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“So, ugh…” Ryan tilts his head and raises his hand to casually play with a bit of hair at the nape of his neck. “Has she been in yet?”
“God, Ryan!” Spencer gives his friend a disgusted look and walks off, muttering to himself and waving his hands.
Ryan frowns. “Shit, sorry.” He sighs, looking at Jon. “But seriously, has she been in yet?”
Jon, ever patient, shakes his head. “Not yet, man.” He plops down beside Ryan.
“What?” Ryan asks defensively, and Jon holds his hands up in surrender. Someone walks past and Ryan looks up quickly, but it isn’t who he’s looking for; his attention goes back to Jon. The bassist is hiding a smile. “Fuck you.” Ryan gets up. “And I call you assholes my friends.”
Jon clears his throat. Ryan turns around.
“Hi,” she says, and one of her decoratively painted eyebrows rises high. She’s smiling, all bright white teeth and dark plum lips, her voice throaty and rough but bright and enthusiastic. She’s dressed in her usual gear: black-and-white striped stockings and a T-shirt with a (most likely fucking cool) slogan. Her black boots are mean and designed to look like they could squish you with their shiny buckles and heavy soles.
“Amanda, hey.” Ryan swallows, trying to act nonchalant. She’s wearing more eyeliner than him; that says something.
Ryan is maybe, possibly, just a tiny, teeny, little bit in love with her.
*
He’s not sure where it started. He liked The Dresden Dolls, the way they sounded and their words. He liked Amanda’s raw, natural being and how she just didn’t care. Then they started touring, and Ryan felt himself falling just a bit. He’d once tried to explain it to Brendon, seated next to the singer on the piano, who had taken to making funny faces at Ryan when Amanda wasn’t looking.
“It’s not that kind of crush. You know? Like—she knows Tchaikovsky not for The Nutcracker, and, like—she can talk for hours about Walt Whitman and—”
To which Brendon had burst out laughing and said, “Dude, the guy who wrote gay poetry?”
Ryan wasn’t listening when Brendon said he knew all of Tchaikovsky’s compositions, or when Brendon recited, “He turns his quid of tobacco, his eyes get blurred with the manuscript…”
He’d tried explaining it to Spencer—Spencer, who he was sure would understand and help him figure it out.
But Spencer had given him one of those looks and said, “Do you remember the time when we were nine years old and we didn’t have enough money to pay for some candy?”
Ryan had nodded.
“And you said, ‘Hey, Spencer, put the candy in your pocket while I wait outside?’”
Ryan had nodded again.
“Remember how that turned out?”
Ryan had cringed.
Spencer had nodded smugly. “This will turn out exactly the same.”
Ryan didn’t bother mentioning that neither Spencer nor himself were going to be spanked like three-year-olds nor grounded for a month. It was pointless.
Finally, he’d gone to Jon, and if Jon didn’t understand, then fuck the world.
But before Ryan had even got really into his rant, Jon had patted him on the shoulder and said, “Look, man, you like who you like. You can’t really help it. But, y’know—she’s, like, a decade older than you and seeing someone else. Watch where you tread.”
Ryan wasn’t listening when Jon said Brendon had come to him with a similar problem. He just wasn’t listening.)
*
Ryan walks in on Amanda backstage a couple of hours before one of their shows. She’s pulled a chair over by a window and has her stocking-clad feet resting on the sill. The light is enough to allow her to read her book without any hassle.
“Hey, Ry,” she says, throaty and raw when she sees him, smiling and leaning back in her chair. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.” He shrugs casually. “What’re you reading?”
“László Krasznahorkai.” She says the name in such a manner Ryan can’t tell if she’s pronouncing it right, but it sounds so professional and right coming from her that he just nods.
“Any good?”
She shrugs. “Just started. It hasn’t got that pull factor for me just yet, and I don’t think it’s any Clockwork Orange.” There’s a tiny smile on her lips. Ryan chuckles. Silence envelops them and he shifts, because it feels awkward—and it shouldn’t be. Should it?
“Hey, Ryan.” He looks up from the floor and meets Amanda’s gaze. And Jon is so, so right, because there’s this gap of years between them and he can see it in her eyes. “Is everything okay?” She tilts her head, dark hair pinned up to expose her pale neck. “I’m not pushing,” she reassures him. “I’m just asking.”
He stutters before nodding. “No—yeah, everything’s fine. Fine.”
She fixes him with her piercing stare before she sighs and closes her book, setting it down as she stands up, swinging her legs off the sill. She starts her sweep from his toes, eyes fixed on him as they rise up to his own gaze. He stands still under her inspection. Her look is soft.
“Ryan,” she says, and is that a glint of fucking amusement he sees in her eyes, “I don’t shave my legs.” He keeps quiet. “I don’t shave my armpits.” He can’t help but let his eyes flit to the junction of her arm and torso. “I had an abortion at seventeen.” There’s no amusement in her eyes. “I was raped at twenty.” Ryan’s own eyes widen at the soft-spoken words. “I’m as fucked up as they come.”
Ryan’s breath hitches in his throat when she places a hand on his shoulder and leans in. Her lips press against his and she tastes of cigarette ash and whiskey, something sweeter than what you see on the outside, and something else entirely.
But it doesn’t taste right.
There’s no spark, no pull in the lower part of his stomach that he expected to get when this moment came (if it ever would).
It’s just not there.
When she pulls back, her face is honest and open. “And I’m in love with Brian.”
Ryan shivers, sighs, and nods. “Yeah—yeah, I know.”
She pulls him into a hug. “You’re a good kid, Ry. You’re gonna go far. Further than I ever will.” She’s grinning when she pulls away. “Now fuck off. Go find that singer of yours and have some guy time for a while.” She winks, and Ryan is so, so lost that it isn’t even funny.
But she’s ushering him away and sitting back down with her book, an amused little grin on her painted lips, and Ryan thinks, yeah. Yeah, okay.
*
He doesn’t see Brendon before the show. He tries to catch up with him while they’re getting changed and geared up for the performance, but Brendon gives him this odd look and pulls away, slinging himself over Jon instead. Ryan’s confused, that’s for sure.
When Amanda comes off-stage, she’s sweating and made up and gorgeous, but she isn’t what Ryan thought she was. He smiles and congratulates her, and she leans forward to press her warm lips quickly to his painted cheek. He doesn’t miss Brendon’s crestfallen stare when he pulls away.
When they get to Lying, Ryan waits for the customary speech and the leaning in and the leg grabbing, his eyes on the ground.
He listens to Brendon’s voice, deep and smoky and a little rushed as he makes his way over to Ryan’s side of the stage. Ryan looks up at the right time to meet Brendon’s gaze, but he doesn’t turn away as Brendon leans in. The singer’s dark eyes spark and turn quizzical, and Ryan arches one of his own in return. Before they really have time to think about it, Brendon’s lips are sliding across his cheek and then he’s gone.
The crowd is screaming, and he’s spouting some proverbial shit that means absolutely nothing.
*
They come off the stage sweating and high and fucking thrilled, and before Ryan knows it someone is pressing him up against a wall and he thinks, there’s always a wall; it’s fucking mandatory or something. But then there’s heated, rasping breath across his neck and hands on his hips and—whoa. That feels fucking good.
“Brendon?” Ryan blinks. The singer’s face comes into view and he raises both eyebrows so high he thinks they may have disappeared into his hairline.
“You—fuck.” Brendon bites his lip and looks away quickly before twisting back to stare at Ryan with a heated gaze. “The fuck are you doing? I—this is—I don’t even know, and…” He looks at Ryan desperately. “I don’t know.”
Ryan jolts forward, smashing his mouth against Brendon’s before really thinking.
“Ow!” Brendon yelps, recoiling. “Dude, my lip is, like, bleeding.”
“Sorry,” Ryan mutters. “This wasn’t exactly planned.”
Brendon swears when he hears voices and grabs Ryan’s wrist. Ryan follows obediently, allowing Brendon to take him somewhere more secluded—somewhere being the keyword, because he really has no clue where he’s going. Brendon pins him up against a wall again and Ryan thinks, what the fuck is with the walls? But then Brendon is all rushed words and raw honesty.
“I—I know all of Tchaikovsky’s compositions, every one of them, and I have them on my iPod. Walt Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death, and I could most likely recite passages right here if you asked me to.” He draws in a labored breath and ignores Ryan’s gaping mouth. “I wear eyeliner and make-up because you asked me to, because you said I looked good in it. I tried applying it myself once and stabbed myself in the eye; it hurt like a bitch. I’ve read A Clockwork Orange so many times I’m fucking sick of it.” He presses up against Ryan harder. “And I am not, like, ten fucking years older than you, and I am totally and completely one hundred percent single.”
When Brendon’s lips meet his own, it takes perhaps one millisecond for Ryan to feel that low heat curling in his stomach, and Brendon tastes like sweat and sweetness and want and need—and it’s just right.
“God—I…” Ryan stutters when they break apart to breathe.
Brendon rests his forehead against his and sighs. “Were you listening that time, you fucker?”
“Yeah,” Ryan says, nodding emphatically. “Yeah, I was totally listening. Now kiss me again.”