#ryte

Brendon watches the girl make her way down the cobblestone path, the red enamel rose on her navel ring glinting like a garnet in the sun as she tugs down Ryan’s traded shirt. He heaves himself out of his awkward crouch position once she’s vanished from view. Brendon makes a face at the loud crack of his back in the hot silence as he stands among the dead orchids and the fading smell of weed. He hates how sore his shoulders are after the long drive here as he edges out of the greenhouse and thinks about the flat stomach of that girl, tanned and adolescent against the wine bottles on Ryan’s sofa.

1.

Ryan’s hand is curled around the hem of the grey t-shirt he swapped with her as Brendon approaches him on the path, knuckles pink against the fabric and nudging his hip. Ryan doesn’t acknowledge his presence as Brendon comes to face him, passive gaze on the gravel.

“So why did you have my t-shirt?” Brendon asks flatly.

Ryan looks up, startled.

“It’s a grey t-shirt,” he says, but his face is flushed and he folds his arms across his chest the way he always had when he was caught out. Brendon rolls his eyes.

“No. I wore that shirt as a pyjama top on the Circus tour and I fucked you in it once. Then I thought I lost it, but then you wore it that time we were hanging with Pete by his bus. And I was going down on you and fingering you that night and then…” Brendon shoves down a wave of self-pity at images of Ryan spooned up against him all night and breathing softly, spit on his grey t-shirt and sleep crusting on his lashes. “And then I lost it again,” he finishes.

Ryan stares at him, brown eyes wide and flush deep along the column of his throat. He arches an eyebrow.

“You have a pretty great memory of what you did with your fingers like seven years ago,” he says dryly. “Why do you know all that?”

“You know why I remember you, Ryan!” Brendon snaps, and then palms at the sweat on the nape of his neck, embarrassed. “Why didn’t you want her to take that shirt, anyway?” he sneers. “Is that like a personal trophy?”

 “You understand I have all the same awards and shit as you do from like five years of my life, if I wanted a trophy, right?” Ryan snaps. “You love to forget about the part where I was in our band.” Ryan looks so pretty, skin pink against the cotton grey and brown eyes flashing in anger under the sun. Brendon thinks about the peace on Ryan’s face asleep in his arms that night over half a decade ago. He suddenly wants to go home.

“No, I don’t,” Brendon says slowly. “Whatever. Tell your ex-girlfriend thanks for the weed,” he adds as he turns around and walks down the path.

“Brendon,” Ryan lets out on a frustrated breath. Brendon ignores him, crunching over the sand-coloured gravel and picturing Z’s dreamy hand-writing on the side of the one living orchid pot. It hurts.

“I’ll post you like fifty grey t-shirts. Since apparently you’re fucking destitute of grey shirts now or something. I guess the one you took without asking’s a present now too.”

“Brendon could you please stop,” Ryan tries. His voice falters and Brendon pauses on the cobblestone he’s standing on and looks at what looks like some kind of stumpy palm tree beside him. A lot of the plants around him look like Ryan wasn’t sure what was meant to belong there.

“What?”

“That night after we were with Pete outside the Fall Out Boy bus. After we,” Ryan clears his throat with a strange, anxious sound, “had sex. You were humming a Britney Spears song.”

Brendon turns around and stares at him in astonishment. Ryan looks at him for a moment, cocking his head like he’s reading his face and then taking tentative steps down the path towards him.

“You were humming against my neck. What song was that?” he asks as he reaches Brendon.

“It was ‘Lucky’,” Brendon tells him without time to process if he wants to. Ryan smiles, cracked lips full from where Brendon kissed them in the greenhouse.

“What: no petty, asshole comment about that?”

Ryan’s shoulders sag and he twists his hand in the grey fabric at his stomach.

“Ask me again why I still had your t-shirt.”

“Fuck you, Ryan.”

Ryan looks up at a bird passing overhead that looks like it might be a hawk. For a moment he looks like he wants to be far away too, hungover and vulnerable with half of his face in the sun. Brendon sighs and lifts his fingertips to touch the part of Ryan’s lips where they’re a darker pink in the shadow. Ryan closes his eyes.

“I remember you too.”

2.

“I almost kissed Ryan today.”

Pete feels Patrick’s breath catch at his back and his arm shift around him as Patrick shuffles on the bed the way he does when he’s anxious. What Patrick doesn’t do is stop holding Pete. It makes Pete feel more loved and more like hot garbage than he did ten seconds ago.

“So that coffee really escalated fast,” Patrick starts cautiously after Pete doesn’t say anything. “That really- that got out of hand quickly,” he stammers out with an anxious laugh. Pete’s heart swells and he wants to turn in his arms and kiss that guarded laugh out of Patrick’s lungs. He loves the fact that Patrick is trying to make a bad Anchorman reference right now so hard it gives him chest pains.

“That line goes the other way around. That got out of hand fast.” Patrick takes another breath at Pete’s shoulder and Pete adds, “I didn’t kiss him. I thought about it, though.”

Pete feels Patrick’s entire frame relax around him.

“Ah, so I have to apologise to you for almost kissing the girl at the florist today because I thought she was cute, right?”

Pete shakes his head, staring ahead at the wall he knows he’s facing in the dark.

“That’s not the same.”

Patrick chuckles.

“Are you saying I have no game? Because we can’t all have your looks, but I can be pretty charming,” he teases, placing a warm, wet kiss on Pete’s neck. Pete doesn’t respond to the touch, static and staring ahead in Patrick’s arms. It’s not that he doesn’t want the way that Patrick’s hand is sneaking around his hip. It’s that Patrick is so good, and Pete hasn’t earned that today. “Come on, girls think my awkwardness is hot,” Patrick jokes. He squeezes his hand around Pete’s hip and Pete exhales.

“You know what I meant.”

“Okay…” Patrick says. He takes his hand away and his voice changes as he realises Pete’s taking this seriously. “That’s fair; you guys have a history. I understand that my odds of hooking up with our florist aren’t so great. What I don’t understand is you wanting to punish yourself for anything you thought about doing.” Patrick kisses the crest of Pete’s back, more gentle this time. “We’ve talked about that.”

Pete nods in the dark. Pete doesn’t mention the part where he thinks Ryan is the reason that didn’t happen, not him. He thinks about Ryan’s back pressed against the bathroom wall next to the roaring hand dryer, Ryan’s annoyed brown eyes and Ryan’s hot breath on his face. The closeness accidental but the sugar on his breath slamming into Pete’s blood like Pete’s hips used to slam into Ryan.

“I love my flowers,” Pete croaks. “Thank you, ’Trick.”

“You’re so welcome,” Patrick murmurs, tugging Pete closer so Pete’s lower back is pressed against the softness of his belly. “You’re way hotter than the florist.” Patrick rests his hand on Pete’s abs now, thumb stroking along the muscle. It’s like he’s uncertain if he should go back to giving Pete more sexual attention, but he’s making sure to present that option. Patrick hadn’t seemed like he was after sex tonight when he came into bed, wearing a faded Simpsons t-shirt and bright blue boxers and turning off the lamp as he lay down.

Maybe Patrick thinks it’s his job to make Pete come now, if Pete wants that. Because Pete always wants to crawl inside Patrick when his perfect life gets too hard. Pete’s eyes water.

“Patrick?” Pete whispers.

“Hey,” Patrick says softly.

“Am I bad?”

3.

“Look, it’s alright,” Pete says. He crouches down in front of Ryan, hopeful as he pushes his handful of wet grey fabric forward above Ryan’s lap. “Baking soda and vinegar, right? It’s almost all come away already. It’s alright.”

Ryan’s head is still hanging forward on his neck, shoulders pressing in over his thin frame on his knees on the floor. He slowly takes the t-shirt out of Pete’s hands and looks at the faded pink mark where Pete soaked and scrubbed at the wine stain. Ryan’s knuckles turn pink as he squeezes and Pete watches the water soak Ryan’s thighs.