Chapter Text
Jon's car is parked outside Spencer's house. It's ancient and beaten-up and has three long scratches down one side. "Yeah," says Jon, "Don't ask." He grins over at Brendon from the driver's seat. "It's not exactly luxury, sorry."
"If this were a real date," says Brendon, "I'd expect a Porsche."
Jon nods. "Definitely," he says. "And I'd have brought you flowers. Roses?" He cocks his head and looks at Brendon. Brendon strikes a pose. "Yeah, you strike me as a roses kind of guy," says Jon, grinning. "Maybe just the one, like, with a stem. I'll get you roses on prom night, okay?"
Brendon laughs, and Jon's grin gets wider, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "This is going to be great," he says. "Okay, let's go."
Brendon's never thought of Jon as a really talkative guy – though no one's talkative compared to Brendon – but he chats through most of the drive. Mostly he's telling Brendon about the people who are going to be at the diner. "It's no one weird, don't worry," he says. "Tom's the only one who's gonna look at you twice, and Tom's basically a flake, Sean'll distract him after a minute. Not on purpose," Jon elaborates quickly. "Tom's just easily distracted by Sean."
"Are they -?" asks Brendon carefully.
Jon just shrugs, which makes the car do a slightly worrying wobble in the middle of the road, and says, "Don't ask me. Tom's got a girlfriend? But I think they've got an exception or something."
There is apparently a lot more gayness going on at Brendon's high school than he ever realized.
"Sean and Al and Luciani are all cool," says Jon. "If Nick tries to borrow money from you, don't give it to him. Max'll be there – actually, maybe you know Max, I think he's a junior? He's Danielle's younger brother. Danielle's Tom's girlfriend, she'll be there."
Brendon just nods, trying to fix all the names in his head. It's not easy. He's going to be so confused. "That's all the core people," says Jon, "except – oh, hey, you'll get to meet Greta, she usually shows up."
"Greta's the scary one?" says Brendon.
"Greta's awesome," says Jon firmly, but then he gives Brendon an embarrassed look and admits, "but yeah, scary. And that'll be everyone unless Pete crashes."
"Who's Pete?" Brendon starts to ask, but Jon's already distracted by parking the car. The diner is a shabby little building on the street corner, but it's brightly lit up inside. It doesn't look that busy. Jon waits for Brendon to hop out of the car and knocks his shoulder against Brendon's when they're both standing on the curb. "Ready?" he says.
"Let's do this," says Brendon.
Jon grabs Brendon's hand, all casually, when they walk through the door, and Brendon is suddenly nervous again and his palm starts to get sweaty almost at once. He feels weirdly exposed in his tight jeans and girl t-shirt, and when a round of wolf-whistles and clapping starts up from the table in the corner he feels himself start to go red, but Jon glances at him and doesn't let go. Somehow that helps, and Brendon clings to Jon's hand like a lifeline and lets Jon twine their fingers together. Jon's skin is warm and his fingers have calluses – guitar calluses, actually, Brendon recognizes them with a jolt of surprise, how come he didn't know that? – and he holds Brendon's hand tighter as they walk over to the table. He doesn't let Brendon go.
Of course he doesn't, Brendon thinks. They're supposed to be pretending to be boyfriends right now. Jon's friends are all eyeing him with interest, and wow, did he ever not think this through.
Jon gives his hand a squeeze. "Hey, guys," he says, "this is Brendon. B – that's Sean, Tom, Danielle, Al, Ryan J, Nick, Max – hey, where's Greta?"
"Not here yet," says Danielle. "All right, shove up, guys!"
There's some general elbowing and pushing as everyone squeezes a little closer together to make room for Jon and Brendon, and Brendon finds himself shoved in at one end of the table with Jon pressed warm and comforting against him from thigh to shoulder on one side, and Tom Conrad on the other being equally warm but much less comforting. Brendon goes to run his fingers through his own hair nervously, remembers that his hair is full of gel, remembers that he read somewhere that touching your face is a dead giveaway that you're nervous, and tries to put both his hands flat on the table.
Jon leans down and whispers right in Brendon's ear, "It's okay, B." He's so close that Brendon can feel his breath puff out warm and a little damp. He ducks his head. Jon reaches for one of his hands, pulls it under the table and gives it a squeeze, and Brendon turns his head to give Jon a smile.
From across the table the guy Jon called Nick says, "Okay, you guys, that's disgusting. Do the PDA on your own time."
"Fuck you, Nick," says Jon easily.
"No, listen, you can do the lovebird thing later," Nick says. "I need to talk to you, Walker – five minutes?"
Jon hesitates, glancing at Brendon, but then he says, "Okay," and he gets up. Nick has to fight his way out from the middle of the squash of people on his side of the table, but the instant he's free he grabs Jon's arm and tugs him over to the other side of the room to talk to him in a quiet, urgent voice. Brendon stares after Jon forlornly. He wasn't expecting to be abandoned this fast. Then he realizes the rest of the table has started laughing, and he jerks his attention back to them, panicked.
Ryan J smiles at him across the table. "Nick's trying to get Jon to lend him forty dollars," he says, nodding over at the two of them. "He just can't accept that we all know better by this point."
"Never, ever lend your money to Nick," says Danielle gravely. "You will never see it again." Everyone nods. Brendon tries not to meet any of their eyes without actually looking away. Everyone's looking at him. He can tell they're being friendly, but... but it's weird. He doesn't belong here, not really.
"Hey," says the guy sitting directly opposite Brendon, "you're in band, aren't you?" He's a short chubby dude with a mess of curly hair. "Percussion, right?"
"Um, yeah," says Brendon, and then his memory does the weird sparky thing it does whenever music's involved and he thinks – says – "You're brass."
The guy grins. "Tuba! I'm really bad, though. I'd rather play guitar."
"Who wouldn't?" says Brendon. "But still, the tuba." He does his tuba impression, oom-pah oom-pah. The guy – Max, Brendon remembers, Jon called him Max – cracks up, and then starts complaining about the music they're doing in band at the moment. Brendon is always up for complaining about the music they're doing in band. He has a whole scheme of bitching which both Jon and Spencer have heard about a million times.
He doesn't notice Jon and Nick come back over, or the way the tension in the room relaxes. Max starts talking about twelve-tone technique and Brendon actually has quite a lot to say about twelve-tone technique, specifically why it's bad and wrong and evil. He waves his hands about a lot for emphasis while he says it and kind of elbows Tom in the ear, but he doesn't realize that's what it was until a couple of minutes later when it's probably already too late to apologize. In fact he doesn't look up from his conversation with Max until someone slams the diner door open and roars, "Let's get this party started, bitches!"
Brendon jumps and looks up.
There are some crazy people crowding through the doorway.
Their leader is wearing neon. The others are all wearing some neon, wristbands and patches and in the case of one gorgeous, leggy girl who's almost certainly taller than Brendon is, neon green thigh-high boots, but the leader is wearing nothing but neon. He refracts, he reflects, he's positively dazzling; Brendon has to squint to look at him, and not exactly in a good way.
"Gabe!" calls someone from the table, delighted, and then someone else in the doorway shoves the gang of neon people forward and says, "Out of the way, coming through, coming through!" and suddenly there are a whole lot more people. Brendon hears someone yell, "Pete, you fucker!" and someone else calling out longingly to Victoria, Victoria! and Max whispers, "Oh shit, did they seriously bring Bill?", and this is really way too many people and loads of people are standing up and mingling and talking and Brendon's lost sight of Jon. He glances desperately back at Max, who is engaged in some sort of eyebrow communication with his sister – Brendon knows eyebrow communication when he sees it, Brendon is a master of eyebrow communication, but he can't decode Max's – and there is seriously no one Brendon knows, and all these newcomers are scary, and then someone sits themselves neatly down next to Brendon and he yelps.
"You're the only person here I don't know," says the newcomer. She's blonde and pretty, wearing a white dress with flowers embroidered around the collar and smiling. She's maybe the least intimidating person Brendon's ever seen. He breathes a sigh of relief, and even manages not to flush and look away when she continues sweetly, "You must be Brendon."
"I – yes," says Brendon.
"Jon's boyfriend?"
"Yes?" says Brendon. For the purposes of this evening he is, anyway.
"Jon kept you pretty secret," says the girl in a considering way. "Why do you suppose that is?"
"I – I don't know," says Brendon. "We – I mean, this whole thing is kind of sudden, you know?" Not a direct lie, but pretty good deflection. The girl smiles at him again and Brendon hasn't the faintest idea what she's thinking.
Thankfully, Max jumps in to rescue him at that point. "Brendon knows his stuff about music," he says. "I didn't realize – how come we haven't talked before, anyway?" he demands in Brendon's direction. "We've both been in band for three years, that's lame."
"It's Jon's fault," says Brendon.
"Yeah, he kept you all for himself," says Max, and laughs.
The blonde girl leans her elbows on the table, still smiling sweetly, and says, "Music? All right, then let's try this one. Five greatest jazz pianists, go."
It sounds almost like a challenge, or a test, but no way is anyone who looks so sweet out to get him. Brendon decides he's just being paranoid and they should all just get back to the music conversation, which was cool. "Okay, first –"
Max and the girl have gotten into an argument over Art Tatum when Brendon becomes aware of someone looking at him. He looks up, unnerved, and then relaxes a little when he realizes it's Jon. Jon's standing on the other side of the room, with some people (Pete? Brendon thinks the short one is Pete) talking to him. He doesn't seem to be listening. He's watching Brendon in a weird way, his eyes distant and almost dazed, with his hands tucked in his pockets like he's been doing it for a while. He's biting down a little bit on one side of his lip. Brendon makes a confused face at him and Jon doesn't seem to notice. It takes him a few seconds to meet Brendon's eyes, startle, and grin at him. He says something to Pete and waves him away as he walks over.
"B, hey," he says, sliding down onto the bench beside Brendon. "You doing okay?" Brendon smiles at him, but before he can answer Jon's hands are sliding around Brendon's waist – Brendon goes stiff with surprise for a second before remembering and forcing himself to relax again – and Jon's tugging him up, saying, "Come and meet Gabanti and people, okay?"
He keeps one hand on Brendon's waist even when they're both standing up again. Brendon's weirdly conscious of it being there the whole time Jon's steering him over to the crowd of new people, even when Jon leans down and whispers in his ear, "Hey, Greta didn't catch you out, did she?"
Brendon's eyes widen. "That was Greta?" he whispers back. He has to stand on tiptoe a little to reach Jon's ear, even though Jon's short. Brendon's shorter. His mom says he'll get another growth spurt if he's patient. "You said she was scary," Brendon murmurs accusingly.
Jon's hand squeezes a little tighter. "She is," he says. "Trust me. She just looks angelic to throw people off the scent." Brendon can't say anything more because Jon's just steered them into the middle of the crowd of new people, and all of them are looking at him.
"Jon Walker, my man!" Brendon gets an impression of neon and leer as they suddenly end up in front of the guy who yelled about getting parties started. "This is your toyboy, is it?"
Brendon freezes. Everyone around him is laughing, and he spots a couple of friendly looks in his direction but mostly they seem like they're waiting for something. If they're waiting for Brendon to be cool they're going to be waiting a long time. "Gabe," says Jon warningly.
Neon Guy – Gabe – steeples his fingers and looks at Brendon over the top of them. "There are important questions to ask you, young one," he intones. "The Cobra has spoken. Not just anyone is permitted to debauch our innocent Jonathan."
"Gabe," says Jon again. Brendon wants to look at him for help, but he's not sure he can meet Jon's eyes. His face feels hot.
"So I must ask," Gabe proceeds. "Not out of any puerile curiosity, you understand, but because it is my duty." He grins. His grin is terrifying. Brendon's half-expecting fangs to appear at any moment. "Have you... kissed?" demands Gabe. Jon's hand on Brendon's waist goes light for a second and then squeezes again, like Jon was about to pull away but changed his mind. Brendon's frozen, but Gabe apparently takes his blush for an answer and continues gleefully. "Have you groped?" he asks. "Have you rubbed? Have you licked? Have you sucked? Have you fucked him up the ass? Nonsense, look at you, you're obviously a bottom – has he fucked you up the ass?"
Brendon's mouth is hanging open. Everyone seems to be laughing. Gabe has serial killer eyes. Brendon tries to stumble back away from him, but instead he finds himself stumbling into Jon, and then suddenly Jon's arms are both around him and Jon's glaring over Brendon's shoulder – seriously glaring – and saying, "Leave him the fuck alone, Saporta, I mean it."
Gabe looks at Jon, and then looks back at Brendon, and his forehead wrinkles in a frown, and he says, "Nothing personal, young one. Welcome, welcome to our merry fraternity. You have passed your test."
"So you can let go of him now if you want, Jon," says Greta from behind them.
Jon lets go of Brendon quickly, stepping away and rubbing at his face; when Brendon turns to look at him he looks a little red. Greta smiles sweetly at Brendon and says, "You passed the test the instant you didn't run screaming from Gabe."
"Greta!" says Gabe, sounding aggrieved.
"Be quiet, Gabe," says Greta. She still looks sweet and darling but Brendon's sort of starting to see where the scary thing comes from. He wouldn't dare to tell a guy like Gabe to be quiet, but when Greta does it Gabe just gulps and shuts up. Greta puts her hand on Brendon's arm and says, "Where have you been hiding this one, Jon? I like him. Did you know he plays five instruments?"
"Not very well," Brendon protests at once, embarrassed.
Jon gives Greta a funny sort of look and says, "I saw him first." Brendon swallows a laugh.
_
They leave a couple of hours later. Jon drops Brendon home and Brendon says, "Shit, my parents aren't going to-" and scrabbles his hands through his hair in a futile attempt to get rid of some of the gel.
Jon says, "Won't they like it?"
"It's more that they'll ask," says Brendon.
Jon says, "I think you look good." Brendon can't see his face properly, it's dark inside the parked car and the street is a quiet one. His voice is low.
"Yeah?" says Brendon, with forced lightness. It's hard to be casual in that moment, somehow. There's something in his ribcage that's behaving weirdly, all twisty. "Thanks. Well, thank Ryan."
"Who's Ryan?" says Jon quickly.
"Uh, Spencer's Ryan?" says Brendon. Spencer's definitely talked about Ryan in front of Jon before.
"Oh," says Jon. After a pause, he says, "I thought he was imaginary."
"Well, he's pretty unreal," says Brendon.
The car's quiet. Brendon should really get up and leave. He has to go in and face his parents. At least he's not wearing a girl t-shirt anymore; he changed back into his while Jon was driving, twisting around in the passenger seat.
"I guess I'll see you tomorrow?" Jon says. He looks up, and the headlights of a passing car illuminate his face with a long slow slide of light, brightening and dimming. The rest of him is a solid dark shape in the driver's seat. Brendon thinks out of nowhere of Gabe leering and saying have you kissed? The coiling feeling in his chest is maybe something like embarrassment.
"Yeah, see you tomorrow," he says, jumping quickly out of the car and snatching his bag up after him. "Thanks, by the way. I had fun."
"Me too," says Jon. "Thanks for coming, B."
Brendon endures the interrogation from his mom as best he can. She doesn't comment on the hair gel or the new expensive jeans, which surprises him until he realizes she's just too happy that Brendon actually seems to be having a social life at school to care. She wants to know who he was with, and if he had fun, and what they were all like, and Brendon ends up giving her a weird mish-mash of his day with Ryan and Spencer – not mentioning the whole cutting-school thing – and the diner. He leaves out Gabe and his cohorts entirely; what moms don't know won't hurt them, and Brendon doesn't even need to think about it to know his mom wouldn't like the idea of Gabe.
She seems to like the idea of Jon, though. When Brendon mentions Jon dropped him off, she says, "Oh, he's the senior from band, isn't he? I'm so glad you're still friends. I did worry that – well, never mind."
Brendon wants to feel resentful that his mom's so dubious about his friend-making and friend-keeping abilities, but the evidence is all on her side.
When he goes to bed he leaves all his clothes on the floor even though he knows he'll get yelled at for that if any of his family notices. He thinks he'll go to sleep at once, but instead he lies awake for a long time, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling. His mind keeps circling back to Jon's hand, warm on his waist.
_
Being Jon's fake boyfriend, Brendon discovers over the next couple of weeks, is actually pretty awesome.
After school, suddenly, his life is full of things to do. If it isn't the diner then it's hanging out with Ryan and Spencer at Spencer's house, and then Brendon starts getting invited along to other things – movie nights and parties and tiny shows played by the band that some of Jon's friends are in – and maybe he can't go to all of them, but people still want him there. One time Jon can't go and Greta still gets hold of his number and texts him and says he has to come anyway. Brendon can't really remember ever feeling so liked before, and it's pretty amazing.
Ryan has Brendon's number too, now, and it turns out he's a compulsive texter. Brendon takes to keeping his phone switched off in class, which he's never ever needed to do before – no one ever texted him during the day before. Now it's not just Ryan (whose texts never make much sense, but Brendon appreciates them anyway) but Jon too. Jon keeps texting Brendon pictures taken with his phone's camera – a nutshell on the sidewalk, the pattern of reflections in a broken window pane, his own bare toes in flip-flops – which make Brendon smile. His own phone's camera is shit and he's a bad photographer anyway, so he replies with random chatter about what he's doing instead. A picture of a confused-looking cat with its head on one side gets my math desk has flwrs carvd on it while a broken, rusted-up fire escape gets listnd 2 the beetles last nite – let it be let it be let it be.
He has people to sit with at lunch now as well – in fact, he has multiple groups of people to sit with at lunch now, because there's Jon's friends and there's also Max's friends, who are mostly in Brendon's year. Mostly, of course, Brendon ends up sitting with Jon – sitting next to him. He stops even noticing when Jon leans into him, presses their thighs together – well, that's not true, Brendon still notices, but it starts to feel natural. He just leans back. Once, feeling daring, he kisses Jon's cheek, and smirks at Jon's silent surprise. Brendon's pretty good at this fake boyfriend thing.
No one knows about the trick except Ryan and Spencer, and Spencer keeps it quiet and Ryan doesn't even go to their school. Everyone seems to be fooled. Brendon even catches some people giving him envious looks in the corridors as the news gets around, and he doesn't know whether to feel weird about it or not. He'd be the first to admit that he's got to look pretty enviable right now, because, well, Jon. If Brendon's pretty good at the fake boyfriend thing then Jon's kind of amazing. Jon -
"Yeah, we get it, you have the biggest crush of all time on Jon Walker's smile and his jokes and his triangle playing and his flip-flops," says Spencer, sounding bored.
"What?" says Brendon, offended. "I was just explaining how Jon's really good at being a fake boyfriend."
"No, it's quite all right, Brendon," says Ryan. "Tell us again how he walks you to class and leaves notes in your locker and buys you pretty things and lets you eat off his plate."
Brendon opens his mouth to protest. It's not like the notes Jon leaves in his locker say actual boyfriendly kinds of things. They tend to be more about smiley faces and 'see you tonight' and –
"And also how it makes sense that everyone's jealous of you because he's so hot," Spencer adds. "You can talk about his shoulders for a bit if you like. Or his hands. Or that thing his eyes do when he smiles. We don't mind at all."
"No, we haven't heard it a million times before or anything," says Ryan. "It's not like you talk about him all the time."
"Remember the day before yesterday?" says Spencer nostalgically. "We had a conversation that wasn't about Jon at all. What was it about, Ryan?"
"I've forgotten," says Ryan mournfully. "My memory has retroactively imposed a layer of Jon Walker over every conversation we've had for the last two weeks. It's like even when he's not mentioned he's still hovering there at the edge of my consciousness. I can see his reflection in Brendon's starry eyes."
"My eyes are not starry!" says Brendon.
His phone beeps. He jumps and scrambles for it.
"Better get that," says Ryan with an amused tilt to his mouth as Brendon flips it open. "It might be Jon."
_
Brendon doesn't have a crush on Jon.
Not that Jon's not completely crush-worthy and awesome, just, Brendon's not actually crushing on him. That would be weird and – well, not wrong, obviously, Jon as good as said that he crushes on boys sometimes, Brendon doesn't think it's wrong – but it would be weird. Jon is Jon. Jon's Brendon's friend, and Brendon's not the kind of person who'd let this whole thing they're doing make him get confused or whatever. That would be not just weird but also pretty dumb.
He keeps telling himself this.
There are ten days left till prom and it's starting to sound less and less convincing.
_
"Tonight's the night," whispers Jon, leaning over Brendon's shoulder when Brendon's eating. They've claimed one end of the table for themselves, no one's listening. "You ready for this, B?"
Brendon swallows his bite of sandwich and grins up at Jon. "As I'll ever be," he says. "I don't know, it's working pretty well so far, isn't it?"
Jon sits down beside him. "Yeah," he says. "It's good." He rubs the back of his neck and offers Brendon a smile. "Thanks," he says. "Did I say? Thanks, thanks for doing this."
"It's no problem," says Brendon. "I mean, I – I like being with you." Shit, that sounds weird. "And, like, your friends," he corrects himself at once. "And, I don't know, Ryan's having the time of his life. When I asked him to sort out my clothes for tonight I think he died a little bit from joy. I have seriously no idea what he's planning, I just hope it's not too weird, you know?"
"Yeah," says Jon. He puts both his hands in his own hair for a moment, running his fingers through it, and then seems to realize what he's doing and stops abruptly, leaning his elbows on the table instead and propping his chin on his hand. He looks at Brendon, but then looks away again before he says abruptly, "Can I ask – are you and Ryan... or, I don't know, maybe you and Spencer..." he trails off.
What? thinks Brendon, and he says it too, "What?"
Jon shakes his head. "Never mind, weird question. Not really my business, right?"
Brendon narrows his eyes, thinking, and then says, "Wait, are you asking – Jon!"
Jon ducks his head. "Sorry? I shouldn't have asked."
"But I'm – I'm not, I mean, I'm –" straight, Brendon nearly says, but he's looking at the line of Jon's throat as his mouth opens around the word and wow, is it ever not true. Self-delusion only goes so far.
"- not that kind of guy," he finishes instead. "I'll have you know that I only ever have one fake boyfriend at a time, Mister Walker." He waggles his eyebrows. Jon looks up at him through his eyelashes and laughs a soft, amused laugh. Brendon gets distracted for a moment by the way the angles of the electric lights overhead throw Jon's cheekbones into sharp relief and paint a soft, inviting shadow right below his lower lip.
"Tonight, then," says Jon. "I'll pick you up from...?"
"Spencer's," says Brendon firmly. Then he confesses, "My parents kind of think I'm sleeping over there. They don't know about... well, I mean, they're pretty conservative, so. We kind of told Spencer's mom this whole long sob story to make her say it was okay?"
(That had been Ryan's idea; he said Spencer's mom was really soft-hearted and Spencer snorted and said, "You'd know." All Brendon had had to do was stand there looking glum and staring at the happy and sad faces on his sneakers while Ryan started to spin a tale of Tragic Love Cruelly Denied and, amazingly, it had worked.)
"I'll see you there, then," says Jon, just as the bell rings for the end of lunch. His hand brushes the back of Brendon's neck as he leaves, right at the hairline. It's probably an accident. Brendon ducks his head and swallows the last of his sandwich, reaching for his bag. So he's maybe sort of attracted to Jon, he tells himself as he gets up to leave. Just a little bit. That's not the same thing as a crush.
_
"Shower," says Ryan, the instant Brendon gets in the door.
From the kitchen, Spencer's mom calls, "Is that Brendon? Hi, Brendon!" but Ryan doesn't even give Brendon a chance to answer, just takes his arm and frogmarches him up the stairs. If you'd asked Brendon before now, he would have said that no way was skinny Ryan Ross strong enough to make anyone go anywhere, but apparently the skinniness is just a cover for his implacable robot strength or something, because Brendon really doesn't have much choice. Ryan shoves him into the bathroom, throws a towel in after him, and shouts, "Rinse twice, and use conditioner!"
It's like Ryan's leveled up into super-Ryan, Brendon thinks. Now ten times crazier and starting a personal hygiene dictatorship. He gets in the shower.
When he wanders down the hall to Spencer's room half an hour or so later with his hair still wet and dripping, wearing nothing but his boxers and the towel around his shoulders, he hears some giggling coming from one of the bedrooms. He looks around but there's no one there. When he goes into Spencer's room he says, "Do you have a giggling ghost or something?"
"Probably my sisters," says Spencer without looking up from the videogame he's playing, and then he does look up and does a double-take. "Oh my god, please tell me you weren't prancing around naked in front of my little sisters. I will end you."
"I'm not naked!" says Brendon. "I'm wearing boxers!"
Spencer does not look appeased. Brendon considers trying to hide behind Ryan. It probably wouldn't work. Even super-Ryan isn't going to be a match for angry Spencer.
"Everyone shut up and settle down," says Ryan, appearing out of nowhere – or, okay, out of Spencer's closet, and carrying a bundle of fabric over his arm. "I have art to create." He says it in a serious way, pronouncing all the capital letters: I have Art to Create. Spencer rolls his eyes but settles for giving Brendon a dangerous glare rather than actually ending him.
Brendon says, "You know he's not even picking me up until eight, right?"
Ryan says, "I know." He looks worried. "We've barely got any time at all."
_
What feels like a million years later, Ryan says, "Okay, yeah, I'm happy with that."
"Where do you even get all these clothes?" Brendon groans.
Ryan smirks and taps the side of his nose. Then he says, "Right, hold still, I'm doing your hair."
_
"Please tell me you're done," says Brendon.
"I'm afraid he can't do that, Dave," says Spencer in his best computer-voice. He's still playing videogames. It's like he doesn't care about Brendon's plight at all.
Ryan gets out his hairspray and starts spraying it everywhere. Brendon coughs. Spencer says, "Great, now my room's going to smell like that shit for days."
_
"Oh no," says Brendon. "No way."
"But –" says Ryan.
"No!" says Brendon. "No makeup!"
Ryan crouches down on the rug in front of Brendon and looks up at him through his eyelashes. He makes a sad face.
"Pouting isn't going to help!" says Brendon. Brendon is wise to the ways of the pout, okay, no one does pouting better than Brendon.
_
"Are you seriously still not done?" says Spencer.
"Yeah, are you seriously still not done?" Brendon echoes him.
"If you'd just stop fucking blinking when I'm trying to do your eyeliner..." says Ryan.
_
Ryan steps back and puts his hands on his hips. "I am a genius," he announces. "I am a god. I am an artist."
"You –" says Spencer, and then he turns and actually looks at Brendon. His eyebrows go up. "Huh," he says. "Not bad."
"Thank you," says Ryan with dry modesty. "I try."
Brendon jiggles his leg. His shiny shoes go tap-tap-tap against the floor. He's halfway between nervous and excited. "I want to see," he demands. "Can I see yet?"
"Yes, come on," says Ryan, and pulls him up and across the corridor to the mirror in Spencer's parents' room. "Ta-da!" he says proudly.
Brendon looks at himself in the mirror. He folds his arms, cocks his hip, tilts his head a little to the side, and starts to grin. He turns to give Ryan a semi-incredulous look.
"I know, right?" says Ryan, hopping from foot to foot with self-satisfaction.
Brendon looks back at the mirror. The guy there is undeniably gorgeous, dark-eyed and slim and looking completely at home in his sharply-cut formal suit. Ryan's put a red sash thing around his waist, the same color as his bow tie, and it shouldn't work but it really kind of does. Brendon says, "Thank you."
Ryan wraps his arms around Brendon's shoulders in a hug and whispers, "Good luck, okay? Go get him," in his ear. Brendon doesn't try to argue – doesn't answer at all – but he keeps his arms folded and hugs himself a little as Ryan turns to Spencer, who's hovering in the doorway, and declares, "Okay, fucker, I was promised pizza for this."
_
Jon shows up a little early, when Brendon and Ryan and Spencer are all still in Spencer's front room eating pizza. Ryan eats pizza twice as fast as everyone else. Spencer's little sisters keep peeking in through the door and giggling in Brendon's general direction, which is weird. "They like you," says Spencer, sing-song and mocking, and they all laugh. The twins squeak and disappear.
Brendon's definitely never been a crush object for eleven-year-olds before. He's not sure how he feels about it.
They all miss the doorbell ringing while they're laughing, and it takes Spencer's mom coming in and saying, "Brendon, someone here for you," with a wide smile for Brendon to realize. He bounces to his feet and says, "Jon!" just as Jon peers over Mrs Smith's shoulder.
"Hi?" says Jon. He's wearing a tux and his hair has been combed, which is hilarious, because Jon's hair is never combed. He's also wearing actual shoes, which is pretty unusual for him. Brendon was half-expecting him to show up to prom in flip-flops. He smirks a little at the mental image, and then smirks some more when Jon scratches nervously at the side of one shoe with the toe of the other. He really obviously doesn't like them.
Brendon grins at him. "Come in and have some pizza," he suggests.
Ryan, who's just reached out for the last slice of pizza, looks up guiltily but doesn't actually stop. Spencer and Brendon and Mrs Smith all say "Ryan!" just as he takes a bite, and Ryan swallows and says, "What?" defiantly, and then, "It was my pizza."
Jon laughs. "That's okay," he says. "We've kind of got to go anyway." He meets Brendon's eyes. "Looking good, B," he says, a little quieter. Brendon swallows. Jon's got his hands behind his back as he says, "I got you something," and smiles lopsidedly.
"What?" says Brendon, instantly fascinated.
Jon brings his hands out from behind his back. He's holding a red rosebud on a single long stem. "We said, right, you're a roses kind of guy... right?" he says. "So, um, here. Rose."
Brendon's got a kind of shiny bubble expanding in his chest, that's the only way he can think of to describe it, how he feels. He takes three long steps across the room to Jon and holds out his hand, and Jon drops the rosebud into it and then leaves his hand there for a long minute, their two hands almost-clasped around it. Brendon tries to tell himself his breath doesn't catch. "Thanks," he nearly whispers.
"Give it here," says Ryan imperiously from right beside him.
Brendon jumps. He'd forgotten there were other people in the room.
Ryan snatches the flower away from them both, mutters something incomprehensible under his breath, and starts fixing it carefully in Brendon's buttonhole. "Do not fiddle with it," he commands Brendon. "You'll kill it. And don't fiddle with your cufflinks either, they're mine and I don't want you losing them."
"Uh, you must be Ryan," says Jon. He raises his hand in a little wave. "Good to see you too, Spence."
"Don't mind Ryan," says Spencer dryly. "He's got strong feelings about accessories."
"He's always been like that," says Spencer's mom fondly, which makes Ryan go red and stop adjusting the rosebud in favor of trying to hide behind his bangs. "Are you ready to go, boys?"
"Thank you for having me, Mrs Smith," Brendon remembers to say politely. He got his guest manners hammered into him early on.
"Now, you're coming back here afterwards, aren't you?" says Mrs Smith. "We'll all be in bed, but Spence and Ryan will wait up for you, won't you, boys?" Spencer and Ryan mumble something affirmative. Spencer's mom is the only person in the world capable of reducing Spencer to mumbling, Brendon's discovered.
"I promise I'll drop him back in one piece," says Jon. "We'd really better –"
"Wait, wait!" says Mrs Smith. "Not just yet, I want photographs."
She shoos them out into the hallway and fetches her camera, and Brendon feels a little embarrassed while she makes him and Jon pose on the stairs. Of course, she doesn't know it's not real – Ryan's whole story to get her to go along with this had kind of been based on Brendon and Jon being tragic high-school sweethearts – but it isn't real. Jon couldn't have been expecting to do the whole couple photographs thing, and Mrs Smith is obviously determined to make up whatever shortcomings she thinks Brendon's parents have, and it ought to be seriously, seriously awkward.
It's not, though. Jon just smiles his usual easy smile and pulls Brendon closer to him, resting his chin on Brendon's shoulder, and if Brendon shivers a little Jon doesn't seem to notice it. Brendon wraps their hands together, twining their fingers, and tries not to notice Ryan and Spencer making meaningful smirky faces at each other behind Mrs Smith. Ryan and Spencer are shitty friends (well, no they're not, Brendon can't make himself claim it even in his own head) who need to stay out of Brendon's business and stop trying to make out that he's got a crush when he hasn't, he hasn't.
"I think we should have some photos with Ryan and Spencer too," he says loudly, and Mrs Smith is enchanted by the idea and forces them all to crowd together by the door with their arms over each other's shoulders. Spencer does his very best to slouch rebelliously, and Ryan is apparently incapable of smiling in photographs unless you take him by surprise, but Brendon cheerfully makes bunny ears behind both their heads while Jon giggles. Brendon doesn't think Jon noticed the meaningful smirky faces Ryan and Spencer were making. He hopes not. It would be the worst thing in the world if Jon realized that Brendon's being weird and got all uncomfortable.
When they finally manage to escape they're actually running kind of late. "Doesn't matter," says Jon. "No one else is going to get there on time anyway." He smiles. His hand brushes Brendon's as they fumble with their seatbelts in the car.