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Ryan’s constant is rarer than a shape, a symbol, a thing. Ryan’s constant is a colour.
It is the soft pink of Georgian sunrises as Ryan walks through the woods, solemn in solitude, breath fogging the air. Leaves crunch beneath his shoes, but otherwise the forest is silent. He tilts his head upwards, towards his pink, and he smiles.
It is the blushing pink of peaches in his father’s orchard. Sweet and alluring, wasps flit around the fruit, their steady drone filling Ryan’s head.
He wears his pink like his heart, on his cheeks and arms, and then something changes.
The children at the school see Ryan’s colour, the pink crayons, pink paper, pink pencils, and they laugh, voices high and reedy.
“Ryan’s going to find himself a nice man, isn’t he?” Billy Krowitz teases, other children giggling and joining in, all competing to make the best jab.
Ryan locks away his heart that night and buries his constant deep, deep, deep in the earth of the orchard. He never wants to see it again.
But it follows him, pink pens, pink books, pink binders, and the taunting continues until it’s a steady drumbeat in his head. But Ryan doesn’t understand. Having the stereotypically feminine colour as his constant means that he’s gay? Exactly where is the logic in that? But Ryan’s reasoning is pointless because the words still hurt.
His vision is blurry, he is lying on the floor. His mother, so young, too young, is chewing obnoxiously pink bubble gum. His father is roaring in the kitchen and he does not know what he has done. His face hurts, he knows that, and blood is dripping from his mouth onto the floor. As the metallic tang seeps into his mouth, he can feel his youth fading away.
He is seventeen and the pink takes the form of watered down blood rinsing off his hands and swirling down the drain, hypnotizing. He has killed Billy Krowitz, his tormentor, the dragon keeping him in the tower. Like Rapuzel, he slits the throats of his other tormentors, and then he thinks that he’s not like Rapunzel at all. He takes his dad’s car and the emergency cash hidden behind the chimney, and he flees as the pink sunlight chases him away from the only home that he has ever known.
Pink is the colour of the only handgun the clerk has left to sell. He takes it, weighs it in each hand, and buys it. He walks out, loads it, then walks back in and shoots the clerk in the head. It was a sketchy deal in the first place, but now Ryan has his money back plus some and he takes a can of black spray paint off the shelves. He covers the pink on his gun that night.
He hears a story on the radio a few hours later.
“Mass murder in Roberta, Georgia.” The broadcaster says, voice sickly sweet, laced with professionalism. “Twenty-two dead and a possibly connected robbery and murder a few hours away. Suspects so far are-” Ryan cuts her off and switches to a stupid teen station and the pop music numbs his mind to the world.
He drives until he can not and then he drives some more. He had been keeping a tally, 31 robberies, 75 dead, marked in pen on his arms. Somewhere along the way, he picked up a mask and it his his southern belle disposition and pink cheeks.
Ryan reaches the coast in the early morning; sunrise turning the water pink, pink, pink. He pushes the car into the ocean and tucks the gun into the waistband of his pants. Time to make a living.
He kills and he steals and no one recognizes him in the skull mask. He makes the beginnings of a living and he makes a name for himself, Vagabond or The Mad King, depending on which news station you’re listening to. His constant is a topic of gossip in the streets, most suspecting that it’s black, a skull, or even death. Ryan laughs because no one expects the big, bad killer to be plagued by pnk. And then he hears someone talk about it while he’s in his public disguise.
“Does it even matter what Vagabond’s constant is? His soulmate isn’t going to love him anyway.” Ryan bristles, but says nothing, and the other man nods.
The two of them die that night in the glow of pink, neon light.
And what finally, finally, finally gets him noticed is a robbery, a pink diamond necklace, heavy in his gloved hands. Not noticed in a traditional sense, but noticed in a ‘hey, come join our crew’ kind of way. He accepts, hesitantly, he’s never truly been part of a crew (a family).
But then everything starts going well, the pink no longer plagues him, shadowing his life. If he was looking for it, he would have seen it everywhere.
The crew pulls off more and more heists and Ryan is becoming comfortable. He melts easily into the lax scenes, Michael is screaming at a video game with Gavin’s head in his lap, Jack and Geoff cooking in the kitchen, Ryan reading a book in an over large armchair next to a pink side table that he tries desperately to ignore.
And then it happens.
“We need a sniper.” Geoff declares, smacking his palm against the table. “We can’t do this without one.” Michael clears his throat.
“I’ve got a friend I can call.” The meeting is adjourned and Ryan doesn’t comment when Gavin and Michael come back to their apartment late, smelling of gasoline and flames. Soot stains their faces, but it does not dull their smiles.
Michael’s friend arrives the next morning and Geoff lets him on. Ryan can hear the formal introductions as Geoff leads him to the kitchen. He looks too young to be in this profession, tousled black hair and thick glasses and a hot pink sniper rifle slung across his back. Their eyes meet and it seems as if lightning has struck everywhere at once. The boy approaches and sticks out his hand.
“I’m Ray.” Ryan smiles.
“Ryan.” They shake hands. “It’s nice to meet you.” Michael whoops from the doorway and Gavin presses a twenty dollar bill into his hand.
The haist goes off flawlessly, Ray providing cover from above and Ryan lets the pink break the flood walls and rush back into his life.
It is Ray’s pink DS as he too falls head first into the crew. The dinky, techno music get s stuck in Ryan’s head, but it’s fine. Ray is part of the crew now and he laughs as he beats Gavin horribly in video games.
It is the pink nail polish of the woman that kidnapped Ray, coincidentally a woman that Ryan kills. When he finds Ray, he’s semi-conscious and tied to a chair, dried blood streaking his white shirt, staining it pink. Ryan cradles Ray in his arms and Ray smiles, a tired smile with so much emotion.
It is the pink sky that they both see as they sit on the roof. Ray is smoking, blowing perfect smoke rings and letting the ash fall down, down, down to the ground below. It is quiet and comfortable and they melt into the scene.
It is the pink roses that Ryan gives to Ray, chock full of meaning and feelings and beauty to rival Ray’s own.
It is the pink chair lugged from Ray’s old apartment and put into his new room in the penthouse by Ryan.
It is the ipink of Ryan’s first handgun, black paint rubbed away over the years, and it is the pink of Ray’s sniper rifle as they make kill after kill together.
They flow together like water, fluid and deadly. It describes them perfectly. They slide together and move together in a perfect rhythm. They are the beauty in death, the death that they bring. They hold each other together with anything they can find and they prop each other up when the going gets rough.
It is a beautiful, completely abnormal relationship and it works for them, works so well for them.
Pink has shifted and evolved throughout Ryan’s life. From the pink of his classmate’s blood and the pink of his first handgun, from something deadly and confusing and bloody and harsh, harsh, harsh.
It has changed. Now it’s the pink of Ray’s cheeks when he laughs and Ray’s DS as they relax together on the sofa, it is something beautiful and strange, still bloody and deadly, but softer, gentler. It is all Ryan ever looked for in his constant.