Faster Than A Speeding Bullet, part 3
Part 2
Introducing Ryan and Andrew was supposed to be the easy part of this trip-when Andrew said he was going to be in the city that week, Jesse had been so relieved. He’d been pretty sure that Ryan’s New York visit was going to be kind of inevitably horribly awkward-they’re awkward enough when they talk on the phone sometimes, and that’s really only ever in hour-or-less increments. Surely constant physical presence was going to show them both all the potential breaking points for this thing they were doing. Surely there was going to be tension.
“Sure,” Andrew had laughed. “I’ll come rescue you from your boyfriend.”
And maybe things haven’t been nearly as bad as Jesse had feared, maybe they’ve even been kind of great, in a surreal way, but Jesse is still glad he’s going to get to see Andrew-it’s been a while since he’s seen Andrew himself, for one thing, and for another, he seems like a good one of Jesse’s friends for Ryan to meet, largely because he’s one of the nicest human beings on the planet.
Ryan is acting weird, though-he’s not really saying anything or even making eye-contact much over the lunch table. He shook Andrew’s hand and introduced himself when they came in, but since then the only full sentence he’s said has been his order when the waitress came around. He’s looking down at the table, at his hands, fiddling with his sleeves. Andrew looks baffled, but gamely tries a bit more of that ridiculous charm Jesse remembers being completely won over by, the first day of rehearsals for The Social Network.
“So, Ryan, how are you finding New York?”
Ryan shrugs, jerkily. “Same as usual.”
“So you’ve visited often?”
“Couple of times.”
Ryan also has his chair scooted in close to Jesse’s, and that’s weird, too. Jesse is learning, a bit at a time, the way Ryan likes to stay close when they’re in bed (it’s not cuddliness, Jesse doesn’t think, not really. It’s just proximity he’s after), but he’s always been pretty circumspect in public-even in private they’re not really at the point where they touch all that much if it doesn’t lead to sex. Now, though, Ryan has his shoulder angled so it’s just behind Jesse’s, in a move that’s either hiding or protective but probably can’t be both. His hand is hanging down so it’s near Jesse’s, and oh, he’s graduated to messing around on his phone with the other hand, seriously, was he raised in a barn?
Andrew isn’t even really trying with Ryan any more-in a move that’s just about as petulant as Andrew ever gets, he’s turned his gaze back to Jesse and started asking about his play like this is any other time they’re meeting up after a while apart, smile only just barely forced.
…
Ryan is aware that he’s behaving badly. Jesse is glaring at him, a little bit, and it really takes a lot to make Jesse angry. Andrew mostly looks confused, and Ryan’s lunch is kind of tasteless, heavy and impossible in his mouth. He takes another bite and Jesse talks about how hard it is to write about awareness in dialogue, how hard to make things come across without hitting people over the head with them. Ryan has ketchup on the side of his thumb.
Eventually they leave. Andrew says, “Maybe I’ll see you again when we’re both in L.A.,” to Ryan, and Ryan kind of hates him a little bit. Why the hell does he sound so friendly? If Jesse acts like Ryan has been to Alex and Z, Z will probably challenge him to a duel.
“Maybe,” Ryan says. He’s sure if he tries to smile now, it will only look pained, so he leaves well enough alone.
The problem with Andrew leaving is that it may be all Ryan has wanted for the last hour and a half, but now he’s alone with Jesse. Jesse who looks at him and says, “Thanks for that. Now he’s going to start worrying about my mental health as long as I stay with you. And he looked kind of sad. Andrew doesn’t really do sad.”
There isn’t a lot Ryan can say to that. He can walk close enough to Jesse that their hands bump together by accident sometimes, though. He can stand close on the subway, just out of consideration of the other passengers, obviously. Ryan knows some things better than others, and one of the things that has always been more or less true is that if he doesn’t make it easy to be mad at him, he can usually wear people down. This is even easier if he has something that person wants, so Ryan waits until they’re back at the apartment, and then follows along at Jesse’s heels, trying to be subtle, but also aim them down the hall past the living room.
Jesse looks at him, kind of incredulous. “Are you really-?”
“Am I what?”
“After you just-are you trying to just skip past the fight right to the make-up sex? You’ve got a lot of nerve.”
Right. So it looks like that’s not going to work, then. Ryan abandons his herding mission, dropping with a sigh onto the arm of the couch and collapsing backwards. “Yeah. Some nerve of me. Don’t worry, I won’t try to suck your dick again, your virtue’s safe.”
“What the hell, Ryan?” Jesse looks about as mad as he had a few times at the restaurant. “What was that about?”
Ryan worries that his shrug loses some of its effect when he’s lying, collapsed, over the arm of the couch, legs dangling.
“Sorry I got in the way of your date with Spiderman. I’ll try not to be such a nuisance next time.”
“You know what? I can’t-” Portia, one of Jesse’s most recent foster-ees, wanders in around then, interrupting by butting her head against Jesse’s shin until he stops short, says, “I forgot cat food, I’m just going to go get that.”
He stalks out, Portia staring after him with wide, startled eyes. Ryan thumps his head against the couch-cushion, but it’s really much too soft to be all that comforting. He closes his eyes for a second, before they jerk open as the door slams closed. Portia jumps and runs under the couch. “You and me both, kid,” Ryan tells her.
…
Jesse leaves and at first Ryan thinks he must just need a little time to cool off, so he waits, still flopped over the arm of the couch, ready to pick up again where they left off because if this is going to end like this, if Ryan is just going to be the catalyst to help get together a couple who are meant for each other, like some kind of romantic comedy (they even fit the archetypes-the quirky, gentlemanly Brit and the spiky, neurotic New York Jew with a heart of gold. They’d probably win awards at Sundance for their daring and sensitive portrayal of evolving relationships in modern society) then he is going to go down in flames, dammit. Ryan has never been good at bowing out gracefully.
An hour stretches on, though, into another and all the blood is pooling in Ryan’s skull making him feel lightheaded, the shadows are stretching further and further across the room and he doesn’t even realize he’s fallen asleep until he wakes to the sound of Jesse’s voice in the hallway.
“-the hell up, of course it wasn’t you. I told you he was kind of strange, right?” Ryan feels something in his gut twist. Jesse’s footsteps are growing closer. Ryan keeps his eyes closed and pictures Jesse standing in the doorway to the living room, leaning on the door frame when he says. “I don’t know, actually. It was weird, though-he said something-it was almost like he was jealous of you.”
Ryan slits his eyes open. Jesse is indeed standing in the doorway, but he isn’t leaning against the doorframe and his left hand is pressed to his temple like the conversation he is having is causing him physical pain, and Ryan thinks, oh. So this is how this ends. Jesse says, “I don’t know, something about my date with Spiderman,” and Ryan reflects that he really can’t blame anyone but himself for this ending.
He usually can’t. That’s okay, or it should be. His flight out isn’t for a few more days, but he can get it switched, or stay with Alex or something. Ryan has options. “I guess,” Jesse is saying to presumably-Andrew on the phone, but he’s also looking at Ryan thoughtfully-Ryan realizes after a second that his eyes are still open, the faking-sleep strategy probably won’t help him much. Jesse says, “I’m going to have to call you back, Andrew. Say hi to Shannon for me,” and slowly lowers the phone from his ear, not waiting for a response. Ryan opens his eyes all the way, and then, not liking the height dynamics of the arrangement, sits up.
“Did you get cat food?” Ryan asks, eyes drifting pointedly to Jesse’s empty hands, and he hadn’t meant to start out all confrontational, but now that he has, he’s not sure it’s such a bad thing. Best defense is a good offense, and all that.
Anyway, it works, for a second. Jesse sounds off-balance, says, “Uh, no, I-” before cutting himself off with a, “You know what? You don’t get to do this. I’m in the right, here. You were an asshole to my friend and you don’t get to be the one who’s mad at me.”
Ryan tries to think of something he can actually say to that, and into the void, Jesse goes on, “I mean, how did you think that was going to go? Was I supposed to be impressed, or something?”
Ryan has actually been thinking about this, about what he’d been thinking and why, and he’d already decided he wasn’t going to tell Jesse, since it sounds kind of pathetic and also, he’s fairly certain, like the train of thought of someone whose self-analysis method has been trained and honed by self-help professionals for years now, which is, in fact, true, but also not something he wants to advertise. Apparently it doesn’t matter what he decided, though, because it all comes spilling out his mouth, anyway. “Established abandonment issues and expectation of failure leading to self-sabotage in order to create a false sense of control, all subliminal, of course. You know, probably. I think that was probably it.”
Ryan is certain that’s all it’s going to take to set Jesse running for the hills. He nods, though, instead, looking kind of thoughtful, before moving to sit on the couch Ryan has been standing next to kind of awkwardly for the past few minutes. He pats the seat beside him, and, when Ryan sits, says, “Okay. But, uh, I don’t actually want to date Andrew.”
Yeah. Okay. Ryan can’t help it, he laughs a little at that. “Have you seen yourself in interviews about him?”
“Not really. The sight of my own face freaks me out.” Ryan is seventy five percent certain Jesse is trying to make a joke here, especially when he goes on to say, “Actually, I guess that’s not true, you’re right. I think Andrew is a charming guy and he would probably be a great person to go on a date with. I would never want to be in a relationship with him, though. Or have sex with him.”
Ryan is pretty sure the way he’s looking at Jesse right now is providing all the skepticism he needs, so he doesn’t say anything. Sure enough, Jesse gets it. “Don’t you ever think you know your friends too well to ever want to date them? Like, Andrew is my friend, and as a friend, I know that when he’s in a relationship, the girl he’s with has to be around him, to want to be around him, a certain amount of very often or he gets all insecure, and I can only deal with so many opposing insecurities to my own, you know? There are a ton of things like that. Ways I know Andrew well enough to know I could never go out with him.”
“Okay,” Ryan concedes, “So you aren’t secretly pining for Spiderman.” Jesse nods in confirmation, “But what about me?”
“What about you?”
“You said you could only take so many insecurities in a relationship, and I think it’s pretty obvious that I’ve got a few of those.” Ryan shrugs, darting a quick glance up to Jesse’s face, and then back down to where he’s been toying with the fabric of the couch. Jesse laughs. “Are you trying to convince me to break up with you?”
Ryan shakes his head, glances up again, then fixes his gaze on the window beyond Jesse’s shoulder. “I'm just being careful.”
Jesse puts a hesitant hand on Ryan’s knee, and Ryan finally looks him in the eye. “Well, don’t, okay? Let’s just see what happens.”
Ryan nods.
...
When Jesse was six, his family moved to a new house. He doesn’t remember a lot of it, not because he was too young so much as that his parents made sure that he wasn’t around for too much of the packing process-his mom told him later that they’d thought that maybe watching his home disappear from around him might have upset him, and Jesse was always such a high-strung kid-later on in life, he can admit that she might have been right about that. He does have one pretty distinct memory, though, of that move.
It was the morning they were supposed to first drive over to the new house as a family, after his parents had moved most of the things in, the trunk of the car piled high with last-minute, forgotten items, and his mother’s cat would not get into its carrier. It would happily be carried right up until it saw the carrier and then squirm away like a mad thing as soon as it came into view and Jesse’s mother was, as she said, at her wits’ end, and Jesse’s father was allergic to cats and also too close to asleep to drive and Jesse’s sisters were little and really he was the only one who could hold the cat on his lap all the way to the new house.
“You have to hold on to him,” Jesse’s mother had said, and he’d been old enough to know that she was worried about this but not old enough to be upset about that, so all he’d done was hold the cat on his lap just like his mom asked, determined to do this right, and then sneak a couple of fingers out to pet the top of his head as Jesse held on to him, even while he wriggled and tried to get away (probably scared Jesse remembers thinking) when the car started.
He’d never paid all that much attention to the cat before that, probably because Vader had had the good sense to stay away from Jesse and his sisters, who were still much too young to know how to treat cats, so that’s usually why he thinks of that morning as a kind of turning point, but there was something else, a feeling, maybe, about it, that’s had that memory on Jesse’s mind a lot lately.
It hits him all at once, when he gets it, because he kind of feels the same now-like he’s being trusted with something kind of fragile and a little wild. Jesse isn’t really used to being thought of as someone to be depended on-not because he’s not trustworthy, he doesn’t think, but because he can get so caught up in his own head, and he doesn’t think everyone can really see that if he is given a trust, he’ll keep it. That he wants to be given the opportunity.
He’s so used to liking and wanting stable people who know who they are, who balance him out in all the ways he thinks he’s supposed to be looking for, and he’s not quite used to the way he and Ryan fight, the way Ryan sometimes says more than he means to and then goes quiet all of the sudden, and he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t like it as much as he does.
…
When Jesse meets Z, he’s too blinded at first to really take in her features. This is not because she’s stunningly beautiful, though she’s pretty enough, so much as it is a result of having a camera with a very large flash snapped in his face as soon as the door opens. Ryan scowls at her. “Was that really necessary?”
“Tenn wanted proof you weren’t making up an imaginary movie star boyfriend to keep yourself from getting lonely. We were going to do an intervention.”
“If I’d, what, shown up to introduce you to a life-sized cardboard cutout of him?”
“Don’t sound all skeptical, have you met you?”
“Hi, I’m Jesse.” Much as Jesse loves standing in strange hallways being left out of odd conversations, he’s ready for the next phase of the afternoon. Part of him wants to feel bad about interrupting, but the rest of him takes over, pointing out that Ryan owes him, after the Andrew thing.
Z laughs and steps back from the door. “Welcome to Alex’s humble abode.”
Ryan doesn’t seem to ready to let the bickering end, though-he tells Z, “We’ve talked about you saying, ‘Tennessee wants,’ when you want something, right? She can’t be your imaginary friend, we all know she exists.”
“I wasn’t!” Z sounds scandalized as she leads them into the living room. “We totally had an intervention plan. There was going to be tea. And soothing music. Like Enya, or The Kinks.”
“The Kinks?” Jesse has to ask. Z nods. “To confront the wild Ryan outside his natural habitat, it’s best to catch him unaware by playing to his obsessions.”
“I’m right here, you know,” Ryan says, sounding put out, and Jesse finds himself smiling, glad he’s not the only one Ryan’s friend has that effect on.
…
See, the thing is that Ryan should have seen it coming, because Alex has this kind of warped set of principals about being a good host, and he hates seeing people look uncomfortable unless he is actively trying to make them feel that way. It’s not a bad thing-it’s actually one of Alex’s more uncomplicatedly good qualities. The problem is that Jesse pretty much always seems a bit uncomfortable, and today he probably actually is, a bit.
The problem is that Alex likes to calm people down by smoking them up. The problem is that Jesse gets this ‘stranger danger after-school-special peer pressure’ look of discomfort on his face when Alex passes him the pipe, before handing it on to Ryan untouched.
Ryan shouldn’t partake. He knows this, he does. The problem is that Jesse isn’t the only one who’s a little tense, this trip has been a few different kinds of weird, if mostly good, and until right now, Ryan has been out of his comfort zone for days, and Alex always gets really good shit and Jesse passed it to him, and Ryan is only human. If Jesse is going to disapprove, he’d better do it now rather than later.
The only real problem with that is that Ryan is kind of touchy-feely when stoned, and Jesse is kind of perfect for leaning on or draping himself over, and when Ryan starts leaning into every touch, Jesse starts touching more. It’s an interesting discovery, but one to save for another day, because when Z looks up from the kids toy xylophone Alex dragged home from somewhere long enough to notice that one of Jesse’s hands has migrated up to just under the hem of Ryan’s shirt, resting on Ryan’s abdomen, she throws a pillow at them. “No hanky panky unless we’re invited, assholes.”
And Jesse pulls his hand away like it’s been burned, and Ryan loves Z but for a moment he gives an honest effort to trying to set her on fire with the power of his eyes. His skin feels cool where Jesse’s hand had been and even the place where Ryan is leaning against him, Jesse feels stiffer and less at ease.
...
The thing about hanging out with Ryan in public is that he has this way of just acting famous, like he expects the world to fall into place to suit him, and the world usually seems to. It’s stupid, because Jesse actually is famous, but hanging around with Ryan and his friends kind of makes all the things about being semi-well-known that usually give him palpitations seem as glamorous and interesting as they’re supposed to.
That is, when they all leave Alex’s apartment a few hours after Jesse and Ryan got there, this time on a quest for cannoli, which Z has decided is the food of the gods and the only thing that can sate her appetite, Alex is wearing sunglasses despite the cloudy day and Z looks like she stepped out of a fashion magazine from the sixties, complete with cigarette and bright red lips that are enough to show exactly how smoking turned into what all the cool kids did, and Ryan-Ryan fits right between them, in his weirdly colored suit pants and non-matching jacket and the hat he keeps saying he’s going to get a feather for. They should look ridiculous, but Jesse is pretty sure he’s the only one who feels out of place.
At the bakery, though-at the bakery, the girl behind the counter recognizes him. It doesn’t actually happen to Jesse all that often, especially not in New York, where people aren’t on the lookout for celebrities the way they are in L.A. It does happen, though, it’s not unheard of, and usually he’ll just recognize their recognition in the way they keep looking at him, sometimes, someone will say something, and this girl with her big eyes as she wraps up the cannoli and rings up their order, she’s going to say something, Jesse thinks, but for once he doesn’t mind.
The girl keeps looking at him, and Z has noticed, if the sideways smiles she keeps shooting at him are any indication. Ryan seems to have noticed, too, and he looks kind of suspicious, like he’s looking for the catch, and Jesse is starting to enjoy himself. He pays and tells the girl, “You have a nice day,” and feels like a completely different person-the kind of person who volunteers smalltalk to strangers instead of avoiding it like the plague.
The kind of person who smiles when she says, “I’m sorry, just-are you Jesse Eisenberg?” responds, “Yeah, actually,” in a cordial manner and signs a discarded receipt for her. When they get outside to open the pink bakery box and find a handful of little chocolate cookies there as well as their order, Z proclaims him her hero and Jesse actually feels like a celebrity. The way Ryan grins at him, walks close next to him so that their hands bump together doesn’t hurt either.
“Stick with me kid,” Jesse tells him, glancing at him sidelong, “I’ll always keep you in macaroons.”
Ryan laughs, loud and open, a hiccoughing, chuckling sound, so obviously not from the city, but when he says, “That’s pretty much the best offer I’ve ever gotten,” he doesn’t really sound like he’s joking.
…
Ryan leaves and Jesse doesn’t go with him to the airport. “It’s early,” Ryan says, “No one should have to get up that early,” and Jesse ought to be agreeing with him, he’s not even sure why he would want to go. Still, he kind of does. He compromises by saying, “I’m pretty due for an insomniac phase, I’ll probably be up anyway,” which is pretty much true.
It would be normally, anyway, and for the first time in a while, Jesse is not entirely pleased when his body decides to stick to normal sleep patterns, because he wakes up in the morning to an empty bed. Ryan doesn’t even leave a note, which Jesse can’t help but feel a little disgruntled about, till he notices his phone blinking at him that he’s got a new text. He clicks it open, and yeah, it just says, on my way skyward, xo but it still makes Jesse smile.
...
Being back in L.A. is weird. Everything is exactly the same as when he left on the way back from the airport, sun setting and cars shrieking by and Ryan’s kitten hides under the couch when he gets home. The plants by the gate are dead, but he’s pretty sure they were already that way when he left. There’s a note on the counter in Brendon’s writing saying that he never did find the cat food, that all there had been in the cupboard was a half a bag of dog food, so Brendon had picked some cat food up, and he expects reimbursement, exclamation point, smiley face. Ryan snorts. So that’s why his cat is hiding from him. Brendon has her brainwashed.
“I bet he’s trying to draw you into the fold of his cult of personality, isn’t he, girl? He telling you you need to have many wives and move to Utah? Don’t drink the Kool Aid, kitty cat.”
She doesn’t come out, though, and Ryan’s house is dark in every room but the kitchen, he leaves the kitchen, switches on the lights in the hall, the living room, goes over to the stereo and puts on whatever the last album he’d listened to there and never put away is, glances at the time, counts the hours, thinks ‘fuck it,’ pulls out his phone and punches in Jesse’s number. It’s only nine thirty on the east coast. Jesse is probably eating dinner alone with the cats.
He answers with, “Portia misses you,” which makes Ryan smile. “It’s not fair of you to just show up and leave again, she’s never going to develop any sense of stability like that.”
“Isn’t she supposed to be getting picked up by that couple who want to adopt her tomorrow, anyway?”
“Exactly. How many upheavals should she really be expected to go through?”
“Portia’s tough,” Ryan says, “She’ll be fine,” and he’s smiling, he can feel his face stretch into a grin, can’t help it. “So did you do all kinds of productive things with me out of your hair finally?”
Jesse laughs. “I cut three pages of script-I pretty much did negative work today.”
Ryan laughs, settles himself on the couch and then laughs again when Alleycat shoots out from under it when he does. “Yeah? Are you lost without me?”
Ryan is teasing, but there’s something in Jesse’s voice when he responds, something a little stuttery, like he really is one of the guys he keeps playing in movies. “Utterly lost,” Jesse says, and his voice sounds blank and sarcastic, but still sort of sincere, unless that’s just what Ryan wants to hear. “Luckily, Portia and I can console each other.”
Ryan sniffs. “Replaced by a temporary cat. I see how it is,” but Jesse says, “Not possible. She’s much more logical.
...
The first time in six months that Ryan thinks of something he wants to tell Jon and then reaches for his phone without thinking, he is half asleep, which probably has something to do with it. The last time he’d reached for the phone to call Jon without thinking, he’d called him a dick and then hung up before Jon could get a word in edgewise, so it’s probably a good thing that there’s been some time in between. Maybe Jon’s even forgotten about it. Ryan isn’t sure whether he hopes he has or he hasn’t.
He’s been lying in bed talking to Jesse, though, and somewhere half way into the conversation, Alleycat climbed onto his chest, walking in circles before settling across his collarbone, furry body pressed against his neck, so of course he can’t get up, even after Jesse gets off the phone pleading an early day and the time difference which Ryan thinks maybe he ought to acknowledge doesn’t just exist to spite him, but it’s tough, and he’s fully dressed and on top of the blankets, but Alleycat is purring against his neck and his face is so warm and he’s almost asleep.
He’s almost asleep, which is a whole lot like being not in his right mind, Ryan thinks, so when his brain flits around from connection to connection, he doesn’t even try to make his logical mind follow along, and pretty soon he’s gone from the warm weight on his neck and chest-simultaneously annoying and comforting-to that longing look Jon had gotten sometimes on tour when someone mentioned pets, and before he knows it, he’s reaching for his phone.
Jon answers with a slightly frantic sounding, “Hey, Ryan, what’s up, what’s wrong?” which is actually kind of insulting. Ryan thinks about telling him so, but that isn’t why he called, so instead he says, “You were right, that time-having to be either a cat person or a dog person is such bullshit, man. Both are such great pets in different ways.”
Jon lets out a sigh, and he sounds way too put upon for this moment, Ryan thinks. Ryan is agreeing with him-yes, agreeing with him on a trivial point in an argument they had years ago, but still. He’s on Jon’s side. It’s not like he’s asking for anything.
Jon says, “What are you on?” It could be a rhetorical question, but he sounds too matter of fact, Ryan thinks he’s probably serious. That’s annoying as well as insulting, but Ryan guesses Jon may have earned the right to that suspicion a little bit, for a little while. Still, “Nothing, I’m not on anything.”
There’s a pause. Ryan takes the time to feel a little smug. Then Jon laughs, and he sounds relieved when he says, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Ryan nods, and he knows Jon can’t see it, but he seems to get it anyway-well, that, or that question actually was rhetorical. He asks, “So how’ve you been, man, what have you been up to?” and he sounds a whole lot happier than he had a second ago. Ryan thinks he probably made the right choice in not getting pissed about anything. Ryan says, “Well, I got a cat.” As if to prove his point, Alleycat flexes her claws against his chest in her sleep.
“For real?” Jon asks, and he has got to stop this skeptical-sounding bullshit, because maybe Ryan wasn’t always a treat to be around at the end of the last tour, and maybe it took him longer to realize how he felt about the split than it should have, but if he was really awful enough to deserve this, Jon shouldn’t even want to talk to him, Ryan doesn’t even know what he’s doing answering his phone. Ryan brings his free hand up to pet along the twisting curl where Alleycat’s back curves into an almost-circle and says, “Yeah. For real. She’s still pretty little, too, you should come see her before she grows up and is no longer charming.”
Jon laughs again, but the good kind, this time, the kind that means he and Ryan are on the same page, he gets the joke, and Ryan doesn’t even really mind that he accidentally invited Jon to come stay. Jon probably won’t take him up on it, anyway.
“What inspired the adoption?” Jon asks, and Ryan tells him, “Well, Jesse said-” but Jon doesn’t even know who Jesse is, so Ryan has to at least half-explain that, and before he knows it he’s telling Jon about volunteering at the shelter, and Jon is making those “hm, mhm” noises that are the verbal equivalent of nodding, and Ryan hadn’t even noticed himself missing that, but no one else can do it in quite the same calming way as Jon.
Jon who waits until Ryan has run out of things to say, and then says, “That’s great, Ryan, you sound like you’re doing really well,” and Ryan gets kind of distantly annoyed all over again at that, remembering the way Jon had answered the phone, like this was Ryan’s 911 call from where he was dying in a gutter somewhere. Still, the condescension is affectionately motivated, and Ryan did call. He should have been expecting it. He tells Jon, “I am,” and then changes the subject. Jon’s like anyone else-he’s glad to let things drop in favor of talking about himself, and Ryan guesses it’s his turn to listen for a bit before he can get back off the phone again.
…
“Never rains but it pours,” is a stupid expression and Jesse doesn’t like it-it has no lyrical value. It’s true enough, though-that is, he’s got promo stuff to do for the latest bill-paying action comedy that’s just quirky enough to actually want to hire him, and it’s just now, when it’s looking like Ascuncion is actually going to happen, after having it in the works for three years, and to top both of them off, there’s a whole other person who wants to be a part of his life, and that hasn’t happened with this kind of certainty in a while either.
He wants to focus most on the play, and he’s got an actual deadline for a final draft before casting, and he’s pretty good about showing up at the places his agent tells him he has to, but everything else sort of fades into the background. Sometimes the cats have to get pretty vocal before he remembers to refill their bowls, it’s a good thing the two that showed up are pretty pushy, Jesse spares a moment to think. For once, the little quiet ones might have gotten lost in the throng, if he’d had any.
He starts turning off his phone when he’s writing, after a while, getting into the habit of turning it back on when he finally stops to sleep. If he does. On the days where he doesn’t bother to stop until he literally can’t move, the phone doesn’t get turned back on at all.
He took the time to warn Ryan about how he’d probably be a little out of touch for a bit, at the very beginning of this interlude. Ryan had said it was fine, that he understood. Then he’d gone to France. Jesse isn’t sure whether it was a cause-and-effect thing, Ryan says no, he’s been wanting to get into producing for a while now, and he’s only just gotten the opportunity, but the timing still seems a little suspicious.
It seems to be working out alright, though-when Jesse turns his phone back on, there are always a handful of cryptic texts-how many french guys does it take to change a lightbulb? It doesn’t matter how many you have if you can’t find a ladder say, or, can I charge napping as billable hours? What if I arrange the songs in my dreams? or, once, unseasonable and at an unreasonable hour, I think you’re swell, Valentine.
...
Jesse wakes to the sound of his phone ringing in the middle of the first night that week where he has actually managed to make it to the bed before falling asleep instead of just passing out on the couch. He reaches for it blindly, not stopping to look at the display before answering; there’s only one person who’d be calling him at this time of night, anyway.
“Yeah?”
“I’m wearing your underwear.”
“What? How?”
Jesse is seventy seven percent sure he would not feel this exhausted if he was dreaming, but this doesn’t exactly feel like a conversation he could be actually having, either.
“I borrowed it. I didn’t bring enough when I visited you, so the morning I left, I borrowed a pair from your drawer.” A pause, and then, “You don’t mind, right?”
Jesse laughs and the sound seems to have to scratch its way out of his tired throat. “You know, this would be a much hotter image if my underwear wasn’t, you know, mine.”
Jesse’s boxers, like a lot of his other clothes, get worn until they can’t be worn anymore. More than his other clothes, really-Hallie doesn’t see those and tell him they’re disgraceful, really, he has to replace them, so they tend to hang around even longer, stretching out around the elastic, graying with age. They are the definition of an unsexy undergarment.
“Isn’t that the point, though?” Ryan asks. “The whole, like psychological factor, the idea that what has touched you has touched me. Or whatever.”
“Well, sure,” Jesse says, turning on one side to lean on his elbow and squint at the lights out the window. “Theoretically. It’s just that mine are kind of gross. You know.”
“So you think I must be gross in them?” That would probably be a dangerous question, coming from someone else, but Ryan sounds like he’s seconds away from laughing, so Jesse isn’t too worried. He takes a second to think about it.
Thinking about it, when Jesse comes right down to it, really only means actually considering the image for a moment-Ryan Ross, maybe lying in the dark in his bed somewhere, just like Jesse is doing, in a pair of Jesse’s faded old boxers, maybe that green pair he hasn’t seen in a while, now that he thinks of it. Probably rolled up at the stretched out waistband to keep them from slipping down those narrow hips, too long legs, certainly longer than Jesse’s, stretched out from the place where the fabric bunches up against the bed. Jesse smiles.
“What else are you wearing?”
…
Jesse’s voice goes from sleepy-gravely to turned on-gravely slowly as Ryan listens, and he finds himself grinning, gloating a little inside his head. How many other people would know the difference in tone? He’s not after a real answer, which is why the question is not voiced. The idea of knowing the real answer makes Ryan feel a little sick, a sharp twist of jealousy which is one of the only things Z really hates about him, a muted sliver of panic at the thought of imparting the same admission. A lot of things are left better unknown.
Instead, Ryan shifts down a little tighter into his cocoon of ratty old hoodie, throw blanket, coat thrown on top. Didier doesn’t believe in using heat at this time of year, no matter what the temperature is like at night. “Absolutely nothing,” he tells Jesse, trying to drag the words out into a drawl, something smug. Something self-assured. He wants to bleed enough confidence through the phone that maybe it’ll seep in Jesse’s ear, slosh around in his brain, follow gravity down and slide right out of his mouth again, into the phone, back to Ryan. He wants Jesse to paint him a picture, and he doesn't want him to be shy about it. He says, “What about you?”
Jesse huffs out an amused sort of half-laugh of a sigh, says, “The jeans I was wearing yesterday and a T-shirt. I’m lucky I managed to get my shoes off before I fell asleep.”
That’s right. Jesse is tired. And Ryan may have just woken up in the morning, may be feeling sleepy and relaxed and content to let the sun slowly stretch over the surface of his borrowed bed, but it’s late in New York. Or early. It is, Ryan concludes after a frenzied moment of finger counting, two a.m. in New York, and Jesse has not been sleeping. And then he was asleep, and then Ryan called him, and now he is awake. He feels suddenly and sharply guilty, asks, “Should I let you go?” and then regrets it as soon as he does, the idea of hanging up driving the guilt right out of his mind.
He’s lucky, though. Jesse just says, “You really shouldn’t. You should learn to finish what you start, you know.”
…
Jesse’s mom is a big proponent of honesty and openness in his personal life, which, he tells her, is all well and good except that he’s starting to have a life that journalists are interested in sometimes, which makes it less convenient. Still, a little more openness would probably have helped prevent this situation, where Jesse is trying, mid-promotional event, to explain to his co-worker why he doesn’t need help or a wingman in getting that guy’s number without actually saying that that guy in the weird shirt, the one Jesse keeps staring at, is actually already Jesse’s boyfriend. If he needed help on the Ryan front, he would have needed it long ago.
He hadn’t expected Ryan to come, had actually specifically expected him not to, and that’s why he’s staring, at first-because surely there can’t be two guys, even in LA, who would wear that shirt, certainly not two guys in that shirt both of whom end up a head taller than most of the crowd, incongruously tall, like they’re on stilts, or were stretched out on a rack during puberty. It couldn’t be Ryan but still, how could Jesse help but stare?
And of course staring led to being noticed, and can’t-be-Ryan was doing that little smirky half-smile that meant it also surely couldn’t be anyone else, hair shorter than last time Jesse had seen him and quirking off into odd little irregular curls, led to Aziz following his gaze, saying, “Dude, so that’s what you’re into? I was wondering the other night, man,” the other night being Aziz saying they had to go out together at least once on this press-tour, man, where is the bonding? Two missed calls from Ryan, who left two rambly messages about how he didn’t even understand where the cleaning products under his bathroom sink came from, surely he didn’t buy them, maybe someone broke in and left them there, and later about how ever did people manage to get their pets into those Animal Planet shows, Alleycat would make a great child star.
So yeah, Jesse hadn’t picked anyone up that night, and weirdly enough, there actually seemed to have been a few hopefuls. Jesse blamed Aziz, though Aziz said it was all him, bro, Aziz himself is no movie star, he is in TV, which is not that special in Hollywood, and he is also kind of short, and often his fly-ness gets overlooked, that’s why he brought the movie star (Jesse assumes Aziz was probably talking about him, there). It was actually a pretty good night, only now the fact that he hadn’t, apparently, even been checking anybody out, in more than a cursory way, at the bar had made Aziz suspicious of Jesse’s status as a live human and not, say, a zombie, alien, or other unknown being.
And now Aziz is saying, “Dude, I’m sure he’d give you his number-he’s hanging around near the line like he’s looking for more than a signed poster, if you know what I mean, and, sure, he could be planning on making a pass at me-who’d blame him?-but the way he keeps looking at you makes me think you’ve got a shot, man!”
Jesse is not, in fact, entirely sure how to respond to this observation. He says, “I know,” and Aziz beams at him, signs the first poster and then passes it to Jesse, telling him in an undertone, “I like your attitude, my friend,” before turning his attention to the people in line and posing for a picture.
When Ryan shows up in line, Aziz kind of leers at him a bit, which is kind of weird, Jesse wonders what Aziz thinks the term ‘wingman’ actually means, but he doesn’t say anything, just passes the poster to Jesse, who signs it without actually looking at the paper, asking, “Cheese or pepperoni?”
Ryan is smiling at him, asks lightly, “What, no pineapple?”
“I thought you thought that was weird,” Jesse feels compelled to point out.
Ryan shrugs at him. “It’s growing on me,” he says, and moves to step away from the table.
Jesse reaches out, hopes that no one will notice, a stupid hope, since he is one half of the main event and everyone in the room is staring at him, and puts a hand over Ryan’s, lowers his voice to say, “I’ll call you later, okay?”
Aziz looks at him sharply as Ryan walks back from the table, but doesn’t say anything. Ryan watches as the other fans come up for a while, but after a while Jesse loses sight of him, assumes he must have left. At the end of the event, Jesse mostly just hopes Aziz has forgotten about it, but it must have been a pretty uneventful event, or Jesse must actually be more interesting to Aziz than he’d previously thought, because when they’re walking out to the car back to the hotel, “So you actually know the dude already, then? Tall, dark and paisley?”
Jesse snorts, but nods, and Aziz goes on, “And you know him in, like, the biblical sense, right? Not just in a saw-you-at-that-party way? I’m not reading that wrong?”
“I’m Jewish,” Jesse points out, aware that he’s stalling.
Aziz gestures at him in an offhand way. “Yeah, yeah, dude. You boned, right? I bet he’d be down for a repeat performance.”
“I know he would.”
“Man, like I said, I’m loving the confidence, but it just doesn’t seem quite like you.”
Jesse laughs at that, says, “Yeah, you think?” but Aziz is still looking at him like he’s expecting an actual answer, and Jesse likes him, he does, which is why he says, “We’ve got kind of a thing,”
Jesse is surprised Aziz actually gets anything from a statement that vague, but he nods knowledgeably, says, “So he’s your fuckbuddy?”
Jesse stares at him. That’s a term people actually use? He guesses he must look as uncomprehending as he feels, because Aziz goes on, “Your friend with benefits, your bit on the side-“ and it sounds like he’s going to keep going if Jesse doesn’t stop him, and none of the things he’s saying sound about right, so Jesse cuts in.
“-Not really. He’s, we’re more like, um.” Jesse wishes he’d thought about how he wanted to end that sentence before he started it, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter, because that’s all it really takes to set Aziz’s eyebrows rising, to prompt him to exclaim, “Your boyfriend? Dude, you’re with him?”
Jesse shrugs. That sounds about right. He’s not quite prepared when Aziz punches him in the arm. It doesn’t feel friendly, it feels like a rebuke. “Dude! Why the hell are you going to the hotel, if your boytoy’s in the city?”
“I’m working,” Jesse protests, feeling a little ridiculous.
“Man, no, you were working, now you’re done for the day. Now tell me again, why are you here getting yelled at by me instead of off gettin’ down with your weird little main squeeze?”
Jesse’s laughing by now, but Aziz is still looking at him like he wants an answer, and Jesse isn’t actually sure he has a very good one.
...
Ryan doesn’t carry his phone around with him from room to room, because that would be lame. He does make sure the ringer is on, though, before he gets up to see who’s at the door. He hopes it’s just Nancy from down the way again-she comes by now and then to see if he’s got an ingredient she forgot she would need when cooking. Ryan never does, so he doesn’t know why she keeps coming by, but she always looks a little too frazzled, and it makes him feel a bit better about whatever he’s doing, empty refrigerator or not, so he doesn’t mind.
It’s Jesse at the door, though, so he didn’t need to have been worrying about leaving the ringer on on the phone after all.
...
And so maybe Ryan’s feeling bold, because Jesse wasn’t even going to see him this trip, and instead of just going with it, Ryan had showed up without warning, and Jesse had showed up at his house later-maybe he’s feeling bold because he did something stupid and it worked, but whatever the reason, this time, in the afterglow when Ryan is just sort of abstractly listening to the way his own breath settles back to normal so easily and Jesse backs off of him, retreats to his own side of the bed, Ryan follows.
Jesse twitches when Ryan leans his head, cautiously, against Jesse’s shoulder, but he doesn’t move away. He doesn’t move closer, either, doesn’t reach out, and that’s not awesome, but it’s not bad, either-plenty of people aren’t big cuddlers-Ryan’s not, not really, so he gets it. It would have been kind of nice, though, maybe-Jesse’s hands are so steady.
This is okay, though-this is good. Ryan breathes against Jesse’s shoulder, feels the way Jesse’s warmth spreads through the blankets, so Ryan can feel him all around, even where they’re not touching. He lets a long breath out, lets himself drift asleep.
...
Jesse has to leave early, and he tries to go without waking Ryan up, thinking sleepily about symmetry, and about waking up to an empty bed and a goodbye texted to his phone. He guesses he must be clumsier waking up, though, or Ryan must be a lighter sleeper, because Ryan starts blinking awake when the bed shifts, and is sitting up and rubbing his eyes by the time Jesse pulls his pants on.
Ryan’s eyes are half closed, like he only wants to let so much light in, but he asks, “Do you have time to grab breakfast?” sounding reasonably clear and alert, and Jesse feels kind of bad for having to say no, and then Ryan is just sitting there blinking, and Jesse looks down at the time on his phone and reminds himself of the way he always builds in extra time so he’s not late, how maybe he doesn’t need to be a half hour early this time. He tells Ryan, “I’ve got time to maybe grab a coffee on the way over, though, if you want to give me a ride.” He feels audacious as he says it.
Ryan nods, eyes still half closed, and sits up, saying, “Give me five minutes to get dressed,” and Jesse already foresees disaster, but he nods anyway.
...
Sometimes when Ryan isn’t reading pop-psychology about how to make himself a better person, a happier person, a nicer person, a more whatever someone has most recently told him he is lacking person, he looks up what opinionated people on the internet have to say about why he already is the way he is. He’s not sure whether that’s a more or a less reliable source of information, but it’s certainly more dynamic-people have new theories every other minute, practically.
Not about Ryan specifically, he’s pretty sure he’ll never be that famous, but he thinks maybe it’s better that way. This way he can pick and choose what he listens to, he can say that things he doesn’t like just don’t apply to him because the people who wrote them don’t really know him. The internet has lots to say about sex, and about sexuality, and sometimes even about relationships, too, although a lot of things Ryan reads don’t seem to understand how big of a difference there is between the two for him.
Apparently Freud is still a big deal, even now that Ryan isn’t sleeping through high school Psych class and having fucked up half-dreams where the teacher is writing on the board just like he is in real life, but the things he is writing are diagnoses, and the whole class keeps looking at Ryan. Anyway, lots of the internet seems to think his parents have something to do with who he wants to fuck, or who he wants to fuck him, which Ryan doesn’t really get, because he’s never been that picky about sex. If he’s in the mood, and someone wants him, he’s never really felt the need to set many more limits than that. Well, he hadn’t. Even before he got this long distance thing going with Jesse, he hadn’t been picking many people up, though.
And that’s what Ryan thinks is interesting, too-the people who stick around. There are people who seem to think that people choose other people who remind them of their parents, and Jesse doesn’t seem much of anything like anyone Ryan is related to (except for sometimes when he doesn’t pick up the phone, and it’s almost like he’s not there in the same way Ryan’s mom was never there, but he thinks that’s more about himself than about either of them). He doesn’t think Jesse is really the opposite of either of his parents, though, either, and he doesn’t think wanting Jesse to want him has anything much to do with being a fucked up kid with fucked up parents except for the way it made him want everyone to want him, for a while, the way it made that desire sink under his skin till even now, when he thinks he’s managed to carve most of it out, he finds it coming up again now and then.
It’s been a little while since he’s been in a relationship that feels as big as this one-probably not since Keltie, and okay, with her Ryan can kind of see where everyone and their parental influence theories are coming from, because she laughed like his mother, bright and happy about the world in a way that just took over when things were going well, and she said she wanted things like his mother, white picket fence-type things, and Ryan thinks they probably both even thought they meant it, when they said they wanted that, only they were wrong, and it ended so badly, and maybe the people on the internet were half-right. Maybe people go after people who remind them of their parents, but only until they learn better.
Z says Ryan is just afraid of girls now, that that is Keltie’s lasting influence in his life. He asks her why he and she had a thing, then, after Keltie, and she just laughs at him, tells him that they were never going to be more than friends, even when they were fucking, that she knew it from the beginning, and that was why it never turned into a mess. Ryan isn’t sure about that-he doesn’t think he was so sure that they were never going to be anything from the beginning, but maybe he just wasn’t paying enough attention. She’s right about a lot of things, why not this, too?
He’s not scared of Jesse, except that sometimes he is, because Jesse is so far away and so different from anything Ryan has ever known, and sometimes Jesse doesn’t call him back and Ryan can’t breath. Or, he can, and he’s a lyricist, or he was, words matter to him, using the right words still matter, even if they’re not going anywhere but into loops in his own head, so. Jesse doesn’t call, and Ryan can breathe, but he doesn’t want to because he’s in his house or he’s in the grocery store or in his car or he’s in his head and there is nobody there, nobody to want anything from him, and he doesn’t want to just be existing out into nothing, with nobody wanting him to, and if he holds his breath till Jesse calls, either he’ll breathe in when he gets a call, or his body will kick in and breathe for him, whether he likes it or not-his body will remind him that a part of him wants to exist all on its own.
...
Alleycat doesn’t like it when Ryan goes back to the shelter, these days. “She gets upset when I come home smelling like other women,” he tells Jesse, who doesn’t seem to believe him. “I was sure I’d raised her right, to be compassionate to the less fortunate, but she doesn’t even care about the other strays these days, she just wants all my attention to herself.”
“Or you’re getting lazy about driving over there,” Jesse says, and he sounds distracted. Ryan is half-convinced he can hear the clicking sound of typing in the background. “Don’t hide behind your cat, Ross. It’s not becoming.”
“I’ll hide behind whatever I want.” Ryan knows he sounds sullen and a little silly. He doesn’t exactly care, though.
He waits, but Jesse doesn’t jump in to respond to that. Ryan knows it’s not actually much to respond to, but still. A little effort would be nice. A man cannot thrive on bread alone, especially if the man is a conversation and Ryan is the bread. He bets he isn’t even a whole grain bread or anything. Maybe one of those kinds that calls itself whole wheat but is actually just like the white bread but a little darker colored, that still leaves you as hungry as if you hadn’t eaten at all-Wonderbread in disguise. The point is, Jesse has got to participate if the conversation is going to happen.
“Just bread isn’t a very fulfilling meal,” Ryan offers up into the silence, knowing Jesse won’t be able to follow it but not really caring.
“Huh?” Ryan definitely hears the sound of fingers on keys in the background as Jesse says, sounding like he’s shaking himself awake with the words, “What-? No, of course not. Tell Z that bakery makes sandwiches with its bread, too-she doesn’t have to be such a purist.”
It wasn’t exactly what Ryan was going for, but it’s good enough. He tells Jesse, “But that bread is meant to be a pure experience. Those sandwiches are perversions.” That’s what Z says, at least. Ryan hopes Jesse can tell that he’s pitched his voice to an ‘I’m quoting’ tone.
Jesse must hear right through him, too, because he says, a bit too knowing, “A really delicious perversion, though, right?” He actually sounds like he hears what he’s saying, too.
Ryan smiles. “The best kind always are.”
...
“It’s really happening,” Justin says, and he’s right, it is, Jesse is riding high on very little sleep and two straight weeks of obsessive editing, and he kind of wants to collapse and sleep for a week, only the editing has actually been building up to this moment, too, this moment where they start rehearsing.
“It’s really happening,” Justin says, and there’s so much behind the words when he says them, there are years of trying with this little script, there are table readings and workshops and trying to get it started, and Justin, always Justin by his side, the voice in his head when he wrote Vinny, one of the first people to ever look at Jesse’s writing at all, never mind look at it and say, “I want to help make this happen.” Jesse owes a lot to Justin. He really shouldn’t be thinking about how if Justin says that one more time, Jesse is going to have to take a minute to be not in the same room with him.
Rehearsal goes pretty wonderfully, considering the fact that Jesse is his own worst critic, and he’s managed to maintain enough control over this production that he has plenty of space to exercise his criticism. Still, he walks out that night as tired as he went in, and he doesn’t even try to make it home before he reaches for his phone, just leans against the side of the building.
Ryan answers the phone with, “Alleycat keeps trying to drink the toilet water-is that normal, or have I warped her developmentally somehow?” And Jesse really really wishes he was going home to an apartment that was warm and bright and had Ryan in it. Instead, he asks, “Are you busy in the next couple of weeks, or is there a time when you could come out and see me?”
Part 4