fic - patd - you are as she was ii.
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Time in Vegas passes slowly for Bren, Ryan and Spencer, but when they meet up at the crack of dawn for their flight to England, Brent seems reluctant to leave. He doesn’t actually say anything, but his lips are soft in a pout and he drags his feet while they board. He didn’t really keep his promise after the band meeting they had. Bren’s hung out with Spencer and Ryan, had dinner with Spencer’s family, but she hasn’t seen Brent more than a few times, some of which were complete accidents.
The hollow feeling that Bren’s been trying to ignore for a while intensifies when she glances sideways. Brent’s eyes are closed, his head tipped back, his expression anything but peaceful.
The flight is painfully long, just like the last time. Bren dozes off a few times but spends most of it feeling caged in and restless. She’s been feeling more and more like herself in the last week, at least in terms of the giddy anticipation of a headlining UK tour, and she’s so ready for the whole thing to start that she can barely sit still. She twists in her seat to talk to Spencer and Ryan every few minutes, and they’re happy enough about their upcoming show that they don’t seem too annoyed by it. Spencer falls asleep eventually and it falls to Ryan to keep her entertained. They make up stupid games and argue about indie music and it's nice, but once or twice she catches him staring at her in that way he has, the one that makes her feel breathless and twitchy, and she has to turn around and collect her thoughts for a while.
Her energy has been ebbing and flowing for so many hours that Bren’s feeling a little crazed by the time the plane touches down. She’s one of the first ones off as soon as the captain gives permission to get out of seatbelts, and she waits impatiently for Brent, Spencer and Ryan to catch up.
“I think we’re all supposed to meet up outside,” Spencer says, and he would know, he keeps up with these things better than Bren does.
“Okay,” she says, heart beating faster because they’re in Europe and they’re headlining and it’s going to be her and her boys and the guys from The Academy and she wants to jump up and down and scream and sing for days, she’s so excited.
Everyone is, indeed, waiting outside. Bren spots Bill first, not that Bill is easy to miss, but she doesn’t get the chance to do more than wave and smile before Jon’s sweeping her up in a hug. Her breath hitches and she tries not to panic in the two seconds it takes to recognize the arms hauling her up against a body not much taller than hers, but Jon smells familiar and she’s so happy that she lets him squeeze her tight before he sets her down instead of squirming out of his hold.
“Jon!” she says happily, spinning around to beam at him.
He grins at her and then he’s turning to slap Ryan on the back and hug Spencer and smile hello to Brent.
“He’s been bereft without you,” Tom says, walking forward and grinning at them all. “Seriously, you should’ve seen him in Chicago.”
Jon nods. “It’s true. I’ve gotten used to having you guys around.”
Bren laughs and turns to greet everyone else. She avoids hugging anyone for too long but lets the adrenaline propel her into the arms of band members for a few almost-comfortable seconds. They pile onto their busses when their managers start getting serious about deadlines, and, of course, it’s not an ideal living situation. The spaces are all cramped, there’s nowhere for Bren to go to be alone except for her bunk; in a few days, they’ll be annoyed with each other and desperate for space.
For now, it’s perfect.
_._
The stage lights are hot, beating down on Bren, and she’s sweating more than any girl ever should. She can feel rivulets of it sliding down her spine, pooling between her breasts, and when she licks her lips she tastes salt and the Chapstick she hasn’t quite bitten off yet. She’s got new clothes in her bag, pants because her mom doesn’t want her flashing her underwear in front of an audience, but she’s wearing one of her dresses, the fabric swishing around her thighs, the air ghosting over her bare skin, cooling the sweat behind her knees but not doing much else.
Bren belts out songs, collects Ryan’s words in her mouth and gives them back to him, shares them with the audience. It’s day five of their tour, their fifth night in a row playing as the headliner, and everything feels different. It’s more electric than ever, there’s more freedom. From the moment Bren steps out onto the stage, she can see everything stretched out in front of her for miles and miles, reminding her that this is where she’s meant to be, right here, center stage, Ryan to her right and Brent to her left and Spencer behind but all of them all around, the music filling her up and sailing outoutout with her voice, Ryan’s words.
Up here, Bren feels alive again, like she did before. On stage she can touch, freely and with abandon. She takes advantage, pressing up against Ryan’s side, an arm around his waist, her lips nearly touching his as they share a mic. She strides over to Brent and holds him in place, a hand on his shoulder, singing and begging, maybe, for him to feel the way she does. She wishes she could touch Spencer. She settles for throwing him winks and blown kisses over her shoulder, body moving to his beat.
Everything has to end and she hates it, but she coasts on adrenaline from the final note to the dressing room, accepting pats on the back from techs and friends and other band members, giggling when someone calls Spencer a stud. She comes down slowly, the best way to crash, and it’s like a drug, the need to be on stage and performing and feeling. Somehow, by the next morning, she’s always desperate for more.
_._
It's a late bus call and they've gathered on The Academy's bus, but it's a little awkward. Usually William and his boys are pretty good about not being bitter over the fact that Bren and her boys are becoming kind of a big deal. But Bren's heard the whispers and she's seen the looks and tonight the crowd was chanting for Panic before The Academy even finished their set. Things aren't cold, exactly, just tense. Bren isn't entirely sure partying with them is a good idea, but she's here and so are Ryan and Spencer and Brent and Jon's across the lounge making funny faces at her so she's trying not to feel weird about it.
It's a little bit easy when Ryan's staring from a few feet away. That's a more pressing issue in Bren's book. She can handle Mike's smartass comments and Sisky's ignoring them in favor of dicking around with Bill on the other side of the bus. She can't really handle the way her skin feels hot and tight under Ryan's gaze.
She looks down at the cup of coke and whiskey in her hands and wills her heart to stop pounding in her ears. It's been the natural reaction to Ryan's eyes on her almost since the first time they met. She remembers being scared and frumpy in a sweatshirt and jeans sitting in Spencer's grandmother's living room with an acoustic guitar in her lap and she remembers that that was the first time she ever felt beautiful, when she played and looked up and the first thing she saw was Ryan staring at her like she was something important. Her heart skipped a beat and it hasn't stopped in the last couple years. It's a little scary, if she's being honest, that he has this effect on her and maybe that's why she's reacted so much more strongly to him. She doesn't feel the same way about anyone else and she doesn't know what that means, she just knows that she wants things she doesn't want to want and it's so confusing inside of her own head that she squeezes her eyes shut to block it all out.
A soft touch to her elbow makes her jump and she sees Ryan standing in front of her, looking concerned.
"Jesus!" she hisses out, pulling her arms in close to her body and frowning at him. "You scared me!"
He blinks and says, "sorry. We just wanted to see if maybe you wanted to go back to our bus and watch a movie? There's not a whole lot going on here."
She looks around and notices Spencer and Brent standing awkwardly apart from everyone else. Jon's talking to them like nothing's wrong, but that's just Jon. To him, Bren thinks everything's probably fine.
Ryan touches her again and Bren inhales sharply. She thought they were getting better but sometimes Ryan does this, gets into her space and forces a reaction. Bren sort of hates that no matter how hard she tries to guard herself, she always reacts to him. Always.
"Yeah," she says finally, a little twitchy and restless suddenly. "Yeah, we can go."
Ryan nods once. They go to file off the bus and Spencer hesitates before asking Jon if he wants to tag along. Jon glances around and ignores the look Mike shoots him, shrugging and taking one last swig of his beer.
"Sure, why not?" he says, smiling warmly.
_._
Everything's back to normal the next night, although the guys don't follow Bren onto The Academy's bus. Ryan's having one of his moody nights and Spencer's keeping him company while Brent does whatever it is he does when he hides in his bunk. Bren doesn't really want to think about that.
She finds herself sitting next to Jon, drinking a bottle of shitty red wine with him and Mike and William and it's like last night never happened. It's always like this, though. One night William's upset about the fact that they've been working their asses off for longer than Bren and her band and they're getting nowhere fast. The next night, William's jovial and friendly like always. It's enough to make Bren's head spin, but the alcohol helps a little.
"I really miss Chicago style pizza," Jon says, apropos of nothing.
Mike lets out an exaggerated groan. "Fuck, me too. Why'd you have to say that, Jon, now I'm craving."
Bren snickers and says, "I've never had it," before taking another sip.
Jon and William both look at her in shock.
"What?" Jon says, leaning forward and into her space. Bren's drunk enough not to mind. She just shrugs. "You've been to Chicago how many times and you've never had authentic pizza?" he continues.
William shakes his head. "That is sad, Little One."
"I have lived a very sheltered life," Bren tells them, voice light even though she can't help thinking about how true that is.
"That's no excuse," Jon tells her. "Next time you're in Chicago, I'm taking you out, okay? And you don't get to say no. Promise." He thrusts out his pinky and Bren laughs, linking her little finger with his.
They shake on it and Jon doesn't let go right away. His touch leaves her feeling warm and pleasantly dizzy and Bren thinks maybe she should have a problem with that, but she doesn't. She just keeps drinking, doing shots when they move on to tequila, and laughing almost non-stop, watching the guys play games with stupid rules before trying them out herself. She lets Jon drape his arm around her shoulders, lets William hold her hands, and doesn't shy away.
She ends up back on her own bus eventually and can't remember how it happened or when they stopped moving long enough for her to move from one bus to the other. She thinks maybe Jon and Butcher helped but then again maybe they didn't. She doesn't know because everything's a little jumbled up in her mind, an impression of sounds and sights that don't really coalesce into actual memories. So she sits on the couch in the lounge and stops trying to remember, debates the merits of stumbling to her bunk instead.
She must fall asleep because the next thing she remembers is drifting awake to fingers in her hair and lips pressed to her temple. Her stomach feels warm, her skin gently tingling. She blinks her eyes open and Ryan's there, soft-faced, in the hazy light of early morning.
"You're a mess," he says quietly, and Bren's still fuzzy-headed, with sleep and from the alcohol, so she just reaches up and clumsily taps the tip of his nose.
"You have no room to talk," she whispers.
Ryan says, "I know," and catches her hand and squeezes and she falls asleep before he lets go.
The next time she wakes up, she doesn't remember any of it at all.
_._
“Shhhhh,” Jon hushes when Bren steps up behind him.
He’s lying on his stomach near the back of the venue, camera sitting next to his left hand.
“Why am I being shushed?” Bren asks in a whisper, climbing over him and lowering herself to her stomach, settling in on his right side.
“Because it’s nice and quiet and I’m enjoying the moment,” he says, tipping a smile in her direction.
Bren grins back and rests her cheek on her folded arms. They’ve been going non-stop for the last six days, a rush of traveling and foreign shops and shows. Bren loves it, she knows that Jon loves it as much as she does, but there’s something comforting about the silence of a theatre because it’s never really silent at all. It’s only waiting for the next explosion of sound, just like Bren. Just like Jon.
They stay like that for a few minutes, Bren being quiet and still because she can totally be quiet and still when she wants, especially for Jon. Her eyes are closed and she thinks she could sleep here, really sleep, for the first time in what feels like months. When she opens them again, Jon’s staring at her, his gaze steady and a little dark. It’s not scary because it’s not threatening. Nothing like Ryan, Bren thinks suddenly, and her stomach does a slow twist.
“What?” she asks, making barely any sound.
Jon just shakes his head and reaches out, slowly. She watches his fingers come closer and closer and stays carefully still when he pushes her bangs behind her ears. When his touch lingers, she shakes it off, but she realizes as soon as he pulls his hand back that it was more reflex than anything. Her heart is beating fast, but not like it usually is after someone’s touched her. It’s beating fast the way it should be, in anticipation, a little in nerves.
She waits to see if Jon will touch her again, but he doesn’t, he just smiles, lifts his camera, and takes a picture.
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