Stray days
Title: Stray days
Author:
alles_luege
Pairing: none, kinda gen
Rating: PG
Summary: This is just about Pete talking to Ryan and Ryan taking in strays.
Warning(s): none
Author’s Notes: This is a companion piece to ‘Open veins’, but can be read on its own. Also it’s a post Panic split -fic. Inspired by Ryan’s comment about how he doesn’t know which label will sign them.
Word Count: 783
Beta: tygermine
Disclaimer: Don’t know, don’t own, not real.
The cat is a stray. It reminds him a bit of Dylan and maybe that’s why he lets it in. It’s a she and he doesn’t give her a name, he doesn’t think she will stay. Strays never do. (Not forever that is.)
She likes it when he strokes her belly. It’s a bit unusual for a cat he thinks, but well. He misses Hobo, but after Keltie broke up and he felt guilty, he gave her the dog and besides it’s not that he needs…anyone… anyway.
Pete calls a few days after he tells them he is quitting the band. (To be fair he called immediately after he heard, the same fucking day. Ryan just didn’t pick up his phone.)
“You better back your shit up,” Pete says and Ryan almost smiles. He sits down on the couch and the cat hisses at him. He ignores it.
“So, what do you want?” he asks Pete and he knows he sounds irritated to anyone who knows him well enough, long enough to pick this stuff up.
“What are you doing with your life, Ross?” Pete wants to know. He can hear Patrick in the background; it must be Patrick, because he always seems to be where Pete is, moral backup and all that, strumming a guitar. And that’s kinda rich coming from Pete he thinks, annoyed.
“What I want,” he answers and it’s the absolute fucking truth.
“Ryan…”
Ryan closes his eyes because he hates when Pete sounds so like him. When Pete knows things, knows them and still, fucking still wants Ryan to say them out loud.
“You don’t have to have my back in this,” he says instead. It’s not really necessary to say more anyway, Pete knows.
“I might not,” Pete answers. It sounds funny. Ryan knew, somehow, he knew. After all, he is leaving Panic, Pete didn’t have Brent’s back either. He had Panic’s back, his back at the time. But Ryan is not a part of Panic anymore. So he will have Spencer’s back, even if Spencer maybe doesn’t need it (doesn’t want him to is more accurate, really), but Brendon, he thinks, Brendon does need someone who will have his back.
“Thanks,” Ryan says and Pete sighs, doesn’t ask what he means, because he knows anyway. The cat hisses again and Ryan gives it an irritated look. What was he even thinking in the first place?
“Patrick might…” Pete offers, but Ryan knows it’s not really true, well, Patrick might, but, he doesn’t want Patrick to have his back. Patrick is there to have Pete’s back.
“It’s okay,” Ryan answers. His voice flat as ever, as at the beginning when he didn’t want Pete to know how broken he was, how hopeful, how damaged. In the end it didn’t matter, because Pete was all that too. He just had a few more years to deal with it and well, he didn’t have a horrible childhood, not like Ryan’s. Ryan had real problems, Pete…Pete has all the stuff in his head, Ryan has that on top of everything else. The difference is that Ryan had always had Spencer, he doesn’t remember the years before Spencer - he doesn’t want to remember the years without Spencer. Maybe if Pete had Patrick from the start, he would have been different.
“I thought you would say that,” Pete says. Ryan can’t really make out what it means, maybe just what he said, the problem is of course that Pete always, always twists the words so the meaning is not what it seems to be in the first place. Pete is disappointed. Ryan is not.
“I’m not wrong,” Ryan answers and Pete laughs, because that doesn’t mean he is right either and they both know it. He hears Patrick in the background say something and then a pause.
“Listen, we’ll talk later. I need to…”
“Maybe,” Ryan interrupts and hangs up on him. He isn’t sure he will pick up his phone in the next few hours at all, or days for that matter.
He throws the phone on the couch and the cat seems offend by it, hissing and scratching his hand, he hisses in return at her in pain and surprise.
“You’re a bitchy little thing,” he tells her and she swishes her tail and lies down again. “I’ll call you Spencer,” he tells her. (He is sure Brendon would object, because ‘that isn’t a girl’s name, Ryan!’ but Ryan is sure other cats will not be mobbing her because of it. He is also sure Brendon would object to that too.) He grabs his phone and writes: I’m right about this.
He hits send and doesn’t wait for a response.
~end~