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At a certain point, Ryan gave up on feeling anything new. He became used to his regular physical sensations; the smoke funneling down into his lungs, the slight burn of the smoker’s cough afterward. He was used to the ache of his back after always sleeping twisted, used to the quietness of the cool mornings as he walked his route to work.
Then there’s the way his mind felt like it was stuck in a vat of cement, unable to break free or do anything about it. Ryan was so familiar with the way it hurt to wonder if he could ever feel any different, if things would ever look up. It became part of his routine to wish for the things he couldn’t change, wishing to connect with the person he could see in his eyes when he looked in the mirror, but the person that he just couldn’t reach. When he worried about how he felt, that cement would so suddenly turn to quicksand instead, so Ryan learned early on to not try delving into his feelings. He much preferred being stuck in an emotional rut to feeling like his focus and his sanity and his reality were all slipping away from him.
Ryan had been convinced, after years of everything being the same, that his reality would never shift. It seemed his most intimate companion was his own tears, and maybe Chris whenever he bothered to show just to fuck with Ryan’s head. Ryan accepted one night that some people were just meant to be alone and meant to stay the same. People just like him.
Matt just didn’t seem to care what the universe was planning on doing with people like Ryan, though, because he showed up, put up with him, and was a little hard to get rid of. The first time Ryan notices that things might actually be changing for once, he doesn’t know what to do with the realization and the way it makes him feel.
Ryan’s helping Matt up from his kneeling, sopping wet position on the concrete. Matt is embarrassingly drunk for having only had a couple drinks and helplessly shaken up from just a single kiss. He’s so far removed from anything beautiful right now, mind no longer recording the off-center steps he’s taking and mumbling worries that Ryan can’t fully understand.
“I need to get home,” Matt mutters to himself, then takes steps to apparently do just that. Ryan can predict him falling back in the pool before he even makes the first stumble, so he grabs onto one of Matt’s cold hands just to be prepared.
It’s hard for Ryan to remember the last time he’s wanted to be close to someone other than Chris. And yet, even in the state he’s in, Ryan still feels his heart beating faster while he holds Matt’s hand to give him balance.
“I don’t think you can go home like this.” Ryan says it as if there was ever any option for debate, knowing for certain that Matt just can't go home like this.
This is so different than needing to be around Chris out of habit, out of being too scared to get away in case there really is only one person on the planet that’s willing to put up with him. Ryan looks at Matt, making momentary eye contact with his blue eyes that are looking glazed over and a little scared, and he just wants to keep looking. He isn’t short of breath like a cliche teen, and he’s not starstruck by the sight of him. Ryan just feels like his heart is content with what’s before him, and that decidedly might be even more unnerving than if his hands were to start shaking.
Matt takes a few more steps towards the pool entrance, walking as if he’s not quite used to his own feet, and his unsteady movements really give Ryan the feeling in his stomach that makes him realize what a mess he’s gotten them into. He likely should have thought a little further ahead and planned for something like this happening, or maybe just shouldn’t have let Matt drink a little too much on an empty stomach anyway. There’s no way to fix the mistake now, though, so Ryan focuses on getting Matt out of the pool grounds in one piece.
Before braving anything as adventurous as trying to heave Matt’s uncooperative body over the fence again, Ryan has the idea to weigh his other options first. He manages to coax Matt along to the locker rooms, barely able to see by the light of the emergency lights placed sparingly throughout. Matt fortunately isn’t far gone enough to be a total dead weight, it’s just a matter of getting him to follow Ryan’s direction. With only a little wandering, Ryan spots their way out and comes to find the relieving, easy give of the door when he pushes at the exit bar. He looks to Matt in hopes of sharing the moment of victory together, but Matt just blinks back at him in the red glow of the exit sign above their heads, barely seeming to register there was even a problem that needed solving at all.
The door closes and clicks shut again back behind them once they’ve made it out, and Ryan huffs out of sigh of relief that the locked door has at least covered their tracks. After the less than grand escape, though, the night still isn’t over. Ryan thinks about the journey back to his house that he already knows is going to feel so much longer than usual while lugging Matt through the dark.
There’s no way that he can let Matt go home like this, not with such a big risk of his dad seeing him in such a state and doing god knows what as a punishment. From what Matt has told him, the guy seems like a total asshole, however unfit to judge Ryan may be. The things Matt relays to him really paint him as more of an egomaniac on a power trip than any kind of good-natured preacher. It pisses him off that people in positions of authority or power really project these ideas of, “Everything is fine, just have faith,” when they themselves are often the ones that are fucking things up for people in the first place.
He disregards the thought before he gets himself too worked up. Ryan’s left to try calming his wandering mind by focusing on anything else. He’s hardly buzzed now, just something reminiscent of the word as he and Matt keep on down the road. Ryan thinks about the trip to the liquor store earlier, how he was afraid of potentially seeing Chris there. He thinks about why he thought introducing Matt to alcohol would be a good idea at all. Ryan thinks about why he’s been thinking of Matt this often in the first place, why when he was eyeing up his usual beers he considered inviting someone else along for a drink this time.
He looks up at the moonless and starry night sky, rolling his eyes at himself with a huff of breath. Matt, at this point, with his somewhat out of character silence and dragging feet, seems less drunk and mostly just tired. Ryan’s tired too.
--
Ryan feels something unplaceable as he lays Matt’s wet clothes out to dry on a few piled up cinder blocks in his side yard. He heads back into his bedroom to Matt sprawled on his mattress, and just can’t seem to shake that something is off about all this, despite knowing that bringing Matt home instead of back to his parents was the better thing to do. He treads quietly around the room, picking up after himself- a few pairs of underwear, spare lighters, and loose change. As if anyone is awake now to see how he keeps his room. There’s something in him that’s keeping him from standing still, despite knowing that he should stop pacing in case he wakes Matt; he should have left the room already, really.
It just feels like this is definitely out of their comfort zone. Not either his or Matt’s alone, but out of the realm of what they seem to allow in the relation they share. He’s crossed some sort of line by pulling the sheets up to Matt’s waist and turning out the lights. Ryan is glad that no one is here to see the intimacy he’s slipped into, or else he might have not been able to stomach the scene and otherwise would’ve left Matt alone and half-naked without care.
That’s just it, though. It’s the care that’s the problem. Ryan still confuses himself with the feelings he can feel wedging their way into his regular ways. The extra thought for an extra heart that he didn’t ever think would even be in the picture leaves him disoriented and wondering how he ended up here. He doesn’t much remember the transition between pushing every living soul away from him with his teeth bared to now, but somehow along the way he managed to let Matt become something to him. A second thought? A friend? A sense of hope?
Ryan gets himself a little worked up trying to figure it out, so much like most of his thoughts and feelings when they arise, he disregards the internal struggle. It’ll likely be brought up again at a later time, when he’s had more to drink and is too inebriated to be able to ignore what’s always there.
Regardless of how he feels about his own feelings, Ryan finds that he cares about Matt’s more. When he thinks of Matt’s father, he’s angry that his actions must contradict his preachings.It’s hypocrisy that Matt has to deal with and live with firsthand. Most of all, it’s frustrating to think that Matt is aware of the flaws in his father, but continues to let him get away with it. So Matt’s got a few daddy issues. So what? Ryan isn’t sure when it became his business that the preacher wants to live vicariously through his son and has a chokehold on his life. It shouldn’t matter that some church kid from down the road can’t seem to get a grip on a life of his own and make his own decisions.
And yet, it bothers Ryan that Matt doesn’t stand up for himself. He’s managed to infiltrate this careful routine Ryan had for himself and he’s made himself known and now Ryan cares.
He’s not stupid. He knows why Matt is on his mind, why he can’t stop pacing, why the first chance he gets in a pool at midnight he goes in to kiss him. Ryan just doesn’t want to admit to the realization, or face the trouble it could cause if he did.
On one hand, Ryan’s heart begs for something new. It longs for someone that Ryan can feed himself into, someone that can help him climb out of the hole of self-pity he’s been sitting in since Chris left again. But on the other hand, Ryan knows that it’s not as simple as the two of them getting along and living that way. Whatever path that he continues down with Matt, even if he didn’t kiss him and even if Matt didn’t seem like he wanted to kiss him back, Ryan is afraid that with someone as fucked as himself, it just won’t work.
He knows why Matt is on his mind.
He finally leaves his bedroom without another look at Matt, cigarettes already in-hand, retrieved from the pocket of a pair of shorts on the floor. Whether he’s lonely or not, Ryan’s mind doesn’t seem to let him rest. Once back outside, he takes to sitting on his front steps, tired of his feet having him wander around the way his mind does. After he lights a cigarette, he stares at the familiar glow of his butane flame for just a little longer than usual before letting the light go out. The first drag helps refresh his mind, pulling every disorganized thought in together, then releasing them all out into the air with his breath of smoke.
As much as he wishes it was just something easy and painless, Ryan knows that this is a mess he’s getting Matt into. Ryan is only some lonely fuck that doesn’t have anything to lose. But Matt, Matt’s got so much going for him. His family cares about him, he has something he’s passionate about. There are people who give a shit if Matt fucks things up, or or at least if he lets someone else fuck things up for him. Ryan doesn’t want to be that person to him- the one who gets in the way. As someone who’s usually content with thoughtless complacency, settling for the bad that wanders around the scarce good, Ryan is surprised that he cares enough to make the decision to watch out for how he affects somebody else.
He knows why Matt is on his mind. The notion alone has the beginnings of a thoughtful tremble shaking his hand as he brings it up to his lips for another drag.
It’s new and it’s different to have this sudden want to be around someone other than Chris, to want to be there for Matt and just care for him. Ryan admits that there is still something scary about something as trivial as wanting to be the person that’s always there to hand Matt his shoes when he’s lost. But what’s worse, or what feels worse, what feels like this red-light, sudden stop of a lurch in his gut whenever he thinks about it, is that this is someone else that he’ll have to give himself up to. As much as he pretends there’s nothing beyond the brick wall of a facade he’s learned to put up, he’s all too aware of what’s really underneath. The idea of being known is terrifying.
Ryan has learned to be good at being lonely, and it was no easy feat to even make it this far without anyone there for him as a constant. He doesn’t cry much, doesn’t blink as much when anyone leaves him behind. Ryan is not some delicate flower that needs protecting. But, at his core, he’s still intricate and small. Ryan has a soft center, and he knows all too well about the dangers of getting taken advantage of because of it. So he locks it away, hasn’t shown anyone anything but his hardened exterior in years. It’s got him afraid to know that it’s almost beyond a conscious choice at this point for him to want to give it up to Matt. There are too many things that could go wrong with that.
So Ryan gets mad when Matt seems to want to pry, because he doesn’t want to have to open up. He hates when Matt looks at him lost and confused, like he’s trying to figure him out, like Ryan is any kind of mystery that needs solving. Realistically, somewhere deep where maybe even Ryan himself doesn’t know it, he’d love to just give up the fight one day and offer someone the key. It’s if he’ll ever allow himself to get to that point that’s the biggest mystery of all.
--
“So, are we going to talk about it?”
His heart is starting to race in his chest. He can’t really remember the last person that made it do that, other than Chris the last time he screamed at him. But that was his heart reacting to the anger. This feels unfamiliar. Feels like fear.
Matt acts coy, but he’s not good at hiding himself like Ryan is. Ryan wonders, if he reached over to touch Matt right now, would he feel his heart pounding in his chest the same way Ryan’s is?
“You can’t keep pretending it didn’t happen, because guess what? It did! We kissed, now get the fuck over it.”
He’s reacting like a defensive animal. He’s giving the conversation all the repressed anger he’s felt towards himself, towards everything that he can’t change. Matt doesn’t deserve it, but if he wanted to get away, he could have already left. Ryan thinks maybe Matt was looking for something by coming here, and if Ryan can’t give him any solace or solve any of his problems, then this is what he’s going to offer instead. The exposure of his agitation with the way Matt has been making him feel.
“You made me kiss you! Why would you do that?”
I’m sorry, Ryan thinks, but on the outside he seethes.
“Why the fuck are you saying this is my fault? You knew what you were doing!”
“No, I didn’t, Ryan, I didn’t. You got me drunk, and you knew I could do something stupid. Why didn’t you stop me?”
I try and I just can’t. I know I should but I can’t make myself stay away. And it’s selfish.
“I just seriously don’t get why this is even a big deal. It’s not like it meant anything.” He lies.
Matt curses at him. Matt calls him names and speaks in this way that he sounds like he’s not used to. Matt looks at him with this expression that Ryan guesses is supposed to appear angry, but he just looks more hurt than anything. He looks confused and concerned and overwhelmed with everything that Ryan is putting him through, and this is it, this is why Ryan can’t delve into any of the thoughts about Matt that keep him up at night.
It’s clear that Matt has never had to live with such a resistant force before. Being around Ryan is different than whatever problems Matt faces with his dad. Beyond what seems to be simply ceaseless arguing, Ryan can see something worse. He sees the vulnerable, overzealous Matt that bickers back with him as someone Ryan used to be, and without much imagining, Ryan has turned into Chris. Ryan doesn’t want to be that person to someone else, and especially not to someone like Matt. So he defends, and strategizes how to make Matt realize what he can’t see, and he pushes away. It’s what he’s good at.
Ryan tries not to feel guilty when he fights right back, and it works. He puts Matt in his place, belittles him, reveals all the reasons Matt should stay away from him without ever saying the exact words. It’s hard to describe the way he wishes he could stop and hopes Matt heeds the warning all at once.
“Just- don’t ever kiss me again, okay?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Ryan lies again.
When the door closes, he already feels like he needs a drink.
--
There’s this feeling that Ryan gets sometimes. It’s not completely unfamiliar, but every time it comes around, it catches him off guard. It’s sad to admit that feeling things makes him uneasy, but it’s just that when he’s on his own, he can block things out. He can selectively shut out what needs to be shut out, and get on without tripping over everything in his head. It’s when he’s around other people that he can’t control the way they make him feel. Something about Matt brings him into this sort of nostalgic trance, something about the way he smiles and wants to genuinely be around Ryan that reminds Ryan of Chris when they were young, or home, or… something. The way that it’s an unplaceable, vague feeling makes him even more uneasy. As if he needs any more new emotions to try and pick through.
It’s the worst, though, with Chris. Ryan has experienced too much with him to ever fully escape him, even if just the memories. He’s not nearly blessed enough to be left with only the thoughts of Chris, though. Chris would never let him live that way.
As soon as Ryan’s front door opens, his pulse begins to race. His first thought was that it was Matt, coming over unannounced, and bursting into his living room as out-of-character as can be. Ryan isn’t usually one for wishful thinking, but it’s the first place his heart jumped to in its interrupted frenzy. If he could control the way he felt and the places his thoughts traveled, he might never have another real worry again. But things don’t work in a way that’s convenient, not for Ryan.
And now Chris is in his house.
“What the fuck,” Ryan says, less of a question and more of a cold display of how he really feels. Ryan, even now, has brief remnants of their past flash by him. Times when he’d have to hide things and shelter himself. He’d walk on eggshells, but it’d be more like tiptoeing on broken glass. No matter how he tried to be the best for Chris, it was never enough. So Ryan thinks of it now, has this image of teenage, cowering Ryan infiltrating this current moment they’re in. He can’t remember the turning point of when he stopped letting Chris walk all over him, just knows that the memory of their past that’s burned into him is all the reminder he needs to never let himself turn back.
“What, didn’t you miss me?” Chris asks coolly. Ryan imagines he should be sneering, grinning like a cartoon villain. Instead, though, he’s casual and collected as he shuts the door to Ryan’s own house behind him, like he does it all the time. Somehow, that makes Ryan angrier than if he were really playing up the part.
“No.” Ryan says definitively. You clearly missed me, though, he thinks of saying, but refrains from stirring the pot. He’s not keeping himself quiet around Chris, he’s just avoiding another few blood stains on his carpet if he can help it.
Ryan’s stood from the couch now, and Chris is standing just feet from him, smirking in that way that he always does. Like he knows Ryan, like he has everything against him.
And then Chris is there, against Ryan, and Ryan is against the wall, and fuck, this is not how things were supposed to go today. Or ever. He didn’t even know that Chris was still around town.
“I didn’t even know you were still around town,” Ryan tells him stupidly, as if that’s the most important piece of information Ryan can think to share right now. It’s nothing like the, “I thought I broke your nose last time, do you want me to try again?” that he feels boiling in his gut, but that won’t actually spill out.
Chris doesn’t have him pinned or anything, so Ryan isn’t going to put up a fight until it’s necessary. Something in him tells him that maybe, if Chris came all the way over here to him, that maybe he’ll be willing to actually talk before getting Ryan too riled up to hold anything back.
“What, like I’d run away just because you’ve got some little twink to fuck now? I’m not you.”
It’s difficult to keep his emotions in check enough as it is, and Chris coming all the way here to start shit with him definitely isn’t helping. Fuck him for going for such a cheap shot. As if comparing himself to a lovesick, broken, sixteen-year-old Ryan is really any boost to his ego. He knows it shouldn’t get to him. He dwells on it anyway, though, starts to feel hot under Chris’s gaze.
“Fuck you.” Ryan says, though it comes out weaker than he meant it to. But he’s not weak against Chris, not like he used to be.
“So you did miss me,” Chris says, his eyes crinkling up in a way that makes Ryan’s stomach feel like it’s starting to turn over itself. He still has every chance to run, or fuck it, to tell Chris to get the fuck out of his house. Yet, when Chris’s hands reach up and his fingers wrap around Ryan’s wrists in a way that’s sickeningly familiar, he doesn’t even flinch.
Chris smiles, and the more Ryan looks at him, the more it looks less like an evil smirk. He tears his eyes away from Chris’s face, trying to keep himself in line because he isn’t weak against Chris anymore, he’s not.
“I didn’t.”
“You want this though. I know you do.”
Chris’s hand travels up to Ryan’s face, his fingers cradling his jaw with his palm against Ryan’s cheek. It’s everything that Ryan feels caught in the middle of. His first thought is of how familiar yet distant and wrong it feels all at once. The touch peels back old memories like sunburnt skin. He thinks of how he could just give in to this, could just let Chris lead him back to his room and let go of the fight. Because he’s weak for this, isn’t he?
Then he thinks about Matt, because he just can’t control himself or his heart and he’ll never be close to being able to. It feels like his heart can’t take it, like he’s letting Matt down.
He thinks about twink and I’m not you, and run away.
“Fuck you.” Ryan says again, definitively pushing Chris away from him with his words. His fists feel heavy when they reach his sides again, clenched and full of everything that’s always brewing inside him. It’s Chris that brings out the worst in him. He’ll never be in control of how anyone else makes him feel, but he can choose to keep the right people around. Ryan knows better. He’s not just some thing for Chris to toy with.
“Ryan,” Chris says with a melodramatic hand raised to his chest in feigned hurt- the kind of hurt that he put Ryan through for years, that he can so easily gloss over and brush aside now.
“Don’t pretend like you don’t want this back. What we have works, you know it does. We’re used to it, there’s no one that’ll be able to keep the same kind of deal going, you know? You fuck with me, I fuck you. It’s what we do.”
It was only a matter of time before Ryan got heated enough to bite back. Although he has a sick feeling that he knows this is what Chris was after, what Chris wants , that doesn’t stop the way the anger feels like venom flowing through his veins.
“Stop saying shit like that, stop talking like you’re coming back. We both know you’re not and it’d save you a lot of trouble to just cut the act and fucking walk out for good like you’ve always wanted to.”
Ryan feels like he’s in high school again. He’s crying to Chris who’s staring at him from the driver’s seat of his car, blank and uninterested in whatever Ryan has to say. And then he’s driving off, leaving Ryan alone in some church parking lot at midnight because that’s how they operate. That’s how they work.
“You come back to what, just to fuck with me? You were never going to stay in the first place, were you?”
Matt doesn’t look at him like something that’s just a convenience when he wants it. Matt doesn’t… Matt doesn’t look at him in any special way at all. But Ryan knows what he wants, even if he can’t have it. And it sure as hell isn’t Chris. Not anymore.
“You need-,”
“I don’t need fucking anything from you. You fuck with me, and then you fucking leave. That’s how we work. Got it?”
The thing with Chris is that, even if he’s upset, ready to yell or thinking of the best way he can get under Ryan’s skin, he almost always looks smug. It was one of the things that always bothered Ryan the most, the reason he has trust issues and is so aware that what he may be seeing on the outside of others is not necessarily what’s true.
When Ryan stands up for himself, though, Chris’s complacency falters. There’s cracks in his well-practiced expression, in his calculated, shit-eating smirk. Ryan knows Chris doesn’t like it when he talks back. Ryan doesn’t care what Chris likes or doesn’t like anymore, though. There used to be a time when Ryan would bite his tongue, but in his house, and regarding this new idea of some kind of self-worth that he’s desperately trying to cling to since Chris left, things are going to be different.
Ryan is trying his best not to show how his heart-rate is picking up. He doesn’t want to know if it’s from fear or just the adrenaline of standing up for himself, as long as Chris doesn’t find out how much he’s affecting him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Chris is back to smiling, but it seems different this time. He looks like he’s won something, or is in the process of winning, at least. Ryan wants to know the secret, wants to know what he thinks he’s got over Ryan just when Ryan thought he couldn’t possibly have any hold on him anymore.
“You actually want to fuck him, don’t you?”
Ryan tries not to feel like a deer in a headlights, though he guesses with the way he’s staring back at Chris with wide, darting eyes, he must give it away.
“You know that he’d never want you, right? You really think a fag like you is gonna make it with the pastor’s goody-two-shoes son?” Chris laughs, head tilting back just enough to make Ryan feel like an idiot.
“God, you’re pathetic.”
“You don’t know shit about me.” Ryan tells him, but with his barely-concealed secret now in the hands of someone like Chris, he doesn’t feel, or sound, so confident.
“Really?” Chris asks, and Ryan regrets saying anything, because he knows that all Chris wants is to rile him up, and he’s just giving him what he wants. But he’s too at war with his own repressed feelings and too hurt by the idea of Chris’s words being all too true to have the sense to back down now.
“I think I know you better than you want to admit. I know you, and I know Matt.”
Chris begins to stalk closer, advancing from where Ryan had so bravely pushed him away just moments earlier. As Ryan is backed the few steps towards the wall, he finds that he doesn’t feel so brave anymore.
“And I know that he’s never going to let you near him, not in the way you want to be. I’m the only chance you’ve got at anyone ever wanting anything to do with you.”
Ryan’s back is against his dining room wall now, and it’s stupid how trapped he feels in his own home. It’s stupid how useless and defeated he feels at hearing Chris’s words, and it’s stupid how, after countless nights spent lying awake or smoking under the stars, trying to sort out his feelings- it’s stupid how after all of that, he’s going to let Chris be the one to cut him off and move him a step backward.
He doesn’t want to believe that Matt could really never see him the way Ryan wants him to. But more importantly, Ryan won’t believe it coming from the likes of Chris.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Chris raises an eyebrow, challenging, “You don’t believe me?”
Ryan hesitates. He knows that with Chris’s dubious past as a Sunday school teacher, a front or whatever it is it may have been, Chris has the upper hand here. This isn’t just one of his lies he’s using to twist Ryan’s fingers, it’s true, he does know Matt. And maybe this whole thing is just as bad as he thought it could turn out to be from the start. Maybe he was naive for ever thinking that Matt could reciprocate, or at the very least seem him as anything other than a charity project.
“Stop seeing him, it’s probably best that you stop lying to yourself.”
“No,” Ryan returns quickly, over being pushed around in his own house. “Why don’t you stop hanging around here, waiting for me to come home just so you can mess with me. That’s what’s pathetic, Chris.”
Chris has always been good with his words. It’s true that Ryan would never really admit to himself just how well Chris knows him, because that would be admitting to how much he knows he can be controlled. He’s learned just what to say and just how to say it to rile Ryan up and get him right where he wants him. Of course Ryan doesn’t want to admit to himself just how predictable and vulnerable he actually is. That’s what Ryan does, avoids confrontation with any of his problems until they can’t be ignored anymore.
For once, though, Chris is silent. He’s staring down at Ryan with a cold expression, something that Ryan has grown used to. And when Chris raises his fist up, Ryan doesn’t even flinch, because he’s become accustomed to that, too.
Chris slams his hand into the wall beside Ryan’s head, and Ryan doesn’t even need to look to know that the drywall is cracked, if not totally caved in. He knew Chris was strong enough to do some damage, but he underestimated what his anger could actually drive him to. Ryan doesn’t want to admit to that, either.
“Stay away from him, Ryan. Or I’ll give you both a reason to.”
Ryan doesn’t fully let out the breath he’d been keeping in until Chris has slammed the front door behind him. He’s shaky, and fumbles a little while fishing for the half empty box of cigarettes in his shorts pocket. While he tries not to smoke inside if he can help it, Ryan can’t be bothered right now. He exhales a long drag of smoke through his nose as he stares at the Chris-sized hole in his wall, wondering what the hell Matt’s going to say. When he sees the wall, when Ryan starts keeping his distance because it’s better for the both of them.
He doesn’t think Chris is right about Matt, and Ryan doesn’t want to stay away. But, he thinks with a sick feeling churning in his gut as he continues to stare at his dining room wall, this is all turning into exactly what he was trying to avoid. With Chris in the picture trying to stir shit up, Matt’s life could get ruined just because of Ryan. The last thing that Ryan wants is for Matt to get caught up in the middle of Chris’s jealous bullshit and end up getting in trouble somehow, or hurt, or… something.
And he doesn’t know how to explain any of that to Matt either, not without potentially blurting how much Ryan’s starting to fall in love with him and ruining things a different way.
Chris is good at following people, and pestering them, and manipulating them with his words. But Ryan is good at running away from the things he shouldn’t.