[It doesn't usually bother him much anymore. It's rare for Ryan to get worked up over a show, and they don't exactly play a lot of the kinds of gigs that would bother him. The whole situation is pretty outside their norm. Usually if he thinks about it, it's just out of gratefulness that that isn't his life anymore. That they're doing better for themselves, together.

He's never talked much about his bad gigs because he's never really needed to. The most he's ever said was that the tour went badly, not how or why. Some of it early on was admittedly fear - as though telling Min would psyche him out, or make him change his mind - but most of it is what it always is. Ryan keeping negative things to himself.]

Because...

[He hesitates, wavering on whether he really wants to share or not. But he pushes down the impulse that it's stupid and overdramatic, especially when the show went well. He's being actively weird and at this point not telling Min why feels more like hiding it and making him worry more.

So, he takes a deep breath and steels himself.]

...A lot of my gigs towards the end were barely even gigs? Stuff where I was just underpaid background noise. Like, you could have replaced me with a boom box and not a single person would have even noticed.

[It feels like a lot, but it's still not giving details. He's still working up to details, eventually. Maybe.]

I was...desperate, I guess. Taking literally whatever for enough gas money to get to the next place, when I still had Dad's van. [Another story he's only told the absolute barest minimum of. He gave it away, with no elaboration whatsoever.] And it sucked. And I...thought it was going to be like that. I guess.