Ne Me Quitte Pas
This fic was written for dragonsinger’s Bandom Het Fic Exchange, and it’s for redsambuca, who requested Ryan Ross/Amanda Palmer. It’s a pairing I’ve been wanting to write for a while, so I enjoyed this! I hope you enjoy reading it just as much.
Ne Me Quitte Pas
lucentvictrola
1,950 | | PG-13
Soundtrack : Click here. Back one to Ne Me Quitte Pas, then continue through Samson.
A/N: A million thanks to Julie (sweetrecovery) for being my amazing beta and hand-holder. This fic would not exist without you; it would be buried in the black depths of My Documents! Title is from a song by Regina Spektor; it’s French for ‘do not leave me’. Italicized parts are excerpts from Amanda Palmer's blog.
Ne Me Quitte Pas
i invited the panic boys over to the cloud club since we were all in town at the same time and ryan, the shy and retiring lyricist, took me up on my offer. there was a raging party here the night before, so wading through the carnage and hungover vibe i showed him our magic house and we watched some ghetto impromptu fireworks from the roof. we had a wonderful time...
The Cloud Club was smoky and dim, with soft indie music weaving through the incense-scented room. Ryan’s head was swimming the moment he and Amanda stepped through the doors, breathing in the thick, saccharine air. The soft chime of bells echoed through the relative silence, broken only by snatches of conversation heard here and there. For the first time in quite a while, Ryan’s entry wasn’t the signal for shrieking girls to come crawling out of the woodwork; many people greeted Amanda or made simple eye contact, but there were no flashes of recognition. Anonymity was blissful.
“Come on,” Amanda whispered to Ryan, “I’ll give you the grand tour.” She directed him around the place, introducing him to friends from her scene. The few patrons of the Cloud Club were gathered in a motley assortment of armchairs, glasses of wine or gin in hand. Many were smoking, and many had red-rimmed eyes with blown pupils. Amanda and Ryan shared a large, threadbare armchair, piled on each other haphazardly. Amanda and one of her friends were discussing a number of books that Ryan had never even heard of, but that seemed to be common knowledge in this circle. He felt young around these people, naive, and a bit anxious to get away. He listened to Amanda discussing subjects he barely understood with people he wasn’t sure she even knew, and with every word, he grew more enthralled.
They eventually ended up on the roof; Ryan wasn’t sure how they got there. They watched some illegal fireworks being set off a few miles away, sudden flashes of color with no real rhythm, so unlike the spectacular shows of Las Vegas. Somehow, Ryan thought they were even more beautiful this way. Red, green, and gold lit up their faces in the dark, illuminated Ryan watching Amanda pluck loose threads from her striped stockings. They caught eyes for a moment, and Ryan lifted an eyebrow, almost too subtle to be noticed. Amanda shook her head, a Mona Lisa smile across her lips, but Ryan pretended he couldn’t see it.
i felt like i had something, anything, in common with him....he has an artist's head, i said, he thinks in lyrics, he likes to wear wild make-up...he must be from a similar planet. he grew on me.
Before concerts, Ryan usually liked to wander around, trying to find every room in the venue. He’d meander in and out of dressing rooms, storage closets, booths, places he probably wasn’t supposed to be. Today his most frequent haunts were the Lucent dressing rooms, having run into Spencer making out with his drum tech in his own room; watching his best friend grind up against guys was far from enjoyable for Ryan. He walked aimlessly around the silk and organza scattered everywhere, the miniscule brushes and pots of pigment, to watch Dream do Shrine’s makeup. She caught Ryan out of the corner of her eye, and quirked a smile at him. “You’re next?” Ryan looked at the graceful lines she was drawing across Shrine’s face, and nodded, moving to stand next to the chair.
Spencer may have made fun of the little swirls under Ryan’s eye, but the fans went crazy and Amanda cracked a smile as she passed him on the way offstage.
i took a long walk with ryan around the parking lot in anaheim. i felt like the whole world had been thrown at him, in all it's shitty ugliness, and what could i say? better to say nothing. we walked, saying nothing and occasionally something. we started at the hooters billboard, hoisted 5 stories in the air to reach the passing traffic from the highway. we walked to the bud light billboard, hoisted 5 stories in the air to reach the passing traffic from the highway. do you have anyone real to talk to? i will. i'll talk to you. when you're ready. don't lose me. i'm an ally. really.
After Ryan’s father passed, he took three days off. When he showed up at the hotel to return to the tour, he looked more broken, emptier, than Amanda had expected. She watched Ryan talk, low-voiced, to his friends in his own band, then beckoned him over. “Feel like a walk-and-talk?” she offered, and Ryan nodded. They walked in silence for a while. In the empty parking lot, their footsteps echoed unnervingly, and the only scenery besides tall, grey steel were scores of palm trees and a billboard trying to persuade them to go to Hooters; it wasn’t the most conducive environment for deep conversations. Finally, Amanda took the first step. “Got a lot on your mind?”
Ryan sighed. "It's hard," he murmured softly, staring at his feet. "I don't want to miss him. I had to be a father to my own dad since I was too young to understand. I had to grow up fast, you know?" When Amanda looked at him, she could see that his eyes were old; she'd never seen that before. “I shouldn’t miss him.” He blinked back tears, bracing himself.
"A lot of us feel things we shouldn't. I do."
"What?" Ryan tilted his head curiously.
"Nothing, it's nothing." Amanda shook her head bruskly, inching away from Ryan a bit.
As the sun set behind the tacky trees and voluptuous billboard, they continued to talk quietly, Amanda saying much and Ryan saying little, just listening in admiration. Eventually, it got very late, and Zack threatened via Sidekick to kidnap Ryan and force him inside. Although Ryan supposed it was an empty threat, he figured they should head back in. He walked, more followed, Amanda to her room, as if he could glean just a few more drops of wisdom from her in the short time before they stopped in front of the door.
“You’re gonna be okay, kid,” Amanda said quietly, and leaned in with the intentions of a quick peck on the lips. Ryan held her there, though, kissing back with all the force he had. When they broke for air, Ryan turned to leave, but Amanda wrapped her hand around his arm, fingers strengthened by years of playing music digging into the soft flesh. She turned him and pressed him into the door, staring up at him with a frightening intensity. “You want me?” Ryan blinked and nodded slowly, shivering when she clenched her fingers tighter. Amanda looked over Ryan’s face, remembered the pretentious faux-intellectual she’d denied at the Cloud Club. She thought of the different, unguarded Ryan she’d talked with for hours. She saw his delicate, pretty face, his jutting bones, his milky skin, like a canvas. She saw how he was looking at her, wide-eyed and in awe. And she smiled, slightly-pointed teeth, digging her key card out of the top of her stocking.
Amanda's brow was furrowed in concentration as she leaned over Ryan's body. Ryan tried to ignore the tickling of the little brush she was using to draw spirals on his skin and the coolness where the marks were, and concentrated on the lines between the chains she'd drawn above her eyes, the thin set of her lips, the freckles on her shoulders. Amanda worked carefully, meticulously, much unlike the confident, almost careless way she had scrawled on her eyebrows that morning. With one hand splayed across Ryan’s ribs, she inked the careful swirls, considering every line before she added it to the canvas of his pale skin. The jet-black curlicues were a stark contrast to Ryan’s bony frame and light skin, and when Ryan glanced down, he was struck by the beauty. They swirled across his collarbone and down the left side of his ribs, marking each one and joining them together onto the same stem of twisting lines. When he looked down further, saw Amanda crouching over his knees to work at a half-finished design on one sharp hipbone, he knew he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
They woke late, afternoon sunlight casting a warm glow on them. They were smeared all over with ink and sticky with dry sweat. Ryan looked at the black smudges on the cheap hotel pillows, a long smear of ink that spread across Amanda’s cheekbone and up to her closed eyelids, and thought of more ink that had smudged across her hips and thighs, her breasts. The once-delicate strokes that she’d worked at in the near darkness were now one long smudge, curling its way down Ryan’s side.
Getting dressed was something of a mutual task; each helped the other, in some ways. Amanda buttoned Ryan’s shirt, watching the smudges and marks on his collarbone slowly disappear; Ryan helped to lace up the back of Amanda’s dress, careful fingers threading the string through each little hole and pull as tight as she requested.
“This is nice,” Ryan murmured, running his fingertips across the brocade bodice and the satin tiers.
“Katie made it for me,” Amanda replied simply, tugging on her favorite hat. She brushed a bit of powder off one of the tiers of her skirt.
“Beautiful,” Ryan whispered. He hoped Amanda knew he didn’t mean the dress.
i close my eyes, and think to myself: now, enjoy yourself. it's quick. it's over so quickly.
On the last night of tour, Amanda and Ryan lay in his bunk, Ryan’s head pillowed on her chest. She stroked her fingers through his hair, toying with pieces of it. “When we’re home,” Ryan murmured against her skin, “When we both go to our homes. Will we still be…?” He looked up at Amanda hopefully, but shook her head, a Mona Lisa smile across her lips. Ryan pretended he couldn’t see it.
i see him downstairs in the front room day and night, wrapped in his overcoat because he refuses to turn on the heat, squinting and crunched over ryan ross after ryan ross, clutching his pencil with furrowed brow, as if the world would finally decide to be kind to all of us if he could only capture that las vegas pout in perfect graphite two-dimensional likeness. panic! at the disco centerfolds from kerrang! magazine scotch-taped to the headboard. ryan ross is the guitar player. they've become gigantic. i wonder how he's doing.
Amanda splays lazily on the bed, flipping through the latest magazine that Max, one of her many artist friends, has brought back. Around the ripped edges and cut-out rectangles where he’s gathered pictures of Ryan to copy, she can read the snippets of an interview. As she thumbs through the pages, she thinks about that young boy, that kid, how much older he looks after not even a year. Before she can feel a pang of regret, she closes the magazine, tucking it under her pillow so she can’t see Ryan’s airbrushed face. Sliding off the bed, she goes to hover over Max’s shoulder, watching him sketch away on the floor. Amanda kneels to study the portrait; it doesn’t look a thing like the Ryan she remembers.
“Here,” she says, gesturing to Ryan’s jaw, drawn strong and smooth. “This is wrong, here. He’s not that perfect.” She takes the eraser and begins to rub away some lines, but as much as she tries to scrub them out, they still leave an impression in the paper.
i wonder how he's doing.
Ne Me Quitte Pas
lucentvictrola
1,950 | | PG-13
Soundtrack : Click here. Back one to Ne Me Quitte Pas, then continue through Samson.
A/N: A million thanks to Julie (sweetrecovery) for being my amazing beta and hand-holder. This fic would not exist without you; it would be buried in the black depths of My Documents! Title is from a song by Regina Spektor; it’s French for ‘do not leave me’. Italicized parts are excerpts from Amanda Palmer's blog.
Ne Me Quitte Pas
i invited the panic boys over to the cloud club since we were all in town at the same time and ryan, the shy and retiring lyricist, took me up on my offer. there was a raging party here the night before, so wading through the carnage and hungover vibe i showed him our magic house and we watched some ghetto impromptu fireworks from the roof. we had a wonderful time...
The Cloud Club was smoky and dim, with soft indie music weaving through the incense-scented room. Ryan’s head was swimming the moment he and Amanda stepped through the doors, breathing in the thick, saccharine air. The soft chime of bells echoed through the relative silence, broken only by snatches of conversation heard here and there. For the first time in quite a while, Ryan’s entry wasn’t the signal for shrieking girls to come crawling out of the woodwork; many people greeted Amanda or made simple eye contact, but there were no flashes of recognition. Anonymity was blissful.
“Come on,” Amanda whispered to Ryan, “I’ll give you the grand tour.” She directed him around the place, introducing him to friends from her scene. The few patrons of the Cloud Club were gathered in a motley assortment of armchairs, glasses of wine or gin in hand. Many were smoking, and many had red-rimmed eyes with blown pupils. Amanda and Ryan shared a large, threadbare armchair, piled on each other haphazardly. Amanda and one of her friends were discussing a number of books that Ryan had never even heard of, but that seemed to be common knowledge in this circle. He felt young around these people, naive, and a bit anxious to get away. He listened to Amanda discussing subjects he barely understood with people he wasn’t sure she even knew, and with every word, he grew more enthralled.
They eventually ended up on the roof; Ryan wasn’t sure how they got there. They watched some illegal fireworks being set off a few miles away, sudden flashes of color with no real rhythm, so unlike the spectacular shows of Las Vegas. Somehow, Ryan thought they were even more beautiful this way. Red, green, and gold lit up their faces in the dark, illuminated Ryan watching Amanda pluck loose threads from her striped stockings. They caught eyes for a moment, and Ryan lifted an eyebrow, almost too subtle to be noticed. Amanda shook her head, a Mona Lisa smile across her lips, but Ryan pretended he couldn’t see it.
i felt like i had something, anything, in common with him....he has an artist's head, i said, he thinks in lyrics, he likes to wear wild make-up...he must be from a similar planet. he grew on me.
Before concerts, Ryan usually liked to wander around, trying to find every room in the venue. He’d meander in and out of dressing rooms, storage closets, booths, places he probably wasn’t supposed to be. Today his most frequent haunts were the Lucent dressing rooms, having run into Spencer making out with his drum tech in his own room; watching his best friend grind up against guys was far from enjoyable for Ryan. He walked aimlessly around the silk and organza scattered everywhere, the miniscule brushes and pots of pigment, to watch Dream do Shrine’s makeup. She caught Ryan out of the corner of her eye, and quirked a smile at him. “You’re next?” Ryan looked at the graceful lines she was drawing across Shrine’s face, and nodded, moving to stand next to the chair.
Spencer may have made fun of the little swirls under Ryan’s eye, but the fans went crazy and Amanda cracked a smile as she passed him on the way offstage.
i took a long walk with ryan around the parking lot in anaheim. i felt like the whole world had been thrown at him, in all it's shitty ugliness, and what could i say? better to say nothing. we walked, saying nothing and occasionally something. we started at the hooters billboard, hoisted 5 stories in the air to reach the passing traffic from the highway. we walked to the bud light billboard, hoisted 5 stories in the air to reach the passing traffic from the highway. do you have anyone real to talk to? i will. i'll talk to you. when you're ready. don't lose me. i'm an ally. really.
After Ryan’s father passed, he took three days off. When he showed up at the hotel to return to the tour, he looked more broken, emptier, than Amanda had expected. She watched Ryan talk, low-voiced, to his friends in his own band, then beckoned him over. “Feel like a walk-and-talk?” she offered, and Ryan nodded. They walked in silence for a while. In the empty parking lot, their footsteps echoed unnervingly, and the only scenery besides tall, grey steel were scores of palm trees and a billboard trying to persuade them to go to Hooters; it wasn’t the most conducive environment for deep conversations. Finally, Amanda took the first step. “Got a lot on your mind?”
Ryan sighed. "It's hard," he murmured softly, staring at his feet. "I don't want to miss him. I had to be a father to my own dad since I was too young to understand. I had to grow up fast, you know?" When Amanda looked at him, she could see that his eyes were old; she'd never seen that before. “I shouldn’t miss him.” He blinked back tears, bracing himself.
"A lot of us feel things we shouldn't. I do."
"What?" Ryan tilted his head curiously.
"Nothing, it's nothing." Amanda shook her head bruskly, inching away from Ryan a bit.
As the sun set behind the tacky trees and voluptuous billboard, they continued to talk quietly, Amanda saying much and Ryan saying little, just listening in admiration. Eventually, it got very late, and Zack threatened via Sidekick to kidnap Ryan and force him inside. Although Ryan supposed it was an empty threat, he figured they should head back in. He walked, more followed, Amanda to her room, as if he could glean just a few more drops of wisdom from her in the short time before they stopped in front of the door.
“You’re gonna be okay, kid,” Amanda said quietly, and leaned in with the intentions of a quick peck on the lips. Ryan held her there, though, kissing back with all the force he had. When they broke for air, Ryan turned to leave, but Amanda wrapped her hand around his arm, fingers strengthened by years of playing music digging into the soft flesh. She turned him and pressed him into the door, staring up at him with a frightening intensity. “You want me?” Ryan blinked and nodded slowly, shivering when she clenched her fingers tighter. Amanda looked over Ryan’s face, remembered the pretentious faux-intellectual she’d denied at the Cloud Club. She thought of the different, unguarded Ryan she’d talked with for hours. She saw his delicate, pretty face, his jutting bones, his milky skin, like a canvas. She saw how he was looking at her, wide-eyed and in awe. And she smiled, slightly-pointed teeth, digging her key card out of the top of her stocking.
Amanda's brow was furrowed in concentration as she leaned over Ryan's body. Ryan tried to ignore the tickling of the little brush she was using to draw spirals on his skin and the coolness where the marks were, and concentrated on the lines between the chains she'd drawn above her eyes, the thin set of her lips, the freckles on her shoulders. Amanda worked carefully, meticulously, much unlike the confident, almost careless way she had scrawled on her eyebrows that morning. With one hand splayed across Ryan’s ribs, she inked the careful swirls, considering every line before she added it to the canvas of his pale skin. The jet-black curlicues were a stark contrast to Ryan’s bony frame and light skin, and when Ryan glanced down, he was struck by the beauty. They swirled across his collarbone and down the left side of his ribs, marking each one and joining them together onto the same stem of twisting lines. When he looked down further, saw Amanda crouching over his knees to work at a half-finished design on one sharp hipbone, he knew he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
They woke late, afternoon sunlight casting a warm glow on them. They were smeared all over with ink and sticky with dry sweat. Ryan looked at the black smudges on the cheap hotel pillows, a long smear of ink that spread across Amanda’s cheekbone and up to her closed eyelids, and thought of more ink that had smudged across her hips and thighs, her breasts. The once-delicate strokes that she’d worked at in the near darkness were now one long smudge, curling its way down Ryan’s side.
Getting dressed was something of a mutual task; each helped the other, in some ways. Amanda buttoned Ryan’s shirt, watching the smudges and marks on his collarbone slowly disappear; Ryan helped to lace up the back of Amanda’s dress, careful fingers threading the string through each little hole and pull as tight as she requested.
“This is nice,” Ryan murmured, running his fingertips across the brocade bodice and the satin tiers.
“Katie made it for me,” Amanda replied simply, tugging on her favorite hat. She brushed a bit of powder off one of the tiers of her skirt.
“Beautiful,” Ryan whispered. He hoped Amanda knew he didn’t mean the dress.
i close my eyes, and think to myself: now, enjoy yourself. it's quick. it's over so quickly.
On the last night of tour, Amanda and Ryan lay in his bunk, Ryan’s head pillowed on her chest. She stroked her fingers through his hair, toying with pieces of it. “When we’re home,” Ryan murmured against her skin, “When we both go to our homes. Will we still be…?” He looked up at Amanda hopefully, but shook her head, a Mona Lisa smile across her lips. Ryan pretended he couldn’t see it.
i see him downstairs in the front room day and night, wrapped in his overcoat because he refuses to turn on the heat, squinting and crunched over ryan ross after ryan ross, clutching his pencil with furrowed brow, as if the world would finally decide to be kind to all of us if he could only capture that las vegas pout in perfect graphite two-dimensional likeness. panic! at the disco centerfolds from kerrang! magazine scotch-taped to the headboard. ryan ross is the guitar player. they've become gigantic. i wonder how he's doing.
Amanda splays lazily on the bed, flipping through the latest magazine that Max, one of her many artist friends, has brought back. Around the ripped edges and cut-out rectangles where he’s gathered pictures of Ryan to copy, she can read the snippets of an interview. As she thumbs through the pages, she thinks about that young boy, that kid, how much older he looks after not even a year. Before she can feel a pang of regret, she closes the magazine, tucking it under her pillow so she can’t see Ryan’s airbrushed face. Sliding off the bed, she goes to hover over Max’s shoulder, watching him sketch away on the floor. Amanda kneels to study the portrait; it doesn’t look a thing like the Ryan she remembers.
“Here,” she says, gesturing to Ryan’s jaw, drawn strong and smooth. “This is wrong, here. He’s not that perfect.” She takes the eraser and begins to rub away some lines, but as much as she tries to scrub them out, they still leave an impression in the paper.
i wonder how he's doing.