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Perfectly After All
Panic! At The Disco; Ryan/Brendon
NC-17; The renfaire AU. Thank you for indulging me in this. You’re all sweethearts. For _lolapalooza before she leaves for Italy. Also for tragedy, jzbell and lady_stargazer. Beta by the lovely yankeesdtr. I love you all to tiny pieces.
Sometimes Ryan wishes that he’d taken up smoking. Then he considers that even the tiniest bit of fire is uncalled for when it’s already eighty degrees at 8 o’clock in the morning and you’re wearing at least five layers of clothes.
Okay, maybe not five layers, but still.
“Ryan, seriously,” Spencer says, stepping in front of him, and Ryan looks up at him from his spot sitting in the passenger seat of Spencer’s car, his legs outside the vehicle and his feet on the ground. Spencer is tucking his car keys into the pouch hanging from his belt. “You can’t be all… I don’t know, depressed or whatever.”
“It’s already hot,” Ryan points out.
“Oh Jesus,” Spencer says. “Ryan. Get out of the car. Put on your stupid hat, and let’s go. It’s not any hotter today than it was yesterday.”
“That was yesterday,” Ryan whines at him. Spencer kicks him in the shin and Ryan looks up, affronted. “I know you did not just get dirt on my tights.”
Spencer blinks at him. “You are the gayest gay boy I have ever met. Get the hell out of my car.”
“I don’t like you,” Ryan says seriously, but he grabs his hat out of the back seat and gets up, straightening the bottom of his tunic. Spencer is already walking away from Ryan, bells jingling.
***
Spencer wishes that he could remember whose idea it was to even do this in the first place. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t his, but Ryan bitches so much that he’s not sure it was Ryan’s, and Spencer just knows that he was probably won over by the idea of the shoes. Spencer’s almost positive that it had something to do with shoes. Ryan constantly uses the idea of new shoes against him.
Spencer has boots that are custom made and come up past his knees and he’ll never be able to wear them anywhere but at a renaissance faire. Which is good, really, since that’s exactly what he’s bought them for. He knows, in his soul, that this had to be one of Ryan’s ideas.
It kind of started as a joke, because neither of them was really into any of that sort of thing. But then they realized that it was actually sort of fun. And then Spencer got the boots, and every time Ryan threw a diva fit and threatened to quit, Spencer reminded him that if they quit, then Spencer would not get to wear his boots, and Ryan would suffer all the more for it.
So it’s Spencer, with his boots, laced all the way up the back and coming high up in front of his knees in the front and lower in the back, his pants and the flowing shirt that has the laces on the front, scarves around his waist and bells strung through them, wrapped around his ankles, too, who decides that they’ll keep doing it.
Spencer plays a gypsy, plays a drum for his girlfriend who dances and teaches simple ones to the little girls who wander by and are fascinated with the way she moves her hips. Spencer doesn’t even mind that he has to haul his own drum around, back and forth from his apartment to his car and from his car to the gypsy camp and back again. It’s fun.
They’re their own little gypsy band, three girls and two guys: Spencer the drummer, Haley and Jessica the dancers, Gabe the snake charmer, and Maja the fortuneteller. They always have a crowd of people around them, watching them, and that makes Spencer proud.
Spencer likes being a gypsy.
***
Ryan would like to blame it all on Spencer. Ryan would like to say that the tights and the tunic and the codpiece and the frilly shirt are all Spencer’s fault. But in all, it was Ryan’s idea. Deep down, he loves his frilly shirt. He loves his heavy ass tunic. Even though it’s almost like wearing a dress.
The only thing he doesn’t really like is the codpiece, but hey, he has to keep his junk from being visible somehow. Especially since Brendon keeps trying to flip up the bottom edge of his tunic.
Ryan is going to kill him the next time he does it.
Ryan is part of their faire’s court, a pompous noble who is a complete scatterbrain. It gives him an excuse to wear all of the frills and the giant feather in his hat, and the large number of huge rings that adorn his fingers. It excuses his fake-jewel encrusted goblet that he carries around and drinks from.
Ryan’s character’s arch nemesis is Brendon’s Spanish ambassador, because Brendon’s just as pompous, if not more so than Ryan, and he does it all in the worst Spanish accent Ryan has ever heard. Plus he wears really stupid shoes with really big buckles without irony. At least Ryan has the good sense to wear a nice pair of boots.
Ryan’s character hates Brendon’s. They constantly try to outdo each other, and it makes for good interactions when people are watching.
No one seems to notice that they’re sneaking back behind the castle, where it’s all blocked off from patrons and none of the players really have any reason to go, so that Brendon can blow Ryan against the wall.
***
Ryan and Spencer share an apartment half an hour north of where they work at the faire. They’re both going to university, but they’re out for the summer and they spend that time working both at their jobs, and at the faire. Spencer’s going to school for business, because he’s smart, they both know that he’s smart and he’s good at things like that. He’s a receptionist for now, working for a small company in the city, but he’s hoping to get an internship and actually do something practical.
Ryan doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. By the time Spencer moved out to live in the apartment with him, Ryan had already given up on what he’d intended to do. He’d always claimed that he’d wanted to be a veterinarian, because he loved animals, but math and science made him give up. He still works at an animal shelter, but he’s changed his major about twelve times and if he doesn’t figure something out soon, Spencer’s going to start feeling sorry for him.
Brendon’s a theatre major and he’s got a dorm room on campus, but he’s spent more time living in Spencer and Ryan’s apartment in the last few months, and Spencer’s sure that if Brendon’s parents ever find out they’re going to kill him. Spencer might do it for them, though, if he walks in on Brendon and Ryan making out on the couch again.
Spencer’s just pissed that Brendon can be there all the time and Haley’s parents get pissed off if he doesn’t have her home by curfew.
***
Jon Walker plays a pirate, and Spencer has no idea how any of them even became friends with Jon, except for somehow there’s a running joke that because Jon is the smallest pirate, he has to be their errand boy. Somehow this has translated into Jon having to get the new recruits, and Spencer’s pretty sure that the first time he ever saw Jon, he was charging through the streets with Ryan Ross slung over his shoulder.
“Um, what are you doing?” asks Spencer the Gypsy, stepping in front of him in the road.
“Recruiting,” says Jon in return, and sidesteps Spencer, carrying him straight down into the harbor area and aboard the pirate ship. Ryan yelps for help as Jon carries him by and Spencer strolls after them, because if something’s going to happen to Ryan (like being thrown into the pond, for one) Spencer wants to be there to see it.
Jon’s girlfriend plays a pub wench, and at least once every weekend, he steals her from her pub for himself, arranging for some other girl to go and work in her stead, taking her down and declaring her to be the pirate queen. Spencer thinks it’s sweet, and he likes the way Cassie just laughs and rolls her eyes at Jon and his grand declaration.
***
The four of them go out to dinner on Sunday nights, after the faire closes, at the IHOP a few blocks away. It’s always just the four of them, occasionally one of the girls but not often - Haley has a curfew and Cassie has to be at work early in the morning.
The first thing that Jon does when he gets out of the faire is take off his pirate boots. “They’re horribly uncomfortable,” Jon tells Spencer earnestly, sliding his feet into a pair of flip-flops. He also removes his belt with all his pouches and untucks his shirt, leaving it flowing down over the top of his pants. He looks sort of ridiculous, with his hat hair and the bridge of his nose sunburnt, but Spencer untucks his shirt just the same, and probably has a matching sunburn.
Ryan is horrified, because he would never, ever undo part of his costume if he was still wearing it. The only time it ever came off was when he was done with it. Brendon is the opposite, because he wants to remove as much clothing as is decent. He definitely garners some stares when he strolls into IHOP with his tights and funny shoes still on and nothing else but the big shirt. It kind of looks like a nightgown, and Ryan tries to pretend that Brendon isn’t his boyfriend, or even his friend or someone he knows.
Brendon’s trying really hard to be a vegetarian and even now that he’s moved out of his parents house, and he still has certain things ingrained into him from growing up in a strict Mormon household, so he orders water to go with his veggie burger. Ryan’s not helping things, because he tells the waitress that he needs a pitcher of Coke, no seriously, a pitcher, and Spencer can see Brendon caving in and when Ryan’s not looking, he sticks Ryan’s straw in his mouth and sucks hard.
Ryan can never figure out how he drinks so much soda, but neither Jon nor Spencer are telling.
***
Spencer’s out with Haley and Ryan is left sitting on the couch, needle and thread in hand and his tongue between his teeth and just barely poking out of his mouth as he works on the trick stitches that the bottom part of his tunic needs for Spencer to tear it off on the chessboard. It’s their gag, one they came up with all on their own and it shows off the chain mail codpiece that he picked up at a faire they went to a couple years ago.
He dresses like a normal kid most days, just wears jeans and t-shirts to work because they’re inevitably going to get dirty or covered with dog and cat hair and a pair of Converse that are old and falling apart anyway so it doesn’t matter how much dog shit he steps in. He just hoses them off and keeps going.
Brendon works at the smoothie bar in the food court on campus, and sometimes brings smoothies when he comes to the apartment. Ryan wonders what Brendon has told his parents, if they know he’s gay, if they know he’s not being the faithful little Mormon boy they want him to be, that he’s not staying in the dorm room that they pay for. Ryan never asks, just lets Brendon come over and sleep in his bed, or on his couch if they’re fighting.
Brendon shows up that night with Ryan’s favourite flavor of smoothie (plain strawberry) and sits down beside him on the couch, tipping his face up and kissing Ryan’s jaw. Ryan dodges away, because he’s busy, and Brendon can wait five minutes until he’s gotten the thread tied off. Brendon pouts at him while he finishes up and puts his needle and thread away.
“You are so gay,” Brendon says, a little bit of a smile on his lips, handing over the smoothie and letting Ryan kiss him at the same time.
“You should talk,” Ryan says, shifting over and throwing his legs over Brendon’s, sipping the smoothie. Brendon’s already flipping through channels on the TV and one hand snakes up to rest on Ryan’s hip, under the edge of Ryan’s t-shirt.
Brendon stops on Spongebob Squarepants, which Ryan hates, and he gets away with it for all of three minutes, until it goes to commercial, when Ryan says “if you want to watch cartoons, at least put it on the Cartoon Network, okay?”
Brendon does as he’s told, because he’s hoping to get laid. Every little thing helps.
***
Spencer’s a really good dancer. At set times during the day, cast members gather around the maypole and dance, and teach patrons how to do it as well. It’s easy to tell that Spencer has spent a lot of time working on learning all of this. It helps that he’s fun to watch, because he enjoys it and has a huge smile on his face the entire time, kicking his legs around with the bells tied around his ankles jingling.
Brendon’s good at most of it, and what he’s not good at, he tackles with such enthusiasm that he’s a blast to watch. He doesn’t have the bells like Spencer, but he’s coordinated and hopelessly adorable as he bounces around, even though sometimes his kicks can get dangerous. He gets some of the loudest applause, just because he’s wild about it. But Ryan’s the only one that sees the bruises he ends up with on his legs from his sword banging against him when he dances. Even though Brendon won’t admit that’s what happened.
Ryan’s okay at it, not great, but not terrible either. He doesn’t know all of the dances, and the ones that he does know, he hasn’t dedicated as much time to learning. He’s not a dancer. He’s not interested in getting all hot and sweaty or causing his tunic to flip up at the bottom and put his rear and his codpiece on display for everyone like Brendon does. Of course, Ryan harbors no delusions that his butt looks as good as Brendon’s, so he tries not to show it off.
Jon is a horrible dancer. He knows it, everyone else knows it. He doesn’t even dance that much. He’s only willing to get out and dance if Cassie is able to get out of her pub and come down and dance with him. He has fun, it’s clear that he’s having fun, but no one but Cassie would want to dance with him. Jon enjoys himself, and no one’s quite sure if he’s a terrible dancer on purpose, or if he’s really just that bad.
***
Brendon’s sitting on the steps outside the apartment building one afternoon when Spencer gets off work. It’s the stillest Spencer’s ever seen Brendon, he’s pretty sure, and he looks up at Spencer with wide, sad, bloodshot eyes when Spencer walks up.
“What’s wrong?” Spencer asks, frowning, even though he’s sure that will open the floodgates and there will be some long, tragic story about something that Brendon is blowing way out of proportion and there will probably be tears. Spencer has seen this before, and he immediately regrets the words when they come out of his mouth.
Brendon looks up at Spencer and doesn’t say a word, and Spencer doesn’t take that as a good sign. This is their last week of school before finals, the week before the second week of faire, and he figures Brendon is probably having some kind of breakdown about that. But Brendon doesn’t say a word until they’re upstairs and inside the apartment.
Spencer doesn’t mind letting Brendon in, even if Ryan isn’t there, because Brendon is a whiz at most videogames and Spencer likes playing with him. But today, Brendon just curls up on the couch. He still hasn’t said a word.
“Okay, are you having some kind of mental break? Because if you are, can you do it somewhere else? You’re starting to freak me out just a little bit,” Spencer tells him.
“My parents don’t want me to go to summer school this year,” Brendon says. He’s been going to summer school just to stay in the city with Ryan the last two years. “And I’m not sure that they don’t want me to… to not come back in the fall.”
“Just tell them you want to finish up your degree and graduate early,” Spencer tells him. He can’t see how parents could complain about that. Spencer’s mother tells him constantly that he should go to summer school.
“They know I haven’t been staying in the dorms,” Brendon tells Spencer, and Spencer realizes that this is serious, really serious. “I guess they came up, and my roommate told them that I’m not ever there, and they were like, where are you staying then, Brendon? And I was like, with some friends, and they got all pissed off and I just left, and I… I don’t know. Now I guess I’m going to have to go home.”
“No,” Spencer says, and shakes his head, because if there’s anything that he knows, he knows that Brendon makes Ryan happy, and Ryan is Spencer’s best friend and Spencer wants more than anything for Ryan to be happy. “No, we’re going to figure something out.”
***
Second weekend, Ryan slips back behind the castle to find Brendon already sitting there. There’s an overturned crate sitting there, and Brendon is perched on it, hunched over, staring at the ground. It hurts Ryan’s heart to see him sitting there, to see his eyes huge and hurt when he looks up at Ryan.
All day people have been asking Brendon what’s wrong, noticing that he’s not acting like himself. He just smiles and says that there isn’t anything wrong, and he just keeps going through his day the best he can.
Ryan reaches out and pulls Brendon to his feet, wraps his arms around Brendon and holds him close. Ryan rubs Brendon’s back, even though he can’t really feel through Brendon’s shirt and tunic and jacket.
“You can live with us,” Ryan tells him seriously. “You can, and I don’t care if Spencer only likes you half the time, if you help pay the rent, or. Or something, you can.”
“I won’t have money to go to school if I don’t,” Brendon says quietly. “I’ll drive back up and finish faire, and then… I’ll…” He trails off and goes quiet because he doesn’t really know what he’ll do. Ryan gets upset at this, and pulls away.
“I love you,” he says, and Brendon looks at him, startled, because they’ve been seeing each other for two years now, fucking around for most of that, and those words have never crossed Ryan’s lips. “I suck at this relationship thing and I love you and now you’re leaving me.”
He wants to walk away and go straight back into the faire and forget this is even happening. He can’t, because he’s scared that he’s going to start crying, and Ryan has never been good at plastering a fake smile on his face the way Brendon seems to be able to. He stops and looks back at Brendon, standing there with his little beard and his stupid hat and looking horribly sad.
“My parents are going to find out. They’re going to disown me,” Brendon says.
“Well, then… then I don’t know. This is your decision,” Ryan says, and straightens his back, slipping back into the faire and hurrying down into the bottoms, hiding inside the pirate ship. Jon doesn’t even say anything, just hugs Ryan tightly for a few minutes, before going on about his pirating.
***
Ryan skips out on the IHOP on Sunday evening and just goes home, and Spencer is torn between going and not dealing with Ryan being a sulky bitch, and going home and comforting Ryan.
Spencer decides that he’d rather have dinner, and he knows that there’s no food in his and Ryan’s apartment.
So he goes out to dinner and Brendon is uncharacteristically quiet and it’s nowhere near as much fun as it usually is. Spencer brings Ryan home a sandwich, something to eat so that he doesn’t disappear from sight. Ryan’s in his room, reading, when Spencer gets home.
“I brought you something,” Spencer says, smiling at him. Ryan rolls over and looks at him, then sits up, and Spencer climbs onto the bed, handing Ryan the food. Ryan pops open the container and starts eating the fries.
“So I love Brendon,” Ryan starts.
“I know,” Spencer says, because he’s known Ryan since they were little. “I’m not blind or stupid, Ryan, and you guys have been together for like, two years now, right?”
“And apparently he doesn’t love me,” Ryan says. “Or, well, maybe he does, but I’m coming second to… to everything.”
“Ryan, seriously,” Spencer says.
“I am being serious,” Ryan says, and falls back onto the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. Spencer’s sure that Ryan’s trying not to cry.
Spencer puts the food aside and stretches out on his stomach. “He does love you,” Spencer says. “He just doesn’t know what to do, you know? This is messing up his whole life, you know? His parents making him leave school, leave you. He’s scared.”
“You don’t know that,” Ryan says. “He just doesn’t. Maybe I’m just sex to him.”
“Ryan, seriously,” Spencer says, and rolls his eyes. “If it was just sex, he wouldn’t have stuck with you for two years. I mean. Okay? I know you’re not stupid, Ry.”
“I am stupid,” Ryan says quietly, and sighs. “I shouldn’t have told him I loved him.”
“Yeah, probably bad timing,” Spencer says, then pauses. “Wait. You hadn’t said it before now?”
“No,” Ryan says. Spencer sighs and stands up.
“He has been hopelessly in love with you for so long, and you’ve never said it to him? What do you do when he says it to you? I know he says it to you?”
“I usually just. Kiss him or something. I don’t. Spencer I wanted to make sure that I loved him before I said something? I don’t know. It’s. It’s a big deal for me.”
“Ryan, I love you? But you are really an idiot sometimes,” Spencer tells him, and shakes his head, getting off the bed and walking out of the room.
***
Ryan spends most of Sunday down in the bottoms, hanging around the gypsy camp and the pirates. In fact, after the chess match, Jon brings him a pair of pants and says “here, you’re officially a pirate for the rest of the day.” Ryan manages a weak smile, and changes into the pants, discarding his tunic and just buckling his belt over the loose bottom of his shirt and adjusting his sword on his hip. He leaves his rings on, and his hat.
“Hey, we got a new cabin boy!” yells Pete, who has been sitting out in front of the pirate ship, trying to coerce girls to come in and be ‘cabin girls’. Ryan manages to smile at that, even though he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to be anyone’s cabin boy.
He wanders around with Jon the rest of the day, pretending to steal and plunder and gather new recruits to their pirate crew. He only sees Brendon once, catches the other boy’s eye and then turns away, catching up his pace and following Jon into the castle. He thinks maybe next year he’ll be a pirate instead. He’s not sure he wants to keep playing the character he was when he met Brendon. Especially if Brendon isn’t coming back.
***
Brendon finally shows up at the apartment on Tuesday, when he knows Ryan will be there. They need to talk, and both of them know it. Spencer makes himself scarce, disappearing into his room and leaving Ryan and Brendon in the living room.
“What do I do if I can’t go to school?” Brendon says after a few tense minutes of staring at each other.
“Get a job,” Ryan says.
“Where am I supposed to live?” Brendon demands.
“With me. You know, your boyfriend who already offered to let you live with him?” Ryan says, already getting angry.
“With my boyfriend who’s been trying to figure out ways to get out of saying he loved me for a year now?” Brendon shot back. Ryan’s eyes went wide.
“No, it’s not. I’m not. That’s not it,” Ryan says.
“That is it,” Brendon says. “I have to go home. I may not be back next semester.”
Ryan reaches out and takes hold of Brendon’s hand, lacing their fingers together. He’s silent for a long time, just sitting there. Then, he says “I do love you. So… so if you’ve decided to leave, then let’s make the best of the time we have left, okay? I don’t want… I don’t want you to leave, and I don’t want you to leave angry with me, okay?”
“Okay,” Brendon finally says.
***
Spencer loves fighting on the chessboard, and third weekend, everything goes off with out a hitch. First weekend, there were a few fumbles, a few jokes that fell flat, and second weekend Ryan was tense, Brendon was upset, and Spencer was annoyed so their fights were thrown off. Third weekend, all of that seems to be resolved, so there aren’t any problems
The chessboard is divided into two sides, and is sort of good versus evil, or at least, nobility and townspeople versus the seedier types. Ryan’s the bishop on one side and Brendon a knight for the same, and one of the gags is their side’s king making Brendon trade places with the other knight to stop their bickering before the match can even start. One of Ryan’s gags is that he spouts off poetry to his side’s queen, a pretty blonde girl named Greta that plays the Lord Mayor’s daughter.
Spencer and Jon are castles for the other team, which is made up of, as Spencer jokes, gypsies, tramps, and thieves. He makes sure to say it out of Brendon’s earshot, because he learned his lesson fast that Brendon knows the words to various and sundry songs and has no problem singing them whenever he feels the need. Maja is their side’s queen, and Haley, Cassie, Pete, and Gabe are all pawns.
Spencer’s first fight is against the King’s minstrel, a chubby kid named Patrick who only claims to just want to not fight, strumming his guitar and circling around Spencer and his sword, until he pretends to bash Spencer in the back with it, starting the real battle. It took them ages to perfect the moment when Patrick tosses his guitar off of the board to Ryan and then Greta slides him a sword.
It ends in Patrick sprawled on his back, looking up at Spencer and his sword, and crying out that he yields. Spencer struts to his new square and yells “return to field!” and they all scramble back up.
Spencer’s favourite gag comes during his other fight, the one he has against Ryan. The first few times they’d practiced it, it was a little shaky, and didn’t go off quite as easily as it should have, leading to many jokes about Ryan being too good of a seamstress for the joke. During the fight, Spencer was meant to grab hold of the bottom edge of Ryan’s tunic and rip it off. There was a joke that followed about Ryan’s chain mail codpiece, and Ryan snarling and running at Spencer with his sword for another clash, an epic battle, ending in Ryan forcing Spencer backward off the board, resulting in his victory. They all return to play and Ryan wraps his fallen tunic around his hips.
Brendon fights twice, once against Maja, ending in the blonde pinning him to the board, kneeling on him, and again, championing Greta against Jon, which he wins. Brendon is Jon’s only fight, save one where he champions Cassie against Ryan, which he also loses, though only barely.
The side of good, the nobility, wins, of course. But it’s all in fun, and they joke about changing it up for the last day of the faire. Maybe they will.
***
Their faire lasts for six weeks, which means that after finals, Brendon has to move out of his dorm room. He talks his parents into agreeing to let him stay with his “friends” instead of coming home, so that he can finish the run of the faire. That means that Brendon will live with them full time for three weeks until he leaves.
Spencer’s not sure what he thinks of this.
Haley’s graduation is the Friday night before fourth weekend, and Spencer goes, bringing her back to the apartment after dinner with her family for their own, more private celebration. This is somewhat dampened by the fact that, when they arrive, Ryan and Brendon are thoroughly engaged on the couch.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Spencer says at the same time Haley says, “Jesus Christ!” and covers her eyes. And then looks through her fingers. And then covers her eyes. Spencer drags her through the living room and back to his bedroom before storming back into the living room, where Ryan is wiping at his mouth and Brendon is buttoning up his pants.
“Okay, seriously?” Spencer said. “I’m really glad that you guys made up. I hate your mopey little faces. But blowjobs on the couch have not ever been okay and will continue to not be okay until the end of time.”
Ryan has the grace to blush but Brendon doesn’t, and neither one of them moves to go anywhere. Spencer glares at them, and if looks could kill, this one probably would have, or at least it would have seriously wounded.
Brendon starts to laugh once Spencer is out of sight, and Ryan looks utterly mortified, but one well-placed hand from Brendon quickly remedies that.
***
Brendon wears through the knees on his tights faster than he does any other parts, which doesn’t really make much sense. Spencer says that it’s because he goes down on his knees so much, and Ryan asks him how he knows.
“Because I know what you look like after you’ve gotten off,” Spencer tells him. “Despite my best efforts not to.”
Ryan hopes Spencer’s the only one who knows what Ryan and Brendon get up to when they take a break and sneak off together. Ryan leans against the wall and Brendon drops to his knees, shifting all of the extra clothing out of the way and taking Ryan’s codpiece off before pulling Ryan’s cock free from his tights and closing his mouth around it.
Brendon’s blowjobs are always quick and dirty, and he seems to know all of the best and quickest ways to get Ryan off with his mouth, and Ryan’s always been impressed by the fact that someone who was a virgin until so recently had learned to deep throat so quickly. And was good at it, even.
Brendon swallows in the end, and straightens up, helping Ryan put himself to rights before letting Ryan slide his hand into the front of Brendon’s tights and jerk him off, kissing him hard.
They share the overturned crate against the wall for a few minutes in silence, catching their breath, when all is said and done.
“My parents are coming up for last weekend,” Brendon says when they’re getting ready to sneak back in. “My mom called yesterday while you were at work. They want to see me at the faire, and they want to see where I’ve been staying. I guess we can tell them I sleep on the couch or something.”
Ryan kisses Brendon softly. “We’ll figure it out,” he says, and gives a little bit of a smile before slipping back into the faire.
***
Brendon turns in his two weeks at his job on Monday morning, letting them know that he’s going home for the summer and might not be coming back. Spencer almost chokes on his soda when he sees the look on Ryan’s face.
“So you’re really just going to let them make you leave,” Ryan says. Brendon shrugs.
“What else am I going to do?” Brendon says. “I don’t make enough money to put myself through school and if I don’t do what my parents want me to do they’re not going to pay for me to go to school.”
“But you’re not coming back,” Ryan says. “You keep saying you don’t know if you’re coming back.”
“I…” Brendon says, and Spencer lifts himself up to sit on the edge of the kitchen table to watch them in the living room. “I’m going to. To mission school. Um. This summer.”
Spencer winces. “So what does that mean?” Ryan asks.
“That means that when I leave I probably won’t be back for two years,” Brendon says. Spencer can tell he’s not happy about it, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, not looking at Ryan. But Spencer can see Ryan’s face. He wishes that he couldn’t.
“Get out of my apartment,” Ryan says. Spencer hops down off the table and starts into the living room, ready to talk Ryan down. Spencer doesn’t want to kick Brendon out because of something he has to do. Besides, it’s only two more weeks, and Spencer really does like Brendon, when he’s quiet. Plus there’s the videogame thing.
“Ryan, don’t,” Spencer says.
“No, I’ll leave,” Brendon says, and he heads down the hallway to get his stuff out of Ryan’s room.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Spencer says. “Brendon, you don’t have to leave. You can sleep in my fucking room, but I’m not kicking you out and neither is Ryan.” Spencer gives Ryan a hard look when he opens his mouth to protest. “Neither. Is. Ryan.” Spencer repeats.
“He’s leaving me,” Ryan whispers, and now he’s looking at Spencer with his eyes wide and hurt and Spencer fucking hates that, because it’s sort of like he can see Ryan’s heart breaking and he doesn’t like it.
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Spencer says quietly, and wraps his arms around Ryan, hugs him and strokes his hair. “If you didn’t have your scholarship, would you be able to pay for school with your job?”
“No,” Ryan says, and he understands it, but that doesn’t mean that after two years he’s not in love with Brendon and he wants Brendon to leave.
“Things will work out, somehow,” Spencer says, and Ryan nods, leaving his face pressed into Spencer’s shoulder.
Spencer sleeps in Ryan’s room that night, listening to his best friend sniffle and toss and turn. He wonders if he wouldn’t be better off sleeping in his own room, with Brendon, but he’s pretty sure Brendon talks in his sleep.
Eventually, Spencer just wraps his arms around Ryan and lets him cry himself out, and then they both fall asleep.
***
Fifth weekend, the gypsies get into a “fight” with the belly dancers and it ends in a dance off on the chessboard that draws almost as big of a crowd as the chess match does.
Spencer carries his drums up onto the board and sits down behind them, kneeling and tapping out a rhythm experimentally. Gabe grabs his guitar out of their vardo and carries it up, standing beside Spencer. All three of their women, Jessica, Haley, and Maja, climb up onto the board to dance.
They may not be as intense as the belly dancers, and they may not be as scantily clad as the belly dancers, but they are at least good, and it’s all in fun anyway.
Eventually several cast members drift down, including the king. The leader of the dancers steps forward and begs the king to declare a winner, insinuating that they were clearly the better of the two teams. Spencer picks it up, playing faster, and the three girls give it their best.
In the end, the king declares them the winner and Spencer gets up from his kneeling position in triumph. They all link hands and reverence the king as he applauds them. The belly dancers jokingly try to recruit the three girls, and even though they turn it down, for one show they are all a big group, playing and dancing and generally having a good time.
In all, it makes for a pretty good Saturday.
***
Spencer takes Haley out on that Saturday night, dinner and a movie, before taking her home. Ryan goes straight home and endures ten minutes of Brendon banging on the door before letting him in and going back and sitting on the couch. Brendon storms inside, still fully dressed down to his hat and plants himself in front of Ryan, now sitting on the couch, also fully dressed.
“Okay, this shit is going to stop, Ryan,” Brendon snaps. “This is not my fault. This is not my fault, okay?”
“You’re the one who just decided to go along with it,” Ryan says, not angry, not anything. Defeated, maybe.
“Ryan, what am I supposed to do?” Brendon says. “Am I supposed to say, oh, I want to stay here and go to school and live with these guys instead of going on my mission like you want me to? And have them cut me off so that it doesn’t matter whether I’m here or not because I can’t afford to go to school?”
“You’d be with me!” Ryan finally yells, and he’s determined not to start crying again. Brendon leans forward and climbs onto the couch with him.
“I know, but I can’t… what am I supposed to do with my life, then, Ryan? What am I supposed to do?” Brendon asks. “I can leave and I’ll come back and … and I’ll write you letters while I’m gone. I’ll do something, anything.”
“We’d figure something out! You could get a scholarship! Something! Anything.” Ryan doesn’t want him to leave. Ryan has a scholarship; Brendon’s at least as smart as Ryan is, even if it’s just in a different way.
Brendon reaches out and pulls Ryan against him, kisses him softly. “I can’t, Ryan. You know that I can’t.” Ryan kisses him back, tasting tears on Brendon’s mouth. “I love you,” Brendon says. “And I’ll come back.”
“Not for two years,” Ryan says. “I can’t do this.”
“You don’t know until you try,” Brendon says, and he’s stroking Ryan’s hair and Ryan’s even still got his boots on.
“You’re going to be gone in a week,” Ryan says unhappily. Brendon sighs and hugs him tightly. “And I know I’m being selfish but I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to leave me.”
“I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to,” Brendon says. Brendon reaches out and takes Ryan’s hat off, discarding it and his own on the floor. He slides off his jacket and bends down to take off his shoes. He unlaces Ryan’s tunic and helps him slide it off, then takes his own off. He gets Ryan lying down on the couch and they lay there silently, still sweaty and gross from the heat at the faire and neither of them caring, really.
Ryan slides his arms around Brendon and holds on. They’re still like that when Spencer gets home, still wearing their tights and shirts, Ryan still in his boots.
Spencer kind of feels sorry for them.
***
Ryan spends Sunday hiding out in the pirate ship, not wanting to talk to anyone and really not wanting to be at the faire anyway. He wears Pete’s hat and the same pants Jon had found him second weekend and doesn’t change into his own garb until it’s time to head out to chessboard, and even then he can’t manage to get into the whole thing like he normally does.
Spencer finds him after, before he can change back into the pirate clothes. “Ryan,” he says. Ryan just shakes his head and starts to untie his tunic to take it off.
“No, Ryan, listen to me,” Spencer says. “This is supposed to be fun, yeah? Please just… make the most of what’s left, okay?”
Ryan looks at him for a long moment, then nods, putting his own hat on. Jon catches him before he goes back outside.
“Are you okay?” Jon asks, frowning. He’s out of the loop and has no idea what’s going on, because Ryan hasn’t been coming to their dinners on Sunday nights. No one’s bothered to tell Jon about Brendon leaving.
“Brendon’s leaving next Sunday. He won’t be back,” Ryan says, and to his credit, he doesn’t start crying, though it’s a very near thing. “For two years,” he adds, and Jon is left standing there inside the pirate ship, startled.
Spencer opts to ride with Jon on the way to the IHOP after faire closes that evening, partly because he doesn’t want to be stuck in a car with Ryan and Brendon, and secondly because he’s hoping that maybe they’ll talk.
Once they’re seated, telling the waitress they’re sorry, but that they’ll have two more, Jon asks Spencer what the deal is with Brendon leaving.
“His parents found out he wasn’t staying in his dorm room, and they decided that he needs to come home and do his mission work, and they’re not taking no for an answer,” Spencer explains.
“Yeah, but don’t they care about him finishing his degree or whatever?” Jon asks, frowning.
“Truthfully? I don’t think they care whether their son finishes his degree in theatre or not,” Spencer says.
“Ouch,” says Jon. Spencer nods, then orders drinks for himself and Brendon and Ryan when the waitress returns.
“So they’ve been fighting on and off, and I’m sick of it. That’s why Ryan’s been hiding out in the pirate ship and stuff like that, you know?” Spencer says. Then he shakes his head. “Really sick of it.”
“God, that blows,” is all Jon says.
***
Ryan and Brendon are sitting in the parking lot, and Ryan is not looking at Brendon. Brendon is frustrated, tired, and he feels like he really needs a shower at this point.
“Ryan, please,” he says, reaching out and grabbing hold of the other boy’s hand. “I have to do this, okay? My parents will be here next weekend, and I swear that I will come back when I can, okay?”
“I love you,” Ryan says helplessly, because he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to get that point across to Brendon and make him not want to leave.
“I know. I love you, too, Ry, but I … I have to,” Brendon says. “I don’t have a choice, though.”
Ryan leans across the space between their seats and kisses Brendon hard, knowing that both of their mouths will be bruised later and Ryan doesn’t care, because Brendon is fisting his hands up in Ryan’s sweaty hair and kissing him back just as hard.
“I don’t want you to leave me,” Ryan whispers, licking his lips.
“I know. I’ll come back. I promise you that I will,” Brendon says, and neither of them are sure that Ryan will be waiting if it takes two years for Brendon to come back.
“Okay,” Ryan says. “Okay.” And he kisses Brendon again, almost climbing across the seat and into his lap to do it, to get a better angle. Brendon breaks the kiss and looks at Ryan, stroking his fingers over Ryan’s hair.
“Let’s go eat, and then… and then I guess we’ll make the best of this week,” Brendon says, hugging Ryan tightly after a moment.
Ryan nods, and they go inside. Jon doesn’t make a joke about how their hair is ruffled or how Ryan’s lips are redder than normal. Spencer doesn’t say anything because they’re holding hands and that’s good enough for him. They slide into the booth across from Spencer and Jon, Ryan on the inside, just like always, and Brendon threads his arm around Ryan’s shoulder and pulls him close, and that’s something they don’t normally do in public.
Brendon orders meat and doesn’t make a secret out of drinking Ryan’s soda. If he’s going back to his parents, he might as well make the best of the time he’s got right now.
***
Ryan and Brendon lock themselves in Ryan’s bedroom before Spencer even has a chance to say anything to either of them once they’re at home. Spencer thinks this is going to be a fantastic week, if they’re going to take every opportunity possible to have sex.
He rolls his eyes and goes into his own room, turning his stereo on, loud enough that he can’t hear them.
***
Sixth weekend is traditionally the hottest weekend of faire, the middle of June and usually humid as all hell. Spencer’s fingers slide on his sword from the sweat as he lunges forward toward Ryan. He’s vaguely aware of the other characters beating their palms and fists on the board, cheering them on as Ryan forces Spencer backward, off the board and into Jon and Pete’s arms, standing there waiting to catch Spencer.
Ryan holds up his sword and both arms, yelling, “return to field” as he moves to take Spencer’s place. Spencer looks at the crowd around them, the largest so far, he thinks, and he can see the man and woman that Brendon had already introduced as his parents. They didn’t seem too happy to be at the faire, or that their son was wearing tights and what pretty much amounted to a skirt as he participated in it.
They did, however, look mildly impressed with Brendon’s acting ability, which Spencer thought wasn’t too bad, all things considered.
***
Brendon had been careful to make it look like he’d been sleeping on Ryan and Spencer’s couch for the last couple of weeks. They’d gotten out blankets and pillows and folded them up neatly, not wanting Brendon’s parents to know that Brendon had definitely been sleeping in bed with Ryan.
They weren’t impressed by the apartment, and they weren’t impressed with Ryan or Spencer, either. Spencer put up with about twenty minutes of being talked down to like a child before he tensely informed Ryan that he was taking Haley out, and he all but ran into the bathroom to shower. Ryan didn’t have a clever excuse to get out of it.
They were upset that there was caffeine in the house, to start with, because the first thing that Ryan did was disappear into the kitchen and get himself a soda, leaning against the counter. They figured, since Brendon was staying there so much, the least Ryan and Spencer could do was not tempt him with things like that.
“No offense, ma’am,” Ryan had told them, “but I’m not going to give up something I enjoy just because you think I should. You’re not my parents.”
Brendon had stared at Ryan, horrified.
And now Brendon’s parents were trying to make him go and stay in their hotel with them.
“Mom, honestly,” Brendon says. “If I’m not doing it, what does it matter if he does?”
“He probably doesn’t go to church, either,” Brendon’s mother says, and Brendon has to fight not to roll his eyes.
“No, he doesn’t,” Brendon says. “But that’s his choice.”
Brendon’s parents frown at him.
“Just have your stuff ready to leave tomorrow night,” they tell him, and when they leave, he just sits on the couch in silence for a little while.
Ryan comes in, and climbs up on the couch. They’re both still in costume, but Ryan’s down to his tights and his shirt, and he straddles Brendon’s hips.
“Here,” he says, and pushes Brendon’s jacket off his shoulders. Brendon shifts and lets him get it off, then helps Ryan take off his tunic as well.
“Ryan, I don’t,” Brendon says, and Ryan presses two fingers to Brendon’s lips.
“Shh,” Ryan says, and then leans down and kisses Brendon, shifting his hips so that they’re pressed hard against Brendon’s. He grabs Brendon’s hand and brings it down. “Tonight’s our last night,” he tells Brendon.
Brendon makes a noise in the back of his throat, and Ryan can’t tell whether it’s sad or upset or turned on, or any of that. Ryan starts to move, rocking his hips slowly against Brendon’s, Brendon palming halfheartedly at Ryan’s cock, just letting Ryan do all of the work, rubbing them together.
“Please,” Ryan chokes out, and he’s afraid he’s going to start crying, because Brendon’s so unresponsive and this is the last night that he’s going to get to spend with his boyfriend before he’s gone for God knows how long.
Ryan reaches his hand down between them, slides his hand into Brendon’s tights and jerks him slowly, and Brendon just tips his head back and lets Ryan move against him, lets Ryan kiss him, sliding his hands up underneath Ryan’s shirt to run over his skin. Ryan jerks him faster, grinding down harder, and Brendon gasps, arching his hips up into Ryan’s hand as he comes.
Ryan pulls his hand out of Brendon’s tights, looking at Brendon seriously, shifting so that they lay down on the couch, side by side. Ryan slides his knee between Brendon’s legs, pushing his knee up, pressing against him as he licks Brendon’s come off of his fingers, looking at Brendon with his eyes half lidded.
Brendon pulls Ryan’s hand away from his mouth, and kisses him roughly, able to taste himself on Ryan’s tongue. Ryan’s pressed up against him, hard and waiting, and Brendon just strokes his fingers over the bare skin of Ryan’s back.
“I want this to. Make it last, Ryan,” Brendon says, because this is going to be the last time he’s going to get to touch this skin, kiss this mouth, until he comes back, if he’s able to come back.
“We can do it again,” Ryan whispers. “We can. We have time. We have all night.”
“We have to sleep,” Brendon says.
“No,” Ryan says. “No, we can stay up all night. We can.”
Brendon almost starts crying then. Ryan sounds so determined, and he leans forward and crushes their mouths together again, letting go of Ryan’s hand and moving his own down Ryan’s stomach, sliding it into the front of Ryan’s tights, pulling him free and stroking him slowly.
“We’re going to have to wash our clothes,” Ryan says quietly.
“We have spares,” Brendon says, and he doesn’t care if he just has to go in sweaty clothes. Maybe not in come-soaked tights, but sweaty doesn’t bother him.
“Yeah,” Ryan says, his voice wavering as he thrusts his hips weakly into Brendon’s hand.
***
Spencer returns home to find them sleeping on the couch. His first thought is to let them sleep, but he knows Ryan, knows that Ryan wouldn’t want to sleep through any of the last hours that he’s able to share with Brendon. Plus, they’re kind of gross lying there on the couch, and Spencer is pretty sure he’s able to see Ryan’s cock.
“Hey guys,” Spencer says, and doesn’t move any closer, because yeah, that’s definitely cock. He averts his eyes. “Guys, pull up your pants and get off the couch, okay?”
Ryan starts and falls off the couch. At least the big frilly shirt covers up all his important parts. Just woken up, Ryan looks all of fifteen years old, his hair a mess and his lips bruised from Brendon kissing him.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep!” he says woefully, and stands up, adjusting himself and reaching out one hand to grab Brendon’s, to pull Brendon up off the couch.
“You should get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day,” Spencer says.
“I can’t. Can’t sleep,” Ryan says, and tugs a very groggy Brendon toward his bedroom. Brendon stumbles after him and Spencer hears the door slam. He just shakes his head and goes to his own bedroom, closing the door and climbing into bed.
He gets up to go to the bathroom, several hours later, and he can still see light coming from beneath Ryan’s bedroom door, and if he steps close enough, he can hear faint voices, and if he stands there long enough, the occasional choked sob.
It’s almost enough to make Spencer start crying himself.
Almost.
***
Spencer hates the way Ryan looks exhausted when they drive to the faire the next morning. It’s early, and Ryan sits in the back seat with Brendon while Spencer drives. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, and Spencer knows that that nap before Spencer got home was all the sleep Ryan got. Brendon is uncharacteristically silent, both of his hands wrapped around one of Ryan’s, his head on Ryan’s shoulder.
They hold hands all the way into the faire, through the morning meeting, and until they have to go out for opening gate. Spencer catches sight of Ryan pulling Brendon out of sight of all of the patrons and kissing him desperately, before taking a deep breath and charging out to play his part. Spencer watches as Brendon just stands there for a moment, before going out to do the same, giving Spencer a weak little smile before joining the king on his way out.
Spencer has just finished one of the dance sessions when he notices Ryan heading up toward the castle. He follows, hoping to just give Ryan a hug, something, anything, try to make him feel better. He notices Ryan slipping through the booths that line the side of the castle. Why would Ryan be sneaking into the back?
Spencer follows, pulling the door open carefully.
Brendon’s already there, in the grungy space behind the castle walls and the fencing that blocks off the booths. Spencer wonders why there’s a space here anyway, all fenced off, like it was meant for such clandestine meetings as this. Ryan’s face is pressed into Brendon’s neck and they’ve got their arms around each other.
Spencer closes the door as quietly as he can and slips back into the faire. It’s better to leave them alone, he thinks. They deserve the few minutes that they can get.
Spencer wipes his eyes quickly as he heads back down to the gypsy camp.
***
Brendon has to beg his parents to be allowed to go with the guys for dinner that evening. He tells them that it’s their tradition, that they’ve done it the last two years, and he wants to go, because this will be his last chance to see any of his best friends for a while. He begs and pleads and looks at them with his eyes wide and hurt, and they do tell him finally that he can go.
It’s sort of tense, and when it’s all over, Jon hugs him so hard that every single bone in his back cracks, and Brendon sheds a few tears as he hugs Jon back just as hard. As an afterthought, Jon grabs hold of Ryan and gathers the skinny boy into his arms, hugging him tightly.
“You’ll be all right,” Jon whispers. “You’ll make it.”
Ryan looks at Jon with tear filled eyes and nods his head before fleeing back to the car.
Brendon calls his parents after they get back to the apartment and in the meantime, he and Ryan curl up on the couch and kiss each other desperately. Spencer stays in the kitchen, pacing back and forth and making coffee, because he’s sure that Ryan will need it once Brendon’s parents take him away.
When Brendon’s parents arrive, both Brendon and Ryan are trying to pretend that they’re not upset to see each other go. Brendon’s the better actor, Spencer notices, but Ryan isn’t too bad, and he and Spencer help Brendon carry his stuff down to Brendon’s parents’ minivan.
Spencer stalls the parents while Brendon and Ryan go back for the last few of Brendon’s things, taking the brief time alone to say their goodbyes. Ryan doesn’t come back down when Brendon does. Ryan’s not a good enough actor to keep Brendon’s parents from knowing that he was about to break down. Spencer hurries upstairs once Brendon is gone and into Ryan’s bedroom. Ryan is sitting on the floor next to his bed, his knees pulled up to his chest.
Spencer knows that Ryan’s crying, and he just wraps his arm around Ryan’s shoulders and sits there. Ryan just has to get it all out of his system then Spencer will fix him a cup of coffee. Spencer can feel Ryan’s shoulders shaking as he cries. It’s silent, but Spencer still knows.
After a few long moments, he says “Ryan, come on. Get up, and I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
Ryan lifts his head, and Spencer takes one look at his face and knows that he has no idea what to do to fix his best friend’s broken heart.
***
Brendon tells the truth about sending letters. They come at least once a week, postmarked from Brendon’s hometown, and then postmarked from the mission school in Utah. The letters always talk about how much Brendon misses him, how much Brendon misses Spencer, even, and how much he loves Ryan.
That’s the main point. Ryan reads the words over and over, written in sharp block letters, black ink, down a page of notebook paper.
Ryan’s been getting off work earlier than Spencer, and Spencer dreads the days he comes home and Ryan’s gotten a letter. Ryan sits on the couch and stares at the page, and Spencer isn’t even sure that Ryan can even see it, because Ryan’s crying.
Spencer sits down on the couch and hugs him. He feels sorry for Ryan, and knows that he doesn’t understand, because Spencer can see Haley whenever he wants, and Ryan hasn’t even heard Brendon’s voice for months now.
Spencer doesn’t miss Brendon’s voice so much, actually.
He misses Ryan’s smile, though.
Ryan hardly ever writes back. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because it’s hard to get letters to Brendon. Brendon isn’t always in the same place, and it’s worse for Ryan to receive a letter back “return to sender” than to not write one at all.
The letters that Brendon does get, all spiky, slanted handwriting, break his heart just as much as the ones that Ryan gets. Except sometimes the letters are smeared by teardrops. Those are the ones that make Brendon cry.
In October, Brendon stops sending letters.
Ryan doesn’t know why. He wishes that he knew why, but Brendon never said anything, and suddenly they stopped.
Ryan doesn’t say anything about it to Spencer, but Spencer knows anyway.
***
It’s a Thursday, just before Christmas, and it’s sort of bitterly cold. It was Spencer’s turn to go for groceries, and Ryan had stayed up in their apartment, mainlining caffeine and studying for one of his finals.
Brendon is sitting on one of the low walls lining the walkway up to the doors to the lobby of their apartment. He doesn’t look different, not to Spencer’s eyes, just cold. He looks up as Spencer approaches with his bags of milk and bread and all the right things to make hot cocoa.
Brendon stands up as Spencer approaches, and Spencer can see that he’s shivering in just a thin jacket. There’s a duffle bag lying on the ground nearby.
“What are you doing?” Spencer asks.
“Waiting for you to get home,” Brendon says. He looks nervous and unsure of himself, and that’s something Spencer has never seen Brendon as.
“Ryan’s upstairs,” Spencer says automatically, because why would Brendon be waiting on him when the guy he loved was only a few flights up.
“I…” Brendon says, and Spencer doesn’t know what Brendon was going to say. He shakes his head. “He’s not. I was scared to just go up and see him, because we haven’t… talked or anything, and… I was just afraid that he might. He’s not seeing anyone, is he?”
Spencer rolls his eyes, because both Brendon and Ryan are idiots. That’s what this boils down to, he’s sure. Brendon and Ryan are idiots.
“No, he isn’t,” Spencer says, shaking his head. “Ryan is still miserably in love with you, so please go upstairs and keep him from throwing himself out the window, okay?”
Brendon’s face splits in a smile and he grabs his duffel bag, almost bouncing as Spencer takes him up the stairs, unlocks the door and lets him in the apartment. Ryan is sitting at the kitchen table, notes and books spread out across the table in front of him.
He doesn’t look up. “Spencer,” he whines. “Will you make me hot cocoa? I’ll make you cookies if I pass this stupid-“
He looks up halfway through his sentence and Spencer can almost see his face going pale. Spencer walks into the kitchen and puts his bags down, then leans over Ryan, nuzzling his nose into the top of Ryan’s hair.
“I’ll make you hot chocolate, honey, if you’ll get up from here and go say hello to your boyfriend,” Spencer says, and he hugs Ryan as best he can in the awkward position, before stepping out of the way. “And warm him up. It’s cold outside and God knows how long he’s been sitting out there.”
Ryan knocks his chair over getting up from the table, and he runs the length of the living room, flinging himself into Brendon’s arms. They tumble back against the door and Brendon loses his balance, sliding down the door. Ryan falls with him, and it doesn’t matter, because Brendon is here, in his apartment. He crushes his lips to Brendon’s and Brendon clings to him, holding on to Ryan fit to snap the skinnier boy in half.
Spencer smiles and goes on about putting away the groceries and making hot cocoa.
***
On the first day of rehearsal for the chess match, at the end of January, Jon hugs Brendon so tightly that every bone in his back cracks. This is a fact of life, and how Jon gives hugs.
“I thought you weren’t going to be here!” Jon bellows. Cassie is grinning and she hugs Brendon tightly as well. Apparently Jon has told her all about it, and she hugged Ryan just as hard.
“I wasn’t,” Brendon says, but he’s smiling and he reaches out and slides his hand into Ryan’s.
Spencer grins at them and he’s got his arm around Haley’s shoulders. “No, now he’s living in my apartment again,” Spencer tells them. “Which means that now I have to deal with them making out on my couch again.”
Ryan reaches out and shoves Spencer’s shoulder. “It’s our apartment. Our couch, Spencer, I can kick your ass.”
“Oh, try me,” Spencer says.
“All right, listen up,” Bob yells, ready to start coordinating all of this. He’s their choreographer and their fight director. They all have input, of course, but Bob makes sure that it all meshes, and makes sense. “Sit your asses down and get ready to do this shit.”
Everyone scrambles to find seats. Spencer and Haley sit side by side on the floor, and Jon and Cassie manage to snag chairs at the end of a row. Pete scrambles into the seat beside Jon. Maja takes the seat in front of Jon, and Gabe slides in late, sitting on the floor beside Spencer and Haley. Brendon plops down on the floor beside the front row of chairs, and tugs Ryan down into his lap.
They scuffle for a moment before both of them consent to simply sitting there, Brendon’s arms wrapped around Ryan’s waist.
***
First weekend of faire the temperature soars to record highs, and halfway through Sunday Ryan plops down next to Spencer in the gypsy camp and fans himself with his hat.
“Its cooler down here,” he tells Spencer. He makes himself useful, borrows Gabe’s guitar and plays along with Spencer’s beat as Haley and Jessica dance. Brendon drifts down later, his jacket lost somewhere, and he stretches out on the ground beside Spencer and propositions all the women who walk by with a big smile and his horrible accent.
Brendon doesn’t see his parents. They show up, because they know that there’s nowhere else Brendon can go, except back to his friends. Ryan doesn’t see them, either, because he’s concentrating on playing, and watching Brendon as well. Spencer sees them, but he’s the only one. He says nothing.
They just want to know that their son is okay. They’re not sure that they want him to come home, because he’s already walked away from the life that they wanted for him. The life that they raised him in. But he doesn’t look thin, he doesn’t look sick, and he’s certainly smiling.
They hang around for the remainder of the day, then follow the four boys out to the IHOP when they leave. They watch all four boys get out of their cars, shedding extra clothes and tossing them back in. Brendon’s mother is almost horrified to see that her son is going to go into a restaurant wearing what is pretty much a very large shirt, but that’s not near as shocking as seeing him take hold of the skinny kid’s hand as they walk inside, or seeing him lean in close and kiss the other boy.
They leave. This boy, they can’t claim him as their son. Not like this.
Brendon doesn’t know. Spencer never says anything.
Spencer isn’t sure Brendon would care.
***
“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” says the priest.
There are cheers as Jon leans over and kisses Cassie, smiles on everyone’s faces. The reception follows, and there is cake, there is happiness, there is champagne, there is dancing.
Brendon catches the garter. It’s a complete accident (he swears) and it even makes him blush. Ryan laughs and Brendon puts it on, wearing it above his knee over his pants for the rest of the night.
Spencer drives on the way home, with Haley in the front seat, and Ryan and Brendon curled up against each other in the back seat.
When Brendon kisses Ryan, he tastes like champagne and wedding cake, and Ryan thinks that everything has turned out perfectly after all.
Panic! At The Disco; Ryan/Brendon
NC-17; The renfaire AU. Thank you for indulging me in this. You’re all sweethearts. For _lolapalooza before she leaves for Italy. Also for tragedy, jzbell and lady_stargazer. Beta by the lovely yankeesdtr. I love you all to tiny pieces.
Sometimes Ryan wishes that he’d taken up smoking. Then he considers that even the tiniest bit of fire is uncalled for when it’s already eighty degrees at 8 o’clock in the morning and you’re wearing at least five layers of clothes.
Okay, maybe not five layers, but still.
“Ryan, seriously,” Spencer says, stepping in front of him, and Ryan looks up at him from his spot sitting in the passenger seat of Spencer’s car, his legs outside the vehicle and his feet on the ground. Spencer is tucking his car keys into the pouch hanging from his belt. “You can’t be all… I don’t know, depressed or whatever.”
“It’s already hot,” Ryan points out.
“Oh Jesus,” Spencer says. “Ryan. Get out of the car. Put on your stupid hat, and let’s go. It’s not any hotter today than it was yesterday.”
“That was yesterday,” Ryan whines at him. Spencer kicks him in the shin and Ryan looks up, affronted. “I know you did not just get dirt on my tights.”
Spencer blinks at him. “You are the gayest gay boy I have ever met. Get the hell out of my car.”
“I don’t like you,” Ryan says seriously, but he grabs his hat out of the back seat and gets up, straightening the bottom of his tunic. Spencer is already walking away from Ryan, bells jingling.
***
Spencer wishes that he could remember whose idea it was to even do this in the first place. He’s pretty sure it wasn’t his, but Ryan bitches so much that he’s not sure it was Ryan’s, and Spencer just knows that he was probably won over by the idea of the shoes. Spencer’s almost positive that it had something to do with shoes. Ryan constantly uses the idea of new shoes against him.
Spencer has boots that are custom made and come up past his knees and he’ll never be able to wear them anywhere but at a renaissance faire. Which is good, really, since that’s exactly what he’s bought them for. He knows, in his soul, that this had to be one of Ryan’s ideas.
It kind of started as a joke, because neither of them was really into any of that sort of thing. But then they realized that it was actually sort of fun. And then Spencer got the boots, and every time Ryan threw a diva fit and threatened to quit, Spencer reminded him that if they quit, then Spencer would not get to wear his boots, and Ryan would suffer all the more for it.
So it’s Spencer, with his boots, laced all the way up the back and coming high up in front of his knees in the front and lower in the back, his pants and the flowing shirt that has the laces on the front, scarves around his waist and bells strung through them, wrapped around his ankles, too, who decides that they’ll keep doing it.
Spencer plays a gypsy, plays a drum for his girlfriend who dances and teaches simple ones to the little girls who wander by and are fascinated with the way she moves her hips. Spencer doesn’t even mind that he has to haul his own drum around, back and forth from his apartment to his car and from his car to the gypsy camp and back again. It’s fun.
They’re their own little gypsy band, three girls and two guys: Spencer the drummer, Haley and Jessica the dancers, Gabe the snake charmer, and Maja the fortuneteller. They always have a crowd of people around them, watching them, and that makes Spencer proud.
Spencer likes being a gypsy.
***
Ryan would like to blame it all on Spencer. Ryan would like to say that the tights and the tunic and the codpiece and the frilly shirt are all Spencer’s fault. But in all, it was Ryan’s idea. Deep down, he loves his frilly shirt. He loves his heavy ass tunic. Even though it’s almost like wearing a dress.
The only thing he doesn’t really like is the codpiece, but hey, he has to keep his junk from being visible somehow. Especially since Brendon keeps trying to flip up the bottom edge of his tunic.
Ryan is going to kill him the next time he does it.
Ryan is part of their faire’s court, a pompous noble who is a complete scatterbrain. It gives him an excuse to wear all of the frills and the giant feather in his hat, and the large number of huge rings that adorn his fingers. It excuses his fake-jewel encrusted goblet that he carries around and drinks from.
Ryan’s character’s arch nemesis is Brendon’s Spanish ambassador, because Brendon’s just as pompous, if not more so than Ryan, and he does it all in the worst Spanish accent Ryan has ever heard. Plus he wears really stupid shoes with really big buckles without irony. At least Ryan has the good sense to wear a nice pair of boots.
Ryan’s character hates Brendon’s. They constantly try to outdo each other, and it makes for good interactions when people are watching.
No one seems to notice that they’re sneaking back behind the castle, where it’s all blocked off from patrons and none of the players really have any reason to go, so that Brendon can blow Ryan against the wall.
***
Ryan and Spencer share an apartment half an hour north of where they work at the faire. They’re both going to university, but they’re out for the summer and they spend that time working both at their jobs, and at the faire. Spencer’s going to school for business, because he’s smart, they both know that he’s smart and he’s good at things like that. He’s a receptionist for now, working for a small company in the city, but he’s hoping to get an internship and actually do something practical.
Ryan doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. By the time Spencer moved out to live in the apartment with him, Ryan had already given up on what he’d intended to do. He’d always claimed that he’d wanted to be a veterinarian, because he loved animals, but math and science made him give up. He still works at an animal shelter, but he’s changed his major about twelve times and if he doesn’t figure something out soon, Spencer’s going to start feeling sorry for him.
Brendon’s a theatre major and he’s got a dorm room on campus, but he’s spent more time living in Spencer and Ryan’s apartment in the last few months, and Spencer’s sure that if Brendon’s parents ever find out they’re going to kill him. Spencer might do it for them, though, if he walks in on Brendon and Ryan making out on the couch again.
Spencer’s just pissed that Brendon can be there all the time and Haley’s parents get pissed off if he doesn’t have her home by curfew.
***
Jon Walker plays a pirate, and Spencer has no idea how any of them even became friends with Jon, except for somehow there’s a running joke that because Jon is the smallest pirate, he has to be their errand boy. Somehow this has translated into Jon having to get the new recruits, and Spencer’s pretty sure that the first time he ever saw Jon, he was charging through the streets with Ryan Ross slung over his shoulder.
“Um, what are you doing?” asks Spencer the Gypsy, stepping in front of him in the road.
“Recruiting,” says Jon in return, and sidesteps Spencer, carrying him straight down into the harbor area and aboard the pirate ship. Ryan yelps for help as Jon carries him by and Spencer strolls after them, because if something’s going to happen to Ryan (like being thrown into the pond, for one) Spencer wants to be there to see it.
Jon’s girlfriend plays a pub wench, and at least once every weekend, he steals her from her pub for himself, arranging for some other girl to go and work in her stead, taking her down and declaring her to be the pirate queen. Spencer thinks it’s sweet, and he likes the way Cassie just laughs and rolls her eyes at Jon and his grand declaration.
***
The four of them go out to dinner on Sunday nights, after the faire closes, at the IHOP a few blocks away. It’s always just the four of them, occasionally one of the girls but not often - Haley has a curfew and Cassie has to be at work early in the morning.
The first thing that Jon does when he gets out of the faire is take off his pirate boots. “They’re horribly uncomfortable,” Jon tells Spencer earnestly, sliding his feet into a pair of flip-flops. He also removes his belt with all his pouches and untucks his shirt, leaving it flowing down over the top of his pants. He looks sort of ridiculous, with his hat hair and the bridge of his nose sunburnt, but Spencer untucks his shirt just the same, and probably has a matching sunburn.
Ryan is horrified, because he would never, ever undo part of his costume if he was still wearing it. The only time it ever came off was when he was done with it. Brendon is the opposite, because he wants to remove as much clothing as is decent. He definitely garners some stares when he strolls into IHOP with his tights and funny shoes still on and nothing else but the big shirt. It kind of looks like a nightgown, and Ryan tries to pretend that Brendon isn’t his boyfriend, or even his friend or someone he knows.
Brendon’s trying really hard to be a vegetarian and even now that he’s moved out of his parents house, and he still has certain things ingrained into him from growing up in a strict Mormon household, so he orders water to go with his veggie burger. Ryan’s not helping things, because he tells the waitress that he needs a pitcher of Coke, no seriously, a pitcher, and Spencer can see Brendon caving in and when Ryan’s not looking, he sticks Ryan’s straw in his mouth and sucks hard.
Ryan can never figure out how he drinks so much soda, but neither Jon nor Spencer are telling.
***
Spencer’s out with Haley and Ryan is left sitting on the couch, needle and thread in hand and his tongue between his teeth and just barely poking out of his mouth as he works on the trick stitches that the bottom part of his tunic needs for Spencer to tear it off on the chessboard. It’s their gag, one they came up with all on their own and it shows off the chain mail codpiece that he picked up at a faire they went to a couple years ago.
He dresses like a normal kid most days, just wears jeans and t-shirts to work because they’re inevitably going to get dirty or covered with dog and cat hair and a pair of Converse that are old and falling apart anyway so it doesn’t matter how much dog shit he steps in. He just hoses them off and keeps going.
Brendon works at the smoothie bar in the food court on campus, and sometimes brings smoothies when he comes to the apartment. Ryan wonders what Brendon has told his parents, if they know he’s gay, if they know he’s not being the faithful little Mormon boy they want him to be, that he’s not staying in the dorm room that they pay for. Ryan never asks, just lets Brendon come over and sleep in his bed, or on his couch if they’re fighting.
Brendon shows up that night with Ryan’s favourite flavor of smoothie (plain strawberry) and sits down beside him on the couch, tipping his face up and kissing Ryan’s jaw. Ryan dodges away, because he’s busy, and Brendon can wait five minutes until he’s gotten the thread tied off. Brendon pouts at him while he finishes up and puts his needle and thread away.
“You are so gay,” Brendon says, a little bit of a smile on his lips, handing over the smoothie and letting Ryan kiss him at the same time.
“You should talk,” Ryan says, shifting over and throwing his legs over Brendon’s, sipping the smoothie. Brendon’s already flipping through channels on the TV and one hand snakes up to rest on Ryan’s hip, under the edge of Ryan’s t-shirt.
Brendon stops on Spongebob Squarepants, which Ryan hates, and he gets away with it for all of three minutes, until it goes to commercial, when Ryan says “if you want to watch cartoons, at least put it on the Cartoon Network, okay?”
Brendon does as he’s told, because he’s hoping to get laid. Every little thing helps.
***
Spencer’s a really good dancer. At set times during the day, cast members gather around the maypole and dance, and teach patrons how to do it as well. It’s easy to tell that Spencer has spent a lot of time working on learning all of this. It helps that he’s fun to watch, because he enjoys it and has a huge smile on his face the entire time, kicking his legs around with the bells tied around his ankles jingling.
Brendon’s good at most of it, and what he’s not good at, he tackles with such enthusiasm that he’s a blast to watch. He doesn’t have the bells like Spencer, but he’s coordinated and hopelessly adorable as he bounces around, even though sometimes his kicks can get dangerous. He gets some of the loudest applause, just because he’s wild about it. But Ryan’s the only one that sees the bruises he ends up with on his legs from his sword banging against him when he dances. Even though Brendon won’t admit that’s what happened.
Ryan’s okay at it, not great, but not terrible either. He doesn’t know all of the dances, and the ones that he does know, he hasn’t dedicated as much time to learning. He’s not a dancer. He’s not interested in getting all hot and sweaty or causing his tunic to flip up at the bottom and put his rear and his codpiece on display for everyone like Brendon does. Of course, Ryan harbors no delusions that his butt looks as good as Brendon’s, so he tries not to show it off.
Jon is a horrible dancer. He knows it, everyone else knows it. He doesn’t even dance that much. He’s only willing to get out and dance if Cassie is able to get out of her pub and come down and dance with him. He has fun, it’s clear that he’s having fun, but no one but Cassie would want to dance with him. Jon enjoys himself, and no one’s quite sure if he’s a terrible dancer on purpose, or if he’s really just that bad.
***
Brendon’s sitting on the steps outside the apartment building one afternoon when Spencer gets off work. It’s the stillest Spencer’s ever seen Brendon, he’s pretty sure, and he looks up at Spencer with wide, sad, bloodshot eyes when Spencer walks up.
“What’s wrong?” Spencer asks, frowning, even though he’s sure that will open the floodgates and there will be some long, tragic story about something that Brendon is blowing way out of proportion and there will probably be tears. Spencer has seen this before, and he immediately regrets the words when they come out of his mouth.
Brendon looks up at Spencer and doesn’t say a word, and Spencer doesn’t take that as a good sign. This is their last week of school before finals, the week before the second week of faire, and he figures Brendon is probably having some kind of breakdown about that. But Brendon doesn’t say a word until they’re upstairs and inside the apartment.
Spencer doesn’t mind letting Brendon in, even if Ryan isn’t there, because Brendon is a whiz at most videogames and Spencer likes playing with him. But today, Brendon just curls up on the couch. He still hasn’t said a word.
“Okay, are you having some kind of mental break? Because if you are, can you do it somewhere else? You’re starting to freak me out just a little bit,” Spencer tells him.
“My parents don’t want me to go to summer school this year,” Brendon says. He’s been going to summer school just to stay in the city with Ryan the last two years. “And I’m not sure that they don’t want me to… to not come back in the fall.”
“Just tell them you want to finish up your degree and graduate early,” Spencer tells him. He can’t see how parents could complain about that. Spencer’s mother tells him constantly that he should go to summer school.
“They know I haven’t been staying in the dorms,” Brendon tells Spencer, and Spencer realizes that this is serious, really serious. “I guess they came up, and my roommate told them that I’m not ever there, and they were like, where are you staying then, Brendon? And I was like, with some friends, and they got all pissed off and I just left, and I… I don’t know. Now I guess I’m going to have to go home.”
“No,” Spencer says, and shakes his head, because if there’s anything that he knows, he knows that Brendon makes Ryan happy, and Ryan is Spencer’s best friend and Spencer wants more than anything for Ryan to be happy. “No, we’re going to figure something out.”
***
Second weekend, Ryan slips back behind the castle to find Brendon already sitting there. There’s an overturned crate sitting there, and Brendon is perched on it, hunched over, staring at the ground. It hurts Ryan’s heart to see him sitting there, to see his eyes huge and hurt when he looks up at Ryan.
All day people have been asking Brendon what’s wrong, noticing that he’s not acting like himself. He just smiles and says that there isn’t anything wrong, and he just keeps going through his day the best he can.
Ryan reaches out and pulls Brendon to his feet, wraps his arms around Brendon and holds him close. Ryan rubs Brendon’s back, even though he can’t really feel through Brendon’s shirt and tunic and jacket.
“You can live with us,” Ryan tells him seriously. “You can, and I don’t care if Spencer only likes you half the time, if you help pay the rent, or. Or something, you can.”
“I won’t have money to go to school if I don’t,” Brendon says quietly. “I’ll drive back up and finish faire, and then… I’ll…” He trails off and goes quiet because he doesn’t really know what he’ll do. Ryan gets upset at this, and pulls away.
“I love you,” he says, and Brendon looks at him, startled, because they’ve been seeing each other for two years now, fucking around for most of that, and those words have never crossed Ryan’s lips. “I suck at this relationship thing and I love you and now you’re leaving me.”
He wants to walk away and go straight back into the faire and forget this is even happening. He can’t, because he’s scared that he’s going to start crying, and Ryan has never been good at plastering a fake smile on his face the way Brendon seems to be able to. He stops and looks back at Brendon, standing there with his little beard and his stupid hat and looking horribly sad.
“My parents are going to find out. They’re going to disown me,” Brendon says.
“Well, then… then I don’t know. This is your decision,” Ryan says, and straightens his back, slipping back into the faire and hurrying down into the bottoms, hiding inside the pirate ship. Jon doesn’t even say anything, just hugs Ryan tightly for a few minutes, before going on about his pirating.
***
Ryan skips out on the IHOP on Sunday evening and just goes home, and Spencer is torn between going and not dealing with Ryan being a sulky bitch, and going home and comforting Ryan.
Spencer decides that he’d rather have dinner, and he knows that there’s no food in his and Ryan’s apartment.
So he goes out to dinner and Brendon is uncharacteristically quiet and it’s nowhere near as much fun as it usually is. Spencer brings Ryan home a sandwich, something to eat so that he doesn’t disappear from sight. Ryan’s in his room, reading, when Spencer gets home.
“I brought you something,” Spencer says, smiling at him. Ryan rolls over and looks at him, then sits up, and Spencer climbs onto the bed, handing Ryan the food. Ryan pops open the container and starts eating the fries.
“So I love Brendon,” Ryan starts.
“I know,” Spencer says, because he’s known Ryan since they were little. “I’m not blind or stupid, Ryan, and you guys have been together for like, two years now, right?”
“And apparently he doesn’t love me,” Ryan says. “Or, well, maybe he does, but I’m coming second to… to everything.”
“Ryan, seriously,” Spencer says.
“I am being serious,” Ryan says, and falls back onto the pillows, staring up at the ceiling. Spencer’s sure that Ryan’s trying not to cry.
Spencer puts the food aside and stretches out on his stomach. “He does love you,” Spencer says. “He just doesn’t know what to do, you know? This is messing up his whole life, you know? His parents making him leave school, leave you. He’s scared.”
“You don’t know that,” Ryan says. “He just doesn’t. Maybe I’m just sex to him.”
“Ryan, seriously,” Spencer says, and rolls his eyes. “If it was just sex, he wouldn’t have stuck with you for two years. I mean. Okay? I know you’re not stupid, Ry.”
“I am stupid,” Ryan says quietly, and sighs. “I shouldn’t have told him I loved him.”
“Yeah, probably bad timing,” Spencer says, then pauses. “Wait. You hadn’t said it before now?”
“No,” Ryan says. Spencer sighs and stands up.
“He has been hopelessly in love with you for so long, and you’ve never said it to him? What do you do when he says it to you? I know he says it to you?”
“I usually just. Kiss him or something. I don’t. Spencer I wanted to make sure that I loved him before I said something? I don’t know. It’s. It’s a big deal for me.”
“Ryan, I love you? But you are really an idiot sometimes,” Spencer tells him, and shakes his head, getting off the bed and walking out of the room.
***
Ryan spends most of Sunday down in the bottoms, hanging around the gypsy camp and the pirates. In fact, after the chess match, Jon brings him a pair of pants and says “here, you’re officially a pirate for the rest of the day.” Ryan manages a weak smile, and changes into the pants, discarding his tunic and just buckling his belt over the loose bottom of his shirt and adjusting his sword on his hip. He leaves his rings on, and his hat.
“Hey, we got a new cabin boy!” yells Pete, who has been sitting out in front of the pirate ship, trying to coerce girls to come in and be ‘cabin girls’. Ryan manages to smile at that, even though he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to be anyone’s cabin boy.
He wanders around with Jon the rest of the day, pretending to steal and plunder and gather new recruits to their pirate crew. He only sees Brendon once, catches the other boy’s eye and then turns away, catching up his pace and following Jon into the castle. He thinks maybe next year he’ll be a pirate instead. He’s not sure he wants to keep playing the character he was when he met Brendon. Especially if Brendon isn’t coming back.
***
Brendon finally shows up at the apartment on Tuesday, when he knows Ryan will be there. They need to talk, and both of them know it. Spencer makes himself scarce, disappearing into his room and leaving Ryan and Brendon in the living room.
“What do I do if I can’t go to school?” Brendon says after a few tense minutes of staring at each other.
“Get a job,” Ryan says.
“Where am I supposed to live?” Brendon demands.
“With me. You know, your boyfriend who already offered to let you live with him?” Ryan says, already getting angry.
“With my boyfriend who’s been trying to figure out ways to get out of saying he loved me for a year now?” Brendon shot back. Ryan’s eyes went wide.
“No, it’s not. I’m not. That’s not it,” Ryan says.
“That is it,” Brendon says. “I have to go home. I may not be back next semester.”
Ryan reaches out and takes hold of Brendon’s hand, lacing their fingers together. He’s silent for a long time, just sitting there. Then, he says “I do love you. So… so if you’ve decided to leave, then let’s make the best of the time we have left, okay? I don’t want… I don’t want you to leave, and I don’t want you to leave angry with me, okay?”
“Okay,” Brendon finally says.
***
Spencer loves fighting on the chessboard, and third weekend, everything goes off with out a hitch. First weekend, there were a few fumbles, a few jokes that fell flat, and second weekend Ryan was tense, Brendon was upset, and Spencer was annoyed so their fights were thrown off. Third weekend, all of that seems to be resolved, so there aren’t any problems
The chessboard is divided into two sides, and is sort of good versus evil, or at least, nobility and townspeople versus the seedier types. Ryan’s the bishop on one side and Brendon a knight for the same, and one of the gags is their side’s king making Brendon trade places with the other knight to stop their bickering before the match can even start. One of Ryan’s gags is that he spouts off poetry to his side’s queen, a pretty blonde girl named Greta that plays the Lord Mayor’s daughter.
Spencer and Jon are castles for the other team, which is made up of, as Spencer jokes, gypsies, tramps, and thieves. He makes sure to say it out of Brendon’s earshot, because he learned his lesson fast that Brendon knows the words to various and sundry songs and has no problem singing them whenever he feels the need. Maja is their side’s queen, and Haley, Cassie, Pete, and Gabe are all pawns.
Spencer’s first fight is against the King’s minstrel, a chubby kid named Patrick who only claims to just want to not fight, strumming his guitar and circling around Spencer and his sword, until he pretends to bash Spencer in the back with it, starting the real battle. It took them ages to perfect the moment when Patrick tosses his guitar off of the board to Ryan and then Greta slides him a sword.
It ends in Patrick sprawled on his back, looking up at Spencer and his sword, and crying out that he yields. Spencer struts to his new square and yells “return to field!” and they all scramble back up.
Spencer’s favourite gag comes during his other fight, the one he has against Ryan. The first few times they’d practiced it, it was a little shaky, and didn’t go off quite as easily as it should have, leading to many jokes about Ryan being too good of a seamstress for the joke. During the fight, Spencer was meant to grab hold of the bottom edge of Ryan’s tunic and rip it off. There was a joke that followed about Ryan’s chain mail codpiece, and Ryan snarling and running at Spencer with his sword for another clash, an epic battle, ending in Ryan forcing Spencer backward off the board, resulting in his victory. They all return to play and Ryan wraps his fallen tunic around his hips.
Brendon fights twice, once against Maja, ending in the blonde pinning him to the board, kneeling on him, and again, championing Greta against Jon, which he wins. Brendon is Jon’s only fight, save one where he champions Cassie against Ryan, which he also loses, though only barely.
The side of good, the nobility, wins, of course. But it’s all in fun, and they joke about changing it up for the last day of the faire. Maybe they will.
***
Their faire lasts for six weeks, which means that after finals, Brendon has to move out of his dorm room. He talks his parents into agreeing to let him stay with his “friends” instead of coming home, so that he can finish the run of the faire. That means that Brendon will live with them full time for three weeks until he leaves.
Spencer’s not sure what he thinks of this.
Haley’s graduation is the Friday night before fourth weekend, and Spencer goes, bringing her back to the apartment after dinner with her family for their own, more private celebration. This is somewhat dampened by the fact that, when they arrive, Ryan and Brendon are thoroughly engaged on the couch.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Spencer says at the same time Haley says, “Jesus Christ!” and covers her eyes. And then looks through her fingers. And then covers her eyes. Spencer drags her through the living room and back to his bedroom before storming back into the living room, where Ryan is wiping at his mouth and Brendon is buttoning up his pants.
“Okay, seriously?” Spencer said. “I’m really glad that you guys made up. I hate your mopey little faces. But blowjobs on the couch have not ever been okay and will continue to not be okay until the end of time.”
Ryan has the grace to blush but Brendon doesn’t, and neither one of them moves to go anywhere. Spencer glares at them, and if looks could kill, this one probably would have, or at least it would have seriously wounded.
Brendon starts to laugh once Spencer is out of sight, and Ryan looks utterly mortified, but one well-placed hand from Brendon quickly remedies that.
***
Brendon wears through the knees on his tights faster than he does any other parts, which doesn’t really make much sense. Spencer says that it’s because he goes down on his knees so much, and Ryan asks him how he knows.
“Because I know what you look like after you’ve gotten off,” Spencer tells him. “Despite my best efforts not to.”
Ryan hopes Spencer’s the only one who knows what Ryan and Brendon get up to when they take a break and sneak off together. Ryan leans against the wall and Brendon drops to his knees, shifting all of the extra clothing out of the way and taking Ryan’s codpiece off before pulling Ryan’s cock free from his tights and closing his mouth around it.
Brendon’s blowjobs are always quick and dirty, and he seems to know all of the best and quickest ways to get Ryan off with his mouth, and Ryan’s always been impressed by the fact that someone who was a virgin until so recently had learned to deep throat so quickly. And was good at it, even.
Brendon swallows in the end, and straightens up, helping Ryan put himself to rights before letting Ryan slide his hand into the front of Brendon’s tights and jerk him off, kissing him hard.
They share the overturned crate against the wall for a few minutes in silence, catching their breath, when all is said and done.
“My parents are coming up for last weekend,” Brendon says when they’re getting ready to sneak back in. “My mom called yesterday while you were at work. They want to see me at the faire, and they want to see where I’ve been staying. I guess we can tell them I sleep on the couch or something.”
Ryan kisses Brendon softly. “We’ll figure it out,” he says, and gives a little bit of a smile before slipping back into the faire.
***
Brendon turns in his two weeks at his job on Monday morning, letting them know that he’s going home for the summer and might not be coming back. Spencer almost chokes on his soda when he sees the look on Ryan’s face.
“So you’re really just going to let them make you leave,” Ryan says. Brendon shrugs.
“What else am I going to do?” Brendon says. “I don’t make enough money to put myself through school and if I don’t do what my parents want me to do they’re not going to pay for me to go to school.”
“But you’re not coming back,” Ryan says. “You keep saying you don’t know if you’re coming back.”
“I…” Brendon says, and Spencer lifts himself up to sit on the edge of the kitchen table to watch them in the living room. “I’m going to. To mission school. Um. This summer.”
Spencer winces. “So what does that mean?” Ryan asks.
“That means that when I leave I probably won’t be back for two years,” Brendon says. Spencer can tell he’s not happy about it, standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, not looking at Ryan. But Spencer can see Ryan’s face. He wishes that he couldn’t.
“Get out of my apartment,” Ryan says. Spencer hops down off the table and starts into the living room, ready to talk Ryan down. Spencer doesn’t want to kick Brendon out because of something he has to do. Besides, it’s only two more weeks, and Spencer really does like Brendon, when he’s quiet. Plus there’s the videogame thing.
“Ryan, don’t,” Spencer says.
“No, I’ll leave,” Brendon says, and he heads down the hallway to get his stuff out of Ryan’s room.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Spencer says. “Brendon, you don’t have to leave. You can sleep in my fucking room, but I’m not kicking you out and neither is Ryan.” Spencer gives Ryan a hard look when he opens his mouth to protest. “Neither. Is. Ryan.” Spencer repeats.
“He’s leaving me,” Ryan whispers, and now he’s looking at Spencer with his eyes wide and hurt and Spencer fucking hates that, because it’s sort of like he can see Ryan’s heart breaking and he doesn’t like it.
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Spencer says quietly, and wraps his arms around Ryan, hugs him and strokes his hair. “If you didn’t have your scholarship, would you be able to pay for school with your job?”
“No,” Ryan says, and he understands it, but that doesn’t mean that after two years he’s not in love with Brendon and he wants Brendon to leave.
“Things will work out, somehow,” Spencer says, and Ryan nods, leaving his face pressed into Spencer’s shoulder.
Spencer sleeps in Ryan’s room that night, listening to his best friend sniffle and toss and turn. He wonders if he wouldn’t be better off sleeping in his own room, with Brendon, but he’s pretty sure Brendon talks in his sleep.
Eventually, Spencer just wraps his arms around Ryan and lets him cry himself out, and then they both fall asleep.
***
Fifth weekend, the gypsies get into a “fight” with the belly dancers and it ends in a dance off on the chessboard that draws almost as big of a crowd as the chess match does.
Spencer carries his drums up onto the board and sits down behind them, kneeling and tapping out a rhythm experimentally. Gabe grabs his guitar out of their vardo and carries it up, standing beside Spencer. All three of their women, Jessica, Haley, and Maja, climb up onto the board to dance.
They may not be as intense as the belly dancers, and they may not be as scantily clad as the belly dancers, but they are at least good, and it’s all in fun anyway.
Eventually several cast members drift down, including the king. The leader of the dancers steps forward and begs the king to declare a winner, insinuating that they were clearly the better of the two teams. Spencer picks it up, playing faster, and the three girls give it their best.
In the end, the king declares them the winner and Spencer gets up from his kneeling position in triumph. They all link hands and reverence the king as he applauds them. The belly dancers jokingly try to recruit the three girls, and even though they turn it down, for one show they are all a big group, playing and dancing and generally having a good time.
In all, it makes for a pretty good Saturday.
***
Spencer takes Haley out on that Saturday night, dinner and a movie, before taking her home. Ryan goes straight home and endures ten minutes of Brendon banging on the door before letting him in and going back and sitting on the couch. Brendon storms inside, still fully dressed down to his hat and plants himself in front of Ryan, now sitting on the couch, also fully dressed.
“Okay, this shit is going to stop, Ryan,” Brendon snaps. “This is not my fault. This is not my fault, okay?”
“You’re the one who just decided to go along with it,” Ryan says, not angry, not anything. Defeated, maybe.
“Ryan, what am I supposed to do?” Brendon says. “Am I supposed to say, oh, I want to stay here and go to school and live with these guys instead of going on my mission like you want me to? And have them cut me off so that it doesn’t matter whether I’m here or not because I can’t afford to go to school?”
“You’d be with me!” Ryan finally yells, and he’s determined not to start crying again. Brendon leans forward and climbs onto the couch with him.
“I know, but I can’t… what am I supposed to do with my life, then, Ryan? What am I supposed to do?” Brendon asks. “I can leave and I’ll come back and … and I’ll write you letters while I’m gone. I’ll do something, anything.”
“We’d figure something out! You could get a scholarship! Something! Anything.” Ryan doesn’t want him to leave. Ryan has a scholarship; Brendon’s at least as smart as Ryan is, even if it’s just in a different way.
Brendon reaches out and pulls Ryan against him, kisses him softly. “I can’t, Ryan. You know that I can’t.” Ryan kisses him back, tasting tears on Brendon’s mouth. “I love you,” Brendon says. “And I’ll come back.”
“Not for two years,” Ryan says. “I can’t do this.”
“You don’t know until you try,” Brendon says, and he’s stroking Ryan’s hair and Ryan’s even still got his boots on.
“You’re going to be gone in a week,” Ryan says unhappily. Brendon sighs and hugs him tightly. “And I know I’m being selfish but I don’t want you to leave. I don’t want you to leave me.”
“I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to,” Brendon says. Brendon reaches out and takes Ryan’s hat off, discarding it and his own on the floor. He slides off his jacket and bends down to take off his shoes. He unlaces Ryan’s tunic and helps him slide it off, then takes his own off. He gets Ryan lying down on the couch and they lay there silently, still sweaty and gross from the heat at the faire and neither of them caring, really.
Ryan slides his arms around Brendon and holds on. They’re still like that when Spencer gets home, still wearing their tights and shirts, Ryan still in his boots.
Spencer kind of feels sorry for them.
***
Ryan spends Sunday hiding out in the pirate ship, not wanting to talk to anyone and really not wanting to be at the faire anyway. He wears Pete’s hat and the same pants Jon had found him second weekend and doesn’t change into his own garb until it’s time to head out to chessboard, and even then he can’t manage to get into the whole thing like he normally does.
Spencer finds him after, before he can change back into the pirate clothes. “Ryan,” he says. Ryan just shakes his head and starts to untie his tunic to take it off.
“No, Ryan, listen to me,” Spencer says. “This is supposed to be fun, yeah? Please just… make the most of what’s left, okay?”
Ryan looks at him for a long moment, then nods, putting his own hat on. Jon catches him before he goes back outside.
“Are you okay?” Jon asks, frowning. He’s out of the loop and has no idea what’s going on, because Ryan hasn’t been coming to their dinners on Sunday nights. No one’s bothered to tell Jon about Brendon leaving.
“Brendon’s leaving next Sunday. He won’t be back,” Ryan says, and to his credit, he doesn’t start crying, though it’s a very near thing. “For two years,” he adds, and Jon is left standing there inside the pirate ship, startled.
Spencer opts to ride with Jon on the way to the IHOP after faire closes that evening, partly because he doesn’t want to be stuck in a car with Ryan and Brendon, and secondly because he’s hoping that maybe they’ll talk.
Once they’re seated, telling the waitress they’re sorry, but that they’ll have two more, Jon asks Spencer what the deal is with Brendon leaving.
“His parents found out he wasn’t staying in his dorm room, and they decided that he needs to come home and do his mission work, and they’re not taking no for an answer,” Spencer explains.
“Yeah, but don’t they care about him finishing his degree or whatever?” Jon asks, frowning.
“Truthfully? I don’t think they care whether their son finishes his degree in theatre or not,” Spencer says.
“Ouch,” says Jon. Spencer nods, then orders drinks for himself and Brendon and Ryan when the waitress returns.
“So they’ve been fighting on and off, and I’m sick of it. That’s why Ryan’s been hiding out in the pirate ship and stuff like that, you know?” Spencer says. Then he shakes his head. “Really sick of it.”
“God, that blows,” is all Jon says.
***
Ryan and Brendon are sitting in the parking lot, and Ryan is not looking at Brendon. Brendon is frustrated, tired, and he feels like he really needs a shower at this point.
“Ryan, please,” he says, reaching out and grabbing hold of the other boy’s hand. “I have to do this, okay? My parents will be here next weekend, and I swear that I will come back when I can, okay?”
“I love you,” Ryan says helplessly, because he doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know how to get that point across to Brendon and make him not want to leave.
“I know. I love you, too, Ry, but I … I have to,” Brendon says. “I don’t have a choice, though.”
Ryan leans across the space between their seats and kisses Brendon hard, knowing that both of their mouths will be bruised later and Ryan doesn’t care, because Brendon is fisting his hands up in Ryan’s sweaty hair and kissing him back just as hard.
“I don’t want you to leave me,” Ryan whispers, licking his lips.
“I know. I’ll come back. I promise you that I will,” Brendon says, and neither of them are sure that Ryan will be waiting if it takes two years for Brendon to come back.
“Okay,” Ryan says. “Okay.” And he kisses Brendon again, almost climbing across the seat and into his lap to do it, to get a better angle. Brendon breaks the kiss and looks at Ryan, stroking his fingers over Ryan’s hair.
“Let’s go eat, and then… and then I guess we’ll make the best of this week,” Brendon says, hugging Ryan tightly after a moment.
Ryan nods, and they go inside. Jon doesn’t make a joke about how their hair is ruffled or how Ryan’s lips are redder than normal. Spencer doesn’t say anything because they’re holding hands and that’s good enough for him. They slide into the booth across from Spencer and Jon, Ryan on the inside, just like always, and Brendon threads his arm around Ryan’s shoulder and pulls him close, and that’s something they don’t normally do in public.
Brendon orders meat and doesn’t make a secret out of drinking Ryan’s soda. If he’s going back to his parents, he might as well make the best of the time he’s got right now.
***
Ryan and Brendon lock themselves in Ryan’s bedroom before Spencer even has a chance to say anything to either of them once they’re at home. Spencer thinks this is going to be a fantastic week, if they’re going to take every opportunity possible to have sex.
He rolls his eyes and goes into his own room, turning his stereo on, loud enough that he can’t hear them.
***
Sixth weekend is traditionally the hottest weekend of faire, the middle of June and usually humid as all hell. Spencer’s fingers slide on his sword from the sweat as he lunges forward toward Ryan. He’s vaguely aware of the other characters beating their palms and fists on the board, cheering them on as Ryan forces Spencer backward, off the board and into Jon and Pete’s arms, standing there waiting to catch Spencer.
Ryan holds up his sword and both arms, yelling, “return to field” as he moves to take Spencer’s place. Spencer looks at the crowd around them, the largest so far, he thinks, and he can see the man and woman that Brendon had already introduced as his parents. They didn’t seem too happy to be at the faire, or that their son was wearing tights and what pretty much amounted to a skirt as he participated in it.
They did, however, look mildly impressed with Brendon’s acting ability, which Spencer thought wasn’t too bad, all things considered.
***
Brendon had been careful to make it look like he’d been sleeping on Ryan and Spencer’s couch for the last couple of weeks. They’d gotten out blankets and pillows and folded them up neatly, not wanting Brendon’s parents to know that Brendon had definitely been sleeping in bed with Ryan.
They weren’t impressed by the apartment, and they weren’t impressed with Ryan or Spencer, either. Spencer put up with about twenty minutes of being talked down to like a child before he tensely informed Ryan that he was taking Haley out, and he all but ran into the bathroom to shower. Ryan didn’t have a clever excuse to get out of it.
They were upset that there was caffeine in the house, to start with, because the first thing that Ryan did was disappear into the kitchen and get himself a soda, leaning against the counter. They figured, since Brendon was staying there so much, the least Ryan and Spencer could do was not tempt him with things like that.
“No offense, ma’am,” Ryan had told them, “but I’m not going to give up something I enjoy just because you think I should. You’re not my parents.”
Brendon had stared at Ryan, horrified.
And now Brendon’s parents were trying to make him go and stay in their hotel with them.
“Mom, honestly,” Brendon says. “If I’m not doing it, what does it matter if he does?”
“He probably doesn’t go to church, either,” Brendon’s mother says, and Brendon has to fight not to roll his eyes.
“No, he doesn’t,” Brendon says. “But that’s his choice.”
Brendon’s parents frown at him.
“Just have your stuff ready to leave tomorrow night,” they tell him, and when they leave, he just sits on the couch in silence for a little while.
Ryan comes in, and climbs up on the couch. They’re both still in costume, but Ryan’s down to his tights and his shirt, and he straddles Brendon’s hips.
“Here,” he says, and pushes Brendon’s jacket off his shoulders. Brendon shifts and lets him get it off, then helps Ryan take off his tunic as well.
“Ryan, I don’t,” Brendon says, and Ryan presses two fingers to Brendon’s lips.
“Shh,” Ryan says, and then leans down and kisses Brendon, shifting his hips so that they’re pressed hard against Brendon’s. He grabs Brendon’s hand and brings it down. “Tonight’s our last night,” he tells Brendon.
Brendon makes a noise in the back of his throat, and Ryan can’t tell whether it’s sad or upset or turned on, or any of that. Ryan starts to move, rocking his hips slowly against Brendon’s, Brendon palming halfheartedly at Ryan’s cock, just letting Ryan do all of the work, rubbing them together.
“Please,” Ryan chokes out, and he’s afraid he’s going to start crying, because Brendon’s so unresponsive and this is the last night that he’s going to get to spend with his boyfriend before he’s gone for God knows how long.
Ryan reaches his hand down between them, slides his hand into Brendon’s tights and jerks him slowly, and Brendon just tips his head back and lets Ryan move against him, lets Ryan kiss him, sliding his hands up underneath Ryan’s shirt to run over his skin. Ryan jerks him faster, grinding down harder, and Brendon gasps, arching his hips up into Ryan’s hand as he comes.
Ryan pulls his hand out of Brendon’s tights, looking at Brendon seriously, shifting so that they lay down on the couch, side by side. Ryan slides his knee between Brendon’s legs, pushing his knee up, pressing against him as he licks Brendon’s come off of his fingers, looking at Brendon with his eyes half lidded.
Brendon pulls Ryan’s hand away from his mouth, and kisses him roughly, able to taste himself on Ryan’s tongue. Ryan’s pressed up against him, hard and waiting, and Brendon just strokes his fingers over the bare skin of Ryan’s back.
“I want this to. Make it last, Ryan,” Brendon says, because this is going to be the last time he’s going to get to touch this skin, kiss this mouth, until he comes back, if he’s able to come back.
“We can do it again,” Ryan whispers. “We can. We have time. We have all night.”
“We have to sleep,” Brendon says.
“No,” Ryan says. “No, we can stay up all night. We can.”
Brendon almost starts crying then. Ryan sounds so determined, and he leans forward and crushes their mouths together again, letting go of Ryan’s hand and moving his own down Ryan’s stomach, sliding it into the front of Ryan’s tights, pulling him free and stroking him slowly.
“We’re going to have to wash our clothes,” Ryan says quietly.
“We have spares,” Brendon says, and he doesn’t care if he just has to go in sweaty clothes. Maybe not in come-soaked tights, but sweaty doesn’t bother him.
“Yeah,” Ryan says, his voice wavering as he thrusts his hips weakly into Brendon’s hand.
***
Spencer returns home to find them sleeping on the couch. His first thought is to let them sleep, but he knows Ryan, knows that Ryan wouldn’t want to sleep through any of the last hours that he’s able to share with Brendon. Plus, they’re kind of gross lying there on the couch, and Spencer is pretty sure he’s able to see Ryan’s cock.
“Hey guys,” Spencer says, and doesn’t move any closer, because yeah, that’s definitely cock. He averts his eyes. “Guys, pull up your pants and get off the couch, okay?”
Ryan starts and falls off the couch. At least the big frilly shirt covers up all his important parts. Just woken up, Ryan looks all of fifteen years old, his hair a mess and his lips bruised from Brendon kissing him.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep!” he says woefully, and stands up, adjusting himself and reaching out one hand to grab Brendon’s, to pull Brendon up off the couch.
“You should get some sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day,” Spencer says.
“I can’t. Can’t sleep,” Ryan says, and tugs a very groggy Brendon toward his bedroom. Brendon stumbles after him and Spencer hears the door slam. He just shakes his head and goes to his own bedroom, closing the door and climbing into bed.
He gets up to go to the bathroom, several hours later, and he can still see light coming from beneath Ryan’s bedroom door, and if he steps close enough, he can hear faint voices, and if he stands there long enough, the occasional choked sob.
It’s almost enough to make Spencer start crying himself.
Almost.
***
Spencer hates the way Ryan looks exhausted when they drive to the faire the next morning. It’s early, and Ryan sits in the back seat with Brendon while Spencer drives. He’s got dark circles under his eyes, and Spencer knows that that nap before Spencer got home was all the sleep Ryan got. Brendon is uncharacteristically silent, both of his hands wrapped around one of Ryan’s, his head on Ryan’s shoulder.
They hold hands all the way into the faire, through the morning meeting, and until they have to go out for opening gate. Spencer catches sight of Ryan pulling Brendon out of sight of all of the patrons and kissing him desperately, before taking a deep breath and charging out to play his part. Spencer watches as Brendon just stands there for a moment, before going out to do the same, giving Spencer a weak little smile before joining the king on his way out.
Spencer has just finished one of the dance sessions when he notices Ryan heading up toward the castle. He follows, hoping to just give Ryan a hug, something, anything, try to make him feel better. He notices Ryan slipping through the booths that line the side of the castle. Why would Ryan be sneaking into the back?
Spencer follows, pulling the door open carefully.
Brendon’s already there, in the grungy space behind the castle walls and the fencing that blocks off the booths. Spencer wonders why there’s a space here anyway, all fenced off, like it was meant for such clandestine meetings as this. Ryan’s face is pressed into Brendon’s neck and they’ve got their arms around each other.
Spencer closes the door as quietly as he can and slips back into the faire. It’s better to leave them alone, he thinks. They deserve the few minutes that they can get.
Spencer wipes his eyes quickly as he heads back down to the gypsy camp.
***
Brendon has to beg his parents to be allowed to go with the guys for dinner that evening. He tells them that it’s their tradition, that they’ve done it the last two years, and he wants to go, because this will be his last chance to see any of his best friends for a while. He begs and pleads and looks at them with his eyes wide and hurt, and they do tell him finally that he can go.
It’s sort of tense, and when it’s all over, Jon hugs him so hard that every single bone in his back cracks, and Brendon sheds a few tears as he hugs Jon back just as hard. As an afterthought, Jon grabs hold of Ryan and gathers the skinny boy into his arms, hugging him tightly.
“You’ll be all right,” Jon whispers. “You’ll make it.”
Ryan looks at Jon with tear filled eyes and nods his head before fleeing back to the car.
Brendon calls his parents after they get back to the apartment and in the meantime, he and Ryan curl up on the couch and kiss each other desperately. Spencer stays in the kitchen, pacing back and forth and making coffee, because he’s sure that Ryan will need it once Brendon’s parents take him away.
When Brendon’s parents arrive, both Brendon and Ryan are trying to pretend that they’re not upset to see each other go. Brendon’s the better actor, Spencer notices, but Ryan isn’t too bad, and he and Spencer help Brendon carry his stuff down to Brendon’s parents’ minivan.
Spencer stalls the parents while Brendon and Ryan go back for the last few of Brendon’s things, taking the brief time alone to say their goodbyes. Ryan doesn’t come back down when Brendon does. Ryan’s not a good enough actor to keep Brendon’s parents from knowing that he was about to break down. Spencer hurries upstairs once Brendon is gone and into Ryan’s bedroom. Ryan is sitting on the floor next to his bed, his knees pulled up to his chest.
Spencer knows that Ryan’s crying, and he just wraps his arm around Ryan’s shoulders and sits there. Ryan just has to get it all out of his system then Spencer will fix him a cup of coffee. Spencer can feel Ryan’s shoulders shaking as he cries. It’s silent, but Spencer still knows.
After a few long moments, he says “Ryan, come on. Get up, and I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
Ryan lifts his head, and Spencer takes one look at his face and knows that he has no idea what to do to fix his best friend’s broken heart.
***
Brendon tells the truth about sending letters. They come at least once a week, postmarked from Brendon’s hometown, and then postmarked from the mission school in Utah. The letters always talk about how much Brendon misses him, how much Brendon misses Spencer, even, and how much he loves Ryan.
That’s the main point. Ryan reads the words over and over, written in sharp block letters, black ink, down a page of notebook paper.
Ryan’s been getting off work earlier than Spencer, and Spencer dreads the days he comes home and Ryan’s gotten a letter. Ryan sits on the couch and stares at the page, and Spencer isn’t even sure that Ryan can even see it, because Ryan’s crying.
Spencer sits down on the couch and hugs him. He feels sorry for Ryan, and knows that he doesn’t understand, because Spencer can see Haley whenever he wants, and Ryan hasn’t even heard Brendon’s voice for months now.
Spencer doesn’t miss Brendon’s voice so much, actually.
He misses Ryan’s smile, though.
Ryan hardly ever writes back. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because it’s hard to get letters to Brendon. Brendon isn’t always in the same place, and it’s worse for Ryan to receive a letter back “return to sender” than to not write one at all.
The letters that Brendon does get, all spiky, slanted handwriting, break his heart just as much as the ones that Ryan gets. Except sometimes the letters are smeared by teardrops. Those are the ones that make Brendon cry.
In October, Brendon stops sending letters.
Ryan doesn’t know why. He wishes that he knew why, but Brendon never said anything, and suddenly they stopped.
Ryan doesn’t say anything about it to Spencer, but Spencer knows anyway.
***
It’s a Thursday, just before Christmas, and it’s sort of bitterly cold. It was Spencer’s turn to go for groceries, and Ryan had stayed up in their apartment, mainlining caffeine and studying for one of his finals.
Brendon is sitting on one of the low walls lining the walkway up to the doors to the lobby of their apartment. He doesn’t look different, not to Spencer’s eyes, just cold. He looks up as Spencer approaches with his bags of milk and bread and all the right things to make hot cocoa.
Brendon stands up as Spencer approaches, and Spencer can see that he’s shivering in just a thin jacket. There’s a duffle bag lying on the ground nearby.
“What are you doing?” Spencer asks.
“Waiting for you to get home,” Brendon says. He looks nervous and unsure of himself, and that’s something Spencer has never seen Brendon as.
“Ryan’s upstairs,” Spencer says automatically, because why would Brendon be waiting on him when the guy he loved was only a few flights up.
“I…” Brendon says, and Spencer doesn’t know what Brendon was going to say. He shakes his head. “He’s not. I was scared to just go up and see him, because we haven’t… talked or anything, and… I was just afraid that he might. He’s not seeing anyone, is he?”
Spencer rolls his eyes, because both Brendon and Ryan are idiots. That’s what this boils down to, he’s sure. Brendon and Ryan are idiots.
“No, he isn’t,” Spencer says, shaking his head. “Ryan is still miserably in love with you, so please go upstairs and keep him from throwing himself out the window, okay?”
Brendon’s face splits in a smile and he grabs his duffel bag, almost bouncing as Spencer takes him up the stairs, unlocks the door and lets him in the apartment. Ryan is sitting at the kitchen table, notes and books spread out across the table in front of him.
He doesn’t look up. “Spencer,” he whines. “Will you make me hot cocoa? I’ll make you cookies if I pass this stupid-“
He looks up halfway through his sentence and Spencer can almost see his face going pale. Spencer walks into the kitchen and puts his bags down, then leans over Ryan, nuzzling his nose into the top of Ryan’s hair.
“I’ll make you hot chocolate, honey, if you’ll get up from here and go say hello to your boyfriend,” Spencer says, and he hugs Ryan as best he can in the awkward position, before stepping out of the way. “And warm him up. It’s cold outside and God knows how long he’s been sitting out there.”
Ryan knocks his chair over getting up from the table, and he runs the length of the living room, flinging himself into Brendon’s arms. They tumble back against the door and Brendon loses his balance, sliding down the door. Ryan falls with him, and it doesn’t matter, because Brendon is here, in his apartment. He crushes his lips to Brendon’s and Brendon clings to him, holding on to Ryan fit to snap the skinnier boy in half.
Spencer smiles and goes on about putting away the groceries and making hot cocoa.
***
On the first day of rehearsal for the chess match, at the end of January, Jon hugs Brendon so tightly that every bone in his back cracks. This is a fact of life, and how Jon gives hugs.
“I thought you weren’t going to be here!” Jon bellows. Cassie is grinning and she hugs Brendon tightly as well. Apparently Jon has told her all about it, and she hugged Ryan just as hard.
“I wasn’t,” Brendon says, but he’s smiling and he reaches out and slides his hand into Ryan’s.
Spencer grins at them and he’s got his arm around Haley’s shoulders. “No, now he’s living in my apartment again,” Spencer tells them. “Which means that now I have to deal with them making out on my couch again.”
Ryan reaches out and shoves Spencer’s shoulder. “It’s our apartment. Our couch, Spencer, I can kick your ass.”
“Oh, try me,” Spencer says.
“All right, listen up,” Bob yells, ready to start coordinating all of this. He’s their choreographer and their fight director. They all have input, of course, but Bob makes sure that it all meshes, and makes sense. “Sit your asses down and get ready to do this shit.”
Everyone scrambles to find seats. Spencer and Haley sit side by side on the floor, and Jon and Cassie manage to snag chairs at the end of a row. Pete scrambles into the seat beside Jon. Maja takes the seat in front of Jon, and Gabe slides in late, sitting on the floor beside Spencer and Haley. Brendon plops down on the floor beside the front row of chairs, and tugs Ryan down into his lap.
They scuffle for a moment before both of them consent to simply sitting there, Brendon’s arms wrapped around Ryan’s waist.
***
First weekend of faire the temperature soars to record highs, and halfway through Sunday Ryan plops down next to Spencer in the gypsy camp and fans himself with his hat.
“Its cooler down here,” he tells Spencer. He makes himself useful, borrows Gabe’s guitar and plays along with Spencer’s beat as Haley and Jessica dance. Brendon drifts down later, his jacket lost somewhere, and he stretches out on the ground beside Spencer and propositions all the women who walk by with a big smile and his horrible accent.
Brendon doesn’t see his parents. They show up, because they know that there’s nowhere else Brendon can go, except back to his friends. Ryan doesn’t see them, either, because he’s concentrating on playing, and watching Brendon as well. Spencer sees them, but he’s the only one. He says nothing.
They just want to know that their son is okay. They’re not sure that they want him to come home, because he’s already walked away from the life that they wanted for him. The life that they raised him in. But he doesn’t look thin, he doesn’t look sick, and he’s certainly smiling.
They hang around for the remainder of the day, then follow the four boys out to the IHOP when they leave. They watch all four boys get out of their cars, shedding extra clothes and tossing them back in. Brendon’s mother is almost horrified to see that her son is going to go into a restaurant wearing what is pretty much a very large shirt, but that’s not near as shocking as seeing him take hold of the skinny kid’s hand as they walk inside, or seeing him lean in close and kiss the other boy.
They leave. This boy, they can’t claim him as their son. Not like this.
Brendon doesn’t know. Spencer never says anything.
Spencer isn’t sure Brendon would care.
***
“I now pronounce you husband and wife,” says the priest.
There are cheers as Jon leans over and kisses Cassie, smiles on everyone’s faces. The reception follows, and there is cake, there is happiness, there is champagne, there is dancing.
Brendon catches the garter. It’s a complete accident (he swears) and it even makes him blush. Ryan laughs and Brendon puts it on, wearing it above his knee over his pants for the rest of the night.
Spencer drives on the way home, with Haley in the front seat, and Ryan and Brendon curled up against each other in the back seat.
When Brendon kisses Ryan, he tastes like champagne and wedding cake, and Ryan thinks that everything has turned out perfectly after all.