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"I'll bet you twenty dollars," says Marissa. These are dangerous words. That's In-N-Out money right there.
You have to sign a waiver to ride the mechanical bull at Willie's. At face value this is so the establishment doesn't risk getting sued for any too-drunk idiots breaking an arm or leg or collarbone from getting thrown, but in reality it is so you can spend a minimum of five minutes filling out tedious paperwork and really, really thinking on what you're about to do. Ryland becomes less and less sure that the possibility of a double double with fries and- according to Marissa- a "gay little" strawberry shake is worth it with every box of personal information he completes, but while he is historically a quitter and a weenie and extremely happy to not do something if he really doesn't want to, he also knows that if he walks back to his best friend now she will never let him live this down.
The line to ride the bull is long, which is even worse. Now he gets to think about it.
Marissa claps her hands in delight while taking a long pull from her Blue Moon by grabbing the mouth of the bottle with her lips and tipping her head back. It's a party trick that she perfected solely for the purpose of drinking hands-free, but apparently is fantastic at appealing to girls. Ryland wouldn't know. He sees the point of the original intent, obviously, but the second part has been deemed useless by a collection of experiences, including one very eye-opening breakup that sort of stripped the paint off his soul a little, that resulted in him deciding that fucking other people, much less dating them, was clearly not something he was cut out for and thus not something he ever wanted to do. It's not sour grapes if there's a name on the internet for it. Really.
"Stop looking excited," he says, spinning the almost empty plastic cup of beer between his hands. It's an IPA, probably. It's also terrible. He just needed something to do with his hands. "You want me to fall off."
"No I don't," Marissa insists, "I actually want you to succeed. Really. But it would be funny if you did fall off, so I win either way."
"If I fall off, I'm emailing Dr. Schoffer and telling him that your grandma didn't actually die, and you asked for that extension on your lab write up so you could drive two and a half hours to Joshua Tree for an orgy."
"First of all," Marissa says, pointing the neck of her beer bottle at his face, "it wasn't an orgy. It was a foursome with a throuple. An orgy requires more than six people."
He frowns. "No it doesn't."
"Yes it does! Also, how the fuck would you know?"
Ryland shrugs, giving his cup another spin to emphasize the point. "Because there's logic to these things, okay?"
Marissa gives him a flat stare you could balance a brimming glass of water on. "Uh huh. Okay. I'm gonna start putting up fingers, and you tell me to stop when I get to how many people you've ever had sex with." Holding the expression, she raises one finger, then two, then-
"Stop- stop it," he says, throwing up his hands in defeat and also confirmation. "I just realized I don't care about any of this."
"It's fine that you've only had sex with three people. I think you're valid, by the way."
"Don't ever say that to me again." He rolls his eyes, but hides a smile just under the brim of his cup as he takes a sip. "Let's talk about you. Let's talk about your problems. Are there any girls here tonight you haven't slept with?"
"Yeah, most of the straight ones," Marissa says blithely. "Oh, I hooked up with your lab partner's fiancee last week. Look normal by the way, he's coming over."
"What?" says Ryland to the first part, mouth half-full of beer, and then when he finishes processing the words "fiancee" and "look normal" and "coming over" he blanches so hard that half the mouthful goes directly down the wrong pipe, the other launching out in a spectacular spit take that he, with milliseconds to spare, manages to turn and complete with Marissa out of the line of fire.
The hacking coughs to clear out his airway make his vision go fuzzy for a moment, so that he only realizes he's choking directly onto a pair of beer-splattered steel toes when one of them steps forward, and a warm, familiar hand is firmly patting his back. "Jesus," he wheezes, and then, brain finally finishing up its calculations to arrive at the who and what and where, "Oh shit."
"Hi Rocky," says Marissa pleasantly. Over Ryland's head, she hands him a napkin. "How's your night going."
"Is Grace dying?" Rocky asks, giving Ryland's back a final pat before choosing to rest his hand there. It's unclear why, but it honestly feels kind of nice and Ryland isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. They're nice hands. Uncommonly warm.
"No, I just told him I hooked up with Adrian." She looks down at him bemusedly. "Ry, I don't think I've ever seen anyone do an actual spit take in real life."
"You have a fiancee?" Ryland croaks. He sits up slowly, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, and the one pressed against the small of his back disappears. Despite the mugginess of the bar and the sweat already beading at the sides of his nose, he finds he misses it almost immediately. Weird. Whatever.
"Yeah, since I was twelve," Rocky says. "Our families arranged it. Are you sure you're not dying?" He takes one of the napkins and, without asking, reaches over to dab at Ryland's mouth. Ryland can feel Marissa's eyebrows shoot up, but he can't imagine why. He and Rocky do this all the time. The other day they were studying together in the library, and for every Quizlet flashcard he got right, Rocky fed him a goldfish cracker. It made Ryland feel a little like a horse, but it also meant he didn't have to stop typing in the other open tab on his computer.
"I'm- I'm fine. Marissa, are you telling him to his face that his fiancee cheated on him with you?"
"No, no, no. We're open," says Rocky. Marissa, a midwesterner and thus inherently suspicious of all things polyamorous (and also the victim of UChicago's famously unethically nonmonogamous lesbian dating scene during her undergrad), rolls her eyes.
"Yeah, and you guys need to snake your shower drain."
"How do you-?" Ryland starts, but Rocky immediately bowls over him.
"I've been telling our landlord- I'm just gonna do it. If you know anyone who owns a drain snake, let me know."
"I have one," says Marissa, "you can borrow it."
"Why do you have a drain snake?" Ryland asks. Rocky hasn't moved away since cleaning him up with the napkin, and his leaning in to talk to Marissa has put him almost directly between Ryland's legs, spread where he sits on the barstool. He feels a weird tingle just behind his sternum, like a full body shudder condensed into one spot. The heat radiating off Rocky is, as always, tremendous.
Marissa waves her hand back and forth dismissively. "I stole it from my ex. Everybody always needs one of those. By the way, Rocky, Ry is going to ride the mechanical bull and if he stays on for more than a minute I'll give him twenty dollars. You want to get in on this?"
"Do I want twenty dollars for riding the bull?" Rocky echoes. "Because I'm not putting money on this. Grace is a wimp."
"Hey," Ryland protests. Rocky gives him one of the most common expressions he's seen on his face: a condescending little smile with just enough of a twinkle in his eye to be endearing. "A little faith would be, y'know, not unappreciated."
"Sure, probably," says Rocky. "But I don't have any. I could bench press you. Marissa could bench press you. Adrian could probably-"
"Alright, alright, I get it," he grumbles. "Everybody is a gym bunny for some reason."
"Welding PPE is heavy," Rocky says by way of explanation. "Spend a week walking around in it for eight hours a day; see how you feel. Anyway, my money's on the bull."
As if on cue, Marissa taps him on the shoulder and points to the TV screen to the left of the bull's inflated enclosure. "You're up next, cowboy."
"Jesus." Ryland rubs his face with his hands and moves them around to scrub at the back of his neck, smearing the sweat collected just above the collar of his t-shirt.
"It can't hurt to ask the guy for help," Marissa quips. Ryland shoots her a glare from the gap between his bicep and forearm. He's going to tip off and into a spectacular face plant within a few seconds, and they both know it.
"I don't care if I win or lose this," he says, sliding off the stool and barely missing colliding with Rocky's chest. It is, he can objectively admit, a torso indicative of the guy's future profession. "Marissa, you're buying me another beer after. Rock, you can get the third."
"What an honor," Rocky says flatly. He slings an arm around Ryland's shoulder and starts to usher him towards the bullpen. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. Up you go."
"Are you herding me? I'm not a horse."
"Never said you were." Rocky has a couple inches on him, which makes it easy for him to swing Ryland around and push him towards the steps that lead up into the pen. "Horses are more coordinated. Nomative determinism is wasted on you."
"Nomative- what?" Ryland ignores the bored-looking server holding the gate open for him and spins to face Rocky, hands on his hips. "I feel like half the time I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Nomative determinism," Rocky repeats. "Personal traits determined by name. See, it's funny. Grace," he says meaningfully. "You might prove me wrong, though. I don't see any sliding glass doors around here."
Ryland feels himself flush with a combination of indignation and embarrassment, which tends to happen a lot whenever he and Rocky hang out. "Okay. Okay that was one time-"
"Sir, I'm gonna have to ask you to get on the mechanical bull or get out of line," interrupts the server. She swings the gate to the bullpen back and forth meaningfully, and Ryland takes the hint.
"Right, yeah, sorry," he says with a nod, then looks over his shoulder to point a finger at Rocky. "One time."
"More than one. I'll tell you later," he says. "Go, go, go."
Ryland narrows his eyes as he climbs the stairs, straining to remember which second incident involving a sliding glass door Rocky could possibly be referring to. The first one is pretty unequivocally memorable; it was almost midnight at some professor's gargantuan LA beach house and he had showed up to the dinner in what barely counted as cocktail attire, holding himself back from nodding off for a solid four hours of polite conversation and meaningless chatter and thinking, well, at least no one had asked him about the funeral from the week before because he was not prepared to explain to a room full of his colleagues that he was now, at that tenuous age of twenty-five, an orphan. He had snuck down to the basement in search of a pillow to scream into (or maybe cry; he hadn't decided yet) when he noticed a path outside that clearly led down to the beach, and the promise of a few quiet moments alone with the waves and the big night sky had distracted him just long enough to not notice the person on the other side of the glass. The curious tapping had startled him just badly enough to walk directly into the door, a loud, crunchy thunk ringing out in the empty basement as a shooting pain overwhelmed his nose, and then he was suddenly kneeling on the floor and watching blood drip steadily onto the carpet while wondering distantly who would be stupid enough to bleed on the floor of a person they very much wanted a letter of recommendation from.
The door had opened. A pair of bare, sandy feet stepped into his line of view. Someone had kneeled down in front of him, touched his face very gently, and blinked at his obviously broken nose with a pair of huge, bespectacled brown eyes.
"Oh gross," said the person who was about to become one of Ryland's best friends. "Jesus fucking Christ that's nasty."
Ryland hadn't been able to stop giggling the entire car ride to the hospital. He was definitely hysterical, but the insane combination of misery and slapstick and definitely swallowing a bit of his own blood, only to be rescued by a guy who was blatantly trespassing on private property and didn't even seem ashamed about it, was kind of the final straw. The nurse at the check-in counter had asked the man with the brown eyes if his friend had a concussion.
"No," said brown eyes, "I think he just needs glasses". Which it turned out Ryland did.
So Rocky was the reason for the bump on his nose and the prescription lenses perched on it, which Ryland realizes only too late he had forgotten to hand off before getting on the bull. Fuck. Whatever. He's going to have to actually try not to fall off now.
He clambers on with, okay fine, a lack of grace that is definitely not befitting someone with his last name, but remembers enough about human biology and breakage points to wind the rope around both his clenched fists and brace his elbows tight up against his body. The server sits down at the control station and asks if he's ready, to which he gives a terse nod. He is, if nothing else, capable of sucking it up and muscling through.
A second before he feels the jerk of the machine beneath him, the song playing too-loud over the bar's speaker system changes: "Baby you a song, you make me wanna roll my windows down…" Ryland gets an abrupt and vicious flashback to the first college party he ever went to back in undergrad, when the playlist was a cacophony of songs that sounded all the same and all like this one. He looks over at the Touch Tunes near the bathrooms, where Marissa is standing unguardedly and unguiltily. She waves. He resists the urge to fuck up his grip and flip her the bird.
The bull starts moving and Ryland feels his heart jump into his throat. He gets, he remembers abruptly, very nervous and sick on elevators. It's the bottom-dropping-out part. He knows there's solid ground beneath him, but the jerk and whoosh of the floor either rising or falling in space does something to his animal hindbrain that results in all the blood draining from his face and a whorl of panic overtaking his gut. He actually threw up once, barely making it to the trash can on the next floor.
This is about a billion times worse.
A sound that can best be described as a meep! wrenches its way out of his throat, and he instinctively hunches his shoulders and tenses up. One of his lower eyelids twitches. The bass of the song thuds almost as loud as his heartbeat; he looks around wildly to send Marissa an absolutely withering glare, but she's disappeared into the crowd. Most of them are looking at him.
The rope slides against the outside of his wrists and burns, rubbing the skin raw as he holds on for dear life. He can see the bull's eyes actually fucking glowing, like the villian from The Last Unicorn come to life with the express purpose of giving him a panic attack at a dive bar. His thighs clamp down on the sides out of pure instinct, and he tears his gaze away from the surrounding onlookers in an attempt to focus. He can fall off, he just has to figure out how to do it in a way that doesn't break his glasses.
Okay, he thinks, okay. This is physics. I can physics my way out of this. You know physics. You love physics. This is fine. The bull jerks him violently to the left, and he shrieks at the top of his lungs.
"Grace!" someone yells out from the crowd, and he knows just by the choice of name that it's Rocky. Ryland finds him at the edge by the gate, waving one hand wildly to get his attention. "Grace! Lean in!"
"What does feminism have to do with this?" he yells, which breaks off into another shriek as the bull dips low. Rocky looks like he wants to throttle him.
"Why would I be talking about- are you fucking stupid? The bull! Lean into the bull!"
"Like forward?" He yelps as one leg comes unlocked and almost swings over the bull's shoulders. Miracle of miracles, the next jerk sends it flying back into its former position. Ryland's thigh is now sliding back and forth on the sides of the machine, but he's still hanging on. For now.
Rocky cups his hands around his mouth. "Into the movements! Move with it! Use your core as a stabilizer and keep your hips loose- no! No, Grace your hi- your hips! Jesus Christ-!"
"You're not being helpful!" Ryland shouts, yanking the reins back harder. Rocky throws up his hands in defeat.
"I am! You're hopeless! Just thrust! Fuck!"
"Thrust?!" The music is an active issue now, because surely that's not what Rocky just said. Surely he's not comparing riding a bull to having sex with somebody. That would be insane.
Just insane enough to work, supplies the part of his brain that also led to him doing molly for the first time, which ended with him (absolutely fucking busted), and Rocky (drunk, he thinks) lying on the beach almost a mile away from the bonfire and coming up with the most absurd possible constellations, after which Ryland's memory cuts out and he woke up at home with, for some fucking reason, lipstick on his cheek. He hasn't done molly since.
He's also never ridden, well, anything except a pony at the state fair one time. Which is fine. He's never really wanted to, anyway. Well, okay, he's thought about it from a conceptual level, but only because of the one time he walked in on Marissa boiling something in a large pot on her stove, and before she could stop him he was peering over her shoulder to ask what she was cooking, and there was a fucking penis in there; an actual pastel-pink silicone dick, and he was the one that shrieked in horror while Marissa went from mortified to scream-laughing at the concept of Ryland never having seen a dildo before. And then he thought about it that night- not her using it; gross, but the concept of owning one. Utilizing it, even. He was, obviously, aware of the existence of the prostate and the near-certainty of himself having one, but finding it just seemed like a lot of work for something he probably wouldn't even like. Since sex wasn't his thing. Because he was bad at it. There was just so much talking afterwards.
It might, theoretically, be different with someone he actually liked talking to, but Ryland had two friends in total and one of them was 1. not an option he would ever consider and 2. currently sleeping with his other friend's fiancee, apparently. And as for the other friend in question- well.
It obviously meant something, that Rocky knew the supposedly correct way to stay mounted on a bull and chose to convey that information via a simile about sex. Ryland didn't know the kind of sex Rocky was having. He hadn't thought about it much. And if he had, it had only been with the kind of abstract observation of Huh, Rocky is probably really good at sex due to his dexterity and physique, and that overbearing bossiness definitely translates to the bedroom, and hey, didn't he say he could definitely bench press you about five minutes ago? Do you want to play that back again? We're gonna play that back again.
He's still on the bull, Ryland realizes.
The timer on the big TV says forty seconds, which means there are twenty seconds between him and In-N-Out, but currently Ryland is far more interested in how the fuck he hasn't fallen off already. It feels like it's gotten a little bit easier, to be honest.
Then the bull swerves, and Ryland feels his hips instinctively move with it. They glide forward, then fall back as it jerks backward, settling into the movement of the machine.
There are a couple whoops from the crowd and he thinks two things simultaneously: Okay, let's do this and No one can ever know that I figured out how to do this by thinking about riding my best friend's dick.
He rolls his shoulders back, sticks his tongue in between his teeth to really concentrate, and tries to keep that relaxed feeling below the small of his back. He thinks about Rocky's hand there only a few minutes ago, long-fingered and steadying, and lets the ghost of the touch push and pull him along with the machine below. If it works, it works. And it's actually working.
The bull goes for a three-sixty spin and he grabs the rein in the direction of the turn just in time to pull it hard, leaning his hips into the movement and his waist away. The spin ends with an abrupt jerk, and Ryland lets his shoulders gently fall forward, thighs locked in place to catch himself. Ten seconds. He is going to grin like a motherfucker the whole way to the drive-thru.
The crowd starts counting down, and Ryland looks out to see if Rocky is still watching. He can't find him for a moment, stomach plummeting into his shoes, before he catches a glimpse of silver hair that curls nearly horizontal. Yeah, of course Rocky never left. That's his guy.
That's his guy looking at him like- oh.
Rocky's expression is entirely new to Ryland, which is practically unheard of at this point in their friendship. His arms are crossed over his chest, visible hand digging into the fabric of his flannel, forearms so tensed that the line where muscle dips over bone is visible. The lights of the bar are dim, but Rocky's pupils are more dilated than Ryland has ever seen them. They're boring straight into him, huge and black and swallowing every speck of brown they can get their hands on. He watches Rocky swallow, Adam's apple bobbing, and follows the tense line of his throat to the hard set of his jaw. One part of his bottom lip is pulled into his mouth, like a single tooth is biting down on it. He looks incredibly focused and even more pleased and basically- well he basically looks like he wants to eat Ryland alive.
Ryland realizes with a tremendous interior start that he honestly wouldn't mind that.
Why did it take this long? Why here? Why now? And most importantly: what the fuck? He feels all the cylinders firing in his brain screech to a halt, consumed with the alien feeling of want, of wanting to fuck someone, and the obvious information that said someone really wants to fuck him.
Before he even knows what's happening, there's air and then there's the wind being knocked out of him. He lands on his back with a loud thud, hitting the mat and sending his glasses nearly flying off his face. They land on the very tip of his nose, just barely held back by gravity. Ryland lets out a loud wheeze.
The server steps into the bullpen and helps him to his feet, giving him a terse, "Good job, man," before practically shoving him down the steps and into the crowd. Ears ringing a little, Ryland turns to see the time on the TV: one minute and two seconds.
Several people pat him on the back as he pushes through to where he last saw Rocky, but the guy's nowhere to be found. Marissa waves to him from the bar, and Ryland weaves through the last stubborn crush of people to collect his reward: fast food, yes, but most importantly in their friendship: bragging rights.
"Damn," she says, raising her eyebrows and holding up her hands. "Well fuck me, I guess. Holy shit, Ry!"
"Uh, thanks," he says, still looking around. "Have you seen Rocky?"
"I think he went outside," she says, and looks at him with something concerningly close to suspicion. "Why?"
"I have to- it's a thing- don't worry about it-" he finally settles on, which is weak as hell and they both know it but Marissa switches to a face that says she clearly wants no part in whatever's about to happen.
"You'll get your In-N-Out, man. Just go."
Outside the bar are several clusters of people smoking, the air reeking of cigarettes and vape juice and weed, but Rocky is the only one standing alone. He looks intimidatingly cool, a cigarette held delicately between two fingers while he fiddles with one rolled-up sleeve of his flannel. Ryland feels the sweat on his skin instantly dry in the cool air, but his nerves seem determined to close the gap.
"Hey," he says, already proud of himself for not opening with, So you looked like you wanted to fuck me stupid back there, and I'm kind of wondering if that's actually on the table? Also, please put that out on me. "You can put that out on me, if you want."
Rocky's eyebrows shoot up, and Grace freezes. Okay, maybe he should just walk into the street and lay down until a car comes. It's LA; it should only take about a few seconds.
"Are you serious?" Rocky asks, a laugh nearly swallowing the last half of the sentence. Grace shakes his head.
"Uh, no. Or maybe. I'm honestly kind of new to this- the sex thing, that is. Like, the wanting sex. I mean- not that I haven't wanted to have sex with the people I've had sex with before, but I haven't really wanted to have sex with them before; kind of a take it or leave it situation, and the last time I slept with someone I got halfway through and realized I would really rather be watching TV but obviously you can't say that to someone you're actively having sex with, except I think she realized I was trying to wrap things up really quickly because we ended up having this huge fight and I- I told you about the Linda thing, right- it wasn't great- but I feel like we sort of had this moment? Thing? In there? And this is the first time I've ever actively thought about what it would be like to have sex with someone before actually having sex with them, and wanted to do it, which is the new and weird thing for me in question and will you please stop fucking laughing?"
Rocky does not stop. Rocky drops the cigarette in order to put his hands on his knees and bend over, wheezing with laughter as Ryland sputters and grouses and tries not to look half as pathetic as he feels.
"N- Stop," Rocky finally manages, unfolding to full height and wiping fucking tears from his eyes. "Oh my god stop, I can't take any more. I'm gonna pull something. Jesus, Grace." He stubs out his cigarette with the toe of his boot and grabs the hem of Ryland's t-shirt with the other, toying with it in a way that makes Ryland flush so fast he gets a little dizzy. "For one of the smartest people I know, you can be really fucking stupid; you know that, right?"
"I'm one of the smartest people you know?" Ryland echoes faintly. Rocky's fingers are twisting the fabric of his t-shirt back and forth, and it's kind of doing things to his cerebral processing functions right now. Possibly irreparably.
"You're also one of the stupidest," Rocky tells him, "I said that, too. I feel like you're not listening to me."
"Uh huh," says Ryland, watching Rocky's fingers bunch up more fabric and pull him closer. He goes without even thinking.
"And I've been trying to fuck you since the second glass door, so good to know why that's been taking so long."
"No, yeah, absolutely-" he agrees, then stops. "Wait. Wait, you said second glass door thing."
Rocky grins. "I did."
"And you said it earlier tonight, too."
"Those are things I said, yes. Good job."
The praise shouldn't affect Ryland as much as it does. He feels himself immediately get a fourth of the way to hard regardless. "Yeah. So. Um. What was that all about, I guess?"
Rocky gives the hem of his t-shirt another tug and laughs again. "That time we went to the beach bonfire and you did molly, and we hung out on the beach until you started crying about probably not living long enough to see the era where humanity makes first contact, which is a little weird but mostly fucking adorable, and I was pretty much sober by that point so I drove us to the nearest gas station to get you ice cream, and you walked straight into the freezer door?"
Ryland doesn't remember that at all. It sounds like something he would definitely do, though. "Uh. No."
Another tug. Their chests are touching now, and Ryland feels the chill of the night disappear from the force of Rocky's body heat. "I mean, you didn't break your nose again," Rocky says casually, as if this is the most normal thing in the world and Ryland can't feel his blush going all the way down to his sternum. "But you did whack your cheek pretty hard. And you started crying again. So I asked if you wanted me to kiss it better, and you said yeah," and here he does a truly unfair imitation of Ryland's whine, but it's also kind of accurate, "so I thought yeah, this'll be funny, why the hell not, and when we got back in the car I got my lipstick out of the glove box and gave you a kiss on the cheek. And I thought hm, hey, that looks pretty good. I should do that again sometime. But you haven't asked since."
"For you to put on lipstick?" Ryland asks. Rocky looks at him like he really does think Ryland is the stupidest person he's ever met. He might be.
"No, Grace. For me to kiss you. You have to ask a lady if you want that." Rocky winks. Hoo boy.
"I mean- no, yeah. Would love that. For you to do." Ryland can't stop staring at his mouth. "Uh. Please?"
Rocky cocks his head, mouth turning up slowly enough that it's clear he knows where Ryland is looking. "Even without the lipstick?"
"Man, come on-"
Rocky kisses him. Even without the lipstick, it's pretty effective.