(no subject)
Title: Seven Steps to Make a Circle
Author: DF
Fandom: P!atD, FOB, TAI
Pairing: Panic! GSF
Summary: Seven views of the Panic! boys by seven different people at seven different points in time.
Disclaimer: No harm intended (don't own), hopefully no harm incurred (don't sue). I own nothing but the story; even Heather and the photos described are real. Props to anyone who can find the pictures I'm talking about.
i. brent
Sometimes Brent thinks it was better when Trevor was around, even though Trevor could be kind of a dick and didn't grow up, didn't want to move on when the rest of them did. And okay, maybe that's not his fault, but Brent is still bitter, still kind of resents him for not following where the rest of them led.
Because, see, with Trevor at least Brent had someone to keep him company. Everyone else will forever be on the outside of the entity that is SpencerandRyan. Brent doesn't mind mind - they're his friends, why the fuck would he begrudge them their best friendship? - but sometimes it sucks, always being the third wheel.
So he brings in Brendon, because Brendon's a musical genius or whatever but also because it means he'll have someone to hang with while Spencer and Ryan are doing their thing and talking like they know exactly what the other is thinking.
It's great, for a while; everyone likes Brendon but he's awkward, a little, fits smoothly into the band but not SpencerandRyan. So it's great for a while, but then it isn't.
Brent ignores the first hints of it, the shared smiles and inside jokes, but he can't help getting smacked over the head with it when Spencer and Brendon show up at practice together one day and Brendon says, "Oh, yeah, my parents kicked me out of the house, so I'm staying at Spencer's until I find a place."
Ryan doesn't look surprised, and Brent remembers that Ryan goes over to Spencer's house all the time. He wants to shake Brendon, demand Why them? I thought I was your best friend, fuck, man, I go to your school, I could give you rides in the morning.
Still, though, Brendon just got kicked out of his fucking house, so Brent tries his best to be sympathetic. Spencer's the one who fixes things, anyway; Spencer takes care of people. It kind of makes sense.
Then Ryan starts crashing at Brendon's apartment more often than not and Brendon starts making Spencer mango smoothies with blueberries, no raspberries, before Spencer can even ask, and Brent knows it's a lost cause. Knows that this time, he's going to be the one that gets left behind.
ii. pete
"We don't have Spencer," Ryan blurts out, fidgeting, "or Brent, but."
"We figure we can try it without them just this once," Brendon fills in smoothly. "Spencer will be played by a recording. Which is a pity, because it can't really do him justice."
"We really are committed," Ryan assures Pete, and Pete almost wants to pet him, he looks so much like a nervous puppy. "It's just..."
Brendon doesn't say anything, just reaches over to grip Ryan's shoulder. Pete sees Ryan take a deep breath, calm down.
"So," Pete prompts, grinning at them, because they're so adorable. He wants to put them in his pocket and take them home to Patrick, he really does. He could dress them up and everything! "Which song are you playing first?"
"Oh!" Ryan says, looking embarrassed. "Oh, yeah. Sorry."
He introduces the song and they launch in, the drum recording tinny in the background but Brendon's hand sure on the bass. Pete wants to ask them if they even realise that they're leaning towards each other just slightly, incrementally, but he's pretty sure the answer would be no.
iii. heather
Heather Stebbins plays the cello, and of all the studio musicians contributing to A Fever You Can't Sweat Out she plays in the most songs. It's only four tracks, though, it's not too many. The Panic! boys tend to be pretty musically proficient.
Well, the boys that she sees, in any case; that Brent kid only shows up a couple times, and she's not really sure if he actually plays anything or if he just hangs out with them sometimes. He seems nice enough, though.
They're all sweet boys, really; Heather keeps herself from cooing over them but she can't help baking cookies for them when she comes in to work on 'There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought of It Yet' (seriously, could that song have a longer name?) They accept them with shy smiles and scarf them down during their break.
"Are you even out of high school yet?" she asks with a laugh, and Brendon declares dramatically that he has his diploma and everything, thank you very much.
"Brent and Spencer had to finish online," he whispers as if it's shameful, dropping the farce to giggle when Spencer shoves him.
"I graduated a year ago, I'm way too mature for them," Ryan informs Heather loftily, sneaking another chocolate chip cookie off the plate. Spencer shoves him, too, and he grins.
Heather only plays on four tracks, but she likes watching Spencer, Ryan and Brendon interact, likes seeing how they all touch each other in these absent-minded, innocent ways - Brendon grabbing Spencer's hand, Spencer ruffling Ryan's hair - like it's a habit, like breathing.
Sometimes she wonders what they think they're doing; sometimes she wonders if they actually realise they're doing it. Mostly, though, she just thinks that they're sweet boys - refreshing, after all the divas she's met - and just goes back to playing cello. It's her job, after all.
iv. william
In some ways, William sees it coming.
He likes being on tour with Panic! - they're great guys, even if he is kind of upset that they're pretty much jailbait. No big, though; it's not like there are any laws against checking out Brendon's ass or Spencer's hips, and hooking up with Pete's newbie protegees is probably a no-no anyway.
They must have some kind of homing device or something, though, because they catch on to the awesomeness of Jon Walker in, like, a millisecond. All of a sudden he's playing bass when Brent doesn't show up and singing Aladdin with Brendon (which, for the record, is actually kind of awesome; Bill wishes he could secretly record it and leak it onto the internet because the world should not miss the amazingness of Jon Walker's Jasmin-falsetto).
Bill doesn't mind, not really. He says it's because Jon Walker deserves to be shared with the world at large, but really? It's because he's not as oblivious as people think, sometimes.
"Is that glitter, my friend?" Bill demands of Jon one night, when he's just escaped his abduction by the Panic! boys.
Jon laughs. "Ryan insisted on putting makeup on me," he explains, and William gasps melodramatically.
"Tom!" he calls out. "Tom, they put glitter on him!"
Tom, lovely, fantastic Tom, takes the hint and shakes his head at Jon. "Jon, my friend," he says somberly. "You know what this means." He waits a second for dramatic emphasis, lowers his voice to a stage whisper. "They're trying to make you one of them."
"I'm afraid for you," Bill confesses, clutching his hand to his heart. "What if one day you aren't able to resist their boyish good looks and feminine wiles?"
Jon snickers at them and says, "Don't worry, Bill, your feminine wiles overpower theirs. I will always come back."
I'm not so sure, William thinks, and so he's not really surprised when, after Brent leaves, Brendon, Spencer and Ryan ask if they can steal Jon. Brendon even gets down on one knee, which makes William laugh so hard he almost gives in right then and there. He waits a little while, makes them promise to feed Jon every day and tells them if they break him, they have to pay for him, before he lets them go.
"It's just temporary," Jon tells him later, laughing.
"Right," William says, and, "I can't wait to see you in eyeliner." He laughs as Jon curses.
He's not surprised when Panic! steals Jon; he's not surprised when Jon doesn't come back.
v. cameras
Brendon buries his face in Jon's neck, one hand in Jon's hair, the other fisted in his shirt as a crowd of girls looks on. Spencer grins at Jon as they walk down the street, at a signing; Jon sits behind Spencer's drumkit and Spencer never, ever lets anyone touch his drumsticks. (Except apparently, he does.) Brendon throws his arms around Ryan in one, two, three, four, too many pictures to count.
(Even when Brent is there, he stands slightly apart; Brendon and Ryan tilt their hips towards each other just so slightly, Ryan's arm brushing Spencer's chest.)
Jon, smiling as if he knows something no one else does (maybe he does; he's the only one not wearing makeup, after all) stands diagonal to Ryan, letting Ryan's arm fall against his chest. Ryan and Brendon's heads touch, hips meet and Spencer tilts towards Brendon as if he can't help it.
Curled up in a corner, Spencer's knee lies on top of Jon's; Ryan's hand falls on Jon's thigh and in the back, Brendon's knee simultaneously presses against Ryan's leg and Jon's back. Jon is still smiling secretively.
(A thousand hands, a thousand hugs, a thousand pictures; it's not finding evidence that's hard, it's ignoring it.)
vi. zack
Post-show roundups are generally the most stressful time for Zack. En route pit stops run a close second - for the record, it's fucking hard to drag Brendon away from way stations, especially when they have ten million little stores that no one ever really needs, and especially especially when he starts making friends with random truckers - but they've established a routine with those. If they stop for less than fifteen minutes, it usually involves not letting Brendon off the bus.
Pre-show is comparatively easy. Even if he loses sight of all four boys, they are, at hear, professionals; he can trust them to get to the venue with time to spare before soundcheck.
After the show, though, the fangirls are harder to control, and Spencer, Brendon, Ryan and Jon are all running around with performance endorphins, wanting to be anywhere and everywhere except back on the bus.
Zack sighs, before catching sight of a familiar face. "Spencer," he begins, and Spencer looks up at him. "You wouldn't happen to know where Ryan, Jon and Brendon are, would you?"
Spencer just sucks lazily on his milkshake - where did he get that, anyway? - and says, "Jon went to the bathroom, and Ryan went to grab his sweatshirt from backstage but I think he got sucked into talking to one of the other bands."
"And Brendon?" Zack asks warily.
Spencer smirks. "Right behind you." It's all the warning Zack has before a very familiar pair of arms suddenly latch around his neck.
"Zack!" Brendon exclaims, wriggling himself into a more comfortable piggyback position.
"Brendon," Zack replies, fighting back a smile. "You know, you're covered in sweat."
"It's not sweat," Brendon tells him all too innocently. "It's my love for you in liquid form."
"What about your love for me?" Spencer wonders absently, smiling slightly.
"My love for you is boundless, Smith," Brendon declares, flinging one of his arms out wildly. The other one wraps around Zack even more tightly to compensate. "If it became liquid, we would flood the world. Also, where did you get the milkshake?"
"Bribed one of the techs to get it for me." Spencer passes the cup to Brendon before Brendon can even beckon for it.
"Hey look, there's Ryan!" Brendon mumbles around the straw.
Zack lifts his head up, ready to corral another of his errant sheep. "Where?"
"There," Brendon says, pointing. Zack can see a lanky figure in the distance. He's not even sure it's Ryan from this far away, but he knows better than to ask. Brendon knows.
"And Jon should probably be done right about now," Spencer remarks, and almost exactly on cue, Jon strides out of the venue bathrooms. Correction: Post-show roundups are generally the most stressful time for Zack, but not as stressful as they could be if his charges didn't generally know where their bandmates were at any given moment.
"Come on, onto the buses," he says when Ryan arrives, making sure to wrap his arms around Brendon's legs so there's no chance of escape. He shepherds them on the bus and shuts the door behind them; they ought to stay in place now.
He never rides on the bus with them. He figures they might want to be by themselves for a while.
vii. pete
"Ryan!" Pete yells, running into the Panic! bus. "Ryan -"
"Quiet," he hears Spencer say harshly, if a bit sleepily, so he slows to a walk and calms down a little. Nobody crosses Spencer Smith.
"Hey, is Ryan there?" he asks in a cross between a whisper and his usual speaking voice. Pete's not very good at quieting down. "He said he wanted to work on lyrics."
He walks into the lounge and looks down, sees the entire band curled up on the tiny couch and is impressed with their flexibility, as well as their ability to sleep in positions that don't look comfortable at all.
"He's asleep," Spencer says, which is kind of superfluous because hey, Pete's here now, he can see for himself. Spencer yawns.
"Oh," he says, and is about to ask if he can wake Ryan up when Spencer, who is lying mostly on top of Jon's chest, narrows his eyes. Pete holds up his hands and backs carefully out of the room. Really, nobody crosses Spencer Smith, not even (technically) his boss.
If Patrick were here, Pete thinks, he'd probably say something about music and rhythms and flow. Pete just thinks that, no matter how long he knows the Panic! boys, he will never stop wanting to put them in his pocket and take them home.
Also, he really wants to cuddle now. Grinning, Pete dashes off to the other bus to see if Patrick is doing anything.
Author: DF
Fandom: P!atD, FOB, TAI
Pairing: Panic! GSF
Summary: Seven views of the Panic! boys by seven different people at seven different points in time.
Disclaimer: No harm intended (don't own), hopefully no harm incurred (don't sue). I own nothing but the story; even Heather and the photos described are real. Props to anyone who can find the pictures I'm talking about.
i. brent
Sometimes Brent thinks it was better when Trevor was around, even though Trevor could be kind of a dick and didn't grow up, didn't want to move on when the rest of them did. And okay, maybe that's not his fault, but Brent is still bitter, still kind of resents him for not following where the rest of them led.
Because, see, with Trevor at least Brent had someone to keep him company. Everyone else will forever be on the outside of the entity that is SpencerandRyan. Brent doesn't mind mind - they're his friends, why the fuck would he begrudge them their best friendship? - but sometimes it sucks, always being the third wheel.
So he brings in Brendon, because Brendon's a musical genius or whatever but also because it means he'll have someone to hang with while Spencer and Ryan are doing their thing and talking like they know exactly what the other is thinking.
It's great, for a while; everyone likes Brendon but he's awkward, a little, fits smoothly into the band but not SpencerandRyan. So it's great for a while, but then it isn't.
Brent ignores the first hints of it, the shared smiles and inside jokes, but he can't help getting smacked over the head with it when Spencer and Brendon show up at practice together one day and Brendon says, "Oh, yeah, my parents kicked me out of the house, so I'm staying at Spencer's until I find a place."
Ryan doesn't look surprised, and Brent remembers that Ryan goes over to Spencer's house all the time. He wants to shake Brendon, demand Why them? I thought I was your best friend, fuck, man, I go to your school, I could give you rides in the morning.
Still, though, Brendon just got kicked out of his fucking house, so Brent tries his best to be sympathetic. Spencer's the one who fixes things, anyway; Spencer takes care of people. It kind of makes sense.
Then Ryan starts crashing at Brendon's apartment more often than not and Brendon starts making Spencer mango smoothies with blueberries, no raspberries, before Spencer can even ask, and Brent knows it's a lost cause. Knows that this time, he's going to be the one that gets left behind.
ii. pete
"We don't have Spencer," Ryan blurts out, fidgeting, "or Brent, but."
"We figure we can try it without them just this once," Brendon fills in smoothly. "Spencer will be played by a recording. Which is a pity, because it can't really do him justice."
"We really are committed," Ryan assures Pete, and Pete almost wants to pet him, he looks so much like a nervous puppy. "It's just..."
Brendon doesn't say anything, just reaches over to grip Ryan's shoulder. Pete sees Ryan take a deep breath, calm down.
"So," Pete prompts, grinning at them, because they're so adorable. He wants to put them in his pocket and take them home to Patrick, he really does. He could dress them up and everything! "Which song are you playing first?"
"Oh!" Ryan says, looking embarrassed. "Oh, yeah. Sorry."
He introduces the song and they launch in, the drum recording tinny in the background but Brendon's hand sure on the bass. Pete wants to ask them if they even realise that they're leaning towards each other just slightly, incrementally, but he's pretty sure the answer would be no.
iii. heather
Heather Stebbins plays the cello, and of all the studio musicians contributing to A Fever You Can't Sweat Out she plays in the most songs. It's only four tracks, though, it's not too many. The Panic! boys tend to be pretty musically proficient.
Well, the boys that she sees, in any case; that Brent kid only shows up a couple times, and she's not really sure if he actually plays anything or if he just hangs out with them sometimes. He seems nice enough, though.
They're all sweet boys, really; Heather keeps herself from cooing over them but she can't help baking cookies for them when she comes in to work on 'There's a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought of It Yet' (seriously, could that song have a longer name?) They accept them with shy smiles and scarf them down during their break.
"Are you even out of high school yet?" she asks with a laugh, and Brendon declares dramatically that he has his diploma and everything, thank you very much.
"Brent and Spencer had to finish online," he whispers as if it's shameful, dropping the farce to giggle when Spencer shoves him.
"I graduated a year ago, I'm way too mature for them," Ryan informs Heather loftily, sneaking another chocolate chip cookie off the plate. Spencer shoves him, too, and he grins.
Heather only plays on four tracks, but she likes watching Spencer, Ryan and Brendon interact, likes seeing how they all touch each other in these absent-minded, innocent ways - Brendon grabbing Spencer's hand, Spencer ruffling Ryan's hair - like it's a habit, like breathing.
Sometimes she wonders what they think they're doing; sometimes she wonders if they actually realise they're doing it. Mostly, though, she just thinks that they're sweet boys - refreshing, after all the divas she's met - and just goes back to playing cello. It's her job, after all.
iv. william
In some ways, William sees it coming.
He likes being on tour with Panic! - they're great guys, even if he is kind of upset that they're pretty much jailbait. No big, though; it's not like there are any laws against checking out Brendon's ass or Spencer's hips, and hooking up with Pete's newbie protegees is probably a no-no anyway.
They must have some kind of homing device or something, though, because they catch on to the awesomeness of Jon Walker in, like, a millisecond. All of a sudden he's playing bass when Brent doesn't show up and singing Aladdin with Brendon (which, for the record, is actually kind of awesome; Bill wishes he could secretly record it and leak it onto the internet because the world should not miss the amazingness of Jon Walker's Jasmin-falsetto).
Bill doesn't mind, not really. He says it's because Jon Walker deserves to be shared with the world at large, but really? It's because he's not as oblivious as people think, sometimes.
"Is that glitter, my friend?" Bill demands of Jon one night, when he's just escaped his abduction by the Panic! boys.
Jon laughs. "Ryan insisted on putting makeup on me," he explains, and William gasps melodramatically.
"Tom!" he calls out. "Tom, they put glitter on him!"
Tom, lovely, fantastic Tom, takes the hint and shakes his head at Jon. "Jon, my friend," he says somberly. "You know what this means." He waits a second for dramatic emphasis, lowers his voice to a stage whisper. "They're trying to make you one of them."
"I'm afraid for you," Bill confesses, clutching his hand to his heart. "What if one day you aren't able to resist their boyish good looks and feminine wiles?"
Jon snickers at them and says, "Don't worry, Bill, your feminine wiles overpower theirs. I will always come back."
I'm not so sure, William thinks, and so he's not really surprised when, after Brent leaves, Brendon, Spencer and Ryan ask if they can steal Jon. Brendon even gets down on one knee, which makes William laugh so hard he almost gives in right then and there. He waits a little while, makes them promise to feed Jon every day and tells them if they break him, they have to pay for him, before he lets them go.
"It's just temporary," Jon tells him later, laughing.
"Right," William says, and, "I can't wait to see you in eyeliner." He laughs as Jon curses.
He's not surprised when Panic! steals Jon; he's not surprised when Jon doesn't come back.
v. cameras
Brendon buries his face in Jon's neck, one hand in Jon's hair, the other fisted in his shirt as a crowd of girls looks on. Spencer grins at Jon as they walk down the street, at a signing; Jon sits behind Spencer's drumkit and Spencer never, ever lets anyone touch his drumsticks. (Except apparently, he does.) Brendon throws his arms around Ryan in one, two, three, four, too many pictures to count.
(Even when Brent is there, he stands slightly apart; Brendon and Ryan tilt their hips towards each other just so slightly, Ryan's arm brushing Spencer's chest.)
Jon, smiling as if he knows something no one else does (maybe he does; he's the only one not wearing makeup, after all) stands diagonal to Ryan, letting Ryan's arm fall against his chest. Ryan and Brendon's heads touch, hips meet and Spencer tilts towards Brendon as if he can't help it.
Curled up in a corner, Spencer's knee lies on top of Jon's; Ryan's hand falls on Jon's thigh and in the back, Brendon's knee simultaneously presses against Ryan's leg and Jon's back. Jon is still smiling secretively.
(A thousand hands, a thousand hugs, a thousand pictures; it's not finding evidence that's hard, it's ignoring it.)
vi. zack
Post-show roundups are generally the most stressful time for Zack. En route pit stops run a close second - for the record, it's fucking hard to drag Brendon away from way stations, especially when they have ten million little stores that no one ever really needs, and especially especially when he starts making friends with random truckers - but they've established a routine with those. If they stop for less than fifteen minutes, it usually involves not letting Brendon off the bus.
Pre-show is comparatively easy. Even if he loses sight of all four boys, they are, at hear, professionals; he can trust them to get to the venue with time to spare before soundcheck.
After the show, though, the fangirls are harder to control, and Spencer, Brendon, Ryan and Jon are all running around with performance endorphins, wanting to be anywhere and everywhere except back on the bus.
Zack sighs, before catching sight of a familiar face. "Spencer," he begins, and Spencer looks up at him. "You wouldn't happen to know where Ryan, Jon and Brendon are, would you?"
Spencer just sucks lazily on his milkshake - where did he get that, anyway? - and says, "Jon went to the bathroom, and Ryan went to grab his sweatshirt from backstage but I think he got sucked into talking to one of the other bands."
"And Brendon?" Zack asks warily.
Spencer smirks. "Right behind you." It's all the warning Zack has before a very familiar pair of arms suddenly latch around his neck.
"Zack!" Brendon exclaims, wriggling himself into a more comfortable piggyback position.
"Brendon," Zack replies, fighting back a smile. "You know, you're covered in sweat."
"It's not sweat," Brendon tells him all too innocently. "It's my love for you in liquid form."
"What about your love for me?" Spencer wonders absently, smiling slightly.
"My love for you is boundless, Smith," Brendon declares, flinging one of his arms out wildly. The other one wraps around Zack even more tightly to compensate. "If it became liquid, we would flood the world. Also, where did you get the milkshake?"
"Bribed one of the techs to get it for me." Spencer passes the cup to Brendon before Brendon can even beckon for it.
"Hey look, there's Ryan!" Brendon mumbles around the straw.
Zack lifts his head up, ready to corral another of his errant sheep. "Where?"
"There," Brendon says, pointing. Zack can see a lanky figure in the distance. He's not even sure it's Ryan from this far away, but he knows better than to ask. Brendon knows.
"And Jon should probably be done right about now," Spencer remarks, and almost exactly on cue, Jon strides out of the venue bathrooms. Correction: Post-show roundups are generally the most stressful time for Zack, but not as stressful as they could be if his charges didn't generally know where their bandmates were at any given moment.
"Come on, onto the buses," he says when Ryan arrives, making sure to wrap his arms around Brendon's legs so there's no chance of escape. He shepherds them on the bus and shuts the door behind them; they ought to stay in place now.
He never rides on the bus with them. He figures they might want to be by themselves for a while.
vii. pete
"Ryan!" Pete yells, running into the Panic! bus. "Ryan -"
"Quiet," he hears Spencer say harshly, if a bit sleepily, so he slows to a walk and calms down a little. Nobody crosses Spencer Smith.
"Hey, is Ryan there?" he asks in a cross between a whisper and his usual speaking voice. Pete's not very good at quieting down. "He said he wanted to work on lyrics."
He walks into the lounge and looks down, sees the entire band curled up on the tiny couch and is impressed with their flexibility, as well as their ability to sleep in positions that don't look comfortable at all.
"He's asleep," Spencer says, which is kind of superfluous because hey, Pete's here now, he can see for himself. Spencer yawns.
"Oh," he says, and is about to ask if he can wake Ryan up when Spencer, who is lying mostly on top of Jon's chest, narrows his eyes. Pete holds up his hands and backs carefully out of the room. Really, nobody crosses Spencer Smith, not even (technically) his boss.
If Patrick were here, Pete thinks, he'd probably say something about music and rhythms and flow. Pete just thinks that, no matter how long he knows the Panic! boys, he will never stop wanting to put them in his pocket and take them home.
Also, he really wants to cuddle now. Grinning, Pete dashes off to the other bus to see if Patrick is doing anything.