Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first stage of an ardour draught needed salamander flame. Potion making was like most other branches of magic, though, in that it was more about form and idea than it was reality, so you could get away with a mechanised salamander-shaped brazier if the fire was hot enough. Master Saporta's metal salamander was ancient and smoked to black in the hinges, and it moved its head in little stop-start motions that were pretty much entirely unconvincing. But it had been used in place of a real salamander long enough to have picked up a good bit of personality through accidental exchange-of-ideas magic.

It creaked its head to the side and tried to bite Brendon when he lifted the crucible away. He turned to put the crucible next to the other which was spitting bad-tempered sparks on the bench. Then he gingerly pushed the salamander further back on the bench with the handle of his tongs, because seriously, the one thing that hurt worse than sharp metal teeth clamping down on your finger was, hey, burning hot sharp metal teeth. It had happened to Brendon once, and holy shit ow.

The shop bell jangled out a low chime. Brendon pushed his bangs off his forehead with the back of his wrist and straightened up to give a smile and half a wave across the room to the boy who'd slipped inside. The boy was wearing a soft grey and black scarf and a newsboy cap pulled down over brown curls. He had nice eyes, Brendon thought. He wasn't a regular. Brendon was good with faces, and he would have remembered the uncertain angle of his shoulders, the elbows folded out of harm's way. He gave Brendon an awkward wave back and then turned his attention to the hand-written labels around the necks of the bottles on the shelf nearest to him.

Brendon turned back to his potions. Thursday afternoons were quiet, so Gabe usually had him make ardour draughts. The shop didn't actually make a lot of money from them, because most people shoplifted them out of embarrassment rather than buying them at the counter, but you couldn't be a potions shop without love potions. Unless you were making some kind of statement about free will, like the Way brothers over in Cavendish Square – although Brendon had heard rumours that Mikey Way sold them out of the back room anyway, and just didn't tell his brother.

Brendon wasn't supposed to be working on the other potion, but he'd decided it was necessary. He was eighteen, he'd been an apprentice here for four years, it was so absolutely time he made journeyman. Asking Gabe about it – or hinting at Gabe about it – hadn't earned him any more than knowing leers and a comment about doing things in the cobra's own time. But Brendon had found a potion that was supposed to give you future knowledge – tell you things that you would know in the future – and this way at least maybe he'd find out when it was going to happen. Over at the communications tower Jon had moved from rope boy to junior technician more than two years ago now.

Jon was also two years older than Brendon, but whatever.

Brendon had finished the potion base this morning. That part had been painstaking and slow, but the rest looked pretty quick. He glanced over at his one customer. The boy had found a high stool and was perched up on it, frowning at some directions for use. His fringe had fallen into his eyes, and he kept frowning and trying to blink it out, but not paying attention enough to reach up and push it away. It was sort of charming. Brendon grinned, then turned away to start work on the reactant.

The boy was still there when he finished it. He was browsing the top shelves now – the ones Brendon still needed a footstool to reach quickly, which Gabe was apparently never going to stop finding hilarious. He didn't seem to require any actual customer service, so Brendon turned his attention back to the crucible.

The potion was actually a really pretty mix: a rippled blue with red sediment sinking to the bottom of the flask. Brendon took a moment to admire it. Then he tipped it into the crucible that still held the base, stirring briskly. The base had stopped sparking, but it hissed a bit now before finally settling into a clear mixture. It was very faintly luminescent.

Brendon frowned, glancing back at the book, because it was supposed to still have a blue tint, he thought. Still, clarity was usually a sign of potency, so maybe he'd just made it stronger than expected.

Newsboy cap boy was still browsing. Brendon was pretty sure at this stage that he was just avoiding the chilly fog outside, actually, and didn't mean to purchase anything at all. Brendon probably had time to test the potion out now, so that he could get rid of it before Gabe came back.

He poured a small portion into a test tube, holding the back of his hand to the glass for a moment to make sure it was cool enough to drink. Then he turned away from the counter and quickly tipped it over his tongue.

It burned anyway, in a way that had nothing to do with temperature, and he coughed, his eyes watering. It didn't really taste of anything – potions usually didn't – but it didn't go down easily either. He had to swallow a few times before the burn started to fade.

Brendon straightened, wondering when it would start to work. Would the knowledge drift into his head gradually? Or would he wake up tomorrow with the knowledge just there? He shook his head, turning back to the shop.

The boy in the cap was making his way up to the counter, using his scarf to rub gently at a smear on the glass bottle he was holding. He looked up, and Brendon forgot everything that he'd been thinking.

The hair curling around the top of the boy's scarf and collar was a soft brown. It made his skin look paler, white against the grey and black of the scarf and the grey of the cap. It made his eyes look browner, too, darker than his hair but still a rich brown that could hold secrets; could hold anything. His mouth was pale pink, slightly open; he was chewing on his lower lip. His hands were folding the ends of the scarf over themselves.

"Uh," the boy said, and Brendon's gaze snapped up. He felt his smile go wide, and he couldn't help it, he couldn't, he kind of wanted to smile at this boy just forever.

"Can I help you?" Brendon asked, leaning forward.

The boy smiled back a bit. He looked pleased but uncertain. "I wanted, um ... this?"

Brendon leaned over to look. The boy had a night vision cordial in his hands, the neck of the bottle loosely gripped in long fingers.

"It's sixteen marks?" the boy asked. He had a quiet, kind of toneless voice, as though he hadn't made up his mind whether he wanted what he was saying to be noticed or not. It made Brendon want to lean closer and make him smile wide; laugh and forget himself.

"It's on special," Brendon said firmly. "Twelve marks."

The boy glanced down, then up again. He looked sort of shy, and god, Brendon wanted to tug him in by the scarf and just press his cheek against the boy's hair, slide his hand around and under the scarf and feel the back of his neck warm under Brendon's fingers.

"Really?" the boy said, and he sounded sceptical but also, again, pleased. Brendon laughed.

"No, really," Brendon said. "It's totally on special. What's your name?"

The boy smiled a bit. "Ryan," he said. He fiddled with the hair next to his ear, looking as though he didn't know he was doing it. "Are you – you're an apprentice here or something, right? You can't be Master Gabriel Saporta."

That was what the sign on the shop front said: Master Gabriel Saporta's Potions Distillery. It was the only place Brendon had ever seen or heard Gabe referred to as Gabriel.

"I'm Brendon," Brendon said. "Urie. Brendon Urie."

Ryan had dug out his wallet. He carefully counted twelve marks into his hand, then set them down on the counter. He held the vial of night vision cordial up. "Did you make this?"

Brendon hesitated. "No," he said regretfully. "I totally can, but that batch was Gabe."

Ryan grinned, a flash of expression, and he had the best grin ever, Brendon was convinced of this. Ryan tucked the bottle away. "I guess I can't blame you if it doesn't work, then."

Brendon widened his eyes. "Ryan, are you impugning the shop's wares?" He shook his head, faux-hurt. "I'll have you know that we are the best. Cities fight for us."

Ryan started to reply, then stilled, looking thoughtful. "I like that," he murmured. "Cities have fought for us." He flipped his scarf back over his shoulder. "Thank you," he said, giving Brendon half a smile again. He was still looking thoughtful as he left the shop.

The bell jangled low behind him. Brendon leaned forward to watch him through the dusty glass of the shop front as he set off down the street, his head bowed a little and his hands tucked into the ends of his scarf. Even the way he walked, awkward but sure of where he was going, appealed to Brendon.

Brendon leaned back, dazed. He felt as though he'd been hit with something heavy, all the breath knocked out of him – but in a good way. His mind kept replaying the flash of Ryan's shy smile, the amused tone to his voice, the way his hair curled over his neck, and Brendon wanted to touch it. Brendon wanted to touch his mouth, too – wanted to press Ryan up against a wall and feel the press of his hip bones, the heat of his mouth, soft and chapped against Brendon's own – oh god, did he ever want that.

This was crazy. Brendon didn't even know this kid. He might never see him again.

Brendon almost gasped at the sense of loss that crashed through him at that thought, and seriously, this was crazy. How could he be so smitten, so fast? It was as though he'd – it was as though –

Brendon turned around to the workbench, a slow horror uncurling in his chest. There were two crucibles lined up there, as he'd left them. The future knowledge potion and ... oh god. He'd poured the knowledge potion's reactant into the base for the ardour draught.

He'd given himself a love potion.

By the time Gabe got back Brendon had bottled and hidden the hybrid love potion, cleaned away the unused future-knowledge potion base (useless now that it had been left too long), and washed and put away both crucibles. He'd also fallen into three daydreams about Ryan's hands (he had really long, graceful fingers), Ryan's smile (his eyes sparkled when he smiled), and the flash of skin at Ryan's collarbone that had shown beneath his scarf. Brendon wanted badly to touch it.

Gabe flung the door open, making the bell jangle furiously. He stalked inside in a way you could only pull off if you were roughly seven feet tall and wearing an ankle-length fur coat with a high collar, along with huge tinted glasses. Brendon thought. He'd never seen anybody else pull it off, anyway.

"My tiny apprentice!" Gabe called. "Failing to set fire to the shop once again!" He reached Brendon and ruffled his hair, his eyes glinting over the tops of his glasses. "You're slipping, Urie."

And this, this was why Gabe didn't take Brendon seriously enough to end his apprenticeship. Brendon had set fire to the shop once, and it had been years ago. He'd been fifteen. Fifteen year olds were expected to screw up and accidentally set fire to things.

This was also why Brendon couldn't tell Gabe that he'd accidentally dosed himself with a love potion.

Brendon ducked away. "You're back early," he grinned. "I had shop fires scheduled for four o'clock."

Gabe slipped the dark glasses off, tucking them in the front of his fur coat and smiling a less crazy smile. It had taken Brendon ages to realise that as insane as he was, Gabe didn't actually take seriously more than ten percent of what came out of his own mouth. Guessing which bits were the ten percent was harder, but Brendon had got a lot better at it.

Gabe turned on his heel and shook his head solemnly. "Punctuality and scheduling skills – these are the qualities I instill in my apprentices. Victoria, you should take note."

Brendon blinked. Gabe's personality tended to fill a room to capacity, and he hadn't even noticed that Vicky-T had followed Gabe inside. She was leaning just inside the door, long legs encased in long boots stretched before her. She was watching them with what Brendon thought of as her Gabe smile: equal parts sharp affection, contempt and amusement. If there was anybody in the world who took Gabe less seriously than he did himself, it was Vicky-T.

She nodded at Brendon, tapping a cigarette out of a silver case.

"You left the shop by itself?" Brendon asked, straightening up. He loved Vicky-T's shop. "What about the animals?"

"I left the Alexes in charge," she said. She reached out without looking and took down a little stoppered tincture-of-flame vial; Gabe kept it there for her, Brendon knew. She thumbed the cork out and lit her cigarette on the flicker of fire that escaped before she nudged the cork back in. "It's a test, really," she explained. "If I come back and none of them has been eaten or disemboweled, they'll have passed."

Brendon held her gaze for a moment, trying to work out whether she was joking. Victoria had a small dash of Gabe's crazy streak, and she might actually have been the coolest person Brendon knew, but she was seriously difficult to read.

"Aren't the Alexes like ... twelve?" Brendon asked cautiously. "Are you sure the animals are all right with them?"

And, okay, they were fifteen maybe – or Cash was fifteen and the others must be about that – but still. Brendon wasn't sure they were ready for the responsibility of making sure that Vicky-T's baby wyverns didn't eat each other or something. The baby wyverns were sort of awesome; they were Brendon's favourites.

Vicky-T widened her eyes and blew out smoke. "If I hear screaming I'll run," she promised. Then she smiled, her eyes crinkling. "They're right next door, Bden. But I might mention to Cash how much faith you have in him."

Brendon instantly felt guilty. "No, don't. I'm sure they're completely ... reliable."

Vicky-T gave him an unfairly amused smile and pushed away from the wall, her cigarette lolling at a delicate angle between her fingers. She wandered up one of the aisles, peering at bottles. She seemed to be killing time, so she was probably serious about her absence being a test of some kind for the Alexes. "Gabe, your truth serums are looking kind of filmy," she called. "Are you watering them down these days?"

Gabe cricked his neck to the side. "The only truth is the cobra," he said vaguely, which could have meant anything at all. From Victoria's snort, she didn't think it meant much.

"I, uh," Brendon said, drawing Gabe's attention. "I didn't burn anything down, but I did get distracted by a customer at kind of a ... a crucial point? And I messed up the ardour draughts. You can, um, dock the ingredients from my pay and I'll make another batch tomorrow."

Brendon didn't actually mess up very often, and he would normally have been nervous admitting a screw-up to Gabe. But this time he couldn't say 'distracted by a customer' without thinking of Ryan. Without falling into a daydream in which Ryan became a regular customer; went out of his way to stop by on his way to other places, so that he could smile that awkward smile at Brendon from under his bangs.

Brendon didn't know what his expression looked like, but Gabe straightened up and stared at him. A slow grin was building on his face. "Distracted by a customer," Gabe said, the grin getting bigger. "Were they pretty? Was there flirting? Was there fucking, right here in my shop?"

"That would certainly be distracting," Vicky-T said, looking up.

Brendon's face flushed hot. He ducked his head. "Oh my god, shut up," he mumbled. "It wasn't – he didn't even –"

Vicky-T started laughing, delighted, and Brendon buried his face in his hands. He was usually so much better at lying than this.

Gerard Way had the right idea. Love potions were fucked up.

Brendon hadn't revised this opinion by the next day. He'd spent a restless night replaying everything Ryan had said in the shop, and how he'd said it, and what it had meant. And Brendon had tried telling himself that it didn't actually matter if Ryan was interested, because Brendon wasn't really interested, Brendon was drugged, but it didn't seem to make a difference.

He didn't feel drugged. He didn't know how you were supposed to be able to tell the difference, because he just felt completely infatuated. He felt like maybe seeing Ryan again would be like the sun coming out, and. Fuck.

Gabe laughed at Brendon's sleepless eyes the next morning. Then he locked himself up in the back workroom to meditate and commune with the cobra, which probably meant to make soul mirror potions. The shop had had a special order, and they were master-level potions.

Brendon spent the morning trying to research love potion antidotes. The problem was knowing exactly what he was finding the antidote for. If you knew what you'd taken, there were basic principles of reversal that you could apply. But Brendon had taken some kind of weird-ass mix-up of a potion, and he honestly wasn't sure how it was even working.

The other problem was that he'd never been so easily distracted in his life. Reading about beguilement elixirs turned into trying to decide whether he liked Ryan best in the hat or if Brendon wanted to see him bareheaded and tousled. Taking notes on ingredients in the reactant of the future-knowledge potion that could also contribute to love potion effects turned into wondering what Ryan's lower lip felt like, and imagining what sound he would make if Brendon gently bit down on it.

Brendon jumped to his feet, jittering around the shop. It was – he wasn't going to think about it. Ryan wasn't going to come back to the shop; he had no reason to come back to the shop, he'd just come to pick up a potion and he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time and Brendon was a fucking idiot, but it was going to be okay. He'd find the antidote and he'd never see Ryan again and it wouldn't matter. Everything would be fine.

He made his way back around the counter again, concentrating on the mantra of fine.

The shop bell sounded and somebody ducked inside, hatless and with cheeks flushed from the cold.

Brendon couldn't breathe at all for a moment.

Ryan finger combed his hair out of his eyes, searching for and finding Brendon in the comparative dimness of the shop. He smiled, yesterday's happy self-conscious smile, and waved his hand a bit. "Hi." He sounded breathless.

Brendon vaulted over the counter. "Hey," he said. "Hi. Hi. Ryan. You came back."

Brendon was kind of vibrating in place and he couldn't stop smiling.

Ryan blinked a bit. He was wearing a different scarf today, a deep red one over a charcoal grey shirt. He was also wearing cowboy boots and trousers in a gorgeous tangle of reds and browns that laced up the side of his leg and made Brendon think inappropriate thoughts about unlacing them. Ryan had one hand paused in the act of tucking an errant bit of hair behind his ear, smoothing it into place while he blinked at Brendon. Brendon clasped his hands behind his back to keep from leaning over and doing it for him. "Hi," he said again, softer but still smiling.

Ryan lowered his hand, confused but smiling back. "You're really weird, aren't you," he said. He kind of deadpanned it, but he was still half smiling, and Brendon was almost positive he meant it in a teasing way.

"I," Brendon said, "am irresistible." He pulled an over-the-top sex-face, touching his tongue to his top lip and waggling his eyebrows. Ryan choked, but Brendon noticed that his eyes also flicked to Brendon's mouth.

Brendon wanted to hug the quick look to himself.

"So Ryan Who?" he said. "What's your last name?"

Ryan looked even more amused, but he said, "Ross."

Ryan Ross was the most perfect name in the English language.

Brendon grinned. "Hi," he said again.

"Oh my god," Ryan said, coughing into his hand. When he looked up again his eyes were sparkling a bit. "I used the night vision drink last night," he said. "For, um, for writing. It was – it worked really well."

Brendon leaned back against the counter, his foot tapping an uneven rhythm against the floor. "Yeah? You were – what were you writing?"

"Um," Ryan said. He looked away to the side and down, one hand pushing through the short curls at the back of his neck. "I'm, um, I write – lots of things. Stories sometimes? And verses. Um." He glanced back up at Brendon, and his cheeks were flushed. He coughed and looked away again, embarrassed.

"Ryan Ross," Brendon said. "You're a writer? That is completely awesome."

Ryan shot him another look, still embarrassed but more confident. He smiled back. "Yeah," he said. "Um, that's actually – sometimes my friend Spencer gets me freelance gigs for the paper, and I've sold some stories, but it's not – I kind of need another job. Just a couple of days a week. I wondered if – I thought maybe this shop might need some more help?" He glanced at Brendon's face and rushed on. "I've seen you guys on weekends sometimes, and you're really busy. You seem really busy, and I thought –"

This was a pretty clear-cut decision. Brendon was under the influence of a mind altering potion and wasn't going to be able to think clearly any time Ryan was around. Spending time around Ryan would mean lying to him, making him think that Brendon had the world's hugest crush when he didn't, he was just drugged. It would be unfair to Ryan and torturous for Brendon.

"Gabe was actually talking about finding somebody to help out a couple of days a week," Brendon heard himself say. "I think you would be ideal for it."

Ryan's eyes darted back to his face, and he smiled slow. "Yeah?" he said.

And the thing was that Brendon actually thought he would be. He thought, as he smiled helplessly back at Ryan, that Gabe would like him.

Gabe had taken one look at Brendon's blush and decided that he liked Ryan a terrifying amount. Ryan's mouth had quirked, but he'd answered Gabe's questions politely and pretended not to hear the lecherous insinuations about Brendon (Brendon wanted to die, really he did), and in general he'd been remarkably unfazed.

Gabe had offered him two half days a week, on Saturdays and Tuesdays. Ryan had accepted at once. He'd worked two mornings now, and Brendon was going crazy. He had to tell Ryan about the potion, he knew he had to.

"Only I can't, Jon. When I'm talking to him it's like I forget about everything else. I can't even care about the potion. If I told him, he'd never come around again and he'd – he'd hate it Jon, he'd hate it so much. I don't know what to do."

They were up in the rigging of the communications tower. It was Brendon's first afternoon off since the Ryan thing, and he'd pretty much run all the way here. Jon was the first person he'd been able to tell about the potion.

Also, he kind of loved the communications tower. It was a wildly teetering structure, the tallest building in the city, and it was more or less held together with twisted strands of wire and dobs of glue. There was always rigging around it for repairs. Jon's bosses mostly didn't mind Brendon monkeying around up there as long as he was with Jon.

Jon was trying to reconnect a slipped antenna hanging way out wide from the tower. He sat back on his heels, pushing his fringe back and leaving a smear of grease on his forehead. "Seriously, you," he said slowly. "You really gave yourself a love potion?"

Brendon flopped down next to him, resting his head on the arms propped on his knees. "I really did."

He lifted his head to find Jon blinking sympathetically at him.

"And it's – I can't tell Gabe either, because he'll never make me a journeyman if he thinks I'm this incompetent who poisons himself with potions, and I don't know how to fix it." He pushed back up to his feet and paced the length of the little platform they were on, rigged up against the tower. "When I'm talking to Ryan I don't even want to fix it, and how fucked up is that?"

Jon turned his spanner over in his hand, looking down at it. "Brendon," he said, frowning. He looked up. "Does he like you?"

Brendon let all his breath out. He dropped down next to Jon, closer this time. "I don't know," he said. "I think – I think so. Maybe." He pulled a face. He couldn't even stand to be around himself, when he thought about what a jerk he was being. "Jon, he thinks I really like him. He thinks – and he's really, okay, he's. He showed me some of his writing yesterday, and it's really good, he's really good, and he's cute and he's funny and he's fucking, he's got this awesomely eccentric sense of style, and he doesn't fucking deserve someone pretending to be in love with him."

This would normally be the point where Jon would drag Brendon over and drop an arm round his shoulders. Instead Jon dropped his spanner next to his knee and swallowed a soft, startled sound, his eyes fixing on something down on the ground.

They were only halfway up the tower, not far above the rooftops. The activity at street level was easy to see, scenes divided by swinging grey cables and bunched cords. A boy with warm brown hair and a beaten up bomber jacket was swinging his leg off a bicycle and leaning it against the wall. He pushed the long straight fringe out of his eyes and looked around.

Jon seemed galvanised. He leaped to his feet, ignoring the loose antenna, and leaned out, grabbing a cable and hooking their little platform up to a creaking metal wheel. Brendon grabbed a piece of railing as their platform instantly started descending in shuddery terrifying stop-starts.

"It's newspaper guy," Jon explained, breathless. He was working the winch at the same time. "He always – he's new at the paper? Like a cadet? And he comes for the daily foreign dispatches."

That was all the commentary there was time for before the platform juddered to a stop about five feet from the street.

Jon vaulted over the railing and caught his hand on a hanging rope. Newspaper guy looked up and saw him, and his eyes warmed up. Jon strolled over, his hopeful smile destroying the attempt at nonchalance, and tucked his thumbs in his belt loops as he said hello.

It was too noisy down here for Brendon to actually hear what they were saying. He took a moment to recover from the descent, his legs a little shaky, then climbed over the railing and dropped to the street. He looked around. One of the other junior technicians gave him a friendly grin.

Brendon tilted his head at Jon and the other boy. "Is he – is this a regular thing?" he asked.

The tech rolled his eyes, shifting the coiled rope looped over his shoulder. "It's completely tragic, is what it is," he said. "It's been, I don't know, three weeks? And I don't think Walker's even found out his name yet." He shook his head. "Sad," he said.

Brendon looked back at Jon and the cadet from the newspaper. Brendon wasn't sure what had caught Jon. The cadet looked ... normal, maybe nice, maybe a bit sarcastic when he raised his eyebrows like that. Then Jon said something and the boy laughed, his smile huge and bright as he leaned forward. Okay, wow. Maybe Brendon could see what had knocked Jon over after all.

It was things like that smile that made people fall for each other when it was real, after all. When it wasn't a potion that was going to fuck both of them over in one way or another.

Brendon leaned back against the base of a pylon, out of the way of the bustle of activity around him. He'd kind of hoped that talking to Jon would make him feel better, but this – yeah. Brendon was pretty sure that if he thought much more about Jon's bashful grin or the way the cadet journalist was leaning forward to listen, the sick feeling in his stomach was going to tighten into something actually painful.

It was while he was reaching over the salamander brazier to get something further back on the shelf, carefully avoiding the bad-tempered snap of its little teeth, that it occurred to Brendon that he might be going about the love potion antidote in the wrong way.

He'd finished the alchemical analysis of the constituent parts of the accidental potion and it had given him nothing. Something had clearly created the effects, but it wasn't alchemical.

He looked at the brazier, caught by an idea. If it wasn't alchemical, could it be ideological? The kind of exchange-of-ideas magic that made the little salamander jerk its head around and snap at his fingers?

Ryan arriving for his Tuesday morning shift interrupted him. Ryan could distract Brendon pretty thoroughly even when he wasn't there, so Ryan stripping off his hat and gloves and unwinding the deep blue scarf from around his neck, depositing them behind the counter and flicking his hair back to smile hello at Brendon – yeah. Distracted wasn't even the word.

Before he went out, Gabe had asked Brendon to get Ryan to help him catalogue the older vials on the back shelf. They set up stools in the back of the shop, Ryan curling his long legs up over each other and leaning precariously back against the shelves, writing against his knee. Brendon jittered his foot against the floor, humming snatches of songs and trying not to be too conscious of Ryan so close to him.

Ryan cricked his neck to the side, looking up from the vial he'd been squinting at. "Did you always want to do this?" he asked. "Potions, I mean?"

"What?" Brendon noticed with dismay that he'd let an ink stain bleed into part of his half of the inventory while he pretended not to watch Ryan. He shook his head, dabbing at the stain with the back of his thumb. "No, I wanted – well, when I was a kid I wanted to work up in the communications tower. You know, swinging on cables and making things spark. But actually my friend Jon works there now, so I get to muck around on the tower sometimes anyway." He looked up to grin, giving up on the ink stain. "And then I thought later I might be a musician, which..."

"You play?" Ryan asked, his eyes widening in interest.

Brendon nodded. "Just, you know, I learned piano and a few other things. But then..."

He trailed off, and Ryan blinked at him. "What?" Ryan asked eventually.

Brendon laughed nervously. "Sorry. I just – when I was fourteen I kind of – I fell out with my family and ran away from home. And we're fine now, we're good, I even moved back for a few years, but I – right then I really needed a job, and Gabe sort of saved me. Or, he found me trying to sleep on his back stoop, and told me that if I was going to hang about looking tragic and appealing, I should do it inside the shop where he could use it to sell things to customers." Brendon grinned, rubbing his hand over the back of his head and avoiding Ryan's eyes. "I thought he might be going to cut me up and use me for potions, but I was desperate enough to think that might be worth it. And then actually he just gave me half his dinner and let me curl up with a blanket, and I hung around for a few days and eventually he started calling me his apprentice."

"That's –" Ryan sounded almost upset. "You don't really want to be doing it, then?"

"I love it," Brendon admitted. "I'm actually – I turned out to be really good at it." Mostly, he amended silently, because he'd had a pretty good record up until he poisoned himself with a love potion. "And I kind of love the shop, and talking to customers, and distilling – and Gabe is pretty much the world's most easygoing boss."

Ryan nodded. "You seem like you really like it," he admitted. "I thought you were going to say you were miserable and I'd have to admit that I fail at reading people, again."

Brendon was glad that Ryan wasn't going to ask about the falling out with his family. He didn't think he could even have explained what it was about: the crushing sensation of everything they wanted for him, wanted of him, that was nothing he wanted for himself. They'd done it with love, but that had almost made it worse.

Gabe was pretty big on people doing their own thing. Working for him had been a bit like breathing air for the first time, after fourteen years underwater.

Or Brendon had been fourteen years old and melodramatic, maybe. But it had been real and important at the time.

"I always wanted to write," Ryan volunteered. "From as soon as I could read, really."

"Yeah?" Brendon said. He imagined baby Ryan frowning over a pencil, focused and intense.

"My dad didn't want me to be a writer," Ryan said, looking up and catching Brendon watching him. "He still doesn't. That's why I have to write at night, with that potion I bought, because I can't use a proper light." He shrugged, but his gaze stayed steady on Brendon's face. "He's okay with the newspaper jobs, but he says my other things are only fairy tales."

Brendon frowned. "Which is ... not good?"

Ryan smiled at him quickly. "I guess. I don't get it either."

"You didn't want to find full-time work with the newspaper?"

Ryan shook his head immediately. "My friend Spencer works there, and he likes it, but – it's just sort of depressing, writing things that ephemeral. I'd like what I write to last longer than a day."

A customer came in, a girl in a yellow shawl. Brendon had been letting Ryan take all the customers this morning, for the practice. Ryan slipped off the stool, leaving his half of the inventory folded neatly on the seat.

Brendon tried to keep working, but he couldn't keep from watching Ryan instead. He was having an earnest discussion with the girl about the night vision potion she was buying.

"No, really, I've tried this one, it's amazing," Brendon heard him say. "It lets you see this ... there's like a blue glow to the edge of everything, like a halo. It's like seeing the ghosts of everyday objects hovering just behind the real ones."

Eventually she left and Ryan came back, curling his legs back up onto the stool next to Brendon. "I think she wished you were serving her," he said, giving Brendon a quiet grin that made Brendon's breath stutter and catch. "She kept glancing back at this end of the shop and prolonging the conversation, like if she stayed long enough you'd come back up front."

Brendon nodded seriously. "Well, it's my dark magnetism," he said. "Girls are helpless to resist such enigmatic allure, it's all very sad for them."

Ryan shot him a sharp, quick grin, picking up his next potion and carefully noting it on the list in front of him. "That was it exactly," he agreed. "Your darkness and your enigma, she was really struck." He was smiling at his own handwriting as he said it, and he sounded impossibly fond. Brendon stared at him and forgot to answer.

Ryan picked up another vial and frowned at it. "I think the seal's loose on this one," he said. "Is that –"

The cap fell away and Ryan hissed as a jet of flame licked its way out, catching his hand.

"Fuck!" Ryan slid forward off the stool, dropping the bottle on the floor. It clink-rattled to a stop against the leg of Brendon's stool and the flame went out. Ryan sucked his fingers into his mouth, his expression pained. "Fuck," he said again, muffled around his fingers.

"Shit," Brendon said, "shit, let me..." He scooped the fallen vial up and screwed the cap back on, just in case. The label had faded to illegibility, but it wasn't hard to guess it had been tincture-of-flame. He straightened back up and tugged gently at Ryan's wrist. Ryan gave him a plaintive look but let Brendon pull his fingers free of his mouth and examine them.

Brendon pursed his lips. "Here, wait a second." He gave Ryan his fingers back and slid off his stool, making his way back to the front of the shop and rifling through the drawer under the workbench, where they kept the medicinal potions. He came back with a salve and a clean strip of linen bandage.

"Thanks," Ryan said. Then, "Ow! Fuck, Brendon."

"Sorry, sorry," Brendon said. He carefully finished rubbing salve into Ryan's hand, keeping his touch as gentle as he could. Ryan made small noises of discontent but kept his hand steady. Brendon concentrated on winding the bandage around Ryan's hand, firm but gentle. He was conscious of how close Ryan was, of how their breathing had evened out until it was in time. He could feel Ryan's pulse at his wrist.

Brendon couldn't help rubbing his thumb over the skin there. He heard Ryan's breath stutter. Brendon looked up. Ryan's eyes were wide and dark, and he was leaning forward, his hair tumbling a little way into his eyes and brushing his lashes. He was staring at Brendon, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. He let out a breath as Brendon watched, shaky and uneven, and his tongue came out to wet his lips.

Brendon swayed into Ryan, helpless, his hand coming up to touch Ryan's cheek. Ryan closed his eyes for a moment, his lashes a shadow against his cheeks, then he blinked them open again and he was leaning the last inch forward, their mouths touching so lightly Brendon wasn't sure it was real.

Brendon made a sound in his throat and twined his fingers up into Ryan's hair, angling their heads to the right angle for a harder, deeper kiss. Ryan opened his mouth under Brendon's, and it was suddenly hot and wet and desperate and so, so fucking good, Brendon didn't ever want to breathe again.

He didn't even know how long they kissed. Ryan held his injured hand cradled against his chest and twined his other around Brendon's waist, long fingers resting in the small of Brendon's back, dipping just underneath his shirt. Brendon curled himself around Ryan, pushing them up against the jutting edges of the shelves, trying not to press so hard that they would dig into Ryan's back but god, just, just wanting so badly, wanting to feel the press of Ryan's body everywhere, his hips fragile and sharp against Brendon's, his heartbeat hot and steady against Brendon's chest.

Ryan dropped his head, breaking the kiss and breathing hard against Brendon's cheek. He turned his head to press his mouth against the skin there, the movement not coordinated enough to be a kiss. Brendon nuzzled his face into the crook of Ryan's neck and laughed, breathless, and Ryan shivered.

"Hey," Ryan said quietly, ducking his head again, the word buzzing against Brendon's cheek.

Brendon just smiled back, huffing out another laugh. He let Ryan pull back slightly, leaning their foreheads together. Brendon was aware that he was smiling dopily, his mouth tingling and sore in the best way. He didn't ever want to move away from Ryan, from the intoxicating nearness of him. He almost couldn't believe that he'd actually been allowed to do what he'd wanted to since – since the first time he –

Brendon stumbled away, pushing his fist up against his mouth. He bit down on his hand, muffling the horrified noises he wanted to make.

Ryan caught himself with a hand on the shelf behind him. He was blinking at Brendon. He looked rumpled and debauched, his cheeks flushed and his hair mussed, his mouth reddened and puffy.

Brendon squeezed his eyes shut over the want that pushed through him like a flood. Fuck, fuck, he'd just – there was a line, and there were things that were unforgivable, and Ryan didn't know about the potion.

"I – I didn't mean –" Brendon said. He pushed his hand back up against his mouth and shook his head. Then he dropped his hand and laughed, not meeting Ryan's eyes. "I have to – can you mind the shop until Gabe gets back?" His voice came out weird and strangled. "There's something I need to – I promised Vicky-T I'd do something for her, I just have to – okay, bye!"

"What," Ryan said behind him, his voice flat, but Brendon was already stumbling out of the door.

It was cold outside, a sharp slap to his face, and Brendon didn't have a jacket. He curled his arms around himself. Ryan could still see him from inside the shop, so he turned and walked three blind steps until he reached the doorway for House of Asher Fantastical Beasts. He ducked through.

It shouldn't have been soothing inside. There were birds of paradise and tiny dragonets circling the rafters, and gilded cages lining every wall with creatures peering out of them, calling mournfully or chittering in excitement or emitting whuffling snores. Three or four winged cats and a goat with fantastical blue-and-gold horns were wandering free about the store; the goat came up to butt curiously at Brendon, and Brendon automatically reached out to pat its head. All five Alexes were also present, and they were possibly making more noise than the animals. Brendon felt himself breathing easier, nonetheless. He really, really loved Vicky-T's shop.

"Brendon!" Cash called. When Brendon came in Cash had been wrestling with Alex Marshall at the back of the shop, Alex DeLeon and Ian cheering while Alex Johnson rolled his eyes at them all and clipped the tails of a longsuffering demigriffin up on the counter. Now Cash straightened out of the headlock he had Marshall in and bounded over.

"Hey, Cash," Brendon said. He did his best to smile. "Hey, listen, could you do me a favour? I need to talk to Victoria, but I left Ryan alone in the shop. Could you go and help him out for a bit? He's got a burned hand, so he might need help with customers."

Cash's eyebrows went up, but he grinned wide. "Sure," he said. He sauntered out, his hands in his pockets.

Cash had a crush on him, and Brendon would maybe have felt guilty about taking advantage of it, except that he knew that Cash also had a crush on Vicky-T, on the red-haired girl at the Post Office, and, maybe more to the point, on Alex Johnson.

Vicky-T came out of the back room, a cigarette in her hand. She had her skirt tied up out of the way, flashing miles of leg in high boots, and her hair pulled up into a high ponytail. Her fringe was askew on her forehead and she was frowning.

"Did you just steal an Alex?" she asked.

He shook his head, grinning at her shakily. "That one wasn't even really yours." That was true – Victoria only actually employed Ian and Johnson. The others had sort of come with them as a package deal.

Vicky-T raised her eyebrows, apparently unimpressed with this argument. Then she sighed, shifting the cigarette to her other hand so that she could reach out and card her fingers through Brendon's hair. "You're not having fun, are you, Bden?" she said quietly. "Love potions are kind of hilarious, but not when you're on the wrong end of them."

"I'm – what?" Brendon blinked at her. Then he glared over her shoulder at the Alexes, who were looking far too interested. He didn't think they could hear over the racket, but, "Less gawking, thanks," he said, raising his voice. Johnson rolled his eyes at him, but the others suddenly found other things to do. The noise level went up even further as Ian opened the baby wyvern pen to feed them. Brendon was distracted for a moment by the little wyverns' frantic cawing and bopping reptilian heads. Then he looked back at Vicky-T.

He palmed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "I didn't think anyone knew, " he said, lowering his voice.

Victoria shrugged. "Your boy doesn't, and he's the one who counts." She pushed herself up onto the counter, reaching out to pet the feather-fringed ears of a little dog creature that had been sleeping on top of a stack of accounts. It yawned silently and pushed into Victoria' hand but didn't bother to wake up.

Brendon looked at Victoria's hand on the dog's ears so that he wouldn't have to look at her face. "I kissed him," he said quietly. "I – and he thought it was real, and it felt – but I don't think that's something you forgive. Is it?" He looked up at Vicky-T, maybe pleading a little. She winced, and he looked away again. "Fuck," he swore. "I don't think finding the antidote is even going to fix this anymore."

"I wanted to ask you what it was you'd taken, actually," Vicky-T said. She tapped ash into a pewter bowl on the counter behind her and curled her legs up on the counter, one arm loosely cradling her knee. "But if you don't know the antidote I guess you don't know. You were making ardour draughts when we came in, so I thought at first that –" She broke off. "Alex! Watch that!"

All four boys looked up guiltily. Vicky-T slid off the counter and took a canister out of Ian's unresisting hand. "If you keep feeding them silk pellets you'll deserve it when they eventually take off your hand," she said. "Also, I'll laugh and refuse to take you to the hospital."

"Oh," Ian said, looking up from where he was still crouched in front of the wyvern pen. He scrambled to his feet. Vicky-T tossed the canister of pellets to Marshall and pulled herself back up onto the counter.

Brendon stared at the boys over her shoulder until they congregated in a group in the back of the shop, making a show of being too far away to listen. Brendon really wasn't interested in the Alexes overhearing his love potion problems.

Victoria's expression was unusually serious as she looked back at Brendon. "The thing is that I've seen people under the effects of love potions, and I've even – well, I've seen, and it's never looked like this. If you hadn't looked so much like you'd been knocked over by a cart, and if you weren't so miserable whenever he left and you could think straight again, I wouldn't think it was a potion at all. It's –" She frowned, shaking her head. Her ponytail slipped down her neck. "It doesn't look fake," she said finally. "I've seen what comes from an ardour potion, and what you've got is so much sweeter."

Brendon bit his lip. "I really don't know what I took, though," he said. "I mean, I know what the ingredients were. It was half an ardour draft and half of a sort of time potion that's supposed to give you knowledge from the future."

Victoria raised her eyebrows and Brendon flushed. "Oh, what, I wasn't trying to get horse racing results or anything," he grumped. A curl of smoke escaped Victoria's lips as she laughed.

"But nothing in the ingredients should have produced anything like this," Brendon said. He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. "The only thing I thought was that it could have been ideological magic – that maybe the Intention of each potion was strong enough that even though neither of them was finished, the effects combined. Only they have nothing in common, and I don't see what they could even combine into that would make sense. It's –"

Brendon broke off in horror as he spotted a figure in a familiar newsboy cap through the glass of the shop window. He dove over the counter and down behind it just as the door opened.

"Hi, Ryan," Victoria said, a lilt of laughter in her voice.

"Uh. Hi." Ryan sounded flat and uncertain, and Brendon's heart twisted in his chest. He curled his knees up against him in the alcove behind the counter, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Um," Ryan said. "My shift's over, and Gabe came back a minute ago. That boy – Cashmoney?"

"Just Cash," Johnson said, and Brendon could hear him rolling his eyes.

"Right," Ryan said, still uncertain. "He wanted to hang with Gabe for a bit. I thought – is Brendon around?"

Vicky-T sounded regretful. "He had to do something."

"Oh," Ryan said, his voce even smaller. Brendon curled his legs up tighter and hated himself a bit more. "Well, I'll just – I just wanted to tell him I was going home. But I'll – see him on Tuesday. I'll just go. Um, thanks."

Brendon waited until he heard the shop door close again before he crawled out from under the counter.

"Throw yourself off a bridge later," Victoria said when she saw his expression. "Right now go back to where you were. Effects of the potions combining. I've heard Gabe talking about this stuff often enough to know that that sounds promising."

Brendon groaned. "It's not, though. How can a love potion and time potion combine? I wanted knowledge from the future and instead I got – instead..." He trailed off. He blinked at Vicky-T, shaking his head a bit. "Does that work?" he asked. "Love instead of knowledge? Is this ... am I feeling something from my future?"

Vicky-T pulled both her knees up on the counter, resting her chin on them. She raised her eyebrows. "I guess you're going to be in love with him sometime, Bden," she said, a teasing curl in her voice.

Creating an antidote was easy, once you knew exactly what you'd taken. There were simple principles of reversal. It shouldn't have taken long, but Brendon had been working on the mix in the back room of the potions shop for the last three hours.

He'd maybe been trying to delay the process a bit.

He finished it now, though. He poured a portion into a glass beaker, watching the deep golden liquid slosh into the glass.

"What if it's not for ages, though?" he'd asked Victoria. "What if I don't fall for him for – what if I just lose this, for years?" He didn't want to lose it. He hadn't even realised how much until that moment.

He turned the beaker, letting it catch the lantern light from different angles.

"You have to risk it," Victoria had said tiredly, and she'd sounded decades older than him instead of fewer than ten years. "It's always a risk. What you've got is a moment, one moment from the future, but love's not static like that. It's –" She'd turned away restlessly, lighting another cigarette. "Love isn't an unchanging emotion; it's treacherous and it grabs you by the throat and maybe it endures or maybe it doesn't, but you never get a safety net."

She'd reached out to push her fingers into his hair, smiling a bit. "It's just a moment. Maybe this isn't even as deep as you'll fall."

Brendon took a breath and lifted the beaker, gulping it quickly. It fizzled sharply in his throat and made his head swim for a moment. Potions didn't often have a flavour, but this one tasted faintly of burned toast, for some reason.

He felt it when it worked. Something dissipated, a faint hum that he didn't notice until it was gone. He worked his throat, his eyes stinging a bit.

He tried thinking about Ryan, but all he could come up with was the way he'd seen Ryan under the potion. Everything was confused in his head.

He was going to have to actually see Ryan before he knew.

Gabe came into the back workroom and interrupted the restless pacing Brendon had started up. He glanced from the beaker to Brendon's face and said, his voice irritated, "Just so you know, I'm not going to fire Ross just because you're over your love potion." He cricked his neck. "I like him."

Brendon dropped onto the stool behind the worktable and cradled his head in his hands. "Did Victoria tell you, or did you know all along too?"

"You will never know for sure," Gabe said. Brendon looked up and Gabe raised his eyebrows. "But you cleaned up your own mess. I respect that, Urie."

"Yeah?" Brendon straightened hopefully. "Does that mean you're going to make me –?"

Gabe raised a hand, stopping him. "The cobra values patience, young apprentice." Then he grinned crazy-wide and continued up the back stairs. "Maybe," he called over his shoulder.

For a moment Brendon was distracted, staring after him. Then he shook his head and got to his feet again, pacing.

Ryan was coming in on Tuesday. Brendon wasn't sure how he was going to wait that long.

"God, shut up, Spence," Ryan muttered. "I want to walk over the bridge. It doesn't mean anything."

Spencer gave him an unimpressed look which Ryan did his best to ignore. "Right," Spencer said. "We're going forty minutes out of our way because you want to walk over the bridge. It has nothing to do with the fact that this route is going to take us past your potions shop in like five minutes."

Ryan chewed his lip, walking a bit faster. Spencer lengthened his stride and snagged Ryan's elbow, linking their arms together. He tugged Ryan against him so that their shoulders bumped together as they walked. Ryan gave him a sideways look, then relaxed, leaning his head against Spencer's for a moment.

"So what happened?" Spencer asked, his voice quiet.

"I don't know," Ryan admitted. "There was ... we kind of..."

"Totally made out in the back room?" Spencer asked, and Ryan could tell that he was trying to sound dry, but he started giggling instead.

They swerved out of the way of a tinker's cart that was clanking and jangling down the middle of the road.

"In the front room, actually," Ryan said after a hesitation.

Ryan had kind of been wanting Brendon to press him up against the wall since the first time he saw him through the shop window, weeks before he got up the nerve to go in. And it had been fantastic and hot and sweet and the look on Brendon's face... And then Brendon had backed off looking appalled, and Ryan was maybe freaking out a bit. A lot. He just needed to see what Brendon said when he saw Ryan again.

"He was weird," Ryan said, and he could hear the misery in his voice.

Spencer hesitated. "Like, he wanted you to do some kind of –?"

"Oh my god, no." Ryan lifted his head, horrified. "I meant afterwards, he was weird about it, and I just ... I want to see whether he's still..."

Spencer looked away, pressing his lips together. Ryan could see him mentally putting a black mark against Brendon's name.

"Well, you can see now," Spencer said after a moment, carefully inflectionless.

Ryan jerked his head up. They'd reached the potions shop while they'd been talking. Brendon was in the front window, checking labels with a frown. He looked up and noticed them.

Ryan felt his chest contract, and he tightened his grip on Spencer's arm. Spencer made a small pained sound.

Brendon stared at him for a moment, and then ... then his face broke into the sweetest smile Ryan could ever remember seeing.

"Oh thank god," Ryan breathed.

Ryan still didn't know what was going on in Brendon's head, but maybe ... he thought maybe it wasn't going to matter that much.

Brendon was making elaborate miming motions now, telling them to stay there. "He looks a bit shifty," Spencer said doubtfully.

Brendon appeared in the doorway, pulling on a coat. "Hey," he said, coming over. He was still staring at Ryan, staring and smiling. "Hey, what are you doing here? I didn't think I'd see you today."

"We were, um ... we were passing?" Ryan said. Spencer made a small noise in his throat, but Ryan was pretty sure that nobody else would be able to interpret it, so. "This is my friend Spencer," Ryan added, stepping sideways and dropping Spencer's elbow.

Spencer folded his arms, looking at Brendon. Brendon frowned at him for a moment. Then he broke into a huge grin. "Spencer," he said. "You work at the newspaper. You collect the daily dispatches." He shook his head. "I am going to be Jon's favourite person in the world."

Spencer stared at him. He looked less like he suspected Brendon was a cad, now, and more as though he thought he was a crazy person.

Ryan hiccupped a laugh. "Wow," he said. "So that was random."

Brendon turned to Ryan, widening his eyes. "It's part of my enigma, Ross," he said. He stepped closer, so that his mouth was almost brushing Ryan's cheek. "You know you can't resist it," he murmured.

Ryan was rolling his eyes and smiling too hard to answer.

"Okay," Spencer said from somewhere, "I'll be over here where the embarrassing people with the in-jokes aren't."

"Mmm," Ryan said vaguely.

Brendon didn't look away from Ryan. "It's all right," he murmured, his hands coming down to rest lightly on Ryan's hips. "I like you too, Ryan Ross."

He sounded surprised and delighted.