Fic: Can't Stop Dropping Things
Can't Stop Dropping Things
Brendon/Jon/Spencer (implied Panic!gsf) | NC-17 | 9.5k
Warnings: Deathfic, unbetaed
For my very favorite stephanometra as a belated birthday gift. I love you, bb! ♥ Popcorn? :D? Title from "Simple Together" by Alanis Morissette
Brendon can hear his cellphone ringing through the open windows of the patio, and he knows he should answer it. It's Spencer's ringtone, and he's driving up this afternoon, but Bogart drops his ball off at Brendon's feet and the sun feels awesome against his skin after two sort of shitty, grey days.
Besides, Shane's home; he's inside, so by default, he's closer to the phone.
He throws the ball again, watching it smack off the fence at the back of their yard. It bounces back. Bogart is off and running, barking and wagging his tail like this game is fucking awesome. It is pretty awesome.
Dylan looks over from her spot of grass, where she's stretched out in the sun, and he knows the look she's giving his dog.
"It's okay if you're lazy, babe," he says, bending down to scratch at her ears while Bogart trots over with his ball, dropping it off again. He barks at Brendon to throw it again.
But Shane says, "Hey, Brendon?" from inside the house, and his voice sounds.
Brendon doesn't like the way his voice sounds. He doesn't know how to describe it, like he's raised it the octave and closed the sound so it's all in his nose instead of how he normally talks. Except that he sounds breathless at the same time, and that shouldn't happen.
He leaves the ball and Bogart and Dylan to go inside, where Shane is standing there with his eyes wide, and he's holding out Brendon's phone like it's burning and all he wants to do is drop it.
"Hey, Spence," Brendon says when he takes the phone. He shoots Shane a look, like What the hell, dude?
"Brendon," Spencer says, and his voice is fucked too, rough in a way that Spencer's voice isn't allowed to be.
The microwave beeps in the kitchen, and the dogs are barking. Brendon hears what he says next wrong; he has to. His eyes are burning. He hasn't cried since Dylan ran away, and he's not starting now.
He just heard Spencer wrong. He has to say, "Spence, you're not--"
And Spencer says it again.
***
Brendon doesn't remember the funeral, not really. He remembers sitting up in the Smiths' kitchen until five in the morning while Spencer plans the food for the wake, the music that they should play. He remembers calling his mom and telling her that he was coming home for the week, the way she was quiet when he told her about Ryan, about the accident.
She doesn't say anything until he stops for breath, and then it's just, "Of course, honey." She's waiting up for him when he drives in the next morning with Jon sitting pale beside him and Shane in the back seat.
He goes into his old bedroom, and he knows that he should do something. He remembers his mother hugging him close and whispering that it was okay.
He remembers shaking hands with people that he doesn't know at the viewing, and he remembers getting into the limo that's supposed to be for immediate family. He sits on Spencer's left and Jon's on his right. Zack's across from them, and he doesn't smile when Brendon looks over, not like he usually does.
Brendon remembers the wake, when Pete tried to make them all smile a little, and he remembers Jon rolling and saying it was what Ryan would have wanted. They stand on the Smiths' back patio, and Brendon can't remember the last time he was this high, tingling every where. He thinks it was in Philadelphia, on Rock Band. They had a hotel night, big windows that they opened even though Pennsylvania is fucking cold.
He chokes on the smoke when he remembers Ryan's smile that night, the way he kisses the side of Brendon's mouth when they all stretched out over the beds to watch shitty porn on Pay Per View. It wasn't anything, just a gesture from Ryan that he's done a hundred times before, but that memory makes everything burn and he has to hand his joint off to someone and sits down, waiting for his ribs to stop shaking.
***
Shane takes Brendon's car back to Vegas, and Brendon doesn't even know if Spencer notices the way he and Jon have taken to camping out in his living room, swapping the air-mattress and the couch from night to night. Spencer lets his hair get snarled, greasy like it is on tour, and Brendon's fingers get the old itch to fix it for him.
Spencer just gets up every afternoon like he always does when they are on break, and he plays Mario Kart alone. He makes English muffin pizzas until he runs out of the ingredients and then he just eats shredded cheese from the bag. Jon cleans up the mess that he leaves on the floor, and no one talks about what they should do now, what happens to the band now.
There are days where he thinks none of them talk, just exist around each other and in each other's space because it's easier to return to this routine than go back to his new house with huge windows for the sun, the really awesome walk way, and the fact that it's only twenty minutes from Ryan's.
Jon doesn't say if he's going back to Chicago, and there are days where Brendon catches him with red eyes. He's not loose and smiling, like he should be if he's smoking up, and Brendon rests his head on Jon's shoulder for a minute. He doesn't ask if Jon's crying; that's something Ryan would have done, reached over and run his thumb under Jon's cheek to see if there was moisture there.
Brendon doesn't even know if the fans know. He hasn't asked, hasn't been to the blog that Ryan set up or the myspace. He wonders if Keltie's said anything--he remembers her in the room, at the funeral when Spencer got up in front of the room and started to talk about Fisher Price Golf clubs, the way her mascara ran down to her jaw and how Ryan would have rolled his eyes about that--or if Pete has.
He can't ask. It's easier this way, when it's just the three of them, even if Spencer isn't looking at them.
Jon cleans the dishes every night after Spencer's crawled into bed, and Brendon puts them away and tries to make a list of groceries that they need. There are oranges in the back of the fridge, a pepper and some sort of tofu still bagged. Spencer buys shit like that, likes to try new recipes out on all of them. Sometimes they end up okay, but Brendon's not really sure he wants to eat questionably old tofu. He throws it out.
***
Brendon gets most of the phonecalls for Spencer's house now. Jon likes to let the machine pick it up, and Spencer doesn't seem to care. He's the one who declines dinner invitations and talks to Ryan's mother when she calls, when she asks about what they're going to do with Ryan's stuff at the house in LA.
He's the one who talks to Eric about it too, the sad way Eric admits that he needs a housemate and he can't just leave Ryan's stuff until they're ready to go out there and take care of it.
Shane offers to help Eric box it up and put it in a truck. They store it in Spencer's garage, the in the third room that used to be Haley's office and now just has the desk that she wouldn't take with her. Ryan's boxes are more or less labeled, bedroom/kitchen/living room. There seem to be more boxes of clothes than anything else.
Brendon has Shane take the piano and most of Ryan's guitars over to their house. They can go in Brendon's room, since Brendon's not sure when (if) he'll be back. He still sends his part of bills over to Shane, though.
***
It's been almost a week when he takes Spencer's car and drives to see his mom and dad. Kara's over, with the kids, and he smiles for them. He smiles and smiles, and he wants to ask his mom how this can get better.
She gives him tupperware full of warm food, stuff they can microwave, and tells him to call when they run out.
He calls Shane from his parents' house, and he puts the dogs on. They pant in Brendon's ear. He wonders if Spencer would mind if he brought Bogart down, just for a week, until he remembers that they have the airmattress and the couch.
Kara kisses his cheek and tells him to call anytime, just to talk, and he knows what she means. It makes him feel weird down to his toes, but he nods and asks if maybe Jon could or Spencer. She gives him her card and a card for someone she knows and trusts, in case its weird for them.
"Anything, Brendon. Really," she says softly. "I won't tell Mom and Dad about it." He doesn't know what she's trying to say with her eyes soft and pleading like that, but he hugs her again.
***
When Brendon was ten, he read a book called The War With Grandpa, and he remembers the kid talking about waiting for that shoe to drop, when everything was going to go fucking wrong and there was no way to ward it off or stop it. He remembers it was funny in the book, scrambling around looking for shoes and sandwiches, and everyone learned a lesson in the end.
He doesn't see the lesson when Spencer is pouring himself coffee and fills his mug to the top. He keeps pouring until there's coffee pouring over the countertop and onto the floor, on his barefeet, and he's shaking just a little bit.
Brendon says, "Spencer," softly at first and then louder, trying to take the carafe from him. He doesn't let go, even when there's coffee everywhere and the bottoms of Brendon's feet burn a little from standing in it. "Spencer, c'mon."
Spencer isn't looking and isn't blinking, just staring ahead with his eyes too large. Brendon grips at his wrist, says, "Spencer," way too loud and Jon sticks his head in the room.
"Hey, guys," Jon says softly, and he steps forward just as Spencer drops the carafe on the stove. It shatters, sprays glass everywhere and they are all barefoot.
Spencer is quiet. He's not still anymore, shaking under Brendon's grip, and there's just the faintest tinge of pink to his eyes, glossy now. He opens his mouth to say something, but the sound he makes isn't right, isn't a sound that should come out of Spencer's mouth.
He tries to move back from Brendon, but Jon's there, holding him up, hands strong on Spencer's ribs. "Bed," Jon says softly. "Both of you. I'll clean this up."
Brendon wraps himself around Spencer, and Spencer lets him. He lays his head against Spencer's chest, listens to his heart. Spencer keeps touching him, his hair and the back of his neck, and he lays still until Spencer's hand falls asleep and the tension seeps out of his body, until he's asleep, and even then he doesn't want to get out of bed to go down and touch base with Jon.
He does anyway, and Jon's standing in the kitchen with the coffee dried to the floor, cigarette dangling off his lips. "What are we gonna do," he murmurs, and Brendon bumps his shoulder against Jon's.
***
It's easier when Spencer spends most of his day in his bed, when he's not trying to go through motions like nothing's changed. Brendon sits with him some days, and his fingers ache to touch a guitar again, the piano, anything, but he keeps thinking of Ryan, the half-finished third album that's hanging around partially on Brendon's harddrive and partially Ryan's.
Brendon doesn't know where Ryan's laptop is, and he's afraid to ask Spencer, not now when Spencer is just starting to get the weird glassy eyes that Jon's had for weeks, that Brendon's sure he's had just as long.
It's better when Spencer doesn't fight them when they push him into the shower. He washes himself on automatic, without looking, and Brendon helps him with the mess his hair has turned into. He doesn't like that they have to be the ones to take care of Spencer now. It feels weird and wrong, makes Brendon feel like he's cut loose and nothing makes sense.
He sleeps with Spencer now, curled up along his back, and sometimes he strokes Spencer's side when he's having a nightmare, when he's not saying anything but they all know what he's dreaming about. Brendon doesn't talk about having the same dreams, weird blurs of what happened.
Only it's worse because Spencer's the only one who saw the car. Brendon knows that Ryan probably didn't feel it, probably didn't know.
It makes it worse, makes him seek out Jon and want to ask if that was the way Ryan would have wanted it. He can't though, not when Jon looks up with tired eyes. He doesn't know if Jon's sleeping at all; he spends too much time with Spencer to be sure.
"Spencer made a statement," Jon says, voice hushed. "The fans know."
Jon's laptop is open, and Brendon sucks in a breath. "Oh," he says. He sees that Ryan's blog is open. There are words on the screen. He closes it so he won't have to look and listens to the sounds of cars outside, laughing people.
"Okay," he says because what else can he do? He doesn't know how Spencer managed to remember the ridiculous password to the blog that Ryan gave the three of them. Brendon wrote it down somewhere, some scrap of paper that he probably tossed out when he and Shane moved from Vegas. "Why did you look?"
"I just wanted to... The pictures he posted, from the trail. I wanted to see them again," Jon says, and he leans against Brendon's leg. Brendon runs his hand through Jon's hair.
They all look awful, he thinks. He hasn't been back to California in weeks, and he knows that his mom and Ginger keep bringing food over when they're not paying attention. He wonders when Jon will go back to Chicago.
His fingers tighten in Jon's hair a little. Jon can't go back to Chicago, just like Brendon's pretty sure the only way he'll be going back to LA right now is if he needs to pick up Bogart.
He misses his dog. He wishes Boba and Milo hadn't gone with Haley because she would have the time for them.
"They want to know if the band's over," Jon says, soft against Brendon's jeans. "I can't--Why would you ask that."
Brendon exhales loudly and wants nothing more than to crawl back into Spencer's bed and forget that he wandered downstairs, forget that it's another shining sunny day and that if he goes out for a drive, he can't accidentally end up at Ryan's condo and find him trying to figure out a way to float candelabras in his pool.
He tugs Jon up off the floor, up the stairs. Spencer rolls closer to the center of the bed, and the three of them watch some old movie on TNT. They don't tell Spencer about the fans or their question, and Brendon doesn't know what he said to the fans, what story he and Pete gave and where they asked people to send donations in lieu of flowers. (Because he knows that's what they did.)
They don't need to talk about it to know that it was Ryan's band, his and Spencer's, and there isn't any fucking way. Brendon has piano keys on his skin, and he knows that music is going to be there when he wants to go back.
Just not those songs, not Ryan's words.
***
The dreams start in the middle of June, when it's hot enough that he wants to take everything off, even his boxers. Spencer and Jon don't make him sleep under a sheet, but he still feels like he's melting into the bed every night, especially on the nights when Spencer sleeps close, when Jon's hand comes over Spencer's body and rests warm on Brendon's side.
They aren't bad dreams, not like before when he'd see Ryan mouthing along to his radio and then crashing and screaming. He doesn't want to call them good, though, not when they're about Ryan.
Ryan always smiles in them, though, and Brendon thinks he can smell Ryan's cologne, feel Ryan's stubble against his shoulder when Ryan rests his mouth there. When he's dreaming, it never feels weird, to dream about laying in bed like he is now, with Ryan's skinny arms around his waist and Jon's hand still on his thigh.
Sometimes there's more to the dreams, Ryan's hand skimming down his stomach and pushing down the boxers he sleeps in. Jon's hand is still on Brendon's thigh, Spencer's face against his neck, and Brendon wakes up shaking.
He wonders if this was the shit that Kara was talking about. He doesn't call her.
***
Spencer starts coming downstairs during the day, and he smiles sometimes. He won't leave the house alone, but the three of them start going to the Smiths on Sundays for dinner. Ginger hasn't taken down any of the pictures of Ryan and Spencer as kids, the stupid birthday parties that they share.
Brendon wonders what they're going to do this year, when Spencer turns twenty-two. His stomach twists ugly, and Jon grips his elbow like he knows.
They talk about the weather, about the schools Spencer's sisters are going to in the fall. Ginger makes them cake, yellow with chocolate icing and it's Spencer who says, "Remember the only time Ryan watched the twins?"
There's a beat, and Jon's hand is already on Spencer's shoulder. Brendon pushes his knee against Jon's and waits, ignoring the way his stomach lurches tight.
Crystal smiles a little, looking down at the cake. "He let us bake," she whispers.
"Brownies, I think," Jackie says. Her hand is over her sisters', their fingers laced.
The Smiths don't say anything else about it, and Spencer doesn't finish the piece of cake put in front of him.
They're in the car before Jon says, careful and slow, "Why was he watching the twins?"
Spencer's stretched across the back with a huge bowl of fruit salad on his stomach. "Because... I think Dad was running late or something, and Mom had to take me to the doctor's. Dad's the one who called him." He has sunglasses over his eyes, even though the sun has set.
Brendon taps his fingers against the wheel, angling his mirror so all he can see is Spencer, the shadows over most of his face. "It was pretty bad, huh?" He tries to keep his tone light.
"Ryan put the oven on clean," Spencer says, and Jon groans a little.
"He did that once in LA, too. Man, there was all this smoke." Jon sinks in his seat a little. "I don't even know what he was making, but he fucking destroyed the pan."
Brendon doesn't have anything to add. The apartment he had senior year didn't have a working stove; he had a mircowave and a heating coil and Ryan never touched either one. He smiles though, rolling down his window and asking Jon if he can bum a cigarette before they get home.
***
He has the dreams again, more frequently now, and wakes up hard and shaking on a Sunday morning, before the sun's even risen. The sheets are damp from his sweat, worse now than usual, and he thinks Jon might be awake, that he might see Jon looking at him and knowing.
Brendon rolls out of bed and runs the shower. He doesn't jerk off, waits for his erection to go down under the lukewarm water with his head tipped back against the wall.
Spencer and Jon are still asleep when he gets out of the shower, and they don't wake up when he dresses quickly and grabs Spencer's keys from the bedside table. He leaves his iPhone and doesn't leave a note. He touches Jon's hair before he goes, and he tugs the flat sheet up over Spencer's legs, just so he won't get cold.
He drives around Spencer's neighborhood in circles that seem to get a little larger every time. He drives until the gas light comes on, and then he has to stop at the Exxon. It's a little after eight, and he tries not to think too much about it when he makes a stop at Walmart before he drives to his parents' house.
It's a little after nine when he gets there with dress slacks that he isn't going to wear again and a shirt in a box. His mom takes it from him and promises to iron it if he'll sit down and eat breakfast.
Brendon makes himself a bagel, and he waits in the kitchen, to the soft sounds that he remembers from every Sunday growing up, and he wants to feel grounded. He wants to feel like this is a good idea, just for one time.
His mother fixes his collar for him, does his tie up, like she used to do when he was a kid, and he smiles when he says, "You know I can do that, right? I was in a band with Ryan Ross."
"I know," she whispers, and she hugs him close.
If for nothing else, he thinks that hug makes it worth it, when he sits with his family during the sacrament meeting and smiles at people he hasn't seen in years, names he's forgotten. He shakes hands and nods when people say they're sorry, the ones who know.
He doesn't feel grounded like he should, not like he would have if he'd driven into the desert with his guitar for all this time, but he feels something. It doesn't make the itch under his skin away, the fact that he wants to go back home, back to Spencer and Jon, but he forgets the dreams for a few hours.
Brendon doesn't go home until after dark, after Sunday dinner and he's still in the Walmart button down when Jon opens the door. He doesn't say We worried.
He rests his forehead against Jon's shoulder and doesn't say that he wanted to see if he could back, if he could be part of it again, like he should want that after everything. He wants to think that Ryan isn't over, and that was a place where he could pretend.
He doesn't though. He just holds onto Jon and breathes.
***
Shane comes by with Eric, unannounced, and Brendon tries to feel bad about how the house looks, how they look. There's a stack of mom-brought tupperware in the fridge, and Spencer and Jon are in ratty sweatpants on the couch.
He doesn't care because Shane has Bogart in his arms, and he passes him over to Brendon before he comes inside.
Eric smiles, tight and sad, and he shows them into the living room.
They get high that night, for the first time in too long, and play Monopoly until it's well past dawn. Bogart falls asleep on the old airmattress, and Spencer builds a motel on Boardwalk before he passes out on Jon.
"How are you guys doing?" Shane asks in a low voice, before he picks up the dice to roll again. He's down to less than two grand, sitting on South Carolina avenue.
"They're okay," Brendon says. He thinks it's true.
Shane knocks their shoulders together. "And?"
Brendon looks at his hands and then Bogart sleeping on the other side of the room, the way his legs twitch in his sleep. Jon mutters something when he starts awake again, like he hasn't been drifting off because Monopoly is the worst game to play under the influence. "I'm good."
It scares him that he's almost being honest. He shouldn't be okay, not when Jon and Spencer are sleeping on each other but there's still room on the couch for one more.
***
They give an interview after Jon's birthday passes. No one celebrates it; they skipped Spencer's too. (There was something for Ryan's, even if it was just driving into the desert and drinking into the night. No one laughed, and they couldn't see each other in the dark. There were no stars, and Brendon hummed 'Happy Birthday' into Spencer's neck.)
They don't want to. It feels a little like the interviews right after Brent, how the woman--Stephanie--isn't interested in the music that they aren't making. They meet with her at the Palms, neutral ground, and she asks polite questions--how are they, are they ready for fall--before she says, "So, this is your first interview since the death of your guitarist."
Jon winces a little at the way she says it, almost over-eager, and Spencer isn't looking at her, so Brendon is the one who has to say, "Yeah." He nods, because he knows her recorder probably can't pick up his voice.
She makes a face that's more sympathetic than anything, before she asks, "You said on your blog that Panic was on permanent hiatus, after..." Her voice trails off like not sayingsince Ryan died makes it better. "What about the third album?"
"It wasn't finished," Jon says. His hand is over Spencer, their fingers tangled again. "We have some demos and some other stuff, but we didn't get far enough in it."
"We can't release it like he left it," Spencer adds. He still isn't looking at Stephanie.
"Any plans for solo stuff?" She looks at Brendon when she says it. "You had two of your own songs on the last album, right?"
He rubs his hands on his jeans, palms sweaty. "I haven't--Music's going to be in my future, but I don't know if I want all of this." He thinks maybe he should look into colleges again, go and see if he can do something academic where people don't expect him to call the groom's bride a whore.
"Yeah, I think we're all still trying to adjust. No major changes for a year, you know?" Jon reaches over and rubs the back of Brendon's neck, and Brendon leans into the touch. It grounds him a little more, makes this all a little less surreal.
She nods and jots something down. "You still live in Chicago, right?"
That makes Jon look away. "Mostly, yeah," he says after too long a break.
Brendon wants to ask if that means Jon's going back to Chicago, but she moves onto questions about the fan reactions, their support, and he lets Spencer and Jon lie their way out of that.
***
The day everything goes wrong, Spencer is awake first. He's up and making breakfast for the first time since the funeral. Jon's on the far side of the bed, and Brendon wakes up cold, smelling sausage and bacon.
His boxers are gross and stuck to him, and he can't remember anything that happened. He showers quickly and tries not to read too much into the distance that he sees now, how Jon doesn't touch his back when he passes Brendon in the kitchen. Spencer doesn't bump his hip against Brendon's when Brendon leans around him for a juice glass.
Something's wrong, and he can't tell what it is. They're not touching him, and when he reaches over to muss Jon's hair--it's grown too-long again, bangs in his eyes--Jon flinches away.
They're not looking at each other, sitting on the far ends of Spencer's dining room table with Brendon in the middle, and they barely talk except to say, "Pass the pepper."
He tries not think this has something to do with how he woke up, that he might have said something in the dream. It's worse now, Ryan further away and Spencer and Jon closer, too much hot skin. He stares at Spencer's mouth sometimes and wonders, when he's wide awake and sober.
Brendon can't ask if he said anything, though. The idea makes his palms sweat, skin itching, and there's just the fine hint of shame there--he can't tell them that he's thought about Ryan like that, not now. He can't tell them that he thinks he wants them both like that, like he's too greedy for just one person. He needs two people, and they have to be the ones that mean everything.
The eggs Spencer made are dry and flavorless, and he doesn't finish his breakfast before he gets up from the table.
"Brendon?" Jon looks up from his plate. He hasn't eaten anything either, fork spearing a sausage link, and the joke about eating someone's meat is right there.
He doesn't take it, just shakes his head and goes up the stairs into Spencer's bedroom and grabs his phone from the charger.
He calls Kara on her answering service--it's Saturday; she's not in but she might still call--because he can't talk to her husband, like he might know what's going on inside his head.
Hey, Kara. It's me. Call me back when you get this. I think... It's all fucked up.
***
Kara doesn't contact him for two days, and when she does it's just a text that says I'll call around three tomorrow. Sorry, work and kids. He's not mad, but the house is too quiet. When Bogart runs into the kitchen to beg off dinner scraps, his nails are too loud on the linoleum.
Brendon finds their CDs out in the living room, and Pretty. Odd. is in the stereo. He turns it on and he hits track eleven. He gets as far as "A daydream," before he has to hit the power switch. Ryan's voice fades quickly, and the house is too quiet again.
Jon and Spencer still aren't looking at each other; Jon's sleeping on the airmattress again, and Brendon feels weird crawling into bed with just Spencer now.
***
He can't face Jon or Spencer while he's waiting for her to call back, and he knows they'll look for him in the music room. Brendon wants to play again, wants to see what kind of music he can make out of the twisting feeling, the way it feels like it's going to push out through his skin like something in a sci-fi movie.
There's space in the spare room, though, in with all of the boxes that are filled with Ryan's stuff. They haven't opened any of them; he doesn't know if they will. (He snorts when he thinks about what they're going to do with all of Ryan's clothes; none of them will fit in his tiny and tight button downs, not without looking stupid.)
He hides between a box marked kitchen and a box marked books and holds his phone in his hands, turning it over and over and trying to decide what he wants to say. He wants to tell them that he doesn't mean it, that he isn't thinking about them like that constantly.
But it's not the same as telling the truth. He doesn't want to go bed tonight and sleep on the couch alone except for Bogart curled up on his chest. He doesn't know if he could sleep like that, if he can go for days and days on end without Jon's hand in his hair or Spencer's around his side. He doesn't know if he can keep his hands from the back of Jon's neck. He likes that he can sit mostly in Spencer's lap and Spencer won't complain.
It's not just because of them, or maybe it is, but he can't help but think of Ryan, dancing close to him on stage and grinning when Ryan would kiss his cheek or butt his head against his shoulder. Brendon knew they wouldn't be a band forever; he doesn't think they have the stories to tell that the Stones do, or even like Aerosmith.
He curls up tighter and rests his cheek against the book box. He wonders if they smell like Ryan at all, the weird sandalwood and juniper handcream that he liked to use so his cuticles wouldn't bleed half as much. He doesn't know what it was called, and Brendon can't open the box because if he does, and they don't smell like Ryan, it will be like Ryan is really gone.
Brendon lets out a shaky breath, pressing his forehead to his knees. He knows Ryan is gone; he watched the hearse take him away and he knows that there's an urn somewhere. It's different, though, when he thinks about the sad way Spencer smiles now, how his eyes seem tired, and Jon seems older than twenty-four.
It's different because they're all changed. They're all changed and he's trying to decide if it's okay. Spencer might never have the same grin that he had when Ryan was there to roll his eyes, but he's still Spencer; Brendon knows he can't learn how to have Spencer in his life, like the things that have changed because they all need to patch the hole somehow.
Kara calls him back before he can really decide if he should open the box. "Brendon?" Her voice is quiet. "What do you think you screwed up?"
"I don't know," he says. He can't tell his sister that he has dreams about fucking his bandmates, that he thinks he wants it to be real, that he wants to touch them and know what they sound like when they're shaking apart for the right reasons instead of what he's seen in the past few months.
She hums softly. "How are the guys?"
"They're good," he says, before he sighs again and shifts in place. "They're downstairs."
"Good," she says. She doesn't say anything else, and it's a trick that she learned from their mom.
It doesn't work on Brendon, not usually, but he has to say it, "I don't know if I'm okay or not. I want..." He can't tell his sister that he wants Spencer and Jon like that, that he's starting to think that he wanted Ryan like that before.
"Brendon, it's okay," she says, and she's so soft that he thinks he misheard her over the sound of his own breathing. "You should be happy."
He stutters a little, because he doesn't know what to say to that. "But I think they know," he says, finally.
"Can you have them without anything else?" She doesn't mention what he wants, and he doesn't know who she's trying to protect from the truth.
Brendon bites his lip. "I can't lose them," he says softly.
"Then don't," she says, and she sounds so sure and confident that he wishes she could really be here. She'd at least give him a hug. He could really use that now.
She doesn't talk again, and this time the silence doesn't bother him. He stands up and pats the top of the box of books. He doesn't know what part of Ryan's library is in it, but he thinks maybe--more important than him seeing if they smell like Ryan's hands and the stupid creams he spent hundred of dollars on--he shouldn't be sitting alone in a half-dark room to find out.
***
Jon's out when he comes downstairs, and the television is fritzing, picture grainy. "There's an electrical storm," Spencer says before Brendon can ask why.
He sits at Spencer's feet, and Bogart crawls into his lap. Brendon can tell it's going to be a bad one from the way he's already starting to tremble.
"It's okay," he murmurs, and he wonders where they put his crate, so he has some place to hide when the storm gets too loud. Bogart whines, and Brendon scratches behind his ears and under his chin.
Spencer doesn't say where Jon is, and Brendon doesn't ask. Spencer won't ask who he was on the phone with, where he went. He can see where Spencer's trying to pull away already, and it makes him nervous, shaky like his dog, and he wants Jon to come home soon, so they can talk.
***
When Jon comes home, he has groceries and the luggage from the garage, the suitcase he brought to Vegas, before they all started living out of laundry baskets. "My mom called and said the kids miss me," he says when Brendon looks at it. He has his head bowed, like it's suddenly interesting to wipe spiderwebs and dust from it.
"Yeah," Spencer murmurs. "It's been a long time."
Brendon waits for them to say something, anything else, before he has to say, "You're leaving us."
Jon's shoulders hunch in a little, but he doesn't say no. He says, "Brendon," like his name should be enough of an answer.
Brendon crawls over to Jon, taking the cloth from his hand. "Jon," he says with the same amount of importance, like Jon should know everything he's feeling, the dizzy sweep of please no, please no and I'm sorry; forgive me that's whirling in Brendon's head.
"You don't have to go home yet," Spencer says, and he has the television turned low, so the cable movie is just an annoying hiss across the room.
"I am home," he says, and he means it. He has a house in LA and a roommate there, but his dog is here. Jon and Spencer are here.
Spencer sighs and tips his head back, away from them. "Brendon, I'm going to be okay. I don't need you both hovering so much." It sounds mean, but there's no bite to the way he says it, like he's just forcing the words out because it's what he should say to make them go.
"If he doesn't want us--"
"What happens if you go back, Jon?" Brendon says. He rubs a hand through his hair. "When are you coming back?"
Jon doesn't have an answer for it, just says, "Brendon, things are getting weird."
And that's it. He flinches away from the words because he knows he's the one who is weird, the one who wants too much and knows he shouldn't.
It's worse when Spencer nods, when he says, "We need some time apart, I think."
He shouldn't say, "But I'll lose you, too," like he does, loud over the first distant roll of thunder. He wishes it would rain, that it could drown out his words.
Jon blinks and steps forward, saying, "Brendon, this isn't about you." He doesn't say anything else, though, because Brendon looks at his mouth and he has to know.
He kisses Jon fast, biting because he hurts and he's never been good at keeping his emotions out of kisses. Jon is still under his hands, even when Brendon licks along the seam of his lips. His hands finally go around Brendon's elbows, but it's to push him away instead of pulling him close.
"Brendon," he says, voice a little deeper. There's something weird in his eyes, and his fingers are trembling. "It doesn't have to--"
He kisses Jon again, shaking himself free. He keeps kissing Jon until Jon starts kissing him back, until Jon's hands on his elbows move up to his arms, thumbs digging into Brendon's skin. It's not a good kiss, but there's something desperate in it, something that makes Brendon push closer, threading his fingers into Jon's hair and pulling just this shade of too hard.
There's a flash of lightening then, and then a thundercloud. It's enough to make the house shake a little, the air warmer suddenly, and he wants to back Jon into a wall, to keep touching because he's allowed and because Jon isn't going to make him back off, make him think that this isn't right.
He sucks on Jon's tongue when his hands slide under Jon's shirt, and Jon makes this soft groaning noise that Brendon wants to hear more of, something that makes the hair on his arms stand on end.
Brendon's almost too concerned with hearing that sound again to notice the way Spencer shifts loud on the couch, the way he exhales when Jon pulls back and lets Brendon push his shirt away. He almost misses the way Spencer shifts on the couch, goes from sitting with his legs crossed on the couch to both feet on the floor. He doesn't move away or forward, but he moves. Brendon notices, though, and so does Jon.
They both look at him, at the way his eyes are wide and he's looking at both of them with his lips pale. "What are you doing?" he asks, his voice rough.
"I don't know," Jon says, and that makes something dark cross over Spencer's face, something that makes him shut-down and Brendon's missed something.
Bogart scampers out of the room after another thunderclap, and he can't watch him go. He has to watch them.
Spencer gets up, rubbing his arms like he's cold. "I told you," he says, and it's directed at Jon. Something's happened; Brendon doesn't know it. He wants to laugh because he thought it had been him; that they knew and it wasn't.
Except Spencer looks proud for a minute, the bitchy face he used to give interviewers when they kept asking about the exclamation point, about replacing Brent. Brendon knows the look and how Spencer just looks bitchier when he's trying not to look tired. He thinks maybe Spencer's trying not to look scared; he hopes Spencer's trying that, at least.
Brendon doesn't care. He grabs for Spencer's hands and only catches one. He won't let Spencer get away from them. "Spence," he says, and he laces their fingers. "I don't--"
"It's not you," Spencer says, and he tries to tug away. "If you and Jon want to--"
"I don't want Jon," Brendon says, and he steps a little more into Spencer's space, tipping his face up. Spencer's almost too tall to kiss, tall enough that he's not sure he can surprise him the way he could Jon.
"You made it pretty clear that you do," Spencer says, and his voice is so quiet and so sad that Brendon can't smile anymore, just lets his expression slide into something gentle.
"No," he says, and he knows Jon is still close. He hopes Jon understands, because he wants to make the sad look go out of Spencer's eyes, even if it's just for a minute. "It's both of you. I need both of you."
Jon presses a kiss to Brendon's neck, just under his hairline, while he wraps an arm around Brendon's waist. "We need you, Spence," he says.
Spencer looks at both of them, and he doesn't move, not even when Jon pushes Brendon closer to him, not when Brendon reaches up and tips his face down, before he goes on tip-toe to press a light kiss to the side of Spencer's mouth. Spencer exhales shakily, eyes closed. Lightening flashes again, and this time the answering rumbles don't make him jump. He doesn't give a shit about the weather; he wants to watch Spencer, to see if anything changes.
"If you don't want," he says, "if you don't want to, we can wait." He doesn't want to wait, not with Jon's arm around his stomach. He wants to feel connected to them, safe and protected and no more bad can happen, at least not for a long, long time.
Spencer exhales and he sags forward. "I don't want to... Not because we're sad," he says softly.
Brendon shakes his head and kisses Spencer again, harder this time, with more in it. Things he can't say because they feel weird thinking, let alone putting into words. "Not because we're sad," he says into Spencer's mouth.
***
It's not because they're sad that they undress each other, with the storm in the background. The clock tells him it's a little after five, not late enough for it to be dark when he pushes Spencer back on the bed, after they have him naked down to his boxers. He can see the weird yellow-grey of the sky through the open curtains.
Jon's already naked, half-hard when he curls around Spencer and kisses at his throat, and Brendon stops undoing his belt to watch them, the way Jon palms at Spencer's dick before he closes a loose fist around it. The storm isn't loud enough to cover the way Spencer says Jon's name, just enough to hide the way it sounds when Jon's hand moves, slow jerks of his hand.
Brendon bites his lip. His jeans are still open, but the curtains are up. He doesn't think anyone can see into the bedroom, but he has to close them. He doesn't want to share this, the way Spencer is panting and Jon is thrusting against his hip, the way they're both watching him. He smiles nervously before he drops the blinds and pulls the drapery shut.
"Hey," Spencer says, voice low and dragging on Brendon's skin. He shivers. "I thought it was both of us?"
He waggles his eyebrows at Spencer before he hooks his thumbs unto his jeans. He peels them down slow, because he likes the way they're looking at him, the way Spencer licks his lips and thrusts up sharp into Jon's fist. He can't take his underwear off sexily after that; he doesn't want to try and pretend he's got crazy moves or anything like he does usually, the first time he's fucking someone.
This is Spencer and Jon; they know he's a dork and they're watching him like that anyway.
Brendon's almost nervous when he crawls onto the bed, like maybe this isn't going to work. It's weird to think that now, two seconds before Spencer reaches out and pulls him close, sucking hard on the pulse point of Brendon's neck, one hand already on his cock.
He gasps loud, letting his mouth stay open, and then Jon's there to kiss him, catching his bottom lip between his teeth. He takes the sounds out of Brendon's mouth, steals them away, and Brendon wraps his free hand in Jon's hair again, pulling hard, and Jon responds in kind.
They stay like that for a while, for too long, kissing and touching with the storm starting to fade. It's warmer now than before, the last of the daylight muted, but he doesn't really need to see how Spencer looks when Jon pushes him down, rubbing his beard on Spencer's fair skin. He wonders how much beard burn Spencer will have in the morning, how much he'll have. The skin around his lips, on his chin, already feels rubbed raw.
He kisses Spencer again, because he wants to be able to see it. He wants that in the morning, even if it fades quickly. Spencer groans into his mouth, wiggling away from Jon and pushing Brendon back into the mattress, and Brendon isn't expecting the rough feel of Jon's tongue at the underside of his cock, teasing along the vein. He bucks up before he can help it, and Jon snorts when Brendon's cock slides against his cheek.
"Eager," he teases, pinching the inside of Brendon's thigh, and Brendon groans again. He tries to wiggle away; Jon and Spencer don't let him, keeping him pushed down between both of them, Spencer fucking his tongue into Brendon's mouth while Jon keeps licking at the head of his cock, keeping his hand moving in a steady rhythm, pace almost too fast but the pressure is right. Jon's saliva is making the slide messy in the best possible way.
Brendon can't help himself, panting against Spencer's mouth, and Spencer's hands are the ones that keep his hips still, so he's not fucking Jon's mouth when Jon finally swallows him down again, as far as he can.
"What do you want," Spencer says before he kisses the curve of Brendon's jaw. "What do you like?"
He wants to tell Spencer everything, all the shit that you don't talk about even when you share a bus, because Spencer's asking and he seems like himself in the low, low light, not as sad and focused now in a way that he hasn't been in a month. Except Jon's thumbs are digging into Brendon's thighs, and then his nails one second before he moans around Brendon's cock.
Brendon comes like that, with Spencer's hands tight on hips and Jon stretched between his legs, and he isn't quiet about it, the way everything turns to white noise at his orgasm and he can't talk or think for a handful of seconds.
But Spencer asked him a question, and he wants to answer it.
When he can think again, after the rush has faded a little but all his senses are still sharp, he kisses Spencer again. "I want to watch him fuck you," he says, and Jon moves up onto his knees. "I want to watch your face."
Spencer shivers, and Brendon grins, pushing sweaty hair from his eyes. "Okay," he says, and he reaches over to the night stand. There's condoms in there and lube. Brendon doesn't know how old they are, how long Spencer's had them on hand. He knows that Spencer hasn't had sex since he and Jon moved in, but it doesn't matter now.
Brendon pushes the lube into Jon's hands before he leans over to press their mouths together, sliding his tongue into Jon's mouth so he can taste himself, push his tongue against Jon's. His skin is still sensitive, and he can't help the way he shudders when Jon touches his hip, the crease of his thigh, before he's moving closer to Spencer, lube open and fingers slick.
He sits up and watches Jon spoon behind Spencer, pulling one of his legs up to he can slide his fingers along the crease of Spencer's ass, and Brendon watches Spencer's face. He wants to see the moment that Jon stops teasing and starts to push his fingers in, one at first and then more so Spencer's stretched and ready.
Spencer's eyes close, and Brendon has to reach over and turn on the bedside lamp. He wants to see everything, the way Spencer bites his lip when Jon goes to two fingers and the way Jon keeps talking nonsense into Spencer's neck, his eyes dark with want. He keeps looking between Spencer and Brendon, like he can't decide.
Brendon hopes he never has to, and he kisses Jon over Spencer's shoulder, pushing Spencer between them.
"Fuck," Spencer hisses, and he thrusts against Brendon, where he's still a little too sensitive from coming yet, making him jump when his nerves can't register good, good and tell him too much. He rolls his hips away, but Spencer makes a sound and tries to pull him back, cups his palm over Brendon's ass and digs his nails in.
"Please," he says, and Brendon can hear Jon fighting with the condom wrapper, see Jon whisper something in Spencer's ear. It doesn't feel like a secret; it's like a surprise that they all know is coming, when Jon slowly fucks into Spencer.
"Please," Spencer says again, and he squeezes Brendon's ass this time, hard enough to hurt. He can't help groaning.
He runs his hand between Spencer's legs, touching where he's already stretched tight around Jon's cock. They don't have a rhythm set yet; he knows from how they're breathing that they aren't sure how to keep going, can tell when Jon's going too fast or Spencer's being too still. He hopes they have time to figure it out best, see the way the way Spencer wants to be fucked or how he wants to fuck them.
His hand gets wet from the lube, and he presses two fingers behind Spencer's ball before he touches his dick, laughing almost too loud at the noise Spencer makes. He's fucking against Brendon's hip, and sometimes his dick slips, hits against Brendon's and Brendon can't come again, not this soon or it will hurt.
He takes his hand away, just to hear Spencer whimper a little, before he snaps, "Stop being a fucking tease, Brendon."
Jon laughs, and it seems out of place, like they should be serious. His eyes are dark, but he's grinning. "You should stop," he says, before he's sucking on Spencer's neck, holding his hip.
"Yeah," Brendon says, even though he's not sure who or what he's really agreeing to, before he's wrapping his hand around Spencer. He's not jerking him off, just holding his fist still so there's something for Spencer to fuck into.
He can tell when they get it right, when it stops being uncomfortable for Spencer and starts to feel good. Jon groans, and Spencer's neck is going to be marked in the morning. Brendon should feel jealous, but he's not. Spencer's marked as Jon's, and he can't help himself from bending down to suck a bruise on the other side of his neck, near his collar bone where Jon can't reach.
Spencer can be theirs.
He keeps his mouth there, keeps his hand still for Spencer, and listens to their breathing, the way the bed sounds when Jon pushes forward and the sound of his hips hitting Spencer's ass. It's not as hard as it could be, and he thinks it's better that way.
When Spencer's close, he pulls on Brendon's hair, hard and Brendon looks up. Spencer's kiss is bruising, almost too hard. It's desperate in a way they don't need to be, like he's trying to tell Brendon everything he has inside, all the fear and the anger.
Brendon kisses back gently, settling his hand on Spencer's hip over Jon's, and Spencer gets it after a minute. His lips feel swollen long before then, but it's worth it when Spencer's kisses turn chaste, off-center and playful before Jon pushes forward and Brendon slicks his thumb over the head of Spencer's cock.
He comes apart between them, hot and shaking, and they're both there when he comes back, Jon kissing the back of his neck and Brendon pressing his mouth gently over Spencer's face, his cheeks and the side of his mouth before he chases Brendon's mouth down and whispers something against it.
Brendon doesn't know what he says, but he likes the way it feels, almost as much as he likes the way Spencer watches him jerk off Jon, his fingers smeared with Spencer's come.
***
They don't fall asleep together. Brendon gets up first, and he brings a washcloth back to clean them up. Jon takes it, but Spencer won't, muttering about a shower even though there's still the distant rumble of thunder.
It's barely evening, and they should eat dinner. He feels weird getting dressed, even if he just pulls on a pair of thin pajama pants. Bogart is still hiding in his cage, shivering in the corner and Brendon reaches inside to stroke along his fur. He leaves the door open, in case he wants to come out and cower at Brendon's feet.
He orders pizza because there's nothing in the fridge, and Jon comes down and turns on a football game, some game that played two days ago. Brendon's pretty sure they already watched it.
They sit in silence until Spencer comes into the living room, hair damp and combed straight. He's wearing sweat pants that are a little too big now, not staying up the way they should, and showing off a sliver of his side, the white skin of his hip. It's hard not to stay at the red marks on his neck, the way they trail down and disappear under the collar of his shirt.
Brendon waits for one of them to say something because he doesn't think it's fair for him to be the one to do it this time. Jon's suitcase is still out, abandoned between the coffee table and the tv.
Spencer sees that he's looking, and he makes a soft, discontent noise. "You should put that back," he says.
Jon sighs and shakes his head. "I still need to go to Chicago," he says, and it makes Brendon's skin feel cold and hot at the same time, that Jon still wants to leave them.
"Jon," he says at the same time Spencer says, "We want you to stay."
Then Jon smiles, and he shakes his head. "I need my cats and my dog. Bogart's great, but they're driving my parents nuts."
There's something in the way that he says it that makes Brendon's throat close up tight. He remembers an old interview, where Jon said he could never actually move. "It's still hot here," he whispers.
Spencer isn't saying anything. He's just watching them both, and Brendon takes Spencer's hand without thinking, squeezes it between his.
"Yeah, but my family lives here," Jon says, and he's looking at both of them with something in his eyes that Brendon doesn't have words for.
The doorbell rings; their dinner's here and no one moves to get it.
Brendon/Jon/Spencer (implied Panic!gsf) | NC-17 | 9.5k
Warnings: Deathfic, unbetaed
For my very favorite stephanometra as a belated birthday gift. I love you, bb! ♥ Popcorn? :D? Title from "Simple Together" by Alanis Morissette
Brendon can hear his cellphone ringing through the open windows of the patio, and he knows he should answer it. It's Spencer's ringtone, and he's driving up this afternoon, but Bogart drops his ball off at Brendon's feet and the sun feels awesome against his skin after two sort of shitty, grey days.
Besides, Shane's home; he's inside, so by default, he's closer to the phone.
He throws the ball again, watching it smack off the fence at the back of their yard. It bounces back. Bogart is off and running, barking and wagging his tail like this game is fucking awesome. It is pretty awesome.
Dylan looks over from her spot of grass, where she's stretched out in the sun, and he knows the look she's giving his dog.
"It's okay if you're lazy, babe," he says, bending down to scratch at her ears while Bogart trots over with his ball, dropping it off again. He barks at Brendon to throw it again.
But Shane says, "Hey, Brendon?" from inside the house, and his voice sounds.
Brendon doesn't like the way his voice sounds. He doesn't know how to describe it, like he's raised it the octave and closed the sound so it's all in his nose instead of how he normally talks. Except that he sounds breathless at the same time, and that shouldn't happen.
He leaves the ball and Bogart and Dylan to go inside, where Shane is standing there with his eyes wide, and he's holding out Brendon's phone like it's burning and all he wants to do is drop it.
"Hey, Spence," Brendon says when he takes the phone. He shoots Shane a look, like What the hell, dude?
"Brendon," Spencer says, and his voice is fucked too, rough in a way that Spencer's voice isn't allowed to be.
The microwave beeps in the kitchen, and the dogs are barking. Brendon hears what he says next wrong; he has to. His eyes are burning. He hasn't cried since Dylan ran away, and he's not starting now.
He just heard Spencer wrong. He has to say, "Spence, you're not--"
And Spencer says it again.
***
Brendon doesn't remember the funeral, not really. He remembers sitting up in the Smiths' kitchen until five in the morning while Spencer plans the food for the wake, the music that they should play. He remembers calling his mom and telling her that he was coming home for the week, the way she was quiet when he told her about Ryan, about the accident.
She doesn't say anything until he stops for breath, and then it's just, "Of course, honey." She's waiting up for him when he drives in the next morning with Jon sitting pale beside him and Shane in the back seat.
He goes into his old bedroom, and he knows that he should do something. He remembers his mother hugging him close and whispering that it was okay.
He remembers shaking hands with people that he doesn't know at the viewing, and he remembers getting into the limo that's supposed to be for immediate family. He sits on Spencer's left and Jon's on his right. Zack's across from them, and he doesn't smile when Brendon looks over, not like he usually does.
Brendon remembers the wake, when Pete tried to make them all smile a little, and he remembers Jon rolling and saying it was what Ryan would have wanted. They stand on the Smiths' back patio, and Brendon can't remember the last time he was this high, tingling every where. He thinks it was in Philadelphia, on Rock Band. They had a hotel night, big windows that they opened even though Pennsylvania is fucking cold.
He chokes on the smoke when he remembers Ryan's smile that night, the way he kisses the side of Brendon's mouth when they all stretched out over the beds to watch shitty porn on Pay Per View. It wasn't anything, just a gesture from Ryan that he's done a hundred times before, but that memory makes everything burn and he has to hand his joint off to someone and sits down, waiting for his ribs to stop shaking.
***
Shane takes Brendon's car back to Vegas, and Brendon doesn't even know if Spencer notices the way he and Jon have taken to camping out in his living room, swapping the air-mattress and the couch from night to night. Spencer lets his hair get snarled, greasy like it is on tour, and Brendon's fingers get the old itch to fix it for him.
Spencer just gets up every afternoon like he always does when they are on break, and he plays Mario Kart alone. He makes English muffin pizzas until he runs out of the ingredients and then he just eats shredded cheese from the bag. Jon cleans up the mess that he leaves on the floor, and no one talks about what they should do now, what happens to the band now.
There are days where he thinks none of them talk, just exist around each other and in each other's space because it's easier to return to this routine than go back to his new house with huge windows for the sun, the really awesome walk way, and the fact that it's only twenty minutes from Ryan's.
Jon doesn't say if he's going back to Chicago, and there are days where Brendon catches him with red eyes. He's not loose and smiling, like he should be if he's smoking up, and Brendon rests his head on Jon's shoulder for a minute. He doesn't ask if Jon's crying; that's something Ryan would have done, reached over and run his thumb under Jon's cheek to see if there was moisture there.
Brendon doesn't even know if the fans know. He hasn't asked, hasn't been to the blog that Ryan set up or the myspace. He wonders if Keltie's said anything--he remembers her in the room, at the funeral when Spencer got up in front of the room and started to talk about Fisher Price Golf clubs, the way her mascara ran down to her jaw and how Ryan would have rolled his eyes about that--or if Pete has.
He can't ask. It's easier this way, when it's just the three of them, even if Spencer isn't looking at them.
Jon cleans the dishes every night after Spencer's crawled into bed, and Brendon puts them away and tries to make a list of groceries that they need. There are oranges in the back of the fridge, a pepper and some sort of tofu still bagged. Spencer buys shit like that, likes to try new recipes out on all of them. Sometimes they end up okay, but Brendon's not really sure he wants to eat questionably old tofu. He throws it out.
***
Brendon gets most of the phonecalls for Spencer's house now. Jon likes to let the machine pick it up, and Spencer doesn't seem to care. He's the one who declines dinner invitations and talks to Ryan's mother when she calls, when she asks about what they're going to do with Ryan's stuff at the house in LA.
He's the one who talks to Eric about it too, the sad way Eric admits that he needs a housemate and he can't just leave Ryan's stuff until they're ready to go out there and take care of it.
Shane offers to help Eric box it up and put it in a truck. They store it in Spencer's garage, the in the third room that used to be Haley's office and now just has the desk that she wouldn't take with her. Ryan's boxes are more or less labeled, bedroom/kitchen/living room. There seem to be more boxes of clothes than anything else.
Brendon has Shane take the piano and most of Ryan's guitars over to their house. They can go in Brendon's room, since Brendon's not sure when (if) he'll be back. He still sends his part of bills over to Shane, though.
***
It's been almost a week when he takes Spencer's car and drives to see his mom and dad. Kara's over, with the kids, and he smiles for them. He smiles and smiles, and he wants to ask his mom how this can get better.
She gives him tupperware full of warm food, stuff they can microwave, and tells him to call when they run out.
He calls Shane from his parents' house, and he puts the dogs on. They pant in Brendon's ear. He wonders if Spencer would mind if he brought Bogart down, just for a week, until he remembers that they have the airmattress and the couch.
Kara kisses his cheek and tells him to call anytime, just to talk, and he knows what she means. It makes him feel weird down to his toes, but he nods and asks if maybe Jon could or Spencer. She gives him her card and a card for someone she knows and trusts, in case its weird for them.
"Anything, Brendon. Really," she says softly. "I won't tell Mom and Dad about it." He doesn't know what she's trying to say with her eyes soft and pleading like that, but he hugs her again.
***
When Brendon was ten, he read a book called The War With Grandpa, and he remembers the kid talking about waiting for that shoe to drop, when everything was going to go fucking wrong and there was no way to ward it off or stop it. He remembers it was funny in the book, scrambling around looking for shoes and sandwiches, and everyone learned a lesson in the end.
He doesn't see the lesson when Spencer is pouring himself coffee and fills his mug to the top. He keeps pouring until there's coffee pouring over the countertop and onto the floor, on his barefeet, and he's shaking just a little bit.
Brendon says, "Spencer," softly at first and then louder, trying to take the carafe from him. He doesn't let go, even when there's coffee everywhere and the bottoms of Brendon's feet burn a little from standing in it. "Spencer, c'mon."
Spencer isn't looking and isn't blinking, just staring ahead with his eyes too large. Brendon grips at his wrist, says, "Spencer," way too loud and Jon sticks his head in the room.
"Hey, guys," Jon says softly, and he steps forward just as Spencer drops the carafe on the stove. It shatters, sprays glass everywhere and they are all barefoot.
Spencer is quiet. He's not still anymore, shaking under Brendon's grip, and there's just the faintest tinge of pink to his eyes, glossy now. He opens his mouth to say something, but the sound he makes isn't right, isn't a sound that should come out of Spencer's mouth.
He tries to move back from Brendon, but Jon's there, holding him up, hands strong on Spencer's ribs. "Bed," Jon says softly. "Both of you. I'll clean this up."
Brendon wraps himself around Spencer, and Spencer lets him. He lays his head against Spencer's chest, listens to his heart. Spencer keeps touching him, his hair and the back of his neck, and he lays still until Spencer's hand falls asleep and the tension seeps out of his body, until he's asleep, and even then he doesn't want to get out of bed to go down and touch base with Jon.
He does anyway, and Jon's standing in the kitchen with the coffee dried to the floor, cigarette dangling off his lips. "What are we gonna do," he murmurs, and Brendon bumps his shoulder against Jon's.
***
It's easier when Spencer spends most of his day in his bed, when he's not trying to go through motions like nothing's changed. Brendon sits with him some days, and his fingers ache to touch a guitar again, the piano, anything, but he keeps thinking of Ryan, the half-finished third album that's hanging around partially on Brendon's harddrive and partially Ryan's.
Brendon doesn't know where Ryan's laptop is, and he's afraid to ask Spencer, not now when Spencer is just starting to get the weird glassy eyes that Jon's had for weeks, that Brendon's sure he's had just as long.
It's better when Spencer doesn't fight them when they push him into the shower. He washes himself on automatic, without looking, and Brendon helps him with the mess his hair has turned into. He doesn't like that they have to be the ones to take care of Spencer now. It feels weird and wrong, makes Brendon feel like he's cut loose and nothing makes sense.
He sleeps with Spencer now, curled up along his back, and sometimes he strokes Spencer's side when he's having a nightmare, when he's not saying anything but they all know what he's dreaming about. Brendon doesn't talk about having the same dreams, weird blurs of what happened.
Only it's worse because Spencer's the only one who saw the car. Brendon knows that Ryan probably didn't feel it, probably didn't know.
It makes it worse, makes him seek out Jon and want to ask if that was the way Ryan would have wanted it. He can't though, not when Jon looks up with tired eyes. He doesn't know if Jon's sleeping at all; he spends too much time with Spencer to be sure.
"Spencer made a statement," Jon says, voice hushed. "The fans know."
Jon's laptop is open, and Brendon sucks in a breath. "Oh," he says. He sees that Ryan's blog is open. There are words on the screen. He closes it so he won't have to look and listens to the sounds of cars outside, laughing people.
"Okay," he says because what else can he do? He doesn't know how Spencer managed to remember the ridiculous password to the blog that Ryan gave the three of them. Brendon wrote it down somewhere, some scrap of paper that he probably tossed out when he and Shane moved from Vegas. "Why did you look?"
"I just wanted to... The pictures he posted, from the trail. I wanted to see them again," Jon says, and he leans against Brendon's leg. Brendon runs his hand through Jon's hair.
They all look awful, he thinks. He hasn't been back to California in weeks, and he knows that his mom and Ginger keep bringing food over when they're not paying attention. He wonders when Jon will go back to Chicago.
His fingers tighten in Jon's hair a little. Jon can't go back to Chicago, just like Brendon's pretty sure the only way he'll be going back to LA right now is if he needs to pick up Bogart.
He misses his dog. He wishes Boba and Milo hadn't gone with Haley because she would have the time for them.
"They want to know if the band's over," Jon says, soft against Brendon's jeans. "I can't--Why would you ask that."
Brendon exhales loudly and wants nothing more than to crawl back into Spencer's bed and forget that he wandered downstairs, forget that it's another shining sunny day and that if he goes out for a drive, he can't accidentally end up at Ryan's condo and find him trying to figure out a way to float candelabras in his pool.
He tugs Jon up off the floor, up the stairs. Spencer rolls closer to the center of the bed, and the three of them watch some old movie on TNT. They don't tell Spencer about the fans or their question, and Brendon doesn't know what he said to the fans, what story he and Pete gave and where they asked people to send donations in lieu of flowers. (Because he knows that's what they did.)
They don't need to talk about it to know that it was Ryan's band, his and Spencer's, and there isn't any fucking way. Brendon has piano keys on his skin, and he knows that music is going to be there when he wants to go back.
Just not those songs, not Ryan's words.
***
The dreams start in the middle of June, when it's hot enough that he wants to take everything off, even his boxers. Spencer and Jon don't make him sleep under a sheet, but he still feels like he's melting into the bed every night, especially on the nights when Spencer sleeps close, when Jon's hand comes over Spencer's body and rests warm on Brendon's side.
They aren't bad dreams, not like before when he'd see Ryan mouthing along to his radio and then crashing and screaming. He doesn't want to call them good, though, not when they're about Ryan.
Ryan always smiles in them, though, and Brendon thinks he can smell Ryan's cologne, feel Ryan's stubble against his shoulder when Ryan rests his mouth there. When he's dreaming, it never feels weird, to dream about laying in bed like he is now, with Ryan's skinny arms around his waist and Jon's hand still on his thigh.
Sometimes there's more to the dreams, Ryan's hand skimming down his stomach and pushing down the boxers he sleeps in. Jon's hand is still on Brendon's thigh, Spencer's face against his neck, and Brendon wakes up shaking.
He wonders if this was the shit that Kara was talking about. He doesn't call her.
***
Spencer starts coming downstairs during the day, and he smiles sometimes. He won't leave the house alone, but the three of them start going to the Smiths on Sundays for dinner. Ginger hasn't taken down any of the pictures of Ryan and Spencer as kids, the stupid birthday parties that they share.
Brendon wonders what they're going to do this year, when Spencer turns twenty-two. His stomach twists ugly, and Jon grips his elbow like he knows.
They talk about the weather, about the schools Spencer's sisters are going to in the fall. Ginger makes them cake, yellow with chocolate icing and it's Spencer who says, "Remember the only time Ryan watched the twins?"
There's a beat, and Jon's hand is already on Spencer's shoulder. Brendon pushes his knee against Jon's and waits, ignoring the way his stomach lurches tight.
Crystal smiles a little, looking down at the cake. "He let us bake," she whispers.
"Brownies, I think," Jackie says. Her hand is over her sisters', their fingers laced.
The Smiths don't say anything else about it, and Spencer doesn't finish the piece of cake put in front of him.
They're in the car before Jon says, careful and slow, "Why was he watching the twins?"
Spencer's stretched across the back with a huge bowl of fruit salad on his stomach. "Because... I think Dad was running late or something, and Mom had to take me to the doctor's. Dad's the one who called him." He has sunglasses over his eyes, even though the sun has set.
Brendon taps his fingers against the wheel, angling his mirror so all he can see is Spencer, the shadows over most of his face. "It was pretty bad, huh?" He tries to keep his tone light.
"Ryan put the oven on clean," Spencer says, and Jon groans a little.
"He did that once in LA, too. Man, there was all this smoke." Jon sinks in his seat a little. "I don't even know what he was making, but he fucking destroyed the pan."
Brendon doesn't have anything to add. The apartment he had senior year didn't have a working stove; he had a mircowave and a heating coil and Ryan never touched either one. He smiles though, rolling down his window and asking Jon if he can bum a cigarette before they get home.
***
He has the dreams again, more frequently now, and wakes up hard and shaking on a Sunday morning, before the sun's even risen. The sheets are damp from his sweat, worse now than usual, and he thinks Jon might be awake, that he might see Jon looking at him and knowing.
Brendon rolls out of bed and runs the shower. He doesn't jerk off, waits for his erection to go down under the lukewarm water with his head tipped back against the wall.
Spencer and Jon are still asleep when he gets out of the shower, and they don't wake up when he dresses quickly and grabs Spencer's keys from the bedside table. He leaves his iPhone and doesn't leave a note. He touches Jon's hair before he goes, and he tugs the flat sheet up over Spencer's legs, just so he won't get cold.
He drives around Spencer's neighborhood in circles that seem to get a little larger every time. He drives until the gas light comes on, and then he has to stop at the Exxon. It's a little after eight, and he tries not to think too much about it when he makes a stop at Walmart before he drives to his parents' house.
It's a little after nine when he gets there with dress slacks that he isn't going to wear again and a shirt in a box. His mom takes it from him and promises to iron it if he'll sit down and eat breakfast.
Brendon makes himself a bagel, and he waits in the kitchen, to the soft sounds that he remembers from every Sunday growing up, and he wants to feel grounded. He wants to feel like this is a good idea, just for one time.
His mother fixes his collar for him, does his tie up, like she used to do when he was a kid, and he smiles when he says, "You know I can do that, right? I was in a band with Ryan Ross."
"I know," she whispers, and she hugs him close.
If for nothing else, he thinks that hug makes it worth it, when he sits with his family during the sacrament meeting and smiles at people he hasn't seen in years, names he's forgotten. He shakes hands and nods when people say they're sorry, the ones who know.
He doesn't feel grounded like he should, not like he would have if he'd driven into the desert with his guitar for all this time, but he feels something. It doesn't make the itch under his skin away, the fact that he wants to go back home, back to Spencer and Jon, but he forgets the dreams for a few hours.
Brendon doesn't go home until after dark, after Sunday dinner and he's still in the Walmart button down when Jon opens the door. He doesn't say We worried.
He rests his forehead against Jon's shoulder and doesn't say that he wanted to see if he could back, if he could be part of it again, like he should want that after everything. He wants to think that Ryan isn't over, and that was a place where he could pretend.
He doesn't though. He just holds onto Jon and breathes.
***
Shane comes by with Eric, unannounced, and Brendon tries to feel bad about how the house looks, how they look. There's a stack of mom-brought tupperware in the fridge, and Spencer and Jon are in ratty sweatpants on the couch.
He doesn't care because Shane has Bogart in his arms, and he passes him over to Brendon before he comes inside.
Eric smiles, tight and sad, and he shows them into the living room.
They get high that night, for the first time in too long, and play Monopoly until it's well past dawn. Bogart falls asleep on the old airmattress, and Spencer builds a motel on Boardwalk before he passes out on Jon.
"How are you guys doing?" Shane asks in a low voice, before he picks up the dice to roll again. He's down to less than two grand, sitting on South Carolina avenue.
"They're okay," Brendon says. He thinks it's true.
Shane knocks their shoulders together. "And?"
Brendon looks at his hands and then Bogart sleeping on the other side of the room, the way his legs twitch in his sleep. Jon mutters something when he starts awake again, like he hasn't been drifting off because Monopoly is the worst game to play under the influence. "I'm good."
It scares him that he's almost being honest. He shouldn't be okay, not when Jon and Spencer are sleeping on each other but there's still room on the couch for one more.
***
They give an interview after Jon's birthday passes. No one celebrates it; they skipped Spencer's too. (There was something for Ryan's, even if it was just driving into the desert and drinking into the night. No one laughed, and they couldn't see each other in the dark. There were no stars, and Brendon hummed 'Happy Birthday' into Spencer's neck.)
They don't want to. It feels a little like the interviews right after Brent, how the woman--Stephanie--isn't interested in the music that they aren't making. They meet with her at the Palms, neutral ground, and she asks polite questions--how are they, are they ready for fall--before she says, "So, this is your first interview since the death of your guitarist."
Jon winces a little at the way she says it, almost over-eager, and Spencer isn't looking at her, so Brendon is the one who has to say, "Yeah." He nods, because he knows her recorder probably can't pick up his voice.
She makes a face that's more sympathetic than anything, before she asks, "You said on your blog that Panic was on permanent hiatus, after..." Her voice trails off like not sayingsince Ryan died makes it better. "What about the third album?"
"It wasn't finished," Jon says. His hand is over Spencer, their fingers tangled again. "We have some demos and some other stuff, but we didn't get far enough in it."
"We can't release it like he left it," Spencer adds. He still isn't looking at Stephanie.
"Any plans for solo stuff?" She looks at Brendon when she says it. "You had two of your own songs on the last album, right?"
He rubs his hands on his jeans, palms sweaty. "I haven't--Music's going to be in my future, but I don't know if I want all of this." He thinks maybe he should look into colleges again, go and see if he can do something academic where people don't expect him to call the groom's bride a whore.
"Yeah, I think we're all still trying to adjust. No major changes for a year, you know?" Jon reaches over and rubs the back of Brendon's neck, and Brendon leans into the touch. It grounds him a little more, makes this all a little less surreal.
She nods and jots something down. "You still live in Chicago, right?"
That makes Jon look away. "Mostly, yeah," he says after too long a break.
Brendon wants to ask if that means Jon's going back to Chicago, but she moves onto questions about the fan reactions, their support, and he lets Spencer and Jon lie their way out of that.
***
The day everything goes wrong, Spencer is awake first. He's up and making breakfast for the first time since the funeral. Jon's on the far side of the bed, and Brendon wakes up cold, smelling sausage and bacon.
His boxers are gross and stuck to him, and he can't remember anything that happened. He showers quickly and tries not to read too much into the distance that he sees now, how Jon doesn't touch his back when he passes Brendon in the kitchen. Spencer doesn't bump his hip against Brendon's when Brendon leans around him for a juice glass.
Something's wrong, and he can't tell what it is. They're not touching him, and when he reaches over to muss Jon's hair--it's grown too-long again, bangs in his eyes--Jon flinches away.
They're not looking at each other, sitting on the far ends of Spencer's dining room table with Brendon in the middle, and they barely talk except to say, "Pass the pepper."
He tries not think this has something to do with how he woke up, that he might have said something in the dream. It's worse now, Ryan further away and Spencer and Jon closer, too much hot skin. He stares at Spencer's mouth sometimes and wonders, when he's wide awake and sober.
Brendon can't ask if he said anything, though. The idea makes his palms sweat, skin itching, and there's just the fine hint of shame there--he can't tell them that he's thought about Ryan like that, not now. He can't tell them that he thinks he wants them both like that, like he's too greedy for just one person. He needs two people, and they have to be the ones that mean everything.
The eggs Spencer made are dry and flavorless, and he doesn't finish his breakfast before he gets up from the table.
"Brendon?" Jon looks up from his plate. He hasn't eaten anything either, fork spearing a sausage link, and the joke about eating someone's meat is right there.
He doesn't take it, just shakes his head and goes up the stairs into Spencer's bedroom and grabs his phone from the charger.
He calls Kara on her answering service--it's Saturday; she's not in but she might still call--because he can't talk to her husband, like he might know what's going on inside his head.
Hey, Kara. It's me. Call me back when you get this. I think... It's all fucked up.
***
Kara doesn't contact him for two days, and when she does it's just a text that says I'll call around three tomorrow. Sorry, work and kids. He's not mad, but the house is too quiet. When Bogart runs into the kitchen to beg off dinner scraps, his nails are too loud on the linoleum.
Brendon finds their CDs out in the living room, and Pretty. Odd. is in the stereo. He turns it on and he hits track eleven. He gets as far as "A daydream," before he has to hit the power switch. Ryan's voice fades quickly, and the house is too quiet again.
Jon and Spencer still aren't looking at each other; Jon's sleeping on the airmattress again, and Brendon feels weird crawling into bed with just Spencer now.
***
He can't face Jon or Spencer while he's waiting for her to call back, and he knows they'll look for him in the music room. Brendon wants to play again, wants to see what kind of music he can make out of the twisting feeling, the way it feels like it's going to push out through his skin like something in a sci-fi movie.
There's space in the spare room, though, in with all of the boxes that are filled with Ryan's stuff. They haven't opened any of them; he doesn't know if they will. (He snorts when he thinks about what they're going to do with all of Ryan's clothes; none of them will fit in his tiny and tight button downs, not without looking stupid.)
He hides between a box marked kitchen and a box marked books and holds his phone in his hands, turning it over and over and trying to decide what he wants to say. He wants to tell them that he doesn't mean it, that he isn't thinking about them like that constantly.
But it's not the same as telling the truth. He doesn't want to go bed tonight and sleep on the couch alone except for Bogart curled up on his chest. He doesn't know if he could sleep like that, if he can go for days and days on end without Jon's hand in his hair or Spencer's around his side. He doesn't know if he can keep his hands from the back of Jon's neck. He likes that he can sit mostly in Spencer's lap and Spencer won't complain.
It's not just because of them, or maybe it is, but he can't help but think of Ryan, dancing close to him on stage and grinning when Ryan would kiss his cheek or butt his head against his shoulder. Brendon knew they wouldn't be a band forever; he doesn't think they have the stories to tell that the Stones do, or even like Aerosmith.
He curls up tighter and rests his cheek against the book box. He wonders if they smell like Ryan at all, the weird sandalwood and juniper handcream that he liked to use so his cuticles wouldn't bleed half as much. He doesn't know what it was called, and Brendon can't open the box because if he does, and they don't smell like Ryan, it will be like Ryan is really gone.
Brendon lets out a shaky breath, pressing his forehead to his knees. He knows Ryan is gone; he watched the hearse take him away and he knows that there's an urn somewhere. It's different, though, when he thinks about the sad way Spencer smiles now, how his eyes seem tired, and Jon seems older than twenty-four.
It's different because they're all changed. They're all changed and he's trying to decide if it's okay. Spencer might never have the same grin that he had when Ryan was there to roll his eyes, but he's still Spencer; Brendon knows he can't learn how to have Spencer in his life, like the things that have changed because they all need to patch the hole somehow.
Kara calls him back before he can really decide if he should open the box. "Brendon?" Her voice is quiet. "What do you think you screwed up?"
"I don't know," he says. He can't tell his sister that he has dreams about fucking his bandmates, that he thinks he wants it to be real, that he wants to touch them and know what they sound like when they're shaking apart for the right reasons instead of what he's seen in the past few months.
She hums softly. "How are the guys?"
"They're good," he says, before he sighs again and shifts in place. "They're downstairs."
"Good," she says. She doesn't say anything else, and it's a trick that she learned from their mom.
It doesn't work on Brendon, not usually, but he has to say it, "I don't know if I'm okay or not. I want..." He can't tell his sister that he wants Spencer and Jon like that, that he's starting to think that he wanted Ryan like that before.
"Brendon, it's okay," she says, and she's so soft that he thinks he misheard her over the sound of his own breathing. "You should be happy."
He stutters a little, because he doesn't know what to say to that. "But I think they know," he says, finally.
"Can you have them without anything else?" She doesn't mention what he wants, and he doesn't know who she's trying to protect from the truth.
Brendon bites his lip. "I can't lose them," he says softly.
"Then don't," she says, and she sounds so sure and confident that he wishes she could really be here. She'd at least give him a hug. He could really use that now.
She doesn't talk again, and this time the silence doesn't bother him. He stands up and pats the top of the box of books. He doesn't know what part of Ryan's library is in it, but he thinks maybe--more important than him seeing if they smell like Ryan's hands and the stupid creams he spent hundred of dollars on--he shouldn't be sitting alone in a half-dark room to find out.
***
Jon's out when he comes downstairs, and the television is fritzing, picture grainy. "There's an electrical storm," Spencer says before Brendon can ask why.
He sits at Spencer's feet, and Bogart crawls into his lap. Brendon can tell it's going to be a bad one from the way he's already starting to tremble.
"It's okay," he murmurs, and he wonders where they put his crate, so he has some place to hide when the storm gets too loud. Bogart whines, and Brendon scratches behind his ears and under his chin.
Spencer doesn't say where Jon is, and Brendon doesn't ask. Spencer won't ask who he was on the phone with, where he went. He can see where Spencer's trying to pull away already, and it makes him nervous, shaky like his dog, and he wants Jon to come home soon, so they can talk.
***
When Jon comes home, he has groceries and the luggage from the garage, the suitcase he brought to Vegas, before they all started living out of laundry baskets. "My mom called and said the kids miss me," he says when Brendon looks at it. He has his head bowed, like it's suddenly interesting to wipe spiderwebs and dust from it.
"Yeah," Spencer murmurs. "It's been a long time."
Brendon waits for them to say something, anything else, before he has to say, "You're leaving us."
Jon's shoulders hunch in a little, but he doesn't say no. He says, "Brendon," like his name should be enough of an answer.
Brendon crawls over to Jon, taking the cloth from his hand. "Jon," he says with the same amount of importance, like Jon should know everything he's feeling, the dizzy sweep of please no, please no and I'm sorry; forgive me that's whirling in Brendon's head.
"You don't have to go home yet," Spencer says, and he has the television turned low, so the cable movie is just an annoying hiss across the room.
"I am home," he says, and he means it. He has a house in LA and a roommate there, but his dog is here. Jon and Spencer are here.
Spencer sighs and tips his head back, away from them. "Brendon, I'm going to be okay. I don't need you both hovering so much." It sounds mean, but there's no bite to the way he says it, like he's just forcing the words out because it's what he should say to make them go.
"If he doesn't want us--"
"What happens if you go back, Jon?" Brendon says. He rubs a hand through his hair. "When are you coming back?"
Jon doesn't have an answer for it, just says, "Brendon, things are getting weird."
And that's it. He flinches away from the words because he knows he's the one who is weird, the one who wants too much and knows he shouldn't.
It's worse when Spencer nods, when he says, "We need some time apart, I think."
He shouldn't say, "But I'll lose you, too," like he does, loud over the first distant roll of thunder. He wishes it would rain, that it could drown out his words.
Jon blinks and steps forward, saying, "Brendon, this isn't about you." He doesn't say anything else, though, because Brendon looks at his mouth and he has to know.
He kisses Jon fast, biting because he hurts and he's never been good at keeping his emotions out of kisses. Jon is still under his hands, even when Brendon licks along the seam of his lips. His hands finally go around Brendon's elbows, but it's to push him away instead of pulling him close.
"Brendon," he says, voice a little deeper. There's something weird in his eyes, and his fingers are trembling. "It doesn't have to--"
He kisses Jon again, shaking himself free. He keeps kissing Jon until Jon starts kissing him back, until Jon's hands on his elbows move up to his arms, thumbs digging into Brendon's skin. It's not a good kiss, but there's something desperate in it, something that makes Brendon push closer, threading his fingers into Jon's hair and pulling just this shade of too hard.
There's a flash of lightening then, and then a thundercloud. It's enough to make the house shake a little, the air warmer suddenly, and he wants to back Jon into a wall, to keep touching because he's allowed and because Jon isn't going to make him back off, make him think that this isn't right.
He sucks on Jon's tongue when his hands slide under Jon's shirt, and Jon makes this soft groaning noise that Brendon wants to hear more of, something that makes the hair on his arms stand on end.
Brendon's almost too concerned with hearing that sound again to notice the way Spencer shifts loud on the couch, the way he exhales when Jon pulls back and lets Brendon push his shirt away. He almost misses the way Spencer shifts on the couch, goes from sitting with his legs crossed on the couch to both feet on the floor. He doesn't move away or forward, but he moves. Brendon notices, though, and so does Jon.
They both look at him, at the way his eyes are wide and he's looking at both of them with his lips pale. "What are you doing?" he asks, his voice rough.
"I don't know," Jon says, and that makes something dark cross over Spencer's face, something that makes him shut-down and Brendon's missed something.
Bogart scampers out of the room after another thunderclap, and he can't watch him go. He has to watch them.
Spencer gets up, rubbing his arms like he's cold. "I told you," he says, and it's directed at Jon. Something's happened; Brendon doesn't know it. He wants to laugh because he thought it had been him; that they knew and it wasn't.
Except Spencer looks proud for a minute, the bitchy face he used to give interviewers when they kept asking about the exclamation point, about replacing Brent. Brendon knows the look and how Spencer just looks bitchier when he's trying not to look tired. He thinks maybe Spencer's trying not to look scared; he hopes Spencer's trying that, at least.
Brendon doesn't care. He grabs for Spencer's hands and only catches one. He won't let Spencer get away from them. "Spence," he says, and he laces their fingers. "I don't--"
"It's not you," Spencer says, and he tries to tug away. "If you and Jon want to--"
"I don't want Jon," Brendon says, and he steps a little more into Spencer's space, tipping his face up. Spencer's almost too tall to kiss, tall enough that he's not sure he can surprise him the way he could Jon.
"You made it pretty clear that you do," Spencer says, and his voice is so quiet and so sad that Brendon can't smile anymore, just lets his expression slide into something gentle.
"No," he says, and he knows Jon is still close. He hopes Jon understands, because he wants to make the sad look go out of Spencer's eyes, even if it's just for a minute. "It's both of you. I need both of you."
Jon presses a kiss to Brendon's neck, just under his hairline, while he wraps an arm around Brendon's waist. "We need you, Spence," he says.
Spencer looks at both of them, and he doesn't move, not even when Jon pushes Brendon closer to him, not when Brendon reaches up and tips his face down, before he goes on tip-toe to press a light kiss to the side of Spencer's mouth. Spencer exhales shakily, eyes closed. Lightening flashes again, and this time the answering rumbles don't make him jump. He doesn't give a shit about the weather; he wants to watch Spencer, to see if anything changes.
"If you don't want," he says, "if you don't want to, we can wait." He doesn't want to wait, not with Jon's arm around his stomach. He wants to feel connected to them, safe and protected and no more bad can happen, at least not for a long, long time.
Spencer exhales and he sags forward. "I don't want to... Not because we're sad," he says softly.
Brendon shakes his head and kisses Spencer again, harder this time, with more in it. Things he can't say because they feel weird thinking, let alone putting into words. "Not because we're sad," he says into Spencer's mouth.
***
It's not because they're sad that they undress each other, with the storm in the background. The clock tells him it's a little after five, not late enough for it to be dark when he pushes Spencer back on the bed, after they have him naked down to his boxers. He can see the weird yellow-grey of the sky through the open curtains.
Jon's already naked, half-hard when he curls around Spencer and kisses at his throat, and Brendon stops undoing his belt to watch them, the way Jon palms at Spencer's dick before he closes a loose fist around it. The storm isn't loud enough to cover the way Spencer says Jon's name, just enough to hide the way it sounds when Jon's hand moves, slow jerks of his hand.
Brendon bites his lip. His jeans are still open, but the curtains are up. He doesn't think anyone can see into the bedroom, but he has to close them. He doesn't want to share this, the way Spencer is panting and Jon is thrusting against his hip, the way they're both watching him. He smiles nervously before he drops the blinds and pulls the drapery shut.
"Hey," Spencer says, voice low and dragging on Brendon's skin. He shivers. "I thought it was both of us?"
He waggles his eyebrows at Spencer before he hooks his thumbs unto his jeans. He peels them down slow, because he likes the way they're looking at him, the way Spencer licks his lips and thrusts up sharp into Jon's fist. He can't take his underwear off sexily after that; he doesn't want to try and pretend he's got crazy moves or anything like he does usually, the first time he's fucking someone.
This is Spencer and Jon; they know he's a dork and they're watching him like that anyway.
Brendon's almost nervous when he crawls onto the bed, like maybe this isn't going to work. It's weird to think that now, two seconds before Spencer reaches out and pulls him close, sucking hard on the pulse point of Brendon's neck, one hand already on his cock.
He gasps loud, letting his mouth stay open, and then Jon's there to kiss him, catching his bottom lip between his teeth. He takes the sounds out of Brendon's mouth, steals them away, and Brendon wraps his free hand in Jon's hair again, pulling hard, and Jon responds in kind.
They stay like that for a while, for too long, kissing and touching with the storm starting to fade. It's warmer now than before, the last of the daylight muted, but he doesn't really need to see how Spencer looks when Jon pushes him down, rubbing his beard on Spencer's fair skin. He wonders how much beard burn Spencer will have in the morning, how much he'll have. The skin around his lips, on his chin, already feels rubbed raw.
He kisses Spencer again, because he wants to be able to see it. He wants that in the morning, even if it fades quickly. Spencer groans into his mouth, wiggling away from Jon and pushing Brendon back into the mattress, and Brendon isn't expecting the rough feel of Jon's tongue at the underside of his cock, teasing along the vein. He bucks up before he can help it, and Jon snorts when Brendon's cock slides against his cheek.
"Eager," he teases, pinching the inside of Brendon's thigh, and Brendon groans again. He tries to wiggle away; Jon and Spencer don't let him, keeping him pushed down between both of them, Spencer fucking his tongue into Brendon's mouth while Jon keeps licking at the head of his cock, keeping his hand moving in a steady rhythm, pace almost too fast but the pressure is right. Jon's saliva is making the slide messy in the best possible way.
Brendon can't help himself, panting against Spencer's mouth, and Spencer's hands are the ones that keep his hips still, so he's not fucking Jon's mouth when Jon finally swallows him down again, as far as he can.
"What do you want," Spencer says before he kisses the curve of Brendon's jaw. "What do you like?"
He wants to tell Spencer everything, all the shit that you don't talk about even when you share a bus, because Spencer's asking and he seems like himself in the low, low light, not as sad and focused now in a way that he hasn't been in a month. Except Jon's thumbs are digging into Brendon's thighs, and then his nails one second before he moans around Brendon's cock.
Brendon comes like that, with Spencer's hands tight on hips and Jon stretched between his legs, and he isn't quiet about it, the way everything turns to white noise at his orgasm and he can't talk or think for a handful of seconds.
But Spencer asked him a question, and he wants to answer it.
When he can think again, after the rush has faded a little but all his senses are still sharp, he kisses Spencer again. "I want to watch him fuck you," he says, and Jon moves up onto his knees. "I want to watch your face."
Spencer shivers, and Brendon grins, pushing sweaty hair from his eyes. "Okay," he says, and he reaches over to the night stand. There's condoms in there and lube. Brendon doesn't know how old they are, how long Spencer's had them on hand. He knows that Spencer hasn't had sex since he and Jon moved in, but it doesn't matter now.
Brendon pushes the lube into Jon's hands before he leans over to press their mouths together, sliding his tongue into Jon's mouth so he can taste himself, push his tongue against Jon's. His skin is still sensitive, and he can't help the way he shudders when Jon touches his hip, the crease of his thigh, before he's moving closer to Spencer, lube open and fingers slick.
He sits up and watches Jon spoon behind Spencer, pulling one of his legs up to he can slide his fingers along the crease of Spencer's ass, and Brendon watches Spencer's face. He wants to see the moment that Jon stops teasing and starts to push his fingers in, one at first and then more so Spencer's stretched and ready.
Spencer's eyes close, and Brendon has to reach over and turn on the bedside lamp. He wants to see everything, the way Spencer bites his lip when Jon goes to two fingers and the way Jon keeps talking nonsense into Spencer's neck, his eyes dark with want. He keeps looking between Spencer and Brendon, like he can't decide.
Brendon hopes he never has to, and he kisses Jon over Spencer's shoulder, pushing Spencer between them.
"Fuck," Spencer hisses, and he thrusts against Brendon, where he's still a little too sensitive from coming yet, making him jump when his nerves can't register good, good and tell him too much. He rolls his hips away, but Spencer makes a sound and tries to pull him back, cups his palm over Brendon's ass and digs his nails in.
"Please," he says, and Brendon can hear Jon fighting with the condom wrapper, see Jon whisper something in Spencer's ear. It doesn't feel like a secret; it's like a surprise that they all know is coming, when Jon slowly fucks into Spencer.
"Please," Spencer says again, and he squeezes Brendon's ass this time, hard enough to hurt. He can't help groaning.
He runs his hand between Spencer's legs, touching where he's already stretched tight around Jon's cock. They don't have a rhythm set yet; he knows from how they're breathing that they aren't sure how to keep going, can tell when Jon's going too fast or Spencer's being too still. He hopes they have time to figure it out best, see the way the way Spencer wants to be fucked or how he wants to fuck them.
His hand gets wet from the lube, and he presses two fingers behind Spencer's ball before he touches his dick, laughing almost too loud at the noise Spencer makes. He's fucking against Brendon's hip, and sometimes his dick slips, hits against Brendon's and Brendon can't come again, not this soon or it will hurt.
He takes his hand away, just to hear Spencer whimper a little, before he snaps, "Stop being a fucking tease, Brendon."
Jon laughs, and it seems out of place, like they should be serious. His eyes are dark, but he's grinning. "You should stop," he says, before he's sucking on Spencer's neck, holding his hip.
"Yeah," Brendon says, even though he's not sure who or what he's really agreeing to, before he's wrapping his hand around Spencer. He's not jerking him off, just holding his fist still so there's something for Spencer to fuck into.
He can tell when they get it right, when it stops being uncomfortable for Spencer and starts to feel good. Jon groans, and Spencer's neck is going to be marked in the morning. Brendon should feel jealous, but he's not. Spencer's marked as Jon's, and he can't help himself from bending down to suck a bruise on the other side of his neck, near his collar bone where Jon can't reach.
Spencer can be theirs.
He keeps his mouth there, keeps his hand still for Spencer, and listens to their breathing, the way the bed sounds when Jon pushes forward and the sound of his hips hitting Spencer's ass. It's not as hard as it could be, and he thinks it's better that way.
When Spencer's close, he pulls on Brendon's hair, hard and Brendon looks up. Spencer's kiss is bruising, almost too hard. It's desperate in a way they don't need to be, like he's trying to tell Brendon everything he has inside, all the fear and the anger.
Brendon kisses back gently, settling his hand on Spencer's hip over Jon's, and Spencer gets it after a minute. His lips feel swollen long before then, but it's worth it when Spencer's kisses turn chaste, off-center and playful before Jon pushes forward and Brendon slicks his thumb over the head of Spencer's cock.
He comes apart between them, hot and shaking, and they're both there when he comes back, Jon kissing the back of his neck and Brendon pressing his mouth gently over Spencer's face, his cheeks and the side of his mouth before he chases Brendon's mouth down and whispers something against it.
Brendon doesn't know what he says, but he likes the way it feels, almost as much as he likes the way Spencer watches him jerk off Jon, his fingers smeared with Spencer's come.
***
They don't fall asleep together. Brendon gets up first, and he brings a washcloth back to clean them up. Jon takes it, but Spencer won't, muttering about a shower even though there's still the distant rumble of thunder.
It's barely evening, and they should eat dinner. He feels weird getting dressed, even if he just pulls on a pair of thin pajama pants. Bogart is still hiding in his cage, shivering in the corner and Brendon reaches inside to stroke along his fur. He leaves the door open, in case he wants to come out and cower at Brendon's feet.
He orders pizza because there's nothing in the fridge, and Jon comes down and turns on a football game, some game that played two days ago. Brendon's pretty sure they already watched it.
They sit in silence until Spencer comes into the living room, hair damp and combed straight. He's wearing sweat pants that are a little too big now, not staying up the way they should, and showing off a sliver of his side, the white skin of his hip. It's hard not to stay at the red marks on his neck, the way they trail down and disappear under the collar of his shirt.
Brendon waits for one of them to say something because he doesn't think it's fair for him to be the one to do it this time. Jon's suitcase is still out, abandoned between the coffee table and the tv.
Spencer sees that he's looking, and he makes a soft, discontent noise. "You should put that back," he says.
Jon sighs and shakes his head. "I still need to go to Chicago," he says, and it makes Brendon's skin feel cold and hot at the same time, that Jon still wants to leave them.
"Jon," he says at the same time Spencer says, "We want you to stay."
Then Jon smiles, and he shakes his head. "I need my cats and my dog. Bogart's great, but they're driving my parents nuts."
There's something in the way that he says it that makes Brendon's throat close up tight. He remembers an old interview, where Jon said he could never actually move. "It's still hot here," he whispers.
Spencer isn't saying anything. He's just watching them both, and Brendon takes Spencer's hand without thinking, squeezes it between his.
"Yeah, but my family lives here," Jon says, and he's looking at both of them with something in his eyes that Brendon doesn't have words for.
The doorbell rings; their dinner's here and no one moves to get it.