Everybody was well dressed (everybody was a mess).
Part one.
The studio sends Ryan a trainer almost immediately after he signs on. He’s name is Hans and he’s ex-military.
Their first day together Hans and Ryan’s new nutritionist work out a diet plan and finalise Ryan’s work out plan. It’s complete bullshit and Ryan says as much when Breezy and Ione take him out to dinner this new vegetarian place they heard about. Together they share two bottles of wine on mostly empty stomachs, while he smokes his way through half a pack of cigarettes for good measure. Fuck his nutrition plan, Ryan thinks as he picks at a plate of lentils and roasted carrots, it’s not like Darren isn’t going to want the costume department dress him in Italian styled suits. Ryan’s read his notes. There is a reason directors use green screens and stunt doubles.
The next day Hans makes him do three hours of endurance training in the morning to help build up his endurance.
Ryan manages to last half an hour before he’s throwing up his breakfast on the sidewalk.
When his stomach in empty, Hans makes him keep going.
Ryan decides he hates him.
He hates that Hans wasn’t the only one to witness the reappearance of Ryan’s eggs benedick breakfast too, since he, Brendon, and Vanessa are all training together. Apparently it’s to help create a sense of comradely before going on set. Filming is due to beginning in four months. Maybe five. They’re still trying to iron out some scheduling issues. (And the script, if the rumours are true). For the time being the only thing settled is their training schedule.
Ryan doesn’t know how he is expected to do it. He’s never been bulky. Unlike Spencer who grew tall and strong, Ryan’s body never filled out. When he was a kid, Ginger uses to try to feed him up. Now his nutritionist tries to do the same, interrupting his six hour training sessions with meals. Food is important, protein especially. If he doesn’t eat frequently, all the training he is doing is undone. Ryan doesn’t really understand how, but he sits down with Brendon and Vanessa and eats when they are told too.
Following lunch they have martial arts and fight choreography. It’s just as Ryan imagined it.
After being thrown to the ground for the hundredth time, Ryan stares up at Brendon’s grinning face. He holds out his hand. Ryan ignores it and pushes himself up to stand his feet.
“Again,” one of the trainers shouts.
In the corner of his eye, he catches Vanessa doing sit ups, her face barely flushed. It’s only been about six months since Vanessa finished filming Sucker Punch. It’s embarrassing working out with her. She’s miles ahead of both Ryan and Brendon. She makes both of them look pathetic. Thank god none of Ryan’s friends know. He’d never hear the end of it.
At the moment, at least, his friends have lost interest in Ryan’s latest career turn. Even Z, who is apparently bff’s with Katie Homes, hasn’t made a joke about action figures. It makes sense that Alex is morous when Ryan catches up with him.
“Is Kristen dating another one of your co-star again?” Ryan asks, bumming a cigarette off him.
“Fuck you, Ross.”
Ryan snorts.
An hour later, Alex is drunk off bad cocktails. “Have I ever told you how I introduced Kristen to the two great loves of her life?”
Ryan wrinkles his nose. “No. But you have told me about how you introduced her to her last two ex-boyfriend’s.”
“Same difference.”
“Not really.”
Ryan checks his mobile. It’s not even ten pm yet.
There are five messages in his voicemail, all from his agency. They can wait.
The next morning Ryan is hung over and almost arrives late to training. He isn’t late though. Not that it matters. Hans treats him as if he is. So do Brendon and Vanessa which is rich, especially considering the rumours about Vanessa. And by rumours, Ryan means how her hair smells of weed and how she’s wearing day old clothes. But whatever. Like that counts when she can did a one hour cardio work out and then a hike without batting an eye.
Ryan manages a whole week and a half of passive aggressive behaviour before Darren calls him out on it.
He turns up at training and waits until Ryan has finished getting changed to hassle him.
Sitting down next to him in the change rooms, Darren doesn’t break eye contact, not even for a moment. And if he hasn’t already laid it on the line for Ryan, he does now when he says. “I want you for this film, you know that, but these are the rules - this is how it’s going to be. You’ve got to respect me. You’ve got to respect the film and everyone else who is working on it. That means there’s no going out clubbing, turning up late or running your mouth. You’re going to fucking work for this and you’re going to give me everything.”
Ryan doesn’t cuss him out, but he wants to. He wants to say he is giving Darren everything. But that would be a lie. Ryan’s turning up on time and jobbing with a backpack filled with weights or whatever Hans decides he wants Ryan to do, but that’s just abiding by his contract. Darren knows this.
“Understand?” Darren asks, but not really.
What he’s really doing is reading Ryan the riot act and fuck it if Ryan will let that stand.
He nods. “I understand.”
And that, is that as far as Ryan is concerned.
So okay, Ryan can earn gold stars. Brendon and Vanessa might be naturals, but Ryan knows how to work hard. Fuck anyone for believing otherwise.
Like clockwork Ryan turns up for training on time and actually does it. Hans throws the fucking book at him, but Ryan gives it his all. He stops smoking and starts eating right and works like he’s never worked before. Although he’s never really been unfit or anything akin to that, he’s never been fit to the standard Darren requires.
Despite Ryan’s effort, his body never quite responds with the ease that Hans promised it would, He will never have the ability of Vanessa (who picks up sword fighting and fight choreograph like it’s another High School Musical dance number). But by the time production is due to begin, he can hold his own. Admittedly, Darren will still have to use a stunt double for the more difficult stunts, but with insurance and the studio heads playing close attention to the project, he was always going to have to.
Spencer, when Ryan’s able to get through to him, sounds proud.
“I knew you could do it,” he says, and Ryan is worn thinner than he probably has ever been before.
The sound of Spencer’s voice makes Ryan close his eyes and -
“Hey,” Spencer says. “You’re going to kick ass.”
“I can kick your ass now,” Ryan threatens.
Spencer laughs. “Yeah, yeah.”
Ryan bites his lip to stop himself from smiling. But that isn’t new when it comes to Spencer.
It isn’t long now until Spencer and the guys finish their tour. Only a few more dates. Ryan remembers this when he hangs up. Not long now. Not long now.
“I told you I’d be back before you knew it,” Spencer says.
It didn’t quite work out like that, and they both know it. But it was never going too.
“I wish I could be there to welcome you home,” Ryan tells him, because Ryan does wish he could be there.
“Yeah,” Spencer agrees. “Me too.”
Filming is set to commence within the fortnight. Ryan’s flight is less than a week away. Vanessa and Brendon are flying out a few days later. Ryan can’t believe how quickly time had flown. It feels like yesterday Darren was ordering his rare steaks and talking shit about Ryan’s filmography.
“But hey,” Spencer says. “When you get back to LA, I will be here to pick you up from LAX. You won’t even have to pay me minimum wage to be there.”
It’s a stupid joke, but it makes Ryan laugh. “I never paid you minimum wage.”
“No,” Spencer admits. “But you never paid me nearly what I was worth.”
Well, yeah. Ryan knows that. But that was a given. Spencer was Spencer.
Ryan knows - has always known what Spencer is to him, how lucky he is to have Spencer. Spencer’s always been there for him, always believed in him even when Ryan didn’t believe in anything let along himself.
“Ry?” Spencer asks after a moment.
Ryan exhales slowly. “I’m going to hold you to your promise. You better be there to carry my bags. You better be on time too.”
Spencer snorts. “Sure. You got it.”
Logically, Ryan knows he signed onto the film five months ago. But it isn’t until after he’s flown out to Moscow and arrived on the first day of filming he realises exactly what he’s gotten into when he is shoe horned into a spandex suit and had his dick arranged and rearranged into place by three women from the costume department.
God, Ryan thinks feeling rather too flustered. God.
The rest of the day isn’t much better. In fact Ryan would go as far as to say the first day of shooting is a disaster. Ryan had prepared. Night Watch might just be a pit stop before On the Road, but he is a professional. He turns in early the night before, turns up to set early, and is his character the moment he steps on set.
“No, no. Fuck, not like that,” Darren says, shaking his head after the first take.
Ryan nods.
He tries again. And again. And again.
Darren walks off set.
“Fuck method acting,” Darren says finally. “Fuck it. I don’t want formulas and, fuck, method. I want you to react.”
React. Right. Ryan can do that.
The next day isn’t any better.
Ryan doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong.
After four days of bad weather the shooting schedule has fallen behind. As a result they’re working extra hours to make up for the shortfall.
“Hey, it happens,” Brendon tells him after Darren’s gone off to have another smoke break.
Ryan - “Maybe to you.”
The week isn’t even out yet and even Vanessa has managed to make a better impression than him.
Ryan knows he’s taking his frustration out on Brendon, but that doesn’t stop him. Fuck him. Fuck Darren.
Superhero films. God.
The thing is, despite what people say, everyone’s a method actor in Hollywood. If you stay long enough, you can’t help it. Ryan’s just more honest about it than most.
Night Watch in primarily shooting Eastern Europe. Apparently it’s the new Southern Europe. The underground railway in Moscow was the first stop. In retrospect Ryan really shouldn’t have complained about all the night shoots. They might be filming at three and four in the morning during the time the railways shut down for repairs, but at least Moscow was a capital city. The rest of the shoot is currently taking place in half a dozen small Eastern European countries that Ryan had never heard of before.
In contrast Jon and Tom are shooting a low budget indie flick in NYU. It’s summer there. As Ryan tries and fails to think of something to do on his one day off that month, he feels sharp tendrils of envy.
Early on in the shoot, Ellen visits.
In-between projects, she flies out to hang out with Brendon. Brendon, of course, is delighted to see her. Like they are still attending high school or something, he introduces her to everyone and during the lunch break they sit next to each other and hold hands.
“Pretty cheesy, huh?” Vanessa comments, siding up to him with an overfilled plate of clumpy macaroni in hand.
Ryan twitches. She smells like day old weed and beer. But she always does.
He has no idea how she gets hired, let alone how she managed to bag a lead in Night Watch. Her last significant role was Beastly. Beastly. From across the table, Ellen winks as if she knows. Dressed in one of Brendon’s old shirts and a pair of jeans with the knees torn out, Ryan kind of hates her.
Perhaps it’s the language barrier, perhaps Spencer’s right, but the four of then end up hanging out together more than they don’t. In the evenings they crowd into Brendon’s room. Stupid and bored, Ryan and Vanessa join forces and drink his mini fridge dry while Ellen and Brendon pluck out the occasional song on the battered acoustic guitar Ellen brought with her.
If they were in LA, Ryan would probably get himself into trouble with the moods he’s in.
But if they were in LA, he wouldn’t be getting into those moods.
Maybe Darren had more reasons than aesthetics when he chose his locations. Knowing him, he probably did.
Ellen smiles when Ryan brings it up. “There is a reason to every rhyme, Ross.”
“That’s not how the saying goes,” he tells her because it isn’t. It’s a small thing, he knows, but it doesn’t feel like it.
Isolation makes mild irritations into something that prickles him.
She shrugs easily. “So?”
Ellen’s been acting for a long time too, long enough that people forgot and somehow decided to label her an over night success. He wonders if they’re going to do that to him too.
Spencer doesn’t really care. Back in LA, he sounds soft and perhaps kinder than Ryan deserves when he tells him, “People will do what they want. You can’t control that.”
He sounds tired too, Ryan realises later. Ryan could hear that in his voice too.
He and the guys got off tour less than a week ago. Since then their label have been talking about producers and not losing momentum. A few years ago they were fucking around with cords and harmonies in Cash’s pool house, Ryan remembers that and he thinks of that when he hears their song on a promo add for the next season of Gossip Girl while watching TV in his hotel room.
It’s amazing really, how quickly things change.
The set is like a pressure cooker. The longer the shoot goes on, the more pressure builds. He’s headlined pictures before - not major ones, like this - but it shouldn’t be new. Except it does feel new. Every day there are script revisions to revise, stunts to learn, people to work with and Darren demanding his best.
“Again,” Darren says.
‘Again’ is all Darren seems to say to Ryan.
Ryan’s body can’t keep up. Where in training it was a joke that he couldn’t do what Brendon and Vanessa could do, now it infuriates him. Acting has always been Ryan’s passion. It was always what he was best at - what he was better than other people at. But now he is struggling.
Take after take and he can’t get things right. Take after take and he becomes more and more exhausted.
Struggling by on less and less sleep, Ryan tries, but for the first time in his life it isn’t enough.
On the few occasions he gets time to himself, Tara is calling him, wanting to get his opinion on action figures and approve pre-release photographs. If it isn’t her, it’s Gloria. Gloria calling to talk about press and on-set interviews and how there are rumours that he’s fighting with Brendon and Darren and hooking up with Vanessa and god. It makes Ryan laugh. Because really. Vanessa?
His friends would never let him hear the end of it.
But for all that Alex and Juno and Eric have all promised to visit, none of them have. Something is always coming up. Ryan isn’t disappointed, not really. He knows that they think it’s so silly - that he’s silly for doing this film. But it’s exhausting and they’re drinking cocktails while he’s struggling to find things to say to Brendon and struggling to hold his tongue around Vanessa and -
They're not even a half way into filming and there are months and months to go and - he knows he's having a sort of breakdown. He can feel it building.
“It’s okay,” Spencer says when Ryan calls him.
But it isn’t.
In the end, there isn’t a straw that breaks his back, or a moment that pushes Ryan too far. But he runs never the less. Politely of course, on the weekend, to an awards ceremony in LA where his stylist sends him suits and ties and his agent organises a detailed schedule full of pre-release press for the film he doesn’t want to think about.
“Hey,” Spencer says, when he sees Ryan.
His hair is getting too long again and he’s wearing one of Dallon’s shirts. It’s one of the ones from their last tour with The Drums. The print is already cracked, and the edges are peeling off.
Standing barefoot just inside the same set of Chateau Marmont rooms Ryan always books, Spencer reaches to help Ryan with his bags but Ryan drops them and clings to Spencer. The months of exhaustion catch up to him. Months of tasteless energy drinks and memorising scripts that keep getting rewritten and trying to develop a character when Darren keeps telling him to be instinctual and to just react and to be in the moment and - it’s Spencer. It’s Spencer, and Ryan can’t help it. He can’t. It’s not his fault.
“Hey now,” Spencer says, wrapping his arms around Ryan. “Hey, Ry.”
Ryan knows what Spencer’s doing, knows he’s trying to talk him down, calm him down. But there is static in his ears and his breath is short and it’s Spencer. Ryan wants him with his heart and his fingertips and with the dryness of his mouth, but exhaustion renders him useless.
Spencer takes him into a darkened room and undresses him. The only sound is click of his belt buckle and the rasp of his belt being pulled from his jeans. Spencer touch is efficient and does not linger. He undresses Ryan like Ginger would, like she did when after she brought him home from the hospital with a cast on his arm. And oh, what a thought that is. Ryan sniffs and leaning forward he presses his temple into the curve of Spencer’s neck. Closes his eyes and inhales shakily.
“Shhh,” Spencer mutters, putting Ryan to bed.
“No,” Ryan tells him. “No, don’t.”
Spencer kisses his temple. “You need to sleep, okay.”
Pulling the sheets up, Spencer tucks him in.
The next day, Ryan wakes slowly to the feel of the mattress shifting under Spencer weight as he sits.
For a moment, it feels as though not a day has passed. It could be an entire year ago. His arm could still be broken and Spencer could still be fresh off tour, smelling of asphalt and sweat, instead of just about to head into the studio to record his bands sophomore effort. Ryan wants to tell Spencer to stay still, to not move, to let them go back in time and stay there.
Life doesn’t work like that though.
Looking down at him, Spencer smiles softly. “Hey.”
Blinking, Ryan rolls over a little.
“What time is it?” he mumbles, sleep thick.
“Late.”
The sun is casting long shadows. Through the open window Ryan can’t hear the sound of kids splashing around in the pool. Ryan doesn’t care what time it is. He closes his eyes. When he opens then again, Spencer’s sitting by the window reading the paper. For a little while Ryan watches him.
Ryan can’t remember not knowing Spencer - can’t remember a life without Spencer in it. Spencer is Ryan’s best friend, his truest friend.
He must have slept for hours, but Ryan still feels exhausted. Closing his eyes, he falls back asleep.
For the sake of appearances Ryan is meant to do some press for Shame. That was part of the deal. He might have only had a small part, but it’s up for some serious awards this year. The studio has high hopes. But when Ryan finally gets up, he does not reach for any of the suits his stylists sent him.
Out on the balcony he hears Spencer talking on his mobile. His voice is hushed and quiet.
Back, when Ryan first ‘arrived’ in Hollywood, he, Spencer and Brendon used to go out together. They’d go to clubs and they’d drink in VIP sections. It was fun. Ryan remembers that. He remembers girls. Women. Actresses and models - interchangeable. He remembers the thrill of talking to the prettiest ones he could find and how they would all talk to him, look at him, and want him. He remembers how awkward Spencer was, too. How he never really looked at anyone twice until Clémence came along. (He never really looked at anyone apart from her).
Ryan listens to Spencer talk and thinks about those photographs of them at the Harry Potter premiere, and then of how she’d turned up to his last LA gig and sat backstage like that was something ex’s did. Spencer isn’t the only one to do what he wants. Maybe that’s why he liked Clémence so much. The thought feels like counting backwards from a hundred, or reading his own press, almost.
Spencer loved Clémence, Ryan knows that. Probably still loves her. But he knows Spencer loves him too. Ryan’s known for a long time.
When Spencer comes back inside, Ryan is back in bed, waiting.
“I talked to Tara,” Spencer tells him. “She’s cancelled your interviews.”
“Good,” Ryan tells him, and he means it.
Spencer’s always been it for Ryan. Ryan’s always known that. He’s pretty sure Spencer knows it too.
At lunchtime, Spencer runs Ryan a bath and tells him about this song Ian is writing about his Twilight girlfriend while Ryan is washing his hair.
“Dallon and I both think it’s really about Cash,”
Ryan makes a face.
Spencer nods. “I know. But you have to admit it’s pretty fucking funny.”
“I hope you don’t talk like this about me behind my back.”
“I do,” Spencer grins. “You’d be shocked by the things I tell people.”
There is a twinkle in Spencer’s eyes and Ryan thinks he doesn’t care. Not if Spencer looks at him like that.
It isn’t until Spencer is handing Ryan a dry towel, Spencer brings up the elephant in the room. “So hey, is this something we need to worry about?”
Ryan doesn’t really know. He shrugs.
The corner of Spencer’s eyes crinkle a little. He’s kind - people sometimes forget that. Spencer might do what he wants, when he wants, but he’s never cruel.
“Okay. We’ll play it by ear.”
Ryan nods. They can do that, he just doesn’t want too.
Sometime in the middle of the night, Ryan gives up pretending to sleep and switches on the television instead. The colours are too bright for his eyes. Squinting, he flicks through the channels. There isn’t much on. A few late night shows are on, and twenty four hour news channels recycle the same old bulletins. Ryan has the sound on one of the lowest settings, but Spencer’s appears after a few minutes.
“Scoot over,” he tells Ryan and Ryan does, making space for him on the bed.
There is something comforting about Spencer’s presence. After a while he leans over and plucks the control from Ryan’s hand, switching away from the history channel and onto animal planet.
“Jesse Eisenberg doesn’t watch TV,” Ryan says during the first commercial break.
Spencer glances at him. “People that say they don’t watch TV are such douchebags.”
“Jesse isn’t.”
Spencer snorts. “But you are.”
“Yeah,” Ryan allows, the corner of his mouth twitching. “And I don’t even own a TV.”
“No. You rent them.”
“Got to fill suites with something other than slacker friends.”
“True,” Spencer nods.
The conversation is so stupid. The whole thing is so stupid. Ryan can’t help but laugh. It feels good - like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.
Later they order room service and get crumbs everywhere. Ryan gets a hamburger because his trainer is always on at Ryan to eat more protein and Spencer gets ice cream and fresh fruit. They manage to catch the end of an episode of Boardwalk Empire. Ryan likes the colours and the sets but jumps at the violence. He isn’t sure what sort of tell that is, but he knows it is one. Spencer merely changes channels over to a Mad Men marathon. They saw enough of Ashlee’s new boyfriend during the last award season; neither of them need to watch him on TV.
Somewhere between Betty leaving Don and the episode where Kara Urie does a guest spot, Spencer places the empty room service plates on the carpet beside the bed.
“That’s better,” he says, smiling as Ryan stretches out besides him.
Ryan likes his smiles and it’s easy to mirror it. Lying next to each other, Ryan feels every point of shared contact. Elbows knocking into elbows, thighs aligned and the heat of Spencer’s body against Ryan’s own.
“Is this okay?” Spencer asks.
Ryan nods. It is. His heart pounds inside his chest. But it’s okay. It’s Spencer.
When the infomercials start running, Spencer presses mute and they kiss slow and unhurried. They haven’t done this before. But the night feels soft and like it was a long time in the making. Inside his chest, Ryan’s heart pounds like a muted drum. The only thing that keeps him whole is Spencer hands tangled in Ryan’s hair, holding him close.
There isn’t a world outside the curtains.
There isn’t anything else but them.
In the morning Spencer kisses Ryan awake and it’s hard to remember why it took them so long to get here when in retrospect being anywhere else seems like a complete waste of time.
“We wasted twenty seven years,” Ryan mutters against Spencer’s lips.
“You did,” Spencer corrects. “I only wasted twenty six.”
It’s easy to stay an extra day, and then push and try steal more.
Why just take an inch?
Tara calls and leaves seventeen messages. Spencer listens to them for Ryan and then deletes them.
“She’s pissed,” Spencer comments.
“Yeah.”
Ryan’s flight is in an hour.
Spencer packs for him.
“Three months,” he says.
Ryan’s spent the last four months on set, and the previous three months preparing for the film.
Spencer leans over and kisses him chastely. “Just three more months.”
Ryan can barely stand the thought of the two hour flight back to the location.
“You’ve known me for over two decades,” Spencer reminds him. “Twelve weeks is nothing compared to that.”
“Okay,” Ryan tells him.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But Ryan trusts Spencer.
“Okay.”
Technically Ryan can drive now. The suspension on his driver’s licence was lifted a while ago and he’s almost certain his car is still parked underground in the Chateau Marmont parking lot. But Spencer rings the font desk and orders a town car to take them to the airport.
In the backseat Spencer laces his fingers through Ryan’s and when they get to the airport he comes to the gate and hugs Ryan goodbye.
“Come and visit me,” Ryan says. (He can’t ask, still can’t, even after two decades).
Spencer nods.
It isn’t quite a promise but when has that ever counted for anything with them?
Back on set Ryan feels fragile. Tissue paper thin, if that. The expression on his face feel like it is pasted on, the light touch in his tone is a fall back - something he pulls out at interviews and auditions. He figures that’s the best one to go for. It’s the one that git him hired, the one that Darren experienced initially. So he uses it in between takes. He can’t be his character, but he can be a version of himself. Darren’s never said anything about that.
Brendon claps him on the back in the make up trailer and Ryan wonders if he can tell. If he can guess that Ryan was recently put back together and the glue is still drying.
They do an action scene. It’s big and bold and about fifty people are involved. Real blockbuster stuff. Ryan’s head is in the game as much as it can be.
When they break for lunch Ryan tries to put himself together.
There is a sunny warmth deep inside his chest when Ryan thinks of Spencer. He holds it close, holds it tight. Darren still isn’t any more or less pleased with Ryan’s work, but Ryan keeps trying. He wants this film to be good. It’s never going to be great. At least not in the way Ryan would consider great. It’s simply not that sort of film. But Ryan knows his taste runs toward the art house side of the business.
At night he calls Spencer.
Night Watch is the sort of film Spencer likes. The sort he watched with Ian and Dallon while they are on tour.
Spencer’s seen all of Ryan’s work. Even the short films he made with his friends - the awful and very embarrassing ones which they all thought were brilliant at the time.
Ryan thinks - Ryan wants Night Watch to be good. He wants it to be something Spencer will like.
He starts to stay back and watch the dailies with Darren.
“Finally got you hooked, kid?” Darren smirks.
Ryan shrugs. He wouldn’t say that.
Darren eyes him like he knows, like he approves.
“Fuck off,” Ryan tells him. Because really. He can live without Darren patting him on the back for a job well done.
Darren snorts. “Pathetic. There wasn’t an ounce of feeling behind that ‘fuck you’.”
It - Darren’s flippant tone - startles a laugh out of Ryan. “Yeah. I know.”
Back when Ryan was a kid being driven to LA every week for auditions, he and his mom used to play games in the car. She’d tell him to be something, act something out, to be someone else. Together they’d do accents and make faces to pass the time. Basic theatre games, really. Not that he knew the difference. Back then it was just something they’d do together. Sometimes it would be fun, at least when he was very young. As he grew up it sometimes be boring and he’d whine about having to do it, having to give up his weekend, not being able to hang out with Spencer whenever he wanted. Typical kid stuff.
She’s living somewhere in Washington D.C now.
Sometimes they’ll catch up when various promotion tours take him through the city. They have dinner at nice restaurants with her new husband and he talks to his step siblings about school and it’s all very nice. They’re his only family left. Ryan always reminds himself of that whenever he sits down with them.
Afterwards, when they leave, the paparazzi is always present. Sometimes it feels intrusive. Most of the time he finds it predictable.
None of his step siblings have shown any interest in acting - Ryan brought that up once and his mother had shaken her head.
“They’re all about sport.”
Brendon’s nursed something for Spencer for as long as Ryan’s known him. But that is just one of many things Ryan knows about Brendon. Maybe Brendon knows about how Ryan feels for Spencer too, maybe he can tell that Ryan’s heart is full.
But neither of them ask, and neither of them tell.
Neither of them are very brave. At least not when it counts.
That’s always been Spencer. He was the one who took chances, who shook his head when Ryan’s agent tried to sign him, who did exactly what he wanted because what did applause and mass approval mean to him? He never wanted or cared for it. All he ever needed was music and place to sleep at night. And Ryan - Spencer wanted Ryan too.
Ryan knows that now - knows what that means.
Ryan might not be very brave, but he’s brave enough, brave enough to not only know a good thing when he sees it but hold onto it.
When Spencer comes to visit, the three of them end up hanging out together like old times. During breaks in filming, they hang out in Brendon’s trailer like they did all those years ago when Ryan was star struck and Brendon was a child star taking on his first adult role. Vanessa often joins them. It doesn’t surprise Ryan at all that she and Spencer quickly become friends - doesn’t surprise him either when Vanessa idly comments that having Spencer around makes Ryan more fun.
“He does that,” Ryan agrees, because Spencer does.
Brendon winks. “Spencer’s the best.”
Vanessa rolls her eyes. “I’m the best. Spencer cool though, when he isn’t around you two losers.”
She’s probably right. It’s lucky Spencer’s never given a shit about being cool.
When Ryan broke his arm, the hospital called Ginger.
It wasn’t until she showed up looking worried he realised that he hadn’t changed his in case of emergency list since he was seventeen. At the time, Spencer was on tour. He and the guys were somewhere on the opposite coast playing to half filled rooms and doing interviews on community radio stations.
“Spencer called,” Ginger told him. Holding his good hand, she waits with him for the doctor to return.
Ryan didn’t want to know what Spencer could have said.
Ginger smiled, like she knows. “He didn’t laugh too much.”
“Don’t lie.”
Ginger smiled. She looked tired.
Later Ryan found out that when the hospital called, she dropped everything and flew up from Las Vegas on the first available flight she could catch. It made Ryan feels guilty and embarrassed - it still makes him feel that way. Even now, he can’t believe what happened actually happened.
Filming takes a little over six months. When the sequel is filmed, if it is filmed, Ryan assumes it will take much longer as his character plays a greater role in the source material. As it is, Darren run over by three weeks over the time he and the studio’s scheduled, which doesn’t surprise anyone. However it does mean Ryan only has one and a half months break before heading off to film On the Road, instead of three months.
When he gets back to LA, Spencer and Cash pick him up from the airport.
“You look like shit,” Cash comments, hugging Ryan hello.
Cash doesn’t. He does look like a trust fund douchebag. But he always does. Ryan’s never really gotten why he and Spencer get on so well, but Spencer always has his reasons. He might not be very LA, but Ryan’s always trusted Spencer’s judgment.
On the Road is going to be a completely different environment. Ryan feels it in his bones but that is all. Spencer’s heading back on tour soon. He and the guys have almost finished recording. Their label is pushing for an early release to capitalise on their momentum, maybe even a solo tour. But nothing has been decided yet. Over breakfast, Spencer boots up Ryan’s laptop and plays some of the rough tracks he and the guys are currently working on. Ryan doesn’t really have the best ear for music, but the base line is pulsing and Spencer’s drumming is erratic and driving.
“We wanted to do something less contrived.”
“Probably a good idea. If you guys spend any more time hanging out with the guys from The Drums and Passion Pit I think Dallon and Ian would have probably replaced you with a drum loop.”
The corner of Spencer’s mouth twitches. “Or a model who could play some really amazing tambourine.”
“Or that,” Ryan nods. “I mean, enough of them attended your last LA show. It wouldn’t be hard to find one looking for a part time gig in between photo shoots and auditioning for the next tween movie franchise.”
“They could be your co-star too. Then you wouldn’t have to be seen with Vanessa Hudgens. That would really kill two birds with one stone.”
“There’s some potential in that,” Ryan muses. “If they were any good I could get them to replace you too.”
“Everyone’s a triple threat in LA.”
“Better not let anymore models into your shows then.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell Brian to print it on all the tickets.”
Spencer smiles. His hair is getting too long again and Ryan thinks one and a half months isn’t nearly enough. And it isn’t.
When the time comes for Ryan to head off, he offers to keep his room at the Chateau Marmont, but Spencer shakes his head when Ryan brings it up.
“No, I’ll be okay.”
Ryan knows that. But that isn’t the point. He lets it go though.
“Where are you going to stay?” he asks instead.
Spencer shrugs. “Cash’s pool house, or Brendon’s. Maybe Dallon’s place if Breezy’s cool with it. I don’t want to impose.”
Ryan nods. In his head he thinks about Spencer being somewhere else, about distance and other people.
His house is almost finished. They’re currently plastering and painting it. He and Spencer visited a few times when Ryan first got back to LA. It felt even more alien to Ryan than the last time he was there with Ione. Ryan doesn’t think he wants to keep it. He doesn’t need the luxuries he thought were essential as a twenty four year old. He really doesn’t need much. It’s funny. Since Ryan got back to LA, he’s been talking to Darren a lot and it’s Darren who tells him its okay.
“You’ve been working non-stop since you were seventeen. You should take a break.”
And Ryan thinks he might. Other than the Night Watch trilogy, Ryan doesn’t have anything else lined up after On the Road.
It might be nice to do something other than acting. Maybe tag along with Spencer when he goes back on tour. Ryan doesn’t know. But he thinks he likes the idea of finding out. The idea of stepping back doesn’t scare him anymore.
When he was a kid, there was desperation about how he approached acting. Even when Sean cast him in his first meaningful role, Ryan was anxious about what came next. So much so, after it was released, Ryan signed onto four projects. All one after another; no wonder he ended up playing the same role over and over again.
When it comes time for Ryan to leave, Spencer sees him off. Together they pack up their belongings. Ryan doesn’t think they’ll be back to the Chateau Marmont. At least not for a while.
“Want me to come to the airport with you?” Spencer asks the night before they check out.
Ryan thinks about it. “Yes. But I think I should drop you off at Cash’s.”
He doesn’t like the idea of Spencer being left alone at LAX.
“You know I don’t mind,” Spencer says.
“I know,” Ryan tells him, because he does. But he still likes the idea of leaving Spencer with friends better than the idea of leaving him standing along at the departure lounge.
Ryan’s never been good with people, not even with Spencer. But Ryan wants to be good for Spencer. So Ryan insists.
In the end Ryan’s glad that he does.
Cash might be a trust fund kid/former socialite, but he’s a good guy. He won’t look after Spencer - Cash can hardly look after himself - but he’s Spencer’s friend and there are worse things than seeing his arm looped around Spencer’s shoulders when Ryan glances into the rear vision mirror.
Ryan feels older in Dean Moriarty’s skin. He keeps catching Walter Salles staring at him thoughtfully.
“You’re not what I expected,” Kristen Stewart says.
She isn’t what he expected either. He doesn’t say that though. He isn’t as young as her. Sometimes, at least, he knows better.
The hair and make up people dyed her hair straw blonde. It makes her complexion look patchy. It’s almost as bad as the cut she got when she played Joan Jett. But everyone’s playing her now. Even Ashlee Simpson has read for one of the projects Flower Films has in pre-production.
Ashlee would make a shitty Joan Jett.
Ryan doesn’t really care for Pete anymore, but some things reach too deep under his skin. It’s funny, Ryan never really saw himself as loyal. But maybe he is. (Spencer still talks to Ashlee. Once or twice, Ryan thinks Spencer has even played go-between for her and Pete. Ryan doesn’t understand how Spencer can do it, how he can be so fucking adult about it).
During the break between films, he was told to let his hair grow. On arrival, they cut and styled it to match the era. Parting his hair and cutting it tight and tapered on the sides, while leaving it long and full on top. Each morning they comb Pomade through it, slicking it back. After months playing a villain made to look harmless, Ryan hasn’t quite gotten used to it. His body slowly is starting to feel like his own again. But he knows that will change. He already has Dean Moriarty under his skin, humming away, restless and impatient. It’s only a matter of time.
In the evenings he calls Spencer. Usually he’s still at the studios but once or twice he’s at home and lets Ryan listen when he touches himself. The sound of his ravaged groans and skin and fabric rustling leave Ryan breathless. He presses his face against the cool sheets of his hotel bed and rolls his hips against the cover while. He says Spencer’s name over and over. It’s new, so very new. The shear intensity of it all overwhelms Ryan.
Only after coming, will Spencer then coach Ryan though it; his voice rough and deep.
Ryan knows Spencer. Knows that before him, there was Clémence, and that was it. Perhaps one or two people kissed at parties or in the darken corners of random clubs, but no one who mattered. Ryan has two hands and they are not enough to count the names of people he would have to count if asked to make a list of people he fucked or wanted or approached with intent. Somehow that does not matter, not when it’s Spencer on the other end of the line telling him to wait, to make it good - better, because Spencer wants to hear it.
It should be terrifying - it is, at times - to be risking so much to have Spencer like this. To have him groaning and breathless, dirty and shameless, to get that part of him when having it makes losing all of Spencer such a greater possibility. For the most part though, Ryan does not feel that. He knows Spencer. Knows himself, now. Neither of them are going anywhere.
Afterwards, after Ryan has finished shaking and trembling, Spencer is still on the other end of the line. His breaking even and steady now. Reassuring, in its own way.
Occasionally Spencer sends a tracks or short sound bite - his drumming, Ian and Dallon singing harmonies.
When Kristen shows an interest, he finds himself letting her listen to some.
Disney stars, he thinks to himself. First Brendon, then Vanessa, and now Kristen - it’s something that should be ironic.
He and Kristen never really connect like he and Vanessa eventually did. Where Vanessa would show up on set in fringed suede short shorts, stoned and having forgotten that it was her day off; hilarious and completely unselfconscious, In comparison Kristen is awkward and self contained. Sometimes they sit together and watch dailies with Sam Riley, but that’s as far as it goes. Ryan doesn’t mind so much.
“You were like that once,” Brendon comments when they get together at Comic Con to do a press panel for Night Watch. (It should be too early for things like that but there is already a lot of buzz - the reality of how long awaited and anticipated the English adaptation is, still takes Ryan aback).
Ryan looks at him and Brendon grins knowingly, which makes sense because he wasn’t always just Spencer’s friend, once he was Ryan’s too.
He’s Ryan’s friend now.
Sitting next to him and Vanessa, there is something easy about how the three of them deal with the press. Together they take turns at answering questions and embellishing anecdotes. While Darren is talking about concepts and themes, Brendon takes his phone out to show them pictures of the dog he and Ellen adopted from the pound the week before last and when they take a break for lunch, Vanessa gets the two of them to lean in close so she can take a picture of them for her millions of twitter followers.
“You really need to get one of these,” she tells Darren, who takes the picture for them.
“No, he can’t,” Brendon tells her, making a face. “He’d lose all of his mystic.”
“He can’t make films without it,” Ryan nods solemnly.
“Fuck all of you,” Darren says, shaking his head. “I’m going to go talk to people that don’t get carded at bars.”
Once back on set, Ryan sheds his press ready smile and the PR posture. Back in shirts with starched collars and brylcreem, he doesn’t feel more like himself but he does feel like his character. That’s what counts with Walter.
Kirsten Dunst only spends a short amount of time on set, but it’s strangely pleasant to see her. There is something familiar about her that makes it easy to greet her like an old friend.
“Alex’s friend, right?” she asks when she sees him, and he nods.
“How is he?”
She shrugs. All golden hair and fragile nonchalance. “Same old same old.”
Still hung up on her then, Ryan surmises.
He thinks maybe she doesn’t see it, that she’s so used to Alex being infatuated with her, she doesn’t recognise it for what it is.
They shoot hours at a time. She is playing Camille and although she doesn’t have a large role, her part is emotional and bitting. When she acts, she acts with everything, with all of her, and when Walter calls cut for lunch, Ryan is surprised when Walter draws comparisons between the two of them, calling them two sides of the same coin.
Kirsten laughs. “Well, I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
She laughs in a really pretty way, so pretty that Ryan nods. “Me too.”
They sit together in the catering tent and talk. It’s funny, but despite being so close to Alex, Ryan doesn’t really know her. He knows she fucks Alex up, but Ryan never really understood why. Up close and away from distractions and flashing lights, there is just something about her that Ryan responds to easily and without artifice. She is lovely, Ryan sees that now. There is something clever about her, something full of charm and grace. But Kirsten frays at the edges, everyone knows that. Ryan doesn’t want to be like her. It is an awful thing to say, but it is true. He isn’t strong enough to be like her.
She’s on location with them for a little over a week. They eat lunch together most days. Sometimes Walter comes over and joins them, occasionally Jim joins them too.
“It’s strange we don’t know each other better,” he says right before she leaves.
“I think we know each other reasonably well,” she counters, but her eyes are covered with cateyed sunglasses. Ryan can’t properly judge her expression.
He shrugs. “I would like to know you better.”
He would. He hopes she feels the same.
Ryan doesn’t have many friends. But he thinks he would like it if she were one of them. He has Spencer, then he has Alex and sometimes he has Z. Recently, Ryan has been able to honestly call Brendon a friend again. Sometimes there are other people too. But not many. It would be nice to call Kirsten one of them.
Towards the end of the shoot, Ryan’s house is finally finished. Over skype, Spencer talks about throwing a party to welcome Ryan home.
Ryan doesn’t need a party. That house isn’t home to him.
“Home is someone, not someplace,” Sean had told Ryan a very long time ago.
Ryan doesn’t know if he’d ever had either, until Spencer.
Spencer smiles when Ryan says as much.
When Ryan was a kid, he never had a plan. Not when his mother was still around. Not even afterwards. Back then he had so few of the things he needed that he always wanted more than most, but never what he needed, because he stopped expecting to get that. Growing up was something he did fists-first. In retrospect it was no wonder Sean Penn picked him; an unknown nobody of a kid with a hard mouth and so vulnerable even though he pretended he wasn't. At the time Spencer was the only kind part of Ryan, the only part that wasn’t run lean and the wrong size.
He isn’t that kid anymore.
He stopped being that kid a long time ago. And he is glad of it.
Masterpost.
Bonus materials.
Bonus Kirsten Dunst/Alex Greenwald coda: LJ AO3
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