Archive of Our Own ^beta

The tour starts in Florida, and Brendon’s on center stage under the hot lights with the screams starting up again, louder and louder every time he shakes his hips, and he’s missed this like oxygen. He can't help grinning helplessly over at Jon, who looks dapper in his dark coat; he can’t see Spencer without turning around, but he can hear him pounding away at the drums, and man, he kind of misses the old kit's light-up glow, but the new set-up’s kind of awesome, even though Spencer’s sitting so high up and far away.

(“I don’t see a problem,” Spencer had said when this point was raised during planning, “we’re just, you know, setting things up like they should be.”

“What, you should be up way above us, having to look down?”

“Duh.”)

On his right, Ryan has his head down, focusing on his fingers as he finishes the bridge, cap shadowing his eyes. Brendon waits until he looks up, waits for the triumphant flick of his head that signals the change; Ryan grins at him, and Brendon beams, nervousexcited, back.

He steps up to the mic again and starts to tell the audience about a dream, running through a field of flowers towards a lover. As he talks, he moves towards Ryan and the screams rise and rise, shock and surprise and sheer glee welling up into a wall of sound. Brendon hates to give credit but Spencer and Ryan were totally right about this.

He and Ryan play it out like in rehearsal: a certain amount of steps, a certain amount of closeness – he drives his hips forward, reaches out towards Ryan’s cheek – and then when Ryan jerks his chin at him incrementally, the sign, he snaps back, peeling away, and says dramatically into the mic, “But this is not that dream.”

It hadn't been Brendon’s idea, not really. Well, in a way, it kind of was, but only if you squinted and sort of tilted your head to the side. Brendon had been more of a muse, really, to Ryan the fucking insane artiste.

Only, Brendon has the idea that muses are supposed to lie on couches all swoony and pale and passive, and stuff, sighing deeply every now and then. Or maybe they’re supposed to have really happening curls and do high-kicks on the side of pottery vases, but he might have picked that idea up from Disney, and he hasn’t really been able to trust them since they killed off Simba’s dad, because that was really, really harsh.

So maybe not a muse, then. Maybe the midwife to Ryan’s stupid, stupid ideas. Only, like, masculine. A mid-man.

And now he’s thinking of himself holding Ryan’s hand while Ryan screams and swears in the throes of labor, and it’s like that horrible scene from Alien only with ABBA or Cher or whatever playing, and strobe lights, and then he has to scrub his brain, so maybe not a midwife, either.

But the point is, he was just the inspiration; this is in no way his fault.

(“BALLET DANCERS GETTING NAKED,” Jon wrote down carefully in his notebook, tongue caught in his teeth. He paused, squinted at the huge, blocky capitals, then uncapped the sharpie again and added “!!!”.

“Well, what else are we going to do?” Ryan said impatiently. “That’s good, but it’s not really different.”

Spencer had leapt in. “We could get a- ”

“We’re not having live animals on stage, and that’s final.” Ryan paused. “Brendon doesn’t count.”

“Oh, that’s not what you said in bed last night, Ross,” Brendon said, as a joke, a joke! And okay, maybe he then pursed up his lips and blew loud smacking air kisses in Ryan’s direction.

But it had been a joke - it was just, you know, just what he did. Spencer could just sit there and stare at you, if he wasn’t in the mood to play, and Jon would just grin easily and sometimes pat him on the head; but Ryan would go red and duck his head, and maybe shove him, or get all pissy and definitely shove him, and either way, there was always something, it was always fun, there was always a reaction.

He stopped blowing kisses and noticed that the others were staring at him. Well, Spencer and Ryan were; Jon was drawing lopsided little hearts and squiggly little cats into the margins of the notebook.

Spencer and Ryan exchanged those serious, lengthy glances that they used when other people, normal people, actually had a conversation, and then Ryan said slowly “That’s – that’s actually a good idea, considering.”

“Yeah,” Spencer said, “they’ll love it, and it’ll cost less than hiring a matador.”

“What?” Brendon demanded, “love what?”

“G-A-Y,” Jon scribbled down obediently, and added with a flourish of sharpie, “KISSING!!!”)

Brendon has to stand by the statement that it was not his fault.

But, you know, the actual staging was kind of fun. Spencer was right, they totally loved it. And Brendon loved it, too; loved walking across the stage, parroting his spiel about sunflower fields, and hearing the screaming reach a fevered pitch, the energy pulsing and battering. He fucking loves making them scream. (On the stage, that is, it’s a little more annoying when you don’t have your earplugs in and girls squeal, like, right in your ear; Brendon sometimes is seriously convinced that he’s going to be deaf before he’s thirty, and, you know, that’ll suck).

So, yeah, he enjoys hamming it up. One night straight after their third show, Atlanta (it's still the honeymoon period, when they’re all so happy to be back together, when playing shows is still an exhilarating novelty, when they’re not yet exhausted from the pace) they all walk offstage together, laughing, tired and exhilarated. Jon and Spencer whisper something that might be “hurry, showers”, the two-faced little schemers, and vanish before Brendon has even had time to unscrew the cap on the water bottle he’s snatched up.

The thump of the beat is still sounding in his veins, blood pounding in his ears, makeup streaked with sweat.

Ryan smiles at him, tired and jubilant. He takes off his cap and runs his hand through his soaked hair, and pulls his guitar strap over his head, handing it to a tech as they walk past.

“That was awesome, right?” Brendon asks over his shoulder, beaming, and his cheeks hurt, and he can’t remember right at this moment how he could have possibly been sick of this at the end of the last tour.

“Yeah,” Ryan says, catching up to him as they walk from the backstage area down towards the corridor, “yeah, that actually went really well –”

They grin at each other, and then Brendon just – he doesn’t even know why he does it, but one second he’s smiling at Ryan, screams from the crowd outside still ongoing, still audible, and the next he’s just, he’s just leaning in, lips brushing against Ryan’s, and he can smell him and feel the heat of his face. It's a dry swipe of lips against lips, nothing fancy, just -

And then he’s pulling back and Ryan looks about as pole-axed as he feels, frozen in place.

Brendon laughs nervously. “Um,” he says, suddenly desperate for something to do with his hands.

Ryan stares at him for a moment, and then he shakes his head, something going shuttered behind his eyes. "Hey, let’s see if we can get to the showers before Jon does," he says, and jogs off after the others.

They go for tacos after the show, late late late. Not getting a spicy chicken burrito is so, so fucking hard, especially when Spencer orders one, but Brendon totally cares about the chickens (who deserve to live and to flap their flightless little chicken-y wings in freedom), so he steels himself, as mostly-per-usual, and when it’s his turn he orders a meatless one instead. He has to think really, really hard about Chicken Run, though, with Spencer closing his eyes as he takes taunting, indelicate bites. Some people, jesus. Zack’s order is even more painfully tempting.

And then there’s Jon. “Food,” Jon says, clapping his shoulder and leaning past him to squint at the register, “food, food, food. Tacos. Taco Bell.”

“Taco Bell is for making out,” Spencer says, grinning, and Ryan heaves a weary sigh, hip propped against the counter’s edge.

“I don’t want to know how you came to make that mental connection, I really don’t.”

“Making out,” Brendon repeats quietly, apropos of nothing, and Ryan’s hand jerks and soda slops through the ineffectual plastic lid of his cup, spilling over his fingers.

“Whoa, skills,” Jon remarks, already armed with a fistful of napkins.

“God, Ross,” Brendon says, punching him lightly in the arm. “Total skillfest.”

“Okay,” Spencer says, resting his elbows on the signing table. “What are the bets this time?”

“Tonight’s my night,” Jon nods. “Any guys show up in the meet-and-greet, and it’s my turn to collect from all of you.”

“But the girls bring presents,” Brendon says. “I like the girls. Also, breasts, hello.”

“There are never any guys,” Ryan says, “or, like, a tiny proportion. Tiny.” He fiddles with a button on his coat sleeve.

“I see them,” Jon argues. “In the crowd sometimes –

“ - adrift in a sea of estrogen –”

“The point is, they’re out there.”

“So is the truth,” Spencer says solemnly.

Brendon starts to hum, then (seriously, how could he not? Come on), and Spencer harmonizes, tapping the beat against the edge of the table.

“It’s just not a guy thing to do,” Jon opines. “You know. You’re – they’re there for the music, they don’t need to tell the lead singer how hot he is beforehand, after.”

“I can always stand hearing that.”

“Shut up, Brendon,” Ryan says reflexively. He scratches the side of his nose. “Anyway, some guys do.”

“Tell Brendon that he’s hot?” Jon asks. “No, they don’t.”

Brendon pouts. “They could. My hotness surpasses all gender boundaries, right?” He jostles Ryan with his elbow. “Right? Come on, you all think I’m sexy, admit it already.”

Spencer scribbles his name across someone’s handbag, the ‘S’ sloppy and almost formless. “He means, some guys do wait for autographs,” he corrects, and hands the bag back to the girl in front of him with a tight smile.

“But the whole thing, the whole point of the bet, is that they actually don’t,” Jon says. He sounds confused.

Spencer smirks just a little. “Yeah, but Ryan did.”

“It was Pete,” Ryan says defensively, hunching his shoulders. “And it was a long time ago. Stop laughing and sign the fucking things.” He scrawls his name across someone’s sneaker with a snap to his wrist.

Jon claps his hand over his mouth exaggeratedly. “Did you ask him to sign your shirt?”

“Did you tell him he was hot?”

“He totally did, look, he’s going all red and stuff.”

“That’s rage,” Ryan says, deadpan, head down, “shut up and sign.”

Brendon catches his eye and grins at him. Ryan makes a face, but when Brendon keeps grinning, he smiles back, sharp and bright; it’s only a quick flash across his face, and a second later he’s turning back, nodding to the fan in front of him, biting his lip and signing her CD case.

Ryan hasn’t smiled like that much since that brief but shining time between bringing Jon into the band and Ryan’s father’s death. Brendon’s missed it.

He kicks Ryan’s ankle gently under the table. “Hey,” he whispers, when Ryan turns his head to look at him again, “did you get Pete to sign your purse?”

The next time they play, the next time Brendon has to make Ryan back up along the stage, try to kiss his cheek – and seriously, Ryan does not get to write the stage scripts ever again, as if anyone would back away from him being all seductive and stuff – there’s an odd sort of frisson to the acting. Leaning in, grinding his hips – it’s different, because for a second he almost thinks he’s going to do it, and he can tell that Ryan’s suddenly not entirely sure that he’s not by the way he skitters back across the stage.

And – it’s weird, a bit. It shouldn’t be, because making out with a bandmate is like, mandatory in the scene, and it’s not like anyone gives a fuck if you do, once or twice, as long as you laugh really hard afterwards. But it just is. Maybe because it’s Ryan and he takes things so – he takes things differently; with Spencer or Jon Brendon can’t imagine this sort of subtle bullshit, and the worst part is, he can’t call Ryan on it because that might make it worse. It might actually even be all in his own head. It’s just – weird, and Brendon wants it just to be over with already, but that's pretty hard when nearly every night he's meant to stalk Ryan across the stage.

Seriously, any other person would be totally cool with random acts of weirdness, but no, Brendon has to plant one on Ryan Ross, king of Taking Things Too Seriously. It seems even more impossibly unfair that since the kinda-sorta kiss thing - and Brendon really doesn’t mean to - he finds himself watching, noticing things that he really, really (really) wouldn’t normally. It's the weirdness' fault. If Ryan was cool about it, Brendon would be cool about it, too.

Like, one morning he gets up and staggers out into the lounge, Spencer and Jon still sleeping in the bunks.(Spencer pulls his curtain back as Brendon goes past, squinting blearily at him "Coffee,” he murmurs. Brendon evades his clutching hands and makes hasty promises of “later, later.”)

Ryan’s out there already, bent over his notebook, his pen making little rasping noises as it slides over the paper, quick and furious.

“Hey,” Brendon says, scratching at his stomach, “morning, man. Do we have food? Tell me we have food.”

“We have s'more pop tarts,” Ryan says, gesturing with the pen, “but they’re revolting, I wouldn’t.”

Brendon makes a high-pitched little whining noise. “You have cereal, though, I can see it. I can see it, Ryan. Share.”

Ryan rolls his eyes at him and rattles the box. “Spencer bought it at the last stop.”

“Huh.” Brendon has to weigh that one up carefully; cereal, yes, pissing Spencer off, really a no. Spencer is surprisingly and inventively vindictive.

His stomach makes the decision for him. "I'm your star," he tells Ryan, testing the explanation out. "I should get consideration. Your energies must all be bent on the noble goal of me not fainting onstage."

"Mmhmm," Ryan nods, snagging the box back after Brendon has plundered and ransacked sufficiently. "Totally. You’re our diva."

“Shut up,” Brendon says, “I have no designs on your crown,” and he pulls his legs away fast, before Ryan’s foot can connect.

Brendon gets revenge a little later, though, when Ryan’s bent over the notebook once again, eyes distant. He gets up to get a can of Red Bull from the bus fridge, and before he opens it, he thinks hmmm. Quashing an evil, gleeful little cackle, he walks over to Ryan very, very quietly and presses its coldness against the bare curve of his neck.

Ryan squeaks, then swears. “You fucking – Brendon,” he says, the very name spluttered vituperation, and Brendon smiles at him winningly and ruffles his hair.

“Diva diva diva,” he sings softly, and Ryan’s mouth twitches.

“You’re an asshole.”

“I know,” Brendon sighs, sitting down again, “it’s my cross to bear.”

Ryan coughs something that sounds like no, it’s ours but Brendon graciously overlooks it.

And, suddenly, it’s just – normal. They’re sitting there, Ryan squinting down at what he’s written while Brendon clicks around idly on his sidekick.

And then he finds himself looking up, watching as Ryan sucks thoughtfully on the top of his pen... finds himself wondering idly what Ryan looks like naked, and, whoa.

Whoa, he thinks, and shit. And then, Ryan? What the fuck?

He really, really needs to get laid. He lost his casual hookup before the tour began, and he hasn’t wanted to get into anything new. Maybe - probably - his libido is just confused, because there really are limits to how often and how thoroughly you can jerk off when you’re stuck sharing a bus. It could be the bus' fault, even; proximity, whatever. Something's badly wrong, anyway, and he blames the weirdness. This is Ryan and he’s seen Ryan go into a complete screaming meltdown while wearing a pink t-shirt and an unironic sweatband; seen him fast asleep with his mouth hanging open while Jon drew on his face (or, okay, that was mostly Brendon, but Jon helped); seen him with the world’s worst hair cut hanging in long lank waves over his face as he stumbled around the back of their old van, half asleep and wearing only boxers that had been washed too many times, their original plaid print faded into a medley of greys and sagging from his bony hips.

“What?” Ryan looks up at him, frowning. Brendon blinks at him, considering. There’s stubble dark on his chin, jaw, rough on his upper lip, and Ryan hasn’t bothered to brush his hair yet. It’s perfectly flat on one side, strangely rumpled on the other; and his ancient sweatpants – no, really, sweatpants – are frayed and split over his knees. He is, however, accessorizing the sweatpants and old t-shirt with his new Ice Cream sneakers and a pair of stripy socks that he probably had to hold up a Hot Topic for.

Yeah, no.

“What is it?”

“Your shoes,” Brendon says finally. “They have, uh, lipsticks on them.”

Ryan stares at him.

And then he stares some more.

“Yeah,” he says at last. “Yeah, they do.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Huh,” Brendon says thoughtfully, squinting into the mirror. “I think – does this look okay to you?”

“What?” Ryan asks, abandoning his attempt to persuade Jon to don eyeliner for the show again. Jon could probably lift Ryan up into the air with one hand, without breaking a sweat, but he still looks relieved at Ryan’s switch in focus. Ryan’s slight, but he’s feisty, and he had Jon backed up into a corner.

“My eyes,” Brendon clarifies. There’s blue-black eyeshadow smeared from his eyebrows to his eyelids, violent against his pale, ghoulish foundation. He waggles his eyebrows at himself in the mirror; he looks awesome, except maybe one eye is more pronounced than the other, he’s not sure. That’s what he has Ryan for.

Ryan squints at him. “I don’t know. Come over here, the light’s better.”

Brendon goes, and Ryan grabs his jaw and turns his head back and forth roughly under the light. “Yeah, no. No, this is kind of fucked-up.”

“But still awesome, right?”

“Eyeshadow,” Ryan says brusquely, holding out his hand. Spencer shoves the little round case and the brush into his hand, and Ryan takes his hand off Brendon’s face long enough to open it, load his brush up with powder.

And then his hand’s back on Brendon’s jaw, and Brendon tries to stand still, he tries really hard. He can’t help bouncing a little, nervously, on the balls of his feet; Ryan’s so close, he can feel his breath hot against his face, and he’s so fucking intense about it.

The brush moves quickly, with tiny jerks of Ryan’s wrist; it’s whiskery, almost too impersonal to be ticklish, over the thin skin above his eye.

Ryan’s hand is steady, and his lower lip vanishes between his teeth as he concentrates.

Brendon tries to keep still, tries (fails) to keep his eyes closed, cast down. He tries desperately not to stare at Ryan’s mouth or at the way the line of his throat shifts when he swallows; and then Ryan steps back. “All done.”

“Thanks,” Brendon says.

“No problem. Now put your rouge on,” Ryan instructs him, and turns back to the mirror, frowning.

Brendon’s jerking off in the quietness of his bunk, behind the false privacy of his curtain, when he finds himself thinking about the curve of Ryan’s mouth again.

And that’s just. God, is that fucked-up, to think about a guy, a friend, Ryan, while his hand’s on his dick and he’s pumping slow, warming up, trying not to make a sound.

So fucked-up, twisted even, and he tries not to notice the way his dick twitches at the thought.

No, he thinks very firmly, and tries very hard to think instead about the last time he got laid, instead, or the way the shirt that the interviewer from a couple of days ago was wearing clung to her breasts, and fitted so closely to her stomach that when she stood in the light he could make out the cleave of her ribcage, the faint shadowy dent of her navel.

That works, until suddenly he’s thinking about the way Ryan bites his lip when he’s thinking, the way his stupid low-cut t-shirts used to bare his collarbone and the soft pulse beating at the base of his throat. Brendon’s hips jerk up, into his fist, and he curses under his breath. Fuck, he hadn’t even been aware he’d even noticed that.

And fuck getting off, it isn’t worth – it isn’t worth thinking about that sort of shit and touching his dick, because 1. that’s a good way to make sure that he can never look Ryan in the eye again, ever, and 2) that’d be – dude, no.

Brendon tucks himself back into his boxers and forces, forces himself to think unsexy thoughts. He closes his eyes, hands curled into fists at his sides, and starts to lovingly recall every folded crease in the wattle-like neck of his old English teacher, the mole high on her cheek and the sinister glint of her glasses as she looked over their rims to snap instructions.

And wow, does that work. Not work.

Only, only, soon it morphs into his eighth grade home room teacher, the one with bouncy brown curls and tight cardigans that buttoned up the front with, like, a million tiny tiny little buttons. She’d smelled like rosewater, overwhelmingly, and had had trim little ankles, and every boy in his class had practically popped a boner every time she took attendance.

And that’s, that’s. Brendon’s hand creeps back to his dick, almost like magic, and he curls his toes and thinks really hard about the way her neck curved and the day she’d worn a black bra under a light, pastel shirt –

He’s just starting to get into it again when Ryan’s hands, of all fucking things, flash suddenly to the forefront of his mind; long thin fingers drumming impatiently against flat surfaces, slowly strumming a guitar. He thinks about the pale thin skin over Ryan’s collarbone again, about the ridges of his spine showing through on the back of his neck, his fucking mouth, and oh fuck, oh fuck, hand moving faster, Brendon is so fucking screwed.

He comes with a harsh moan, drawing air in sharp through his nostrils, and yeah, fuck, so fucking screwed.

Brendon lies very still in the small cramped darkness of his bunk and listens to the other guys breathe. The ceiling is only a foot or so from his head. His hand is all sticky and gross, and he’s still breathing fast, shudderingly, and. Wow, he’s kind of a bad person, because god, did that work for him.

He starts to justify it to himself after he wipes his hand clean on his shirt (he’s kind of gross, he knows it; he’ll send Zack with laundry when they’re in one place long enough). By the time he drifts off to sleep, he’s managed to rationalize it.

Because, see, the more Brendon thinks about it, the more it makes sense. He kind of maybe has a thing for Ryan, that’s become pretty hard to ignore. But if you look at it another, his unconscious is kind of genius. Brendon is kind of genius; he just didn’t know it.

Because sex with Ryan – it’d be, huh. He guesses it could work. He’s not really all that into guys, or he hasn’t been, but imagine the possibilities: sex on tour, all the time, whenever he wants. Sex with a friend, even. Sex for fun, without having to bother with pick-up lines, or doing stupid shit like talking about your feelings, or remembering anniversaries, or having dinner with the parents, or (hopefully) VD -

It’s a brilliant, brilliant idea.

Brendon is so smart. He just didn’t realize it.

They sign autographs after that night’s show – Zack’s feeling charitable towards the fans tonight - and it’s a total melee; one girl with a t-shirt too tight and glitter across her face like a starburst leans in close when he’s signing a shirt for her and asks him what he's like in bed.

Brendon blinks. It never stops being weird what the hell some fans think is okay to just say to him, and he's too tired to think of anything snappy fast, so Jon answers instead.

"Like a teddy bear. Weirdly cuddly, weird amount of body hair.”

Brendon snorts (even though the hair part is a total lie, Jon’s very glib) and says, “Yeah, what he said."

Ryan laughs at them, in the natural way which he usually doesn’t when confronted with a blank wall of excited girls in his face, and the weird questions and declarations of love hard to hear over the noise.

“Jon, you were totally a boy scout, right?

“Are you kidding,” Brendon scoffs from his side of the bus lounge. “Duh, Spencer Smith. He’s only like the world’s biggest boy scout ever.”

“Actually, I wasn’t,” Jon interrupts. “But my best friend when I was in grade school was. He taught me useful Boy Scout skills.”

“Skills like lock-picking?” Spencer asks.

Jon looks mildly embarrassed. “Actually, I think that one was Tom. It might have been Scimeca, I don’t know. I meant skills like. Like fire.”

“Or cookie-selling.”

“Or cookie– no, that’s just the girls, I think.” Spencer frowns.

“Shut up,” Brendon says, “don’t even try to tell me that little Jon didn’t wander around the mean streets of Chicago in little knee socks and carrying a box of baked goodness, because I will call you a liar.” He pauses. “And also accuse you of destroying my fondest hopes and dreams, and can you live with that, Spencer? Can you?”

Jon’s eyes meet Spencer’s over Brendon’s head, a flash of warm, palpable fondness.

“No, Brendon,” Spencer says, patting Brendon’s knee, “I can’t.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Brendon says contentedly, and he slides down until his head’s resting in Ryan’s lap.

“Mean streets?” Ryan asks. He looks down at Brendon with jaded acceptance. “I thought that the most there was to worry about in Chicago suburbia was, like, soccer moms.”

“Hey,” Spencer says, “don’t mock the soccer moms, they’re totally fearsome.”

Ryan nods along to Spencer’s pronouncement; his long fingers start to card the soft hair at the base of Brendon’s skull with abstracted gentleness.

Brendon smirks at the touch, adds: “Also, it like, gets really cold. Little match girls could be dying on the Chicago streets!”

“A lot of those around,” Jon agrees. “We have to sweep them up out of the gutter with the trash. They clog the drains.”

“Jon,” Spencer frowns, as Ryan continues to play with Brendon’s hair, “that was mean.”

“And my point is,” Brendon continues, “is that the streets of Chicago are cold. And therefore mean. And when there’s cold, there’s, you know. Bears.”

“Bears?”

“Bears?” Ryan stops playing with Brendon’s bangs long enough to flick him on the forehead. “You’re an idiot.”

“Dude, you said soccer moms.”

“And then there’s Pete Wentz,” Spencer adds. “Very scary.”

“Mean, scary streets,” Brendon repeats, “that’s my whole entire point!”

He turns his head until he’s nuzzling the inside of Ryan’s thigh, just a little. Ryan twitches, a fine controlled tremor along the muscles of his legs, hand going still in Brendon’s hair.

Jon nods. “Very mean. Bears, and Pete Wentz. I kept a switchblade in my little knee sock, you better believe it.”

Brendon crows in triumph, and Spencer grins. “Dude, you totally have to end everything you say from now on with a ‘or I’ll cut you, bitch’.”

Ryan laughs softly. “What, like, ‘get me a drink-’”

“‘-or I’ll totally fucking cut you,’” Brendon finishes his sentence excitedly, “'bitch.’ Yeah, just like that.”

“Guys,” Jon says, rolling his eyes.

“Guys what,” Brendon prompts.

Jon shakes his head, the tan skin around his eyes going crinkly at their corners. When he grins his teeth are very white. “Guys,” he says with deliberation, “shut up.”

They wait. Spencer’s chin rests on his fist; Brendon’s head is still pillowed peacefully on Ryan’s thigh but his eyebrows reach a comical height. Ryan clears his throat.

“Fine,” Jon sighs. “ ‘Guys, shut up, or I’ll cut you. Bitch.’” He frowns. “Bitches?”

“It’ll do,” Brendon declares, sitting up. Ryan pulls his hand back and looks at it like it’s strange to him.

Brendon clambers over Spencer’s knees to reach Jon, to hang around Jon’s neck like a determined spider monkey. “It’ll do, you just need to practice. It makes perfect!”

“We’re cutting down his Red Bull,” Spencer promises over Brendon’s head. “If we have to put a kiddy lock on the bus fridge.”

“You think I don’t hear you,” Brendon says loudly, “but you would be wrong.” He pokes Jon in the side. “So, so wrong. Stand up, Jon Walker, I want to ride piggyback off the bus.”

“Ryan,” Brendon says, “Ryan, I got you a drink.” He puts the juice by Ryan’s elbow and smiles winningly.

Ryan looks up from his Sidekick, brow creasing. "...thanks?”

“No problem,” Brendon says cheerily. “I can get you snacks, too, if you want. Candy? Popcorn? Cookies? I can do it all.”

“Um,” Ryan says, squinting at him. “No, I’m good. Thanks.”

“No problem,” Brendon repeats, and doesn’t move away until Ryan looks up from the Sidekick and frowns at him.

“What?” Brendon asks.

“No, I’m asking you, what?”

“What?”

“Ryan.”

“Brendon,” Ryan says, raising his eyebrows.

“Do you want to listen to my ipod?” Brendon asks in a wheedling fashion, nudging it over to Ryan’s side of the couch. “I have a full bar, and I don’t think yours has any charge.”

Ryan blinks. “I’m okay, Brendon.” He turns another page in his book.

“Do you need more water? I can get you a refill. Or, um, ice!”

“…I’m okay. Thanks.”

“I could give you a backrub,” Brendon offers finally, and somewhere behind him Spencer explodes into hysterical laughter, Brendon’s not sure why.

“You never offer to give me backrubs,” Jon says mournfully.

“Sure I do. I just – I kind of suck at them, and you’re really good, so it just makes logical sense for you to be giving them to me, you can’t argue with facts, Jon Walker – but, uh, Ryan, if you’re interested, I’m offering.”

He thinks about wriggling his eyebrows or winking or something to really underline his point, but come on, that’s so blatant that a two year-old could pick up on it. Not that Brendon has experience with two year-olds, that was totally hyperbole.

“I’m still okay,” Ryan says, looking confused, and turns another page.

The situation is clearly desperate, and he decides that it's time to call upon the advice of older (wiser? Yeah, probably not, but certainly more experienced) guys. Very experienced guys.

Jon or Spencer? Ha. Ahaha. Ha.

In the end, he steals Jon’s phone when Jon’s half asleep on the couch and drooling gently on Spencer’s shoulder, and scrolls through his address book.

‘Treat him like a lady, woo him gently, buy him flowers and dinner and walk him to his bunk and just maybe he’ll put out-’ is as far as William gets before he breaks down into hysterical giggling. Brendon cuts off the call with a "Yeah, thanks. Ass.”

“Dude, what the fuck,” Ryan says, when they’re prowling around they’re hanging around the venue before soundcheck and he turns around to find Brendon close on his heels.

“I just thought I’d come along with,” Brendon says glibly. “To, um, wherever. Wherever it is that you’re going.”

“The bathroom?”

“Exactly.”

“Brendon,” Ryan says, and he realizes that Ryan’s peering at him anxiously. “Are you okay? You’ve been acting weird. Weirder. We can, like, get someone to talk to you, or take you to a doctor, or something -” and the worst part is, his habitual monotone is layered with earnestness and what Brendon finally identifies as genuine concern.

This is really not going at all well.

He locks himself in the bathroom and leaves an urgent, ten minute message on Pete’s voicemail. This is a desperate measure (because, a: Pete kind of treats Ryan like a cross between a little brother and a pet - like, a show dog that had won its category via some completely unexpected fluke; and b: fuck knows how secure anything on Pete’s sidekick really is.)

But then, the situation has become dire.

Pete doesn’t get back to him for three days, and when he does, it’s a text: id say get him drnuk but that doesn’t wrok with ryan. so just use ur p33n like a pool q and let ur conscience b ur guide.

Pete really needs to stop conflating ‘mentor’ with ‘Jiminy Cricket’. Brendon just doesn’t get Pete’s weird grasshopper thing.

That night, Jon waits until the dressing room door swings shut behind Ryan to peer at Brendon in an amused, addled fashion. “Dude,” he said slowly, tipping his head to one side, “you were totally staring. At Ryan.’

“I was not!”

Spencer raises his eyebrows. “I corroborate Jon’s version of events.”

“Shut up,” Brendon says automatically. “Also, you can prove nothing.”

“Dude, you’re the kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, give it up already.”

“I just –” He wishes they’d just stop staring at him. Spencer’s lips are twitching, and Jon’s wearing the wide-eyed look which he knows denotes deep and secret amusement. “It’s just been a while, okay. I have a very confused libido. That’s all, that's it.”

Jon chuckles. “Brendon Urie, rock star, unable to get laid? You lie.”

“Yeah, well,” Brendon says sulkily. “The stuff with, you know, ended ages ago, and I don’t want to pick up a groupie. They’re clammy, and icky, and they post everything to their blogs!”

“…”

“…”

“Stop laughing at me, dickheads.”

“And they call him a sex symbol,” Jon says sadly to Spencer, who shakes his head.

“Oh, they wouldn’t say that if they knew him. Or if they had to spend hours with him in an enclosed space when he’s on a sugar high. Or if- ”

“You suck, are you aware of this?”

“Seriously,” Jon frowns, “you don’t actually think your options are limited to groupies or bandmates? Because that’s kind of sad.”

“I don’t want a groupie,” Brendon says in a small voice, and magnificently ignores the question.

“Dude,” Spencer says, not looking up from his sidekick, “why don’t you, y’know, just ask him?”

“Because he might punch me,” Brendon exclaims, sitting up. His glasses nearly fall off in his agitation. “Or laugh at me! Or punch me and laugh at me!”

Jon starts to chuckle quietly.

“Yeah, but he probably won’t,” Spencer says calmly. “Since you already kissed him, and he didn’t try to knock you out.”

“But that could have been shock! And – wait, how the fuck do you even know that?”

“Duh,” Spencer says. “Best friend, remember?”

“You’re – you two’ve talked about – you know you suck, right? Holy shit,” Brendon says disbelievingly, “that’s so fucking Mean Girls of you, oh my god.”

Spencer starts to laugh, sweet and bubbling and irrepressible, and Jon bites his lip very hard to keep from following suit.

“I hear you, Brendon,” he says terribly solemnly, “Spencer, you kept this to yourself? I can’t believe that you didn’t share this with me. Brendon’s right, you’re just like the mean girls who wouldn’t let me come to their slumber parties back in middle school. I was never allowed to have pillow fights or braid hair or hear secrets. Spencer Smith, you’re mean.”

Spencer laughs harder.

“I – oh, fuck you,” Brendon says, “can we just stop with the making fun of me for one second? I’m serious here.”

“So am I,” Jon assures him, “I like braiding hair,” and Spencer starts to pound on his shoulder with mirth.

Brendon leaves in high dudgeon but with, he assures himself, his dignity intact. He doesn’t even slam the door. It's kind of proof that he's grown as a person.

The funny part (for a given, black-humor, joke's-on-you definition of ‘funny’) is that it’s not even any of his subtle, cunning stratagems which does the trick.

No, he’s innocently flipping through Spin and eating a creamiscle, trying not to cross the streams and accidentally drip on the pages because it’s Spencer’s. So is the creamsicle, actually, only he didn’t have to liberate it from under Spencer’s nose; Spencer actually just let him have it, offered it, even. Brendon was touched, and thus he’s trying to return the show of affection by not fucking up the magazine.

However, Ryan chooses that moment to snap (Brendon’s not even paying any attention to him! He means to, that’s part of the concerted plan of attack, but the article on The Fall is kind of fascinating and functionally distracting). Ryan makes a vexed noise and before Brendon even has time to look up properly, he has a hold on his collar – “Dude, you’re totally choking me – um, Ryan?” – and is dragging him up out of the chair. The magazine falls from his lap and hits the bus floor with a muffled, rustling thump.

“What the fuck is going on?” Ryan asks him, point-blank, swinging his head around until he’s right in Brendon’s face. He practically barks it out, and his jaw is tight. “Are you trying to, I don’t know, psych me out? Do you think this is funny? What the fuck.”

Brendon swallows (sparks are almost-not-metaphorically crackling off Ryan’s hair); he casts around for something smooth to say, some completely convincing explanation, but he’s caught flat-footed by the heat in Ryan’s eyes and instead he just blurts out “Look. I. I kind of want to maybe kiss you again.”

Ryan says faintly, stepping back, “God,” and then –“Brendon, just – quit it, okay, it’s not funny.”

For the next couple of days, Brendon trails after Ryan like a puppy, springing variations of ‘why won’t you mess around with me? Huh, huh, huh?’ on him at random intervals.

“No.”

“No, but really.”

“No.”

“Blowjobs know no gender,” Brendon explains earnestly, as the bus rumbles through DC. “I’m open-minded when it comes to orgasms! That’s why it’ll work.”

”They do if you’re giving them,” Ryan says slowly, like he’s speaking to a very small child. Brendon hopes he doesn’t have these sorts of conversations with very small children. "Or were you just planning on getting them?”

“Um,” Brendon says. The way Ryan’s glaring at him from under the brim of his cap warns him that a “maybe” isn’t going to go down well. Brendon can pick up on subtle clues like that, easy. “No, I can give it a try. I mean, I totally can. I’m there. I have the mouth of a god, you know. Or you will.”

"No."

“You have to give him points for persistence,” Jon remarks, seemingly to the air.

Brendon beams at him. Ryan balls up a bag of Doritos and throws it at his head.

“It would be fun,” Brendon promises. “No strings attached! Nothing but orgasms!”

“Yeah?” Ryan says, picking idly at one of his gloves. Brendon is mildly disappointed by the way Ryan is taking his brilliant proposition; okay, he hasn’t hit him, or laughed at him (today), and he no longer seems to think of him as a crazy stalker, but then, he doesn’t seem exactly keen. “Brendon, seriously, who gave you the drugs? Was it Jon? Do I have to have a talk with Zack?”

“Oh, haha,” Brendon says impatiently, “look, I’m actually serious here. It’s a great idea, I promise.” He shoots Ryan his very, very best pleading look, which involves stratospheric widening of his eyes and faint, suggestive lip wobbling.

(Brendon would just like some respect. This is a brilliant plan and it deserves actual consideration.)

“You want someone to get you off while on tour,” Ryan says slowly. “Okay. Why me?” The tiny glance he gives Brendon from under his eyelashes is barely perceptible, a quick wary flicker.

“The Pete thing,” Brendon begins, and fuck, Ryan glares at him, so he switches tactics. “You get to get off too, so it’s a beautiful symbiotic arrangement! It’s win win.”

“Brendon, you can stop the joke now. It wasn’t funny to begin with.”

“It’s not a joke,” Brendon says, but Ryan’s already stomping away.

“Why,” Ryan asks slowly, after their first show at Madison Square, “did we write a stage script which requires Brendon to grope me?”

Spencer shrugs. “I think you said something about ‘contesting established hetero-normatism.’ And something about artistic statements?”

“I think there was something about Bowie, too,” Jon adds helpfully.

“-yeah, and something about following in Gerard Way’s hallowed footsteps.”

“This is sexual harassment,” Ryan says, glaring at his feet. “I’m being harassed in my place of work.”

“Dude,” Brendon says, breaking his silence (removing heavy eye makeup takes concentration,otherwise cold cream gets in your eyes, and man, does that suck), “Not my fault. Jon has the planning minutes still in his notebook, I can back this shit up.”

Ryan covers his eyes.

Spencer pats his shoulder kindly. “Suck it up. It’s Brendon, he’ll get distracted by something shiny sooner or later.”

“Fuckbuddies are an old and hallowed musical tradition,” he informs Ryan after their appearance on TRL, when he finds him sitting by himself in the back lounge, reading.

“Brendon,” Ryan says, very seriously. He lets the book fall shut, although he keeps his thumb caught in the pages as a marker. “Look. If you’re serious – if you – look, you want to get off, I get that. That part’s obvious. Why the fuck are you asking me?”

“I don’t know,” Brendon admits. He smoothes his hair, tugs at the hem of his t-shirt. “I blame the stage show. It confused me. You know I’m easily led – oh, fuck it, Ryan, I don’t fucking know.”

“What even made you think I’d agree to something like this? To be your -” he snorts – “your experimental outlet?”

“Orgasms! Sex! What part are you not getting? What part is not awesome?”

“Brendon.”

“I don’t know,” Brendon repeats, “but. But like, I really do think I’d like to kiss you. You know. I’ve thought about it a couple of times. Or kind of a lot.”

Brendon’s too busy staring at the mockingly bright plaid of his shoes to actually see how Ryan reacts to that, but when he doesn’t hear laughter and doesn’t experience a fist to the face (or a slap, slaps are more Ryan’s line), he looks up. Ryan has his head tilted to the side, chin resting on his hand, and he actually looks, for the first time, like he’s taking Brendon seriously.

Finally, god.

“Um,” Ryan says, atypically ineloquent.

Which is not a no, and again, there’s no laughter or punching, so Brendon decides to press his advantage. Get them while they’re stunned, he is totally a tactical genius. No one can resist his beautiful, inevitable logic, because ultimately, who says no to sex? “Is that a yes? A yes to orgasms?”

Ryan kicks his ankle. “No.”

“That’s totally a yes,” Brendon decides, “you can’t hide these things from me, Ross, I am all-seeing.”

Ryan opens his mouth to protest.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Brendon announces.

Quickly, before the shock dissipates and, like, the skepticism returns. (He is swift and cunning, like the cobra. He makes a note not say that around Gabe, though. Gabe is a little territorial.)

Ryan shuts his mouth. He looks slightly wide-eyed, and Brendon absolutely has to advantage of this. He licks his lips, and Ryan watches him do it.

They both try to take the lead and lean in at the same moment; Brendon’s closed mouth hits Ryan’s at entirely the wrong angle, the lines of their lips practically at right angles to each other.

They pull back, frowning, then lean in again; Brendon tilts his head at the exact opposite angle to the last time, and unfortunately, so does Ryan. The overcorrection produces a mirror image of their previous attempt; a photo in negative.

“Huh,” Brendon says, leaning back; his lips are dry, but they tingle a little from brushing against Ryan’s stubble, against Ryan’s mouth. Ryan sits back, raises an eyebrow at him. “No, no, Ryan, wait, we’re trying that again. That doesn’t count as a first kiss -”

“The point of first kisses is that you don’t get do-overs-”

“- and anyway, that suckiness was totally not my fault. I’m an awesome kisser. Like, I could win awards. I could kiss for America! If I opened up a kissing booth, the line would be around the block-”

“Well, it’s not my fault,” Ryan says, “stop talking, Brendon,” and his hand comes up to wrap around the curve of Brendon’s neck, jerks him abruptly forward.

It’s still awkward, noses knocking against each other, the sinister clack of teeth, the rasp of Ryan’s chin against his new and strange; and Brendon tries to pull away and ask for another do-over, because he can totally do better. Ryan’s hand keeps him clamped in place. When he opens his mouth to complain, Ryan licks his way into his mouth, slow and inevitable in a way that makes Brendon’s stomach kind of – wobble, weird. Ryan evidently has hidden talents that Brendon knew not.

“Mmph,” he says appreciatively when Ryan pulls away. “That was-” He licks his lips. “That was kind of okay.”

“Really,” Ryan says dryly, “high praise.”

“You know what I mean,” Brendon sighs, and he quite honestly doesn’t mean to, exactly, but then he’s tugging Ryan forward, hauling him into his lap. Unbelievably, Ryan allows himself to be hauled, and thus Brendon finds himself with Ryan straddling his thighs, one hand gripping the couch tightly like he needs a secure anchor, and looking at him.

Brendon can’t quite remember what he was going to do next, because that move wasn’t really supposed to work.

They blink at each other. He's is seriously having to fight the urge to laugh nervously before Ryan sighs a little impatiently and presses his lips to the corner of his mouth.

And, right. That’s what was supposed to follow his smooth lap maneuver, right. He lets Ryan push him back against the couch just a bit, and he’s not quite sure where to put his hands; this is Ryan, this is a guy, it’s not like he can just subtly palm his breasts, can he? Is he supposed to work in a subtle ass-grab instead, or would Ryan kick him?

He settles for just grasping Ryan’s shoulders, thumbs pressing into the hollows of their sockets, and then Ryan bites his bottom lip, the pressure just between teasing and serious, and Brendon forgets the possible etiquette of the situation and slides his hands down Ryan’s back; Ryan moans, and the kiss definitely slides past experimental into serious, deeper. Brendon lets them slip a little lower, settle on Ryan’s hips, left bare where his t-shirt rides up above the line of his jeans.

And this is actual making out.

He can’t help freezing up.

“Hey,” Ryan says quietly, resting his cheek against Brendon’s, and Brendon is not freaking out, he is not. This is merely the culmination of his genius plan (or, well, the actual culmination involves getting off, but this is clearly a rung on the ladder to that promised land of orgasms).

“I can actually hear you thinking. Should I- ” and Ryan starts to shift, like he’s going to move away, and Brendon finds himself gripping Ryan’s hips tighter, until he stays still.

“That’s a no,” he informs him.

“Okay.” Ryan smiles, quick and brief, and he knows that look, that’s relief.

“Mmm,” Brendon says approvingly. “Dude, you have to keep buying girl’s deodorant. I like.” He nuzzles Ryan’s shoulder, leaning in closer until his lips brush the warm skin of his neck. “I definitely like.”

“It’s amazing what regular showering does for body odor,” Ryan says dryly. “You should try it some time. Go crazy.” But he rocks against Brendon just a bit, one long hand sliding to cup the back of his neck again, and his thin cheeks stretch around the curl of his smile.

Brendon brushes his lips lightly against the tip of Ryan’s nose, and then, because he doesn’t want it to come off as too hearts-and-flowers-y, flicks out his tongue in what is totally, totally a sexy tease.

Ryan sneezes.

“Oh, gross,” Brendon says, pulling back, nose wrinkled.

“Did you just. Were you trying to molest my nose?” Ryan asks disbelievingly. “Seriously?”

“Did you just sneeze on me? Seriously?”

Sneezing is apparently a total mood-killer. Brendon will keep that in mind in the future.

“That show was -”

“It kind of sucked balls,” Ryan agrees.

“Oh, fuck you both,” Brendon says, pulling off his golden coat and then the brown t-shirt he wears under it, two many layers of clothes too many. “I was awesome.”

“The kids sing for you, Brendon,” Spencer says, “they wouldn’t care how off-key you are, they can barely hear you over their own screaming.”

“I was on-key,” Brendon protests, and throws his soaked t-shirt at Spencer. “I’m always on-key! I have perfect pitch, so take that back, motherfucker.”

“I wasn’t talking about you anyway,” Ryan says, frowning as Spencer starts trying to whip Brendon with his towel, “I was talking about my string breaking at the end of Esteban, dickheads – are you even listening to me?”

“I’m guessing no,” Jon says kindly, and he and Ryan lean against each other and watch as Brendon and Spencer run in crazy circles and sneaky double-backs around the changing room, their bare feet slipping on the floor, laughter half-choked, rough and uneven.

“Ha!” Spencer crows, cornering Brendon, “take that!” His towel smacks against Brendon’s shoulder, curls cracklingly around his legs, and Brendon throws his head back and howls.

“…you do realize there are probably people out there waiting?” Ryan asks. “And listening? Right?”

“I don’t give a fuck,” Brendon announces, “Spencer Smith, I am going to own you and you are going to cry for mercy –”

He lunges, and Spencer slips out of the way; Brendon skates unsteadily over the tiles, propelled too far by his own momentum, and only barely manages to avoid falling over. They circle Ryan and Jon warily, keeping just out of each other’s reach, and neither of them can quite control their slightly manic giggling.

Ryan presses his forehead against Jon’s shoulder. “I don’t know how they have any energy left, I just don’t.”

“Awww,” Brendon says, abandoning the standoff (Spencer is standing far too ready to flee, eyes flickering from side to side, and he doesn’t honestly have enough energy to expend on a losing battle even for principle’s sake). “You should totally have used this time to bag the shower, dude. Think strategically.”

“We don’t have time,” Jon explains, “it’s bus showers tonight.”

“Huh,” Brendon says, and that’s bad news, it is, but bus showers mean more time, which – fuck, if only the bus shower wasn’t so fucking small… “I totally need a shower, though. A proper one. I call first.”

“I called it first.” Jon smiles. “You just didn’t hear me, You were too busy chasing Spencer.”

“Really? Man, you just don’t understand how badly I need one. I felt like I was dying tonight, like, being cooked slowly inside my fucking jacket. Isn’t it supposed to be winter?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, “you do reek.”

Brendon sticks his tongue out at him. “No, but seriously. I’m thinking next tour, after the album, next tour we’re totally going nudist.”

“Dude,” Spencer says very slowly, “no.”

“Think of how much cooler it’d be!” Brendon argues, “I’m totally lobbying for nakedness. We could wear loincloths, be all He-Man.” He widens his eyes at Ryan persuasively. “Think about, uh, the artistic ramifications! It could symbolize the thread-bareness of modern culture, or, like. Um.”

“A return to primeval beats and a tribute to Brendon’s animal prowess,” Jon suggests.

“Yes!” Brendon nods emphatically. “Or. I know, it could be about how we strip ourselves naked for our art, bare our innermost souls to our audience-”

Ryan looks slightly hypnotized, but then he shakes his head. “No,” he says, and firmer, “no fucking way, Brendon.”

“I call second shower,” Spencer says into the quiet.

They put Blade Runner on at some point - it's already, like, practically a classic - and Brendon grabs the seat next to Ryan on the couch and eyes Jon and Spencer balefully, triumphantly.

Jon laughs softly. Spencer rolls his eyes. Ryan pretends not to notice anything.

The movie is kind of lame, really, and Brendon stops pretending to pay attention about ten, fifteen minutes in. He’s tired, and he slumps down in his seat and lets his eyes almost shut. He slouches stealthily, incrementally towards Ryan; about five minutes into Brendon’s silent guerilla campaign, Ryan realizes what he’s trying to do, makes a small exasperated noise, and shuffles over until their sides are touching, grazing, shoulders thighs hips.

And okay, that was easy. Brendon feels a little silly, but then Ryan tips his head until it touches Brendon’s shoulder. Their forearms, the bones of their wrists, the sides of their hands all brush against each other.

Ryan doesn’t move even when the movie grows yet more boring and Jon reaches over and steals his hat right off his head, fits it on his own. (It doesn’t fit properly, sitting too high on the crown of his skull, and it looks ridiculous; underneath it, Jon beams, crossing one ankle over the other and looking smug).

Ryan and Spencer exchange speaking glances, and then Jon vanishes under a hail of vengeful skittles. He tries to catch them in his mouth until they come too fast and thick and he ends up shielding his head with his hands and calling for mercy.

Brendon watches them all as small bright candies fly like grapeshot through the air, as Spencer stops the bombardment long enough to tug at the neck of his shirt and perform an odd squirming dance to dislodge the candy that’s gone down his back.

Something goes liquid in his stomach. It feels like happiness, it feels like being ten and being in church surrounding by his family, his network, and singing all together; it’s stupid and it’s silly and when Ryan stops flicking skittles and pokes a sharp elbow into his side, whispers “What?” Brendon just shakes his head and says, “Nothing.”

Brendon’s on tonight, really fucking on, crackling with energy. He grips the mikestand and sings and sings and sings; his fingertips slide sure and loving over the piano keys, and maybe the crowd notice that he’s up a notch from normal, or maybe he’s just so psyched up that their response seems better than usual, whichever, but something’s amplified, turned up to eleven.

(“How could they seriously tell?” Spencer asks him the next day when they’re rehashing the show and Brendon mentions that. “You’re always, like, the Energizer bunny onstage,” and then he starts making buzzy vibrator noises and Brendon tunes him the fuck out).

It is almost electric, though, the roars and screaming and chanting feeding into it as he feeds them the songs, a twisted perfect feedback loop that has his lungs straining and his pulse beating hard and fast in his ears.

It’s best of all when they’re in the drum line, and he can breathe a little easier even as his heart goes faster to match the rhythm of the snares, the distant thunder of Ryan and Jon pounding their trashcans a slightly higher beat overlapping the deeper drone of the drums.

“Dude,” Brendon says as they troop offstage, “dude,” and he grabs Ryan’s wrist and squeezes. Ryan breathes shudderingly out and sways forward a little bit, wide-eyed; but then he cuts his eyes over at Spencer and Jon where they’re swigging back bottles of water, bites his lip.

“Okay,” Brendon says quietly, and then louder, “Hey, you guys go on and shower, okay? I just want to check out the speaker connections, I think the tech guys had something weird going on during our set. You go on, okay?” he repeats, flapping his hands at them encouragingly.

Jon raises his eyebrows, but smiles and hustles Spencer offstage before he can open his mouth.

“Better?” Brendon asks, head still turned to watch them go.

Ryan doesn’t answer him. He leans in instead, hand urgent on Brendon’s shoulder, and kisses him; their lips slide together, and then Ryan bites down on his lower lip, only half-gentle.

“Uh,” Brendon manages, because this is finally, totally how it’s meant to go; Ryan kissing him, hips flush against his.

They stagger back a bit, until Ryan’s back hits the side-stage partition, and Brendon takes Ryan’s face in his hands because that seems like the logical thing to do. A faint distant – aware? – part of his mind notices that Ryan’s skin is slippery against his palms where it’s not rough with stubble, slick with sweat and greasepaint, but the rest of it is too caught up in the sensetastefeel of everything else.

“This isn’t, we should,” Ryan says breathlessly, finally, hands still tight on Brendon’s shoulders. “We should, not here. Bunks.”

Brendon leans his forehead against Ryan’s and breathes hard. “Okay, just.Yeah.”

“So, they’re really not subtle,” Jon offers, eyeing the closed bunkroom door.

Spencer shakes his head. “Really not.”

“What do you like?” Brendon says into the soft skin just above the indentation of Ryan’s navel. He’s kneeling between Ryan’s knees, their abandoned shirts pooling together on the floor, and all in all, the situation is looking distinctly promising.

Ryan shrugs back against the bunk, propped slightly upright by his pillow. The fingers of his left hand tap impatient staccato against his crossed arms. “Both, I guess. Either.”

“B- oh,” Brendon says, “Yeah, I hadn’t really worked my way up to asking the top or bottom question yet. The big one. That was meant as more of a warm-up, more like what do you like, you know, messing around. Stuff. But, uh, that’s good, that’s good to know.”

Ryan eyes him; the deep shadows cast spikes of dark from the edges of his eyelashes, smudging their distorted shades down across the skin under his eyes, the top of his cheekbones. (Of course, Brendon thinks witlessly, he could just have forgotten to wipe his eyeliner off properly, and why is he even focusing on Ryan’s fucking eyelashes?)

It’s not his fault, really, Ryan’s looking at him; he and Spencer must have practiced the stare together back in grade school. But Spencer staring doesn’t make his pulse pick up, make him need to lick his lips – okay, bad comparison, because it does, but out of pure, bowel-loosening craven fear, not – whatever. Spencer staring at him definitely doesn’t make him hard, although… no, not going there. Focus, Brendon.

“Oh,” Ryan says finally, and bites his lip. “Okay. Um. Giving head. Getting it, obviously. Hands. Mouth. I like, um, touching. Skin. I want to touch you. And, um, fingers. You know. In me.” He takes a breath, shoulders drawing incrementally inwards, and his tone shifts from hesitant to irritated. “Is that the detail you wanted, or did you just want to embarrass me?”

“Dude,” Brendon says earnestly, palms flat and sincere on Ryan’s knees. “I could listen to you talk like that all day. All night. All the time, even. I could record it and put it on my iPod on repeat.”

Ryan huffs slightly, in amusement or disbelief, Brendon’s not sure. It doesn’t matter, because he jumps when Brendon leans in and kisses the skin just above the waistband of his jeans, then breathes out, shudderingly, through his teeth. Brendon kisses his way in the wrong direction, up past Ryan’s bellybutton; up along the cleave of his ribcage; the notch of his collarbone where his pulse beats; slightly to the left of his adam’s apple; the skin just below his ear.

“Fuck you,” Ryan hisses when he does that, works his way up, “fuck you, fuck you, I’m not a fucking girl, hurry the fuck up,” and then Brendon stops holding himself stretched over Ryan, sinks down against him, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, hips to hips. Ryan closes his mouth abruptly.

The way Ryan feels underneath him, the jut of sharp hips curving back into the plane of his stomach, the press of his flat chest right against Brendon’s, feels nothing like a girl. Neither does the way his dick is pressed between them, not quite touching his own, but. That’s cool, Brendon can totally work with that.

He rocks against him, just a little bit, and it sends a bright flash of pleasure to all the way to the base of his spine; rocks again, and again, and pleasure twines itself along his limbic system, slow warm sparks. He hasn’t really done the whole dry fucking thing since he learned how to unhook a girl’s bra without making an idiot out of himself.

Ryan gasping under him, grinding up; the way his dick suddenly lines up with Brendon’s, and they moan together; the way Ryan’s wrists twist in the curl of his fists, but not like he’s trying to break free – it’s strange, and Brendon can’t help but feel that it shouldn’t feel anything like this good, but god, it does, it does.

Ryan makes a small sharp noise when Brendon sucks at his collarbone, and Brendon has to kiss him then, strange or not; so he leans in, aiming for his mouth.

Unfortunately, this is when Ryan arches against him and lunges forward, shoulders rising from the bunk; his jaw meets the bridge of Brendon’s nose with a clack of teeth and a dull crunch.

“Ow, jesus fuck,” Brendon exclaims, and tries to jerk back, away.

Ryan squirms under him when he tries, digging his heel into the back of Brendon's calf.

And. That’s really not something, if he thinks clearly, through the pain, that he wants to get away from.

“Mmmph,” he says instead, and pushes his hips down, and this time he finds Ryan’s mouth.

“Hey, are you- oh, sorry,” Jon says politely and insincerely from the doorway. “I thought you were over on Andrew’s bus with Spencer.”

Ryan goes perfectly still under him, and Brendon knows the hollow tang of despair.

“I was just going to take a nap,” Jon explains. His grin is charming and his teeth flash white. “You guys don’t mind, right?” He pauses, tilts his head. “Hey, Brendon, your nose is bleeding, did you know?”

“So, you and Ryan,” Spencer says carefully into the uneasy silence of the bus lounge.

“If he’s hurting you, you can tell us,” Jon says earnestly.

“Don’t hide your pain, Brendon. Let it out.”

“Yeah,” Jon nods, “we’re here for you, dude. You can tell us. We’ll protect you.” He cracks his knuckles in demonstration.

“Fuck you,” Brendon says sweetly. His nose is still bleeding. Probably, it’d stop sooner if he didn’t keep pulling the Kleenex away to check, but then how is he supposed to know if it has? “Ryan,” he whines, rubbing his cheek against Ryan’s shoulder, “my nose hurts, and my mouth tastes like blood, it tastes gross, and these fuckers think that they’re funny.”

Ryan pats Brendon’s knee reassuringly, but he doesn’t look up from his sidekick.

Spencer shakes his head. “Stockholm Syndrome, or something,” he says wisely. “Not uncommon in battered wives.”

“Fuck you, Smith –”

“Spencer, I don’t know, maybe we’re reading the situation wrong,” Jon interrupts. “Maybe, like, we got our wires crossed. I mean, Ryan’s little. No upper-body strength.”

At that, Ryan looks up from the sidekick long enough to shoot Jon a poisonous glare promising future bloody dismemberment. “Hey,” he says, “I have muscle tone. I play guitar.”

“Hmm,” Spencer says meditatively. “I’m going to have to play best friend here and stand up for Ryan. Like, maybe Jon’s right, maybe he wouldn’t be able to take Brendon down. He is taller, and he does fight dirty, but. I don’t think he’d want to, anyway.”

Jon scratches at the stubble on his chin. “Yeah, exactly.” He grins at Spencer. “So maybe Brendon let him.”

“Is that it?” Spencer asks Brendon with faux solicitousness, pale eyes gleaming. He’s smirking, the utter total fucker. Brendon would quite like to punch him. “Do you like pain, Brendon? Are you kinky?”

“You’re not funny,” Brendon groans. “Are you going to stop? Please say you’re going to stop.”

“No, this is too much fun,” Spencer says matter-of-factly. He smiles sunnily. “Suck it up, it’ll just make you stronger.”

“He’s not a masochist,” Ryan says in belated defense. “I mean, he’s whimpering like a little girl over a nosebleed.”

“I hate you too, Ryan Ross,” Brendon says loudly, although he doesn’t lift his head from Ryan’s shoulder. “You’re all against me.”

Later that afternoon, when Jon’s riding up front with the driver, watching Ontario slowly give way to New York State, Ryan disappears into the murky depths of his bunk. Sometimes he just needs to have his own space, find a way to be solitary, and they’ve come to respect that, even Brendon. The results of a Ryan thwarted are too unpleasant to endure.

Brendon strolls into the back lounge, throws himself down on the couch next to Spencer and tugs on his ear.

“Spence, my man, what’s up?”

This turns out to be a mistake.

“Ryan is like my brother,” Spencer says, turning his head from the television screen to regard him calmly. “No actual fucking around with Ryan when I’m in the room, or I’ll smother you in your sleep.”

“Fine,” Brendon agrees breezily.

“That means no sex in the bunks,” Spencer points out. “At least when I’m trying to sleep in one. And Jon and I have decided that if there is fucking in our bathroom where we brush our teeth, we will secede from the band. Or engineer your pants to split onstage, and believe me, we can and will do it. I don’t think that you’d both be able to fit in there, but Jon thinks,” he pauses for a second, as if playing something back in his head, “that since you’re both tiny, horny and sort of sneaky, we should make sure that it’s not even an option.”

Brendon shoots him a darkling glare, but jerks his head sharply in acknowledgement.

“And don’t hurt Ryan, because you really will never wake up again,” Spencer says, in the same conversational tone he uses when they argue over The O.C. (Ryan had a strange and bizarre fondness for Marissa that the others find completely mystifying and, just, wrong in every possible way).

Spencer is as completely unthreatening as a small and fuzzy kitten in his pale lavender t-shirt, soft brown hair licking at the curve of his neck; Brendon’s spidey sense must be on the fritz or something, because little shivers run up his spine and he can’t help but believe every word implicitly.

Spencer continues to stare at him, his mild blue eyes unblinking.

“Fine,” Brendon says finally. “Stop talking like – there are no hearts and flowers! I’m not asking for his hand in fucking marriage! There’s no need to act like he’s your virginal little Catholic-schoolgirl sister, I’m not going to hurt him. I want to get laid, he wants to get laid –“ he spreads his hands out wide – “so everyone is happy, okay? It’s a perfect plan!”

“Mmhmm,” Spencer says noncommittally, and returns his gaze to the tv.

Brendon lets out a deep breath and relaxes back onto the couch. Onscreen, Seth is babbling harmlessly to Julie Cooper-Nichol. Brendon likes the way his hair curls.

“Kill you in your sleep,” Spencer mutters under his breath a little later; or at least, that’s what Brendon thinks he says. It could be your mother is a sheep or bury you real deep or probably even just Caleb is a creep, but Brendon jerks upright, heart pounding, and beats a hasty retreat.

He finds it difficult to get to sleep that night, even with the soft noise of Spencer breathing audible from the bunk opposite, slow and even and peaceful.

The next night, it’s a Hotel Night, one of the few nights they don’t spend on the road, driving against the schedule, trying frantically to get to the next destination on time.

When they’re handed hotel keys, Brendon looks at Ryan and Ryan looks at Brendon.

‘Hi, Spence,” Jon says. “Roomie.”

Spencer sighs and wrinkles his nose at Ryan and Brendon. “Go forth,” he says, “and – no multiplying, but. Go forth.”

Brendon feels like he has received an official blessing from on high.

Ryan locks the door of their hotel room firmly behind them.

“Come here,” Brendon says, and Ryan pushes him back against the door and kisses him almost lazily, his palms flat against the wood.

Brendon could definitely get used to this.

“Okay,” Ryan says, pulling back, “that still works,” and Brendon grins at him.

“Duh.”

They end up fumbling their way towards the nearest of the beds, Brendon’s fingers hooked through the belt loops of Ryan’s pants.

“Admit it,” Brendon says, lying down and pulling Ryan towards him, “this was a pretty sweet idea of mine.”

Ryan rolls his eyes, so Brendon kisses him again, just to make his point.

“Dude,” he says a few minutes later, “Ryan, did you just yawn? While I was kissing you?”

“No,” Ryan says defensively, but his face contorts briefly around another yawn.

It’s contagious. “Stop that,” Brendon demands, only it comes out sounding more like ‘stop th-aaaaaht’.

“I’m trying,” Ryan mutters, and Brendon sighs.

“Way to jinx us, Ross.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night, okay,” and Brendon snaps, “Well, neither did I!”

They both yawn into the conversational pause.

“This is ridiculous.” Ryan shuts his eyes.

Brendon pokes Ryan in the ankle with his toe. “Oh god, it is.”

He stares at Ryan, and Ryan stares at him. The shadows under his eyes are faintly tinted with blue. Brendon finds himself almost smiling (and it’s not funny, it really isn’t) when the corner of Ryan’s mouth turns up slightly, ruefully acknowledging that they’re too weary even to talk, really.

“I’m tired,” Ryan says softly, and Brendon cups his jaw.

“Yeah.” Because - Brendon would like to summon up even the tiniest flicker, the tiniest iota of crazy, glorious, one-track, technically-still-teenaged lust; he can’t. His eyelids are heavy, and there’s a dull leadenness to his limbs. He sighs. “Hey man, I’m bushed. Sorry about all the sex we won’t be having.”

“Night,” Ryan mutters, kicking off his shoes, and “Night,” Brendon echoes, watching wistfully as Ryan pulls off his pants, divests himself of his scarf and gloves.

He strips down to his own boxers, and there’s a faint plink as Ryan rolls over and switches off the bedroom light. “Just a sec,” Brendon says, but Ryan doesn’t turn it back on, only grumbles sleepily into his pillow.

Brendon fumbles around in the dark, and eventually manages to find another light switch over by the bathroom door. Ryan’s already, instantly asleep, curled on top of his covers, still in his t-shirt and socks, as well as his boxers.

Brendon’s not sure why, but when he comes back out of the bathroom, he just can’t leave Ryan lying there, all cold and uncovered.

“Ryan,” he says, sing-song, and shit, he’s totally using the tone his mother used to employ when she woke him up for church. “Ryan, come on, you’re not even in your bed. Just – just move a bit, dude.” He shakes Ryan’s shoulder gently, and then rather more roughly.

Ryan makes a faint moan of protest in his sleep, but his eyes stay firmly shut. Brendon tries to move him manually; he can get him to shift a little (jesus, you’d look at him and think he weighed nothing, but apparently not. That, or he has his own gravitational field, and Brendon would not be surprised to learn that that was the case), but not enough to let Brendon pull the cover out from under him and cover him up.

He can’t just leave him like that, Brendon tells himself. Ryan gets chilly easily, and if he loses his fingers to hypothermia then they’re out a guitarist, and also Spencer will probably blame him.

So, finally, he pulls the cover off his own bed, and curls up awkwardly next to Ryan, trying to pull a bit of pillow out from under his head. His coverlet is mostly big enough for both of them, but he checks anyway to make sure that none of Ryan’s extraneous limbs are exposed. Because he fears Spencer, he tells himself, but he only gets as far as ‘fears’ before he’s asleep.

When Brendon wakes up, he can hear the water running in the bathroom; he fumbles for his sidekick, and swears when he notes the time. “Ross, you dick,” he calls, thumping on the bathroom door, “hurry the fuck up.”

The door swings open, and Ryan smirks at him, half-dressed. “I didn’t want to wake you,” he says, wide-eyed, and Brendon makes a face and pushes past him.

“Sure you didn’t, you shower stealer.”

He pushes the door closed and strips hastily. The bathroom mirror is already fogged over. He pauses, and cracks the door open again. “If, you know, you’re not clean enough, you can share my shower, Ryan. I’m generous like that.”

Ryan’s already got his pants on, and he’s fussing with his hair in front of the bedroom mirror. He grins. “Not now, hurry up.”

The door slams closed again.

Brendon rubs apple shampoo into his hair and hums happily as he tips his head back and lets the spray fall full on his face. He likes showers. It sucks that he doesn’t, really, have the time to properly enjoy it.

He starts to jerk off anyway, playing one of his favorite fantasies; he’s just starting to get into it, closing his eyes as the shower beats warm on his shoulders, when the door creaks open and Ryan wanders in.

“Dude,” Brendon squeaks, scandalized, because hey, this is private time. He’s protectively shielding his cock before he realizes that maybe ‘private time’ doesn’t apply to Ryan anymore. Conflating ‘fuckbuddy’ with ‘Ryan’ still makes his eyes cross slightly with effort when it comes to, say, personal ablutions.

Does ‘fuckbuddy’ even apply when no actual orgasms have yet transpired?

“I just have to brush my teeth,” Ryan mumbles, holding up his toothbrush as evidence, “just, go on, it’s not like I care, man.”

Brendon doesn’t feel like he can, though. He tries, but it’s hard to concentrate on fucking his hand and fantasizing about watching Maja Ivarrson bite at Scarlett Johansson’s thighs when Ryan’s right there. It’s – distracting.

So he watches almost sullenly as Ryan leans over the sink and scrubs virtuously at his teeth. Ryan brushes carefully, spending a certain allotment of seconds on each tooth, and god, that should be such a turn off, right? No one looks good with toothpaste foam around their mouth. No one.

Only Ryan kind of does. Brendon is a sick, sick boy.

“You could come in and help me with it,” Brendon suggests after a few helplessly enraptured seconds, but he knows before he even says it that it’s a lost cause, since Ryan’s dressed, fresh pants and shirt, and he’s already got his eyeliner on.

He’s not wearing his gloves yet, though.

Ryan flicks his eyes over at Brendon in the mirror. They catch, and hold. “No”, he says, but he doesn’t look away. In fact, he swallows. “You could. You could come here, though.”

Brendon shuts off the water. “Right.”

Ryan smiles a tiny smile when he steps out of the shower – “Towel”, Ryan says sharply, with an eye for his clothes. Brendon grabs one of the fluffy hotel towels (he loves hotel towels, loves) and roughly scrubs at his hair, at his skin. It’s rough and ready, but he lets the towel drop and advances on Ryan again.

“That’s better,” Ryan says appraisingly, almost into his ear, and Brendon swallows, and puts his hands on Ryan’s hips. Ryan’s wearing his favorite belt again, the bright one with the loud design, orangeyellowgreenred. It hurts Brendon’s eyes, so naturally he adores it. Thinking about Ryan’s belt is easier than thinking about the way Ryan’s hands are sliding up his bare arms, very slowly. It’s easier still to stop thinking at all and just to lean forward, meet him.

Brendon’s nowhere near properly dry yet; in fact, he’s distinctly damp, but Ryan kisses him anyway.

Kissing Ryan right now is kind of like making out with a breath mint, but better, Brendon decides. He decides not to tell Ryan that, though, because breath mints and those offended by breath mint comparisons probably don’t do what Ryan’s doing right now, which is ‘getting a hand between them, and groping Brendon’s dick’, and Brendon is totally on board with Ryan’s current plan of action.

“This is okay, right,” Ryan whispers, and there’s no interrogative inflection to the sentence.

“Are you kidding,” Brendon mutters, and it’s also a statement.

Ryan’s not as good at it as Brendon maybe thought he would be. He’s sure Ryan’s had more practice than he has, but then Pete probably didn’t bother with handjobs. His grip is a little too tight, but it’s really good, somehow; and anyway Brendon’s still slick from the shower, he can take rough treatment and like it if it comes with getting to watch Ryan’s face, the way his lower lip is caught between his teeth, the crease of deep concentration between his brows.

Brendon has been trying to get off with Ryan for what seems like forever, and somehow he thought there would be a bigger, more satisfying conclusion than a hasty handjob in a hotel bathroom. Not that he’s complaining, but -

“Dude, can you,” he bucks his hips a little, and Ryan’s grip shifts, loosens, and Brendon sighs. “That’s, that’s –”

Totally better, yeah, and then Ryan’s thumb toys with the head of his cock in a way that could only be bettered if it was his tongue, and at that thought Brendon moans. His back hits the tiled wall of the bathroom. He leans against it and lets Ryan jerk him off, slow and steady, and then, faster, faster.

He – well, he comes pretty quickly, to be honest; he doesn’t expect to, they’re just getting a proper rhythm going and it’s not, you know, frantic – but then his orgasm hits, enough of a surprise, slamming up his spine, to make him sag back against the tiles and breathe hard through his nose. (He whines a little, maybe, when he comes into Ryan’s fist, over the curl of his fingers. Ryan has carefully angled his grip so that nothing stains his clothes.)

“Dude,” Brendon says, as soon as he’s got his breathing under control, “dude, timing. I just took a shower. I’m all gross again.”

Ryan smirks. He’s leaning against the counter, and he looks almost satiated, and definitely pleased with himself. “Yeah, I know.”

“That was actually kinda anti-climactic,” Brendon says thoughtfully, and then, “huh, anti-climactic, get it?”

Ryan makes a sound which might be irritated or amused, Brendon’s not sure. Then he picks up Brendon’s t-shirt - the one which he was just about to change into when Ryan totally jumped him - and wipes his hand off on it. Which clears that up.

“Fuck you,” Brendon groans, “see if I jerk you off now.”

“No time, anyway. We’re supposed to be downstairs in, like, two minutes.”

“- I’m not ready.”

“Yeah. I am.”

“You suck,” Brendon tells him. And it’s normal, it’s what they do, it’s how they talk (it’s how they roll), but at the same time Brendon’s standing there totally naked with his towel at his feet, and Ryan’s dressed and looking at him, and he just jerked him off.

“Uh,” he says awkwardly, “thanks. You know.”

Ryan drops his gaze and shrugs. “Whatever, it’s what I’m supposed to do, right? Now hurry the fuck up.”

“Mmmm.” Jon shuts his eyes and breathes in deep, happily.

“Mmmm,” Brendon agrees. “If they had an aftershave that smelled like coffee, I’d be all over that.”

“If you smelled like coffee, I’d hump your leg like a puppy dog. It’d be pretty awesome,” Jon tells him, “I won’t lie.”

“We need to get on that, then,” Brendon decides, tapping Jon’s shoulder thoughtfully. “But first, my caffeine fix.”

“Coffee, then humping,” Jon nods.

God, he loves Jon. Jon is fun. Which makes him think about things which are more fun, and he’s smiling possibly a little bit dreamily, whilst mentally debating the relative merits of plain old coffee cake as compared to cinnamon swirl, when Jon blinks.

“You – did you,” he starts, and then grins and waves his hand. “Okay, totally not my business.”

Brendon tears his eyes away from the muffin selection long enough to squint at him. “Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Jon’s facial hair makes him more inscrutable. It’s like camouflage. A camouflaging mask of fur.

“You suck, Jon Walker, don’t try your mind tricks on me. I’m unassailable.”

Jon punches his arm affectionately. “You’re something, that’s for sure.”

“You love me,” Brendon says to him, and “a venti just plain drip coffee, no dairy on any account; and a, uh, chai latte no whip – yeah, that one’s venti, too, awesome, thanks,” to the barista.

“But I don’t want-”

“Not for you,” Brendon mutters, studying the counter intently, “and more importantly, should I go wild and crazy and get cake? Or, ooh, cinnamon rolls. Thoughts, decisions, feedback: your name here?”

“They’re really very good,” the barista says earnestly, and Jon smiles at her.

“Okay, I’m going to have one. You twisted my arm. Brendon?”

“No,” Brendon decides, “I think not,” and Jon smiles again at the barista and orders his own coffee. She has to ask them for their names and scribbles them dutifully on the sides of their cups with sharpie. Brendon eyes the two cups marked Brandon with a distinctly jaundiced stare, but when he opens his mouth, Jon steps hard on his foot and treats the barista to another broad, easy smile.

When the girls come up to them, they’re waiting patiently over by the stand with the straws, stirrers and napkins, slouching a bit and having a stimulating intellectual debate. It’s totally like college might have been.

“Jasmine could totally kick Belle’s ass,” Brendon concludes. “She’s feisty. And the pointy shoes, man, do you think they were actually spiky? Because that would kick even more ass.”

“Excuse me,” says a voice at his elbow, in the choked and breathless register that has him already donning a bright, glossy smile, automatically, Pavlovian.

“Hi,” Brendon says, and “Hey, how are you doing,” Jon adds, and when they’ve finished signing autographs and taking pictures – “one picture,” Brendon specifies, “and I totally look like ass, I’m sorry,” – their names are called and they get to pick up their drinks and flee.

“You’re late back,” Ryan snaps, “late for sound check, you remember we have a gig, right? You haven’t suddenly forgotten because of your desperate need for-” he snorts – “Starbucks?”

“Um.”

Ryan glares at him, and Brendon hunches his shoulders.

“I got you coffee, actually. Too. You know, if you want some. Or if you don’t. It’s just -” he gestures with the cup, shoves it towards Ryan “- here.”

Ryan’s mouth closes. “Oh,” he says, small, brow smoothing out, “oh.”

Brendon shrugs. “It’s just, you know, coffee – mmph.”

“Guys.”

Brendon moans piteously, but he stops grinding against the glorious friction of Ryan’s hip, even though there’s nothing he conceivably wants to do less.

“There’s a time and a place, you know?” Jon says, shaking his head sadly. “Save it for the bus. After the show.”

Spencer nods, resting his chin on Jon’s shoulder. “Just a hint, guys, a brightly lit hallway which the supporting bands, the techs, other band-aids, and oh, yeah, reporters are likely to walk through any time probably isn’t it. Just throwing that thought out there.”

Fuck them. It’s only a moderately-lit hallway, and it’s not like it’s the main one or anything. It’s not like he didn’t assess the risks or anything when he and Ryan staggered down the hall, clutching their coffees, and decided that it was suitable to their purposes. Of course their bandmates would have to stumble along, of fucking course.

“Tell that to my blue balls,” Brendon grits out. “You think this is funny? Cockblockers.”

Ryan sighs in frustration, but he lets Brendon go. “Fine. I hope you know that I have to hate you for this.”

“We hate them for this.”

“I’m okay with that,” Jon says. “Spencer, you’re okay with that, right?”

Spencer presses his face into the curve of Jon’s neck. “I’m totally okay with that.”

“We’re cursed,” Brendon says hollowly. “Cursed.” As Spencer and Jon walk away, grinning, he buries his face in Ryan’s shirt and groans. He can feel the warmth of Ryan’s blood through the thin cloth, feel the faint pulse of his heartbeat. (He’s being melodramatic and he even knows it, but whatever, he’s totally entitled.)

Ryan pats his shoulder gently. “C’mon, let’s go and change. We shouldn’t fuck ourselves up before the gig, anyway.”

Brendon whimpers and maintains a white-knuckled death grip on Ryan’s shirt.

“Hey,” Ryan says, and he sounds amused.

Brendon thinks about being annoyed, but then Ryan ducks his head and nuzzles just above his ear, and suddenly the irritation is gone. He might not put something unpleasant in Jon’s bunk after all, although Jon completely and totally deserves a disgusting, squelchy surprise.

(Brendon is way too smart to prank Spencer. Spencer always makes you pay. And pay.)

“We’ll find a better time, Brendon.”

“We won’t,” Brendon says gloomily, “we’re fucking cursed, our fucking is literally cursed,” but he lets Ryan pull him down the hall.

Philadelphia, and they come out of an interview rolling their eyes, because seriously, journalists.

“Did you hear that?” Spencer asks, shaking his head. “Did you even –”

“God,” Ryan says with disgust, and that’s all that really needs to be said, but Brendon and Spencer mock the questions for the rest of the time it takes them to get back to the bus and for Zack and the crew guys to bring them takeout. Normally they’d get food themselves (well, depending on the schedule, the intensity of the fangirl scrum, and the proximity of the fast food outlets) but, post-show interviews, that’s like totally above and beyond and Brendon is so tired (so in need of a shower, too).

“Falafel,” Jon says happily, peering into one of the bags Zack drops in, “falafel, falafel,” almost sing-song, and Brendon throws his arms around Jon’s broad shoulders and hangs down off his back, humming along.

Spencer tosses a napkin at them, grinning. “Shut up.”

“Falafel, falafel,” Brendon says, sticking his tongue out at him.

It’s about two in the afternoon when the bus stops at a roadside 7-11 to refuel, and as per tradition, they get out to stretch their legs and to stock up on absolutely essential snack items with ridiculous levels of salt and sugar.

Brendon seizes the moment and Ryan’s arm, and drags him into the cramped, two-stall rest stop bathroom.

“What the fuck, Brendon,” Ryan says waspishly. “I was going to get some more gummi bears, and now Spencer’ll probably clean them out, and it’s fucking gross in here, did you notice? What the fuck are we doing here? I think I could catch something just from touching the walls. Or breathing the air. I don’t think anyone’s cleaned this bathroom since it was built. Fifty years ago. This fucking reeks – holy shit, is that a glory hole?”

Brendon focuses on his pretty, pretty mouth and tunes out the monologue coming from it until Ryan’s lips stop moving.

“You done?”

“Um,” Ryan says, scratching his chin, “yeah, pretty much. Seriously, what the fuck?”

“I was thinking,” Brendon says very patiently, “that we could, you know, lock the door and have fantastic uninterrupted sex.”

“Here.”

“Or I could just blow you, I guess. That way you wouldn’t have to touch the icky, icky walls or the floor.”

Brendon is considerate and a total gentleman. He thinks William Beckett would be proud. He is also a complete master of seductive dirty talk (fucking Jon, fuck him, he totally is), so he adds “I really, really wanna blow you, Ryan. I want you in my mouth, I want to suck your cock, let me, please.” He licks his lips for good measure.

Ryan’s mouth twitches, sort of like he might sneeze, and Brendon is briefly worried, because that would ruin the whole seductive vibe he’s going for here.

He licks his lips once more, slower this time (he’s been practicing in front of the mirror in the bathroom on the bus, and it’s totally hot. He’d fuck his mouth himself, if his spine bent that way).

“…okay,” Ryan says, a little breathlessly. “Okay, yeah.”

“Excellent,” Brendon says cheerfully. He takes off his black frames and puts them carefully in his jacket pocket, and then grabs a thick handful of paper towels from the dispenser hanging on the wall, scattering them enthusiastically on the ground. Ryan’s right, the floor does look fucking disgusting. He kneels down (oh god, the floor is gross. No, ignore it. Sex! Sex! Sex! chants the little voice at the back of his skull) and grabs Ryan by the hips and pulls him closer, towards his mouth. Brendon has a move he wants to try that’s utterly completely certain to turn Ryan to fucking butter.

“Um,” Ryan says after a few beats. “Brendon. What the fuck?”

“Shut up,” Brendon mumbles. “It’s harder than porn makes it look, okay?”

“Are you trying to – with your teeth?”

Fucking zipper. Fucking, fucking zipper. Brendon’s starting to wish that he’d practiced this before trying it out -

“Ow!”

Ryan smacks the back of his head again. “Stop it, you’re going to ruin my pants, you idiot. Do you know how much these cost?”

Brendon moves back, glaring. “Fucker.” He’s going to do this, though, dammit, so he attacks Ryan’s zipper again, with his fingers rather than his mouth. The crotch of Ryan’s pinstriped trousers is damp, and for a second Brendon feels proud that he can turn Ryan on so much (and then he remembers that, oh yeah, he probably drooled a bit when he was trying to pull that fucking stupid little zipper tab down, why the fuck do they make them that small?).

He’s fumbling, and it’s all that zipper tab’s fault, it threw him off, so it takes a little while to get them open, and then there’s Ryan’s dick, half-hard and flushed, and it’s Ryan’s dick, right there, in his face. Ryan’s dick.

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Have you done this before?”

“Yes,” Brendon lies, because he has, sort of, that time he got completely drunk on The Academy’s bus that first tour. At one point he definitely had his head in William’s lap, he just can’t really remember the details all that well. (Jon shakes his head sagely when That Night is mentioned, and tells Brendon that no, really, he doesn’t want to know. Fucking Beckett and his fucking tequila. It’s not Brendon’s fault he confused him for a girl, anyone could make that mistake).

“You sure?” Ryan asks, and he sounds softer and less bitchy than before.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Brendon snaps, “come here, this has to be quick.”

“God, what a turn on,” Ryan mutters, but he shifts his hips forward, curling one hand in Brendon’s hair. Brendon can feel the warmth of Ryan’s skin radiating against his face, and Ryan’s long fingers in their fingerless gloves are firm and gentle and practically petting his hair, and this has totally been worth the wait, it really has.

It’s weird at first, sober, and Brendon thinks that he could choke and possibly throw up on Ryan’s dick. Which would put paid to any thoughts of sex with Ryan ever ever again, and then he doesn’t think he can breathe, and Ryan will have to explain to the others and to all the world how Brendon happened to asphyxiate and die so tragically young, and it’ll be really, really fucking embarrassing even from beyond the grave, and there will be no sex with Ryan ever ever again, and then he stops worrying about that and worries instead that Ryan’s hands are too tight in his hair, because if Ryan gives him early-onset Male Pattern Baldness, swear to god, he will bite Ryan’s dick off himself and then there will also be no sex with Ryan ever ever again.

Brendon manages a proper rhythm going, after a few minutes, sliding his mouth down just far enough not to choke himself, and hey, this is cake, if kinda (really, hideously) boring. How do girls do this? It’s like watching paint dry. But he’s awesome, and obviously really good at giving head, (which he could have guessed already even if he can’t remember the details of That One Time He Went Down On William Beckett), even though he can’t deep throat, because he can hear Ryan making these breathy little sounds and rougher ones, god, is he growling? and that’s hot, it really is.

He moves his head enthusiastically up and down some more, and then something pops audibly in his neck. The muscles in his shoulders seize up and the top of his spinal column feels like it’s on fire, pain irradiating along his jaw.

Brendon throttles a scream down to a muffled “Ahhheurgh,” and topples backward, onto his ass (and the skanky, disgusting floor. He’s going to have to burn these jeans, and he likes them).

Ryan’s eyes snap open. “What the fuck?” and then, “shit, are you okay?”

“I think I threw my neck out,” Brendon moans pathetically.

A bang sounds on the door. “Hey, driver says we’re leaving now, so whatever you’re doing, hurry up and get out here right now. We’ve got to get to Lowell by four, so I’m standing right here until you get your asses on the bus - and Brendon, I know where you sleep, so move.”

At this moment, Brendon could cheerfully throttle Spencer with his own hands, but he rises painfully to his feet and hobbles past Ryan to the door.

“I hate you so much right now,” Ryan hisses, grimacing as he tries to fasten his pants over his erection. “So, so much.”

Ryan will never know how lucky he is that Brendon didn’t bite his dick off when he had the chance.

The next day, they have the morning free, and most of the afternoon. It’s one of the only actual free days on the whole, entire tour, with just a few phonecall interviews to radio stations penciled in.

They get lunch together in the city, the four of them and Zack. Jon spends most of it on his phone, fielding first a call from Cassie – his face goes suddenly soft, like wax held up to heat – and then one from Tom which make him frown. Brendon doesn’t even have the heart to steal anything from his unguarded plate, and neither does Spencer. They make faces at each other across the table.

They all heard about the thing with the Academy just after it went down, before the tour started; Jon looked miserable for a week. They were unanimous in agreeing that Tom should join them, later, and Jon started smiling properly, fully, again.

Somehow, sympathetic grimaces with Spencer turns into Brendon opening his mouth and displaying a fairly revolting mass of half-masticated taco, and Spencer pales.

Zack laughs, and then smacks the back of Brendon’s head, and Ryan sighs and says “Seefood? Are you fucking eight years old?”

“Yeah,” Spencer adds, “that’s fucking gross.”

“Oh, whatever,” Brendon rolls his eyes, “do you know what’s gross? How much ketchup you have on your plate.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Spence,” Ryan says sadly, “I hate to agree with Brendon, but he has a point.”

“I do,” Brendon agrees. “Your lunch is drowning in the salty blood of the innocents.”

“Ketchup is murder.” Ryan’s voice was made for delivering ridiculous statements absolutely deadpan.

“The tomatoes were asking for it,” Spencer says, and tries to kick them both under the table simultaneously.

It’s nice.

Afterwards, Jon peels off, phone held close to his ear, and Zack follows him, but not without a worried look in their direction. Pfft, like the three of them need constant protection. There’s not much to do, since Spencer and Ryan turn down his brilliant mini-golf plan, so they wander around, sipping sodas and shopping, and trying to look inconspicuous. Video games, a couple of books, and finally Brendon buys a pair of awesome sneakers. They glitter. Spencer casts disdainful eyes over the selection, but he eventually leaves with a furtive look and a large shopping bag, plastic straining over the hard corners of shoeboxes.

Ryan, Brendon knows, is on the brink of organizing an intervention for Spencer.

When they stop, it’s about time for them to call the radio station (Brendon and Spencer’s turn today). About five minutes into the call, Zack and Jon turn up, and Brendon knows that it’s mostly to check that they’re keeping their interview commitments, but they still exchange manly, silent handslaps.

“What did you do?” Jon mouths, and Brendon tries to answer the interviewer’s lame questions (“Do you see yourself as a sex symbol? What’s your favorite color?”) and simultaneously mime the day’s events at him.

When that’s wrapped up (“No problem, happy to talk to you,”) Jon suggests going to catch the new Bond movie before the bus leaves that night.

Ryan shrugs. “Pete wants to see it at Thanksgiving.”

“I’m feeling like a night in.”

Spencer says, “I’ll go, what else is there to do? And I’m not going to just let you hibernate in your bunk, Ryan.”

Brendon grins and says, “Oh, I wasn’t going to let him hibernate, Spencer Smith, I promise you that,” and Ryan goes pink and kicks his ankle at the same time as Spencer punches his shoulder.

“Hey, now,” Jon intervenes, when Brendon plasters himself to his shirtfront and claims protective shelter (“Sanctuary! Sanctuary!”), “no hitting. Zack, do you wanna come with?”

Zack does, and in the end, a couple of guys from the crew tag along too.

“Fools,” Brendon mutters as the two of them walk back to the bus, and Ryan rolls his eyes at him.

“Says the guy who’s totally excited about seeing it in Chicago.”

“Pussy Galore,” Brendon sighs happily, “they just don’t name them like they used to.”

The bus is dark and shut up; Brendon pulls his keys off his beltloop, and says, “What do you want to do? We could, we could try out that giving of head thing again, maybe.”

“Sure, maybe.” Ryan strips off his jacket. “But I bet I could kick your ass at Tekken first.”

Brendon says first, “Dude, vintage,” and then “No, you couldn’t, Ross, you’re on.”

They play a couple of games, Ryan stretched out across the back bus couch, one ankle flung atop the other, Brendon sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him, tongue pinched between his teeth.

“Told you,” Ryan says, smug, setting his controller down, and Brendon makes a face at him.

“That so doesn’t count, I won the first one.”

Ryan flips through channels on the tv. “Yeah, but I won the second. And the third. And, oh yeah, the fourth.”

“I hate you, Ryan,” Brendon announces plaintively, and crawls towards the couch, kneeling on the floor, elbows propped on the couch edge. His face is too close to Ryan’s; he can’t see all of Ryan’s face at once, just huge eyes, a bit of forehead, a lot of nose, a hint of upper lip. Focusing makes his eyes cross.

“Hey.” Ryan blinks owlishly at him.

“Hey yourself,” Brendon says, and leans in the rest of the way.

They make out like that until Brendon’s knees start to hurt (“Ow, fuck, stop laughing-”) and he clambers up onto the couch. Ryan wriggles over a little, makes room for him, and Brendon kisses him a little more until they both get distracted by the tv.

They stay like that, curled into each other, while they watch Teen Titans cartoons. It’s not deliberate, it’s not even particularly comfortable, but Brendon falls asleep partway through, around the time when Starfire is flying back to the Tower, Robin in her golden arms.

He dreams about – he can’t even remember, later, filaments of dream slipping like quicksilver from his waking mind, but he thinks he remembers something about pirates.

“- it was awesome,” someone - Spencer - says, and he sounds both loud and far away.

“You should have come,” Jon agrees, and then right by Brendon’s ear Ryan hisses viciously, “Shut the fuck up, you’re going to wake him up.”

“Mmeurgah,” Brendon complains, half-turning over, and Spencer says, “Too late, Ryan.”

Brendon feels suddenly chillier as the warm human mass pressed against his side shifts and then pulls away, and the air hits him. “I’m awake,” he announces, but it takes him another couple of seconds to get his eyes unstuck.

“Thanks for sharing,” Jon says, patting him on the head, and Brendon struggles upright, because lying supine puts him at a distinct disadvantage.

Ryan’s sitting up, too, arms folded over his chest. When Brendon looks at him, the corner of his mouth curls in a half-smile.

“Right,” Brendon says, standing right in front of Ryan. Spencer and Jon have long since vanished into the bunks, so he sets his jaw and assumes an expression which he hopes conveys grim determination. “I’m going to blow you, and it’s going to be fucking awesome, and you’re going to think that I’m sucking your soul out through your dick, and then you’re going to be my little bitch forever and trail around after me telling me how good I am at giving head and asking for more, like, like - a tiny perverted Oliver Twist!”

“Sure,” Ryan says boredly. He punches Brendon in the arm, and either he means it to feel like a gentle glancing blow from a dying butterfly or he’s getting weaker and weaker as his thighs get thinner and further apart, because it doesn’t hurt at all. “Sure I will.” He looks down at his knees, and then quickly up again. “Look. Brendon. This has all been kind of a disaster, I think maybe we should just –”

“I haven’t finished!” Brendon protests, holding up a hand dramatically. “Look, that’s only part one of the plan, and wait, before I unveil part two, what the fuck kind of guy are you? I promise you amazing head, and you try to brea- to turn me down? Jesus.”

Ryan starts to open his mouth again, and Brendon waves the hand in his face magisterially. “Part two,” he says loudly, “involves you going down on me, and you have no idea, like, none at all, how much I think about that sometimes. God, your mouth. It’s so – don’t you dare hit me – it’s so fucking pretty, and sometimes when we’re onstage or on the bus or, you know, anywhere public, I just, I just stare at it. And sometimes I think about how it would look around my dick, and, and, yeah.”

He looks up to see how Ryan’s taking it.

“Oh,” Ryan says quietly. His eyes are wide and dark, color smeared along his cheekbones (and the natural kind, not the type that comes in shining black tubes of MAC, even), and as Brendon watches, he shifts in his seat, bottom lip caught between his teeth. He doesn’t say anything more.

Promising.

Brendon kneels in front of the couch again, between Ryan’s legs, and puts his hands on his knees, pushing them gently apart. Ryan lets him move him just like a poseable doll (not that Brendon has ever touched one of those, no), and doesn’t even say anything sharp, just watches him, eyes wide.

Oh yeah, this is going to be excellent.

He gets Ryan’s jeans open with a minimum of difficulty this time. Ryan isn’t wearing underwear again, because boxers just don’t work properly with pants that tight, and Brendon really, really likes that about him. It’s an admirable character trait, Ryan’s occasional complete lack of underwear.

He’s better at going down this time, too, because while he panics a bit at first (not enough to stop or slow down) he gets into, like, this groove, after only about half a minute of overdramatic imaginings of his possible death. Ryan starts to make the soft needy noises again, and yeah. He is going to get Ryan off properly even if it kills him, and then Ryan is going to get him off, and no one is going to interrupt or fall asleep, and it is going to be awesome.

He shifts his hands from Ryan’s thighs, sliding one along to clutch at Ryan’s ass (ass grab! He is so fucking smooth) and moves the other down to unfasten his own fly, because Ryan making those noises because of him? Really, really, fucking hot.

“Mmmph,” Ryan half-moans, “Brendon, fuck, Brendon- ”

Yeah, so fucking hot.

“ - fuck, Brendon, watch your teeth, ow. Mmm, better, god, could you use your tongue some more? Watch the fucking teeth already. Yes, tongue, and if you could – god, Brendon, yeah, that’s okay, that’s good - could get your hand off your own dick long enough to touch my balls, or something, please, fuck –”

Ryan Ross is somehow still a demanding little bitch even when getting head. It sort of figures.

He keeps up the running commentary, and Brendon follows his directions as best as he can and tries really hard not to feel resentful, because after this the lips snapping instructions are going to be wrapped around his own dick and it’ll be so, so worth it.

Soon, though, Ryan ceases to be so stridently bossy. “Brendon, could you – oh, oh, fuck, mmm,” gives way to a series of moans that cannot be accurately transcribed, growing successively deeper, lower and more desperate.

Brendon chuckles smugly. As his mouth is currently occupied, this has a gratifying effect on Ryan, who arches his back, slender hips jerking forward with sudden urgency, and Brendon just has time to think whoa, and pull back a little bit, because death by asphyxiation is looming again, when Ryan moans a final time and shudders as he comes.

Because the glorious culmination occurs when Brendon is halfway through drawing back from Ryan’s cock, mouth gone loose, an unfortunate amount of Ryan’s come manages to make it into his mouth.

A slightly larger, even more unfortunate amount makes it onto the surface of his face.

“Oh my god,” Brendon splutters, “Oh fuck, oh god, that’s disgusting, oh my god!” He frantically paws at his face. “This is the vilest taste that has ever been in my mouth!”

Ryan stares down at him. “I think that’s like the worst thing you could possibly say. In this situation. Ever.”

“Oh god,” Brendon continues, “I think you got some in myeye. Oh god, it stings. I’m going to go blind - ”

Ryan continues to stare as Brendon scrambles into the bathroom, where the sounds of frantic gargling and “my eyes, oh god, my burning eyes!” float out clear and distinct even over the white noise of running water.

“So, um,” Brendon says when he comes out of the bathroom. His hair is wet through from sticking his head under the faucet, and his shirt is drenched and sticking to him, but the surfaces of his eyeballs are no longer burning.

Ryan’s curled up on the couch with a book, fully dressed again, with his knees tucked under his chin. Something about the sight of him so quiet, lashes against his cheeks, makes Brendon’s ribcage feel oddly tight.

“What about part two? Are you going to return the favor?” He’s not hard any more, but hey, give him a minute.

“Sorry, darling, I have a headache tonight,” Ryan says snippily, turning a page in his book, and he doesn’t look up.

“Victory,” Spencer says, spreading his arms out slowly, tiredly, dragging against the floor of the bus. If there was snow on the floor, he’d be leaving angel prints.

“I don’t see why we have to step over you,” Brendon says. “I’m going, I’m going to trip and fall over you, you’re a total hazard. A fire hazard.”

“You’re just jealous you didn’t bag the floor,” Spencer tells him smugly. He has the cushions from the couch and some pillows and blankets plundered from the bunks, and he snuggles into them smugly.

Brendon eyes the denuded couches, occupied by Jon, and Ryan and Ryan’s large bowl of popcorn respectively, and sighs. “If you let me share, I’ll share my cookies with you,” he says, squatting down and staring straight into Spencer’s eyes. “Chocolate chip.”

“I can’t be bought,” Spencer says, but eyes the cookies, and when Brendon rustles the packet invitingly he makes a grumbling sound and twitches back one of the blankets. “I want half.”

“A third,” Brendon tries to barter, but Spencer ends up with half plus one. Brendon’s not entirely sure how that happened, but Spencer gives him a cushion and a bit of blanket, so. It’s not a total loss.

“So, what are we watching?”

“Sshh.”

“Halle Berry, I mean, Catwoman, now shut the fuck up.”

“Ryan, pass the popcorn.”

“Make me.”

“Jon, can you kick him?”

“I don’t believe in kicking. Ryan, can you – thanks.”

“Unbelievable.”

“I know, right?”

“If the dickheads on the floor would shut up, we could actually watch the movie.”

“Hey, hey. Spencer, we’re like, literally the peanut gallery.”

“We don’t have any peanuts. Or popcorn. Jon -”

“Okay, okay.”

“Shut up.”

“….”

“Oh my god, you two, stop the fucking giggling.”

The tour hits Illinois in time for Thanksgiving, which suits Jon, who disappears off into the embrace of his family, and doesn’t phase Spencer, who gets to go to Hayley’s and spend time with his girlfriend.

(Jon had said that they were welcome to crash at his - Spencer looked wretched and explained that he couldn’t invite people to his girlfriend’s parents’ place, and continued to look guilty even when Brendon and Ryan assured him that no, Spencer, they totally got that. Pete sent Ryan a laconic message two weeks before Thanksgiving; dude u bettr get ur ass hre 4 thnxgiving k. bden and spence too. my moms cooking, itll b awes. Brendon knows, because Ryan showed him the message before he got all annoyed at him for, like, not swallowing or whatever that was. It was totally unreasonable, anyway.)

Ryan’s not quite talking to him, but he’s not quite not. He makes a point of asking Spencer pointedly to tell Brendon that Pete’s picking them up the morning after the Chicago show (so he better have his fucking bag ready because Ryan’s going to tell Pete not to wait) while Brendon’s sitting right there. But he also asks Brendon absentmindedly to get him a drink when he’s standing over by the bus fridge, interrupts him in interviews and grins at him when they’re both trying to answer the same question.

And that morning when Ryan’s trying to walk out of the bunks and Brendon’s trying to walk in, they both sway together with the movement of the bus and Brendon kisses him back until Ryan finally pulls himself away, scowling, says “I’m still angry with you,” and pushes past him.

The atmosphere is still a little weird in Pete’s car en route to the Wentz Family Thanksgiving – Ryan calls shotgun and Brendon sprawls out over the entire backseat; Pete fiddles with the rearview mirror until he can see Brendon’s eyes, and says loudly, “So, that message you left me a couple of weeks ago, how’s that working out for you?”

“Um,” Brendon says.

“You didn’t,” Ryan says flatly from the front seat, “you’re such a fucking idiot,” and then tells Pete “it’s not.”

“It kind of is,” Brendon argues.

Ryan twists around to glare at him and says darkly, “You’re on probation.”

Which Brendon thinks about for a few seconds, until he’s reasoned that that means that he wins. Because Ryan could have just said that it wasn’t again, but no, probation. Which means that he’s not really pissed any more, and he shouldn’t be, because seriously that wasn’t Brendon’s fault, and he’ll do better next time.

He tells Ryan that (it’s totally oblique, he’s not spelling anything out, it’s practically code) and Ryan hisses shut up while Pete chuckles and says, “Smells like teen love, that’s so fucking cute.”

Pete’s mom is a total sweetheart, Brendon likes her. She assures him before he’s even stepped over the threshold or to said more than ‘hi’ that she knows that he’s vegetarian (which mostly he is) and has made sure to have food options for him. She fusses over Ryan, too and talks about feeding him up, which seems to be the reflex impulse of every woman over, like, twenty-five, when confronted with Ryan’s spindly legs and prominent collarbone.

“Listen to my mom, she’s very wise,” Pete says, ruffling Ryan’s hair. Ryan grins at him but hesitates in the hallway after Mrs Wentz bustles away, looking awkward. Pete ruffles his hair again and says “Chin up, Ross. You’re welcome, I promise. You’re more than welcome. You know you’re like, my baby bro. My other baby bro.”

Brendon thinks, gross, but he keeps it to himself.

He likes Pete’s sister Hilary, too, who teases Pete about his dubious hair and fashion choices over the mashed potato, which is something Brendon feels he can get behind, until Hilary turns her laughing eyes on him and Pete says hastily “The guests are off-limits for mocking, Hils.”

Brendon is maybe in favor of the sisterly needling because of the way Pete’s sitting with his arm around Ryan’s shoulders, squeezing occasionally to punctuate the highpoints of his lame jokes.

He knows they’re lame, but he still finds himself laughing until he has to actually clap a hand over his mouth to make sure that he doesn’t embarrass himself in front of the gathered Wentzes by accidentally spewing tofurkey all over the tablecloth.

Ryan rolls his eyes at one particularly awful turkey joke, smiling at Brendon; Brendon grins back and their fingers brush when Brendon passes him the gravy boat, and Ryan smiles again.

After hanging out in Pete’s room for a couple of hours, watching movies, listening to him talk and talk and talk (raptly, in Ryan’s case), Pete spots Brendon yawning and turns off the tv, even over their protestations.

He ushers them down to the basement with a flashlight in his hand; the lights are still on downstairs, though his parents have gone to bed, so he really doesn’t need one. But he’s Pete, so when he opens the basement door he pushes them through, without switching on the light, and then flips the flashlight on and makes gruesome faces into its pale beam.

“Okay,” he says, stopping and flashing the torch around the black space of the basement instead, “this is my domain. My batcave. But you get to use it, because I’m generous like that.”

“Wow, thanks,” Brendon says, grinning, and Pete abandons the flashlight and finally flicks the lights on.

“Okay, so, the bed’s over there, and I got my mom to make up a campbed down here, too, since I figured you’d wanted to room together… anyway. So, like, the choice is up to you two – or, hey, not. Man, Ross, you move fast.”

Ryan does. Brendon scowls at him, and he smirks back from the bed he’s sprawled himself out over.

“You suck,” he tells him, setting his bag down by the campbed. “Seriously, there aren’t even words for it.”

Ryan smirks at him again, then plucks at his own t-shirt and looks over at Pete.

“I’m going,” Pete tells him, “I just have to tuck you in first, okay? Host’s obligation. Host’s duty. Host’s pleasure.”

Ryan laughs. “I think we can manage that ourselves,” and Brendon mumbles, “Gross.”

“Shut up, it’s my duty. You’re like, my progeny,” Pete says, eyes going slightly squinted with amusement. “Don’t do drugs, kids, and always practice safe sex. Wear sunscreen.”

“Dude, gross.”

“I appreciate the advice,” Ryan says gravely, and Pete beams at him. “You still don’t get to tuck us in.”

“You suck, Ryan Ross,” he says, half-petulant, “I made you, you should be, like, my obedient little man-dolls. Well, Patrick did, too - you see, in my offspring-analogy, he’s the mom,” he informs Brendon with a whispered aside. “Children need a nurturing influence, or they grow up warped.”

Ryan raises his eyebrows. “I’m telling Patrick you said that.”

“Hey, we have autonomy now. We don’t let you dress us up anymore,” Brendon says triumphantly. “Because that way lies badness.”

“And my days are empty now,” Pete tells him soulfully, “the joy has passed from my life.” He sighs. “Where did I go wrong? Didn’t I, like, discipline you enough? When do man-dolls become men?”

“Night, Pete,” Ryan says, and Brendon watches as Pete turns his head to smile down at him, a real smile, one which touches his eyes.

“Night,” he says, and leans down and brushes a kiss against Ryan’s temple. It’s a more genuine, revealing gesture than Brendon’s seen from Pete in, well, ever; and Ryan smiles up at him, the soft smile which doesn’t curl his cheeks up but which sits lightly around his mouth, surprisingly sweet. (He looks weirdly young in his old t-shirt, without his makeup or his hat or any of his little distracting thingies; young and tired and spending Thanksgiving without a family, and the bones of his wrists, resting on the bedcovers, look strangely delicate under the fluorescent light.)

“Gross,” Brendon says again, scowling, and Pete lifts his head up to smile crookedly at him.

“I can sing you a lullaby, dude, if you want. Little boy blue, come blow my horn- ”

“Ew,” Ryan says, nose wrinkling, and at that Pete grins a final time and backs out of the room, closing the door carefully behind him with a click and a loud “Happy Thanksgiving, my demon spawn!”

Brendon gets ready for bed, and watches as Ryan shucks his jeans and pulls back his own covers.

“Just a moment,” Ryan mutters, and then he pads over to the far wall, bare feet sounding against the floor, and clicks the light off.

“I’m kind of surprised you’re not sleeping up there with him,” Brendon says, over the faint sounds of Ryan finding his way back into bed.

Ryan’s breath hisses between his teeth and he says sharply, “Shut the fuck up,” and the basement fills with tense, resentful silence.

Brendon lies there in the dark, staring at the ceiling; the room is almost entirely dark, light barely filtering around the far-away edges of the door. (He’s not listening to Ryan breathing). He can barely make anything out; Ryan’s bed is a faint, far-off smudge, and so are the cabinets against the wall, the edge of the couch, posters indistinct blotches against the paler walls. (He’s still not listening to Ryan breathing.) He can’t see the ceiling clearly, he knows he can’t, but he squints at it anyway, and as it swims against his gaze, he could swear that it’s stained, suspicious patches of dark dappled against its surface.

Then there’s a shuffling and a sliding and Ryan’s climbing into his campbed, on top of him. Brendon is surprised – uh, whoa? Wait, what? – and then Ryan’s kissing him, hard and rough, his hips digging into Brendon’s even through the bedcovers.

Brendon whines and thrusts up against him. “Shush,” Ryan whispers harshly, and then he scrambles back a little and whips back the covers.

“Jesus fuck,” Brendon exclaims, shivering, as the night air hits his skin; his old shirt and boxers don’t provide a hell of a lot of warmth and Pete’s basement isn’t exactly toasty, “jesus fuck, Ryan,” but Ryan just sighs impatiently against his ear.

‘Suck it up, god,” and his cold fingers are suddenly rough on the waistband of Brendon’s boxers, pulling them down, chilly against his lower belly; and then, then, his mouth is on him, and Brendon finds himself lying back and staring at the amorphous stains on the ceiling of Pete’s basement while Ryan Ross goes down on him.

He does a better job than Brendon did; he’s good with his tongue, slick, and at first maybe, mostly he just licks sloppily around the sides (Brendon’s not going to complain, it’s not like he can do any better; they say there’s no such thing as a bad blowjob and that’s totally true - except when teeth are involved, but that’s like, a given), but then Ryan takes a deep breath and it suddenly gets even better. He starts to slide his mouth down, experimenting, going further, his fingers sharp on Brendon’s hips and digging in harshly every time Brendon even thinks – doesn’t think – about bucking forwards.

Brendon tries to lie perfectly still, like the dead, with Ryan’s fingers pressing like a vice against the back of his hips and with his mouth like, like - warm hot sin - his mouth, his actual mouth, sliding up and down on his dick, jesus. It’s minutes and minutes and it feels like hours, like seconds.

Then Ryan pulls away.

“Hey,” Brendon whimpers, “hey, no,” and Ryan looks up at him, and Brendon can’t read his eyes at all in the dark.

“Dude, you don’t get to come in my mouth, after the other night,” he says flatly, like it’s obvious, and Brendon could kick himself, would kick himself, if Ryan wasn’t sliding back up then, his breath hot on Brendon’s chin, and his hand wasn’t slipping between them, finding Brendon’s dick, finishing him off.

“Ryan,” Brendon says, shutting his eyes, and Ryan mutters, “Yeah,” and Brendon can feel him grinding himself off against his hip. The campbed shudders and shakes under their weight, Ryan’s movements, and Brendon honestly thinks that it’s going to collapse.

He comes before Ryan does, and lies there mouthing at his neck, breathing hoarsely through his nose, until Ryan sucks his breath in quietly and stops moving.

“You don’t,” Brendon says when Ryan twists off of him, “you don’t have to go,” and Ryan rolls his eyes at him – okay, it’s dark, and Brendon can’t actually see him doing it, but oh, he knows – and stands up.

“There’s no room,” he says quietly, moving away, and then Brendon hears the shuffling soft noises the bedcovers make as Ryan gets comfortable back in his own bed.

“Night,” he calls softly (his boxers are entirely gross, but that’s a problem for another day) and “Night”, Ryan echoes back.

In Minneapolis, Ryan is a little slow pulling away from Brendon’s predatory onstage lunges, and he gets close enough to feel Ryan’s breath against his face.

“Rise and shine, I hope nobody’s naked in there!” Jon whips the curtain of Brendon’s bunk open and beams paternally down at them. “Up, up, up!”

“Kill him,” Ryan whispers into Brendon’s neck, “please. I’d do it myself, but he trusts you more. You can slip under his guard.”

Brendon pouts, hand curling around Ryan’s hip possessively. It’s kind of like – the closest approximation Brendon can come to is being in bed with a more padded Jack Skellington, and huh, it’s totally possible to retroactively destroy your own childhood, who knew? He hates his brain, he really, really does.

They don’t fit very well into the small space of the bunk – Ryan’s elbow is sharp in his side, and when he woke up, he had a mouthful of Ryan’s hair - but proximity has its own rewards. (By which he means that there was space enough for him to watch Ryan jerk off after the show last night, help him out with that a little, and then for Ryan to go down on him; and that’s all the space one could really ever need, right? The, uh, sleeping, actual sleeping, together after had been an accident.)

“Death is so final. Can’t we just pants him onstage? We could pants him every night!”

“I heard that!”

“So did I,” Ryan grumbles, “and no, you can’t, it’ll destroy the artistic integrity of the stage show. We have a whole theme, a flow, and- ”

“Uh-huh,” Brendon agrees, “totally, are these my boxers or yours?”

Brendon throws himself onto the couch and tips his head back, staring dreamily at the ceiling of the lounge. “I want waffles. Or eggs. Or pancakes. Anything but cereal.”

“Cereal is all we have, suck it up,” Ryan says, tugging his cap on, and kicks Spencer’s ankle gently in greeting. “Stop making me hungry.”

“Ice cream!” Brendon muses. “Towers of chocolate-chip waffles! With cream!”

“I’m making coffee,” Jon decides, pulling himself up from the couch and stretching his back. “It’ll be instant, but still full of caffeine-y goodness and nutrients.”

Spencer beams. “I love Jon. Stealing him from William was the best thing we ever did. Did you hear that, Jon?”

“-and chocolate sauce! And ooh, curly fries!”

“Stealing is such a lie,” Jon calls back from the kitchen, “You all swept me off my feet, I totally eloped.”

“Hey,” Ryan whispers, leaning against Spencer’s shoulder.

Spencer pats his arm. “Hi.”

“I don’t want cereal,” Brendon says sulkily.

Jon bustles out, and hands mugs of coffee to Spencer and then to Ryan. Brendon pouts and waves empty hands at him. “What about me?”

Jon ruffles his hair affectionately. “Awww. There’s a cup for you on the bench, Brendon, but if you want it you have to get up and get it. I only have so many hands.”

“I want waffles,” Brendon whimpers tragically.

“Mmm,” Spencer agrees, and Brendon can hear his stomach gurgle in counterpoint. “Me too.”

Jon folds himself down next to Spencer, as if Brendon isn’t supposed to be his favorite. Brendon pouts. He pouts more when Jon rubs his head against Spencer’s free shoulder.

“Hi, Jon.” Spencer pats his knee. “Jon, I want waffles.”

“So do I,” Brendon complains, “I wanted waffles first.”

“Yeah?” Jon says, pressing his nose against Spencer’s neck to make him squirm. “I could maybe ask the driver how we’re going for time, and then maybe if we happen to go past somewhere we can stop - we may have to cut the lunch stop later a little, a lot short -”

“Dude, if you can do that-” Brendon is a little scared of their driver. He likes him, he just has the weird feeling that sometimes their driver would like to squash him like an annoying little fly. “Use your powers for good, Jon Walker, and if you can pull it off, I’m totally going to marry you when I grow up.”

Brendon is honestly not sure whether to pay more attention to Ryan, or to his waffles. On the one hand, Ryan; on the other, waffles.

He compromises on shoveling large forkfuls of waffle into his mouth whilst simultaneously trying to get Ryan to hold his hand under the table. Ryan bats him away and concentrates on cutting up his pancakes into tiny little bite-sized pieces, but the tips of his ears go scarlet.

“See, and that’s why the Elephant Six – look, it’s kind of like an M&M,” Spencer gestures with his fork, painting figure-of-eights in the air. “There’s this outer coating of coolness, really awesome sound, they seem like they were all just messing around and having fun? And then inside, like, the chocolate part, it’s really pretentious and deep, and you know, whenever people bitch about the length of our titles, I just want to tell them to take a look at some of the early Of Montreal stuff, you know?”

“Mmm,” Jon says, and Spencer looks briefly gratified, “M&Ms.”

“I could go for M&Ms,” Brendon muses, chewing. He dips his finger into his whipped cream and tries to transfer it to the tip of Ryan’s nose; Ryan elbows him sharply in the side (“Oh god, I’m wounded, I can’t breathe! You’ve broken my ribs, and they’ve pierced my lungs, and you’re going to have to sing tonight and it serves you right, asshole!”) and so he settles for reaching across the table and daubing Jon solemnly across the cheek with it instead.

“Now you’re a warrior,” Brendon tells him, “and also a man.”

Jon nods gravely, and then smears a retaliatory line of chocolate syrup down the centre of Brendon’s forehead, ending halfway along the bridge of his nose.

“God, it’s like trying to eat in public with two year olds,” Ryan complains, and he and Spencer exchange martyred looks.

“It is not, I was going to lick the cream off your face once I got you with it!” Brendon defends himself, “It would’ve been hot! Oh yeah, sorry, Jon, that offer doesn’t extend to you. Though you’re magically delicious, maybe it should…”

Ryan throws his napkin at him.

“Anyway,” Spencer drawls, drawing the word out like wire.

“Anyway,” Jon echoes. He crumples his napkin into a ball and tosses it from hand to hand. “Brendon still has chocolate on his face, look – hey, are you two holding hands?”

“…no.”

“Nuh-uh, absolutely not.”

“If you’re going to be cutesy, I’m going to be sick.” Spencer pushes away his eggs, but the apples of his cheeks bloom with his suppressed smirk.

Jon takes an absent-mined forkful, and then when Brendon kicks him (“Jon Walker, you bottomless pit!”), says belatedly “You don’t want these, right?”

“Take them,” Spencer says dramatically, “take them all, I’m not going to need them.”

Ryan slips his hand free of Brendon’s and cuts another tiny bite-sized piece out of his pancakes. “Here.”

Spencer eyes him for a moment, and then rolls his eyes and leans in, eating from Ryan’s fork. “Mmph.” He swallows deliberately, and finally pronounces, “Good.”

Brendon nudges Ryan. “I want some too!”

“I’m not sharing the fork again after he’s used it,” Spencer says hastily. “I don’t know where his mouth’s been.”

“I could tell you,” Brendon offers, “I could tell you where Ryan’s has been,” and then shrieks (in a manly way) when Ryan uses the fork to stab him in the thigh.

Jon looks up from his napkin, stops scribbling at it in Sharpie, and reaches past the half-devoured plates of food to pat Brendon’s hand. “Hey, hey, stop being mean to Brendon.”

“I love Jon,” Brendon says, “he understands me.” He nudges Jon’s ankle with his foot lovingly.

Spencer steals another bite of Ryan’s pancakes. “They’re playing footsie, oh my god.”

“Platonic footsie!”

Ryan stares down at his rapidly disappearing pancakes mournfully. “We need better friends.”

Spencer nods.

“I’m sorry about the eggs,” Jon tells Spencer, eyes wide. “I’ll make it up to you.” He hands Spencer his crumpled napkin, now heavily adorned with scribbles in black marker.

“Wow, thanks,” Spencer says evenly.

“See?” Jon asks, “that’s you, and that’s me, and we’re smiling because you’ve forgiven me for eating half your breakfast. And that’s Dylan.”

“Jon Walker,” Spencer sighs. On the napkin, the stick figures and the tiny stick cat beam with wide crazed grins. “Stop making it so hard to be even a little mad at you.”

“What’s that?” Ryan points at one of the unidentified scribbles (also bearing a mad grin).

“That’s the sun.” Jon shrugs. “I like sunshine.”

Spencer sighs again. “You make it so hard.”

Brendon’s kind of bored by this, so he decides to make his own entertainment. He leans in until his lips are touching Ryan’s ear, breath heavily laced with chocolate: “Hey, you know, I could go down on you right now,” hand creeping up Ryan’s knee, “I could pretend I dropped something and just crawl under the table,” fingers insinuating over Ryan’s zipper, “just open your pants and -”

There’s a loud crash, and lukewarm liquid splashes all over the table as Ryan’s coffee cup makes an unexpected acquaintance with the floor.

“Um,” Ryan says, looking red and quietly mortified, “that was an accident.”

A waitress hurries over and starts to take care of it. Ryan sinks down in the booth, staring at his lap and generally giving an excellent impression of wanting to disappear.

“Hey, lighten up,” Brendon says, patting his knee, “you’re a rock star, come on. How are you going to deal once we get into the smashing-our-rooms-up stage of fame? Seriously.”

Ryan just shakes his head, shoulders curling in. Brendon sometimes thinks that the real reason Ryan started wearing his newsboy cap all the time - after he started growing his scene bangs out and slicking it back - was to give himself something else to hide behind, once the veiling fall of soft hair was gone.

The waitress is actually sort of hot, with sweet brown curls to her shoulders; large brown eyes, small neat hands, and yeah, nice breasts. Brendon idly admires her over the black rims of his glasses.

(He loves his glasses. They help him see when he’s too tired for contacts, but more importantly, he thinks that they make him look really, really smart. Like, professor smart. It’s all in the glasses. Even if his eyesight was perfect, he’d wear them with plain glass in the frames or something, because they bring him respect.)

When he glances back at Ryan, he and Spencer have purloined Jon’s sharpie and are writing something on another napkin, heads close together and talking low.

”Hey, let me look,” he nudges Ryan, who shifts to shield the napkin with his body, “what’re you doing, come on.”

“Nothing, it’s just.”

“You wouldn’t get it.”

They start laughing, and Brendon cranes his head pathetically to see what the hell they’re finding so fucking funny.

Jon steals food from all of their unattended plates and watches them indulgently, lips quirking in the slightest of smiles.

“Tell me what’s so funny! What’re you doing?”

“Brendon, you don’t care, trust me.”

“Show me, come on. Spencer, you love me, I’m your friend. Ryan, I’m your friend, too, and I – I give you orgasms!”

“Please talk louder,” Ryan says dryly, “Really.”

“Why won’t you just show me?”

“It’s not for you, Brendon,” Ryan says, and Spencer nods.

“It’s just a Ryan-and-Spencer thing, you know. You wouldn’t care.”

Brendon seizes Ryan’s fresh cup of coffee. “If you don’t show me, Ryan, dude, you can kiss the caffeine goodbye.” He waves it menacingly. “Because it’ll be ending up on your designer sneakers,” he tells Spencer, who goes stiff with indignation and possibly fear.

“Brendon, you dickhead- ”

“I mean it. Sneakers, target locked and -”

“Hey, hey.” Jon slides his foot against Brendon’s shin comfortingly. “They’re just playing hangman, okay?”

“Jon, you ruined it,” Ryan complains.

Spencer scowls. “It was just getting funny.”

Brendon slumps down in the booth, pouting. “You suck. I’m going to the bathroom.”

Ryan holds out his hand for his mug, and Brendon relinquishes the coffee.

And then a brilliant idea strikes him like divine inspiration, a silvery bolt straight from the heavens. He presses Ryan’s thigh meaningfully. “Anyone else need to go? Like, oh, Ryan?”

Spencer and Jon trade weary glances.

“No, I’m good,” Ryan says, smirking at him over his cup of coffee, and Brendon knows that this is his revenge for the spill earlier. And possibly also for the shouting. And possibly also for the threatening.

“No, you’re not,” Brendon tells him, and scrunches his face up meaningfully. “You’re really really not, come on. I need you to, uh – I don’t want to go alone, okay? I’m little and helpless and I might get lost! And that hot waitress might take advantage of me!”

Ryan just shoots him a sour look, but Spencer and Jon give up on trying not to laugh.

“Sure,” Spencer gasps, “because you’re just so irresistible.”

“Shut up, I totally am.” He tugs on Ryan’s arm and whines. “Ryan, come on.”

“Fine, just stop causing a fucking scene,” Ryan says, and grudgingly allows Brendon to drag him down the aisle into the bathroom.

They’re laughing a little breathlessly when they burst through the doors; Brendon glances around quickly and once he’s satisfied that the coast is clear, leans in and licks Ryan’s jaw.

“I’ve been wanting to do that,” he says reproachfully, “but it would’ve been better with the cream.”

“I was talking to Spencer,” Ryan complains. “And I haven’t finished my coffee. Do you have to jump me every single time you feel horny?”

“What, you have a problem with that?

“No,” Ryan says hastily, “I just- fuck, I’m beginning to understand what it’s like to be Brendon Urie’s left hand. How the fuck have you not worn it out yet? Don’t you chafe?”

“Oh, you love it,” Brendon says complacently, and pins him against the wall, winding himself around him like a friendly octopus.

Ryan fights him just a little, nipping at his lower lip in a not entirely friendly manner; but the tension drains from the set of his shoulders as Brendon continues to kiss him. Ryan’s lips are still faintly sweet and sticky with syrup, and he kisses back, hand moving to cup the side of Brendon’s neck almost tenderly, thumb resting against his pulse.

“Okay,” Brendon says finally, pulling away; Ryan tries to tug him back, making little pleading noises, but Brendon manfully resists. “Look, we have to be quick, we have what, ten minutes? Enough with the making out.”

“What?” Ryan asks blankly, and Brendon sighs deeply, already opening his own jeans.

“I calculate that we have about five, maybe ten minutes before they come looking for us and we have to leave,” he explains patiently, “so why are we wasting potential orgasm time with this shit? Priorities, Ross, it’s all very simple.”

Ryan slaps Brendon’s hands away when they move to his fly. “Fuck off.”

“We don’t have time for this!”

“Jerk yourself off, I’ve already blown you once today.”

“Ryan,” Brendon whines, “Ryan. Please? How can you not want to get off, seriously? I’m here and the flesh is willing.”

Ryan raises his eyebrows.

“Pleasepleasepleaseplease.” That usually works, at least for getting Ryan to give him the last of the ice cream, or to let him borrow his jacket. “Please?” He pushes against Ryan, nudging, his dick sliding against the frailly curving wing of bone which is Ryan’s hip; and leans in to cup his cheek. Ryan stares back at him, a little cold still, but when Brendon strokes along his cheekbone, his eyes close, just for a second.

“So, you want to make out?” Weird, but okay. Brendon can work with that. ”There’s nothing that says we can’t make out and get off, I just. I was just thinking about using time effectively, you know?”

Ryan rolls his eyes, but Brendon could swear that the clench of his jaw softens, just a bit. “Fine.” He still sounds pissed off, but when Brendon rolls his hips against him again, he grinds back, just a bit, and oh yeah, that’s what Brendon was wanting.

“Lock the door,” Ryan says, low.

Brendon swallows, and his lips graze Ryan’s cheek. “Right.”

He flips the engaged lock with a sense of triumph and accomplishment. Thank fuck for restrooms with like, a single stall; more room, and no fear that some random dude with a complex will just walk into the next stall. Brendon had no idea what the set up would be; he just happens to be so fucking lucky. Clearly a sign that this is a brilliant idea.

“Okay,” Brendon says. “We’re good. Come here, I promised you some making out.”

“This had better be worth it,” Ryan informs him, “Spencer is going to be so pissed.”

”I know.” Brendon grins evilly and reels him in close. “Isn’t that awesome?”

Brendon lets the making out go on for approximately six of their hypothesized ten minutes of bathroom time. He won’t lie, he could totally spend a couple of hours lazily making out with Ryan, just hearing Ryan gasp into his mouth, sliding his hands up under the thin fabric of Ryan’s shirt, both of them hard but not exactly desperate to do anything about it. If they were – if Ryan was a girl, maybe, if Brendon had a girlfriend, he could go in for some of that. As it is, that’d just be weird. Fuckbuddies don’t make out. That’s girlfriend stuff.

It’s nice, though. He slides his thigh in between Ryan’s, rocks; and forget lazy making out, he’s really fucking hard and he needs to do something about it right about now.

Ryan’s mouth is wet and open on his neck, and Brendon tries to strain closer to him, he can’t get close enough, fuck, he can’t get any closer. “God, I want to fuck you,” he says. It just slips out, and when Ryan goes still against him, he wants to bite the words back, swallow them down into silence.

“Uh. Ryan- ”

“In my back pocket. There’s stuff,” he says, breathing harsh against Brendon’s lips.

“You have actual stuff?” Brendon says, and his voice cracks just a little bit.

Ryan opens his eyes to glare at him. “If you don’t want them- ”

“No, no- ” Brendon’s already busy hunting them down, which fortunately practically requires him to grope Ryan’s ass, in, like, the line of duty.

Sometimes, he has these moments of an almost suspended sense of reality, when everything both fixes crystal-perfectly in place and wavers in the air like a mirage; moments when he can’t believe this is this actually his life, and if he just turns around quickly enough, he’ll be back in Vegas and the dry heat of a summer afternoon. Back in Vegas, and his mother won’t be talking to him (except to ask him to attend the service on Sundays), and he’ll have a math test he hasn’t studied for, and band practice that afternoon (but he’ll be worried about not making it, he might have to pull an extra shift at work, because otherwise he won’t be able to make payments on his shitty little apartment, and it might suck but it’s the only roof over his head he has).

He normally has these weird moments on stage; when there’s a faceless mass screaming at him, waving their hands touch me touch me touch me, shouting back the words that he’s already sick of, that he thinks that they’ll find engraved on the insides of his lungs when he dies. When he met Pete Wentz for the first time. When they won the VMA, when Fever went platinum. (When his parents told him he had to move out.)

Apparently he also has them, how is this real, how is this his life, when Ryan Ross stops panting and grinding against him for long enough to snatch the little foil packet of lube out of his hand. “You take care of the condom, I’ll deal with this, okay?”

“Okay,” Brendon echoes, okay, and while he’s fumbling it open, fumbling it on, Ryan’s doing something, he’s not even sure (but he could probably hazard a guess) and turning around to face the wall.

“Hurry up,” he says over his shoulder, not in some weird yet sexy porn voice, but in the exact same tone, pointed and demanding, that he uses when Brendon’s hogging the bathroom mirror, or dawdling before sound check, and it just makes the whole thing even weirder.

“Okay,” Brendon says again, hands on Ryan’s hips, and he pushes forward and. And, and, jesus fuck, Ryan’s so fucking tight - and wet, even, he’d been slicking himself up, that’s what he’d been doing, that is so fucking hot - and it takes more control than Brendon has in, like, his whole entire body not to just shove in the rest of the way but somehow he doesn’t, and he thinks that sound is Ryan moaning and then he realizes, hey, it’s him.

“Brendon,” Ryan says raggedly, “you,” and somehow it makes sense for him to answer with “god, yeah, more?” and Ryan doesn’t answer but he bucks, he actually fucking bucks his hips back just a little, and as far as Brendon’s concerned that’s an all-access pass, fucking laminated and on its own special color-coded lanyard.

They try to keep quiet, all muffled moans and sharp exhalations, the stuttered sound of skin against skin (public restroom, Brendon has to keep reminding himself, fixing that fact in his head, throttling down all the noise he totally needs to make, potential bandmate interruptus) until Ryan breaks, moaning low, drop D-tuned, and Brendon rests his forehead against his back and just, just goes thoroughly and not particularly quietly to pieces.

“Okay,” Ryan says shortly, soon after, “okay, pull out, okay? Brendon, off,” and he has to actually move, that is so unfair, he’s a fucking rock star, he should be allowed a few seconds just to – stand there stupidly, he supposes, whatever, he’s totally entitled to his seconds. He peels himself off Ryan with a distinct sense of injustice.

“Get rid of the fucking condom.” Ryan sounds quiet and commanding, and Brendon bites his lip when he realizes that he’s totally jerking off.

“Uh, you didn’t,” he begins, and Ryan rolls his eyes at him.

“No, but I’m getting there.”

“So next time, I should…” Brendon trails off, watching Ryan’s hands, quick and impatient.

“Next time,” Ryan huffs, and says something like “yeah, right, but maybe you could’ve tried actually touching my dick,” but Brendon’s not even pretending to listen because watching Ryan jack off is, like, compelling viewing, there will never be anything successfully competing during that time-slot, and he only tunes back in as Ryan’s breath half-hitches oddly, losing its rhythm, and he quietly comes over his hands.

Brendon’s reminded of something, so he reaches over and grabs one of them, pulls it up to his mouth. Ryan lets him, pliant, but then:

“ - the fuck are you doing?”

“I don’t even know,” Brendon admits, making a hideous face, “it was something I saw once and I thought it was hot but that is so fucking gross, uck.” He gags over the sink.

Ryan stares at him. “Just put your pants back on, Brendon,” he says tiredly, wiping his hands off on a paper towel and then attending to his own.

“They haven’t like, rattled the door or anything. How long do you think that took?”

Ryan laughs. “You’re joking, right?” He moves to check his hair in the mirror, and smoothes his shirtfront.

“We have to do that again tonight,” Brendon decides, “hey, do you think there’s time for me to blow you before we get to Denver? We could totally lock Jon and Spencer out of the bunks, and then there’d probably be time for you to blow me too, I’m generous like that.”

Ryan stops fussing over his hair and stares at him. For a second Brendon is weirdly certain that Ryan’s about to, like, actually slap him, or punch him, or kick him in the shins (balls), something like that; but then Ryan turns on his heel and stomps out, boots harsh on the tiled floor.

Weird.

That night, there’s a guy at their meet-and-greet; one clinging to his girlfriend, sure, and he does not tell Brendon how hot he is (instead he sort of bobs his head at them and mutters something about how he hopes it’ll be a good show, his girlfriend’s hand tight on his arm). But reliably, definitely, a guy. It’s Spencer’s show tonight, and they owe him the sum total of two hundred and thirty-five dollars and three backrubs.

Jon tries to get away with merely contributing the backrubs, and until Brendon howls in protest Spencer looks like he’s considering it (it’s common knowledge that Jon is far and away the best at them).

Ryan’s strangely quiet; he pays up automatically, and doesn’t smile even when Brendon pins Spencer to the floor of their dressing room and tries to claim that tickling him totally counts as a back rub (“it’s near his back, it’s basically a massage, come on!”). But then they’re all, god, so fucking tired.

It’s a good show.

“Brendon.”

“Hey, Spencer.” Brendon stretches, sprawls out a little more; he doesn’t know how guys like Bill or Travis manage touring, but his bunk is snug and perfect for his height. A little less snug since Spencer pulled back the curtain and interrupted his nap, but that’s not his bunk’s fault. He wraps his arms around his pillow and nuzzles it affectionately.

Strangely enough, the curtain remains open.

“Dude, what is it? It’d better be good.”

“What did you do?” Spencer asks, and he sounds like he’s forcing the words through his teeth, hard and sharp, quick, a hail of bullets; Brendon can almost hear them plink plink against the walls, the floor (his skull).

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Brendon tells him, pleased to have a clear conscience for once when confronted with Spencer’s folded arms and suspicious stare. And the tapping foot. Brendon fears that impatient, staccato beat, ominous as the drums in the deep; it never bodes well. “Unless you’re talking about those Doritos, but that was, like, last week, way to hold a grudge. And that wasn’t even me, it was Jon. I mean, it was a little bit me, but mostly Jon.”

Spencer stares at him eyebrows raised, and Brendon swallows. “I can replace them! Or bring you Jon’s head, if that’ll fix it. His still steaming entrails, how’s that?”

“I thought that was you. Fucking right you can replace them.”

“You didn’t know?” Brendon says. “Huh. Oops?”

“You’re an idiot,” Spencer tells him. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Spence, I don’t have a fucking clue,” and maybe his eyes have achieved the golden mean proportion of innocent wideness, something, because Spencer stares at him for just a little bit longer, and then he relaxes.

His eyes lose that steely sheen, clear sweet blue once more. “You’re an idiot,” he repeats, but without the heat and force of before, and from Spencer, that’s an expression of affection.

“So did you want to hang?” Brendon asks, swinging his legs over the edge of his bunk. “If the coast is clear, we could whip out the old Guitar Hero and I could cream your ass, just like old times.”

Spencer sits down next to him and grins. “We’ll have to rain check. Ryan’s in the lounge. We don’t want it confiscated. They can’t know that we rescued it.”

“Ryan threw it out the window,” Brendon says bitterly, still aggrieved, but then he taps the side of his nose wisely. “Gotcha. Our little secret. Can’t have our cover blown.”

“Don’t –” Spencer stops. “Just. Just don’t – don’t be a dick, okay? Don’t be,” he sighs, “don’t be Brendon.”

“I resent that,” Brendon informs him. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re actually trying to say, but I’m pretty sure I resent that.”

Spencer bumps his shoulder against him. “You know what I mean.”

“I actually don’t, you know.”

“Whatever,” Spencer says wearily, and gently kicks his ankle. “Now put your headphones on or get out, okay? I’m supposed to call my girlfriend.”

“And you want privacy? …Spencer Smith, are you having phone sex?”

“Fuck you.”

“No, no, fuck you,” Brendon corrects him. “Stop flaunting your girlfriend-having in front of the less fortunate, that’s just mean. Think about other people sometimes, jeez.”

“Out,” Spencer says, and he looks suddenly annoyed again, like he’s swallowed a handful of tacks.

Brendon doesn’t understand people sometimes; and they call him unpredictable. “Is this your time of the month, dude?”

“Out.”

Ryan’s been dressing so very sharply lately, all elegant shirts and tailored pants instead of t-shirts and jeans; well-cut jackets, expensive shoes and boots paired with his ancient, beloved newsboy cap and ratty street-urchin gloves. Dressing like a gentleman, like someone fifteen years older than him and one hundred and fifty years dead and gone.

So it makes Brendon blink, just a bit, to see him curled up on the couch in the bus lounge wearing Spencer’s ancient white hoodie, which is a little too big for him, the sleeves slopping down over his thin wrists. He’s still wearing that fucking cap pulled low over his eyes, and the hood tugged up over it, a double layer of distance.

“What’s with the hoodie?” Brendon sits down beside him, throwing his legs over Ryan’s lap. “Dude, I know you’ve been going for the whole hobo look lately, but Spencer’s old clothing, that’s going a little too far for your art.”

Ryan shoves his legs away. “Fuck off, Brendon, I’m trying to write.”

“Yeah?” Brendon rubs his face against Ryan’s shoulder, the hoodie soft under his cheek from too many washings. “That’s cool, I was just thinking, you know.”

“What?”

“That like, maybe we could fuck.”

Ryan makes an odd growling sound. “Brendon. You have a hand, you don’t need me. Go and jerk off in the bathroom, I’m actually trying to work on something here.”

“It’s better if you do it,” Brendon says in the most wheedling tone he can muster. “Don’t be boring, Ryan. I’m bored. Entertain me.” He slings his legs across Ryan’s lap again.

“No,” Ryan says, “I’m not in the fucking mood, no,” and pushes Brendon off his lap. Again. He doesn’t shove him off his shoulder, though, just sits there small and strangely forlorn in Spencer’s most-comfortable hoodie, ignoring Brendon’s presence.

“You’ve being boring,” Brendon tells him, but Ryan just shrugs and taps something out on his Sidekick.

It really is incredibly dull, considering all the better uses Brendon has for his time, so a few minutes later (after various attempts to tickle Ryan, distract him, seduce him, annoy him and/or steal his ’kick have all met with the same blank disdain) Brendon gives up and goes in search of Jon.

Jon is sitting on the bus steps with Tom when Brendon comes out scowling and with his hands sunk deep in his pockets. He grins at him broad and bright, like the sunshine, and Brendon feels a little better.

Only a little better, though, because while he likes Tom, and is totally cool with him coming out to hang with them (and enjoys posing for his camera as often as he can; Brendon likes attention) he just wants Jon to be his best friend right now. It seems hugely unfair that while, okay, most of his own attention has admittedly been focused on Ryan lately, when he wants Jon, Jon has Tom to keep him company.

Tom squints at him. “Dude, what’s eating you?”

“Nothing.” Brendon has to admire how perfectly true that statement is.

“Alex and Ryland asked us over to their bus,” Jon says easily, tugging Brendon down by his sleeve, “you wanna come with?”

Brendon sits down next to Jon and swings his legs. “Maybe.”

“We’re going to hang,” Jon tells him, “play some video games, drink all Gabe’s beer, and maybe find his stash. Which we might flush, or hold to ransom, or something. I’m thinking ransom.”

“I’m thinking smoke,” Tom adds. “The classics are always good.”

“I could go for video games right now,” Brendon admits, “but even if I was into that other shit, I’m not touching anything of Saporta’s, are you fucking crazy? Jon, we need you. I need you. The band needs you. You can’t die. You haven’t lived!”

“It’s safe,” Jon assures him, “Alex says he’ll probably think the cobra took them as sacrifice or something. Tithes, offerings, you know.”

Tom nods. “We’re going to drunk dial Bill, it’ll be fun. For us.”

“Doesn’t he have caller id?”

“Yeah, but he gets confused really easy. It’s funny.” Jon grins.

“He’s easier to confuse when you’re drunk,” Tom says wisely.

Brendon smirks. “Don’t you mean when he’s drunk?”

“Whatever, Brendon,” Jon says, sighing hugely, “the point is, it’s going to be fun. We’re going to fuck with his head a little bit. We’ll get Red Bull for you, special.” He ruffles Brendon’s hair, and though Brendon squawks and smoothes it back down, he does feel better.

Brendon moves forward, quick and sure, and it’s not like Ryan has anywhere to go, not like they’re alone; instead they have an audience of thousands, and the closer he gets, the more they scream.

Brendon leans forward until he can practically feel the heat coming off of Ryan’s face, see every quick movement of his eyes, eyelashes, the way that the twisting coil of black winding its way down his cheek is slightly smudged under the harsh lights of the stage, hot and flashing.

Ryan jerks back, out of his reach, and they’ve scripted this move, practiced it, performed it for so many gigs already, but this time, it – it pisses Brendon off, somehow.

“ - but this is not that dream,” he declares, and the screams rise again, waves of battering sound, competing with the opening notes of Lying.

Across the stage, Jon meets his eyes, just for a second; he offers Brendon a small smile, until he has to look down, concentrate on the bassline.

Brendon bows once, twice. He really – he needs a top hat for this shit, seriously. He could doff it, and, like, ladies (squealing girls in training bras, guitarists, whatever) could swoon, and it would be awesome. Maybe a cape. Or even a monocle, although that could pose a problem when it came to the dancing. Still, monocle. He should run that one by Ryan, he’ll probably be totally jealous that he didn’t think of it himself.

He follows Jon offstage, and makes little ‘go on, I’ll follow you’ motions when Jon pauses. Spencer pushes past him, eyebrows raised, and Brendon just shakes his head, gestures him onwards.

“What,” Ryan starts when Brendon stands in his way, “what,” and then Brendon’s pushing him up against the back of the speakers, he can still hear the kids screaming just beyond, Spencer’s probably looking back, but Brendon doesn’t care.

“I was thinking,” he says against Ryan’s jaw, “that I need a monocle, what do you think?”

“You need a head examination,” Ryan hisses back, but Brendon licks his jaw then, and he shivers. “Brendon –”

“What, now you want to talk to me?” Brendon asks, but it’s mostly rhetorical, he’s already working Ryan’s pants open, pushing his shirt, his stupid flouncy sleeves out of his way. He should probably feel guilty for exploiting the post-show high like this, but he really, really doesn’t, not with the way Ryan bucks forward into his fist, and yeah. Not at all.

“You are so,” Ryan grits out, “so fucking, Brendon,” and then he pulls away. Brendon’s about to protest until he realizes that Ryan’s just sinking to his knees.

He lets himself draw a shuddering, gloating breath when Ryan shoves his pants down from his hips, down his thighs, and then Ryan’s mouth is on him, hot and wet and god, so fucking good, better than he remembered, better than the sense memories he played back when jerking off last night, alone in his bunk listening to Ryan tap on his sidekick in the dark and not talk to him.

Ryan sucks him off, and there’s no teasing at all about it, just Ryan’s fingers pressing hard into his thighs, painful but in a way that just turns him on more, until he’s just basically fucking Ryan’s mouth and he already knew that Ryan could take more than him but this is actually ridiculous.

It’s over way more quickly than looks good set down in black and white. Brendon’s wound so tight, and the next thing he knows, he’s bucking forward and Ryan’s making strangled little noises and punching him in the thigh.

When Brendon opens his eyes, Ryan’s sitting back on his heels. He glares at Brendon stonily and spits into his hand, then wipes it on the floor.

Brendon wonders why he didn’t just wipe it off on Brendon’s clothing, he’s always seemed fond of doing that when he’s pissed off (and then he remembers, right, costumes. Ryan respects costumes).

“Uh.” Brendon clears his throat. “Uh, sorry. Look, I’ll do you now, okay?”

Ryan stares at him for a long moment. “No,” he says. Just that (who the fuck turns down a blowjob? Jesus), and stands, fixing his pants, and turning on his heel, off towards the changing rooms.

“Ryan,” Brendon whispers, golden coat already in a crumpled heap on the floor, “Ryan. Ryanryanryanryan.”

Ryan pulls his cap off, shrugs out of his coat and shirt, and he doesn’t look at him.

“I’m going to take a wild guess here,” Spencer says, unbuttoning his jacket, “that you want to get Ryan’s attention, right? Stop me if I’m wrong, please.”

“If there’s, like, reasonable doubt, we could play hot or cold,” Jon suggests. “Is Spencer hot, Brendon?”

“That’s – dude, that’s totally an incriminating question,” Brendon insists, pouring a bottle of water over his head. The water is a cool shock against the heat of his scalp, sliding down his neck, down his forehead, along the backs of his ears in a way that’s both perfect, like scratching an itch, and weirdly ticklish. He shakes his head like a dog, spraying droplets of water everywhere.

Spencer steps out of his way, screwing his face up into a look of total, exaggerated disgust. “Don’t answer that, please, there are some things I just don’t need to know.”

“Oh, sure, in that case,” Brendon says affably, nodding, “- in that case, you’re so hot, you’re burning up, Spencer Smith. You’re on fire.”

Jon whoops, and Ryan’s mouth jerks, like he’s fighting the urge to laugh. Brendon only sees it because he’s watching so closely, yes he is pathetic.

Spencer pokes Ryan in shoulder. “Save me, this is totally where you step in.”

“Is not,” Ryan mutters, stripping off his gloves. “Brendon’s not my responsibility.”

“Um,” Brendon says, blinking. “Dude. Ross.”

Ryan doesn’t look up from his book, but the tilt of his head betrays inquisitiveness. His legs are folded under him lotus-style, and he’s still wearing Spencer’s old hoodie.

“Ryan,” Brendon repeats, louder, “Ryan, can you explain to me why I have a death threat from Pete Wentz on my ‘kick?”

On the plasma screen, Spencer’s car crashes into a barrier in a fiery cloud of orange. Jon’s actually starts going backwards. Brendon would find it funny, if it wasn’t for the misspelled, poorly punctuated message which seems to be prophesying his doom.

“Um.” Ryan keeps his head lowered, still apparently absorbed in his book. “Don’t know. It’s Pete?”

“It’s Pete,” Brendon agrees, “and he’s sent me a message saying that he wants to – okay, it’s not actually, technically, a death threat, but, you know, I can read between the lines. He’s at least saying straight out that he wants to kick my ass, and I’m like, what have I done? Ryan.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Ryan mumbles.

“Do that,” Spencer chimes in, “he can’t kill Brendon now, we’d have to refund people for the rest of the tour.”

“Oh, hey, my life has value in and of itself. Right, Jon? Back me up.”

Jon holds his hands up. “I’m so not getting involved in this, guys.”

“I’ll talk to him,” Ryan repeats a little more clearly, “he must have misunderstood something.”

Spencer snorts.

When they stop on the way to Seattle, it’s supposed to be just to quickly refuel. But once they’ve stopped, Jon jogs off to talk to the driver, and when he comes back, he reports “Hey, we’re stopping for maybe half an hour, guys. He wants to go and get something to eat, and I told him that that’s cool, we could all use an opportunity to stretch our legs, right? Right.”

“I want my bike,” Spencer says. “Jon, you’re my favorite,” and Brendon has to admire the way Spencer convinces Zack and Jon to unload it for him before Zack disappears, following their driver inside into the warmth and succor of the truck stop. It’s masterfully done, and Brendon can totally appreciate the coercion skills of a master.

“So, are we going inside?” he asks. It’s not snowing, but it’s grey and bleak, and he’s suddenly grateful for his scarf, the way its chunky grey and black wool snuggles against his throat.

“In a bit,” Jon promises, as Spencer swings a leg over the saddle of his bicycle. “Spencer wants to ride some first. And I was thinking, Tom and I were thinking, about maybe taking some photos. That’s cool, right?”

Brendon nods, and Ryan says softly, “Yeah.” His arms are wrapped around his narrow ribcage, and Brendon slings a friendly, warming arm over his shoulder. Ryan stiffens, but he doesn’t shrug him off, and then they’re blinking as Tom’s camera flashes, the awkward moment digitally preserved in bits and pixels. Ryan steps away.

It flashes again, capturing Spencer riding his bike around and around the parking lot in triumph, cheeks pink from the cold; Jon and Spencer tussling over the handlebars as Jon tries to grab them, stop him, laughing. Ryan biting his lip, smiling when Spencer lifts one, both hands from the handlebars, making dual victory signs as the front wheel wobbles unsteadily; Brendon leaning against the side of the bus, watching.

“Okay,” Tom says finally, “I’m totally freezing my balls off here,” and Jon laughs easily, leaning against his shoulder, whispering something into his ear. He nods at Brendon, and then Tom’s carefully putting his camera away.

“You wanna come with?” Jon asks. “We’re going to get something to eat, maybe something hot to drink.”

“No, I’m good,” Brendon says. He’s fine just watching as Spencer stops and as Ryan takes up an uneasy perch on his handlebars, as they slowly and shakily try to ride around the parking lot again, together. Ryan’s laughing, lower and shorter than Spencer, and it’s. It’s a sweet sight.

“Okay.” Jon squeezes his shoulder, and then he jogs off after Tom.

Brendon blows on his fingertips (why did he let Ryan convince him that fingerless gloves were a good idea?) and watches them ride until the bicycle’s precarious balance becomes a decided list, and it nearly topples over. Ryan’s elbows, in their elegant (expensive) jacket, come within kissing distance of the dirty pavement, and Brendon’s really not surprised when Ryan disentangles himself from the bike, still laughing, and walks back towards the bus, although he is when Ryan comes to stand next to him.

“Fun?”

“I guess.” Ryan shrugs, staring at his shoes. “Yeah.”

“That’s, uh. Good,” Brendon says, and the word is uncomfortable in the air. “So, Seattle tonight, right? Should be good. Different venue from last tour, though.”

Ryan actually looks at him, then, and Brendon realizes that he sounds like he’s making small talk with a fucking reporter. Jesus.

“Yeah,” Ryan confirms, frowning a little, “but Pete says they’ve played there, it’s good.”

Brendon flinches just a little at the mention of Pete – he got another message, at four in the fucking morning when he was actually succeeding in sleeping. It wasn’t an explicit threat against his physical well-being this time; in fact, it seemed to be couched more in the terms of an apology, but Brendon can read between the lines and the lack of capitalization, and there seemed to be a sinister undertone of violence lurking somewhere in the places where the apostrophes should be, and yet are not.

Ryan smirks, and Brendon realizes that he was maybe a little bit obvious about the flinching. “He said that that was a mistake, like I told you. He did say sorry, right?”

Brendon scratches at the side of his jaw. “Kinda, yeah. Anyway, I could totally take him.”

“Dude, he bites,” Ryan says, and that’s definitely amusement now. Brendon feels strangely proud at that, and like – well, the sky is still the sullen color of gunmetal, but if there had been a sudden shift and the watery winter sunshine had come through the clouds, that’d be – yeah. What the fuck ever, he doesn’t even know what he’s trying to think.

“I bite, too,” Brendon reminds him, “you should totally know that.” He licks his lips, and grins. “I could, I could maybe remind you, if- ”

Ryan drops his gaze and stares at his feet again. “Fuck,” he says, the word especially harsh and fresh in his mouth suddenly, like he doesn’t use it every day, hasn’t worn the edges off it, “you never fucking stop, do you, never fucking get it-”

“Hey,” Jon calls out, and Brendon lifts his head to see that he and Tom have returned whole and sound from the false, warm, luring clutches of the truck stop diner.

Standing in the parking lot watching Spencer ride around on his bike was much the manlier path, Brendon thinks virtuously.

“We come bearing cocoa,” Jon announces, and Ryan turns away, towards Tom and Jon, smiling gratefully. His fingers are too bare in their artistically fingerless gloves, Brendon knows, has watched him chafe them; when he curls them around the cardboard cup that Jon offers, it’s a strangely appreciative gesture, like he’s cradling a bird’s egg, the shell thin as paper.

Brendon takes his own cup as Ryan stalks away, right into Spencer’s path. Spencer’s cycling slows and then stops. They stand with their heads together in the centre of the parking lot for a few minutes. Ryan holds out his cup, sharing it; Spencer takes it, sips.

“Hey,” and Ryan’s suddenly standing in front of him again, one foot scuffing awkwardly against the pavement, “hey, could you hold this for me for a minute?” He holds out his cup, and Brendon takes it like an automaton.

“Yeah,” he says, but Ryan’s already gone, back over to Spencer, who passes him the handlebars of the bike with a flourish.

Ryan climbs on, much to Brendon’s bafflement, setting his feet to the pedals as Spencer stops by Jon and Tom to claim his own cup of hot chocolate.

Brendon watches, head tilted, as Ryan starts to cycle, smooth fluid laps around the lot. He almost doesn’t notice when Spencer jogs over to stand at his side. They watch together quietly for a few minutes.

“So, Seattle,” Brendon begins.

“Is pretty fucking cold.”

Brendon wants to put his hands in his pockets, out of the wind, but he has beverage-holding duties. He’s a glorified cupholder, really, and he’d be annoyed if one wasn’t his, and the other wasn’t Ryan’s.

“So,” he repeats, ducking his head, “so if there was a possibility that somebody could’ve, you know, fucked something up, would you know what they theoretically might have done?”

And wow, the asphalt is very… interesting. Dark grey, stained darker with damp and small splotches of petrol, the crumpled Coke can that never made it into the trashcan, scattered cigarette butts. He can feel Spencer’s eyes boring into the side of his head.

“Somebody could try using his fucking brain.” Spencer offers the suggestion in a very neutral tone. He takes a sip of chocolate.

“Somebody is trying,” Brendon shoots back, “it’d just help if somebody had a fucking clue –”

“Yeah, well, somebody is a –”

“Hey, Ryan,” Jon calls out, “we should load the bike back up. Playtime’s over.”

Ryan doesn’t stop, and Brendon can tell that he’s annoyed from the set of his shoulders, somehow. He’s not sure when he learned how to read Ryan; somewhere on the road, maybe, during the endless blurring tours; or maybe he only picked it up through the slide of skin and skin and mouth and mouth. He sure as fuck couldn’t do it when they were mewed up in Maryland, recording, endless days of wire-tight stress and Ryan’s hands curled into fists, why don’t you get this, it goes like this, why don’t you get it, knobbly knees bared and ridiculous under his basketball shorts. And it’s so incredibly stupid; he can just tell that Ryan doesn’t want to stop, to get back on the bus, but he doesn’t know why, doesn’t know what the fuck’s actually going on in his head.

Ryan sails smoothly around the parking lot in one last pointed lap, slow at first, feet resting on the pedals as the momentum carries the bicycle forwards; and then speeding up, faster and faster until he’s pulling up in front of Jon with a sudden scream of rubber against concrete, wheels aslant. Brendon remembers being a few years younger, doing skids with his bike, the shorter and more sudden the stop, the better – and he can suddenly imagine Ryan doing the same.

He doesn’t remember Ryan talking about a bike; skateboard, sure, but not a bike. He can remember Ryan showing him his old skills, laughing, pulling off a double kickflip along the pavement (trying to do so in Spencer’s grandmother’s living room, even, swearing when his moves were foiled by the muffling of the carpet). Spencer would know about a bike; Spencer knows all of Ryan’s secrets, always seems to know what he’s thinking.

Jon reaches out to ruffle Ryan’s hair, and Ryan grimaces tolerantly at the touch, reluctantly surrendering the handlebars. He ducks his head at something Tom says, Brendon can’t make it out.

And then he nods a final time, and turns, hands sunk deep in his pockets, walks over towards Brendon.

“Nice moves, Evel Knievel.”

Ryan gives him a reluctant half-smile. “Thanks.”

Brendon doesn’t quite know what to say next – he doesn’t want to piss Ryan off any more, after all – but since Ryan’s standing there and he’s not, you know, stalking off in a huff, Brendon feels like he should muster something up. Something good, something more likely to result in orgasms than in deathstares.

Ryan’s eyeliner is smudged, just under his left eye.

“Chocolate,” Ryan says loudly, like he’s said it before, “Brendon, can I have my fucking hot chocolate already?”

“Oh, right.” He hesitates, then flashes Ryan his widest and most dazzling smile. “But dude, there’s a fee for the beverage-minding, okay? You want it back, you have to pay up.”

Ryan looks suspicious. “Yeah?”

“Yup,” Brendon confirms. “You want it back, you kiss me first.” He grins. “That’s what I call a fair trade hot beverage, right?”

Ryan stares at him for a second. “Fuck you, Brendon,” he says, and he sounds very tired, “keep the fucking drink, I don’t want it.”

Brendon watches as he walks away, stalks up the bus steps. The cardboard cups in his hands have gone cool in the wind, and he dumps them in the crowded trashcan with disgust, cursing when lukewarm hot chocolate splashes against his sleeve.

The schedule allows them to get hotel rooms that night, rather than having to crash on the bus and fight the interstate traffic to the next gig.

Brendon naps on the brief ride from the arena to the hotel, and dreams of comfortable mattresses and downy pillows, hot showers and maybe even time to actually talk to Ryan, figure out what’s the problem, make him smile at him again.

Only, only, when they get there, Ryan stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Spencer, hands shoved deep into his pockets, cap pulled down low, and Spencer grabs one of the room keys and says “Okay, Ryan and I’ll be in 237.”

Jon’s hand is warm and heavy on his shoulder, but Brendon still feels. Weird.

“Oh, yeah,” Brendon adds the next day, tacked onto the end of a mild intra-band squabble over who ate Jon’s particular cupcake, and whether, in fact, it was possible that he might have consumed it himself in his sleep, “and do you know what rhymes with circus? Jerkus.”

Ryan stares blankly at him. “That’s not a word, Brendon.”

“It should be,” Brendon insists. Ryan’s been ignoring him and acting like a pissy little bitch all week, and at night he can hear him in his bunk tapping away at his sidekick for hours, and it’s driving him insane. “And if it was, and it was in the dictionary, you know how they’d define it? Ryan Ross.”

“What the fuck, are you twelve?”

“Hey, hey,” Jon interjects peaceably. “Stop fighting, or I’ll send you to your bunks. Separately.”

“Like I’d want to cram into a bunk with him,” Brendon says vengefully. “I hate you, Ryan Ross, and I hate your face. And your stupid shoes with their stupid lipsticks.”

“Fuck you, have you regressed?”

Jon clears his throat. “I said, that’s enough. Don’t fight in front of Spencer, it’s not good for him to see Mommy and Daddy fight.”

“I am so not the mom,” Ryan says hurriedly.

“Oh, you totally are –”

“You’re the one with the childbearing hips –”

Brendon bridles. “Oh, fuck you, Ross, that was a low blow –”

“Speaking of blowing,” Ryan says loudly, “or, you know, how some people totally suck at it, not in the good way –”

“Bunks,” Jon says, “You two, now.”

“But I was going to play Lego Star Wars on the playstation,” Brendon whines.

“No, you weren’t,” Spencer says from the couches, where he’s sprawled out comfortably. “I was going to watch The OC with Jon.”

“Jon,” Brendon says, eyes going wide and tragic, “Jon, if you let me stay I’ll be quiet. I’ll rub your back for you. I have magic fingers!”

Ryan glares.

Spencer catches Brendon’s eye, looks meaningfully in Ryan’s direction, and then smiles brightly and draws a finger across his throat in illustration.

Brendon’s eyes get a lot bigger.

“Bunks, guys,” Jon says kindly. “Go sort it out, or at least fight somewhere else because we’re watching tv. Or sulk, whatever.”

“I don’t sulk,” Ryan says. He glares at Brendon, and then at Jon, and then at Spencer for good measure.

“That is manifestly a lie,” Brendon begins, but he can feel Spencer watching him, and Jon’s looking at him calmly and expectantly, like he knows Brendon’s going to do the considerate thing and he’s just waiting for it.

“I hate you all,” Brendon says finally, and stomps into the bunkroom.

He really, really hates this stupid band. Stupid Jon and stupid Spencer, fucking exiling them; and stupid Ryan, curled up in his bunk and scribbling into one of his notebooks. The scratch of his pen against the paper makes Brendon want to throw things.

“Do you mind?” he yells down from his bunk. “Because that’s really pissing me off.”

Ryan ignores him.

“I said,” Brendon repeats, “fucking stop that.”

More silence.

Brendon makes an inarticulate noise of rage and turns his iPod on, scrolling with the wheel until the sound is so loud that strains of Justin Timberlake are clearly, obnoxiously audible through his earbuds. He does not put them on.

Ryan’s head appears through his bunk curtain. “Turn that shit off.” He sounds like he’s grinding his teeth.

“What crawled up your ass and died?” Brendon asks innocently,

“The obvious?” Ryan says crossly. “Just leave me alone, Brendon, okay? I can’t even – I don’t want to deal with you right now. I’m not up to dealing with a little brat, you’re so fucking annoying.”

Brendon bites his lip, draws a deep breath. Fucking Ryan. He vengefully skips past Timberlake straight to Celine Dion, whose high-pitched, throbbing wails fill the air.

Ryan repeats the teeth-grinding noise; Brendon smirks.

Then Ryan pulls his curtain to and disappears again.

“Hey, no,” Brendon says, swinging down from his bunk, “so seriously, what the fuck?”

“Go away.”

“No, but seriously,” Brendon insists, pushing his head through the curtain, “why are you acting like such a little bitch?”

Ryan glares up at him, diary held to his chest like a shield. “Brendon, get the fuck out.”

“We’re not fucking anymore, are we?” Brendon asks. “Because, you know, you could have just told me. I can take it.”

“No,” Ryan says, “no, we’re not. Congratulations, you’ve just discovered how to infer. Your high school teachers must be so fucking proud. Now get out of my bunk.”

Brendon looks down at his hands. “Okay, right.”

There’s a pause, in which Ryan doesn’t look up, twirling his pen around in his thin fingers, and Brendon knows he should be, is supposed to be, getting out.

“Is this because – am I that bad? Because I can be better.”

It sounds pathetic.

There’s another long pause, and Brendon has this strange, horrible sinking feeling; but then Ryan sighs, the tight line of his mouth going soft.

“No, dumbass. You’re, it’s. It’s fine. I’m just – look, if you’d asked me to fuck around, mess around, like, a year, two years ago, it would have been cool.” He swallows. “Like - but I got over that, I’m over it, so. Not now, okay?”

“Uh,” Brendon says. He has absolutely no idea what to say to that. “Uh, so. So you’ve wanted my sexy body for a while?”

His brain has absolutely no control over his mouth; it’s now official.

“Jesus,” Ryan mutters, and rubs tiredly at his cheek. “You’re such a moron.”

“I am,” Brendon agrees readily. “So, um. So.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” Ryan picks up the diary and pen again. “It’s pointless, and I’m tired. Go bother Jon.”

“But –”

“Go away, please.” He tugs at the brim of his cap, pulling it further down over his eyes, and flips through the pages of his diary.

“But –”

“Brendon,” Ryan says, utterly flat, and he sounds like he hasn’t slept in forever (which, Brendon realizes suddenly, is probably true; they’re all running decidedly short on shut-eye).

He goes, the curtain fluttering closed behind him.

Jon frowns. “I thought I put you in time out.”

“Ryan kicked me out,” Brendon complains, and throws himself onto the couch beside him. He hooks his legs over Jon’s lap and buries his face in Jon’s shoulder and breathes in deep. Jon is, Jon’s just comforting. Like a broad-shouldered teddy bear. And he smells good, and seriously, he gives the best hugs.

“Aww, baby,” Jon says, petting Brendon’s hair lazily. “Do you want me to go scold him?”

“I – actually, no. Don’t. Leave it, it’s okay. I’m good."

Jon’s fingers still. “What did you do?”

“Why do you think it was me who did something?”

“Brendon.”

“Jon.”

“Brendon.”

“Jon?”

“Brendon.”

“I think,” Brendon says into Jon’s shoulder, voice small and muffled, “I think maybe I fucked up.”

“So what do I do?” Brendon says. “Do I, should I, like, buy him flowers or something?”

“Dude, it’s Ryan,” Jon says, ‘Ryan, our bandmate? Tall, skinny, plays guitar? Really likes hats? Also, not a girl.”

“Yes, but he- he’s Ryan,” Brendon says helplessly, flailing, and sketches what might be huge ghostly rose-shapes in the air with his hands.

“I don’t know what you should do,” Jon says, and adds in portentously wise tones, “I think it’s one of those things you have to figure out for yourself.”

“You suck, Jon Walker,” Brendon says. “Huh. I could blow him. Like, a lot. A lot more. And not complain about it, he hates that. Um. I could make him breakfast in bed?”

Jon patted his head. “Good start. Keep going.”

“What do you do?” Brendon whines. “When Cassie’s mad at you.”

At that, Jon gives him a strangely assessing look, quick and a little startled, but says complacently “Cassie doesn’t get mad at me.” He grins. “Also, flowers.”

Brendon punches him in the shoulder. “Oh my god, it would take NASA scientists to calculate exactly how much you suck, Jonathan Walker.”

“Seriously, though,” Jon says, petting Brendon’s hair again, thumb stroking his cheek comfortingly. Jon is so blatantly a cat person. “Think about it, okay? Don’t do anything else stupid. Can you do that for me?”

“Spencer, would you tell Brendon to pass the remote?”

“Brendon, Ryan wants you to pass the remote.”

“Yeah, I heard, I’m not deaf. Jon, will you tell Ryan to get off his ass and get himself?”

“Brendon says, get it yourself. I’m just the messenger here.”

“Spencer, will you tell Brendon that it’s sitting right the fuck next to him-”

“Spencer,” Jon says solemnly, “will you tell Ryan to tell Tom to tell Dan to tell Zack to tell Charlie to tell Pete to tell Joe - ”

“And then, what, I tell you to tell Brendon to tell Andrew to tell Nate to tell Ryland to tell Alex to tell Gabe – you know, the word ‘tell’ is starting to lose its meaning for me here -”

“Oh, you guys aren’t funny,” Brendon says, but he’s laughing a little, and he can see Ryan grinning into his knees. “Seriously, you suck.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

In San Jose, they get hotels again, too. Ryan follows Spencer upstairs like a morose second shadow, treading on his heels.

When Brendon and Jon get to their own room, Jon hones in on the minibar. “Dude,” he tells Brendon, pulling out tiny bottles of spirits and lining them up along the benchtop, two by two, “this is insane.”

“Pffft,” Brendon says. “They have them in every hotel.”

“No,” Jon turns around, looking more serious, “you know what I mean.”

Brendon hunches into his hoodie and doesn’t reply.

In Long Beach, Brendon peers critically at himself in the dressing room mirror before the show.

“My circles don’t line up,” he says sadly. “One’s higher than the other. I’m uneven.”

Ryan has one steadying hand on Spencer’s chin as he sketches on the second half of his evil, dashing little moustache, and he doesn’t look over.

“I’m rooming with Spencer,” Jon announces, as soon as Zack hands them their room keys that night in the hotel lobby. “No no no,” he cuts in, as Ryan opens his mouth, “I insist. I want Spencer all to myself. You can’t hog him forever, Ryan Ross, I’m onto you.”

Spencer rolls his eyes. “Jon, if you were any more transparent-”

“Shhh,” Jon tells him, slinging an arm around his shoulders. “Shh, Spence, you know you’re irresistible. You’re like catnip. No, no, don’t even try to fight me on this,” he counsels, squeezing Spencer’s shoulder before he can protest, and shooting Ryan a quelling look.

Sorry, Spencer mouths at Ryan and ducks his head, but there’s a grin pressed into the corners of his mouth, cheeks faintly pink.

Ryan grimaces but jerks his head in acknowledgement, because they all know that when Jon Walker levels his considerable armory of charm directly at you, it’s like trying to fight a cloud of feathers, or an army of adorable, de-clawed kittens with eyes like saucers. You just can’t.

Jon winks at Brendon in what he probably supposes is an underhanded fashion. Spencer is so right; Jon’s about as transparent as glass. Hug it out, he mouths. Talk.

Ryan doesn’t talk to him on the way up, sullen at the fait accompli; he pushes past Brendon when they get to their room, and claims the twin bed furtherest away from the door, throwing down his bag and his Sidekick territorially.

“So, hey,” Brendon says.

Ryan ignores him, removing his cap, his gloves, unwinding his scarf. “I’m getting first shower.”

He shrugs off his jacket; his t-shirt rides up just a little above this pants, a thin slice of pale belly visible in the gap.

“…okay,” Brendon manages, just as the bathroom door bangs closed.

He sits down on his bed, bouncing up and down a few times to check the firmness of the mattress; shucks off his t-shirt and uses it to wipe away some of the makeup still lurking in the creases of face (he really needs to shower, jesus.)

His Sidekick buzzes once, twice, thrice. Of which, two are helpful, badly spelled messages from Jon:

u bettr b frends again 2marrow or ill gt Zack 2 sit on u both he owes me a favr xoxo

and:

talk 2 him!!! talktalktalk!!!! thats wht i do whn cass is mad at me. luv jon xoxo p.s. obey the pictures!!!!!.

The remaining one is from Spencer:

he’s sort of liked u since vegas ok. god. u r blnd. look u r 1 of my best frends bt hes like my *brthr* so bden if you fck up agn theysll never find ur body. :-))

And that’s. Um.

Brendon doesn’t know what to make of that, really; he’s had some idea, since the scene in the bunks, but -

So he reaches over and steals Ryan’s sidekick instead, for distraction purposes. Ryan left it right there, on his bed next to his bag, just a couple of feet away. It’s just like he wanted Brendon to read it, he justifies it to himself.

Ryan’s sidekick is, unsurprisingly, full of messages from Pete. There are, Brendon calculates, something like ten messages from Pete to each message from someone not-Pete.

They say things like moonshine makes everything look different but its so hard to breathe underwater and we bring out white flags at night but theyre dust at dawn. “we remember our bedrooms”. Brendon wrinkles his nose and tilts his head contemplatively but they still don’t make any sense, even when he adds in a bewildered ‘hmmm’ and strokes his chin.

The Sidekick is also full of photos from Pete; Wentzian self-portraits both broody and ridiculous, and sometimes both (none nude); photos of Hemingway; photos of anything Pete finds amusing enough to send along to Ryan. Ryan sends ones of himself back sometimes; they’re such dorks, Brendon thinks virtuously.

Which doesn’t stop him from holding the Sidekick at arm’s length and squinching his mouth up for the camera, cheeks hollowed, white showing all around the irises of his eyes.

He replaces the sidekick carefully back where it was, on top of Ryan’s neatly folded scarf, and then lies backs down on his bed, folding his hands over his chest and pretending that he’s been laid out for his funeral. It’s not even a huge stretch, fantasy-wise; he is so fucking tired, he can’t even be bothered enough to kick off his shoes.

He’s starting to drift off to sleep when he hears the water shut off, and the door of the bathroom opens, disgorging hot, heavy air, thick with steam; Ryan shuffles out, his hair wet and hanging down into his eyes, towel low on his hips.

He walks over to his bag, ignoring Brendon, and starts rummaging for clean boxers.

Brendon tries to shoot inconspicuous looks at the line of Ryan’ spine, the sharpness of his collarbone, the plane of his stomach (the way the towel slips down just a bit, loose around Ryan’s narrow waist and tiny hips).

He sucks in a sharp breath; oh my god, he wants. It’s only after that he thinks huh, not exactly stealthy there.

Ryan glances quick over his shoulder, and he catches Brendon staring; and incredibly, turns slightly red, shoulders drawing in defensively.

Brendon looks hastily at the floor.

“Are you going to shower?” Ryan asks, gaze fixed firmly on his bag, as if nothing just happened. “Because sharing with you if you’re going to reek will suck.”

“Yeah,” Brendon says, “I am, just give me a second. I’m too tired to move.”

Ryan snorts sceptically, pulling a clean t-shirt over his head. His hair emerges through the neckhole not only damp, but tousled. ‘Too tired, or too lazy?”

“Lazy,” Brendon admits, and grins at him. Ryan grins back, tentative, and it’s good, it’s like they’re friends again, like Brendon wasn’t an incredible fuck-up with idiotic, idiotic ideas that went nova.

Ryan finishes dressing and reflexively checks his Sidekick for messages, shooting a glare at Brendon when he finds Brendon’s masterpiece of a self-portrait. His glare is somewhat muted by the fact that his eyeliner been washed away in his shower. He looks younger without it. More vulnerable.

“I call it ‘Boy With Sidekick’,” Brendon says helpfully. “Or maybe Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Superstud, I haven’t decided yet.”

Ryan shakes his head and looks annoyed, but Brendon notices that he doesn’t delete it. The bed sinks a little as Ryan sits down and starts tapping something rapidly.

To Pete, Brendon assumes. He watches for a few minutes, and then kicks Ryan’s bed. Ryan doesn’t look up, but his mouth twitches and he kicks at Brendon’s in response.

“So, are we going to talk now?” Brendon says, “because I can talk, if you want. Or listen. Jon says I should listen. I can listen, I’m here to listen.”

Ryan stares at him, chewing the side of his lip, fingers stilling in their typing. “No, jesus. What the hell, no.”

“No, but really,” Brendon says, “If you want, we can talk. I don’t want things to be weird now, you know?”

“And ‘talking’ will help?” Ryan says. “ - shut up, Brendon, that’s rhetorical.”

Brendon stands up, looming over Ryan. “Look, I promised Jon we were going to talk, and we’re going to talk! About our friendship, and, and, our fucking feelings! And it’s going to suck balls and be totally awkward, but who cares, because apparently we have to in order to be friends again!”

Suddenly Ryan’s standing too, right there in Brendon’s face, glaring down at him, really working that extra inch (in height! Height) he has on Brendon. “I do not,” Ryan says slowly and very deliberately, “want to talk. I can’t think of anything I want to do less.”

“I don’t like you hating me,” Brendon says, and it hangs in the air, plaintive

Ryan leans forward one hand curling tight around his bicep, and kisses him fiercely, angry and hard.

“Mmph!”

It’s completely out of the blue, like those old movies where the protagonists are shouting at each other and then, bam! They start making out for no particular reason, even though you could swear they hated each other’s guts; but it’s not like Brendon’s going to complain, with Ryan pressing close against him, smelling like clean boy and soap, hair still damp under Brendon’s fingers. He is not, despite vile rumors to the contrary, an idiot.

He does know how to respond appropriately to stimuli, it’s just that most of the time it’s more fun to be inappropriate.

“God,” he moans, “Ryan, god.” He slides his thigh between Ryan’s legs and is rewarded with a gratifying noise, Ryan’s hands moving to grip his shoulders tightly; and then Ryan breaks the kiss, leans his forehead against Brendon’s. They breathe together for a few seconds.

“Why did you do that?” Brendon asks, as soon as he has enough breath. “I thought -”

“Because apparently spending too much time in your company has damaged my brain,” Ryan huffs, and kisses him again.

Ryan says, hoarse, “We have a whole hotel room to ourselves.”

“I know,” Brendon agrees, licking Ryan’s collarbone, “finally. Great timing, right?”

“It sucks, actually,” Ryan points out, “since we’re fighting and we decided that we’re not doing this anymore.” His hand is heavy on Brendon’s hip.

Brendon pushes him back towards his bed, shoving Ryan’s bag and discarded clothes carelessly onto the floor and ignoring Ryan’s chastising jab to his shortribs. “Yeah, yeah. Hey, would you rather talk about Our Friendship, and What It Means To You? Because that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.”

“Jon made lists, didn’t he,” Ryan mutters, as Brendon pulls him down.

“Close! He, uh, passed me this note in the elevator with illustrative diagrams. With, you know, deformed stick figures. The Ryan-stick actually looks kind of like you, with its big head on its bitty body and its little hat-”

“Jon sucks,” Ryan says mournfully, and then, sharper: “Right now, maybe I want to fuck, is that okay with you?” and that’s really not anything like a question.

And Brendon is totally fine with that.

Brendon stops. “Crap.”

“What?” Ryan says impatiently, stretching. His hips push lazily against the empty air.

“It, um. It kinda broke.”

Ryan says faintly ‘Oh my god, can’t you do anything – just give me that,’ and wrenches the condom box out of Brendon’s reach.

“Are you going to put it on for me?” he says with interest. “Because that would be hot.”

“No, I’m going to put it on me,” Ryan snaps, seizing a packet. “Because suddenly, I don’t trust you anywhere near my ass.”

Brendon blinks slowly once, twice, and then he says “Okay, so. Hey, can I put that on for you?”

Ryan eyes him suspiciously. “Why?”

“There’s something cool I wanna try– ”

“No,” Ryan says adamantly, “don’t even think about trying to put it on with your mouth, or whatever trick you’ve seen in porn – what the fuck have you been watching? No, actually, I don’t want to know - just. Just shut up, for once, and let me fuck you, okay.”

And again, that’s really, really not a question.

Brendon had definitely felt a shudder run silver down the dip of his spine when Ryan ground those words out, so: “Yeah. Yeah, okay-”

“Geurrgkh,” Brendon manages, a minute or two in. It’s been weird and awkward, and it’s funny how he suddenly became convinced that asses were totally not meant for this when it’s, you know, his ass. But that was just – huh.

Ryan frowns down at his back, halting the forward push of his hips. “Hurting?”

Brendon wants to say duh, because hello, cock in his ass, but it’d be a lie. Well, it’d be partly true, because he can still feel the burn from earlier, but, “No,” he says, and cautiously thrusts his hips back against Ryan’s. “It’s. That’s good. Do that again.”

“Oh,” Ryan breathes, “okay, yeah,” and there’s amusement and a sort of pleased surprise in his voice, and Brendon doesn’t even resent either, because when he pushes back against Ryan a second time, pressure in just the right place, it feels so fucking good he has to moan again and grind helplessly against the mattress.

Ryan fucks him with short, sharp jabs of his spiky hips, teeth sharp in his shoulder. It is actually kind of awesome, although his cock gets more attention from the mattress than from Ryan.

(Ryan’s fingers are closed around his wrists, stroking his arms, digging tight into his biceps).

It’s still somehow awesome; Brendon pushes back enthusiastically to meet Ryan, and when Ryan finally, finally remembers that Brendon has a cock, too (or stops being a total cocktease, whichever; Ryan can hold a grudge like nobody’s business, and maybe, okay, he deserves it, but seriously, how is it an honorable revenge to ignore Brendon’s dick? Seriously? It’s just, it’s totally not cool) and slides a hand around, jerks him off in time with thrusting of his hips, god, it actually feels fucking incredible.

And it’s not something Brendon ever thought he’d be into, but wow.

Really, the more you know.

He’s kind of glued to the mattress, and he can’t actually feel his spine. Shrieking muscles, yes; spine, no.

Ryan’s pressed against his back, hot warm weight still pinioning him to the bed; so after about ten minutes of drowsing and mumbling incomprehensibly back and forth, Brendon rolls onto his side, pushing him off, ignoring Ryan’s grumbling. He shifts until he’s lying on his back, the way he prefers. Ryan jabs him in the ribs, but it doesn’t hurt like a little bitch, like Brendon knows Ryan’s capable of, so it’s totally a lovetap.

“I can’t feel my bones,” Brendon says finally. “Dude, that’s awesome. We should patent that. We so have to do that again.”

Ryan huffs irritably into Brendon’s shoulder. “Mmph. Not happening. I can’t believe how fucking annoying you are.” His lips graze Brendon’s skin. “This just encourages you. I think you’ve gotten worse.”

“Oh, you want me,” Brendon says confidently. “Once you’ve had the Urie, you can’t go back.”

“…please, please tell me you didn’t name your dick The Urie.”

“You’re a sick, sick man,” Brendon says. “No, I didn’t name my dick The Urie. I’m the Urie.”

“Thank god,” Ryan says. “That’s still lame, but. Thank god.”

“The Terminator is what I call my dick,” Brendon continues, and smiles seraphically at the ceiling.

“…”

“Ow, ow, I was just fucking with you, Ross, stop fucking biting -”

“I like you so much better when you don’t talk,” Ryan says balefully, but he mouths Brendon’s shoulder wetly, lips lining up over the bitemarks.

Brendon’s eyes slide closed, and he arches his spine in sluggish content. “That’s. That’s good.”

“I know,” Ryan says smugly.

“Yeah, keep on doing that,” Brendon says, and then moans happily as Ryan wriggles down and turns his attention – and his mouth – somewhere even better. He’s even quiet for a few minutes, just to show his appreciation.

“Seriously, though, I can’t believe you fell for that. Who the fuck calls their shlong The Terminator? That’s like, like broadcasting that you’re kinda short where it counts. I have no need to call my little guy that. I’m secure in my masculinity.”

Ryan splutters Brendon’s cock out of his mouth, eyes watering.

“Hey, no -”

“Brendon,” Ryan says very, very slowly, “shut up.”

“Yeah, yeah, suck my dick, Ross,” Brendon says, and grins. “Hey, literally!”

“No,” Ryan says. “Fuck you, suck it yourself.”

“If I could, that would be so awesome,” Brendon muses dreamily. “But I can’t, and believe me, I’ve tried, so help a friend out.”

Ryan huffs and throws an arm over the edge of the bed, feeling around for his boxers.

“Heeeeey,” Brendon says, “Hey, no, you’re not going anywhere.”

“Yeah?”

“Nowhere,” Brendon affirms, and more hesitantly, “so, we’re good now, right?”

Ryan eyes him for a moment, head tilted. “We’re better.”

Brendon doesn’t know what to say to that, really, so he rubs his thumbs in small appeasing circles below Ryan’s shoulder blades; Ryan makes a tiny little noise, back arching, and he really, really needs to hear that again.

“Mmmm,” Brendon says, and leans forward to kiss him. Ryan nips at his lip, pissed off still, but he opens his mouth anyway, slips his tongue into Brendon’s mouth.

They make out like that, slow and steady, nice, until Brendon realizes that hey, he has Ryan naked and moaning and underneath him, so, like, maybe he should do something about that sometime.

“What do you want?” he whispers. “Tell me, I’ll do it.”

It occurs to him that maybe he should hedge that around with a clause or two, in case Ryan tells him to jump out of a window or something like that.

Ryan rolls his hips against Brendon. “Are you going to make me say it?”

Oh. “Yes?”

“You’re a dick.”

“Uh-uh,” Brendon says, pulling away; Ryan makes a protesting noise at the sudden lack of friction. “Not that, come on.”

“Fuck me,” Ryan says, low, “hurry the fuck up and fuck me already, okay?”

“So totally there,” Brendon assures him, and scrambles away to search for the lube. He finds it rolled under the bed – he’s not sure how they managed to do that, but whatever – and pours some onto his palm, the coolness of the liquid strangely shocking, trying to remember how Ryan did it.

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Toss it to me,” he says, and proceeds to slick himself up as Brendon watches.

It’s. It’s beyond gorgeous, it’s every pornographic fantasy Brendon has never even thought to have, watching as Ryan works a finger into himself, then another, little pearly teeth sunk sharp into his lower lip. The cords and muscles of his forearms stand out under his thin skin, and he’s all sharp angles; knees and elbows, collarbone and chin, his pale skin gleaming under the golden dim of the lamps set high into the wall.

He breathes in shuddering, staggered exhalations, sharp indrawn gasps; tattered rags of sound. “I want to hear you,” Brendon says, surprising himself, “stop muffling it, just.”

Ryan eyes him narrowly, but when he twists two, three fingers into himself, angled, he moans, hoarse and rough and unstrung, and Brendon shivers all over.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, reaching forward to tuck damp hair out of Ryan’s eyes, fingers dragging across his forehead, down his cheek. Across Ryan’s mouth. “When you’re doing that. What are you thinking about?”

“What do you think,” Ryan gasps, “chord progressions.”

“You’re thinking about me,” Brendon decides smugly, watching the slide of Ryan’s fingers, the way his thighs spread just a little further, fucking himself, god. “You’re thinking about my dick!”

“Shut up,” Ryan growls, then closes his eyes when Brendon leans down and mouths at the smooth skin of his lower stomach, tongue flicking at his navel. “Condom, condom,” Ryan says, suddenly frantic, “hurry.”

“Yeah, on it,” Brendon gasps, grabbing his jeans from the floor and hunting frantically in the pockets for a little foil packet.

“Got it,” he announces triumphantly, tearing the packet open with his teeth, rolling it on faster than he has ever, ever before, “we’re good, Ryan, we’re good, good to go-”

Ryan’s teeth are sunk in his lip, hand reaching down to wrap around his cock -

“Uh-uh, no,” Brendon tells him, lining himself up, “I’ll take care of that, promise, just, just,” and then he’s pushing forward, and Ryan’s so, god, so fucking tight, lifting up his hips and bearing down on Brendon like he’s desperate, fingers like steel on Brendon’s forearms, coaxing him forward down closer.

“Hey,” Brendon says awkwardly, patting the side of Ryan’s face. “Hey, wake up, I made you breakfast!”

“Mmmph,” Ryan says, and gropes blindly for the coffee cup.

Brendon clambers back onto the bed beside him and watches anxiously as he takes a sip.

“Instant,” Ryan pronounces finally. He looks down at the nourishment Brendon has deposited in his lap. “And the stale Pop Rocks you’ve had floating around in your suitcase since the beginning of time. Thanks, Brendon.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Brendon says, watching Ryan inhale the coffee. “I don’t like the watermelon flavoured ones, you know that.” He grins ingratiatingly, a little desperately wide. I’m very suave, he tells himself firmly. I am a romantic genius. “Look, Ross, it’s the best I could do on short notice, okay? It’s totally a gesture.”

Ryan’s fingertips overlap where they curl around the warm circle of the cup. “Thanks,” he says again, and smiles.

Ryan’s only been awake for a few minutes, so Brendon can appreciate the effort that’s gone into producing that facial expression. He leans into Ryan’s shoulder and hums the bridge to Sixteen Going On Seventeen, and after a minute Ryan gulps down the last of the coffee and rests his cheek on the top of Brendon’s head, closing his eyes.

Ryan smells good, warm and male and definitely a little in need of a shower; Brendon makes a mental note to ask Ryan not to wear the girly deodorant today. Although actually that smells pretty good, too, so really Brendon wins either way.

Brendon likes winning.

“So, are you going to eat the Pop Rocks?” Brendon asks after a few minutes. “Because if you’re not, I’m totally going to.”

“I thought you didn’t like them.”

“I don’t,” Brendon shrugs. “But hey, when you kiss me, it’ll be like fireworks!”

“More coffee,” Ryan says wearily.

“I brushed my teeth!”

When Ryan needs ‘just five more minutes’ in the bathroom to fix his hair and artfully distress his stubble, Brendon walks down to the lobby and out to the bus with the other guys. He may love what Ryan can do with his mouth, and sundry other niches and appendages, but the pleasure of riding down in the elevator with him in solidarity is so, so not worth the lecture on punctuality Zack has word-perfect.

The thin winter sun is warm on the back of his neck, little birds are singing happily in the trees, and other such clichés. Life is good.

“Did you talk?” Jon asks, and Spencer places a friendly, ominously heavy hand on Brendon’s shoulder.

“Sort of?” Brendon says. Jon is looking at him hopefully. “Okay, no. I totally meant to! But then we did something better. Don’t even – look, sex is always better than talking, okay? Always.”

“Tried to teach you, I did,” Jon says sadly, “but listen, you would not.”

“Okay, that’s really annoying.” Brendon bumps his shoulder against Jon’s. “You girl. Look, it worked, right? It just does. I don’t know. It’s us.”

“You’re fucked up,” Jon tells him, sounding more cheerful, and he only punches Brendon lightly in the arm when he leans in to nuzzle his cheek. “So fucked up.”

“You’re just jealous,” Brendon informs him, “because sex is better than talking, with or without flowers - the flowers go with the talking, that is, not the sex, because that would be kind of weird or possibly really gross, do you think there are people with flower fetishes? Not like, doing it in a field of daisies type fetishes, but, like, you know. Gross. Or maybe, like, really hot if there were mutant flowers with some kind of sex pollen that gave you the stamina of- ”

“Stop talking,” Spencer says, and Brendon does.

On the bus, Brendon wiggles his eyebrows at Spencer and Jon in Secret Morphic Code until they save their game and clear out of the back lounge. Granted, Jon grimaces passively at him, and Spencer rolls his eyes, mutters something under his breath, and flicks the back of Brendon’s head as he walks out, past – but the point is, Brendon is able to get them to work his will through eyebrows alone. He could be telepathic, even. Some people just have naturally stronger brainwaves that can dominate the people around them, force the weaker minds of lesser beings to bend to their iron will like -

Ryan has his headphones on and his head in a book, and Brendon has to rub his nose interrogatively against Ryan’s cheek a couple of times to get him to look up. It takes s hand on Ryan’s knee to get him to pull the headphones off, and a ‘hey, hey,’ and a hand to his chin to make certain of his undivided attention.

“I fucking hate it when you’re mad at me,” Brendon says quietly. “Not that you’re mad now, I mean before – you’re not mad now, are you? No, well, anyway, it was shitty. And, and not just because you cut me off. Although that sucked. But, you know?”

“Do I.”

“Shut up, you totally do,” Brendon tells him, “or, like, maybe you didn’t; or not even maybe, you totally didn’t and maybe I didn’t actually either, but you should now, okay?”

“That shouldn’t make any sense,” Ryan sighs, leaning back against the leather of the couch. “I’m way too fluent in Brendon-talk.”

“But it does?”

“Yeah,” Ryan admits, closing his eyes and slouching down in his seat, against Brendon’s shoulder. “We’re good."

They’re quiet on the way to the gig, Ryan’s head on Brendon’s shoulder and Brendon’s hand on his knee .

“Heeeeey,” Brendon says when they get to the venue in Glendale, sidling up to Spencer and slinging an arm amiably over his shoulders.

He can feel Ryan’s eyes on them in the mirror, where he’s wielding eyeliner with deadly precision, but this is important, and totally worth being savaged backstage later.

Actually, the savaging is a reward just on its own.

“So. Ryan and I, we’re kind of. A thing. Now. F-Y-I.”

“Dude,” Jon says, beaming proudly.

Spencer stares at him expressionlessly, eyes wide and blue and sweetly blank. The little eyeliner goatee and mustache, Brendon generally finds absolutely hilarious; but the red eyeliner smeared from Spencer’s eyebrows down to his eyelashes adds a certain hideous je ne c’est quoi to the Stare. And when Spencer has that fixed on you, somehow the drawn-on facial hair which makes him look like an undead megalomaniac stops being even a little bit funny.

Even Brendon’s fond and treasured memories of Jon going all fretful the very first time he saw the moustache (“who let Ryan near the makeup again? Spencer, you have to stop letting him use you as a guinea pig, experimental canvas thingy. Not that it doesn’t look kind of badass, I mean, but – but, Spence, come on, just say no.”) lose their charm.

Spencer continues to look at him.

“Right, right,” Brendon says hastily. “Just- yeah.” He removes the arm.

“You’re such an idiot,” Spencer says, “I can’t believe Ryan didn’t tell you so every single fucking day.”

“You did that for me,” Ryan mumbles points out from over by the mirror. He puts the eyeliner down and slumps tiredly into a nearby chair. “It’s cool.”

“Some one needed to,” Spencer explains, “you both suck and blow at this stuff, Brendon,” and Brendon is feeling kind of chastened (Spencer, the perfect friend with his perfect relationship with his perfect girlfriend) until Spencer punches his arm fondly and then slings an arm around his shoulders in an awkward sort of one-armed hug.

His friends are kind of nosy, but sometimes sort of awesome.

“Fifty bucks on a week,” Jon offers.

“Hundred and fifty,” Spencer says, not bothering to look at him, eyes fixed on Andrew as he finishes up his set, “that the honeymoon stage doesn’t last three full days.”

Jon widens his eyes. “Spencer Smith, do you think it’s right for us to put a monetary value on our friends’ happiness?”

“Take it or leave it.”

“You can’t be right all the time,” Jon says, opening his wallet. “Law of averages.”

Spencer examines his fingernails.

Brendon scowls at himself in the mirror and rubs a thumb thoughtfully over his jaw. “Motherfucking beard burn, Ryan Ross,” he says darkly. “Shave your fucking face already.”

“Mmngrh.”

Ryan is still slumped in his chair, eyes shut and makeup half-applied, but Brendon is impressed - and a little annoyed, but mostly impressed- that he nevertheless manages to flip Brendon off in the correct direction.

“I’m serious.” Brendon turns his head to apply his ghostly foundation. “My skin is delicate, man. I’m going to have to moisturize.”

“Mmmrgh.”

“Hey.” He walks over to Ryan’s chair and snaps his fingers in front of Ryan’s nose. “Hey, Ross, we’re on soon, and you still have to finish putting your face on.”

“Fuck you, I’m sleeping,” Ryan grouses, and curls up tighter.

“Yeah, yeah,” Brendon says, pulling Ryan out of the chair. Ryan slumps dramatically against him. “Dude, come on.”

“Don’t want to,” Ryan mutters into Brendon’s neck.

“I know,” Brendon says, patting his back awkwardly. “You can sleep after, okay? Eight full hours tonight, I promise.”

Ryan frowns. “We were going to-“

“We’re going to sleep,” Brendon says firmly. “But first we have a show, and right now I’m going to steal some of Spencer’s coffee. He doesn’t need it like you do.”

“’kay,” Ryan says, eyes still shut, breath hot against his ear. Brendon takes advantage of his boneless slump to steer him over to the mirror, an awkward clumping half-waltz across the dressing room. It’s weird. He’d do this for Ryan normally, of course he would, but now they’re, they’re something, and it’s just weird. Not bad weird, just.

“Mmmrph.” Brendon gets Ryan positioned against the counter, but Ryan’s still a deadweight against him. Brendon shifts as Ryan starts nuzzling at his cheek, open-mouthed, a little sloppy.

“Hey, you’ll mess up my makeup,” he warns, but he hasn’t drawn the black lines from the corners of his mouth down to his chin yet, so it’s okay. Easily fixable, totally forgivable, he tells himself

Ryan kisses him, slow and sleepy, sucking his lower lip into his mouth.

“Mmmph, what – okay, yeah.” Brendon lets his hands move down from Ryan’s shoulders and finds his hips instead; kisses him back, kisses him awake, humming happily in the back of his throat.

Ryan rolls his hips lazily against him, nice; licks at Brendon’s teeth, definitely more awake - and then he pulls away, panting, and braces himself upright against the makeup counter.

“Hey, dude, come back here.”

Ryan grins, and then twists around, reaching for the kohl. “Uh-huh, no.”

“Ryan,” Brendon whines. He knows he’s whining, and that it’s kind of annoying and therefore might not get him what he wants, but. But. “Don’t make me perform with a boner, that’s not buddies.”

“How would that be different from normal?” Ryan carefully sketches a curlicue trailing down his cheek. “We’re going to be on soon. Where’s my coffee?”

“Oh, fuck you, Ross, I am not your bitch,” Brendon begins, but shuts up when Ryan twists around again and places a hand on his jaw.

“Don’t move,” Ryan warns him, and carefully draws the lines from the corners of Brendon’s mouth down to his chin, the rays of thick black lines radiating out from his lower eyelids in a grotesque parody of eyelashes. They’re standing so close together that if Brendon leaned in an inch, he’d be kissing Ryan again. He just has a feeling that Ryan would bite him if he did, so he stays perfectly still.

When he’s finished, Ryan leans forward instead, his mouth brushing against Brendon’s light as air, the feather touch of a moth’s wing.

Brendon closes his eyes, breathes, everything on quiet fire for a fraction of a second; and when Ryan steps back, cap slightly askew, he presses his fingers against the pulse in Ryan’s wrist and feels the blood jump under his skin.