Chapter Text
I cannot believe I ever had the nerve to be upset about not having Brendon back in Machias, because missing him when he’s actually mine is like the ninth circle of hell. At least when I thought it was over I didn’t have to live with all this anticipation, or all these damn phone calls where I have to think about how he’s just out of reach. This is the first time we’ve had to be apart for more than a couple days since we started living together, and it’s only been two weeks, sure, but I think it might just kill me.
I’m staying with Spencer, and by extension, his girlfriend, in London while I record this EP. The label wanted me to work with some producer out here, and I agreed reluctantly because you do what you have to, but I didn’t realize it was scheduled for the same time that Brendon had to be in Chicago. Now Jon has to deal with his moping, Spencer has to deal with mine, and I’m kind of surprised that neither of them have strangled us at this point.
At two PM the phone rings, and Spencer doesn’t even look up from his paper as he says “that’s for you.” he’s right, it’s eight AM in Chicago, and Brendon is usually due at the studio at nine thirty, so he’ll be having coffee now. He always calls before he leaves. He’s almost done recording now, and I’m just waiting around for some meetings next week, but we still can’t get away from our respective obligations yet, and it’s fucking killing me.
We call every day, sometimes more than once, and I think we’re going to owe Jon and Spencer thousands of dollars for all these international calls, but I don’t even care because it’s the best we have.
“Am I speaking to Angel Eyes?” Brendon asks me playfully, referencing that stupid fucking codename I used back in the Followers days. I can practically see the grin on his face as he says it, and it makes my stomach flip over a little.
“Barbi Benton, sorry,” I return playfully. He laughs on the other end of the line, and Spencer snorts from the other side of the table. “What’s up?” I ask, taking a sip of my second cup of coffee of the day.
“Nothing new since yesterday,” he says, sighing. “You?”
“Same.” After a pause I add “I miss you,” kind of pathetically, and I can practically feel Spencer rolling his eyes across from me.
He says “I miss you too,” and then, after some shuffling, I hear him say “fuck off, you know exactly who it is,” to someone on the another end of the line. Jon, I assume.
My assumption proves correct when I hear some struggling, and then Jon says “hey, Ryan,” into the phone.
“Hi, Jon.”
“Could you guys maybe be less clingy for, like, a day? My phone bill is going to be insane.”
I roll my eyes at him, and I’m in the process of coming up with a snarky reply when Brendon manages to steal the phone back. He says “sorry about that,” kind of breathlessly, and I find myself grinning again.
“Tell Jon to fuck off.”
“Ryan says fuck off,” I hear him say, then a pause, followed by “Jon says fuck you.”
“No, that’s your job,” I return. He laughs, and something pulls hard at my chest. “I love you,” I say after the call lapses into silence, a little softer than I mean to, feeling like the words are practically getting ripped out of me. I love him, I love him, I love him. It fills up every fiber of my being. God, do I love him.
“I love you too, baby,” he replies, and my insides feel all warm at the pet name. I feel like a fucking teenager. I hear Jon make exaggerated kissing noises at the phone, followed by what sounds like some scolding from Cassie, and I think that maybe I’m not the only one who’s acting like a teenager, actually.
Eventually he has to go, and we do the whole sappy goodbye thing long enough that Spencer rolls his eyes and kicks me in the shin, a clear ‘would you guys shut the fuck up,’ look on his face. I hang up, reluctantly, and allow myself about five seconds of staring forlornly at the phone.
So maybe it turns out that being in a stable relationship makes me really goddamn annoying, which is unfortunate because past experience has proved that not being in a stable relationship has the exact same effect. This makes me much less self-destructive, though, so I suppose we can all be grateful for that.
----------
There’s this patch of purple flowers just behind Spencer’s house, at the base of this big evergreen. It’s nice just outside of London, really. I’m glad he doesn’t live in the city proper. I wouldn't have felt that way a few years ago, I would have wanted to be in the center of the city, right in the heart of it all, but I’ve settled down a lot since then. If Machias taught me one thing it was that I will not actually die if I let myself slow down.
I stare at those damn flowers as I scribble in my notebook where it’s resting on the railing of Spencer’s back porch, taking a drag from my cigarette with my other hand. I think I was drawing the tree, but it looked like shit, and now I’m just making random lines to feel my hand move against the paper. It’s so warm here compared to Chicago. Brendon told me earlier that they got six inches of snow last night, but here there are flowers growing. It’s warm, but I just feel absolutely frigid without him. Flowers in February, that’s kind of what he is, isn’t he? He’s like… this warm weather thing I get to keep all year. A fireplace in the winter, or some shit. It’s a stupid thought, sappy and annoying, but I write it down anyway because I can fill entire notebooks with sappy annoying bullshit about him. I have before, and I will again. I can’t help it.
I leave evidence of loving him all over. I shed it like a dog losing my winter coat. There’s all these bits of dumb poetry and half finished sketches that I leave on every surface available to me, because it’s involuntary at this point. Restaurant napkins that say things about morning sunlight, and feeling an absence just as heavy as the weight of his body on mine, lay strewn about Spencer’s house in random corners and pockets. Sometimes he makes fun of me for it, but sometimes he leaves them back in my jacket with notes like ‘I like this line,’ left innocuously next to some metaphor about birds. He knows I could never actually record most of these, because the pronouns are wrong, but the approval always feels nice, anyway.
I also sleep in his shirts, but they’re starting to lose their smell, and I’m trying really hard not to complain about that because it makes me sound like such a girl. Holy shit, I’d never hear the end of it if I honestly answered Spencer’s “what’s wrong?” with “my boyfriend's shirts don’t smell like him anymore.”
This sweater still does, though. I bury my face in the sleeve as I stub out my cigarette, closing my eyes as I inhale deeply.
“Jesus Christ, you are the gayest person I’ve ever met,” Spencer comments, startling me enough that I jump a little. He’s reading over my shoulder, I notice, and I shut the notebook quickly. Fuck, I didn’t even hear him come outside.
“You’ve met William,” I counter, stubbornly refusing to make eye contact with him.
“William doesn’t compare his boyfriend to flowers.”
“Oh, I bet you anything he does,” I shoot back, finally turning to look at him when he matches my posture, leaning on his forearms against the railing.
“Admitting that you act like William Beckett is not helping your case against being the gayest person I know.” He makes a wounded noise when I kick him in the shin, but I don’t feel bad. He deserved it.
We stare out at the yard for about a minute, quietly listening to the sound of the wind whipping through our hair and the ambient noises of London just off in the distance, before he speaks up again. “You miss him pretty bad, huh?”
I shrug. “You miss your girlfriend when you’re apart, right? Everyone misses people.”
“Not like you, though,” he says, knocking our shoulders together. “You’re kinda clingy, Ross.”
“Am not,” I say with a huff, looking down so my hair will fall in my eyes and prevent me from having to see him.
“I get it, you know? The first time you’re apart from the person you love like that it’s hard. I mean, you remember what I was like with Hayley the first time we went on tour.”
“This isn’t my first relationship, you know?” I say, still pointlessly acting like I’m going to get out of this conversation.
“It kind of is, actually,” he says. I turn to him, confused, and he tilts his head in thought as he looks out at the horizon. “It’s not technically , but you’ve never been with a guy this officially. The rest didn’t, like, count.” He turns to me then, and asks “you are gay, right? Like, actually. Cause I know you’ve been with women, obviously, but you don’t love women like this.”
I pause for a second, blinking at him. I take a breath and say “yeah… yeah, I’m gay.” That really shouldn’t feel like a huge admission with him, because he knows that, knows it well enough to joke about it, and I’ve known it for a long time now, but it somehow still registers as ‘the first time I’ve told him out loud,’ and I guess that’s supposed to be a big deal. He just nods at me, though, and turns back to look out at the view.
“Yeah, so it’s basically your first real relationship,” he says with a tone of finality. It’s weird when he puts it like that, almost pathetic, considering my age, but I do have to admit that he’s got a bit of a point. He squeezes my shoulder once, and says “it gets easier, promise, the whole missing him thing,” before walking back inside.
I don’t really believe him, because I’ve missed him for years, and I’ve never really gotten any better at it, but I don’t protest.
It’s not just missing him, either, is the thing. The real problem for me is not being able to confirm that we’re okay whenever I need to. Any time he can’t call when he usually does, or when he has to leave earlier than usual, or even just seems off on the phone for a second, some little nagging voice in my head tells me he’s realizing how much better it feels to live without me. It’s fucking stupid, I know that, because he constantly tells me how much he loves me and misses me, but I never claimed to be a particularly rational person.
I try to push all those thoughts out of my head, though, and follow Spencer back into the house.
----------
I wake up alone, as expected, but it still kind of stings to realize that Brendon’s not there beside me. I almost can’t believe how fast I got used to waking up with him, I’ve never gotten used to that with anyone before, but it already feels like it’s been that way forever. He is my default state, and this is now an unpleasant step away from home base.
At this point I wake up every day kind of freaked out, and continue to get more nervous every minute as I wait for him to wake up and fucking call me. Jesus Christ, maybe I am clingy.
I hear Spencer laugh from the kitchen as I leave his guest room, and I suppress the urge to groan at the thought of being forced to watch him and his girlfriend do their little domestic bliss thing for hours. I’m happy for him, and everything, I’m just a complete miserable asshole. At least he’s used to putting up with that from me, I guess.
I round the corner into the kitchen, scowl firmly in place, ready to aggressively pour myself a cup of coffee and frown out the window as I attempt to ignore the happy couple in front of me, when I stop dead in my tracks.
Brendon gives me a warm smile over his coffee, and says “hi, baby,” in an alarmingly casual tone. I blink at him dumbly.
Spencer grins broadly, gesturing to Brendon with both hands as if he’s presenting Wheel of Fortune, and says “I got you something!” He seems proud of himself, which should really be, like, sweet, or something, but I can’t focus on him right now because every fiber of my being is screaming ‘oh, thank god .’
Brendon sets his mug down on the counter next to him, beckoning to me with one hand, and I know I must move over to him comically fast because I hear Spencer laugh next to us as I practically throw myself at him. I touch him kind of frantically, my hands in his hair, on his back, grabbing at the fabric of his shirt. He smells like plane and coffee and cigarettes, but also his cologne and his sweat and him . I just barely have the foresight to walk us backwards until he’s braced against the counter, giving him something to lean on, before I throw a leg over his hip, wrapping myself around him and leaning heavily into him.
He laughs, and repeats “hi, baby,” his lips pressed into my neck.
I take a shaking breath, and laugh out a weak, “hi,” against his shoulder. I have so many questions, like how and why and how long , but when I open my mouth to say one of those what actually comes out is “fuck. Fuck, I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” he says, still laughing. I hitch my leg up a little higher on his hip, trying to, I don’t know, crawl under his fucking skin or something, and I don’t even care that Spencer is watching all of this, because I’m finally home.
He says “I love you,” and all the tension drains out of my body. He loves me, he still loves me. I know I shouldn't doubt that by now, but I’ve never had to be apart from him for this long and keep believing that he loves me. It turns out that it’s pretty hard to remember that when he’s not standing right in front of me. He’s standing in front of me now, though, and I finally let myself believe that, no, he didn’t decide to leave me after a taste of life apart again, he decided to let me come home early, instead.
I put almost all of my weight on him, and he takes it easily, just accepts it. I know he’s strong enough, or maybe I’m light enough, that he could support me if I wrapped my other leg around him, but I am actually still aware that Spencer is in the room, so I hold off on doing that. I finally feel myself start to smile against him, and I say “I love you too.”
He kisses me on the cheek, and I pull back finally, cupping his face in both my hands. I look at him for a second, just smiling as I stroke my thumb over his jaw. He hasn’t shaved in about three days, I can tell, and something about the familiarity of that is so comforting. I kiss him, hard, and he makes a soft noise into my mouth, opening his mouth for me to lick into. I tilt our heads, getting a better angle, and one of his hands moves from my waist to the back of my knee, pulling me closer.
Spencer clears his throat, and says “hey, no gay sex in my kitchen.”
Brendon pulls back, smiling at me fondly, and tells him “no promises.”
“If you fuck in my kitchen I am making you get a hotel,” Spencer says impatiently. When I finally turn to look at him, though, he’s smiling at me over his coffee. A hotel might not be a bad idea, actually, because I really want to have some loud enthusiastic reunion sex with him at some point soon, but I store that thought away for later.
“Why are you here, anyway?” I finally manage to ask, turning back to Brendon. “I thought you had two more weeks in Chicago.”
“I did, but I’m done with the recording part at least, and it’ll be another week before the mixing is done, so I managed to beg off of the waiting part.” He strokes up and down my side a little, and I play with the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. “Also, Spencer called me while you were out the other day to beg me to make you less insufferable, and Jon wouldn't stop complaining about the phone bill,” he laughs.
“Say ‘thank you, Spencer,’” Spencer demands playfully, sounding self-satisfied.
I laugh, pressing my face back to Brendon’s shoulder to hide the heat I can feel rising to my face, and mumble “thanks, Spence.”
“You’re welcome,” he returns, and I hear the sound of him leaving his chair, then grabbing his keys. I turn around to look at him questioningly, and he says “I gotta go pick up Alison.” He walks to the door, and I press into Brendon's neck again, just breathing him in.
Spencer yells “no gay sex in my kitchen, Ryan! I mean it!” as he closes the door, and I feel Brendon’s laugh from where I’m pressed against his chest.