Archive of Our Own

Ever since Panic at the Disco had split, Brendon had developed a routine. He didn’t like thinking about it, in fact he didn’t like thinking about anything at all anymore. He would get up every afternoon, make something to eat and waste his time away on the computer or TV or playing video games. Sometimes he’d watch Disney movies. When he got hungry he would consider making dinner. More often than not, he would decide against it and order take-out.

He’d spend his night in his makeshift studio messing around on one instrument or another before giving up and going to bed.

He went shopping every two weeks or so. He would need at least one day to work himself up to it. Sometimes it would take up to four days, until he was out of everything.

Brendon had been waiting for some water to boil one Monday afternoon when there was a knock on the door. He frowned to himself. When the knock came again he walked to the door, trying not to run. He was still lost in thought, trying to think if he’d ordered anything and then forgotten about it, when he opened the door. Thus, he was thrown off guard to find a familiar face standing on the other side.

"Sean Van Vleet,” he said, “are you working as a delivery boy now?”

“Not exactly,” Sean said, grinning. “I’m so glad you’re home, though! You know Jon is out of state? And Ryan is out of the country?"

"Yeah," Brendon said, not elaborating on how he had only found this out through the internet.

"Dude," Sean said, "we need your help." He picked up a box from next to his feet and held it out to Brendon.

"What is this?" He asked, lifting the top to take a peek inside.

"It’s Tom!" Sean said, eyes bright.

"What?" Brendon said, dropping the lid to look at Sean’s face, "You’d better come in."

***

Sean explained how they had gone to see a fortune teller a few days ago, and things had gone a little sour. He said they woke up the next day and found a cat in Tom’s bed.

"We thought it was a prank or something," Sean said, "even though Tom was never the type for that sort of thing."

"How’d you figure it out?" Brendon asked, looking at the cat stretch lazily on his floor.

"He told us," Sean said.

"How?" Brendon said, amused despite himself.

"With some pens, paper and a lot of meowing," Sean said, "Ryan got bitten." Sean grinned at the memory.

"Okay," Brendon said, raising an eyebrow, "say I believe you. What do you want me to do?"

"We’re going on tour; we need someone to look after him,” Sean said, leaning forward, and touching the tips of his fingers to each other.

"Whoa hey, you can’t just-" Brendon started, raising his hands and moving back.

"There’s no one else-" Sean started.

"Jon-" Brendon tried.

"Out of state,” Sean reminded him.

"Ryan knew him better," Brendon tried again.

"Out of the country."

Brendon knew this, he did, but he was not prepared for whatever was going on with Empires.

"What about William?” he tried one more time, “I thought they’d patched things up. Or his girlfriend?"

"William’s baby is allergic to cats, and Danielle and Tom ended things a while ago,” Sean said, biting his lip.

"Is there no one else?" Brendon said, looking down at the cat. He looked back at Brendon with half- lidded eyes, tail thumping on the carpet.

"I’m really sorry," Sean said, "we could always go down our list, but you guys seemed to get along really well, and we’re running out of time, we leave for tour tomorrow morning."

"You’re just gonna leave him as a cat? What about the fortune teller?"

"She said some mumbo jumbo about fairy tales and true love but we all love Tom, and that hasn’t done any one any good." Sean stopped and sagged. "It’s been three weeks, we’ve tried everything. We’ll just have to sort it out when we come back."

Brendon pursed his lips, still unsure.

“I wouldn’t ask if we weren’t completely out of options,” Sean said.

Brendon leaned down to pet the cat- pet Tom between the ears. "How long will you be gone?"

"Two weeks," Sean said, getting up before Brendon changed his mind, "we have everything set up, cat food and toys, and I’ve got all his things in the car, litter box and bed and he pretty much takes care of himself, as long as you feed him twice a day he's set."

“He doesn’t need to go outside?” Brendon asked, following Sean to the door.

Sean laughed. “It’s Tom,” he said, “he never wants to go outside.”

***

The rest of the day went by quietly. Tom explored Brendon's house then came to settle on the floor in front of the TV. When it came to dinnertime, Brendon made an effort, for once, pulling out pasta and making sauce from scratch.

According to Sean, Tom was still Tom somewhere in there and he really didn’t want to set off any alarms or get anyone worried. He just had to pretend everything was normal until they came back for him.

When Brendon went to his music room, Tom followed, but instead of stretching out and going to sleep like he'd done earlier, he sat up and watched Brendon play. It was unnerving to say the least. His ears would follow Brendon around the room even though his head was perfectly still.

When it was time for bed, Brendon dragged himself to his bedroom, Tom close in tow. He watched as Brendon slipped into his bed and quickly fell asleep. Brendon woke up sometime in the morning with a stifling feeling, as if he couldn’t breathe.

It took him a minute to realise that Tom had moved to lay on his chest after he’d gone to sleep. He pushed him off with an arm and received a disgruntled, grumpy meow for his efforts, but he curled up next to Brendon and was asleep again before Brendon could do much more. He seemed to have the gist of it so Brendon decided to go back to sleep too.

***

By the third day, Brendon gave up on trying to maintain a front. Who knew what Tom would remember when he was human again, anyway. He went back to eating ramen and take-out. As the days passed, Tom grew closer and closer to him. By the end of the first week, Tom was even curling up in Brendon's lap in the evenings, and sometimes he would start purring when he liked a particular progression that Brendon was fiddling with.

Halfway through the second week, Brendon stopped thinking of Tom as a person inside a cat’s body and just started thinking of him as Tom the cat. It was probably while Brendon was shamelessly sobbing over the end of Tangled, hand buried in Tom’s fur. Tom mewed and looked up at Brendon with judging eyes.

“Shut up,” Brendon muttered, looking around for his box of tissues.

As the days passed, what he said became more personal, until he found himself telling Tom about the break-up.

“I don’t blame them, you know,” he found himself saying, “I was just angry at myself for not continuing, for letting Spencer drift away, we should’ve kept going as Panic, maybe.”

Tom mewed up at him.

“Why am I even telling you this?” Brendon asked, placing the bowl in front of Tom and petting him between the ears. “You won’t tell anyone though, will you?”

Tom mewed again and started on his food. Brendon sighed and went to find his phone. He had a craving for Chinese today.

Three days before Sean was meant to come back, Brendon woke up with Tom pressed up against him, purring loudly. When he shifted, Tom moved with him and licked at his face. Brendon smiled, and shifted too to press a soft kiss between Tom’s ears and went back to sleep.

The next thing he knew, there was a dip in the bed and a voice was mumbling about getting out of bed.

Brendon froze. When the mumbling didn’t disappear, he opened his eyes and slowly turned to see Tom, the human being, lying on his bed, completely naked.

“Oh, god,” he said, backing away as fast as he could, falling out onto the floor in his haste. He stood just as quickly but held his ground.

“Tom?” he said.

“What?” Tom said turning to look at him, then his eyes widened as his own voice registered in his mind and he scrambled out of bed too.

“Whoa!” Brendon said, putting his hands up to shield his eyes, “naked!”

“Oh!” Tom said, and Brendon could hear him pulling at the sheets. “Okay, I'm good now.”

Brendon peeked between his fingers to check before completely taking his hands away. They stood in silence for a moment.

“So,” Brendon said, “you're back.”

“Yup,” Tom said, rocking back and forth on his heels, “it appears so.”

“How much do you remember?” Brendon said.

Tom nodded smugly. “All of it.”

“Fuck,” Brendon said, and Tom nodded again, unable to hold his smile back anymore.

***

After Tom was dressed in some of Brendon's clothes and they were sitting across from each other in the living room, Tom finally spoke.

“You should call Spencer,” was the first thing he said.

“Listen,” Brendon tried, “I’m not-“

“No, I’m not saying start a band, I'm not even saying make music,” Tom said, “but he’s your friend, and those guys left him just as much as they left you.”

“He’s got a life, his girlfriend-“

“You don’t know what he’s got,” Tom said, “not until you call him.”

“What do you even care,” Brendon muttered, “you’ve got your own band, you're human again.”

“Because you can’t live like this, Brendon,” he said, and shifted closer, to sit on the same couch as Brendon, “because I care about you.” He moved even closer.

“Why?” was all Brendon could say, eyes wide.

“Think about it,” Tom said, “the woman mentioned fairy tales and true love, and I'm human again.”

“You’re saying that I- that because-“ Brendon said, trying to move even further away from Tom, his back pressed against the armrest, “it wasn’t even on the lips!”

Tom shrugged. “I’m still feeling kind of feline,” he said, moving close enough to count the freckles on Brendon's face, “you want to fix that?”

“I- yes,” Brendon said, “yes, is that weird?”

Tom laughed softly. “I think that would be the least weird of everything that’s happened in the last month or so.”

“Okay, cool,” Brendon said nervously, “because I really want to kiss you right now, and I’d hate for it to be weird.”

“Then why don’t you just do it already?”

And so Brendon leaned in to close the gap between them. The touch of their lips was tentative at first, but when nothing beyond the ordinary happened they grew more confident and started kissing in earnest. Tom slipped a hand around Brendon's neck to tangle his fingers in Brendon's hair, and Brendon fisted his hand in Tom’s shirt, pulling him closer.

When they finally broke apart Tom’s eyes were dark and his lips red. Brendon didn’t think he looked any better off himself.

“I think that went pretty well,” Brendon said.

“That’s presumptuous of you,” Tom said, raising an eyebrow.

“You don’t think it went well?” Brendon asked.

Tom shrugged. “I think it could have gone better.” He slid down to rest his head on Brendon's lap. “Isn’t it time for Disney now? Do you have Up saved?”

***

Nothing much in the routine changed, as Tom was generally a quiet guy. He hung out in the practice room with Brendon, but now that he had actual fingers, they could work together. Tom had really missed the feel of guitar strings under his fingers.

And when it was time for bed, Tom crawled under the covers and got comfortable.

“Moving a little fast, don’t you think?” Brendon asked.

“Please,” Tom contested, rolling his eyes, “I've been sleeping here all this time, I'm not going to sleep on the couch for the last three days of it. I’m even wearing clothes!”

Brendon shrugged and slid into bed too. Tom wrapped an arm around him and pulled him close, and Brendon didn’t push him away.

“Maybe I will call Spencer,” he mumbled, already half-asleep, curling in on himself.

Tom hummed in agreement, fitting his body around Brendon's. Brendon hadn’t realised how much he'd missed this, this human contact.

Tom was leaving soon, but Brendon didn’t want to be alone anymore. It was time to start moving on.