fic: What Is In The Heart (bandslash, 4000 words)
Thanks to
lordessrenegade for the beta. Title/cut text from The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, which changed my life. Hard R.
It's cold for October.
Cold in the way that gets under your skin, layered in your muscle and bone, creaking when you walk. Ryan shivers on the way home now, and Spencer pretends not to worry about him.
"Hey. So," Ryan says as Brent's packing up and Spencer's flipping his drumsticks. It isn't really a sentence, isn't really anything and might mean nothing, but it's Ryan, so it doesn't. Spencer looks up, or doesn't really, but Ryan knows what he means.
Ryan's wearing a scarf and feeling like a hipster; Spencer's wearing a sweater his grandmother bought for him and feeling out of place. He's also pretty sure that hipsters don't cover Blink 182, but he's not going to be the one to tell Ryan that.
Ryan shrugs. "Since Brent's bass for us now, I was thinking maybe we needed another layer?"
That it was phrased as a question is significant, but Spencer doesn't know how. He frowns. "Rhythm guitar?"
Ryan shrugs again, which Spencer translates as meaning it's really important to him but he's not going to show it - it's his way of keeping his own expectations low so no one will feel like they're disappointing him, and it makes Spencer's stomach ache. "Yeah," says Ryan. "Or maybe a keyboardist."
Brent snaps the buckles on his case closed; his guitar is new, a birthday present, and he takes good care of it. "I might know a guy," Brent says, and Spencer's surprised. Brent doesn't usually make decisions. He gladly goes along with them once they're made, and offers suggestions, but he doesn't make decisions and that bothers Spencer, somewhere low in his gut and underneath his skin.
Brent picks up his case. "He might be interested. I'll ask."
Ryan nods and pretends to tune his guitar to show exactly how much it doesn't matter. Brent leaves.
Spencer flicks his drumsticks around his finger.
Later that night, they're on Ryan's floor, the air mattress from his closet mostly inflated beneath them, as Ryan rocks against him. Ryan groans, breath curling inside Spencer's ear, and Spencer keeps his eyes open, counting plaster clumps on the popcorn ceiling until he can't anymore and his eyes slide shut as he shudders.
They use an old shirt to clean up, and Ryan turns over casually. Spencer is reminded of the way he tunes his guitar and thinks of the smooth turning of the pegs under sure, shaking hands until the sound of breathing next to him evens.
He closes his eyes. Ryan's heart beats beside his ear, the reassuring rhythm of percussion, and Spencer sleeps.
Brent's guy is scared.
The kid's young, dark, small and trying to make himself smaller. His shoulders are hunched past his earlobes. His pants - cargo pants, like he's a five-year-old - are short. They brush the tongues of his sneakers.
"You play keyboard?" Ryan asks, like he's afraid there's been a mistake and Brent accidentally brought his friend that plays ukulele.
This kid nods. Brent puts a friendly hand on his shoulder, his guitar slung around his back. "This is Brendon," he says, and Brendon instantly looks five times more petrified than before. Spencer is surprised that he doesn't squeak and sink through the floor.
Offering a smile, he nods at the keyboard in the corner, abandoned by his sister years before. "Give it a shot," he says.
Behind the piano, Brendon's shoulders sink and widen. His feet sit flat on the ground; his hands seem to grow and stretch.
Ryan says yes before he's done playing.
Spencer flicks his drumsticks around his finger and tries not to smile.
Brendon's high-energy once he settles in, almost ridiculously so, and it funnels into intensity and focus when he's playing. Ryan likes that about him.
"What do you think of Brendon?" Spencer asks on the way to school. He already knows the answer, even if Ryan doesn't.
"He's good," Ryan says, like that's what Spencer asked. "He's… easy to like."
Spencer nods. His fingers tighten on the seat of the car. He turns the radio up and the rest of the ride passes in silence.
They're packing up again, Brent already gone, when Ryan says, "Hey, Brendon, want to come see a movie with me and Spence?"
Brendon's grin is and quick and surprising. "Yeah, sure. When?"
Ryan and Spencer glance at each other. Ryan raises an eyebrow. Spencer shakes his head. Ryan shrugs and turns back to Brendon. "Sunday morning."
Brendon's transitional grin is gone. "Sorry, can't," he says, "Talk to you guys tomorrow. Practice at Spencer's, right?" and he leaves without waiting for an answer.
Ryan and Spencer exchange glances, Spencer's slightly amused and Ryan's flummoxed. "That was weird," says Spencer.
"Yeah," says Ryan.
Footsteps on the stairs: Brent's back for his forgotten wallet. "What'd you guys say to Brendon?" he asks mildly.
"Invited him to a movie Sunday morning," Ryan says. "He ran off."
Spencer grins sideways. "Probably has a crush on you," he says.
Ryan blushes, hot and sudden. It's not something Spencer can get him to do often. "Shut up," he says. Spencer is unimpressed.
Brent shakes his head. "He's got church. He's Mormon, you guys."
Spencer drops his drumsticks; Ryan stares. "For serious?"
Brent shrugs. "I think something's going on with him," he says. "Whatever. Gotta run." He takes off back up the stairs.
Ryan shifts his stare to Spencer. "How's he supposed to be a rock star if he can't even drink Coke?"
Spencer rolls his eyes. "Come on, pack up. I gotta get home. I have to babysit tonight," he says, and tells himself he doesn't feel a sense of accomplishment when Ryan laughs, bright and easy.
Ryan hears Brendon sing backup and then it's all over.
"You sure?" Spencer asks, surprised. This is Ryan's band, Ryan's brainchild, Ryan's escape.
"I'm sure," Ryan says, and Spencer pretends not to notice the way his lips press together like he's holding in a secret.
Brendon asks the same question, suddenly unsure, but Ryan nods and steps back towards Brent and Spencer. The open floor space is quiet and accusatory.
Brendon steps forward.
The diner's artificially retro, a strange mixture of decades that just makes it feel fake. The vinyl seats are losing stuffing through randomly-spaced holes and the wood-paneled walls are scratched with initials and swear words, but the sundaes are almost illegally good. Spencer knows because Brendon says so.
"This is almost illegally good," he says, his face a blissful mask.
"Lemme try," says Ryan, and tries to steal the sundae. Brendon crawls behind his back and holds the ice cream away. "Come on, just on taste." They tussle and Spencer hears Ryan laugh, bright and easy, as he gets the sundae and licks the top of it.
Spencer watches Brendon lean all over Ryan, forgiving him, takes another sip of his milkshake, feeling vaguely sick.
The next day, Brendon comes to practice late. He takes Ryan's lecture without looking up from the keyboard. His shoulders are hunched past his ears and he looks more scared than Spencer's ever seen him since that first day.
Brendon looks over to plug in the keyboard, and the faint yellow of a fading bruise is visible just above his collar.
Ryan leaves off mid-sentence, then clears his throat. "Let's get started," he says.
Brendon says nothing.
Spencer feels sick.
Ryan's trying to write.
He and Brendon are sleeping over at Spencer's, supposedly working. They keep getting distracted, though, first by Brendon flicking his water bottle cap at Ryan and inadvertently starting some roughhousing when Ryan retaliates, and then Ryan snapping a rubber band at Brendon and starting a rubber band war. Spencer's frustrated and annoyed, but Ryan's still trying to write.
"I have to get this," he says, frowning. "It's like the world's humming and I can't get the tune."
(Once, when they were thirteen and fourteen:
Laying on their backs in dusty grass, earth warm and fuzzy under their shirts. Chewing grass and sinking into the soil.
"Listen."
Spencer held his breath and listened.
"Do you hear it?"
Spencer turned his head and only saw liquid brown eyes.
"Do you hear the world humming?")
Spencer goes still, but Ryan doesn't look up. "Whatever. This is not working." He snaps his notebook shut and looks up, grinning at Brendon. "Let's stop for the night."
By the time it's one am, the three of them are watching some shitty old movie on TV, Spencer slumped on the couch next to Ryan, Brendon lying with his head in Ryan's lap.
The other two are making fun of the movie viciously, laughing and making up lines. Spencer's one more shitty scene away from falling asleep.
"Oh, so, Spence," Ryan says. Spencer musters the energy to look over at him, face lit by the flickering black and white screen. "There's a poetry reading I want to hear on Wednesday night."
Spencer frowns. He's at that level of tired that makes it extremely difficult to think, where the world looks less like a movie and more like a flipbook, frames slowed and extended. "I have a math test Thursday."
"I know," Ryan says. "Brendon's coming. Just thought you might want to come for a little bit."
Spencer's stomach clenches. "I don't think so," he says.
Ryan shrugs. "Whatever," he says, and laughs when Brendon does an imitation of the simpering woman onscreen, his head leaning in low and his hair flopping over his eyes, his smile quirking and staying on his face.
Spencer's heart percusses through his body, and it isn't reassuring.
Next practice, Brendon doesn't show.
They wait for fifteen minutes, then try to practice without him, but without his voice pulling the layers of the songs together, it's hard to capture. Ryan calls it off thirty minutes early, upset. He bangs out the front door.
"You could stay here," Spencer offers. It's bright outside. The air is shimmering and painfully clear.
Ryan looks back, and everything is too bright, overexposed. "Not tonight," he says.
"Yeah, okay," says Spencer and closes his door, resting his head against the wall.
The next day, Brendon comes and doesn't say anything when Ryan rips into him.
Spencer carefully doesn't wonder why he's wearing long sleeves.
They decide to go camping.
Spencer's not exactly sure whose idea it is, but he knows it wasn't Brent's, because Brent's not coming. Something about his sisters. Ryan shrugs and, in the morning, loads up his crappy car full of camping equipment.
It's not a long drive, but the windows are all open, and the wind tugs ceaselessly at Spencer's shirt. Ryan's wearing sunglasses and a loose button-up with khakis, looking like he drove there from California. Spencer suddenly longs for the beach.
Ryan and Brendon sing loudly and obnoxiously along with the radio. Spencer stares out the window and feels nostalgic.
They go swimming in a creek and roast marshmallows over a fire and have a pillow fight over the best spot in the tent. As they settle down, Ryan turns on a flashlight against the deepening gloom and pulls out his notebook, frowning at it.
Brendon and Spencer talk; Ryan makes a frustrated noise, pinning up the tent flap to get some air circulating. The highway is visible through the tress, headlights soaring like lost airplanes.
"Need help?" asks Spencer.
Ryan grunts.
Spencer is suddenly irritated. "Just trying to help out," he says.
"You can't help with this," Ryan says.
"Just because you always have to do everything yourself," Spencer says, and doesn't finish.
They stop talking.
Spencer watches the headlights flash through the trees. Ryan writes songs about people who are accidentally beautiful, accidentally happy, purposefully hopeless. Brendon watches the two of them with big, dark eyes.
Spencer watches the headlights flash through the trees and pretends they're falling stars.
"What's going on with you and Brendon?" Spencer asks on the way to school.
Ryan sends him a sharp look.
"We’re friends," he said. "I thought you were into sharing?"
Spencer's hands tighten on the car seat. The radio's too loud. He doesn't touch it.
Brendon is on his doorstep instead of Ryan's.
There's a suitcase next to him and it's like the beginning, or the beginning of the end, of every bad movie, the ones with Matthew McConaughey or maybe Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. There are circles under Brendon's eyes, just like bruises. But maybe not only like bruises, and he didn't go to Ryan's.
"Hey," says Spencer.
"Hey," says Brendon, and stands there. His hands are empty. They hang by his side.
"What's up?"
"So, uh." Brendon chuckles, sort of, like he's trying to tell a funny joke but can't get through it without laughing. He didn't go to Ryan. "I kind of got kicked out."
"What?" asks Spencer, the stupid comic relief, and it's not funny, it's not anywhere close.
"I got kicked out. Of my house," Brendon says, and he's still not at Ryan's.
"Okay," says Spencer. "Okay, okay," and he's not freaking out if Brendon's not. He's not, he's not, he's not. "Do you want to come in?"
Brendon's staying at Spencer's "just until I get my own place, honest." Spencer's mom is charmed and worried. Brent frowns more often. Spencer always feels vaguely sick.
Ryan carefully tunes his guitar.
Brendon gets a job making smoothies and buys a shit apartment.
Ryan sits at the counter and scribbles in his notebook.
Spencer sips his smoothie and says nothing.
The pipes in Brendon's apartment leak. Spencer and Brendon are making fun of what's on TV. Ryan is pretending to write, but he's laughing at their bad impressions. Spencer smiles, and it's just like it should be.
Ryan sleeps at Brendon's more often, now, Spencer knows. There's an extra air mattress and it crowds the floor, even though Brendon doesn't have much other furniture. Spencer pretends not to worry about Ryan.
He doesn't ask about what's going on between him and Brendon again, either.
He doesn't ask when Brendon clings to Ryan's back when they walk him home from the Smoothie Hut in the cold, and he doesn't ask when Ryan's face lights up at something Brendon says, and he doesn't ask when he sees Brendon carefully kiss Ryan's temple when he thinks Spencer's asleep.
It's not his business.
Ryan's asleep now, though, and Spencer and Brendon are still making fun of the TV, Brendon grinning his quirking smile that none of them have seen for weeks. Spencer's tired, deep and warm in his bones, and he chuckles, sliding sideways into Brendon and staying there because it's warm and comfortable and easy. Brendon looks down, amused and laughing and sweet with something that's been growing behind his eyes ever since he showed up on Spencer's doorstep.
And Spencer's not leaning in, he's not, he's not, he's not, until he is.
The touch of their lips is surprising. It's hesitant and not very good, but it curls something low and deep in Spencer's stomach that he hadn't known was there. The streetlight filters in through the bare window at a crazy angle, highlighting Brendon's ear, his nose, the back of his hand. Brendon's kissing him back.
Brendon's kissing him back.
Spencer stops, suddenly, freezes. He gathers his things and heads for the door.
"Wait," Brendon says softly, sleepily.
Spencer hesitates. "I'm a crappy friend," he says, and lets himself out.
Ryan just looks at Spencer the next day, and Spencer knows he knows. He doesn't say I'm sorry, because that would be pathetic and cowardly, but it hangs between them anyway because he desperately wants to say it.
He scuffs his toe along the ground, but it's just concrete and asphalt so the toe isn't making much difference. Ryan's still looking, and Spencer wonders if all the years, if all that time, is just going to end here.
He's sort of expecting it to.
He's not expecting yelling, just cold, hurt stares and silence, forever and ever, amen. Ryan doesn't forgive.
Ryan clears his throat.
"You're a crappy friend," he says, unexpectedly, and Spencer carefully does not cry. "But you're not the only one."
He walks away. Practice that night is easy, normal. They don't bring it up again.
They get good really, really fast, and suddenly Ryan is calling him up and bouncing off the walls, okay, because Spence, you're not going to fucking believe this! Pete fucking Wentz, man!
And Spencer might be a little angry at Ryan for putting their stuff all over the internet and not telling anyone, except for the part where he's really, really not.
Spencer flips when he realizes he can't play when Pete Wentz is there - "There's got to be some way to get out of this, seriously," he says, except apparently there's not - but Ryan points out that any money he can get is good money, so the babysitting might end up paying for amps or guitars or who-knows-what. Brent shrugs and says he can't be there.
Brendon quietly hyperventilates in the corner.
It's somehow Spencer's job, three hours before "Pete fucking Wentz, seriously, man!" comes, to talk Brendon down from wherever the hell he is. This means sitting on the lip of the tub while Brendon throws up for the third time.
"It'll be okay," Spencer says, and he's not exactly sure how many times he's said that in the last hour, but he's pretty sure he'll be saying it in his sleep.
"Fuck, Spencer," Brendon says, and okay, Brendon doesn't usually swear. "This is what it was about. If I screw this up, what? 'M going to go back to my parents and grovel? What the hell?"
Spencer doesn't know what to say, so he just says, "Me and Ryan won't let that happen," which feels like a lie, because what are they going to do? But Brendon seems calmer, after that, so Spencer lets it go.
Ryan wears a pinstripe suit and fingerless gloves to the contract meeting and feels fashionable. Brent wears his father's suit and looks uncomfortable. Brendon wears khakis and a button-up because he doesn't have anything better and looks out of place. Spencer wears a suit a size and a half too small and feels naïve. His shirt is too long and too small in the collar and he's transitional.
Ryan's hand shakes when he signs and the ink bleeds deep into the paper, running the neat letters together. Spencer feels a vague sense of dread.
They go out afterward, to a movie, because no one wants to go home. They sit in the back and make fun of the writing and the fake action scenes. Spencer throws ice at Ryan and Brendon leaves popcorn-butter finger smears all over everyone's nice clothes.
They sleep at Brendon's crappy apartment with the leaking pipes, all of them together, and bicker over floor space and who's stealing which blankets and the limited space to brush their teeth.
The sense of dread is gone by the morning.
Touring is not at all and exactly like Spencer thought it would be.
He likes it, though, and Ryan? Ryan fucking loves it. He breathes it and sings it and sleeps it. Touring makes him exist, in a way he hadn't before, and Spencer can suffer through all the bad parts for that.
They're standing outside a venue, the two of them, leaning against the building and watching the lights reflect on the rain-slicked asphalt. It's pretty, in a film-grain, gut-clench way, and Spencer breathes the soaked air in and out, shivering a little in the cold.
Ryan's hand is warm on his neck when he turns Spencer's head for a kiss, and it's exactly like it always has been.
"What about Brendon?" Spencer says, barely breathing against Ryan's lips.
"We’re all good at sharing," Ryan says. His lips touch Spencer's one more time, warm and dry and safe, and then he touches their foreheads together, lightly, barely, before stepping back. His hand is still warm on the back of Spencer's neck.
Ryan leaves it like that, and Spencer lets him.
When Spencer accidentally walks in on Brendon blowing Ryan in an empty dressing room, it's surprising, but maybe not as surprising as it should have been. Maybe too surprising.
If he only shuts the door when Ryan looks up and comes, he tells himself that it was just the surprise; he wasn't watching at all.
After that, Spencer looks up to see Ryan's eyes on him more often, watching in a steady gaze. Or he'll sense a wisp of feeling on the back of his neck, the brush of Ryan's eyes like a spider web in an attic, but look up to find Ryan's gaze elsewhere (Brendon). He pretends he doesn't notice.
Until he winds up on his knees, blowing Ryan against a sink in a club bathroom, and wondering how he had managed to get there, and looks up to see Brendon's gaze, dark and anything but accusatory.
He doesn't say anything to Brendon, but Brendon winks at him as they go onstage, and Spencer is irreparably confused.
"What's going on?" Spencer asks Ryan. He taps his toes and rests his hand on his hip.
Ryan, however, has become immune to Spencer's (oh-so-subtly) manipulative body language. He doesn't look up from his notebook.
Spencer sighs and slumps into the chair across from him. "Ryan. What's going on?"
Ryan closes the notebook, but doesn't look up. Spencer lets the silence stretch around them, quieting the ticking of the clock and the whirr of the road beneath their feet.
"We know you were watching," Ryan says abruptly. The conversation feels suddenly surreal.
Spencer stands and walks towards the bunks.
"You brought it up," Ryan calls at his retreating (cowardly, pathetic) back. Spencer pretends not to hear.
Two weeks later, and Spencer is going crazy. Two weeks of heat and sun and dry asphalt and summer sky like cracked corn. Brendon keeps winking, Ryan keeps smirking like he knows something Spencer doesn't, and Spencer is going crazy.
He's reading and staring out the window in intervals when Brendon collapses onto the couch beside him and drops a kiss on his neck.
Spencer's hand claps to the suddenly-warm spot. "What the hell, Brendon?"
Brendon giggles, like he's a high school girl, and says, "Nothing." He turns back to the bunks at a resounding thump and a "Shit." "Ross, are you stealing my CDs again? Give them back!" he says, and jumps up again.
Spencer's neck is burning.
It only gets worse after that - touches and hints and more winks until they're in a hotel room and Brent isn't there and Spencer is so, so done.
"What. The fuck."
Brendon jumps just a little, like he's surprised, blushing and looking from the TV down to his shoes. He twists the toes in and out. Ryan just turns around with that look on his face, the "yes?" look, the look of a busy receptionist looking down and making a possibly-unconscious disgusted face at someone's shoes, and Spencer is so, so done.
Spencer leans over and he's going to slap Ryan, he is, he is, he is, until he's not, and Ryan's lips are warm and dry and comfortable. Ryan makes a sort of surprised sound and Brendon sort of squeaks and Ryan's hand reaches up and cups Spencer's neck, right where Brendon kissed him.
They break away, gasping a little, and Ryan rests his forehead against Spencer's.
"Spence…" he says, but doesn't say anything else, and the dangling unsaid sentence is making Spencer's chest tight and hot and itchy.
Brendon's fingers lace through his on the bedspread, and Spencer looks up.
Ryan's smiling. Brendon's smiling too - a little more reservedly and shakily, but he's smiling, too. Ryan's smiling and it's bright and easy.
"Jesus, you guys," Spencer says. "I was… Jesus."
Brendon throws back his head and laughs. Ryan grins broader and rests his head on Spencer's shoulder. Spencer sits beside him on the bed, holding tight until he can feel Brendon's pulse through his fingers, Ryan's heartbeat against his chest.
He closes his eyes, and the beats are reassuring.
lordessrenegade for the beta. Title/cut text from The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, which changed my life. Hard R.
It's cold for October.
Cold in the way that gets under your skin, layered in your muscle and bone, creaking when you walk. Ryan shivers on the way home now, and Spencer pretends not to worry about him.
"Hey. So," Ryan says as Brent's packing up and Spencer's flipping his drumsticks. It isn't really a sentence, isn't really anything and might mean nothing, but it's Ryan, so it doesn't. Spencer looks up, or doesn't really, but Ryan knows what he means.
Ryan's wearing a scarf and feeling like a hipster; Spencer's wearing a sweater his grandmother bought for him and feeling out of place. He's also pretty sure that hipsters don't cover Blink 182, but he's not going to be the one to tell Ryan that.
Ryan shrugs. "Since Brent's bass for us now, I was thinking maybe we needed another layer?"
That it was phrased as a question is significant, but Spencer doesn't know how. He frowns. "Rhythm guitar?"
Ryan shrugs again, which Spencer translates as meaning it's really important to him but he's not going to show it - it's his way of keeping his own expectations low so no one will feel like they're disappointing him, and it makes Spencer's stomach ache. "Yeah," says Ryan. "Or maybe a keyboardist."
Brent snaps the buckles on his case closed; his guitar is new, a birthday present, and he takes good care of it. "I might know a guy," Brent says, and Spencer's surprised. Brent doesn't usually make decisions. He gladly goes along with them once they're made, and offers suggestions, but he doesn't make decisions and that bothers Spencer, somewhere low in his gut and underneath his skin.
Brent picks up his case. "He might be interested. I'll ask."
Ryan nods and pretends to tune his guitar to show exactly how much it doesn't matter. Brent leaves.
Spencer flicks his drumsticks around his finger.
Later that night, they're on Ryan's floor, the air mattress from his closet mostly inflated beneath them, as Ryan rocks against him. Ryan groans, breath curling inside Spencer's ear, and Spencer keeps his eyes open, counting plaster clumps on the popcorn ceiling until he can't anymore and his eyes slide shut as he shudders.
They use an old shirt to clean up, and Ryan turns over casually. Spencer is reminded of the way he tunes his guitar and thinks of the smooth turning of the pegs under sure, shaking hands until the sound of breathing next to him evens.
He closes his eyes. Ryan's heart beats beside his ear, the reassuring rhythm of percussion, and Spencer sleeps.
Brent's guy is scared.
The kid's young, dark, small and trying to make himself smaller. His shoulders are hunched past his earlobes. His pants - cargo pants, like he's a five-year-old - are short. They brush the tongues of his sneakers.
"You play keyboard?" Ryan asks, like he's afraid there's been a mistake and Brent accidentally brought his friend that plays ukulele.
This kid nods. Brent puts a friendly hand on his shoulder, his guitar slung around his back. "This is Brendon," he says, and Brendon instantly looks five times more petrified than before. Spencer is surprised that he doesn't squeak and sink through the floor.
Offering a smile, he nods at the keyboard in the corner, abandoned by his sister years before. "Give it a shot," he says.
Behind the piano, Brendon's shoulders sink and widen. His feet sit flat on the ground; his hands seem to grow and stretch.
Ryan says yes before he's done playing.
Spencer flicks his drumsticks around his finger and tries not to smile.
Brendon's high-energy once he settles in, almost ridiculously so, and it funnels into intensity and focus when he's playing. Ryan likes that about him.
"What do you think of Brendon?" Spencer asks on the way to school. He already knows the answer, even if Ryan doesn't.
"He's good," Ryan says, like that's what Spencer asked. "He's… easy to like."
Spencer nods. His fingers tighten on the seat of the car. He turns the radio up and the rest of the ride passes in silence.
They're packing up again, Brent already gone, when Ryan says, "Hey, Brendon, want to come see a movie with me and Spence?"
Brendon's grin is and quick and surprising. "Yeah, sure. When?"
Ryan and Spencer glance at each other. Ryan raises an eyebrow. Spencer shakes his head. Ryan shrugs and turns back to Brendon. "Sunday morning."
Brendon's transitional grin is gone. "Sorry, can't," he says, "Talk to you guys tomorrow. Practice at Spencer's, right?" and he leaves without waiting for an answer.
Ryan and Spencer exchange glances, Spencer's slightly amused and Ryan's flummoxed. "That was weird," says Spencer.
"Yeah," says Ryan.
Footsteps on the stairs: Brent's back for his forgotten wallet. "What'd you guys say to Brendon?" he asks mildly.
"Invited him to a movie Sunday morning," Ryan says. "He ran off."
Spencer grins sideways. "Probably has a crush on you," he says.
Ryan blushes, hot and sudden. It's not something Spencer can get him to do often. "Shut up," he says. Spencer is unimpressed.
Brent shakes his head. "He's got church. He's Mormon, you guys."
Spencer drops his drumsticks; Ryan stares. "For serious?"
Brent shrugs. "I think something's going on with him," he says. "Whatever. Gotta run." He takes off back up the stairs.
Ryan shifts his stare to Spencer. "How's he supposed to be a rock star if he can't even drink Coke?"
Spencer rolls his eyes. "Come on, pack up. I gotta get home. I have to babysit tonight," he says, and tells himself he doesn't feel a sense of accomplishment when Ryan laughs, bright and easy.
Ryan hears Brendon sing backup and then it's all over.
"You sure?" Spencer asks, surprised. This is Ryan's band, Ryan's brainchild, Ryan's escape.
"I'm sure," Ryan says, and Spencer pretends not to notice the way his lips press together like he's holding in a secret.
Brendon asks the same question, suddenly unsure, but Ryan nods and steps back towards Brent and Spencer. The open floor space is quiet and accusatory.
Brendon steps forward.
The diner's artificially retro, a strange mixture of decades that just makes it feel fake. The vinyl seats are losing stuffing through randomly-spaced holes and the wood-paneled walls are scratched with initials and swear words, but the sundaes are almost illegally good. Spencer knows because Brendon says so.
"This is almost illegally good," he says, his face a blissful mask.
"Lemme try," says Ryan, and tries to steal the sundae. Brendon crawls behind his back and holds the ice cream away. "Come on, just on taste." They tussle and Spencer hears Ryan laugh, bright and easy, as he gets the sundae and licks the top of it.
Spencer watches Brendon lean all over Ryan, forgiving him, takes another sip of his milkshake, feeling vaguely sick.
The next day, Brendon comes to practice late. He takes Ryan's lecture without looking up from the keyboard. His shoulders are hunched past his ears and he looks more scared than Spencer's ever seen him since that first day.
Brendon looks over to plug in the keyboard, and the faint yellow of a fading bruise is visible just above his collar.
Ryan leaves off mid-sentence, then clears his throat. "Let's get started," he says.
Brendon says nothing.
Spencer feels sick.
Ryan's trying to write.
He and Brendon are sleeping over at Spencer's, supposedly working. They keep getting distracted, though, first by Brendon flicking his water bottle cap at Ryan and inadvertently starting some roughhousing when Ryan retaliates, and then Ryan snapping a rubber band at Brendon and starting a rubber band war. Spencer's frustrated and annoyed, but Ryan's still trying to write.
"I have to get this," he says, frowning. "It's like the world's humming and I can't get the tune."
(Once, when they were thirteen and fourteen:
Laying on their backs in dusty grass, earth warm and fuzzy under their shirts. Chewing grass and sinking into the soil.
"Listen."
Spencer held his breath and listened.
"Do you hear it?"
Spencer turned his head and only saw liquid brown eyes.
"Do you hear the world humming?")
Spencer goes still, but Ryan doesn't look up. "Whatever. This is not working." He snaps his notebook shut and looks up, grinning at Brendon. "Let's stop for the night."
By the time it's one am, the three of them are watching some shitty old movie on TV, Spencer slumped on the couch next to Ryan, Brendon lying with his head in Ryan's lap.
The other two are making fun of the movie viciously, laughing and making up lines. Spencer's one more shitty scene away from falling asleep.
"Oh, so, Spence," Ryan says. Spencer musters the energy to look over at him, face lit by the flickering black and white screen. "There's a poetry reading I want to hear on Wednesday night."
Spencer frowns. He's at that level of tired that makes it extremely difficult to think, where the world looks less like a movie and more like a flipbook, frames slowed and extended. "I have a math test Thursday."
"I know," Ryan says. "Brendon's coming. Just thought you might want to come for a little bit."
Spencer's stomach clenches. "I don't think so," he says.
Ryan shrugs. "Whatever," he says, and laughs when Brendon does an imitation of the simpering woman onscreen, his head leaning in low and his hair flopping over his eyes, his smile quirking and staying on his face.
Spencer's heart percusses through his body, and it isn't reassuring.
Next practice, Brendon doesn't show.
They wait for fifteen minutes, then try to practice without him, but without his voice pulling the layers of the songs together, it's hard to capture. Ryan calls it off thirty minutes early, upset. He bangs out the front door.
"You could stay here," Spencer offers. It's bright outside. The air is shimmering and painfully clear.
Ryan looks back, and everything is too bright, overexposed. "Not tonight," he says.
"Yeah, okay," says Spencer and closes his door, resting his head against the wall.
The next day, Brendon comes and doesn't say anything when Ryan rips into him.
Spencer carefully doesn't wonder why he's wearing long sleeves.
They decide to go camping.
Spencer's not exactly sure whose idea it is, but he knows it wasn't Brent's, because Brent's not coming. Something about his sisters. Ryan shrugs and, in the morning, loads up his crappy car full of camping equipment.
It's not a long drive, but the windows are all open, and the wind tugs ceaselessly at Spencer's shirt. Ryan's wearing sunglasses and a loose button-up with khakis, looking like he drove there from California. Spencer suddenly longs for the beach.
Ryan and Brendon sing loudly and obnoxiously along with the radio. Spencer stares out the window and feels nostalgic.
They go swimming in a creek and roast marshmallows over a fire and have a pillow fight over the best spot in the tent. As they settle down, Ryan turns on a flashlight against the deepening gloom and pulls out his notebook, frowning at it.
Brendon and Spencer talk; Ryan makes a frustrated noise, pinning up the tent flap to get some air circulating. The highway is visible through the tress, headlights soaring like lost airplanes.
"Need help?" asks Spencer.
Ryan grunts.
Spencer is suddenly irritated. "Just trying to help out," he says.
"You can't help with this," Ryan says.
"Just because you always have to do everything yourself," Spencer says, and doesn't finish.
They stop talking.
Spencer watches the headlights flash through the trees. Ryan writes songs about people who are accidentally beautiful, accidentally happy, purposefully hopeless. Brendon watches the two of them with big, dark eyes.
Spencer watches the headlights flash through the trees and pretends they're falling stars.
"What's going on with you and Brendon?" Spencer asks on the way to school.
Ryan sends him a sharp look.
"We’re friends," he said. "I thought you were into sharing?"
Spencer's hands tighten on the car seat. The radio's too loud. He doesn't touch it.
Brendon is on his doorstep instead of Ryan's.
There's a suitcase next to him and it's like the beginning, or the beginning of the end, of every bad movie, the ones with Matthew McConaughey or maybe Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. There are circles under Brendon's eyes, just like bruises. But maybe not only like bruises, and he didn't go to Ryan's.
"Hey," says Spencer.
"Hey," says Brendon, and stands there. His hands are empty. They hang by his side.
"What's up?"
"So, uh." Brendon chuckles, sort of, like he's trying to tell a funny joke but can't get through it without laughing. He didn't go to Ryan. "I kind of got kicked out."
"What?" asks Spencer, the stupid comic relief, and it's not funny, it's not anywhere close.
"I got kicked out. Of my house," Brendon says, and he's still not at Ryan's.
"Okay," says Spencer. "Okay, okay," and he's not freaking out if Brendon's not. He's not, he's not, he's not. "Do you want to come in?"
Brendon's staying at Spencer's "just until I get my own place, honest." Spencer's mom is charmed and worried. Brent frowns more often. Spencer always feels vaguely sick.
Ryan carefully tunes his guitar.
Brendon gets a job making smoothies and buys a shit apartment.
Ryan sits at the counter and scribbles in his notebook.
Spencer sips his smoothie and says nothing.
The pipes in Brendon's apartment leak. Spencer and Brendon are making fun of what's on TV. Ryan is pretending to write, but he's laughing at their bad impressions. Spencer smiles, and it's just like it should be.
Ryan sleeps at Brendon's more often, now, Spencer knows. There's an extra air mattress and it crowds the floor, even though Brendon doesn't have much other furniture. Spencer pretends not to worry about Ryan.
He doesn't ask about what's going on between him and Brendon again, either.
He doesn't ask when Brendon clings to Ryan's back when they walk him home from the Smoothie Hut in the cold, and he doesn't ask when Ryan's face lights up at something Brendon says, and he doesn't ask when he sees Brendon carefully kiss Ryan's temple when he thinks Spencer's asleep.
It's not his business.
Ryan's asleep now, though, and Spencer and Brendon are still making fun of the TV, Brendon grinning his quirking smile that none of them have seen for weeks. Spencer's tired, deep and warm in his bones, and he chuckles, sliding sideways into Brendon and staying there because it's warm and comfortable and easy. Brendon looks down, amused and laughing and sweet with something that's been growing behind his eyes ever since he showed up on Spencer's doorstep.
And Spencer's not leaning in, he's not, he's not, he's not, until he is.
The touch of their lips is surprising. It's hesitant and not very good, but it curls something low and deep in Spencer's stomach that he hadn't known was there. The streetlight filters in through the bare window at a crazy angle, highlighting Brendon's ear, his nose, the back of his hand. Brendon's kissing him back.
Brendon's kissing him back.
Spencer stops, suddenly, freezes. He gathers his things and heads for the door.
"Wait," Brendon says softly, sleepily.
Spencer hesitates. "I'm a crappy friend," he says, and lets himself out.
Ryan just looks at Spencer the next day, and Spencer knows he knows. He doesn't say I'm sorry, because that would be pathetic and cowardly, but it hangs between them anyway because he desperately wants to say it.
He scuffs his toe along the ground, but it's just concrete and asphalt so the toe isn't making much difference. Ryan's still looking, and Spencer wonders if all the years, if all that time, is just going to end here.
He's sort of expecting it to.
He's not expecting yelling, just cold, hurt stares and silence, forever and ever, amen. Ryan doesn't forgive.
Ryan clears his throat.
"You're a crappy friend," he says, unexpectedly, and Spencer carefully does not cry. "But you're not the only one."
He walks away. Practice that night is easy, normal. They don't bring it up again.
They get good really, really fast, and suddenly Ryan is calling him up and bouncing off the walls, okay, because Spence, you're not going to fucking believe this! Pete fucking Wentz, man!
And Spencer might be a little angry at Ryan for putting their stuff all over the internet and not telling anyone, except for the part where he's really, really not.
Spencer flips when he realizes he can't play when Pete Wentz is there - "There's got to be some way to get out of this, seriously," he says, except apparently there's not - but Ryan points out that any money he can get is good money, so the babysitting might end up paying for amps or guitars or who-knows-what. Brent shrugs and says he can't be there.
Brendon quietly hyperventilates in the corner.
It's somehow Spencer's job, three hours before "Pete fucking Wentz, seriously, man!" comes, to talk Brendon down from wherever the hell he is. This means sitting on the lip of the tub while Brendon throws up for the third time.
"It'll be okay," Spencer says, and he's not exactly sure how many times he's said that in the last hour, but he's pretty sure he'll be saying it in his sleep.
"Fuck, Spencer," Brendon says, and okay, Brendon doesn't usually swear. "This is what it was about. If I screw this up, what? 'M going to go back to my parents and grovel? What the hell?"
Spencer doesn't know what to say, so he just says, "Me and Ryan won't let that happen," which feels like a lie, because what are they going to do? But Brendon seems calmer, after that, so Spencer lets it go.
Ryan wears a pinstripe suit and fingerless gloves to the contract meeting and feels fashionable. Brent wears his father's suit and looks uncomfortable. Brendon wears khakis and a button-up because he doesn't have anything better and looks out of place. Spencer wears a suit a size and a half too small and feels naïve. His shirt is too long and too small in the collar and he's transitional.
Ryan's hand shakes when he signs and the ink bleeds deep into the paper, running the neat letters together. Spencer feels a vague sense of dread.
They go out afterward, to a movie, because no one wants to go home. They sit in the back and make fun of the writing and the fake action scenes. Spencer throws ice at Ryan and Brendon leaves popcorn-butter finger smears all over everyone's nice clothes.
They sleep at Brendon's crappy apartment with the leaking pipes, all of them together, and bicker over floor space and who's stealing which blankets and the limited space to brush their teeth.
The sense of dread is gone by the morning.
Touring is not at all and exactly like Spencer thought it would be.
He likes it, though, and Ryan? Ryan fucking loves it. He breathes it and sings it and sleeps it. Touring makes him exist, in a way he hadn't before, and Spencer can suffer through all the bad parts for that.
They're standing outside a venue, the two of them, leaning against the building and watching the lights reflect on the rain-slicked asphalt. It's pretty, in a film-grain, gut-clench way, and Spencer breathes the soaked air in and out, shivering a little in the cold.
Ryan's hand is warm on his neck when he turns Spencer's head for a kiss, and it's exactly like it always has been.
"What about Brendon?" Spencer says, barely breathing against Ryan's lips.
"We’re all good at sharing," Ryan says. His lips touch Spencer's one more time, warm and dry and safe, and then he touches their foreheads together, lightly, barely, before stepping back. His hand is still warm on the back of Spencer's neck.
Ryan leaves it like that, and Spencer lets him.
When Spencer accidentally walks in on Brendon blowing Ryan in an empty dressing room, it's surprising, but maybe not as surprising as it should have been. Maybe too surprising.
If he only shuts the door when Ryan looks up and comes, he tells himself that it was just the surprise; he wasn't watching at all.
After that, Spencer looks up to see Ryan's eyes on him more often, watching in a steady gaze. Or he'll sense a wisp of feeling on the back of his neck, the brush of Ryan's eyes like a spider web in an attic, but look up to find Ryan's gaze elsewhere (Brendon). He pretends he doesn't notice.
Until he winds up on his knees, blowing Ryan against a sink in a club bathroom, and wondering how he had managed to get there, and looks up to see Brendon's gaze, dark and anything but accusatory.
He doesn't say anything to Brendon, but Brendon winks at him as they go onstage, and Spencer is irreparably confused.
"What's going on?" Spencer asks Ryan. He taps his toes and rests his hand on his hip.
Ryan, however, has become immune to Spencer's (oh-so-subtly) manipulative body language. He doesn't look up from his notebook.
Spencer sighs and slumps into the chair across from him. "Ryan. What's going on?"
Ryan closes the notebook, but doesn't look up. Spencer lets the silence stretch around them, quieting the ticking of the clock and the whirr of the road beneath their feet.
"We know you were watching," Ryan says abruptly. The conversation feels suddenly surreal.
Spencer stands and walks towards the bunks.
"You brought it up," Ryan calls at his retreating (cowardly, pathetic) back. Spencer pretends not to hear.
Two weeks later, and Spencer is going crazy. Two weeks of heat and sun and dry asphalt and summer sky like cracked corn. Brendon keeps winking, Ryan keeps smirking like he knows something Spencer doesn't, and Spencer is going crazy.
He's reading and staring out the window in intervals when Brendon collapses onto the couch beside him and drops a kiss on his neck.
Spencer's hand claps to the suddenly-warm spot. "What the hell, Brendon?"
Brendon giggles, like he's a high school girl, and says, "Nothing." He turns back to the bunks at a resounding thump and a "Shit." "Ross, are you stealing my CDs again? Give them back!" he says, and jumps up again.
Spencer's neck is burning.
It only gets worse after that - touches and hints and more winks until they're in a hotel room and Brent isn't there and Spencer is so, so done.
"What. The fuck."
Brendon jumps just a little, like he's surprised, blushing and looking from the TV down to his shoes. He twists the toes in and out. Ryan just turns around with that look on his face, the "yes?" look, the look of a busy receptionist looking down and making a possibly-unconscious disgusted face at someone's shoes, and Spencer is so, so done.
Spencer leans over and he's going to slap Ryan, he is, he is, he is, until he's not, and Ryan's lips are warm and dry and comfortable. Ryan makes a sort of surprised sound and Brendon sort of squeaks and Ryan's hand reaches up and cups Spencer's neck, right where Brendon kissed him.
They break away, gasping a little, and Ryan rests his forehead against Spencer's.
"Spence…" he says, but doesn't say anything else, and the dangling unsaid sentence is making Spencer's chest tight and hot and itchy.
Brendon's fingers lace through his on the bedspread, and Spencer looks up.
Ryan's smiling. Brendon's smiling too - a little more reservedly and shakily, but he's smiling, too. Ryan's smiling and it's bright and easy.
"Jesus, you guys," Spencer says. "I was… Jesus."
Brendon throws back his head and laughs. Ryan grins broader and rests his head on Spencer's shoulder. Spencer sits beside him on the bed, holding tight until he can feel Brendon's pulse through his fingers, Ryan's heartbeat against his chest.
He closes his eyes, and the beats are reassuring.