You Will Not Rattle Us Apart, Ryan Ross // Vol. IV
VOL. IV: Saturday
It turns out that Zach has to work this morning, and so after breakfast - hashbrowns and a spinach-tofu scramble and black coffee, because Ryan never hesitates to give the self-righteous vegan speech to omnivores - they take the F-train back to Brooklyn together.
It’s not until they’re sitting there together on the train just like he and Brendon did yesterday morning that Ryan realizes that what he’s doing feels like cheating.
Not just the flirting that he’s always done, the lips and the touches that have carried him through this monogamous thing he has going. And not the casual time spent seducing and banging people when he was single and had his whole body and soul available to work for his goals. This feels like actual cheating. Excited, glowing, heartsick betrayal. A mountaintop, with the precipice just a step away.
He looks at Zach sideways, and watches him watch the lights of the tunnels flick by.
They didn’t even talk about the band at breakfast. They talked about where Zach grew up in New Mexico and Ryan’s family problems back in Vegas. They talked about how fucked up moving to New York is at first, how it’s a paradise and a nightmare for everyone who isn’t from here. How you can never get what it’s like to be from here, because it’s the grandest metropolis and unimaginable except when you’re standing on the sidewalk reminding yourself it’s there, it exists. You’re in it. They talked about the desert: hating the heat, but missing it too. Zach talked about Europe, and his hundred thousand trips to Paris, from teenager to touring artist. They took turns trying to put ineffable things into words, like the night spent watching films that beggared description somehow pushed them both to do just that: describe everything to each other.
But Ryan tells himself this isn’t cheating, that this isn’t even close to cheating. Spending the night out in chaste artistic observance is so far from cheating that it’s actually really weird that right now Ryan is thinking about what Zach’s face looks like when he’s getting his dick sucked.
And then Ryan checks his phone, reminding himself that Brendon hasn’t tried to call him once, even though he kept his phone in his pocket all night, waiting for the ring that could’ve broken the chapel-like silence of the theater.
They walk up to the frame shop together.
Before they go in, Zach turns to Ryan and says, “I’m really glad we hung out.”
Ryan shrugs, and goes, “Yeah, me too,” thinking that if Zach kissed him right now there wouldn’t be much he could do about it.
But Zach just smiles and nods and pushes into the shop. Ryan follows, wondering for a second if that was his move, his cue, and he missed it.
“We should get together to talk, though, soon,” Zach adds, “I mean, about your band.” Then he disappears into the back to clock in, leaving Ryan wondering.
Spencer comes over from the cash register. “Hey,” he says, glancing after Zach with muted curiosity.
“Morning,” Ryan says. “You look spry.”
Spencer’s eyebrows question the truthfulness of the statement. He says, “You look like you slept in a ditch.”
Ryan flattens his hair with one hand and says, a little lofty, “Can you imagine any situation that could possibly persuade me that sleeping in a ditch was the only alternative?”
“Fleeing from an ax murderer.” Spencer says. “Casual sex when your boyfriend’s at home.”
Ryan blinks, his smile falters as he tries to figure out if Spencer’s teasing or accusing. “Like I said, I didn’t sleep in a ditch last night. So both of those options are out.”
Spencer shakes his head just a bit. That twinge of unhappiness is back at the corner of his mouth. “Not that it’s any of my business, but as your next-door neighbor I couldn’t help noticing that you didn’t come home last night.”
“Was Brendon upset?” Ryan asks, not bothering to deny it. His mouth twists, guilty.
“Brendon didn’t show up either. I tried to call him,” Spencer shrugs. “But I guess his phone was off.”
“Where was he?” Ryan asks, guilt immediately drowned out with a flood of anxiety. Jealousy. Worry. Something.
Spencer sees it for what it is - hypocrisy, it turns out - and folds his arms without much sympathy. “I didn’t see him before I came to work.”
“So why didn’t you call me?” Ryan demands, a little belated. “For all you knew I could’ve been in a ditch.”
Spencer doesn’t answer. Without a word, he guides Ryan by the elbow out the front door. Ryan twists to see Zach re-emerging from the back. He sends an awkward wave as Spencer maneuvers them out onto the sidewalk.
“Seriously, Ryan, where were you last night?” Spencer says as soon as he’s decided they’re far enough down the block for some privacy. He looks concerned. He looks like he might be angry, if Ryan answers wrong.
“I wasn’t out banging anyone, if that’s what you’re so worried about” Ryan says, hearing a bit of a defensive whine in his voice. Because obviously that’s what Spencer’s thinking, because obviously that’s what Ryan was functionally doing, minus the actual sex. He hedges: “I was at work.”
“You worked all night. What, did they have some kind of emergency? Someone needed a ten minute shot of a dead whale at 10:00 p.m. on a Friday night?”
“No.” Ryan pauses. “I stayed to watch some reels. Zach came and watched them with me.” It’s hard to explain that what they were doing was totally innocuous. Because it also wasn’t, in Ryan’s eyes.
And obviously not in Spencer’s, either, because as soon as he hears Zach’s name Spencer exhales a breath and raises a hand to his eyes. “God, you’re killing me, Ryan.”
“What! I wasn’t-” Ryan starts again, even though he knows why Spencer can jump to that conclusion. He knows why Spencer would think that. Because he’s done it to Spencer before. High school weeknights spent curled up together on couches, tentative explorations that died in the daylight because Ryan wouldn’t take what Spencer had to offer. And even more recently than that, Ryan’s made promises that he never meant to keep. Spencer knows better than anyone that Ryan is the biggest asshole in the world.
Spencer just waves a dismissive hand. “Look. I’m not going to lecture you,” he says.
Ryan waits for the lecture, anyway. But Spencer just frowns at the dirty concrete. When it becomes apparent that the lecture actually isn’t going to happen, Ryan takes a step closer and says, “Seriously, Spence. I don’t know why you’re so worried. He liked our show. I think he wants to help us out, like, professionally.”
Spencer shakes his head and lifts his eyes to meet Ryan’s. “Please just don’t be an idiot, okay? You are such a slut, sometimes.”
Ryan lets out an offended breath. “I deserve that.”
“Just. Think about what you’re doing, okay? Don’t break anyone’s heart.”
Ryan nods. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Don’t break Brendon’s heart,” Spencer clarifies, folding his arms. Like he knows: Spencer’s lived through it, he’ll spare everyone else the pain, if he can.
Ryan doesn’t know how to respond. Spencer’s obviously losing it if he thinks that it’s going to be Ryan who walks away. He wants to wave his phone in Spencer’s face and hiss He didn’t fucking call me! He didn’t come home either! What the fuck do you think he was doing last night? Instead, he just stares at the sidewalk and doesn’t respond.
Somewhere inside, he knows that blaming Brendon for last night, for everything that’s fallen apart recently, is a cop out. Blaming Brendon is like blaming Jesus for Judas’ betrayal. He was always too good for me, Ryan adds, in his mental tirade. He looks up at Spencer and twists his face, stemming the tide of excuses into something silent and inexcusable.
Spencer sighs at him. “I have to get back to work.” Then he adds, awkward, “I’m sorry, Ryan.”
“It’s okay,” Ryan says. Whatever Spencer is apologizing for, he doesn’t have to. Ryan knows who the problem is. He watches Spencer walk back down the block.
.
When he turns around, he sees Brendon. Two hundred feet down the sidewalk, walking toward the compound steps, looking at least twice as bedraggled as Ryan feels.
When he sees Ryan’s wave, there’s kind of a pause before he smiles and waves back. Like, a frightened pause. Like he’s frightened by the sight of Ryan: not his dirty hair or wrinkled clothes, but the fact that he’s standing there existing at all.
Ryan feels the same way right back.
They reach the steps up to the courtyard at the same time.
“You get some breakfast?” Ryan asks. There are a hundred questions he could ask, but this feels like the only one that is relevant, but still safe. He doesn’t want to know why Brendon has sleep in his eyes, or why he’s walking like his junk is sore. He doesn’t want to know.
“I had soy crepes at the Coup,” says Brendon, cautious. “Pineapple and maple syrup.”
“That’s disgusting,” says Ryan. “You’re going to have a sugar crash.”
“They were delicious.” Brendon says, unapologetic. “What’d you have?”
“Tofu scramble. Hashbrowns. Coffee. Oranges. At that vegan diner just up in Greenwich.” Ryan confesses without confessing: this is his walk of shame, too.
Brendon nods. “They have good stuff.”
Brendon is the one who takes the first step up, with his palm trailing openly behind him. Ryan reaches for it. They walk across the courtyard and up to their apartment hand in hand.
They crawl into bed that way, too. Unshowered, unshaven. They drop their dirty shirts and socks in piles and lie on top of each other. Brendon’s skin smells like a hangover but Ryan doesn’t say anything. He probably smells like preservation chemicals and fried potatoes.
Another thing is that Brendon’s still in his work pants. But when Ryan goes to unbutton them, Brendon tightens his grip on his hand. “It’s fine,” he says, an echo of the last rejection. All they have are rejections, these days. It stings even more because it’s not like Ryan was making a move. He just wanted to be closer. Close as they used to be. He lets his hands go still.
At least they’re in bed, together. Not on the countertop or a kitchen chair. That counts for something.
Brendon is quiet for a very long time. Ryan lies with his ear against Brendon’s chest, his body curled up like an apostrophe, their knees interlocked. Neither of them falls asleep, and Ryan watches the thick yellow sunlight from the curtains move around the room.
Eventually, Brendon gets up. He goes to pee. He’s in the bathroom for a long time and when he comes back he’s in his underwear and Ryan can see the new tattoo, shiny and lurid purple under a coat of moisturizer.
“What is that?” he asks, feeling bereft and discarded and still masochistically curious.
“I was really drunk,” Brendon avoids the answer. He stands there with his hands at his sides, looking down at it. It’s pretty obviously a stylized butterfly. Right over the hipbone, floating there with its crown and taut curls.
Ryan says, “I think that’s the gayest tattoo I’ve ever seen. It couldn’t be gayer if you got a cock tattooed going into your ass.”
Brendon smiles. “You probably could’ve talked me into that last night.”
Neither of them pursue the fact that Ryan wasn’t there last night. They let the subject go, gentle. Catch and release.
Brendon crawls back into bed, this time tucking his head into Ryan’s throat. He sighs.
“Spencer told me not to break your heart,” Ryan says into Brendon’s hair. He feels like crying. He feels like lying here together like this isn’t going to last. He’s waiting for the shoe to drop, but he’s not sure who’s responsible for holding it.
“Were you planning to?” Brendon asks, he sounds surprised, but kind of abstractedly so. Like Ryan had maybe mentioned a tidal wave scheduled to destroy the city in a few years.
“No.”
“Well, please don’t,” says Brendon.
“Okay,” says Ryan, knowing that he’s promising a one-sided ceasefire that Brendon won’t abide by, because Brendon has talent and is gorgeous and has other options musically and emotionally. “I won’t.”
He can say it because he is waiting for Brendon to break his heart.
They wake up, and it’s dark out. Neither of them have moved and Ryan can feel that his right arm - the one Brendon’s laying on - is totally numb. He waits a few minutes, his thoughts clearing out, and when he knows he’s fully awake, he says, “I think we should have a band meeting.”
Brendon is only reluctantly awake, his response is kneejerk: “Why?”
Ryan doesn’t want to say, because I might have found a way to fix what I fucked up, because maybe I can keep the band even if I can’t keep you. Instead he says, “I just think we have a lot we need to talk about.”
Brendon lifts up his head, wipes at his mouth. He starts to pull his knees up and then winces at the skin on his hip. “No way,” he says.
Ryan props himself up on his elbows to look at him. “No?” he asks, kind of hoping Brendon has a better idea, a way to put off the inevitable.
“We should have a party.” Brendon says, already getting up, reaching for his phone. He’s dialing Jon or maybe Marie downstairs, who grows incredible mellow weed in her window box.
Ryan can’t disagree. He rolls out of bed and starts rooting around for a clean shirt.
Their parties are the kinds of things that spread from apartment to apartment, a lazy ripple of music and conversation filtering through the compound like a call to arms. Neighbors come by with snacks and drinks in hand. Marie - who is the kind of person who survived the 70s without ever finding gainful employment and now sells her stained glass for a mint in Manhattan galleries - brings enough of her stash to share with anyone who’s interested. The Zooeys and Llorona and their younger brothers peek in through the door, but don’t stay for long because distracted adults means that their unending game of cops and robbers won’t be interrupted until midnight’s come and gone. Martina and Olivia and Sara show up with guitars in hand. Someone begs Brendon to pull out the autoharp. Doors open up and down the hallways. People dribble out into the courtyard. The entire compound is lit up like a Swiss hotel and everyone knows everyone else and Ryan relaxes into the warm, safe immersion of family.
He wanders downstairs and finds Jon supervising the safe zone for the robbers when they run out of hiding places. He’s eating someone’s homemade hummus and negotiating a five-second count so that a batch of cornered cat burglars can escape back out into the compound.
Ryan sits down on the edge of the garden wall with him as the kids run off, giggling, and the teenagers who are counting to five say an exaggerated mississippi after each beat to prove they aren’t cheating.
Jon offers some carrot sticks to Ryan, who declines. “I meant to come say hi when I got here, but I got sidetracked,” he says. “They gave me food. I don’t know where they found it, but they gave it to me.”
Ryan reconsiders, and takes a scoop of the hummus: lemony, full of pepper and parsley. “It’s Catherine’s,” he says. “You’re eating black market hummus straight out of her fridge.”
“I hope she doesn’t mind,” Jon says, eating more.
Spencer comes in through the gate, only just off work. He sits down on Jon’s other side, conspicuously not making eye contact with Ryan, and starts in on the hummus with vigor. “This Catherine’s?” he asks, three mouthfuls in.
Jon nods, and gives the bowl a little tug to remind Spencer who has first rights to it.
Spencer ignores it, and they keep eating competitively fast, like anxious lapdogs.
“You’re gonna make yourselves throw up,” Ryan warns them.
“No,” Jon denies, unable to spare the time for extra explanatory syllables.
“Wait and see.” Ryan stretches his legs out in front of him and leans back on his hands, tilts his face up to the night air.
When the hummus is gone, Spencer wanders upstairs to find out what’s on offer in terms of hard alcohol, and Jon flags down a kid to put the bowl back where it came from. He writes a note to go with it, Dear Catherine, IOU. From Jon Walker (and Spencer Smith).
“That’s nice of you,” says Ryan.
Jon just gives him a sideways glance, like maybe he was raised by wolves. Selfish ones.
Ryan says, “I told Brendon we should have a band meeting.”
Jon says, “We have rehearsal tomorrow,” in a way that makes Ryan suspect he deliberately under-interpreted the statement.
Ryan says, “Yeah, but I’m worried about a couple of things.”
Jon’s glance flicks to the second floor windows above them, from which Brendon’s voice is sometimes audible, singing in chorus with the others. He is unmistakable.
Jon doesn’t even fake trying to be polite about his discomfort. He says, “I’m gonna go find Spencer. He’s probably getting talked into a spinach juice cocktail or some shit.”
Ryan watches him go. He’ll have to wait until they all come back to him.
It’ll take a few hours.
He goes upstairs and joins in with the jam session. He holds the tambourine. Brendon’s voice, when it’s unaffected by the kind of music Ryan insists he’s supposed to be singing, by where their songs are supposed to slot in Brooklyn’s taxonomy of subgenres, is something whole and uplifting. Full-hearted. Ryan shakes his tambourine appropriately, but mostly just listens.
Brendon smiles at him between songs, his fingers plucking out something approximated on the autoharp. It makes Ryan remember that his promise didn’t get repeated back to him. That he’s put up the white flag but Brendon’s still at war, whether he knows it or not.
Frightened by the thought, Ryan sits so close to Brendon that it interferes with his tambourine duties.
People start falling asleep around three. On the couch, on the floor, in the bed, until something jolts them awake and they make their way back to their own place. Sometimes. Or sometimes they just stay asleep through the murmured conversations, oblivious.
Brendon laughs when he finds Olivia in their bed. “She’s slept on the floor enough times that we probably owe it to her by now,” he whispers, ineffectively loud. Ryan says, “I’m not really tired, anyway,” and they venture across the hall to Spencer’s door, which is closed, but unlocked.
Spencer and Jon are sitting at the tiny folding table with their empty glasses, and Ryan hesitates as soon as he steps in, because he suddenly feels like they’ve interrupted. Like the conversation just stopped, mid-sentence, and his name is still hanging in the air.
Spencer pulls his empty glass closer to him, examining it, and Jon just goes, “Hey.”
Brendon immediately goes over to the freezer, “Popsicles?” he asks Spencer.
Spencer says, “They’re in there somewhere.”
Brendon hands out the popsicles. Ryan gets what looks like cherry and tastes like grapefruit, sour and unsweetened. Jon’s mouth turns purple and Brendon’s goes atomic orange. Spencer’s looks like cream soda. Ryan wonders how he got the only real fruit, while they all got artificial, soda pop flavors. Hand of god, maybe. Divine justice.
Ryan says, “Maybe we could have that band meeting now.”
Everyone goes quiet. Spencer and Jon are staring so hard at their hands, their popsicles, the table, that even Brendon must notice how weird they’re being. But Brendon doesn’t say anything, either. He just looks at Ryan with steady eyes.
Ryan suddenly feels uncertain: he can’t tell if he’s facing the firing squad, or he is the firing squad. He feels like he should apologize for something, but he’s not entirely sure what. Or how.
His voice sounds unsteady to his own ears. “I guess I have some good news,” he starts off. “Apparently our characteristic awesomeness the other night was pretty noticeable, and I think I’ve kind of made us a contact.”
Spencer glances up, his eyes flat. But he looks back down without saying anything.
Brendon goes, “What kind of contact?”
Ryan says, “One of the guys - well, the guy - from one of the local bands. His name’s Zach. He said he really liked us. He kind of implied that he might be able to help us out.”
“Implied?” Jon asks, pointed.
“Yeah, well.” Ryan says, “Yeah.”
“That’s it?” asks Spencer, irritated. “That’s your announcement?”
“Look,” Ryan waves a hand. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with an opportunity like this, to be honest. Our demo is ancient, we haven’t scheduled a real show since - what - February? Every time we talk about touring someone bitches about missing work. I mean, no one ever has time to update the goddamn myspace page, so I don’t even know if we’re really a band so much as a bunch of guys who go to open mics sometimes. Maybe we were a band a year ago, or eight months ago, but right now-” he trails off, equal parts angry and embarrassed. He’s anxious that he’s gone too far. That they’ll see how he’s failed them and turn against him.
Everyone else looks the same. Jon hasn’t lifted his eyes from the table once. Brendon’s folded in on himself, his arms crossed defensively, like Ryan’s assault is near physical.
Spencer is the one who says it. “So what, you want to break up?”
“No!” Ryan squawks. “Did I say that? No. We are awesome, and we write spectacular songs and we are fucking incredible when we play, but that isn’t enough to move us forward. I just want-”
“You just want some more commitment,” Brendon supplies, voice neutral.
“Yes.” Ryan says, “Yes, that is what I want. I want us to get our asses back in gear.” He says us but it’s only him that’s responsible. He knows it, even as he tries to implicate the rest of them, spread the blame so they can’t look at him with firey eyes and destroy him. He should be begging, really. But he keeps his spine straight.
There is another long silence.
Brendon says, “I’m up for that.”
This statement prompts Jon to look over at Brendon, and Ryan sees a lot of doubt there. Doubt that Ryan’s being honest, doubt that Brendon’s not just doing it for the kids, doubt that things will get better. Spencer looks equally unconvinced. Exhausted.
Eventually, though, maybe just from force of habit, they both make sounds of agreement. Tepid ones, but Ryan tells himself it’s enough.
It has to be enough. Ryan is willing to prove this to them, whatever they believe right now. He just needs a little bit of time to get everything moving. Then they’ll believe it. “Okay,” he says. “Good. I’ll- I’ll talk to Zach. I’ll get us going, okay?”
No one meets his eyes except Brendon, who looks, somehow, as worried as Ryan feels.
.
bridge: JON
Jon would never tell Ryan this, because he’s not suicidal, but if the band broke up he wouldn’t be that heartbroken. Okay, he would. It would suck, he’d miss those guys a lot, because he thinks that they have something that he’s never seen anywhere else, in any other band.
But he also has other options, in a way that he suspects Spencer and Ryan and even Brendon’s talented ass - cross-country desert transplants with shallow roots and fragile dreams that they are - do not.
And Jon’s made a lot of accommodations for this band. Like, giving up cheese, for one. And for two, ending his algebraic laptop experimentations to go back to bass. And banjo - number two point five is banjo - which sometimes Ryan makes him play, so he feels like he’s moved to Georgia and bought a donkey or something. Number three is the part where he’s suddenly questioning his sexuality.
He’s been pretty okay with liking tits, soft skin and long hair for years now, but he was also pretty okay with cheese until Ryan started playing those psychotic PETA videos after rehearsals. Hanging out with hot gay dudes all the time - hot gay dudes and their hot friends, and their even hotter friends, and all of Brooklyn sometimes seems like it’s composed of world-beat college boys who like taking it up the ass - is having a similar effect.
He actually turned down sex the other night. Some girl he’d been flirting with consistently for months at work. She wore suits every day, had this thing for the miso sauce. But when they went out for drinks Jon just kind of let it end on a slow note. Smiled and just - didn’t walk her home.
And now, as he sits at Spencer’s kitchen table listening to the door click shut behind Ryan and Brendon, he tries to think of one good reason for not doing it. She was cute, and obviously had her shit together, and she was pretty funny. He just didn’t really care.
Spencer says, “I give it a week.”
Jon says, “What?”
Spencer repeats, morose: “I think we’ll be done in a week. Ryan can’t help himself: he’s gonna fuck that guy, and it’ll destroy Brendon, and they’ll say the band will keep going, but it won’t.”
“Oh,” Jon says. He doesn’t disagree. Spencer is almost always right. And Jon got the vibe: Brendon was dead quiet, Ryan was freaking out. Both of them were sure the band was already done. You’d have to be blind not to see it. You’d have to be a masochist to want to dwell on it, though.
Jon stands up, stretches, and says, “Hey, you wanna get out of here?”
Spencer looks around at his apartment, like he’s wondering what it did to offend. “Why, do you?”
“Yeah.” Jon says. “Screw Brooklyn.”
Spencer frowns.
“Screw Ryan, screw Brendon. Screw the whole scene. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Spencer says, “Yeah, okay.”
“Awesome,” says Jon. He puts on his coat and puts a couple bottles of wheat beer in his pockets. They can take the train back to Manhattan and maybe Spencer will want to come over to his place. His tiny little closet with his futon and his toilet three feet away from each other. Girls hate it, but Spencer’s always been cool.
Jon will definitely never, ever tell Ryan that he’s not entirely heartbroken by the band breaking up. But that’s mostly because he’s pretty sure he can salvage Spencer Smith out of the wreckage.
VOL. V: Sunday