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laniew1So more crack. This time in the form of Ryan/Mikey/Pete.
Summary: It was like he was stuck in some awful version of telephone. Except instead of Ryan ending up with something like leprosy or bad hair or something, he was involved in an affair with Mikey Way that he'd managed to keep secret from everyone.
TITLE: Planned Mistakes
RATING: PG (for language)
PAIRING: Ryan POV: Ryan/Mikey, Ryan/Pete, Pete/Mikey, Ryan/Mikey/Pete
AUTHOR: Melanie
Summary: It was like he was stuck in some awful version of telephone. Except instead of Ryan ending up with something like leprosy or bad hair or something, he was involved in an affair with Mikey Way that he'd managed to keep secret from everyone.NOTES: So I'm totally mucking with timelines here.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of these boys and I'm pretty sure that this has never happened and will never happen quite like this.
Planned Mistakes 1/?
The first time that he met Mikey Way, Ryan had been under Pete's arm, at a party that he hadn't wanted to go to anyway.
He'd told Pete that he would be out of his league, that he wouldn't know anybody but him and he didn't like excluding the rest of the guys, Pete had just looked at him and told him he was going.
So Ryan had gone, eye liner on and tight jeans that pretty much guaranteed that he would never have kids or, possibly, an erection ever again.
Spencer had watched, disapproving, as they left and Ryan had already heard all the lectures. He was tired of Spencer's lectures, telling him that Pete was using him, that he was going to break his heart.
Ryan knew this, knew it as certainly as he knew that Pete didn't want him, he wanted what he represented.
He was Pete's way of either making Mikey jealous or getting him back.
Ryan knew all this, he knew it. At the time he'd been so in awe of Pete that saying no to him was an impossibility.
So the first time that he met Mikey Way he should have been thinking 'so this is the ex' or 'this is the competition' or 'this is who he's trying to make jealous and get back'.
But he'd been young and Pete had been touching him of his own free will, leaning into Ryan like he was the most important person in the room and his only thoughts at the time (besides oh my god, I'm fucking bored) had been 'oh my god, Pete Wentz is touching me'.
He'd been young and foolish and inclined to fits of fancy.
"Mikey Way, Ryan Ross," Pete had said. Quietly, but firmly.
Like he was making a point.
From the expression on his face Mikey got the point, probably a lot sooner then Ryan did.
******************************************************************************
Pete broke his heart twice over a two month time span.
The second time it stuck, primarily because Panic! was on tour, and it was hard for him to get lonely and call or IM Ryan and have him on his doorstep 2.5 seconds later.
Ryan missed him sometimes, missed being cuddled and held and sharing Pete's lap with Hemingway and having someone to talk to about writing and music that maybe understood where his words came from.
Spencer watched him closely, like he thought Ryan was going to go suicidal and slit his wrists because Pete had decided he was straight again.
Ryan didn't think about it, he read the articles when he couldn't avoid them, looked at the pictures when they were right in front of him, but he didn't go searching for them.
He loved Pete and he hated himself a little bit for not being what Pete needed (Mikey or female) and he was glad for the things that took all his attention.
The band and the music and the words that came and that he wrote into songs that he didn't show the others, and Brent leaving and Jon replacing him and he kept himself busy enough so that he couldn't think at all.
******************************************************************************
It had been a long day, inane interviews and he'd only wanted to bitchslap two of the interviewers so he was calling it an okay day.
Not perfect, because they'd only had four interviews, and wanting to commit bodily harm in two of them probably wasn't fantastic… but it was good enough.
He was hiding, though if anyone asked he was just escaping from the noise and the smoke and the conversation.
He didn't even want to be at the party, but he'd been overruled, because Keltie had wanted to go and Brendon and Jon had wanted to go and Haley had flown home so Spencer was all for not sitting cooped up in the hotel room.
And now Keltie and Brendon and Jon were drinking, they'd urged him to join in but he'd done all the drinking he felt he needed to in order to get it out of his system in the four months after he'd turned 21 and then he'd stopped, because he had no desire to turn into the man his father had been and going into rehab wasn't on his list of things to accomplish by the time he turned 25.
He'd left them to their own devices and he thought that their plan might be to see who could drink who under the table first.
He'd been going to hang out with Spencer, get his quality best friend time while said best friend wasn't distracted by his girlfriend. But Spencer had vanished, he wasn't sure to where, he'd just made a high pitched squeaking sound and when Ryan had turned around to question him on it, he'd been gone.
So now he was alone, and hanging out alone at a band party was like just handing Gabe material for six months, without forcing him to work for it first.
Fall Out Boy was there, he'd already seen Pete holding court with Ashlee and he'd managed to not sneer, managed to give her a quick hug without breaking her neck, and made appreciative noises over her hand and didn't yank the huge ass engagement ring off it.
He didn't know what the hell Pete was thinking, or if he even was. Patrick looked annoyed as hell so he knew he wasn't the only one.
The door opened and he was blinded suddenly.
"Are you hiding Ryan Ross?" Ryan blinked, looked up and there was Mikey Way, standing in the doorway, bright light from the hallway glowing around him.
Ryan squinted, he thought that Mikey looked slightly bemused at finding Ryan sitting on the floor in a dark room when he could be out reveling with everyone else, or he could still be blinded by the sudden light.
"No?"
Mikey still looked amused; he walked into the room, door closing behind him and Ryan shifted, getting ready to stand.
Mikey put a hand on his shoulder, "You don't have to get up," he said. Then slid down the wall to sit next to him.
"Where's Alicia?"
Mikey sighed, a long sigh that spoke of stories that he didn't want to tell.
"Never mind," he stared at the wall, next to him Mikey shifted. He thought this might be the longest they'd ever spent in each others company without Pete to act as a buffer. "Did you know?"
"About the engagement?" Mikey asked, Ryan nodded. "No, although with as much disapproval as Patrick is emanating, I suppose we should be grateful that he didn't just elope with her to spite his lead singer."
"Like you did?" Ryan asked and winced.
Mikey laughed quietly, there was a bitter edge to it.
"Sorry," Ryan said softly.
"We all want things we're not supposed to have, sometimes we do things to make sure we can't have them."
"I don't understand," Ryan said.
Mikey was silent next to him and Ryan drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them.
"Are you still in love with him?" Ryan asked. He didn't look over at him, instead he laid his head on his knees and closed his eyes. Tried to figure out why Mikey still being in love with Pete would cause him to marry Alicia instead.
"Pete's very easy to be in love with; he's even harder to be with, besides…aren't you?" Mikey said slowly, like he had to think about every word before they came out of his mouth. Ryan shrugged.
As much as he might have loved Pete, it didn't matter. To Pete he'd been sex and something shiny to shove in Mikey's face when/if they came into contact. He'd claimed Pete as his boyfriend, his lover, but Pete had never claimed him back, had never returned any of the feelings that Ryan had laid out on his sleeve for him.
To Pete, Ryan had just been a way to pass the time until Mikey came back to him or until he figured out a way to move on.
It was just Pete's luck that he'd now get to choose which he wanted more, Mikey back or to move on.
"You should talk to him, he'd probably rip that ring off her finger before she even gets used to the weight of it being there," Ryan said instead.
"I think Pete is moving on," Mikey sighed. "He's made his choice; I'm not going to ruin any shot that he has at happiness…"
"Even though, if he'd had the same choice, he would have ruined yours."
"I managed to ruin it all by myself, so it really didn't matter what Pete did or didn't do."
Ryan swallowed, leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He should get up, go find his band and Keltie and go back to his hotel and try not to think about getting second chances.
You only got second chances if the person giving them cared enough about you to offer.
"I should…" they both said at the same time.
Mikey laughed and Ryan smiled despite himself, biting on his lip as they each climbed to their feet.
"We can't walk out of here together," Ryan said, he rolled his shoulders. It was a band party, yes. The photographers and the reporters had all been dismissed fairly early into the evening, but appearances still needed to be maintained.
He ran a hand through his hair. Brendon was already making noises about haircuts and makeup and the stage show for a new album that wasn't even finished let alone ready to be put out yet.
"Why not, Ryan Ross? We're friends. You have a pretty girlfriend, who you openly adore. I'm happily married, anyone asks we just ran into each other while getting away from the smoke and the noise and the drunken revelers who think they aren't drunk," Mikey said simply.
Ryan walked towards the door, Mikey's hand low on his back as he opened it and stepped out into the hallway.
"Well its not a total lie," Ryan said, Mikey hadn't dropped his hand yet, still had it pressed against the small of Ryan's back and Ryan didn't shift or move forward to cause it to drop off.
He should, he knew he should.
Mikey leaned close, breath tickling his ear. "Sometimes the best truths are the ones that can be left up to interpretation," he pressed a kiss to Ryan's forehead; Ryan turned his head to look at him questioningly as Mikey took a step back.
"I'll see you around Ryan Ross."
******************************************************************************
He'd turned his sidekick off when he went to bed, he'd left before everyone else, he'd heard Keltie stumble in and back out around three and he'd heard everyone laughing in the main room of their suite until he'd rolled over, put his pillow over his head and managed to drown them out long enough to go back to sleep.
When he woke up he found Spencer sitting at the end of his bed, staring at him like he'd grown a second head over night and was just waiting for Ryan to notice.
Ryan reached a hand up to check, just in case.
No second head.
"Mikey Way?"
Ryan frowned in confusion. Spencer liked being vague, but that was so extremely vague that Ryan didn't even know what the point was.
"I'll take My Chem bassists for 100, Alex?"
Spencer rolled his eyes, tossed Ryan's 'kick at him.
Ryan looked at it, back at Spencer.
"Pete's called about a half dozen times, something about you and Mikey Way and coming out of a closet and kissing in a hallway, he sounds kind of insane, Patrick's talking about having him committed before he can do anything else stupid, like actually marry Ashlee and…"
"He kissed me on the forehead, that's not even real kissing," Ryan interjected, there were eight messages waiting from Pete. Spaced about 30 minutes apart.
Spencer stopped, stared at him. It was the first time that Ryan had shocked him into silence since they were 8/9 and Ryan had mentioned that he thought that Daniel Peirce had pretty eyes.
"You mean Pete hadn't done massive amounts of drugs in the backroom and was hallucinating?"
"We were just talking; I can have conversations with people without having sex with them."
Spencer shook his head. "I would maybe not mention that in your defense when Pete calls."
"Pete's engaged, to Ashlee Simpson of all people; Mikey is married, I'm with Keltie. What…"
Ryan's 'kick buzzed at him and Ryan stopped talking and stared down at it.
"Right, I'll leave you alone to talk to Pete. Jon, Brendon and Keltie have gone out for breakfast; they're bringing back muffins and coffee for us. I'll check back in about an hour and see if Pete has managed to kill you through your phone," Spencer pushed himself off the bed and walked to the door.
Ryan frowned at his phone and finally picked it up.
"Hello?" his voice was wary, he hated that.
"What. The. Fucking. Hell. Ross."
******************************************************************************
Ryan wondered if Mikey had known that Pete was out in the hallway, if that was why he'd kept his hand pressed against his back and whispered in his ear and kissed his forehead and made it look like they were something they weren't.
"Sometimes the best truths are the ones that can be left up to interpretation."
He remembered him saying that, whispering it into his ear.
There'd been about twenty minutes of rambling from Pete, before Ryan managed to piece enough of the rambling together to figure out that in Pete's mind, the events that he'd seen translated into Ryan and Mikey being involved in some torrid love affair, had been for years, using Keltie and Alicia to throw off suspicion and using each other as substitutes because they couldn't have him…
Well Ryan might have hung up on him at that point.
He didn't need Pete telling him that he couldn't get someone like Mikey Way unless they were using him to get to somebody else.
Besides he knew that already, it wasn't as much of a shocker as Pete probably thought it was.
There were seven messages from people other then Pete on his voice mail.
One of them was from Mikey, "Gerard thinks that you're too pretty for me," voice soft and amused as he recited his number.
It took him thirteen seconds of staring at his phone, running his fingers over the numbers gently before he keyed it in.
"Was this your plan all along, make Pete jealous using me? Because Pete's just a little bit insane when it comes to you, I think I might actually fear for my life."
Mikey laughed.
******************************************************************************
It was like he was stuck in some awful version of telephone.
Except instead of Ryan ending up with something like leprosy or bad hair or something, he was involved in an affair with Mikey Way that he'd managed to keep secret from everyone.
Including himself.
It was exasperating, because Ryan couldn't keep secrets; Spencer of all people should have known that.
Did know that.
Except his best friend didn't know that, he instead was firmly in the 'why didn't you just tell us, we're supposed to be friends' camp, along with Brendon and Jon; Ryan had resorted to hanging out a lot with Zack who found the whole thing hysterically funny.
And actually believed him, because as he said, numerous times:
"Even if you managed to hide that from the guys, you couldn't hide it from the security teams that shadow you or the fans that stalk you."
Ryan thought about bringing up the half a dozen times he'd managed to slip away to spend time with Pete that neither their security or their fans knew about and decided that could possibly take away the one supporter (besides Mikey) that he had and decided to not say anything instead.
"This is insane," he muttered instead, locked away in his bunk, the others in the main lounge of the bus.
Probably talking about how he was a bad friend for not telling them about his illicit affair with Mikey Way.
Personally he was hoping this was some elaborate April Fool's joke and that in three months time everyone would have a great laugh at his expense and then he could kill them all and get the chair for mass murder.
"My band finds it totally amusing," Mikey said in his ear. He was laughing, the bastard. Ryan hated him a little for a minute, because this was all his fault.
If he'd just kept his hands and his lips to himself…
And Ryan had told him that they should leave separately. Although he wasn't sure if that would have made it worse or not an issue.
"Though they think that you're going to break my heart, are you going to break my heart, Ryan Ross?"
"I'm glad that you are finding this amusing, but you're not touring with five other bands that think you're trying to either drive Pete to murder or insanity, no one can seem to reach any sort of consensus as to what he's actually going to reach first."
"No, I just have to deal with my band. Which includes my brother, who thinks that you're very pretty, but a little young and possibly going through an experimental phase, then there's Frank who calls me a cradle robber under his breath when he thinks that I'm not paying attention to him. Not to mention the others."
Mikey sighed, Ryan sighed with him.
"What exactly were you hoping to accomplish?" Ryan asked.
"What makes you think that I was looking to accomplish anything?"
"We said like seventeen words to each other, then you kissed me and touched me. Did you know Pete was standing there waiting for you?"
"If I'd known Pete was there I would have done a lot more then kiss your forehead," Mikey retorted. There was a hint of anger; Ryan didn't know what he had to be angry about.
Besides…
"What do you mean?"
"He kept tossing you in my face, I mean we only met face to face the one time when he was there, but he'd send me e-mails with pictures and links and it was annoying as hell."
"He was trying to make you jealous, you know this," Ryan said. "You knew this back then."
He could vividly remember their faces when Pete had introduced them, Pete's satisfaction at making his point and Mikey's scowl at having got the point.
He'd been surprised that they hadn't immediately gotten back together.
"Pete's not my type, you know. Not usually. It was a strange summer, I was lonely, I thought he was interesting, things happened," Mikey said softly, the words whispered. Ryan could hear a rustling sound and knew that he was shifting around in his bunk.
"Pete's not my type," he repeated, "I fell in love with him anyway." And Ryan was confused, because Pete might not have been Mikey's type usually, but Mikey was certainly Pete's type always. Though he couldn't figure out Mikey's motive for all of this, if Pete wasn't his type, why was he in the middle of this long, never-ending game of tug of war between the two of them if Mikey didn't even want Pete back?
He'd had massive amounts of opportunities.
"He was showing you off…"
"I know, to make you jealous."
"No, he was showing you off, displaying you. Because he's not my type but you are, and he knew that. Knew exactly how to press my buttons, he was showing me 'see, I got there first, and if you'd stayed with me, if you came back to me, you'd be here with me, with him'."
Ryan opened his mouth, closed it, had absolutely no idea what to say in response to that.
"I'll talk to you later, Ryan Ross."
And Ryan lay there, staring at the top of his bunk; phone pressed to his ear and wondered what the hell had just happened.
******************************************************************************
He was avoiding his sidekick; he knew this, leaving it buried in the sheets of his bunk on the nights they stayed in hotels, turning it off when he had it in his pocket.
Mikey had left four voice mails before he figured out that Ryan was avoiding him.
Then he chose a different tact.
"Bob says that you and Mikey are fighting," Spencer said, he was perched on the couch next to Ryan and looked like he would rather be having any other conversation then the one that he was in.
"We're not fighting," Ryan said, staring at the TV. Maybe if he looked engrossed in the, he tilted his head, whatever the hell they were watching Spencer would leave. And they could finish this conversation never. "And why are you talking to Bob?"
"Well they're like our in-laws now, right? And as such, they're concerned about the status of your relationship seeing as how you won't talk to Mikey, so they're calling us to find out what's going on, because Bob says that Mikey is upset and doesn't understand," Ryan looked at him from the corner of his eye. Spencer had the supportive look on his face that really meant that he could give a shit if Mikey and Ryan were fighting; he was just concerned about how said fight was going to interfere with him.
"Mikey's upset about something else then," Ryan said firmly. "Because we're not even friends and…"
And Mikey was leaving him voicemails…
"You should talk to him, he's your boyfriend Ryan and you went through a lot of trouble to keep it a secret from Pete and everyone so why are you trying to blow it now?" Spencer's tone said that he understood the desire to keep the secret from Pete and everyone else they knew, but still didn't get why Ryan hadn't told him.
Ryan had given up trying to convince him that he and Mikey weren't together.
He thought they might figure it out when Mikey got married again.
He hoped that he wasn't being used in the divorce between Mikey and Alicia as the cause of their split.
Spencer dropped his sidekick into his lap.
"You should call him," he advised, then stood, his work done, he left.
Ryan looked at the sidekick then set it off to the side and stared at the TV.
He still couldn't figure out what the hell he was watching… but it was bright and shiny and the people seemed to have lots of energy.
******************************************************************************
"Did you break up with Mikey?" Pete asked, Ryan choked on the water he'd just swallowed. Jon helpfully pounded on his back.
"What?" Ryan managed, when he'd caught his breath and Jon had stopped hitting him.
"Did you break up with Mikey?" Pete asked again, patiently. His fingers were tapping an uneven rhythm against his leg.
"We weren't ever together," Ryan muttered.
"I know a few people that you guys could talk to, you spend so much time apart maybe you need someone to help you bridge the distance," Pete said helpfully, the expression on his face was anything but helpful.
Ryan looked down at his plate instead; he'd drawn an upside down smile in his mashed potatoes. He refused to call it a frown because he wasn't upset.
"I'm not going into therapy with someone that I'm not even dating."
******************************************************************************
"Did you sic Pete on me?" Ryan demanded. Mikey was silent on the other end of the phone.
"Excuse me?" the voice that answered him was definitely not Mikey's and Ryan almost dropped his phone, he didn't think he'd dialed the wrong number; he'd pressed memory 6 which was Mikey's.
"Mikey?"
"No, Gerard… Ryan?"
"Crap," Ryan muttered, he could feel his face flushing, he was really glad that he was alone in his bunk so that there were no witnesses.
"Mikey's outside, did you want me to go get him?" Gerard asked, his voice was calm and sweet. Very gentle, a far cry from the screaming ball of energy that he could be when he was on stage.
"Um, no… I'll just… I'll call back," Ryan said quickly, he didn't listen to what Gerard said in response, just shut the phone off, dropped it beside him on his bunk and covered his face with his hands.
Maybe if he went into hiding? No electronic devices or people, maybe then this would all go away… or he would wake up and find it was some horrible nightmare.
******************************************************************************
"Does this mean that you're talking to me again?" Mikey asked by way of hello. Ryan was silent for a long second.
"Pete thinks we should go into therapy," he finally said.
It took three minutes and four seconds for Mikey to respond, he was too busy laughing on the other end. Ryan stared at the top of his bunk and contemplated a life style change while he waited for the laughter to die down.
Maybe he could be a carpenter? He'd always liked working with his hands… though he disliked getting dirty.
"Therapy?" Mikey asked, his voice still had an audible giggle to it, Ryan wished he was there because he thought he'd seen maybe one picture of Mikey actually smiling and it had lit up his entire face. Laughter, that long and hard, probably made him glow.
"He thinks that because we spend so much time apart that maybe we're just having trouble adjusting to the distance," Ryan said primly.
"He's already talked to a therapist, hasn't he," Mikey sighed, Ryan sighed in response.
"He said he needed to gauge them first, make sure they weren't a security risk," Ryan sighed again.
"Ryan…"
"At some point, someone is going to realize that we're not actually dating, right? Before they start a gift registry and start planning the commitment ceremony and Spencer and Brendon start fighting over who's going to be my best man and everything?"
"Would it be so bad to be dating me Ryan Ross?"
"But we're not," Ryan said, he didn't whine it, he wanted to, but he didn't. "You have a wife, I have a girlfriend, I don't get why everyone thinks this is such an amazing thing when if it were true we would be cheating on people that we profess to love."
"Because Pete knows enough people in my sphere of friends to know that Alicia and I have been separated for almost nine months and I know enough people in your sphere to know that Keltie is for show."
"She's still my friend, I wouldn't hurt her like that," and he wouldn't, Keltie had been so unbelievably good for him.
Except, she seemed to believe, like everyone else that he was dating Mikey so she was distancing herself and that hurt a little bit because she was nice to talk to and understood him better then everyone but Spencer and Brendon and Jon.
"You're going to be in Jersey at the end of the week, aren't you," it wasn't a question. So Ryan knew that Mikey already knew the answer to that.
"How do you know that?" he asked suspiciously.
"Bob talks to Patrick, which is probably how Pete found out that we were 'fighting'," Ryan grinned, because he could hear the quotes. "Let me take you out for coffee."
Ryan pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it, then looked around his bunk, the curtain was drawn, it was dark. He could hear the low voices of Spencer and Jon and Brendon talking in the lounge.
"Like a date?"
"If you want to call it a date, then I guess we can," he could hear the smile in Mikey's voice. "But I was more thinking we could be two friends getting together and drinking coffee and maybe having a snack while we talked."
"Two friends that all their other friends think are dating… how is us getting coffee supposed to convince anyone that we're not, in fact, dating?" Ryan stated, Mikey laughed at him.
"Who said I wanted anyone to think we weren't?"
"Pete is going to kill me, and when he does I'm going to come back and haunt your ass," Ryan said firmly. Mikey just laughed at him again.
"Pete loves you, and he loves me and he's not going to kill anyone, because he doesn't know it yet, but he still has hope that this is all going to work out in his favor if he just waits long enough."
"Pete's not in love with me," Ryan said, he knew that as certainly as he knew that he and Mikey weren't dating. "And he's engaged. To Ashlee Simpson," Ryan didn't sneer at the name, he did make the sign of the cross though because he didn't want her to suddenly appear and the devil, when his/her name was invoked, typically did. "And you haven't seen the way he's been staring at me, like he's mentally calculating the size of the coffin that he'll need and what type of wood he's going to use and where the knife he's going to stab in my back or slit my throat with is going to come from."
"He's just mad that we're not playing by his rules."
"Mad at what?"
"So coffee, my treat," Mikey said, ignoring everything that Ryan was saying.
"Kill me, haunt you," Ryan said.
"Gerard knows at least four different exorcisms; I'm pretty sure one of them will work if it comes to that."
"Mikey," Ryan muttered helplessly. And it would figure that Gerard would know exorcisms, he probably had performed some and kept the stuff for them under his bunk where Ryan kept his makeup kit and extra scarves.
"I'll see you at the end of the week."
******************************************************************************
Zack went with him; once he was sure the others were safely ensconced in their rooms. Ryan had told them he was going to a bookstore and they avoided going with him to bookstores the way they avoided going to shoe stores with Spencer.
Zack knew where they were going.
"You're not dating him, right?" Zack asked, slightly confused voice.
"We're just friends," Ryan assured him. "He's been getting a lot of flak from his guys about this too, so we're going to figure out a way to fix it."
He was pretty sure that wasn't Mikey's intent, he was pretty sure that Mikey's intent was to get them photographed together and convince Ryan to continue to pretend to be boyfriends, if not actually be boyfriends… but Zack looked like he needed the reassurance that Ryan hadn't, in fact, been dating Mikey all along.
He'd not dressed up, he wasn't sure it was worth the effort yet, he had changed four times before he'd settled on the jeans and t-shirt he was wearing. Luckily no one had been in the room with him because it would have given the game away that he wasn't going to the bookstore.
He had a hat and a coat, no scarves because that had been the last album and while they were still touring it they'd moved on to working on their third and he hadn't figured out what the style of that one was going to settle at yet.
"Ryan," Mikey smiled at him, leaned over the table and kissed his forehead. Zack settled in at the next table.
There was coffee on the table and a chocolate, chocolate chip muffin waiting for him.
"How?"
"Bob talked to Spencer," Mikey leaned back in the booth, Ryan tore at his muffin and took a sip of his coffee, all the while not looking at Mikey. Because the muffin was his favorite and his coffee was exactly the way that he liked it and Mikey looked beautiful and relaxed and sort of happy to see him and Ryan didn't get to keep the things that looked like Mikey.
"Are you going to break my heart Ryan Ross?" Mikey asked, voice low and soft.
He was honest and he smiled to soften the blow.
"No… but I think you might break mine."
******************************************************************************
Mikey went with him to the bookstore.
"You told your guys you were going, let's not make a liar out of you just yet," Mikey said. Their hands brushed together as they walked, talking in quiet voices.
Zack trailing behind them with a disapproving look, possibly he was being confronted with images of the number of ways that Pete would attempt to kill Ryan that he would then have to thwart.
Mikey left him alone for an hour in the bookstore, Ryan didn't know what he was looking at but by the time he reappeared at Ryan's elbow, Ryan had four books and was contemplating a fifth that he'd heard good things about but hadn't liked the last three things the author had written.
Mikey looked at the book, looked at Ryan and gently pulled the book from Ryan's hands and placed it back on the shelf.
"You won't like it," he said then steered Ryan towards the front of the store and the registers. Zack still looked unhappy at the turn of events that had Mikey putting a hand low on Ryan's back and brushing his lips against his temple.
Ryan didn't see the cameras but he knew they were there, even as he turned and flashed a quick smile at Mikey that Mikey returned not at all hesitantly.
"In for a penny, in for a pound."
"It'll be worth it, Ryan. I promise. When you've got Pete Wentz at your beck and call and someone to help you deal with him…it'll all be worth it," Mikey whispered against his temple. "When we've got you pressed between us, when you can't think or feel anything but us, it'll all be worth it."
Ryan shivered, he couldn't help himself.
"I haven't agreed to anything yet, and maybe I don't want Pete anymore."
He could feel Mikey's lips curve against his skin and barely heard the murmured, "liar."
******************************************************************************
Mikey dropped him off at the front door of the hotel, a quick press of lips against his, arms warm around his shoulders as he held him in a tight hug before releasing him back to the care of his bandmates.
Ryan could feel Zack scowling at him but couldn't bring himself to care.
"I haven't made a fool of you, Zack. I promise," Ryan said, because this man was responsible for keeping insane fans away from him and Ryan still wanted him to want to do that in the morning.
"That looked like a boyfriend to me," Zack said, he sounded angry.
"It was a first date," Ryan said, he pressed his fingers to his lips, he usually didn't kiss until at least the third.
"You took me on your first date?" Zack asked, now he sounded amused and Ryan would rather he find amusement on his behalf instead of be mad at him.
Ryan rolled his eyes, because like Zack would have let him wander around by himself while they were on tour.
"You took Mikey Way to a bookstore for your first date?"
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Summary: It was like he was stuck in some awful version of telephone. Except instead of Ryan ending up with something like leprosy or bad hair or something, he was involved in an affair with Mikey Way that he'd managed to keep secret from everyone.
TITLE: Planned Mistakes
RATING: PG (for language)
PAIRING: Ryan POV: Ryan/Mikey, Ryan/Pete, Pete/Mikey, Ryan/Mikey/Pete
AUTHOR: Melanie
Summary: It was like he was stuck in some awful version of telephone. Except instead of Ryan ending up with something like leprosy or bad hair or something, he was involved in an affair with Mikey Way that he'd managed to keep secret from everyone.NOTES: So I'm totally mucking with timelines here.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of these boys and I'm pretty sure that this has never happened and will never happen quite like this.
Planned Mistakes 1/?
The first time that he met Mikey Way, Ryan had been under Pete's arm, at a party that he hadn't wanted to go to anyway.
He'd told Pete that he would be out of his league, that he wouldn't know anybody but him and he didn't like excluding the rest of the guys, Pete had just looked at him and told him he was going.
So Ryan had gone, eye liner on and tight jeans that pretty much guaranteed that he would never have kids or, possibly, an erection ever again.
Spencer had watched, disapproving, as they left and Ryan had already heard all the lectures. He was tired of Spencer's lectures, telling him that Pete was using him, that he was going to break his heart.
Ryan knew this, knew it as certainly as he knew that Pete didn't want him, he wanted what he represented.
He was Pete's way of either making Mikey jealous or getting him back.
Ryan knew all this, he knew it. At the time he'd been so in awe of Pete that saying no to him was an impossibility.
So the first time that he met Mikey Way he should have been thinking 'so this is the ex' or 'this is the competition' or 'this is who he's trying to make jealous and get back'.
But he'd been young and Pete had been touching him of his own free will, leaning into Ryan like he was the most important person in the room and his only thoughts at the time (besides oh my god, I'm fucking bored) had been 'oh my god, Pete Wentz is touching me'.
He'd been young and foolish and inclined to fits of fancy.
"Mikey Way, Ryan Ross," Pete had said. Quietly, but firmly.
Like he was making a point.
From the expression on his face Mikey got the point, probably a lot sooner then Ryan did.
Pete broke his heart twice over a two month time span.
The second time it stuck, primarily because Panic! was on tour, and it was hard for him to get lonely and call or IM Ryan and have him on his doorstep 2.5 seconds later.
Ryan missed him sometimes, missed being cuddled and held and sharing Pete's lap with Hemingway and having someone to talk to about writing and music that maybe understood where his words came from.
Spencer watched him closely, like he thought Ryan was going to go suicidal and slit his wrists because Pete had decided he was straight again.
Ryan didn't think about it, he read the articles when he couldn't avoid them, looked at the pictures when they were right in front of him, but he didn't go searching for them.
He loved Pete and he hated himself a little bit for not being what Pete needed (Mikey or female) and he was glad for the things that took all his attention.
The band and the music and the words that came and that he wrote into songs that he didn't show the others, and Brent leaving and Jon replacing him and he kept himself busy enough so that he couldn't think at all.
It had been a long day, inane interviews and he'd only wanted to bitchslap two of the interviewers so he was calling it an okay day.
Not perfect, because they'd only had four interviews, and wanting to commit bodily harm in two of them probably wasn't fantastic… but it was good enough.
He was hiding, though if anyone asked he was just escaping from the noise and the smoke and the conversation.
He didn't even want to be at the party, but he'd been overruled, because Keltie had wanted to go and Brendon and Jon had wanted to go and Haley had flown home so Spencer was all for not sitting cooped up in the hotel room.
And now Keltie and Brendon and Jon were drinking, they'd urged him to join in but he'd done all the drinking he felt he needed to in order to get it out of his system in the four months after he'd turned 21 and then he'd stopped, because he had no desire to turn into the man his father had been and going into rehab wasn't on his list of things to accomplish by the time he turned 25.
He'd left them to their own devices and he thought that their plan might be to see who could drink who under the table first.
He'd been going to hang out with Spencer, get his quality best friend time while said best friend wasn't distracted by his girlfriend. But Spencer had vanished, he wasn't sure to where, he'd just made a high pitched squeaking sound and when Ryan had turned around to question him on it, he'd been gone.
So now he was alone, and hanging out alone at a band party was like just handing Gabe material for six months, without forcing him to work for it first.
Fall Out Boy was there, he'd already seen Pete holding court with Ashlee and he'd managed to not sneer, managed to give her a quick hug without breaking her neck, and made appreciative noises over her hand and didn't yank the huge ass engagement ring off it.
He didn't know what the hell Pete was thinking, or if he even was. Patrick looked annoyed as hell so he knew he wasn't the only one.
The door opened and he was blinded suddenly.
"Are you hiding Ryan Ross?" Ryan blinked, looked up and there was Mikey Way, standing in the doorway, bright light from the hallway glowing around him.
Ryan squinted, he thought that Mikey looked slightly bemused at finding Ryan sitting on the floor in a dark room when he could be out reveling with everyone else, or he could still be blinded by the sudden light.
"No?"
Mikey still looked amused; he walked into the room, door closing behind him and Ryan shifted, getting ready to stand.
Mikey put a hand on his shoulder, "You don't have to get up," he said. Then slid down the wall to sit next to him.
"Where's Alicia?"
Mikey sighed, a long sigh that spoke of stories that he didn't want to tell.
"Never mind," he stared at the wall, next to him Mikey shifted. He thought this might be the longest they'd ever spent in each others company without Pete to act as a buffer. "Did you know?"
"About the engagement?" Mikey asked, Ryan nodded. "No, although with as much disapproval as Patrick is emanating, I suppose we should be grateful that he didn't just elope with her to spite his lead singer."
"Like you did?" Ryan asked and winced.
Mikey laughed quietly, there was a bitter edge to it.
"Sorry," Ryan said softly.
"We all want things we're not supposed to have, sometimes we do things to make sure we can't have them."
"I don't understand," Ryan said.
Mikey was silent next to him and Ryan drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them.
"Are you still in love with him?" Ryan asked. He didn't look over at him, instead he laid his head on his knees and closed his eyes. Tried to figure out why Mikey still being in love with Pete would cause him to marry Alicia instead.
"Pete's very easy to be in love with; he's even harder to be with, besides…aren't you?" Mikey said slowly, like he had to think about every word before they came out of his mouth. Ryan shrugged.
As much as he might have loved Pete, it didn't matter. To Pete he'd been sex and something shiny to shove in Mikey's face when/if they came into contact. He'd claimed Pete as his boyfriend, his lover, but Pete had never claimed him back, had never returned any of the feelings that Ryan had laid out on his sleeve for him.
To Pete, Ryan had just been a way to pass the time until Mikey came back to him or until he figured out a way to move on.
It was just Pete's luck that he'd now get to choose which he wanted more, Mikey back or to move on.
"You should talk to him, he'd probably rip that ring off her finger before she even gets used to the weight of it being there," Ryan said instead.
"I think Pete is moving on," Mikey sighed. "He's made his choice; I'm not going to ruin any shot that he has at happiness…"
"Even though, if he'd had the same choice, he would have ruined yours."
"I managed to ruin it all by myself, so it really didn't matter what Pete did or didn't do."
Ryan swallowed, leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He should get up, go find his band and Keltie and go back to his hotel and try not to think about getting second chances.
You only got second chances if the person giving them cared enough about you to offer.
"I should…" they both said at the same time.
Mikey laughed and Ryan smiled despite himself, biting on his lip as they each climbed to their feet.
"We can't walk out of here together," Ryan said, he rolled his shoulders. It was a band party, yes. The photographers and the reporters had all been dismissed fairly early into the evening, but appearances still needed to be maintained.
He ran a hand through his hair. Brendon was already making noises about haircuts and makeup and the stage show for a new album that wasn't even finished let alone ready to be put out yet.
"Why not, Ryan Ross? We're friends. You have a pretty girlfriend, who you openly adore. I'm happily married, anyone asks we just ran into each other while getting away from the smoke and the noise and the drunken revelers who think they aren't drunk," Mikey said simply.
Ryan walked towards the door, Mikey's hand low on his back as he opened it and stepped out into the hallway.
"Well its not a total lie," Ryan said, Mikey hadn't dropped his hand yet, still had it pressed against the small of Ryan's back and Ryan didn't shift or move forward to cause it to drop off.
He should, he knew he should.
Mikey leaned close, breath tickling his ear. "Sometimes the best truths are the ones that can be left up to interpretation," he pressed a kiss to Ryan's forehead; Ryan turned his head to look at him questioningly as Mikey took a step back.
"I'll see you around Ryan Ross."
He'd turned his sidekick off when he went to bed, he'd left before everyone else, he'd heard Keltie stumble in and back out around three and he'd heard everyone laughing in the main room of their suite until he'd rolled over, put his pillow over his head and managed to drown them out long enough to go back to sleep.
When he woke up he found Spencer sitting at the end of his bed, staring at him like he'd grown a second head over night and was just waiting for Ryan to notice.
Ryan reached a hand up to check, just in case.
No second head.
"Mikey Way?"
Ryan frowned in confusion. Spencer liked being vague, but that was so extremely vague that Ryan didn't even know what the point was.
"I'll take My Chem bassists for 100, Alex?"
Spencer rolled his eyes, tossed Ryan's 'kick at him.
Ryan looked at it, back at Spencer.
"Pete's called about a half dozen times, something about you and Mikey Way and coming out of a closet and kissing in a hallway, he sounds kind of insane, Patrick's talking about having him committed before he can do anything else stupid, like actually marry Ashlee and…"
"He kissed me on the forehead, that's not even real kissing," Ryan interjected, there were eight messages waiting from Pete. Spaced about 30 minutes apart.
Spencer stopped, stared at him. It was the first time that Ryan had shocked him into silence since they were 8/9 and Ryan had mentioned that he thought that Daniel Peirce had pretty eyes.
"You mean Pete hadn't done massive amounts of drugs in the backroom and was hallucinating?"
"We were just talking; I can have conversations with people without having sex with them."
Spencer shook his head. "I would maybe not mention that in your defense when Pete calls."
"Pete's engaged, to Ashlee Simpson of all people; Mikey is married, I'm with Keltie. What…"
Ryan's 'kick buzzed at him and Ryan stopped talking and stared down at it.
"Right, I'll leave you alone to talk to Pete. Jon, Brendon and Keltie have gone out for breakfast; they're bringing back muffins and coffee for us. I'll check back in about an hour and see if Pete has managed to kill you through your phone," Spencer pushed himself off the bed and walked to the door.
Ryan frowned at his phone and finally picked it up.
"Hello?" his voice was wary, he hated that.
"What. The. Fucking. Hell. Ross."
Ryan wondered if Mikey had known that Pete was out in the hallway, if that was why he'd kept his hand pressed against his back and whispered in his ear and kissed his forehead and made it look like they were something they weren't.
"Sometimes the best truths are the ones that can be left up to interpretation."
He remembered him saying that, whispering it into his ear.
There'd been about twenty minutes of rambling from Pete, before Ryan managed to piece enough of the rambling together to figure out that in Pete's mind, the events that he'd seen translated into Ryan and Mikey being involved in some torrid love affair, had been for years, using Keltie and Alicia to throw off suspicion and using each other as substitutes because they couldn't have him…
Well Ryan might have hung up on him at that point.
He didn't need Pete telling him that he couldn't get someone like Mikey Way unless they were using him to get to somebody else.
Besides he knew that already, it wasn't as much of a shocker as Pete probably thought it was.
There were seven messages from people other then Pete on his voice mail.
One of them was from Mikey, "Gerard thinks that you're too pretty for me," voice soft and amused as he recited his number.
It took him thirteen seconds of staring at his phone, running his fingers over the numbers gently before he keyed it in.
"Was this your plan all along, make Pete jealous using me? Because Pete's just a little bit insane when it comes to you, I think I might actually fear for my life."
Mikey laughed.
It was like he was stuck in some awful version of telephone.
Except instead of Ryan ending up with something like leprosy or bad hair or something, he was involved in an affair with Mikey Way that he'd managed to keep secret from everyone.
Including himself.
It was exasperating, because Ryan couldn't keep secrets; Spencer of all people should have known that.
Did know that.
Except his best friend didn't know that, he instead was firmly in the 'why didn't you just tell us, we're supposed to be friends' camp, along with Brendon and Jon; Ryan had resorted to hanging out a lot with Zack who found the whole thing hysterically funny.
And actually believed him, because as he said, numerous times:
"Even if you managed to hide that from the guys, you couldn't hide it from the security teams that shadow you or the fans that stalk you."
Ryan thought about bringing up the half a dozen times he'd managed to slip away to spend time with Pete that neither their security or their fans knew about and decided that could possibly take away the one supporter (besides Mikey) that he had and decided to not say anything instead.
"This is insane," he muttered instead, locked away in his bunk, the others in the main lounge of the bus.
Probably talking about how he was a bad friend for not telling them about his illicit affair with Mikey Way.
Personally he was hoping this was some elaborate April Fool's joke and that in three months time everyone would have a great laugh at his expense and then he could kill them all and get the chair for mass murder.
"My band finds it totally amusing," Mikey said in his ear. He was laughing, the bastard. Ryan hated him a little for a minute, because this was all his fault.
If he'd just kept his hands and his lips to himself…
And Ryan had told him that they should leave separately. Although he wasn't sure if that would have made it worse or not an issue.
"Though they think that you're going to break my heart, are you going to break my heart, Ryan Ross?"
"I'm glad that you are finding this amusing, but you're not touring with five other bands that think you're trying to either drive Pete to murder or insanity, no one can seem to reach any sort of consensus as to what he's actually going to reach first."
"No, I just have to deal with my band. Which includes my brother, who thinks that you're very pretty, but a little young and possibly going through an experimental phase, then there's Frank who calls me a cradle robber under his breath when he thinks that I'm not paying attention to him. Not to mention the others."
Mikey sighed, Ryan sighed with him.
"What exactly were you hoping to accomplish?" Ryan asked.
"What makes you think that I was looking to accomplish anything?"
"We said like seventeen words to each other, then you kissed me and touched me. Did you know Pete was standing there waiting for you?"
"If I'd known Pete was there I would have done a lot more then kiss your forehead," Mikey retorted. There was a hint of anger; Ryan didn't know what he had to be angry about.
Besides…
"What do you mean?"
"He kept tossing you in my face, I mean we only met face to face the one time when he was there, but he'd send me e-mails with pictures and links and it was annoying as hell."
"He was trying to make you jealous, you know this," Ryan said. "You knew this back then."
He could vividly remember their faces when Pete had introduced them, Pete's satisfaction at making his point and Mikey's scowl at having got the point.
He'd been surprised that they hadn't immediately gotten back together.
"Pete's not my type, you know. Not usually. It was a strange summer, I was lonely, I thought he was interesting, things happened," Mikey said softly, the words whispered. Ryan could hear a rustling sound and knew that he was shifting around in his bunk.
"Pete's not my type," he repeated, "I fell in love with him anyway." And Ryan was confused, because Pete might not have been Mikey's type usually, but Mikey was certainly Pete's type always. Though he couldn't figure out Mikey's motive for all of this, if Pete wasn't his type, why was he in the middle of this long, never-ending game of tug of war between the two of them if Mikey didn't even want Pete back?
He'd had massive amounts of opportunities.
"He was showing you off…"
"I know, to make you jealous."
"No, he was showing you off, displaying you. Because he's not my type but you are, and he knew that. Knew exactly how to press my buttons, he was showing me 'see, I got there first, and if you'd stayed with me, if you came back to me, you'd be here with me, with him'."
Ryan opened his mouth, closed it, had absolutely no idea what to say in response to that.
"I'll talk to you later, Ryan Ross."
And Ryan lay there, staring at the top of his bunk; phone pressed to his ear and wondered what the hell had just happened.
He was avoiding his sidekick; he knew this, leaving it buried in the sheets of his bunk on the nights they stayed in hotels, turning it off when he had it in his pocket.
Mikey had left four voice mails before he figured out that Ryan was avoiding him.
Then he chose a different tact.
"Bob says that you and Mikey are fighting," Spencer said, he was perched on the couch next to Ryan and looked like he would rather be having any other conversation then the one that he was in.
"We're not fighting," Ryan said, staring at the TV. Maybe if he looked engrossed in the, he tilted his head, whatever the hell they were watching Spencer would leave. And they could finish this conversation never. "And why are you talking to Bob?"
"Well they're like our in-laws now, right? And as such, they're concerned about the status of your relationship seeing as how you won't talk to Mikey, so they're calling us to find out what's going on, because Bob says that Mikey is upset and doesn't understand," Ryan looked at him from the corner of his eye. Spencer had the supportive look on his face that really meant that he could give a shit if Mikey and Ryan were fighting; he was just concerned about how said fight was going to interfere with him.
"Mikey's upset about something else then," Ryan said firmly. "Because we're not even friends and…"
And Mikey was leaving him voicemails…
"You should talk to him, he's your boyfriend Ryan and you went through a lot of trouble to keep it a secret from Pete and everyone so why are you trying to blow it now?" Spencer's tone said that he understood the desire to keep the secret from Pete and everyone else they knew, but still didn't get why Ryan hadn't told him.
Ryan had given up trying to convince him that he and Mikey weren't together.
He thought they might figure it out when Mikey got married again.
He hoped that he wasn't being used in the divorce between Mikey and Alicia as the cause of their split.
Spencer dropped his sidekick into his lap.
"You should call him," he advised, then stood, his work done, he left.
Ryan looked at the sidekick then set it off to the side and stared at the TV.
He still couldn't figure out what the hell he was watching… but it was bright and shiny and the people seemed to have lots of energy.
"Did you break up with Mikey?" Pete asked, Ryan choked on the water he'd just swallowed. Jon helpfully pounded on his back.
"What?" Ryan managed, when he'd caught his breath and Jon had stopped hitting him.
"Did you break up with Mikey?" Pete asked again, patiently. His fingers were tapping an uneven rhythm against his leg.
"We weren't ever together," Ryan muttered.
"I know a few people that you guys could talk to, you spend so much time apart maybe you need someone to help you bridge the distance," Pete said helpfully, the expression on his face was anything but helpful.
Ryan looked down at his plate instead; he'd drawn an upside down smile in his mashed potatoes. He refused to call it a frown because he wasn't upset.
"I'm not going into therapy with someone that I'm not even dating."
"Did you sic Pete on me?" Ryan demanded. Mikey was silent on the other end of the phone.
"Excuse me?" the voice that answered him was definitely not Mikey's and Ryan almost dropped his phone, he didn't think he'd dialed the wrong number; he'd pressed memory 6 which was Mikey's.
"Mikey?"
"No, Gerard… Ryan?"
"Crap," Ryan muttered, he could feel his face flushing, he was really glad that he was alone in his bunk so that there were no witnesses.
"Mikey's outside, did you want me to go get him?" Gerard asked, his voice was calm and sweet. Very gentle, a far cry from the screaming ball of energy that he could be when he was on stage.
"Um, no… I'll just… I'll call back," Ryan said quickly, he didn't listen to what Gerard said in response, just shut the phone off, dropped it beside him on his bunk and covered his face with his hands.
Maybe if he went into hiding? No electronic devices or people, maybe then this would all go away… or he would wake up and find it was some horrible nightmare.
"Does this mean that you're talking to me again?" Mikey asked by way of hello. Ryan was silent for a long second.
"Pete thinks we should go into therapy," he finally said.
It took three minutes and four seconds for Mikey to respond, he was too busy laughing on the other end. Ryan stared at the top of his bunk and contemplated a life style change while he waited for the laughter to die down.
Maybe he could be a carpenter? He'd always liked working with his hands… though he disliked getting dirty.
"Therapy?" Mikey asked, his voice still had an audible giggle to it, Ryan wished he was there because he thought he'd seen maybe one picture of Mikey actually smiling and it had lit up his entire face. Laughter, that long and hard, probably made him glow.
"He thinks that because we spend so much time apart that maybe we're just having trouble adjusting to the distance," Ryan said primly.
"He's already talked to a therapist, hasn't he," Mikey sighed, Ryan sighed in response.
"He said he needed to gauge them first, make sure they weren't a security risk," Ryan sighed again.
"Ryan…"
"At some point, someone is going to realize that we're not actually dating, right? Before they start a gift registry and start planning the commitment ceremony and Spencer and Brendon start fighting over who's going to be my best man and everything?"
"Would it be so bad to be dating me Ryan Ross?"
"But we're not," Ryan said, he didn't whine it, he wanted to, but he didn't. "You have a wife, I have a girlfriend, I don't get why everyone thinks this is such an amazing thing when if it were true we would be cheating on people that we profess to love."
"Because Pete knows enough people in my sphere of friends to know that Alicia and I have been separated for almost nine months and I know enough people in your sphere to know that Keltie is for show."
"She's still my friend, I wouldn't hurt her like that," and he wouldn't, Keltie had been so unbelievably good for him.
Except, she seemed to believe, like everyone else that he was dating Mikey so she was distancing herself and that hurt a little bit because she was nice to talk to and understood him better then everyone but Spencer and Brendon and Jon.
"You're going to be in Jersey at the end of the week, aren't you," it wasn't a question. So Ryan knew that Mikey already knew the answer to that.
"How do you know that?" he asked suspiciously.
"Bob talks to Patrick, which is probably how Pete found out that we were 'fighting'," Ryan grinned, because he could hear the quotes. "Let me take you out for coffee."
Ryan pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it, then looked around his bunk, the curtain was drawn, it was dark. He could hear the low voices of Spencer and Jon and Brendon talking in the lounge.
"Like a date?"
"If you want to call it a date, then I guess we can," he could hear the smile in Mikey's voice. "But I was more thinking we could be two friends getting together and drinking coffee and maybe having a snack while we talked."
"Two friends that all their other friends think are dating… how is us getting coffee supposed to convince anyone that we're not, in fact, dating?" Ryan stated, Mikey laughed at him.
"Who said I wanted anyone to think we weren't?"
"Pete is going to kill me, and when he does I'm going to come back and haunt your ass," Ryan said firmly. Mikey just laughed at him again.
"Pete loves you, and he loves me and he's not going to kill anyone, because he doesn't know it yet, but he still has hope that this is all going to work out in his favor if he just waits long enough."
"Pete's not in love with me," Ryan said, he knew that as certainly as he knew that he and Mikey weren't dating. "And he's engaged. To Ashlee Simpson," Ryan didn't sneer at the name, he did make the sign of the cross though because he didn't want her to suddenly appear and the devil, when his/her name was invoked, typically did. "And you haven't seen the way he's been staring at me, like he's mentally calculating the size of the coffin that he'll need and what type of wood he's going to use and where the knife he's going to stab in my back or slit my throat with is going to come from."
"He's just mad that we're not playing by his rules."
"Mad at what?"
"So coffee, my treat," Mikey said, ignoring everything that Ryan was saying.
"Kill me, haunt you," Ryan said.
"Gerard knows at least four different exorcisms; I'm pretty sure one of them will work if it comes to that."
"Mikey," Ryan muttered helplessly. And it would figure that Gerard would know exorcisms, he probably had performed some and kept the stuff for them under his bunk where Ryan kept his makeup kit and extra scarves.
"I'll see you at the end of the week."
Zack went with him; once he was sure the others were safely ensconced in their rooms. Ryan had told them he was going to a bookstore and they avoided going with him to bookstores the way they avoided going to shoe stores with Spencer.
Zack knew where they were going.
"You're not dating him, right?" Zack asked, slightly confused voice.
"We're just friends," Ryan assured him. "He's been getting a lot of flak from his guys about this too, so we're going to figure out a way to fix it."
He was pretty sure that wasn't Mikey's intent, he was pretty sure that Mikey's intent was to get them photographed together and convince Ryan to continue to pretend to be boyfriends, if not actually be boyfriends… but Zack looked like he needed the reassurance that Ryan hadn't, in fact, been dating Mikey all along.
He'd not dressed up, he wasn't sure it was worth the effort yet, he had changed four times before he'd settled on the jeans and t-shirt he was wearing. Luckily no one had been in the room with him because it would have given the game away that he wasn't going to the bookstore.
He had a hat and a coat, no scarves because that had been the last album and while they were still touring it they'd moved on to working on their third and he hadn't figured out what the style of that one was going to settle at yet.
"Ryan," Mikey smiled at him, leaned over the table and kissed his forehead. Zack settled in at the next table.
There was coffee on the table and a chocolate, chocolate chip muffin waiting for him.
"How?"
"Bob talked to Spencer," Mikey leaned back in the booth, Ryan tore at his muffin and took a sip of his coffee, all the while not looking at Mikey. Because the muffin was his favorite and his coffee was exactly the way that he liked it and Mikey looked beautiful and relaxed and sort of happy to see him and Ryan didn't get to keep the things that looked like Mikey.
"Are you going to break my heart Ryan Ross?" Mikey asked, voice low and soft.
He was honest and he smiled to soften the blow.
"No… but I think you might break mine."
Mikey went with him to the bookstore.
"You told your guys you were going, let's not make a liar out of you just yet," Mikey said. Their hands brushed together as they walked, talking in quiet voices.
Zack trailing behind them with a disapproving look, possibly he was being confronted with images of the number of ways that Pete would attempt to kill Ryan that he would then have to thwart.
Mikey left him alone for an hour in the bookstore, Ryan didn't know what he was looking at but by the time he reappeared at Ryan's elbow, Ryan had four books and was contemplating a fifth that he'd heard good things about but hadn't liked the last three things the author had written.
Mikey looked at the book, looked at Ryan and gently pulled the book from Ryan's hands and placed it back on the shelf.
"You won't like it," he said then steered Ryan towards the front of the store and the registers. Zack still looked unhappy at the turn of events that had Mikey putting a hand low on Ryan's back and brushing his lips against his temple.
Ryan didn't see the cameras but he knew they were there, even as he turned and flashed a quick smile at Mikey that Mikey returned not at all hesitantly.
"In for a penny, in for a pound."
"It'll be worth it, Ryan. I promise. When you've got Pete Wentz at your beck and call and someone to help you deal with him…it'll all be worth it," Mikey whispered against his temple. "When we've got you pressed between us, when you can't think or feel anything but us, it'll all be worth it."
Ryan shivered, he couldn't help himself.
"I haven't agreed to anything yet, and maybe I don't want Pete anymore."
He could feel Mikey's lips curve against his skin and barely heard the murmured, "liar."
Mikey dropped him off at the front door of the hotel, a quick press of lips against his, arms warm around his shoulders as he held him in a tight hug before releasing him back to the care of his bandmates.
Ryan could feel Zack scowling at him but couldn't bring himself to care.
"I haven't made a fool of you, Zack. I promise," Ryan said, because this man was responsible for keeping insane fans away from him and Ryan still wanted him to want to do that in the morning.
"That looked like a boyfriend to me," Zack said, he sounded angry.
"It was a first date," Ryan said, he pressed his fingers to his lips, he usually didn't kiss until at least the third.
"You took me on your first date?" Zack asked, now he sounded amused and Ryan would rather he find amusement on his behalf instead of be mad at him.
Ryan rolled his eyes, because like Zack would have let him wander around by himself while they were on tour.
"You took Mikey Way to a bookstore for your first date?"