Sun pours through the grimy film on the only window and into his eyes, and he squints as he leans up onto his elbows to check the clock. It’s already one in the afternoon, Thursday, and he starts, looking to the edge of the bed for a cleanish pair of pants before he realizes that it doesn’t matter anyway. He doesn’t have a job to get to.
He peels back the sheet, stale with sweat and the smell of old beer. David had called him into his office, forced smile as he sat down three days ago. He doesn’t remember the words, just remembers nodding blankly as he’d packed the things on his desk into a cardboard box his assistant had dug up from somewhere. The box still sat in the corner by his closet, filled with what could have been.
He scrubs his face with his hands, the sunlight still piercing through the muggy smog of early afternoon and hurting his eyes. Lanky, pale legs poke awkwardly out of his boxers, and he still has on the shirt he wore yesterday. God, he needs a shower.
Later, in only a towel and still damp, smelling faintly of After Hours, he calls Troy. The phone rings too loud, too long, and he leaves a message, even though he’s sure Troy won’t call back. He hasn’t seen him since Monday. He fumbles, digs around in the pocket of his jacket, shaking hands clutch the tiny bag of white powder. He stares at it. There are only scrapings at the bottom, almost nothing left, and his heart clenches.
After he finishes, body vibrating, he tugs on a t-shirt and some jeans, the only pair he has without holes (he never wears jeans anyway), and flies down the stairs and out into the vibrant streets of Brooklyn. The noises of the streets, cars honking and people shouting and dogs barking and babies crying, they all melt together into a sort of hum and he feels himself humming along. He walks forever, not really knowing where he’s headed and it doesn’t really matter.
He drums on his thigh with one hand as he steps into a bar, a real bar, not like the clubs he vaguely remembers hitting up every night for the last eight months. It has a television above the bar and faded wooden stools with cheap fake leather seats and swollen rings on the wood from a lifetime of beers. There are only two other people inside beside himself and he sits at the bar, seat squeaking as he orders a Guinness and stares up at the game on TV. It’s baseball and he doesn’t care, hates sports anyway, but he is captivated and his shoe is kicking the leg of the stool and his fingers are drumming on the crappy veneer of the bar and he is gulping his beer down way too fast and ordering another.
He has four more before he stumbles back to his apartment, charging them to his card and hoping he doesn’t overdraw again because he doesn’t remember exactly how much money he has left, but it isn’t much. One buzz is slowly being replaced by another and it’s only six o’clock. He calls Troy again and doesn’t bother to leave a voicemail this time, figures he’ll deal with that later. Flinging himself up the stairs, he swings the door open and clumsily pushes it closed, tilting off-balance and the whole world is moving. He turns on the stereo, singing loudly and off-key to Ben Kweller until his neighbor pounds on the wall and shouts for him to shut the hell up.
He wonders if he should go to the club, try to find Troy, but he doesn’t have any money left anyway and Troy’s not the kind of guy to just give out favors. He lies down for just a moment, closes his eyes and suddenly four hours have passed and his buzz is almost gone. Flicking on the TV, he stares until the colors blur together and the laugh track to Seinfeld is grating on his nerves and his ears are buzzing in a completely unpleasant way.
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It’s cold, so cold, and his hands are shaking and he can’t stop shivering. He’s tangled up in the sheets, the TV long gone cold, and he doesn’t know what time it is but he stumbles out of bed and his foot slides on those silly silk boxers with hearts all over them that she’d bought him last year. He picks them up, running them through his fingers and they feel like her hair.
It hits him then, a wave of nausea washes over him and he barely catches himself on the edge of the bed. It’s all over. His job is gone and his new life, the one where he gets to act like he means something, it’s gone too. All he has left is this fucking studio with bad wiring that arcs in blue whenever he tries to plug something in, and he’s not even sure how he’s going to come up with the 700 that’s due next week.
His heart is pounding in his ears and the boxers slip from his fingers. He leans back, rests his head against the wall and draws his knees up to his chin. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It wasn’t his fault that DMI failed. It wasn’t his fault that all he remembers are dirty bathrooms scrawled with smeared ink and the taste of his own vomit as he wiped his mouth in the alley behind the club.
His head feels too light for the rest of him and suddenly he’s afraid that he’s going to float away. Nails dig lines into his sheets as he tries to stay afloat, tries not to get swept away, but there’s nothing stable to hold on to.
Clumsily, he gropes for his phone in the dark, accidentally pushing it off the nightstand and it clatters to the floor. Cursing, he grabs it and scans through the numbers he doesn’t need anymore, searching for the one he thinks might bring him back down.
It rings, over and over, and he starts to think that it must be too late to call, that any sane person is asleep by now, and just when he’s about to hang up he hears her voice, drunk with sleep.
“Hello?” She sounds so soft, so tired, and his regret for waking her is tinged with the—is it happiness?—that he feels when he hears her voice. “Ryan? Is that you?”
He doesn’t know what to say, can’t even begin to form the words.
“Ryan, it’s two in the morning. What the hell? Are you there?”
He clears his throat. “Yeah. Uh, yeah, I’m here.”
“Why the hell are you calling me in the middle of the night?” She sounds angry, and the corners of his mouth tug a little. It suits her.
“Kelly, I—“ He is silent for a long time, too long and he thinks she might have hung up until he hears a soft sigh, and all of a sudden his heart hurts so much he thinks maybe it’s bursting and he hangs up, abruptly, wondering if he actually meant to and what she would have said if he’d stayed on the line.
The phone drops to the sheets knotted around his ankles as he folds his arms over his knees and his cheeks feel wet. He leans his head forward, rests his forehead on his arms and his whole body is shaking, shivering with cold and what could be tears and he thinks that maybe he’s drowning.
Story Notes:
Author's Note: So I was totally inspired by "Night Out" tonight (seriously think it's on my favorite ever list) and the thing that stuck out is that Ryan just feels so...human. After the last 10 episodes of him being a corporate douchebag, and the last four seasons of him being a douchebag in general, I finally really really sympathized with him. (Not to say that I didn't love him before, because I totally do. He's one of my favorites) He just seems so in over his head and he's going to fall soon enough.
ANYWAY, I just had to write this. Hope you like!
ANYWAY, I just had to write this. Hope you like!
