Sick and Sain

So time went on. Gerard toured through August and into mid-October. Ryan kept writing and recording through August until October brought the release of a new album and with it, a slew of interviews and TV appearances. Same old deal. Chime in at the right times, look substantially baby faced, stand in the middle of Brendon and Spencer. Spencer, Ryan, Brendon, Jon. That was how the order went. Unsaid. Done. That was that.

But even in these months, Gerard still had not managed to persuade himself that Ryan did not hate him. Texts and emails were hardly answered. But Ryan still followed the tour schedule, hoping that their paths might collide by chance and he might present an excuse to the group—um, yeah. Gerard and I were…friends. I’m gonna go see the show. The chance was nonexistent.

What Ryan didn’t know was that Brendon was not as blind to the whole fiasco as he liked to pretend he was. He knew a lot more than he would have liked to, to be quite honest. It wasn’t that Spencer had told him anything and it wasn’t that he had eavesdropped—it was that Ryan was still mumbling in his short bouts of sleep and after that conversation with Gerard a few months before, he had begun to put the pieces together. Ryan Ross and Gerard Way. Together. He didn’t really mind it. Oh, he was surprised, for sure, but not shocked. Ryan was…Ryan. He wore birds on his eyes and ruffles on his shirts. Ryan. Not so hard to imagine with a man. But…with, um, Gerard Way? The two were—looking past the makeup—near opposites. One who sang and screamed, the other one who wrote and kept silent. Complete opposites. And mostly, it pissed Brendon off that Ryan only had the courage to tell Spencer and not him. Did he not trust him enough? Brendon was not a homophobe. Did he come off as such? He didn’t mean to. No. Not at all. Brendon wasn’t in the business of excluding or ostracizing people. He meant to include and tolerate everyone. That was it.

The annoyance came to a peak one day as he, Ryan, Jon and Spencer did promo for the new album in New York. Who else should be in town that day but Ryan’s dear friend Gerard Way—just a few miles away at Madison Square Garden, preparing for a sold out show. Ryan was going that night but didn’t want to tell. Bring Spencer, boy, bring Spencer. No, no, no. Damnit. Spencer will ruin everything. Just go on your own to get Gerard. Stand back stage and it will be like an old movie. Spencer would ruin it. Then again, he’d also be nice company. Do you really wanna stand there with Alicia Simmons and Jamia Nestor chatting up your ass? No, no you do not. So bring Spencer! No. No. Go into the crowd, hang out amongst the people. Stupidass, you’ll get recognized and mobbed! Goddamn…you fucker.

In the end Ryan decided to go alone, hang out back stage and tolerate whoever was back there. Like his band mates, Ryan disliked back stage, mainly because it bored him and made him nervous—as though he was supposed to be on stage. But he had an entire day of interviews and signings to get through before that point. His disinterest at the subject at hand—his new album—bled profusely from whatever open wound happened to be available, at this point his mouth. His mouth was a bleeding sore and his tongue was only bacteria, there to agitate it. The album…meh. It was fine. Better than the last one? Maybe. Pretty good. People would be satisfied the following day, when it reached stores. Girls would find themselves deep in love within an hour. But it was empty. The music was pretty, the words were cool. It was just…a thing though, some music. On the first album, Ryan had written down his problems, kept them to himself and promptly exploded once again on paper when he couldn’t anymore. Now…now those problems weren’t simple enough to write on paper. And to be honest, before this whole Gerard-separation thing, he hadn’t really had any problems. He had been relatively stable. But of course he had to write something, didn’t he? So he tried to put himself into that same mindset as he had as a teenager writing the first album. But a lot was different now. He couldn’t do it. There was a permanent sense of writer’s block settling into his mind and it hadn’t gone away yet. Everything he typed was shit, every time his pen turned to paper it turned to dust. Nothing worked out, nothing came out right. It sounded good in his head, not so much on paper. It just wasn’t right.

“Well we’re just a wet dream, for the web-zines…” Brendon was singing. All four members of that little band so many love were in the car on their way to yet another interview and stuck in traffic. Brendon was getting nervous and doing vocal warm-ups in the car. Brendon had happened to choose Ryan’s least favorite song. Brendon was butchering his lyrics—once again. Brendon was ruining everything. Brendon, Brendon, Brendon. Fuck off. Ryan had a headache. Ryan was lovesick. Ryan was having separation anxiety. Ryan had wrote that damn song and it didn’t sound like he intended it to. Ryan, Ryan, Ryan. Ryanryanryan.

“Bren, quit the falsetto,” Ryan snapped to his friend, sneering at him in the rearview mirror. He had gone about isolating himself from his band mates the moment they had stepped out of the TV studio. And if that meant sitting in the front seat next to a bored, tired driver, than so be it.

“Jeez Ryan,” Brendon muttered, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah—well just…it’s not supposed to be like that.”

There was a collective eye-roll from the three in the back. Ryan had a reputation for being picky about how his lyrics were sung, but it usually didn’t come to anything. He’d get over it and move on to the next thing wrong in life—“There is no more purple eyeliner! Fuck you Spencer!”—and then the next and the next and the next. So they ignored it and Brendon resumed his falsetto interpretations of Ryan’s writings.

“Well we’re just a wet dream, for the web-zines…”

“Fuck Brendon! I said quit the falsetto!” Ryan shouted. Or it was close to shouting at least. Close enough for the driver to look displeased and for Ryan’s three best friends—or second best friends—to look utterly pissed off and shocked.

“God Ry, cool it,” Spencer muttered quietly. But trying to blow out a fire will only make it bigger and so Ryan found himself even more pissed at his friends.

“Cool it? Fuck off Spencer.”

“Hey, dude, I don’t think there’s any reason to be so pissed off at us…” Jon muttered, “We’re tired too. We wanna get done as bad as you.”

“No. No you don’t,” Ryan muttered.

“Really?” Brendon challenged. Fucker. Why did he have to be so damn testy all the time? God did he think he was…special? Oh…wait. Yes. That stupid boy and his band were in town tonight. Right. That was what Ryan wanted. Not his band, not his work of art, some random…Gerard Way. Pretty handsome awkward. Well that was the truth.

“Yeah. Really,” Ryan snapped.

“I know what you want,” Brendon suddenly had the nerve to challenge his best friend on the one matter one should never challenge a friend on, “You don’t care about us. You just want him. Him. Yeah. I’m not stupid, you fucker. You want to fuck Gerard Way until you die of AIDS or something. You fucking…who do you want Ry? Do you want us, or do you want him?”

It took Ryan precisely one second to make his decision at that point. And as he did, he grasped the car handle. Traffic. Fine. They were close to the sidewalk. He’d take the subway. “Him.”