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They’re in a dressing room, a quiet, peaceful dressing room with lighting that’s not too bright and seats with no stains. Spencer is over by the vanity table, Doritos on his lap, his feet kicked up on the counter and happily munching. Jon is sprawled on the floor with one of Ryan’s guitars, messing around with melodies. Ryan, he’s just sitting, watching people come and go, venue staff he doesn’t know, and no one raises their voice or does anything particularly jarring.
Granted, Ryan has earphones in, and is oblivious to outside sound anyway. He lets his eyes fall shut and he wonders if he could sneak in a nap before they have to go on stage. He doesn’t know the time, and he doesn’t mind either.
Unfortunately, the peace is shattered when Brendon walks in, and Ryan doesn’t need to turn off his i-pod to hear him. He can hear him just fine.
“Guys, dudes, I found a ping pong table in one of the storage rooms, okay, and I figured I’d just borrow one of the bats for a while, because shit, I haven’t played with one of these in years, and hey did you know in middle school –-”
Ryan opens his eyes with a groan he’s pretty sure was not just internal. Brendon’s got a ping pong bat in his hands, and a ball bouncing on it furiously, and every time he hits it up in the air he lets out a cry that could probably be heard in Texas. And they were in Florida.
Brendon can never walk into a room and just be there; he has to be everywhere, all at once. He darts around the room, chasing after the plastic ball and Ryan can smell him, can see him everywhere he looks. The contrast to five minutes ago is startling, but Ryan gives up on five minutes ago.
He rips out the earphones and fixes a glare at Brendon. “Can you ever do anything quietly? Ever? Even just today?”
Spencer and Jon both tense, feeling the start of an argument brewing. Ryan knows because Spencer starts twirling on the chair and chewing louder, and Jon starts playing a song, a proper song in the efforts of distracting Brendon, probably.
But Brendon is focused on Ryan. His steady batting ends as his eyes pull away from the ball and land on Ryan’s, and the ball finally rolls under the one of the cabinets, never to be seen again. Brendon smiles, a smile that should probably be more worrying than anything else, and abandons the racket in favor of crawling up on the couch beside Ryan.
“I can be quiet,” he says, voice straining to a low whisper. Brendon’s best attempt at a whisper, anyway. “I can definitely do quiet.” His eyes glint a little bit and Ryan looks away.
He doesn’t know why Brendon chose to sit on top of him when there was an empty sofa right across from him, as well as two armchairs beside it. He also doesn’t know why Brendon’s presence beside him makes him feel like his lungs are restricted. Their shoulders touch, just barely, and Brendon steals one of Ryan’s earbuds from his lap, and grins one more time at him, before lodging it in his ear.
Ryan doesn’t know why, but it doesn’t mean he’s not used to it.
+++
The guys were playing hacky sack over on the loading lot at the back of the venue -- Jon, Zack, Brendon, the bus driver, and two techs.
It was hot out, and they were down south in the deep summer, so everything is sticky and almost hotter than Ryan remembers Vegas being. Brendon’s shirt is long gone, and his collar bones were showing, his rib cage was showing, his hip bones – it was all there and covered in sweat, and Ryan starts taking quicker drags of his joint.
He was crouched a little way off, his back against their bus, almost hidden in the shade. He still had a clear view of everything, but it was quieter. He’s pretty sure it’s the effect of the weed when he starts seeing multiple Brendons jumping around the parking lot. One was bad enough.
The door opens, suddenly, and Ryan startles at how close it is. He also has to tear his eyes away from Brendon, and when he looks up, Spencer is slowly making his way down the steps, a beer in his hand. “Hey Ryan. What are you do-”
He follows Ryan’s gaze over to the guys, and then looks back at Ryan. Ryan, for one, didn’t like the look he was getting. “It was too hot in the sun,” he explains. “It’s fucking warm today, have you noticed?” He gestures towards his half opened shirt, the joint clasped firmly between his fingers.
Spencer just snorts, his All Knowing gaze still present. “Right. There’s A/C on the bus, just so you know.” He begins to trail off in the direction of the support band’s bus.
“Although, there’s no shirtless Brendon on the bus,” he throws over his shoulder, entirely too smug.
Ryan’s hand tightens on his knee and quickly glances over at Brendon to make sure he didn’t hear. Brendon’s still yelling and cursing and digging his arm into Jon’s to throw him off balance. Ryan takes a deep breath, exhales the smoke.
Of course, that’s when Jon notices him. “Hey, Ryan smoked up without us,” he calls out, amusement in his voice. Brendon looks more affronted. “What?!” he exclaims, turning around. He catches Ryan’s eye, who’s still slumped against the bus. Ryan silently curses Jon, and the hot weather.
Brendon bounds over and stops in front of him, a frown etched into his features. “Not fair, Ross,” he mutters, and leans down and plucks the joint from Ryan’s fingers. Ryan doesn’t bother putting up a fight. He probably couldn’t even if he wanted to -- his brain felt like it was a melting pot and nothing would actually melt, leaving him sluggish and fuzzy. He couldn’t phrase his thoughts clearly.
In his defence, he was suitably high, and Brendon was shirtless, his red boxers visible at the top of his rolled-up jeans, and he was right there.
Brendon, with the joint sticking out of his mouth, crouches down and gets into the same position as Ryan, his back hitting the side of the bus and his feet scuffing the ground. Nothing ever was done quietly, not with him.
Ryan once again notices all the space Brendon could be occupying that wasn’t right beside him. He didn’t know why that was starting to make him feel giddy.
Brendon passes him back the joint, and Ryan makes a noise of disproval at how little there was left of it. “Asshole,” he murmurs, and Brendon giggles beside him, his head tilted back against the metal.
The guys continue with the game of hacky sack, and Brendon stays where he is. “Man,” Brendon whines. “It’s fucking hot. Fuck Florida.”
Ryan laughs, not really at Brendon, but at everything really. Probably the pot having fun with his brain. He tips his head back to match Brendon’s, and glances over at him, watches his stomach rise and fall as he breathes in, out, and in.
+++
They’re on the road, somewhere in between Tampa and Jacksonville, and Ryan’s in the lounge with the A/C whirring in the background. He’s got a guitar on his lap, and Bukowski’s Love is a Dog From Hell turned over beside him, temporarily marking his page.
His fingers move over the strings, slowly, and he finds the chords he wanted for a melody that wouldn’t leave him alone.
That’s when Brendon strolls in, the door banging behind him. Ryan is quick to grab his book and put it on the coffee table, because he knows Brendon won’t even see it and will proceed to sit on it.
Brendon predictably slumps down beside him on the couch with a sigh. Ryan can smell whatever body spray he’s using, and the shampoo he washed his hair with last night.
Ryan raises his eyebrows at Brendon, because he isn’t as elated as he usually is. Not that Ryan is complaining, but well, he would want to know if anything was wrong.
Brendon just shakes his head minutely, and makes grabby hands for the guitar. Ryan, surprised at his own compliance, hands it to him willingly and sits back. He watches Brendon’s own fingers play for a while, picking out parts of songs that they had talked about covering, maybe on the next tour.
Ryan still doesn’t like how his body is thrumming with Brendon’s presence, an electric self-awareness that he can’t control. But he thinks that he could sleep, if he tried really hard. His eyes are already shut.
But that’s just when he hears the music stop, hears Brendon put down the guitar.
His eyes shoot open and he jumps in surprise when Brendon’s face is much closer than he expected. He’s leaning towards Ryan, a look that Ryan can’t really decipher playing across his eyes. All Ryan can think of is that this was the quietest he's ever seen Brendon, ever.
“Ryan, you have to – I don’t –” He shuts his eyes; Ryan watches his fingers clench on the seat between them. On an impulse, he does what the tingling in his fingers keeps telling him to do.
He twists, reaches over and cradles Brendon’s face, drags him closer until their lips meet, and then they’re kissing, open and slow. Brendon makes a noise somewhere in his throat – of surprise or something else, Ryan doesn’t know.
After several minutes of kisses that were made for this – for first kisses in the back lounge of the bus – Ryan gets restless and his back gets sore. His hand traces up the side of Brendon’s thigh and his other arm wraps around his waist and he tugs him over, until both his knees are planted on either side of Ryan and Brendon is straddling his lap.
“Ryan,” he breathes and leans down, kissing him again. “Ryan, Ryan, Ryan.”
Ryan wants to say ‘Brendon’ back, but he can’t, because Brendon opens his mouth up for him again and licks into it, sucks on his tongue, until all Ryan can do is keen and make small, barely contained noises that get swallowed into Brendon’s mouth.
Brendon pulls back and starts making his way down Ryan’s jaw to his neck, trailing kisses as he goes. He sucks bruises onto Ryan’s collarbone and Ryan flexes his hand where it’s pinned behind Brendon’s back.
Slowly, he inches his hands down to Brendon hips and pulls, until Brendon shifts and his hips slide into place with Ryan’s, causing them both to groan in unison.
Brendon rolls his hips, experimentally, and slips his hands under Ryan’s shirt, bunching it up so he can span his fingers over the dips in his ribcage. Ryan tugs Brendon’s face back up to his so he can kiss him again, this time faster and shallow, and whimpers encouragement against his mouth.
By the time Ryan grinds his hips up in counterpoint to Brendon, his brain has checked out and he can distantly feel his hands shaking on Brendon’s hipbones, like they’re not actually connected to him. He knows he should be embarrassed by the effect that Brendon has him, but he hasn’t had contact with someone like this in ages, and it’s Brendon. It’s Brendon, it’s Brendon, it’s Brendon.
“Brendon,” he murmurs, breathlessly at this stage. His mouth is still moving with Brendon’s, hips moving with Brendon’s, and the rhythm they had set up gradually becomes more frantic. When Ryan’s body shudders and his head falls back into the couch as he comes, Brendon is only a second away, and he follows him over the edge with a low moan that Ryan makes an effort to etch into his memory forever.
Brendon, slowly, wraps an arm around Ryan’s waist and rests his head on his chest, putting all his weight on Ryan. Ryan is still too in shock to notice, and his mind that was fuzzy and insistent now feels clear.
They’re both breathing together against each other’s chests, loud and exhausted, and they hadn’t even taken off their jeans. Ryan almost laughs at the whole thing.
But then Brendon looks up at him, his eyes shining, and Ryan thinks he’d do anything to keep it like this, to keep everything quiet and away from the world.
“Christ,” he mutters, voice rough and scratchy, like he’s been yelling for days, the opposite to what he’s been doing, in fact. Brendon tucks his face back into the crook of Ryan’s neck, and when Jon storms into the lounge to look for his phone charger he stops dead when he sees Brendon on Ryan’s lap. Ryan glances at him under his hair that’s fallen into his eyes, and there’s a second of silence before Jon bursts out into laughter.
And when Ryan feels Brendon laugh into his skin he laughs too, body shaking, and thinks, Screw the silence.
+++
They’re on a different highway in a different state, and his eyes open at what his watch tells him is three in the morning. There’s no light shining through the gap in his bunk curtain, which means everyone has turned in for the night.
He shifts in the sheets, and feels like something is missing. Now that everything is still inside him, the stillness in the air feels too empty without Brendon.
He’s contemplating reaching into his bag for his i-pod when he hears shuffling in the bunk below him. In a second, his curtain is pulled back and he can just about make out Brendon standing there, his hair sticking up in places but his eyes wide and alert, like he hasn’t been able to sleep either.
“Hey,” he murmurs, and pulls the curtain back further. “Move over.”
Ryan thinks that in some other lifetime he might have protested, at least even to prove he’s not a pushover. Except now Ryan's had to pretend for too long, and he grabs Brendon’s arm as he climbs in, and tries not to smile as he settles himself behind Ryan, wrapping his skinny arm around him.
“I like your bunk,” Brendon whispers against his shoulder, sleep finally tugging at his words and slurring them slightly. “Nicer than mine.”
Ryan breathes a laugh and searches for Brendon’s hand with his own, twisting their fingers together when he finds it. “Just because my bunk has me in it, obviously.”
Brendon doesn’t even deny it. Ryan is pretty sure he’s asleep.
He’s also pretty sure he likes the quiet better when Brendon is in it.