Work Text:
He’s never in the same place for too long, but it’s always somewhere in Vegas. He swears over mismatched glasses of spirits to his friends that he won’t always be there. His friends, of which there are really only two, nod their heads at him the way they always do, and don’t bring up that he’s been saying that since he was fifteen.
For now Ryan is still in Vegas. He’s set up in a little space under neon signs that can hardly be called a shop. The mahogany tables are draped with thrifted starry tablecloths. Incense sticks to the air. The crystal balls and scrying mirrors, the tarot decks, the astrology and arthiomancy charts, the palm reading guides, the runic tiles — they’re for show, really. They occasionally help guide him, but the purpose they serve is more to make his clients feel better, to help them trust him more.
The market for fortune tellings, psychic readings, divination, whatever he calls it this week is oversaturated. Especially in Vegas, where you can get your palm read by an exotic dancer predicting a big gambling payout in every three clubs. So Ryan hops from space to space every couple of months, and the people who want to hear what he has to say find him.
Ryan doesn’t really give a shit about his “gift”, as Brendon calls it. It’s a means to an end. He says as much over pizza in the apartment the three of them share, crosses his legs and rolls his eyes when Spencer elbows him with a jab about lottery numbers.
(He thinks he had his first vision, or whatever it is, when he was ten. For a few moments during the end of the last class of the day, he closed his eyes, and his brain conjured up images of shattered glass on the kitchen floor, of his father running outside half-mad, of stammered apologies.
That night a group of kids threw a baseball through their window. Ryan never told anyone he saw it before it happened.)
There’s a man that’s been coming recently, but not doing anything. He just sort of lingers outside the entrance to Ryan’s little nook, peeking through the curtains. He wears a hoodie pulled up and sunglasses tucked underneath. The problem is he’s starting to ward off other possible clients. It’s getting frustrating.
“Sir?” Ryan says with practiced neutrality, at around the fifth time the man shows up and peeks through the curtains, “can I help you with something?”
He bolts, and he isn’t Ryan’s problem anymore. Which could be a shame, because men like that are usually paranoid enough to pay for extra readings. But without him lingering, less clients are turned off, so Ryan figures it evens out in the end. All things eventually do.
When he tells Brendon and Spencer about it over the next pizza night, they don’t seem to find it noteworthy.
“Dude was probably high,” Spencer shrugs, “or rich and famous.”
“Rich and famous,” Brendon echoes, really putting effort into sounding mysterious, “and high.”
(He’s sixteen when it happens again. He’s at the library, very much not studying and choosing instead to write in his notebook. Lyrics, poems, anything — it’s a compulsion, at this point. He reads Palahniuk and Rimbaud, he tries to write Palahniuk and Rimbaud. Maybe he’ll write a movie, a play, anything. Something’s gotta hit. Something’s gotta hit.
Valerie Callahan from trigonometry walks by as he’s chewing on the end of his pen. She doesn’t even look at him, which he doesn’t care about, really.
And then she’s at a lake, some other body of water. She doesn’t have shoes, and the rocks are scratching her feet, and she’s cold, but her friends are beckoning her. She steps forward and slips, and her leg hits the ground with a sickening crack.
Ryan blinks, stunned. He looks up, but he’s still in the library, and Valerie is flipping through a book. He goes back to his notebook, and scratches out the shade of the sheets before all the stains.
A few days later, Valerie comes to class with a cast on her leg, walking on crutches. She’s clearly shaken up, and speaks quietly to her desk neighbor that she’s never going to the lake with Jesse and his friends again. Ryan grips his pencil so tight he thinks it’ll splinter, and asks to be excused so he can throw up in the bathroom.
It just keeps happening after that. Small things he envisions happening hours, days later. It overwhelms him. More than his father, more than the desert, more than his school.)
After a few days, the man is back. He’s wearing the same hoodie and the same sunglasses, and he’s got a baseball cap shoved over his hood. Frankly, he looks stupid. Ryan considers calling him out again, but he finally steps through the curtains before he can. He just stands there for a moment, before he steps forward and sits in the chair opposite Ryan. He’s jittery, clearly scared, bouncing his knee rapidly. He pulls off his sunglasses and shit, Ryan knows this face. He hasn’t looked at in a few years but he knows it, knows it from magazines and posters and sweaty, raucous venues and blog posts and tabloids and —
“Jon Walker says you can tell the future,” Pete Wentz says, leaning forward and propping his elbows on the table.
Ryan’s thankful he’s had a lifetime of schooling his expressions and voice into seeming steady and unaffected. He doesn’t think recognition even flickers through his face, thinks his eyes stay as heavy and dreamy as always. His voice doesn’t even waver when he says “I don’t know who that is.”
He thinks his heart might burst out of his chest when Pete Wentz studies him, hopes his breathing is as even as it feels. “Doesn’t matter. I trust him. Can you tell the future?”
“How much are you offering?”
Pete Wentz purses his lips, deep lines appearing on his brow. Like he wasn’t planning on that question. He digs in his pocket and passes a wad of twenties across the table. Ryan doesn’t bother to count them, just slips them into the inner pocket of his coat.
(He’s eighteen and him and Spencer and Brendon and Brent have a band. They have a couple demos, and they’re posting them everywhere. Every LiveJournal community, every adjacent forum, everything they can think to post on. He believes, really believes, that they’re good enough to get at least relatively known in the scene. No Fall Out Boy, but known enough to get him out of Vegas.
He’s about to send the demos in the comments of Pete Wentz’s post when it hits again. Heavier than it’s ever hit before.
They’re playing a show, a big show — him and Spencer and Brendon and someone who is definitely not Brent, and the crowd, oh God, the crowd is huge, cheering and dancing and hollering along to his songs. Brendon is dressed right out of Moulin Rouge!, and shoots him a smile with the corner of his mouth. It morphs to a house, and it’s just him and — Pete Wentz, and they’re eating fucking pancakes and Pete Wentz is grinning at him like he’s a full moon. Again, it shifts, and he’s in some sort of living room and thunder is banging and rain is pounding and him and Brendon are yelling, and Spencer and the other guy are trying to calm them both down. It shifts again and Ryan is fucked up in someone’s bed and Pete Wentz is there with a woman he doesn’t recognize, and his head is killing him as he watches them kiss with wide eyes and shaky hands. It shifts one final time, and Ryan is trembling on a cold bathroom floor with the other guy rubbing his back and all he can think about is Spencer and Brendon and Pete Wentz. Ringing in his head is an endless loop of wasted potential, wasted potential, wasted potential.
He snaps out of it when a door closes a few rooms away. His father’s footsteps are heavy as they head up the stairs. Ryan doesn’t know if his dad even knows if he’s home. Thankfully. He stares at the computer screen, at the blinking cursor, and he doesn’t send the comment. He deletes his LiveJournal the next week.
Their band plays a couple shows, in parks and shitty diners. The rapidity of the others posting the demos slow down. They don’t blow up. Ryan doesn’t think he wants them to anymore. Brent splits away from the friendship when they decide the band is more stress than it’s worth.)
Pete Wentz sits back in the chair, his leg still bouncing as he looks at Ryan expectantly. “Well?” he says.
“Close your eyes,” Ryan says, waiting until he does to do the same. He takes in a deep, centering breath. “What do you want to know?”
Silence. His breathing feels loud, overpowering. Like having Pete Wentz in this nook was never meant to happen, and the universe wants to make it as difficult of a reading as possible.
“I lost…” he’s being careful with his words, Ryan can tell by the way they’re spoken, almost stilted. “Someone. And — something.”
(A shock of bleached blonde hair and a red suit. Fingerless gloves. Synths.)
“Can I… will I get them back?”
Pete Wentz’s voice tremors. Ryan can feel his heart beating in every part of his body. He forces himself to hum, hating the tune that flows from him. The words that accompanied it once pop up in his mind before he can defend against them — I know the world’s a broken bone.
He hums it, over and over, and stands, keeping his eyes shut. He circles the table once, twice, three times, ghosts his fingertips over the edges, and sits back down.
(Divorce papers and custody hearings. Weddings and children and weekends together.)
“Open your eyes,” Ryan says, hearing the edges of his voice slip out of steadiness. Pete Wentz doesn’t, Ryan can tell. “Open your eyes,” he repeats, and Pete Wentz does. Ryan puts his hands out on the table palm-up, humming once more.
(A happy ending. He doesn’t know how long it’ll take. But he sees a happy ending. Arenas and reclaiming old songs. Smile lines and grey hairs.)
“You non-dominant hand,” Ryan says, slow. Pete Wentz puts his hand in Ryan’s, and Ryan presses his thumb into the center of his palm. He waits, quiet. Hums again.
(Different paths branch, they always do. Early set-times and unsold books. Meeting once a month. Relationships fall apart and they can’t be pulled back together.)
“Will I —” Pete Wentz starts, and he sounds almost desperate, nervous. Ryan’s thinking that he might’ve been better off paying a hooker instead of a psychic.
“You might,” Ryan answers, letting his hand go. “It will take time. It won’t happen overnight.”
“I know that,” he says, pulling his hand back to himself. Ryan can hear his knee bouncing still, can sense him fidgeting with energy. “I know that.”
The energy is overwhelming. He can feel it tingling over his skin, creeping up his spine and tickling his veins. It’s making it difficult for him to get the words out. “Other things have to happen first. Your person needs to set their own path and follow it before anything else.” His throat feels tight. The incense dulls in his nose. “Just because I see a happy ending doesn’t mean you don’t have to work for it.”
(Broken hearts blend with reunions. Inside jokes turn to insults. There’s a warm golden glow that might be molten.)
“Nothing is ever concrete. Trust in what you lost and it’ll come back to you.” Ryan finishes, feeling the energy snap away from him as he opens his eyes. He’s cold all of a sudden, trying not to shiver under his fur-lined coat. Pete Wentz is staring right at him, the bounce of his knee a lot quieter now. Ryan takes a moment in his mind to apologize to his eighteen year old self for not pouncing.
Pete Wentz just stares at him for another long, torturous moment, as if he’s not entirely sure what to make of him. Which is — fair, Ryan supposes. He hopes, almost prays that Pete isn’t digging up a CD signing from the deepest depths of his memory. He apologizes again to his eighteen year old self. “Okay,” Pete Wentz finally says, nodding down as he stands up, “okay. I hear you.”
Ryan doesn’t smile. He will go to his grave saying he didn’t smile, even though he feels the corner of his mouth turn up when Pete Wentz shoots him a small, probably put on smile.
“Well,” Pete Wentz picks up his sunglasses and slides them back on, not sounding very relieved at all, “thanks.”
(He drops out of college, gets a job at the Smoothie Hut and another one paying under the table at a sex shop that’s definitely a front for something, and he moves out the day after his nineteenth birthday. He can’t listen to his father anymore. It feels ceremonial when he cuts his stupid bob into a probably stupider hairstyle that resembles a pixie cut more than the fauxhawk he was going for. He swears off black box dye and flat irons as he positions his fringe over his eye.)
Spencer comes to pick him up, because he’s just a good friend like that. The fact that it’s the night he stays open until three in the morning and Spencer doesn’t like him walking back alone that late anymore has nothing to do with it.
He drops his bag in the car and climbs in the passenger seat, nodding in response to Spencer’s greetings. “The guy came back,” he starts as soon as he clicks his seatbelt in, “sunglasses and hoodie lurker guy.”
Spencer nods, pulling through the narrow street. “Rich and famous or high?”
With a flourish, Ryan pulls the wad of twenties from his inside pocket. Spencer laughs and smiles, big and toothy. “Rich and famous,” Ryan says solemnly.
(Spencer moves in with him a few months later. Brendon joins them a few months after that, and they pull their money tight and spring for a slightly bigger apartment. With three bedrooms.
It’s not glamorous by any means. The floors are creaky and the shower only gives lukewarm water. The ceilings are popcorned and the kitchen is small. Brendon is loud and irritating sometimes and Spencer knows him too well for comfort sometimes but Ryan is actually, truly happy for what feels like the first time since he can remember.)
When he pulls out his laptop the next morning, the first thing he does is search up Jon Walker. He’s a videographer and guitar tech for some band called The Academy Is… which rings a very faint bell somewhere in his mind. They’re on Pete Wentz’s label, apparently, so that clears things up a bit more. He must have just had a reading done last time they were in Vegas, Ryan reasons. He squints a bit at the image on his screen.
It’s the guy from the vision burned into his memory. Ryan feels cold again, even though he’s in a fairly warm set of pajamas and sipping at a fresh cup of tea. He has a name to the face now, of the guy that apparently stayed with him in the universe where the band took off and fell apart — and he wishes he didn’t.
Ryan closes the tab and takes a sip of his tea, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to banish the image of himself on a bathroom floor, crying as Jon Walker rubs his back. Wasted potential, he remembers.
(It’s controllable, kind of. When the visions come to him naturally, he can’t really stop them. But if he forces them, he can stop them just as easily.
Music helps. Actual songs or just him humming helps him wrangle in the energy, shape it into something other than incoherent vibrations and flashes of lights.)
The second thing he looks up is Pete Wentz. Fall Out Boy, apparently, broke up. Or “went on hiatus”, which sounds to Ryan like a dramatic way of saying “broke up.” Something about that makes his chest hurt a little, even if he really hasn’t listened to them much for a while. He thinks about the signed Take This To Your Grave CD tucked into the corner of his collection.
Ryan also learns that Pete Wentz is apparently married. And has a child. There was no cool metal of a wedding ring against his hands last night — the divorce papers were rather clear in his mind. Out of curiosity, he clicks a link to an article that begins to load painfully slow.
“Our internet connection sucks,” he says to no one in particular, because Spencer’s still asleep and Brendon works in the mornings.
The page loads, and the picture at the top feels like a shot through the head. He knocks his teacup, the aromatic liquid spilling and scalding his wrist. He draws his hand back sharply, swearing through gritted teeth. The woman — Pete Wentz’s wife — on the screen is the same from the vision too, the one he would’ve watched in half a daze kiss Pete Wentz above him. God — had it been their bed? Their marital bed? Ryan slams the laptop shut and hurries to clean up the spill, ignoring how the image is pulling at the strings of his psyche.
(George dies the summer before Ryan’s twentieth birthday. Ryan doesn’t think of him as dad anymore by that point. Just George.
He knew it was coming. He saw it for weeks leading up to it happening. There were visions he could change, and visions he couldn’t. This one was one he couldn’t, but he was still surprised when it happened.
Him and Brendon don’t talk about this kind of stuff, not really. But Spencer is at work and Brendon is in the living room when Ryan gets the call.
“Ryan?” Brendon asks, frustratingly gentle. Like he already knows from Ryan’s shaking hands as he hangs up. “Was it…?”
“The memorial is on the second,” Ryan says simply.
Later that night, Ryan is sitting on the floor with his back to the couch when it comes out of him. He scribbles in his notebook take the fight from the kid.
“He never liked me,” Ryan says, curling his fingers in the fabric of his pajama pants, “he never knew what to do with me.”
“He loved you,” Brendon says, sitting on the opposite end of the couch, watching him intently.
“Maybe.” Ryan shrugs, his voice softening around the edges. “But he didn’t like me.”)
His wrist wrapped, Ryan starts the process of moving all his divination shit to the basement of a tea shop. The wind is getting too heavy to stay in the place he’d been the past couple months. The tea shop owner likes him, a kind old lady who gives him a discount on rent in exchange for tea leaf readings.
He’s got a boxful of decks of cards and wall hangings when he hears someone come up behind him.
“Do you really see the future?” Pete Wentz asks. Ryan wonders how his life reached this point. He turns his head and gestures to the staircase he was preparing to descend.
“Give me a minute.”
Pete Wentz, apparently, takes that as his signal to follow Ryan down the steps. He doesn’t offer to help carry boxes or unpack or anything. Ryan wonders if he was always this much of a dick.
“Listen, I just — do you actually see the future, or do you just say you do? Did you actually see a happy ending?” he asks, sounding somehow more desperate than he had a few days ago in Ryan’s shop.
“No refunds,” and it comes out much snappier than Ryan intends. Pete Wentz — and Ryan doesn’t know why he can’t just think Pete, his brain just fills in Wentz automatically — doesn’t seem bothered. “If you don’t believe me, that’s your problem. I’m not working right now.”
To his surprise and embarrassment, Pete Wentz laughs, as if Ryan has just told a great joke. The starstruck teenager inside him feels like he’s died and gone to heaven. The annoyed twenty-three year old he is wants Pete Wentz to get out.
After about five minutes of grating quiet, Ryan asks, tightly, “how’d you find me?”
Pete Wentz smiles, as if he’s not coming off like a pushy stalker right now. “I saw you carrying boxes and recognized you.”
Something flutters in his chest, and he needs to get rid of it fast.
“Okay. I see the future,” he says in his practiced deadpan, crouching to lift his tablecloth from a box and shake it out. “Satisfied?”
Pete Wentz laughs again, and Ryan sees a hint of his canine teeth when he grins and says “never.”
(Technically, he does not sleep with Brendon. Technically, he goes down on Brendon once in the back of Brendon’s car, after a fucking musical. Granted, it was a good musical. Hit a little close to home, but whatever. And Ryan was proud of him, or something.
They don’t talk about it. Ryan jumps into the passenger seat and Brendon hesitates before he jumps into drivers seat, and they pretend it never happened. So, no. Ryan did not sleep with one of his roommates and best friends.
Ryan did, however, spend Thanksgiving weekend 2006 with a man probably old enough to be his father, and he did not tell that fact to Spencer or Brendon.
He stays safe, they keep their noses out of his business. That’s their agreement.
None of them adhere to it.)
For some reason, he doesn’t tell Spencer or Brendon any of this. Not that the weird guy is Pete Wentz, not that part of the fateful vision at eighteen was him having a liaison with Pete Wentz and his wife, not that Pete Wentz had found him through the unnamed man in that vision, not that Pete Wentz followed him into the tea shop earlier. None of it.
He tries. He tries to slide it in, but it gets caught in his throat, and it makes him mad because he’s trying to be more open with them, he really is. The words just refuse to come out. Spencer kind of looks at him a bit odd, like he knows something is off, but he doesn’t pry.
Spencer’s got his own shit to deal with without Ryan’s struggles with clairvoyance, and Ryan knows that. Appreciates it, even. Outside of typical jabs about lottery numbers, Spencer doesn’t really care, or at least doesn’t act like he cares about it. It’s one of those best friend things, Ryan thinks.
For a moment, Ryan doesn’t care about Pete Wentz. He cares about Spencer talking about his girlfriend, he even cares about Brendon going on about a movie he watched. He cares about his friends, his apartment, his life. He wonders what Pete Wentz cares about right now.
(Sometimes Ryan ignores the visions. Or, doesn’t quite ignore them, but ignores what they’re definitely trying to tell him. Danger signs don’t always look like warnings. Sometimes they beckon him in rather than push him away.
Ryan decides he is not going to die in the desert. He is not going to let the heat and the wind and the gravel envelop him. He decides this Valentine’s Day 2007, and he breaks up with his sort-of girlfriend, who kind of already had another boyfriend. Whatever.
“What’s the matter with you?” Brendon asks about a minute into Ryan’s relentless pacing. Ryan doesn’t answer. They’re both moody, and isn’t that what Valentine’s Day is really all about?)
Pete Wentz shows up again. The universe must be punishing him, tormenting him for the path he chose. That’s the only reason Ryan can think of for why Pete Wentz is a) still in Vegas after a week and a half, b) continuously showing up where he is, and c) flirting with him.
Notably, he does not wear his wedding ring when he shows up.
Ryan Ross is a lot of things, but he doesn’t think he’s a homewrecker. He likes to think he’s outgrown his stint of solving his problems by flirting with older men, but God is it enticing right now.
“Why are you even still here?” he asks as he locks the door to the tea shop. “Why are you still in Vegas? Don’t you have anything else to do?”
Pete — and his mind lets him just call him Pete, now — smiles, all sharp lines and teeth. Ryan remains resolutely blank-faced.
“Why’s anyone come to Vegas?” Pete questions back. “Pleasure.”
Ryan shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye, nimble fingers tying a knot in his scarf as Pete talks. “You have a wife and child.”
Pete shrugs. “Alright. Business then.”
(He figures out he can profit off of his “gift” the spring of 2007. He’s a little desperate.
It starts small. He offers readings outside clubs and slips bouncers some cash to look the other way, because Ryan is smart enough to do this.
It probably helps that he’s pretty. He’s well aware of that fact and he uses it to his advantage, blinking softly, doe-eyed at people passing by. Smiles softly at bachelorette parties and juts his bottom lip out in a pout at groups of clearly sexually confused men. Spencer doesn’t like that he does that.
Ryan sometimes forgets that Spencer is younger, because he’s just so goddamn protective. It’s not out of left field, he’s been sleeping at Spencer’s place whenever things got bad at home for as long as he can remember. And most of the time, he does appreciate it. It’s sweet. Spencer is a sweet kind of guy, really.
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you,” Spencer says quietly, one of the nights Ryan doesn’t return until dawn. A little bit buzzed and too tired to deadpan, he leans forward and presses a wet kiss to Spencer’s cheek. Spencer scrunches up his face and swats at him. Ryan is feeling goodwill towards his fellow man, so he leans down and presses a matching wet kiss to a sleeping Brendon’s forehead. And then wipes his mouth.)
This should not be happening. He is very, painfully aware of the fact that this should not be happening. Ryan never sent that comment. Him and Pete Wentz’s paths should've never crossed outside of merch signings.
But he’s in Pete’s hotel room, and Pete is tucking his too-long hair behind his ears and kissing his neck, and Ryan can’t stop thinking about how he saw Pete and his wife kissing above him. And he doesn’t care that he’s a homewrecker now, justifies to himself that their marriage is already rocky and they’d get a divorce without him.
He tries, weakly, one more time. Just so he’s not guilty about it later. “You have a wife,” he says in a low voice, breathing hard as Pete scrapes his teeth against the curve of his shoulder.
“Hush,” Pete mumbles, shaking his head slightly, “she’s not here.”
Pete’s knee is nudged between his thighs, warm and steady. He’s got one hand curled behind Ryan’s head, the other splayed across his chest. It’s making Ryan feel a little dizzy, a little overwhelmed. He’s not a virgin by any meaning of the word, but he’s feeling unprepared with Pete’s hands on him.
“‘sides,” Pete says, trailing his fingertips down Ryan’s torso, “you’re much prettier.”
“Okay, fuck —” Ryan’s breath stops in his throat, the calloused pads of Pete’s fingers skimming his v-line, “you convinced me.”
(Spencer and Brendon, bless them, really do try to get Ryan to spend his twenty-first birthday with them. He appreciates it, even if he doesn’t say it. But he has a different plan that doesn’t involve store-bought cake and red solo cups.
He saw himself, a few days prior, in a hotel room with the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen, high enough to float but not high enough to fear. Large hands on his hips, playful nips to his shoulders. Smoke and kisses.
Ryan finds him at the fourth bar he hits, his long-sleeved polo unbuttoned at the collar. Ryan pushes his own sleeves up and adjusts his fringe where it swoops over his headband and slides up next to him. The man looks at him, and his smile makes Ryan feel weak at the knees.
“Well hello, pretty thing,” he says, looking at Ryan a bit like he’s stumbled on a rare jewel, “you here for me or am I just lucky?”
Ryan laughs, high and breathy, and rests his elbows on the bar. “Both.”
Afterwards, tangled in his bedsheets, Ryan smiles. The man, the gorgeous, gorgeous man, is smoking by the window, half redressed. His tattooed torso seems like it’s glimmering with a vague sheen of sweat under the lights.
“We gonna see each other again?” the man asks, casual as anything. Ryan falls back on the mattress with a throaty giggle.)
Ryan knows he’s pretty much a rebound. Maybe a pet project. No matter how many times he forces a vision from the energy in the room, Pete never pops up again after this week.
The carpet is surprisingly soft. He didn’t even have the time to get his pants off before he found himself kneeling on the ground, Pete looking at him with a mix of pride and want.
“You’re too pretty,” Pete sighs, running the pad of his thumb across Ryan’s bottom lip. “You’re gonna get someone in trouble one day.”
Like you? Ryan wants to say, but before he can Pete is curling his fingers around his chin and all but wrenching his mouth open further, murmuring “open up.”
Ryan knows he’s a rebound, an expensive quarter-life-ish crisis, and a homewrecker, and he doesn’t really care.
At least he knows he’s not a rebound for Pete’s wife. He is well aware, after a couple weeks of chatting with Pete and doing brief readings, he’s a rebound for Patrick. He knows Pete is imagining reddish blondish brownish hair and bluish greenish eyes. He knows Pete is imagining an angelic voice gagging shallowly around him, a cherubic form with rosy cheeks.
It doesn’t bother him as much as it annoys him, and it doesn’t annoy him as much as it kind of excites him. He’s fine with being an outlet, right now. He’s pretty much been an outlet for the universe for thirteen years now. At least this way he gets to live his seventeen year old self’s wet dreams.
(“You know, Ryan,” Brendon says, his arms crossed and his voice raised, “I’m getting tired of you pulling this shit.”
Ryan rolls his eyes, even though he knows his hands are trembling. “Good thing I didn’t ask you.”
“No, we’re not doing that. You disappear for a few days and you come back acting like a massive asshole!” The way Brendon’s voice got higher would be funny if not for the way he’s glaring at Ryan. It feels like a lecture. Ryan wants to punch him. “You act like you’re the only one that matters!”
“Why do you even care?” Ryan asks, crossing his arms to mirror Brendon. He’s keeping his cool. He remembers the scene in the cabin with them yelling and Spencer splitting them up. “I’m fine. I didn’t ask you to give a shit.”
“Where were you the past few days?” Brendon asks, narrowing his eyes.
“God, with a guy. Why does it matter?”
They stare at each other for a moment, both of them frustrated and neither of them wanting to give in. Ryan doesn’t know how he managed to end up living with the one person as stubborn as him.
“I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”)
Ryan’s up on the bed pretty soon, his pants finally off and his cheek against the cool pillow.
“You know what you’d look nice in?” Pete says, running his fingers down the knobs of Ryan’s spine. “Lacy panties.”
Ryan almost laughs, but instead he huffs and wriggles his hips back. Pete’s got a hand on his left hip, though, almost bruising in his grip, so Ryan can’t do too much. He hopes so badly that it bruises, that he can poke at it until it goes away. “Are you gonna fuck me or just look at me?”
“Patience, Ryan,” Pete scolds, clearly teasing. It still makes the tips of his ears flush red. ”Can’t I treasure a desert flower?”
Ryan kicks out blindly behind him, and Pete snorts, grabbing his other hip and sinking in without warning. It’s been a little while, he’s definitely not as ready as he should be, and it burns. But he doesn’t whine, his breath barely even stutters. He lets the burn travel down his thighs, barely hisses through his teeth when Pete’s bony hips rock against his ass. He hopes again for bruises. He needs to feel it in his core.
“Fuck me,” Ryan says, words thin and staccato, as if they’re being forced out of him. “C’mon. I’m not your wife. I’m not Patrick.”
Pete stills, and Ryan thinks he’s gone too far. But Pete just hikes his hips higher, forces his spine to curve further, and rocks in. It’s exactly what Ryan wanted, so he keeps talking, even though his words are broken with sharp exhales. “Not — made of porcelain. You can fuck me for real.”
“Really?” Pete says, and Ryan thinks he can hear the sharp corners of his lips turn in a smile. “You look pretty fuckin’ breakable to me.”
“Break me then,” he says, cringing at the way his voice wavers when he says it. It's more of a challenge than a request.
(Him and Brendon never talk about the argument. He wonders if they’ll explode one day from all the arguments and issues they ignore. He wonders if that would be a good thing.
He keeps going out, starts dressing kind of like a hippie. Smokes a lot more weed than he used to. They don’t have a balcony, so they just prop open the kitchen window.
Ryan scribbles down things have changed for me, and that’s okay when Brendon plops down next to him and plucks the joint from between his fingers.)
Pete doesn’t exactly offer to get him off, which Ryan kind of expected.
Pete finishes hard with his hands wrapped around Ryan’s hips, pressed firmly inside. Ryan had insisted on a condom, because he takes STDs seriously now, but he almost wishes he hadn’t. He turns and lands on his back when Pete pulls out, sighing at the feeling. He watches through lidded eyes as Pete ties the condom and flicks it in the wastebasket, before standing at the edge of the bed and looking at him expectantly.
“What?” Ryan says, sounds feeling heavy in his throat. He’s hard, nearly aching, but he’s not gonna fold just from Pete looking at him. He’s got more self-respect than that.
“Well,” Pete gestures at him, “I wanna see your face when you cum.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “You could offer to get me off.”
Pete shakes his head, looking at Ryan like he’d just said something completely crazy. “No, I don’t do that. Come on, let me see.”
He climbs back on the bed and gets a hand on each of Ryan’s knees, nudging his legs apart. Ryan feels sore and lazy, groaning and going easily. “Are you always this selfish in bed?” he asks in a grumble, trying not to shiver when he feels Pete push his knees up, feet flattening on the mattress.
“Are you always this fucking bitchy?” Pete matches his tone, if not a bit sharper. “C’mon, I’ll be generous. I’ll finger you.”
Ryan grumbles again, but relents and wraps a hand around himself. Pete mumbles out a “good boy,” and Ryan would’ve kicked him if he hadn’t immediately followed it with his index finger tracing Ryan’s rim.
(Ryan can never go further than five years, at least with himself. He doesn’t know what that means, if it means anything at all.
It almost makes him nervous. It makes him worry that he might not make it the next five years. He doesn’t want to die in the desert. He can’t die in the desert. The books stacked haphazardly on his dresser seem to be looking at him, so he picks his paperback translation of A Season in Hell off the top and reads to himself, pacing back and forth.
If Spencer or Brendon are in and can hear him, they’re kind enough not to say anything. They know how he can get.
The poet, Arthur Rimbaud — he died when he was 37. He had to go back to France, go back to the place he’d spent his whole life running from. Fate twisted itself around him and forced him back in his final hour. Him and his sister are buried together.
Ryan sets down the book and scribbles we must reinvent love in his notebook and prays that he isn’t buried with his father.)
“You can’t tell anyone about this, you know?” Pete says as Ryan buttons himself back up. “Like, if — you just can’t. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, you know?”
Ryan sees Pete looking at him through the mirror. For a second, he actually looks guilty. As if this entire thing wasn’t his idea.
Not Ryan’s problem. He rolls his shoulders and tries to fix his messy hair. “Whatever,” Ryan says, deadpan back in his voice and his carefully schooled mask of dreamy indifference back on his face. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
Pete leaves Vegas the next day. Ryan sits, still a bit sore, in his chair in the basement of the tea shop. In his notebook, he writes a wedding ring is just a thing that weighs you down and occupies your finger.
He keeps his word. He doesn’t tell Spencer or Brendon or anyone. If Pete’s ever back in Vegas, he doesn’t find Ryan again.