Chapter Text
“I’ll get back to you. Thanks.” I’m reaching for a cigarette before I’ve even hung up the phone. Christ. Fucking shit.
“Who was that?” Brendon looks up at me over the book he was reading, his expression changing from confusion to concern as he watches me smoke almost frantically, desperate for anything to do with my hands.
“Vicky.”
That seems to concern him ever more. Bad news from Vicky is typically really bad news, or something I consider really bad, at least. Sometimes that’s just something like five scheduled interviews in a week, but I’m not being coerced into promoting anything at the moment, so he knows it’s not that.
“What did she want?” He puts his book down on his own side table, turning to face me with his arm slung over the back of the couch. The arm is an offer for me to move closer, which makes me realize I really don’t want to be on opposite couches anymore, so I invade his space, and he smiles a little like that’s what he wanted. He drops his arm to my shoulders as soon as I’m close enough, pulling me into him, and that helps a little. He’s worried now, because he’s familiar enough with the melodrama that seems to follow me around like a lost puppy to know that this could get catastrophic. I lean back, moving the hand not holding the cigarette to cover my face with a sigh.
“My mom got in contact with Vicky, somehow. She wants to know if we could talk sometime.” I feel him stiffen against me.
“Shit.” Yeah, shit. His hand moves up and down my arm comfortingly. “What do you want to do about it?” Good fucking question.
“No goddamn clue, honestly.” I try to laugh, but all that comes out is a sort of forceful exhale. I feel him nudging at my shoulder, trying to move me, which I let him. He pulls me down until I’m laying across him, my back against his legs and my head on the armrest of the couch. I throw my legs onto the other cushions to straighten out my spine, crossing my legs at the ankle. He looks like he’s searching for the right thing to say, scanning my face as he nervously fucks with my hair and I nervously smoke.
“You know you don’t have to,” is what he settles on. He moves his hand down to rest on my neck.
I nod, taking another drag of the cigarette. I offer it to him, and he accepts, inhaling long and slow as he looks thoughtfully out the window. It’s already three PM, but we haven’t really done anything, just had our coffee and cigarettes, then sex in the kitchen, then more cigarettes. Off of tour neither of us ever bother to get up before noon if we don’t have to.
His side is doing another US tour soon, and everyone’s trying to find excuses for me to be there so the two of us don't get insufferable, because we’ve learned over the last couple years that we do, inevitably, get insufferable. I don’t have a conflicting tour schedule this time, so we agreed I can come out and play a followers song every night. It’s not too much dreaded stage time for me, and the publicity it’ll drum up is a good excuse. His whole band knows, too, so there will be no dancing around pretending to go back to different hotel rooms or anything. There’s just one room that’s technically reserved for me, and one technically reserved for him, but everyone will know to get a hold of us in the same place. Jon keeps reminding us of the no sex on the bus rule, which is fucking ridiculous because we havent even had sex on a tour bus in like eight years, thanks, so he doesn’t even have the experience to be scandalized about it. Besides, we all know rules like that are just wishful thinking, anyway. No sex on the bus is a great ideal for about a week, but I’m not even sure we’re going to be the ones to break it.
“I kind of want to talk to her,” I admit after a while. “I mean, it’s not like I ever got any real closure with my dad, I’d kind of like to know what that’s like. Even if we just end up yelling at each other and not speaking for another twenty years.”
He hums, finishing off the cigarette and stubbing it out in the ashtray next to him.
“You don’t owe her anything though, you know?” he says, moving his hands back to my hair.
“Maybe not, but she kind of owes me answers.”
----------
“Hey.” Every angry thing I had planned to say dies on my tongue the second I hear her voice on the line. That’s what my mom sounds like. Huh.
“Hi.”
“What do I even say here?” She laughs quietly from the other end of the line. She sounds older than I remember. I guess I should have expected that. I only saw her that one time on the Jackie tour, and before that it had been almost two decades. I probably don’t even remember her from my childhood, anyway, there’s just a memory of a memory of having her around. I don’t really know what to say, either. What the fuck do you say to a mother you’ve never really known? I suddenly wish Brendon was here, not that he has any more expertise than me here, but he’s better at filling awkward silences than I am.
“How are you?”
“Uh, good, yeah. You?”
“ I’m good. Uh, kids are still at school. I don’t have work today so I’m just gonna start on dinner in a bit. ” She sounds content with her quiet little life, away from the mess that was me and dad. I feel the void flare up deep in my stomach. She saw something in me, even then, that showed her I could never belong in that world. “ What are you up to? ”
“Uh yeah, yeah. Don’t have any interviews today so-” The silence stretches on for a minute, and I pick at a hangnail. I am not going to be the one to fill this silence, absolutely not. I’m not the one who called, and I’m not the one who suggested this.
“ Look, Ryan,” she says after a second, clearly deciding to stop beating around the bush. “I’m sorry about… everything. God, I shouldn't have left you there, I know that. I was young and it was a mistake. I wish I hadn’t. Every day I wish I hadn’t done that to you.”
“Well, you did.” The line goes quiet again as she waits to see if I say anything else. I debate hanging up, but since we’re talking about it now I might as well ask what I wanted to ask. “Why?” My voice comes out more hurt than angry, and I hate that, but I try to ignore it, setting my jaw tighter like I’m bracing for something. I am, I guess. I’m bracing for a hit I know is coming. That’s pretty ironic, considering if she had taken me with her I might not be so good at that.
“ I just couldn’t be with him anymore, and I thought that… he loved you so much back then. I never thought he’d treat you like he treated me, but I was so young, and I realize now that that was stupid of me.” She pauses for a second, and I can hear her trying to steady her breathing. “I was also worried that if I had you I’d never be able to really get out. Like he’d always be with me, ” she admits a little softer, more ashamed. That was a really, really selfish thing to do, and she knows that, but part of me respects that she said it anyway. Most of me still just feels punched in the gut, though.
I also wonder, somewhere in the back of my head, when he stopped loving me, because I know I was too young to remember it.
“Because I remind you of him,” I say hollowly. The line goes silent again. I want to throw myself off the fucking balcony. The world could always do with one less George Ryan Ross, right?
“ Not anymore. ” She sounds like she means it, and somehow that pisses me off even more. She fucking left, and now she wants to talk about me like she has any idea what I’m like.
“You don’t fucking know that.” She doesn’t. She hasn’t seen what I get like, with the drinking and the blood that’s always dripping from my teeth after I let too much bite into my words. I remind me of him, and it makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
“ I want to! ” She sounds desperate, and it snaps me out of my thoughts a little. “ God, Ryan, I want to. ”
Oh, she thinks she wants to? She really thinks she’s going to like me? Fine. How’s this?
“Alright, you want to get to know me?” I ask, still sounding annoyed. “You know that guy Brendon Roscoe?”
“ Yeah, the one the papers say you mentored, right? ” she asks after a pause, sounding apprehensive at the incongruous segue.
“Something like that, yeah.” I grin a little sadistically. This is going to disappoint her deeply. Good. That's what everyone expects of me, anyway. I disappointed my dad like I was born for it, might as well be two for two. “He’s my boyfriend,” I say simply. He’s something like that, anyway. He’s more than that, but he is my boyfriend in function at the very least. It’s what I've settled on calling him.
Now that she knows that she can call me a faggot and tell me she made the right choice the first time. She can leave me again, and our lives can go back to normal. I can have a mom who fucking hates me, and she can pretend she never had her first son. Back to normal. The silence stretches on for many more long, uncomfortable seconds before I add “as in we’re fucking, and I’m gay,” just to hammer home that, yes, she has my permission to yell at me now and end or relationship again. Go ahead, leave me. It’s what you’re good at. It's what I’m good at. We were built for this.
“ Well, congrats, he seems like a catch, ” she says gently, and I blink rapidly at the wall. Ok that isn’t what I thought she was going to say. I have no idea where to go from here. Shit. I didn’t plan for this conversation to continue after that. I was kind of banking on grinning while she yelled at me, or cried, or called me a disappointment, and hanging up on her mid-sentence. You know, for catharsis. She’s not letting me get out of this conversation that easily, though, and I briefly wonder if it’s because she’s the one I get that trick from, the whole ‘say something shocking and wait for them to yell’ thing. Very few people recognize that for what it is off the bat. It unnerves me deeply.
“Yeah,” I say slowly, all the anger suddenly dissolving into something like shock and confusion.
“ How long have you been together?” She sounds like she actually wants to know, which is understandable, I guess. This is literally the first piece of information she’s learned about me first hand since she left. I never know how to answer that question, though. Since 74? Since New York? Since we started trying for real? I don’t typically have to tell anyone, anyway. Most of the people who know were there for it.
“Three years, officially-” is what I settle on. “He’s at the store, he’ll probably be back in a bit.”
“ Well, I’d love to meet him. ”
Most of me wants to hang up, leave her in the dust this time, see how she likes it. Somehow I just can’t bring myself to do it, to cut off the only hope I have left of a family I share any blood with. Not that it matters, not that any of it matters. I guess some masochistic part of me just wants to know what could have been.
She’s also, somehow, okay with this, which is so wild to me that I can’t not see where this goes.
“You live in Chicago now, right?” I don’t wait for an answer, Vicky already told me, I just spit the words out before I can change my mind. “We’re going to be there in two weeks on tour. We have a house there, Vicky can give you the address. You could, uh, come for dinner, if you’re free.” We’ll have a week break there, as per Jon's request, we have time.
“ I could do Thursday ,” she says softly.
“Yeah, sure. Thursday.”
“ Okay, I’ll see you then .”
“Okay.”
After a second, the line goes dead.
Huh.
----------
“My mom wants to meet you.”
Brendon freezes where he’s standing, having just finished putting the last of the groceries in the fridge. He blinks quickly, staring into the fridge blankly as his brain tries to catch up with the information. I try to keep my expression neutral as he turns to me, finally closing the fridge.
“Your mom wants to meet me?” he repeats. I nod, shoving my hands in my pockets awkwardly. “Why?”
“Because I told her we’re together, and instead of calling me a fag and hanging up on me she said she wants to meet you.”
“You told your mother we’re together?” He’s starting to smile now, in that way he does when he sort of hopes I’m joking, but he’s mostly giving me a bewildered what the fuck is wrong with you look. That’s fair, actually. That’s very fair. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, either, but he’s the one that loves me anyway, so who’s the real dumbass here?
“In my defense, I was pretty sure that was going to end the conversation, but yeah.” I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling exposed in this conversation.
“So?”
“So, she’s coming over for dinner while we’re in Chicago.” I feign an interest in a piece of lint on my shirt as I say it, only looking up again when he moves closer.
“You’re taking me to meet your mom?” he asks, his eyebrows about as high as he can get them. Then he laughs, and I feel some of the tension leave me.
“Yeah, I guess I am.” I laugh a little, too. Seriously, me? Taking someone to meet the parents? Spencer’s going to pass out when he hears about this. “You’re ok with that, right?”
“Of course, yeah.” He kisses me, moving both hands to my waist as he backs me against the counter. “Are you?” he asks, his tone careful.
“Yeah, I want you there.” I really, really do, I realize. Doing this without him seems like it would go a whole lot worse. He drives me up the fucking wall, and probably always will, but he’s also kind of my anchor. He often keeps me from getting… the way I get, and I do my best to do the same for him. We work well together, as a team, as halves, and even though nobody really understands why, it’s kind of undeniable that we handle stress better as a unit. I lean in to kiss him again, moving my hands to his hair, but he’s smiling too much for it to work very well. “She’s gonna fucking love you, you know?” I say against his mouth.
“You think so?” He grins even harder.
“You gotta remember some of that Mormon boy charm.”
“I’m pretty far from a good Mormon boy now, you know that.” He grins.
“Oh, I sure do, baby.” I flip us so I’m pressing him against the counter. Dinner can wait.
----------
This has got to be someone else's life. This is a man I do not know, who thinks about things like his parents' opinions and says things like ‘settling down.’ I’m aware that I’m going through the motions, sure, but this must be some kind of weird play, because there is no way this is real.
I’m trying to follow some recipe Brendon found, but functionally just stirring whatever bowl he shoves towards me. I am not freaking out. I am not. It’s just weird. He keeps snapping at me that I’m doing things wrong, and I snap back, and at least that’s familiar.
Tour has been really nice, at least. I never thought I’d say that, but it has.
The day we left, Brendon told me he had a surprise on the bus, which would have worried me immensely if it wasn’t coming from him. I followed him to the back, and he grinned at me as he showed me what he was talking about: a back bedroom. My heart caught in my throat. “Had to pull a lot of strings with Mike to get a bus with one of these,” he said, smirking.
We were both smiling knowingly at each other in front of the open door when Jon walked in to claim his bunk. The second he saw the queen sized bed he said “Oh god fucking damn it,” and walked directly back out.
The no sex on the bus rule didn’t stand a chance, and we’ve both been relatively calm because of it. Jon still acts like he’s about ready to kill us, but he’ll get over it the second someone else brings a girl (or guy, since His Side works pretty equally with straight and gay people) back to one of the bunks. At least we have the decency to stay behind an actual wall.
It’s kind of like the Jackie tour but with less of the whole hell-on-earth vibe. I know he’s thinking that, too. Sometimes he looks at me like he’s seeing some living memory, right into our past, and I know I look at him the same way. He’ll sit across from me in a shitty all night diner, smoking over a plate of shitty food, and I’ll get a flash of a nearly identical memory. When he was so young and free, and I was so miserable but so in love with him, and somehow I wouldn’t even let myself think the words. I think them now, though, all the fucking time. I say them, too. When he’s sitting across from me, at a table away from the rest of the guys, just like we used to, but for different reasons now, I’ll say “I love you,” as low as I can in that half-empty restaurant, and he’ll smile and say it back.
Much better than the Jackie tour.
As soon as… whatever the fuck we just made is in the oven he turns to look at me. I don’t know what to do with my hands. This is weird.
“This is weird.” I say out loud, because what else is there to say? He reaches out towards me, gesturing for me to come closer. I do not need him to comfort me, because I have decided I am not freaking out, thank you, but I wrap myself around him anyway, because I can’t pass up an opportunity to touch him and he knows it. He wraps his arms around my shoulders, kissing the side of my head habitually.
“It’ll be fine,” he says into my hair. I wrap my arms tighter around his waist, nodding against his shoulder. I know, really.
I put the radio on when we pull away, and it remains that way until we’re done cooking. I can’t really think of anything to say, so I don’t, and he keeps me settled with small touches to my back and face as we move around setting things up. I don’t bother to pretend it’s not helping. I’ve realized over the years that he plays me like a fucking fiddle, and not just in the bedroom. He knows exactly how to touch me to get what he wants, and I honestly find it hard to mind.
Somehow we’ve managed to set out dinner . A real dinner, with multiple things to eat and everything. I think I heard Brendon having a frantic conversation with Cassie about how to actually do this earlier, needing advice from proper adults, and whatever she told him seems to have worked. Both our eyes shoot to the front of the apartment when we hear the doorbell, and I allow myself one frantic look in Brendons direction. He gets the message, smoothing down my clothes for me before leaving a lingering kiss on my lips, and shoving me towards the door.
“Hi.” My mom greets me with a hopeful smile, and I think I probably look confused and out of my depth. I try to get my face to do something neutral, but I have no idea how well that works.
“Hi,” I return, stepping aside awkwardly to let her in. She walks into our apartment, and I think I’m staring, but I can’t really help it. We have the same nose, I think, that’s what I always told myself when I looked at that old picture in the attic. Now that I’m older I can see other things, though. I think the shape of our faces is similar, and our eyebrows. I might look like her. I might. I don’t know what to do with that.
“Can I hug you?” she asks, and I appreciate that she seems open to me saying no. From just a few interactions she’s picked up on the fact that the thing that calms me down is an out. I guess, considering the circumstances, that I probably got that from her. I nod.
Something about her arms feels unnervingly familiar, in this really distant way, and it kind of feels good, but then that thought freaks me out, so I start moving away. I still feel alien and out of my body when she pulls back, and I lead her to the kitchen, to my family, because if I want to stop feeling far from home, I know that’s what I need to do.
“This is Brendon,” I say simply, and he flashes her his most charming smile. It’s meant to put her at ease, but it kind of works on me, too, because I find myself staring at him a little adoringly. Maybe it’s just that I’m kind of lost right now, and he feels like home.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs.-?”
He gives me a kind of panicked look, but then she introjects with “call me Kelly,” and reaches out to shake the hand he’s offered to her. He looks kind of relieved, and it settles me down a little.
She elbows me in the side lightly, saying a faux-conspiratorial “good job, he’s a looker.”
I laugh, mostly in disbelief, and when I look back at Brendon he’s smirking. He says “thank you, ma'am” and she grins at him.
“Polite, too. I like him,” she says to me, playfully, and it doesn’t feel as tense anymore.
“Yeah,” I look back at him, feeling something lock into place as he smiles at me. “Me too.”
We talk about boring adult things for a while as we eat, and Brendon ends up telling a lot of heavily censored tour stories. I reach for his hand under the table at some point, and he takes it firmly, squeezing periodically like he’s reminding me he’s there. It’s comfortable enough, and I think I kind of like this woman, actually, separate from her being my mother. In the context of our relationship as mother and son I’m still not sure how I feel, but I think I could come around to being… content with it. She needed to get away from my dad, and I can understand that. I’ve been there. We both just need to come to terms with the fact that we wish she had taken me with her.
“Your half brother Andrew is a really big fan of His Side,” she says. Yeah, I think, that figures. Anyone related to me is going to be a bigger fan of him. “They’d like to meet you, you know, the boys.” That kind of throws me off again, and I think Brendon can sense it, because his free hand comes over to wrap around the back of my hand, too, and he squeezes my hand firmly between both of his own.
“Uh, yeah. I have some time tomorrow, actually,” I say a bit hesitantly.
“You could come over for a bit at around three?” she asks hopefully. I nod, taking a steadying breath, and she tries to suppress a smile.
She hugs us both briefly on the way out, and somehow it’s not awkward, and before I know it I find myself standing next to Brendon, staring blankly at the closed door as we listen to her footsteps getting further away.
“That went well,” Brendon says after a while. I nod. I don’t know what to do from here, so I do what I always do when I feel unstable, and I fall into his arms. He holds me like he was expecting that, and I try to relax as I press our bodies as close as possible.
“Let’s go to bed,” I mumble into his shoulder.
----------
Meeting with my half brothers goes so unnervingly well that I find myself getting talked into letting the older one come back to the apartment to meet Brendon. I said I could get him a backstage pass for the show tomorrow, too, but that’s a given. I hand out backstage passes every other day. They don’t mean much to me, because this is just my life and there’s constantly hundreds of people back there anyway, but anyone who’s sufficiently separated from the lifestyle thinks they’re great, so a lot of acquaintances end up receiving them as a sort of peace offering.
I call Brendon from my mom's house, just so he knows I’m not going to be alone when I come back. Typically we don’t bring people who don’t know around the house, so we try to give each other a heads up if something like “hey, baby, did you get more cigarettes?” isn’t going to be an appropriate greeting.
Before I know it I’m in the car, driving back to the apartment, with a half brother I just met next to me in the passenger seat.
“So, you like His Side?” I ask the kid, Andrew, just to fill the silence as we drive. I don’t care to talk, not really, but he’s fidgeting and staring out the window, which is making me agitated, and it seems like giving him something to ramble about might calm him the fuck down. It usually does with Sisky, and he’s kind of a nervous teenager, too, if you think about it.
“Uh, yeah. They’re really cool.” Cool.
“Yeah, they are.” God, I feel like a parent trying to get information out of this kid. I wait for him to say something else, because I know he probably will now that the floor is open, and I’m sure as fuck not going to carry this conversation on my own.
“I think it’s really awesome how they, uh, relate to a lot of people, you know? Like they um… have a lot of different kinds of people around them.” He trails off awkwardly at the end of his sentence. I wait for him to elaborate again. It’s like pulling teeth with this one, christ. Maybe we are related if it’s this hard to get anything out of him. “Their songs invite that, I think. It’s like, the perspective is really ambiguous, so anyone can relate to it. You don’t have to be a man thinking about a woman…” He trails off again, seemingly searching for the right words, before he finishes with “none of the songs have to be about a woman, actually. You can think about, uh, anyone, when you listen to them, and I think that attracts a lot of different people to their music and stuff. I like going to their concerts. It feels safe to be in a place like that.”
Oh. I grin involuntarily at the road in front of me, cause isn’t that just fucking hilarious. When I glance at him he looks nervous, wringing his hands in his lap like he’s not sure how I’ll react to what he’s implying, and he’s not sure why I’m smiling, either.
“Mom just can’t stop popping out fags, huh?” I smile even wider as his eyes bulge out of his head. He’s staring at me with that look like I just walked in on him, clearly only processing the language and not the implication. “You too, right?” I can’t help but laugh as he opens and closes his mouth, looking for literally any way to react to what I just told him.
“I’m not- I mean- I haven’t-” I stay quiet, focusing on the road to let him gather his thoughts. “You?” He sounds like he can’t process it at all, which is pretty much the only reaction I get to that. Yes, me. Hi there, I’m Ryan Ross, and yes, I like cock. Nice to meet you. I kind of like doing this, if I’m being honest. We’re careful, frustratingly so, and I don’t get to tell many people on purpose. It’s kinda fun when they don’t curse you out.
“Yeah, me.”
He keeps blinking too fast. He wasn’t ready for this conversation at all, clearly. Poor kid. I
almost feel bad about kind of calling him a fag earlier, but then again, I’m one too, and he’s heard it before. No point in sugarcoating it, that’s not something I do. Besides, if you take their words and use them for yourself they don’t have anything to hurt you with. I’m gay. A cocksucker. A faggot. So what?
“Nobody knows about um-” He pauses for a moment.
“That you’re gay.” I finish for him. It’s hard to say it out loud when you haven’t done it a lot, I remember. He nods, looking at me with wide eyes. “I promise I won’t tell your mom. Mutually assured destruction, and all that.” I smirk at him, and his shoulders seem to relax a little. Not that she’d even care, apparently, but I don’t think now is the time to drop the bomb that his mom actually knows I’m gay already. That might send him into cardiac arrest.
He looks so fucking young, staring at me with that trusting look only a kid can give to someone who knows so, so much more than they do. His eyes don’t look like mine, but they don’t look like our mothers, either. That’s the difference between him and I: dads. That’s probably why he’s better, he’s less sharp around the edges. He’s got that innocent look that was probably slapped off my face around the age of 12. I think we have the same nose, though.
“Do you… have a boyfriend?” He asks it in that innocent, starry-eyed way that teenagers do when they talk about relationships. He’s hoping I’ll say yes, I have a boyfriend, and he takes me out on dates, and we hold hands at the movies, and we’re gonna be together forever and ever, because he’s sixteen, and that's the kind of shit sixteen-year-olds think about.
“Sure, I guess.” I answer honestly. We’re together, very much together, but he can have boyfriends, not me. I’m not in high school. It’s not all of it, not even fucking close, but it’s the closest word I’ve got in their language, and I’d rather throw myself off our overpriced balcony than say something as inane and dramatic as ‘soulmate.’
“Does he love you?” His voice sounds small as he says it, like he’s not sure that’s even possible.
“Yeah,” I answer easily, trying not to smile, “he does.”
“And you love him?”
I do grin at that one, wide and stupid, just like you’re supposed to when you talk about boys. I can’t help it, this whole thing is just ridiculous. I’m answering all these questions like it’s my first relationship and I can't wait to get home and tell my best friend. It reminds me of late nights at Spencer's house, whispering about how Jenny Summers let him go to second base. If only that kid could see me now, he’d probably die on the spot.
“Yeah, I love him.” I do. God, do I love him.
“So… he’s your boyfriend?” Andrew sounds confused about my reluctance to just use the damn label. He’s too young to get how young he is, how little he understands about adults and relationships. It would be sweet if it didn’t make me feel so old.
I can’t help but think back to when we met. Look at us now, huh? Mr. and Mr. ‘too cute to settle down/can’t fall in love,’ happily living together in domestic bliss. Well, at least as close as we can get.
“We’re together, and exclusive, so functionally yeah, but we’re also not in high school.” I smirk at him, and he’s still staring at me disbelievingly. “Boyfriend sounds a little too much like he’s carrying my books to class,” I continue, “It’s sort of accurate, I guess, but it’s more than that. What we have is beyond that.”
“But you’re happy?” There it is, the actual question. I’m afraid I don’t have a satisfying answer to that one, either. Life is a lot more complicated than you ever really consider at that age.
“I don’t know that happy really exists, not in general, but I wouldn’t change it,” I say. “I love him, he’s everything, and it’s more than enough.”
We drive in silence for a bit longer. I resign myself to answering more insecure teenager questions if he comes up with any, but he seems to be mulling everything over in silence for now. That’s just as well. The radio plays softly in the background. I don’t particularly care what’s on.
“Can I meet him?” he finally asks, his voice full of questions he doesn’t even know how to ask like ‘do gay people even meet families? and ‘what does a long term relationship even look like when you’re both guys?’
“Yeah, that’s what we’re on the way to do.”
“I thought you said we were going to meet up with Brendon Roscoe?” He sounds a little disappointed, but his tone is mostly overtaken by confusion. I glance at him sideways, smirking.
“We are.”
“No fucking way.” His eyes are practically bulging out of his head now. “Holy shit you are the luckiest man on the planet.”
That catches me off guard, and I laugh. “Yeah, I know.” I grin at him as I pull into the driveway. “You ready?”
He looks shell shocked, but nods. He’s not gonna get any calmer building this up in his head, so we might as well get the awkward greeting part done as quickly as possible. Fans always settle down after a few minutes when they realize you’re just a person. Not that he’s a normal fan, exactly. Not of me, anyway.
“Hey, we’re back.” I say as I enter the house. I get my shoes and coat off quickly, Andrew following close behind as I climb the stairs and walk to the kitchen. “Baby, meet my gay brother, Andrew.”
At first, Brendon seems thrown off at the pet name, seeing as he knows we have company, but then he grins at me in disbelief “Holy shit your mom cannot stop making gay kids”
“Apparently not, no.” I turn back to Andrew. He’s composed enough now. “Your little brother had better like women or we’re all fucked.”
He tries to laugh, but it comes out in a strained huff. He’s mostly staring at Brendon with that starstruck look. I feel a little proud, and a little possessive. Not jealous, though, I’m used to this. Yeah, he’s gorgeous, wonderful, wanted by the masses, all that, but he’s also mine, and we both know it.
“Holy shit, I saw you on your first tour. Your band means so much to the gay community, you know? Like I know you’re not open about it or anything, but it’s there. And we all feel it in the music. I had my first kiss at that show.” He’s rambling now, and I take back my previous opinion that he’s quiet like me, he just wasn’t excited or nervous enough to start rambling. I hear echoes of a conversation I had almost forgotten about, something that happened close to a decade ago in a random backstage dressing room, and the thought makes me grin wider.
I turn to Brendon, and he’s smiling his normal ‘meeting fans’ smile, but there’s a hint of something softer in there. The kid can’t tell, but he’s probably just made Brendons fucking year. He says “Wow, that’s awesome!” as he flashes his most charming grin. I have the urge to reach out and grab him. I guess I could, theoretically, but I don't want Andrew to pass out from the sight of seeing his half brother he just met making out with his favorite musician in the middle of the kitchen, so I settle for standing way closer to him than necessary.
“You know, that’s almost exactly what you said to Bowie in 74?” I smirk at him, and he just rolls his eyes, glaring at me as best he can. He’s acting like that’s embarrassing, like he’s exasperated with me bringing that up, but he’s not. I can tell by the way he can’t keep the smile out of his eyes. I'm comparing him to one of his idols, which none of us ever really get used to, and he doesn’t want to admit it, but he can still be a bit of a wide-eyed fan, too.
Actually, fuck it. I kiss him quickly, still not wanting to freak the kid out. I just can’t help myself when he’s right there, and I haven’t seen him since this morning, and, yeah, maybe I’m kind of clingy, who cares?
He smiles at me for a second when we pull away, and I feel my heart drop into my stomach. I don’t know how he still does that.
“Come sit down!” Brendon says, turning to Andrew and pushing him towards the dining room table. He kind of still looks like he’s in shock, but he follows easily. “Do you want a beer?” Brendon shoots me a look. “Can he drink?” They both stare at me expectantly, and I’m not sure when the fuck we decided I’m in charge here.
I shrug. “I don’t really give a shit, just try not to get me in trouble with your parents.” One of whom is also my parent, my brain reminds me. I almost laugh. I’m trying not to get in trouble with mom for drinking beer. Who am I? “Do you want one?” I ask. He nods.
I grab three bottles from the fridge as they go to sit down. He looks approvingly at the brand, and doesn’t wince at all as he takes a sip, which makes me feel a little relieved. I wouldn’t want to give him his first taste of alcohol, that would be too much like corrupting him.
“Go ahead,” I gesture to him with my beer bottle, leaning back in my chair, “ask.”
“Um…” He looks between the two of us frantically. He’s either trying to figure out what I mean or trying to figure out where to start. My bets on the latter. “How long have you-?”
“Been together?” Brendon finishes for him. “Three years consecutively, but actually? June 1974.” He turns to me, and I feel myself smile at him. What a fucked up summer that was, but it’s charming in retrospect, I think. Maybe we just romanticize it. “He was so fucking stupid. Insisted he was heterosexual the entire time, even after we had been sleeping together for months. He didn’t tell me he loved me until 1976.” He’s still looking at me, and I should probably be insulted. Should, but he’s smiling in that way he doesn't smile at anyone else, and I don’t have it in me.
“I loved you from the minute I saw you and we both know it.” I find myself saying, not even caring that the kid is still watching us. I get like that when I look at him for too long, all out of it. I sort of forget that other people exist.
“Yeah.” He’s still grinning at me. “You’re easy.”
I roll my eyes and flip him off.
When I turn back to Andrew he’s smiling hopefully. “I just- people always say shit about how gay people don’t have relationships, we don’t fall in love, like it’s just a sex thing, but I always thought that can’t be true.”
“It’s not,” I reply easily, “I used to think that too, but I tried loving women, tried really fucking hard. I got close, just couldn’t do it.” I shrug again, taking another sip of my beer. I glance at Brendon again. “Not like this.”
“It doesn’t bother you that you can’t get married or anything?”
“Not really,” Brendon answers from beside me. “Marriage is something straight people do to get out of the idea that they’ll actually have to commit to loving each other perpetually. It’s just a legal contract that they sign to say they’ll stay together forever and can stop worrying about it. We don’t need that because we have actual faith in our relationship, and some heterosexual institution isn’t necessary for us to validate that.” The words sound rehearsed because they are, he’s said almost that exact thing dozens of times in my presence, talking politics around tables while I mostly tune out, but he means it, too. We’ve talked about it, mostly when we’re drunk or right after sex, whether we would if we could. I said I might want to, he said he wouldn’t. I agree with his reasons, we don’t need the certificate to know we’ll love each other and nobody else for as long as we possibly can, but I want to bind myself to him in every way possible. He says I should stop being so insecure, stop obsessing over the idea that he’s going to leave me, and he’s also right about that, but I never admit to that part out loud.
“And you’re fine? Like, you’re not… it doesn’t make your life miserable? Being gay? You’re not always thinking you’re disgusting or evil?” The kid is looking up at Brendon like he’s got all the answers, cause he probably thinks he really does. His favorite musician is telling him that he’s not doomed to be emotionally unfulfilled for the rest of time, which might be something he hadn’t considered before. He seems dazed. I look at Brendon, expecting him to laugh it off, tell him some snappy pre-practiced line about gay liberation, but he doesn’t. He looks kind of distant as he stares at the kid and- oh.
It hits me all at once: he’s barely older than Brendon was when he left, when he had to leave. And he hasn’t been raised as religious, but I saw some crosses in that house, it’s there. I can tell Brendon’s trying to figure out what to say to him, what he needed to hear at that age, and I have the urge to help somehow, but I just don’t know. I fuck guys now, yeah. Well, for the past few years just a guy . Singular. But I was never 15 years old hiding mens underwear magazines under my mattress. I had no clue any of this was even an option when I was that age. I, functionally, grew up straight, even if my crushes on women were mostly just the result of wishful thinking and a fantasy of being loved. It never even crossed my mind until I was in my twenties that the reason I couldn’t fall in love was because I had only tried women. I’m way out of my depth.
“There’s nothing wrong with you.” He says gently, answering what he clearly understands to be the real question, but I can hear an edge to his voice. The edge he had when I first met him, when he was sitting on the side of the road with a bloody nose, cursing at god or whoever would listen. I can’t help but think of him at 16, completely alone, thinking he would be that way forever. Before I can think about it I reach for the pen and paper next to me on the table.
“This is Vicky’s number. She’s my manager, and probably the only person who can reliably get ahold of me all the time. If you need something you can’t ask anyone else for, call her. She’ll get to me or she’ll take care of it, whichever. I can’t… I can’t promise everything is gonna go fine, but if shit goes bad, or something, like… if the wrong person finds out, you can call that number. We’ll take care of it.” I toss the pad of paper across the table to him, looking back at Brendon. He’s smiling at me a little, like he’s the only one who knows what I’m doing. I smile back at him, mostly cause I can’t help it. There you go, baby. I can fix this one. It’s gonna be ok this time.
“Thank you.” Andrew still seems pretty dazed, but he also looks like I’ve just given him a lifeline he didn't even know could exist. I just shrug. I’m not good at this shit, but he doesn't deserve to be alone.
It’s hard to look at him and think of him as my brother. He’s just a kid, and Spencer is my brother, anyway. He’s the one I grew up with. I feel a lot more like an estranged uncle than anything. I look back at Brendon, knowing he’ll take over the conversation from here, and he’s smiling again, saying something about San Francisco. Rich gay uncles. Sure, we can do that.
----------
“Baby, could you grab me a beer?” Brendon looks up at me where I’m perched on the arm of his chair, smiling hopefully.
“Yeah, sure,” I sigh. He squeezes my hip as a thank you as I stand up, crossing the small dressing room to the mini fridge.
“You know,” Spencer pipes up from the couch, “when we were on the Jackie tour, I never would have guessed that Ryan would be the one out of you two to end up changing career paths to become a groupie.” He’s only in town for a day on the way to see his daughter, which means he’s staying with us and coming to the show, mostly because it would be weird if he didn’t, and as much as I love the guy I kind of wish he’s shut the fuck up right about now.
Brendon snorts, and I briefly glare at Spencer before I get an idea. “Oh, you know damn well that this is not being a groupie. You want to see a groupie?” I’ll fucking show him a groupie. I learned from the best.
Spencer is giving me a look like he’s not sure he wants to know where this is going, but when I look at Brendon he’s grinning. Yeah, fuck it.
I sit on the arm of Brendons chair again, passing him the beer with a charming smile. I give him my best impression of a bubbly attitude, asking him “can I get you anything else, baby? Some food? Some coke?” He laughs, and I let myself fall backwards so I’m sitting in his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck with my legs flung over the arm of the chair. “A blowjob? I can do bunks, too,” I add, grinning mischievously.
Brendon laughs again at the same time Spencer says “gross, Ryan.”
“Babe, we both know damn well you cannot do bunks, that’s why I got us the back bedroom,” Brendon teases me. I glare playfully at him.
“Aw, and here I thought you were trying to be romantic, reenacting the summer we met, and all that.”
“Nope, just want to fuck you without your gangly ass knocking into the wall every thirty seconds.”
I continue trying to look pissed, but he wraps his arms around my waist securely, kissing me on the cheek, and I don’t think it works that well. I wouldn’t let him do this in front of anyone else, but Spencer is different. He’ll tease me for shit like this just like everyone else would, but it’s fine when he does it. I trust it, because he’d never hide it. There's nothing he’d say behind my back that he wouldn’t say even more bluntly to my face, and we both know it’s fine. I do the same thing to him.
“I do not miss sharing a bus with you two,” Spencer muses.
“Hey, we’ve been keeping it down!” I say defensively. We’re trying, at least, especially since he stayed over last night.
“No you haven’t, but I appreciate the effort.” He smirks a little sadistically at me before adding “by the way, you’re doing a really commendable job walking normally today, Ryan.”
I really need to watch my mouth with the specifics while we’re fucking, apparently. My face heats up a little, and I glare at him squarely as I feel Brendon snort. I really miss when the thought of me liking cock made him want to sink through the floor, because this is infinitely worse. Also, I’m not that fucking sore because he just fingered me, thanks very much, and I’m not exactly inexperienced at that anymore, but I’m not about to tell Spencer any of that. I’d rather throw myself out the window than tell him that, actually.
“Fuck you, Smith.”
“Think your boyfriend would disapprove,” he replies without missing a beat.
I’m about to say something snarky back when we hear footsteps coming towards the door, and I stand up quickly, hastily throwing myself onto the couch next to Spencer.
“Spencer, Jon’s looking for you,” Mike says as he pokes his head through the doorway. “Oh, and some nervous kid with a backstage pass is trying to find you, Ryan. Should I let him in?” He looks between me and Brendon, and I nod quickly. Mike and Spencer leave without another word.
We gave the kid the backstage pass before he left yesterday, which he stared at like it was the key to the fucking city. I guess he’s finally found his way here.
We both turn to look when the door opens again, and Brendon flashes him that winning smile he’s perfected over the last few years. He looks gorgeous, but it’s got nothing on the smile he gives me when we’re alone.
“Hey, Andrew!” He stands up to hug him, and the kid looks a little stunned by the action, but he pats his back in a familial way. His head is still clearly spinning with the whole ‘Brendon Roscoe is kind of my brother in law,’ thing, and it’s actually kind of hysterical to watch. He reminds me a lot of Sisky at his first couple shows, but less nosy and excitable, so actually not like Sisky at all.
“Hey, kid. Having fun?” I ask. I hold out my arm to Brendon, lifting it over the back of the couch, and he sits next to me without question, letting me drape an arm over his shoulders.
“Uh, yeah. I’m excited for the show!” he says, sitting down in the chair across from us. He starts to relax here, looking almostat home, and I smile a little.