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It takes a minute for Jon to recognise the kid leaning against the bathroom wall as that sophomore who played about twelve different bit parts in the last school musical. Brendon – Brendon with the huge smile and the manic level of energy. Jon took photos for the last week of rehearsals as part of a feature for the school paper, wandering around with an easy smile and a camera slung around his neck in the hopes that people would get used to him and forget he was there. Brendon ended up in a lot of the photos purely through his habit of zipping around the rehearsal space and being in five places at once. Jon doesn't think he's ever spoken to him, though.
Brendon isn't wearing the smile now. He's slumped against the wall, slowly banging his head back against the tiles and swearing, dully and repetitively, under his breath.
Jon lets the door slide out of his hand. It clacks closed behind him. Brendon looks up, and Jon holds his hands up. "Hey," he says.
Brendon stares at him fuzzily, his forehead creased in something like pain, and raises a hand. "Uh, hi?" he offers, rubbing at the back of his neck and not quite smiling. He's not just frustrated and pissed off, Jon realises. He's upset, and trying hard not to show it.
"Oh, hey," Jon says, clicking his fingers as he remembers, "you're supposed to have glasses, aren't you? Where'd they go?"
Brendon laughs, and it comes out uneven and not very convincing. "I don't know," he says, looking away. Then, laughing again, "Pete Wentz took them. I'm – I've got contacts somewhere, I've –" He ducks down and starts rifling in the school bag at his feet.
Jon winces. He kind of loves Pete a lot, but ... well, he can be a complete asshole sometimes, Jon knows this.
"Hey," Jon says, going over and squatting down by Brendon. "Sorry." He tilts his head, giving Brendon a smile. "Pete can be kind of a douche."
Brendon laughs again, the sound high and disbelieving. "Yeah?" he says. He looks up and squints at Jon. Then he makes a pained face and presses his hand over his face. "Sorry," he says, muffled. "I didn't recognise – you're one of Pete's friends, aren't you? I'm – I didn't mean –"
"Hey, no," Jon says. He shifts uncomfortably. He's not used to feeling embarrassed to be Pete's friend. Pete's a douche, but he's Pete, and people don't actually hold it against him. Jon thought. Maybe it looks a bit different from the other side. "I'm Jon Walker," Jon says, holding his hand out. "It's Brendon Urie, right?"
Brendon blinks at him. "Uh," he says. He squints at Jon's hand, as though he's not sure what he's seeing, and cautiously takes it. "I – yes?"
Jon's finding it kind of trippy, seeing Brendon without the glasses. Brendon's eyes are kind of huge, brown and blinking hazily at Jon, dark brown hair falling partway into his gaze. Doesn't it usually work the other way? Jon's sure that most people have squinty little weak eyes without their glasses, but Brendon pretty much has Disney eyes; he could be Aladdin. Jon shakes his head.
Brendon takes his hand back. "I do have contacts," he says. "I don't like wearing them because they're not very comfortable, but they ... I thought they were in my bag, but I think maybe I forgot to put them in?" He laughs. "I can't – I've been fucking looking for them, but I'm not sure – I can't actually see well enough to –"
Jon nods meditatively. "What you should do," he says, "is you should let me help you look, to make up for my friend being a jerk off." He smiles, easy and friendly. "I have excellent eyesight, all my doctors tell me so."
Brendon stares at him for a moment. Jon thinks he's trying to search Jon's expression but can't see well enough, because he closes his eyes in frustration. "I fucking hate not having my glasses," he mutters. Jon waits, and Brendon opens his eyes again and pushes his bag forward, pulling the zip a bit further down. "Thanks," he mutters. "It's, um ... there should be, like, a black plastic case, about..." He holds his fingers out, showing how large. He half-laughs again. "I swear, I'm getting, like, a bright pink case or something for next time this happens. I can't make out anything black at all."
Jon just nods, and starts carefully taking things out of the bag, balancing them across his knees. Exercise books, Chemistry text, loose pens, a scratched-up tuning fork and a sheaf of sheet music, an iPod with apple stickers all over it – the kind you get off apples in the supermarket. Jon stares at it for a moment and has to duck his head while he grins.
"So why did Pete steal your glasses?" he asks.
"Oh," Brendon says vaguely.
Jon looks up and Brendon's staring at his hands, turning them over in his lap. He's dropped down to sit on the floor, against the wall, careless of how gross the bathroom floor probably is. He bites his lip, and Jon finds his gaze drawn to the indent of strong white teeth in full lower lip, and fuck, did the hyperactive drama kid always have a mouth Jon wanted to touch?
"I, uh," Brendon says. "I don't know?" He waves a hand. "I think I was making too much noise. I was talking to a couple of guys from band, and maybe being kind of loud." He shrugs. "Or maybe he was just bored. I don't know, you're his friend: why does he do anything?"
Jon's starting to feel conflicted. "He's not a bad guy," he says quietly. "He's just, you know ... he's Pete."
Brendon shrugs again, but his mouth turns down a bit, disappointed, and Jon feels like a jerk. He's pretty sure he'd feel like a jerk if he didn't defend Pete in some way, too, but Pete's not sitting in front of him looking like Bambi's cuter and more tragic young cousin.
"Listen," Jon says, "your contacts aren't in here; not unless they're, like, super chameleon contacts and they're pretending to be a protractor case."
Brendon's shoulders slump. "Yeah," he says. He looks up. "Um, thanks. That was pretty nice of you."
Jon wants to brush Brendon's hair back, out of his eyes. "No, hey," he says instead, "I'll go get your glasses for you. Pete's still got them, right?"
Brendon blinks. "Yes?" he says. "I mean, I think?"
Jon tips everything in his lap back into Brendon's bag and hands it to him. Brendon's still blinking when Jon stands up. "I'll be back soon," he says. He tucks his hands in his belt loops and rocks on his heels, grinning. "Be careful you don't bump into anything while I'm gone, okay?"
Brendon's mouth quirks and he flips Jon off. Jon's feeling kind of giddy as he ducks out of the bathroom.
They're all the way over the wrong side of school from the quad, which is why nobody else had been coming into the bathroom – Jon had been coming back from the darkroom, and he guesses Brendon had deliberately gone somewhere he wouldn't be disturbed.
When he does reach the quad Jon finds Pete mock-sparring with Tom and Joe, the three of them laughing like hyenas and completely failing to land any hits.
Jon gets Brendon's glasses back by the simple expedient of walking into Pete's path and asking for them. Pete blinks at him for a moment, pushing the sweaty fringe back from his forehead, then waves vaguely at his bag and goes back to trying to get Joe into a headlock.
Pete's bag is sprawling open on the table. Jon picks through it and finds the glasses shoved down the side, one arm tangled in the spine of a ring binder. He extracts them and gives them a quick look to make sure the lenses haven't been scratched. They're kind of smudgy, but they don't look damaged. They're angular, black frames, and Jon couldn't remember what Brendon's glasses looked like, and now he can't picture what they look like on.
He wipes the glasses off on his shirt and waves them at Pete. "You're a douche," he says levelly, raising his voice a bit so Pete hears. "Just so you know."
Pete's eyes widen in indignation and he drops Joe's shoulders. "Jon," he says, shaking his head, "Jonny Walker, that's not nice."
Jon rolls his eyes. Patrick's been sitting hunched at the table, making notations on sheets of guitar tab, but he looks up now, blinking. "Wait, what?" he says. "Pete, you stole someone's glasses?" His hand comes up to touch the frames of his own. "Do you even know how low that is?"
Patrick's still bitching Pete out when Jon walks away.
The bathroom door's a silent one, so neither of the boys in the bathroom hear him push it open. The contents of Brendon's bag are spread over the counter, and Brendon and another boy are picking through them, heads bent.
"Of course he's not coming back, for god's sake," the other boy's saying as Jon comes in. He pushes a hand through light brown hair. "Shit, Bren, do you have to have so much stuff?"
Jon lets the door swing closed behind him, and the click makes them both look up. Brendon's friend's face sets in a bitchy expression, and Jon lifts the glasses. "Uh," he says, suddenly uncertain, "I got them?"
The guy narrows his eyes, and Jon recognises him now, he thinks, as one of the kids from the drumline. He thinks he's in Brendon's year.
Then the guy turns around, ignoring Jon, and scoops his own bag up from the floor. "Okay, I've got to go, Bren, I'm late for class."
Brendon nods and murmurs something that sounds like "Thanks, Spence." Jon steps back to let him get past.
The door swings closed again and Brendon looks at Jon, shyly. "So, um," he says. "You got them back? Really?"
Brendon with a shy smile, it turns out, is pretty much the most appealing thing Jon's ever seen.
"Here," Jon says, stepping closer. Brendon lifts his chin a little, and Jon carefully fits the glasses over his ears, nudging them into place over his nose. The black frames make him look older, accentuate the lines of his cheekbones. His eyes are still huge and dark, blinking at Jon from behind the glass.
"Why, Mr Urie," Jon murmurs, taking a small step back and smiling. "You're beautiful."
Brendon seems to have gained a lot of confidence, now that he can see again. He tilts his glasses down with one hand and gives Jon a ridiculously sexy smirk. "I was going for 'dashing', actually," he says, and then he actually waggles his eyebrows.
Jon snorts and leans forward, adjusting Brendon's glasses again. They don't need it, but Jon wants to.
"So," Jon says, and he gently tugs at the bit of hair that's gotten trapped behind the arm of the glasses on one side, pressing it behind Brendon's ear. Brendon bites his lip and drops his eyes down and back up. God, Jon is so gone. Brendon's eyes are kind of sparkling.
"So," Brendon says.
"So, I still think I need to make up for my friend being a douchebag," Jon says seriously, stepping back a bit.
Brendon grins. "Yeah?"
Jon nods. "And you know, I've heard that movie tickets make quite good currency."
Brendon nods his head earnestly. "You know, you heard right. They make an excellent currency."
Jon grins, quick, and bites down on it. "So I could take you to a movie on Saturday, then, you think?"
Brendon smiles, bright and wide, then looks down again. "Yeah," he says quietly, and Jon can hear how bright the smile still is, in his voice. "Yeah, you can."