(no subject)
razzle dazzle/come what may
p!atd, spencer!fic with a side of ryan/brendon.
pg-13; 5,350 words.
razzle dazzle/come what may
Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
--Peter Ustinov
Honestly, Spencer liked Brendon very much. Brendon was a very nice kid (even if he did have the attention span and occasionally the maturity of a seven-year-old), and Brendon was an excellent musician, and back when Panic! was first starting out, Brendon would always bring them all smoothies after work and never forgot that Spencer really loathed mangoes in his and made sure he got the strawberry-banana one. Brendon was a great friend. Brendon was one of Spencer's best friends.
Brendon was greedy and obnoxious and a big fat Ryan Ross-hog.
The thing was, Spencer was pretty sure he wasn't doing it on purpose, but he really couldn't blame Ryan for this, because Ryan had been not-so-secretly starving for affection for years, and Brendon was a very affectionate person (though Spencer liked to think of himself as a very affectionate person, too, but he was not quite the snuggles-and-cuddles type of affection-giver that Brendon was, even though Ryan could have come to Spencer for snuggles and cuddles if that's what he really wanted, but Spencer knew Ryan was not really the type who acted on impulses like that, and, well. Yeah. Brendon liked to hug people, and therefore this was all his fault.)
This being: Moulin Rouge, in the cabin's living room, and Ryan was not even singing along. He was cuddling. With Brendon. (Who was actually singing along, most of the time, loudly and obnoxiously and perfectly on-key, but Ryan was not, he was just becoming very intimate with Brendon's shoulder, which, in Spencer Smith's world, was entirely unnatural. He and Ryan had been singing along to Moulin Rouge for years. One simply does not just stop singing along to Moulin Rouge.)
The point being: Ryan was being weird, and Spencer didn't feel like singing along when Ryan wasn't, except he really actually wanted to, and not singing along when he wanted to had put him in a supremely irritated mood. He had a feeling it was showing, too, because Jon kept eyeing him from across the couch with a mixture of concern and caution. Spencer was going to get wrinkles from frowning, and it was all Brendon's fault.
Eventually, Spencer sighed. "Jon Walker," he said, "do you want a glass of water?"
Jon blinked at him. "Not really. I would like a glass of cranberry and orange juice with a hint of limeade?"
Brendon giggled and whispered something about baristas. Ryan hid a grin behind his hand. Spencer scowled and stood up. "You're getting water," he informed Jon, and stalked as dramatically as possible (without actually stomping, because that would be childish) to the kitchen. Instead of getting Jon a glass of water, though, he decided that his time would probably be better spent standing in front of the open refrigerator and glowering at the (minimal and sadly unexpansive) contents as if they would mobilize and for an army to crusade for normalcy if Spencer glared hard enough. (They didn't. Spencer thought he might have seen the milk quiver a little bit, but that may have also been because it was a few weeks past its expiration date and quite possibly alive of its own accord.)
"You know, if you're going to hold a dude's beverage hostage, you could at least send a note," Jon said, and Spencer jumped about a foot, spinning around and slamming the fridge closed.
"Whoa," said Jon. "A little on-edge, Spence?"
"No," Spencer snapped, then frowned and adopted a less irritated, more impatient tone. "We don't have any cranberry juice. Or limeade." There was probably orange juice somewhere, just not in the refrigerator. It was probably alive, too, and planning to elope with the milk. Or something.
Jon shrugged. "Water is fine."
Spencer shrugged back. "Well, since you're in here anyway, you can get your own now."
"Spencer," Jon said. Spencer looked over at him, somewhat reluctantly. His irritation was apparently translating as more forlorn than he meant for it to, because the look Jon gave him was almost obnoxiously sympathetic.
"I'm a little sick of Moulin Rouge," Spencer said.
"Yeah, okay," Jon said, and apparently thought that was a malady curable by hugs, because he took that as his cue to wrap Spencer up in a particularly bear-esque one. Jon gave very good hugs. They were far less bony than Ryan's hugs.
"Hey, Spencer," said Brendon.
Spencer didn't look up from his bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, choosing to ignore Brendon in favor of Wendell's adventures on the back of the cereal box and the magical process of creating the taste you can see. Also, there was a word search. Spencer was very fond of word searches.
"Spencerrrrrr," Brendon said, whining, and a moment later Wendell and his magic mixing spoon (Spencer kind of questioned the sanity of people who marketed children's food) was plucked from in front of him as Brendon confiscated the box and plopped himself down across the table from Spencer.
"Spence!" Brendon said happily, as if it wasn't the third time that minute he had tried to get Spencer's attention. Spencer waved his spoon idly in acknowledgment, kind of gesturing to his current mouthful in a way of saying, "I would say hello, but I am chewing, and I also don't really feel like it anyway." Brendon would understand.
"Hey, a word search!" Brendon exclaimed, turning his attention to the cereal box while Spencer ate. Spencer hurriedly chewed and swallowed, pegging a stray piece of cereal at Brendon's head. (Spencer had never been a very athletic kind of guy, but he was awfully good at hitting people with small, throwable objects, especially if they were obnoxious and Mormon, he had learned over the past few years.)
"Don't you dare, I've got dibs on it," Spencer informed Brendon in no uncertain terms.
Brendon pouted, looking mournfully at the box. "You are a cruel dude, Spencer Smith," he said. "A sucker of fun. A fun-sucker. Like a vampire, but without the sexy factor. And less blood."
"I've got plenty of sexy factor," Spencer said irritably around a fresh mouthful of cinnamon-sugary goodness.
"It's not a vampire sexy factor, though," Brendon said, still frowning at the box and tracing words sadly with his finger. "Vampire-sexy is, like, Pete Wentz. Your sexy factor is, like, squishy. Like marshmallows."
"I--" Spencer started, but was assautled by a very concerning mental image involving s'mores. He stabbed at his cereal, shaking his head. "I, you. I don't even know. You make my brain sad, Brendon Urie."
"Well, you make my heart sad, Spencer Smith." He was doing the big-eyes thing, now, so Spencer made extra-sure to concentrate on his food. "You don't like me anymore."
"I like you plenty," Spencer said around another bite. (His milk was starting to get all sweet, and it was a little bit gross. The milk was supposed to be a refreshing counterbalance to the sweetness of the cereal, not diabetes in a bowl.) He blinked up at Brendon, who was still pouting, but he actually looked so honestly forlorn that Spencer sighed, waving a dismissive hand. "You know what, take the word search."
Brendon's expression did a one-eighty from tragic to ecstatic, and he bounded to his feet with the box in hand. "You're the best, Spencer Smith!" he proclaimed, and pressed a loud, dramatic smooch to the top of Spencer's head as he ran off to become one with the word search.
Spencer sighed again, and frowned at his too-sweet and soggy cereal. Being annoyed with Brendon took a lot of energy.
For the vast majority of his life, and especially the parts he could remember, Spencer had been a guy with plenty of acquaintances and a handful of good friends and one Ryan Ross. If Spencer was fifteen years old and a girl, he would probably refer to himself and Ryan as BFF, just because they'd been through so much shit together, and they weren't the kind of gross friends who never fought, and anyone who could put up with Ryan for as long as Spencer had deserved some kind of titular recognition, anyway.
The point being: this current situation, with Brendon hogging Ryan a lot, left Spencer in a position that he really was not used to dealing with. Technically, sure, he was seeing Ryan every day, but. It was different. And it often left Spencer in a position in which the only person around to pay attention to him was Jon.
Jon, it turned out, was pretty excellent at paying attention to people. He was much better at Halo than Ryan, and had a much longer attention span than Brendon, and didn't accuse Spencer of cheating at Halo when Spencer kicked his ass at it. Well, not often. Except for when Spencer really did cheat. But the problem with all of this was that Jon was a very affectionate person, not in a fabulous way like Brendon, but in a very sweet and subtle kind of way, and he was not built like Jack Skellington like Ryan was, so Spencer couldn't get away with shoving his hugs away by saying they were pokey.
"You are a liar, Spencer Smith," Jon would say. "I am soft and cuddly like a teddy bear." And it was pretty much true, so it wasn't like Spencer could argue.
And this was how Spencer wound up spending a lot of time in/around Jon's lap, or drinking a lot of Jon's special and delicious hot chocolate, and these things were not really a problem. The problem was, really, that Spencer was fairly sure that if he was left alone with Jon Walker for too long he was going to develop a crush on him.
However. Any and all possible drama was always put on hold when the wildlife became traumatizing, which in general occured at night and/or whenever Brendon was feeling particularly high-strung. Now, for example.
"IT WAS A RABID MOOSE," Brendon was saying, gesticulating wildly and running around for, Spencer assumed, a blunt object he deemed formidable enough to take on a rabid moose with. Jon was peeking out the front door, and Ryan was watching, bemused, from the couch.
"I don't see anything," Jon said, blinking out into the darkness.
"Um, Brendon," said Spencer.
"You can't see anything, it's dark out," Ryan pointed out helpfully.
"Moose don't live this far south," Spencer said to anyone who was listening, which pretty much amounted to Jon.
"Brendon," said Jon, "Spencer says moose don't live this far south."
"But I saw it!" Brendon said. "Spencer Smith, don't be a nonbeliever!" He joined Jon in peering out the front door,
"You probably saw a deer," Spencer said.
Brendon considered this. Frowned. "That," he said, "is not nearly as exciting."
"But at least deer won't eat us?" offered Jon.
"Moose don't eat meat, either," Spencer said.
"A rabid one might," said Ryan, shrugging apathetically.
"MOOOOOOOOOSE," Brendon called mournfully into the night.
"You sure know a lot about moose, Spence," Jon said.
Spencer sighed.
Once Brendon got over the moose incident, he went back to hogging Ryan (or going over potential lyrics, whatever), and Jon said, "Want to watch something that isn't Moulin Rouge?"
Emotional and sexual confusion aside, Jon's lap still made an excellent pillow, and Spencer wasn't going to let a silly thing like a possible (probable) crush hinder his enjoyment of plasma-screen-surround-sound-Chicago (Ryan's DVD, Spencer is pretty sure, despite the fact that it has spent the last two years in Spencer's duffel bag, and he certainly wasn't getting it back now). Jon was a big bully, anyway, and practically accosted Spencer into curling up on his end of the couch, so really, Spencer had no choice in the current situation.
The current situation being: Spencer's cheek pressed against Jon's (very warm) thigh (he was fairly sure Jon's jeans had left a pattern pressed permanently into his cheek by now), Jon's fingers combing absentmindedly though his hair, because Jon did that, sometimes (a lot of the time, and Spencer didn't usually mind, and he didn't really mind now either, it was just a little more distracting than before), and Spencer staring very, very intently at Renee Zellweger. He considered, occasionally, mouthing along with the songs, but a) that would involve an awful lot of cheek-to-thigh frottage, and b) Ryan didn't even sing along with Chicago, usually, and Ryan was a hell of a lot gayer than Spencer. (Moulin Rouge was another story entirely.)
It really wasn't fair, Spencer thought bitterly, that Jon Fucking Walker could openly hum along to Razzle Dazzle and still be the straightest guy on FBR who wasn't sporting a jewfro.
Jon tugged on a lock of Spencer's hair, and Spencer rolled a little to look up at him, lifting his eyebrows in question.
"Nothing," said Jon. "You just seem a little off. You're being very quiet."
"I'm being pensive," Spencer informed him, frowning.
Jon grinned. "Really? I was going more for thoughtful." Spencer rolled his eyes, and Jon ruffled his hair, and they both went back to the movie (except now Spencer was too busy to pay attention, thinking up synonyms for pensive so he wouldn't run out before he got over this; there were only so many words one could use to describe a mood without plastering I-have-a-ridiculous-boycrush across one's forehead, and Spencer needed to figure out how to ration them).
Between the two of them, Ryan had always been the insomniac, calling Spencer at ridiculous hours or poking him awake in the middle of the night, whispering Spence, hey, Spence, are you asleep (to which Spencer would grumble, yes, go the fuck away, and give himself thirty more seconds of shut-eye before rousing himself to listen. The one time he hadn't done that, had actually gone back to sleep, Ryan had climbed out Spencer's bedroom window and disappeared for what Spencer still considered the worst two days of his life.)
And this was why Spencer had made himself at home on the couch at two o'clock in the morning, nursing a mug of really gross herbal tea that was supposed to help stress but didn't and waiting to make sure Ryan came back from the walk he and Brendon had gone on about, oh, four hours ago. Spencer wasn't entirely sure what wild animals frequented these parts, just that there were no moose, but he hoped if they had run into a wolf or a bear or someshit Brendon would be man enough to sacrifice himself while Ryan made a run for it, because Ryan wasn't really man enough to do anything of the sort. (But then of course everyone would be very sad, and Jon would probably insist on giving a lot of hugs that Spencer would have to try very hard not to be awkward about, and Ryan would probably lock himself in his room and write angry, angsty music for the next year, and Spencer thought Pete might throw a temper tantrum if they took that long on the album.)
Spencer was eyeing his mug of tea and contemplating getting up to go dump the rest out when Jon wandered in, rubbing sleepily at his eyes. "They still gone?" he asked, flopping onto the couch by Spencer, who automatically stretched out a little more extensively in an inconspicuous attempt to ward of Jon's wily cuddly-straight-man advances.
"Mhmm," Spencer said, and offered Jon his tea. Jon studied it for a moment before taking a tentative sip, making a face, and setting it a safe, unoffensive distance away on a sidetable.
"Good of you to sit up waiting for him," Jon said.
Spencer shrugged. "Brendon may have used the poetic aesthetics of the wilderness to take advantage of Ryan's innocence. Hugs and comfort may be in order. Possibly a battle as well."
Jon snorted a laugh, grinning. "Yeah, okay." Spencer scowled at Jon's skepticism of his highly unlikely and unrealistic situational theory.
"You're just not really the most huggy dude around, Spencer Smith," Jon elaborated.
"Hm," Spencer said. Then he frowned, because he was fairly sure that it had come out something like, "You make me feel funny inside and sometimes I really want to try to make out with you even though I know you're straight."
"... Huh," Jon said. "Really?"
Spencer said, "Shit." Apparently, it had come out exactly like that.
"You really miss Ryan a lot, don't you?" Jon asked, ignoring Spencer's couch-hogging sprawl and shifting over to wrap an arm around Spencer's shoulders (which was the kind of situation Spencer had aimed to avoid in the first place, except now it was more awkward times, like, a thousand. Or a billion. A thousand billion, even.)
"I see Ryan every day," Spencer said.
"Well, yeah," Jon said, "but Brendon hogs him," and Spencer really was momentarily overwhelmed with a sudden urge to kiss him and declare gleefully that at least someone understood, but while he was busy quashing this urge, Jon just leaned over and kissed him, right square on the mouth, and instead Spencer shrieked and flailed and might have accidentally hit Jon in the ear, judging by Jon's own indignant yelp.
"Gross, Jon Walker!" Spencer scolded, rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Dude, what the hell?"
Jon was looking particularly smug, now. "See, you do not want to make out with me," he said triumphantly.
"Well, not now that I know what a slobbery kisser you are!" Spencer said, wiping his hand off on Jon's jeans, and decided not to mention that Jon was miraculously and thankfully right about the entire situation. He was considering acting a little bit abashed about the whole thing, or at least asking Jon to please not mention this little incident to Cassie, as Spencer was really quite fond of her, when the front door slammed open and Ryan came storming through the cabin.
"Hey, look, they're home," Jon observed.
Ryan did not look at either of them on his way through the living room, and when Brendon didn't follow soon after, Spencer pulled Jon with him to look outside for him. (The urge to proclaim his earlier innocence-stealing theory as obvious fact was not nearly as easily quashed as the desire to kiss Jon Walker.)
"Dude," Jon said quietly, nudging Spencer in the side. "You were right. I think hugs and comfort are in order."
Because Brendon was not far, just sitting out on the front steps, but he was doubled over and hugging himself, and, in the faint light filtering out from inside, Spencer could see his shoulders shaking.
Ryan locked himself in his room with a notebook and a guitar and spent the next day treating the cabin to unpredicatble outbursts of angry chord progressions that made Jon jump and Brendon wince. Spencer pressed his ear to the door a few times and could hear muffled lyrics in a quiet, scratchy version of Ryan's singing voice. (Words were hard to make out but what Spencer caught was mostly a lot of cursing and possibly once a couplet rhyming displace to dickface, but he could have heard wrong. Possibly. Spencer doubts it.)
"Maybe he wants to take the new album in a Taking Back Sunday kind of direction?" Jon suggested around a mouthful of poptart the sixth or seventh time Ryan's musical tirades nearly gave him a heart attack. "You know, self-depreciation. Boys like you are a dime a dozen, and all that."
Spencer lifted an eyebrow at him. "You think it's himself he's depreciating in there?" Jon shrugged. Brendon shuffled into the kitchen, looking forlorn with the comforter from his bed wrapped around his shoulders like a security blanket. (Brendon was really the most concerning part about this whole situation, Spencer thought, because Ryan going hermit really wasn't that odd, overall. Ryan was a tortured, poetic soul, and they were expected to go periodically neurotic and crazy. Brendon, though, was just a spastic geek, and for the past day and a half he had been quiet. It was pretty mind-boggling.)
"It's starting to sound like some angry version of Sic Transit Gloria or something," Brendon muttered, possibly (probably) to himself, sinking into a chair near Spencer and poking at the toast Spencer had been looking at and not eating for the past ten minutes. Spencer nudged it over in Brendon's general direction, and Brendon took that as a cue to start munching gratefully.
"Is it possible for Sic Transit Gloria to get angrier?" Spencer asked, just in general.
Jon shrugged. "Maybe the devil and Pete Wentz are raging inside him."
Spencer grinned despite himself. Brendon sniffled into his toast.
Spencer made it two whole days before giving into temptation and accosting Brendon for The Question. The accosting was much easier than Spencer had expected, though Spencer was not sure exactly what he had expected, considering Brendon had taken up residence on the living room couch and had been immobile for at least eight hours. So, really, it was less accosting and more taking a quiet seat next to him, but it still kind of made Spencer feel like an ass when he asked, "So, what did you do?"
Brendon blinked slowly over at him, as if he was taking a long time to digest the question, then sighed and shrugged, sinking further into the comforter he still had wrapped around him. "I don't even know. Spence, what did I do?" he asked quietly, and Spencer felt like even more of an ass. (This was a life lesson Spencer made sure to promptly file away for future reference: there was nothing that would make you feel more like an ass than trying to be angry with Brendon Urie when he was sad.)
Spencer made it almost an entire minute before, with a disgruntled sigh of his own, opening his arms and gesturing for Brendon to shift over into them. He wound up with an armful that was more blanket than Brendon, really, but it was probably to be expected that a particularly thick comforter would have a greater BMI than Brendon. (Most things did, except Ryan, and Spencer was not going to make that comparison right now because it would make him feel like an ass again, and feeling like an ass made him irritable.)
"Well," Spencer said slowly once Brendon recovered from a fresh bout of sniffles, "what did you say to him that made him go all Howard Hughes-y on us?" He was trying very hard to sound sympathetic. It was not his forte.
There was a shift from somewhere within the blanket that Spencer assumed was another shrug. "We were just talking. About stuff. People. And, like, stuff," Brendon said in a muffled sort of voice, then employed some impressively tactical wiggling to get his head free of the comforter. This close, Spencer could see that his eyes were a post-crying sort of red, and he felt like an ass again.
"About Keltie," Brendon specified.
"Ah," said Spencer.
"About--" Brendon paused, frowned and took a deep breath. "About how he kind of feels bad because he's not actually in love with her, you know, like, he likes her and all, but, like, he's not in love, and he thinks he should be, and I was like, well, why don't you, like, break things off then, but then he got all moody and was like, you just don't understand, and I was like, no, I really don't, and he got all angry at me, and I might have told him he was pretty fucking stupid, but I'm pretty sure it was applicable at the time, expect now, like, now I feel like I'm the really fucking stupid one."
"... Oh," said Spencer. He tried to make it sound very sympathetic, but didn't feel like it came across, so he puctuated it by giving the bundle of Brendon/blanket symbiosis in his arms a tight squeeze.
Brendon sniffled. "I'm kind of a little bit in love with him, you know," he said.
"Oh," said Spencer. He didn't even have to try for the sympathy, this time.
"Do you think I'm stupid, Spence?" Brendon asked, sniffling again. Spencer made a mental note to run that comforter through the wash if Brendon ever let go of it, because the idea of Brendon's snot playing house in the seams was a little bit disgusting.
"Just in general," Spencer said honestly. "Not about Ryan."
"Oh," Brendon said quietly. "Okay." And then he fell quiet, and Spencer couldn't really think of anything else to say, either, so he just kind of sat there until Brendon fell asleep. (When they woke up in the morning, Spencer grumpily blamed Brendon for falling asleep on him in such a way that he couldn't move to bed without waking Brendon, but then Brendon chose that moment for a spectacular display of normalcy by declaring loudly and gleefully to a sleepy Jon that, guess what, I slept with Spencer Smith last night, and Spencer could not help but inwardly secretly forgive him for being a big fat Ryan Ross-hog.)
After a few more days of Brendon casting a black cloud of dreariness over the cabin with his moping and Ryan playing mad scientist in his room with his notebook and guitar (and, Spencer assumed, sneaking out when no one was looking to eat; some of Spencer's ramen was missing, and Ryan always did like to steal Spencer's ramen when he was stressed out), Jon turned to Spencer and said, "So, uh, maybe we should do something about this?"
"About what?" Spencer asked. He was currently intently focused on the Clone Wars, and also currently kicking some Republic ass, and thoroughly enjoying himself in the process. Wanting to make out with Jon Walker had sorely impaired his video game skills, and now that he was over that little phase, he was absolutely determined to bring his Rebel forces to victory. Or at least not die.
"Um, this?" Jon said with a dramatic flaily sweeping gesture that seemed to be intended to encompass the entire cabin and possibly most of Nevada.
"Oh," Spencer said. "Well, wait a second, I-- fuck, shitfuck, okay, yeah, you win." Spencer gave the screen one last loathesome look before setting his controller aside and turning to face Jon. "Okay, what do you propose?"
Jon shrugged. "I was hoping you'd have an idea?"
Spencer sighed, scratching at his head. "If I had any ideas, don't you think I'd've done something by now?" He had already tried talking to Ryan, knocking on his bedroom door occasionally only to be greeted with silence or, once or twice, an emphatic fuck off. And besides that, he had no earthly idea where to begin with Brendon.
"Yeah, well," said Jon. "Well, we could at least try to cheer Brendon up. He makes me depressed just looking at him."
As if to prove Jon's point, Brendon came shuffling in, still wrapped in his comforter, and gave Jon and Spencer an unbearably sad look as he sank down onto the couch next to Spencer.
Spencer raised an eyebrow at Jon. "Try being charming and hilarious," he suggested.
"Hey, Brendon," Jon said, offering a smile. Brendon turned his big, sad eyes over in Jon's direction. "What," Jon asked hopefully, "is worse than finding a worm in your apple?"
Brendon blinked at him, slowly, and let out a long sigh. "The Holocaust?" he offered rejectedly, sinking further into his blanket.
Jon looked disappointed. Spencer rolled his eyes. "I think I'll buy you a dictionary for Christmas, Jon Walker," he said, scooting over to once again gather Brendon into his arms. Brendon curled onto the couch, claiming Spencer's lap as a pillow. Spencer ruffled his hair a little bit, then took to kind of awkwardly petting the blanket around Brendon's shoulders in a manner he hoped was comforting. (Even though Spencer was not the most huggy dude around, he really didn't mind an occasional cuddle or two or ten.)
"Spence," Brendon said, shifting around to look up at Spencer, who blinked back down at him. "You're his best friend. What the hell am I supposed to do?"
"Well." Spencer frowned. "When I'm pissed at Ryan, I just punch him."
"Um," Brendon said. "I don't want to punch Ryan."
"Oh," said Spencer. "Well."
"I think you-and-Ryan is a little bit different from Spencer-and-Ryan," Jon said, moving over to join them on the couch, propping his chin on Spencer's shoulder. "In that, you know, Spencer and Ryan do not want to make beautiful babies together."
"You told him?" Brendon flailed as best he could wrapped up in his comforter, pouting indignantly.
Spencer rolled his eyes and flicked Brendon's pouty lower lip. "No, asshole."
"Oh," said Brendon. Then, "Ryan wants to make beautiful babies with me?"
"I've occasionally gotten that impression," said Jon.
"And you do have excellent birthing hips," said Spencer.
Brendon stared up at both of them for about three more seconds before rolling promptly to his feet and taking off down the hallway, his blanket left in a pile on the floor. Spencer winced at the loud thump of human meeting door. "Ryan, Ryan, we can name one after Pete, don't you think he'd like that!"
There were a few muffled scuffling noises, the sound of a closing door, and Brendon didn't come back. Spencer grinned, just a little, to himself.
"Spencer James Smith the Fifth," Jon said with his own grin. "Is that a smile I see?"
"Definitely not," Spencer said. He shifted a little, away from Jon, but Jon scooped him determinedly into a hug.
"Don't you dare," Jon said. "We are going to sit here and revel in our supreme conflict-resolving skills while simultaneously kicking ass and taking names." He picked up Spencer's game controller and handed it over, making himself at home on Spencer's shoulder.
Spencer gave him an odd look, but complied. (He was never really one to say no to kicking ass and taking names, and besides, the galaxy needed saving. Jon kind of failed at being straight even when Spencer did not want to make out with him, but at least now it was an endearing sort of failure.) For a while, they sat quietly, engrossed in the epic battle before them.
"You know, Spencer," Jon said eventually, his cheek still resting on Spencer's shoulder as Spencer battled epically. "You do have friends who aren't Ryan."
Spencer glanced over at him, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah."
Sunrises from the front porch were quiet and picturesque, all soft lights and songbirds, and whenever Spencer happened to be awake when one was happening, he liked to sit and watch. Usually, this happened after all-night video game tournaments when everyone else had fallen asleep just a little too early, but today Spencer woke up restlessly with the first gray light breaking over the trees and, after a few minutes of aimless shifting and sheet-tangling, rolled to his feet and shuffled off toward the porch.
The unpredicted bug in this plan was that Ryan was already there, notebook open on his knees, scribbling away. Spencer eyed him for a moment, but figured, what the hell, and helped himself to the spot next to Ryan on the steps.
Ryan glanced over at him, cracking a smile. "Hey."
"Good to see you out and about," Spencer said.
Ryan shrugged. "Neurotic seclusion is nice, but all the bottled urine starts to smell after a while."
"That's pretty gross," Spencer said affably, leaning his head on Ryan's shoulder and letting his gaze drift down to the open page in Ryan's notebook. Ryan tilted it over a little so Spencer could see better. He skimmed down the page, then pursed his lips thoughtfully, re-reading, feeling Ryan's stare intent on his temple.
"Love song?" he asked eventually.
"Mhmm," Ryan said, frowning and taking the book back to doodle a curly sort of border in one corner. He paused, then drew a long line down the margin, ending it in a spiral. "I haven't shown it to anyone else, yet. You don't think that's too, you know--"
"Nah," said Spencer, giving in to the smile tugging at his lips. "It's good."
(end)
p!atd, spencer!fic with a side of ryan/brendon.
pg-13; 5,350 words.
razzle dazzle/come what may
Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
--Peter Ustinov
Honestly, Spencer liked Brendon very much. Brendon was a very nice kid (even if he did have the attention span and occasionally the maturity of a seven-year-old), and Brendon was an excellent musician, and back when Panic! was first starting out, Brendon would always bring them all smoothies after work and never forgot that Spencer really loathed mangoes in his and made sure he got the strawberry-banana one. Brendon was a great friend. Brendon was one of Spencer's best friends.
Brendon was greedy and obnoxious and a big fat Ryan Ross-hog.
The thing was, Spencer was pretty sure he wasn't doing it on purpose, but he really couldn't blame Ryan for this, because Ryan had been not-so-secretly starving for affection for years, and Brendon was a very affectionate person (though Spencer liked to think of himself as a very affectionate person, too, but he was not quite the snuggles-and-cuddles type of affection-giver that Brendon was, even though Ryan could have come to Spencer for snuggles and cuddles if that's what he really wanted, but Spencer knew Ryan was not really the type who acted on impulses like that, and, well. Yeah. Brendon liked to hug people, and therefore this was all his fault.)
This being: Moulin Rouge, in the cabin's living room, and Ryan was not even singing along. He was cuddling. With Brendon. (Who was actually singing along, most of the time, loudly and obnoxiously and perfectly on-key, but Ryan was not, he was just becoming very intimate with Brendon's shoulder, which, in Spencer Smith's world, was entirely unnatural. He and Ryan had been singing along to Moulin Rouge for years. One simply does not just stop singing along to Moulin Rouge.)
The point being: Ryan was being weird, and Spencer didn't feel like singing along when Ryan wasn't, except he really actually wanted to, and not singing along when he wanted to had put him in a supremely irritated mood. He had a feeling it was showing, too, because Jon kept eyeing him from across the couch with a mixture of concern and caution. Spencer was going to get wrinkles from frowning, and it was all Brendon's fault.
Eventually, Spencer sighed. "Jon Walker," he said, "do you want a glass of water?"
Jon blinked at him. "Not really. I would like a glass of cranberry and orange juice with a hint of limeade?"
Brendon giggled and whispered something about baristas. Ryan hid a grin behind his hand. Spencer scowled and stood up. "You're getting water," he informed Jon, and stalked as dramatically as possible (without actually stomping, because that would be childish) to the kitchen. Instead of getting Jon a glass of water, though, he decided that his time would probably be better spent standing in front of the open refrigerator and glowering at the (minimal and sadly unexpansive) contents as if they would mobilize and for an army to crusade for normalcy if Spencer glared hard enough. (They didn't. Spencer thought he might have seen the milk quiver a little bit, but that may have also been because it was a few weeks past its expiration date and quite possibly alive of its own accord.)
"You know, if you're going to hold a dude's beverage hostage, you could at least send a note," Jon said, and Spencer jumped about a foot, spinning around and slamming the fridge closed.
"Whoa," said Jon. "A little on-edge, Spence?"
"No," Spencer snapped, then frowned and adopted a less irritated, more impatient tone. "We don't have any cranberry juice. Or limeade." There was probably orange juice somewhere, just not in the refrigerator. It was probably alive, too, and planning to elope with the milk. Or something.
Jon shrugged. "Water is fine."
Spencer shrugged back. "Well, since you're in here anyway, you can get your own now."
"Spencer," Jon said. Spencer looked over at him, somewhat reluctantly. His irritation was apparently translating as more forlorn than he meant for it to, because the look Jon gave him was almost obnoxiously sympathetic.
"I'm a little sick of Moulin Rouge," Spencer said.
"Yeah, okay," Jon said, and apparently thought that was a malady curable by hugs, because he took that as his cue to wrap Spencer up in a particularly bear-esque one. Jon gave very good hugs. They were far less bony than Ryan's hugs.
"Hey, Spencer," said Brendon.
Spencer didn't look up from his bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, choosing to ignore Brendon in favor of Wendell's adventures on the back of the cereal box and the magical process of creating the taste you can see. Also, there was a word search. Spencer was very fond of word searches.
"Spencerrrrrr," Brendon said, whining, and a moment later Wendell and his magic mixing spoon (Spencer kind of questioned the sanity of people who marketed children's food) was plucked from in front of him as Brendon confiscated the box and plopped himself down across the table from Spencer.
"Spence!" Brendon said happily, as if it wasn't the third time that minute he had tried to get Spencer's attention. Spencer waved his spoon idly in acknowledgment, kind of gesturing to his current mouthful in a way of saying, "I would say hello, but I am chewing, and I also don't really feel like it anyway." Brendon would understand.
"Hey, a word search!" Brendon exclaimed, turning his attention to the cereal box while Spencer ate. Spencer hurriedly chewed and swallowed, pegging a stray piece of cereal at Brendon's head. (Spencer had never been a very athletic kind of guy, but he was awfully good at hitting people with small, throwable objects, especially if they were obnoxious and Mormon, he had learned over the past few years.)
"Don't you dare, I've got dibs on it," Spencer informed Brendon in no uncertain terms.
Brendon pouted, looking mournfully at the box. "You are a cruel dude, Spencer Smith," he said. "A sucker of fun. A fun-sucker. Like a vampire, but without the sexy factor. And less blood."
"I've got plenty of sexy factor," Spencer said irritably around a fresh mouthful of cinnamon-sugary goodness.
"It's not a vampire sexy factor, though," Brendon said, still frowning at the box and tracing words sadly with his finger. "Vampire-sexy is, like, Pete Wentz. Your sexy factor is, like, squishy. Like marshmallows."
"I--" Spencer started, but was assautled by a very concerning mental image involving s'mores. He stabbed at his cereal, shaking his head. "I, you. I don't even know. You make my brain sad, Brendon Urie."
"Well, you make my heart sad, Spencer Smith." He was doing the big-eyes thing, now, so Spencer made extra-sure to concentrate on his food. "You don't like me anymore."
"I like you plenty," Spencer said around another bite. (His milk was starting to get all sweet, and it was a little bit gross. The milk was supposed to be a refreshing counterbalance to the sweetness of the cereal, not diabetes in a bowl.) He blinked up at Brendon, who was still pouting, but he actually looked so honestly forlorn that Spencer sighed, waving a dismissive hand. "You know what, take the word search."
Brendon's expression did a one-eighty from tragic to ecstatic, and he bounded to his feet with the box in hand. "You're the best, Spencer Smith!" he proclaimed, and pressed a loud, dramatic smooch to the top of Spencer's head as he ran off to become one with the word search.
Spencer sighed again, and frowned at his too-sweet and soggy cereal. Being annoyed with Brendon took a lot of energy.
For the vast majority of his life, and especially the parts he could remember, Spencer had been a guy with plenty of acquaintances and a handful of good friends and one Ryan Ross. If Spencer was fifteen years old and a girl, he would probably refer to himself and Ryan as BFF, just because they'd been through so much shit together, and they weren't the kind of gross friends who never fought, and anyone who could put up with Ryan for as long as Spencer had deserved some kind of titular recognition, anyway.
The point being: this current situation, with Brendon hogging Ryan a lot, left Spencer in a position that he really was not used to dealing with. Technically, sure, he was seeing Ryan every day, but. It was different. And it often left Spencer in a position in which the only person around to pay attention to him was Jon.
Jon, it turned out, was pretty excellent at paying attention to people. He was much better at Halo than Ryan, and had a much longer attention span than Brendon, and didn't accuse Spencer of cheating at Halo when Spencer kicked his ass at it. Well, not often. Except for when Spencer really did cheat. But the problem with all of this was that Jon was a very affectionate person, not in a fabulous way like Brendon, but in a very sweet and subtle kind of way, and he was not built like Jack Skellington like Ryan was, so Spencer couldn't get away with shoving his hugs away by saying they were pokey.
"You are a liar, Spencer Smith," Jon would say. "I am soft and cuddly like a teddy bear." And it was pretty much true, so it wasn't like Spencer could argue.
And this was how Spencer wound up spending a lot of time in/around Jon's lap, or drinking a lot of Jon's special and delicious hot chocolate, and these things were not really a problem. The problem was, really, that Spencer was fairly sure that if he was left alone with Jon Walker for too long he was going to develop a crush on him.
However. Any and all possible drama was always put on hold when the wildlife became traumatizing, which in general occured at night and/or whenever Brendon was feeling particularly high-strung. Now, for example.
"IT WAS A RABID MOOSE," Brendon was saying, gesticulating wildly and running around for, Spencer assumed, a blunt object he deemed formidable enough to take on a rabid moose with. Jon was peeking out the front door, and Ryan was watching, bemused, from the couch.
"I don't see anything," Jon said, blinking out into the darkness.
"Um, Brendon," said Spencer.
"You can't see anything, it's dark out," Ryan pointed out helpfully.
"Moose don't live this far south," Spencer said to anyone who was listening, which pretty much amounted to Jon.
"Brendon," said Jon, "Spencer says moose don't live this far south."
"But I saw it!" Brendon said. "Spencer Smith, don't be a nonbeliever!" He joined Jon in peering out the front door,
"You probably saw a deer," Spencer said.
Brendon considered this. Frowned. "That," he said, "is not nearly as exciting."
"But at least deer won't eat us?" offered Jon.
"Moose don't eat meat, either," Spencer said.
"A rabid one might," said Ryan, shrugging apathetically.
"MOOOOOOOOOSE," Brendon called mournfully into the night.
"You sure know a lot about moose, Spence," Jon said.
Spencer sighed.
Once Brendon got over the moose incident, he went back to hogging Ryan (or going over potential lyrics, whatever), and Jon said, "Want to watch something that isn't Moulin Rouge?"
Emotional and sexual confusion aside, Jon's lap still made an excellent pillow, and Spencer wasn't going to let a silly thing like a possible (probable) crush hinder his enjoyment of plasma-screen-surround-sound-Chicago (Ryan's DVD, Spencer is pretty sure, despite the fact that it has spent the last two years in Spencer's duffel bag, and he certainly wasn't getting it back now). Jon was a big bully, anyway, and practically accosted Spencer into curling up on his end of the couch, so really, Spencer had no choice in the current situation.
The current situation being: Spencer's cheek pressed against Jon's (very warm) thigh (he was fairly sure Jon's jeans had left a pattern pressed permanently into his cheek by now), Jon's fingers combing absentmindedly though his hair, because Jon did that, sometimes (a lot of the time, and Spencer didn't usually mind, and he didn't really mind now either, it was just a little more distracting than before), and Spencer staring very, very intently at Renee Zellweger. He considered, occasionally, mouthing along with the songs, but a) that would involve an awful lot of cheek-to-thigh frottage, and b) Ryan didn't even sing along with Chicago, usually, and Ryan was a hell of a lot gayer than Spencer. (Moulin Rouge was another story entirely.)
It really wasn't fair, Spencer thought bitterly, that Jon Fucking Walker could openly hum along to Razzle Dazzle and still be the straightest guy on FBR who wasn't sporting a jewfro.
Jon tugged on a lock of Spencer's hair, and Spencer rolled a little to look up at him, lifting his eyebrows in question.
"Nothing," said Jon. "You just seem a little off. You're being very quiet."
"I'm being pensive," Spencer informed him, frowning.
Jon grinned. "Really? I was going more for thoughtful." Spencer rolled his eyes, and Jon ruffled his hair, and they both went back to the movie (except now Spencer was too busy to pay attention, thinking up synonyms for pensive so he wouldn't run out before he got over this; there were only so many words one could use to describe a mood without plastering I-have-a-ridiculous-boycrush across one's forehead, and Spencer needed to figure out how to ration them).
Between the two of them, Ryan had always been the insomniac, calling Spencer at ridiculous hours or poking him awake in the middle of the night, whispering Spence, hey, Spence, are you asleep (to which Spencer would grumble, yes, go the fuck away, and give himself thirty more seconds of shut-eye before rousing himself to listen. The one time he hadn't done that, had actually gone back to sleep, Ryan had climbed out Spencer's bedroom window and disappeared for what Spencer still considered the worst two days of his life.)
And this was why Spencer had made himself at home on the couch at two o'clock in the morning, nursing a mug of really gross herbal tea that was supposed to help stress but didn't and waiting to make sure Ryan came back from the walk he and Brendon had gone on about, oh, four hours ago. Spencer wasn't entirely sure what wild animals frequented these parts, just that there were no moose, but he hoped if they had run into a wolf or a bear or someshit Brendon would be man enough to sacrifice himself while Ryan made a run for it, because Ryan wasn't really man enough to do anything of the sort. (But then of course everyone would be very sad, and Jon would probably insist on giving a lot of hugs that Spencer would have to try very hard not to be awkward about, and Ryan would probably lock himself in his room and write angry, angsty music for the next year, and Spencer thought Pete might throw a temper tantrum if they took that long on the album.)
Spencer was eyeing his mug of tea and contemplating getting up to go dump the rest out when Jon wandered in, rubbing sleepily at his eyes. "They still gone?" he asked, flopping onto the couch by Spencer, who automatically stretched out a little more extensively in an inconspicuous attempt to ward of Jon's wily cuddly-straight-man advances.
"Mhmm," Spencer said, and offered Jon his tea. Jon studied it for a moment before taking a tentative sip, making a face, and setting it a safe, unoffensive distance away on a sidetable.
"Good of you to sit up waiting for him," Jon said.
Spencer shrugged. "Brendon may have used the poetic aesthetics of the wilderness to take advantage of Ryan's innocence. Hugs and comfort may be in order. Possibly a battle as well."
Jon snorted a laugh, grinning. "Yeah, okay." Spencer scowled at Jon's skepticism of his highly unlikely and unrealistic situational theory.
"You're just not really the most huggy dude around, Spencer Smith," Jon elaborated.
"Hm," Spencer said. Then he frowned, because he was fairly sure that it had come out something like, "You make me feel funny inside and sometimes I really want to try to make out with you even though I know you're straight."
"... Huh," Jon said. "Really?"
Spencer said, "Shit." Apparently, it had come out exactly like that.
"You really miss Ryan a lot, don't you?" Jon asked, ignoring Spencer's couch-hogging sprawl and shifting over to wrap an arm around Spencer's shoulders (which was the kind of situation Spencer had aimed to avoid in the first place, except now it was more awkward times, like, a thousand. Or a billion. A thousand billion, even.)
"I see Ryan every day," Spencer said.
"Well, yeah," Jon said, "but Brendon hogs him," and Spencer really was momentarily overwhelmed with a sudden urge to kiss him and declare gleefully that at least someone understood, but while he was busy quashing this urge, Jon just leaned over and kissed him, right square on the mouth, and instead Spencer shrieked and flailed and might have accidentally hit Jon in the ear, judging by Jon's own indignant yelp.
"Gross, Jon Walker!" Spencer scolded, rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Dude, what the hell?"
Jon was looking particularly smug, now. "See, you do not want to make out with me," he said triumphantly.
"Well, not now that I know what a slobbery kisser you are!" Spencer said, wiping his hand off on Jon's jeans, and decided not to mention that Jon was miraculously and thankfully right about the entire situation. He was considering acting a little bit abashed about the whole thing, or at least asking Jon to please not mention this little incident to Cassie, as Spencer was really quite fond of her, when the front door slammed open and Ryan came storming through the cabin.
"Hey, look, they're home," Jon observed.
Ryan did not look at either of them on his way through the living room, and when Brendon didn't follow soon after, Spencer pulled Jon with him to look outside for him. (The urge to proclaim his earlier innocence-stealing theory as obvious fact was not nearly as easily quashed as the desire to kiss Jon Walker.)
"Dude," Jon said quietly, nudging Spencer in the side. "You were right. I think hugs and comfort are in order."
Because Brendon was not far, just sitting out on the front steps, but he was doubled over and hugging himself, and, in the faint light filtering out from inside, Spencer could see his shoulders shaking.
Ryan locked himself in his room with a notebook and a guitar and spent the next day treating the cabin to unpredicatble outbursts of angry chord progressions that made Jon jump and Brendon wince. Spencer pressed his ear to the door a few times and could hear muffled lyrics in a quiet, scratchy version of Ryan's singing voice. (Words were hard to make out but what Spencer caught was mostly a lot of cursing and possibly once a couplet rhyming displace to dickface, but he could have heard wrong. Possibly. Spencer doubts it.)
"Maybe he wants to take the new album in a Taking Back Sunday kind of direction?" Jon suggested around a mouthful of poptart the sixth or seventh time Ryan's musical tirades nearly gave him a heart attack. "You know, self-depreciation. Boys like you are a dime a dozen, and all that."
Spencer lifted an eyebrow at him. "You think it's himself he's depreciating in there?" Jon shrugged. Brendon shuffled into the kitchen, looking forlorn with the comforter from his bed wrapped around his shoulders like a security blanket. (Brendon was really the most concerning part about this whole situation, Spencer thought, because Ryan going hermit really wasn't that odd, overall. Ryan was a tortured, poetic soul, and they were expected to go periodically neurotic and crazy. Brendon, though, was just a spastic geek, and for the past day and a half he had been quiet. It was pretty mind-boggling.)
"It's starting to sound like some angry version of Sic Transit Gloria or something," Brendon muttered, possibly (probably) to himself, sinking into a chair near Spencer and poking at the toast Spencer had been looking at and not eating for the past ten minutes. Spencer nudged it over in Brendon's general direction, and Brendon took that as a cue to start munching gratefully.
"Is it possible for Sic Transit Gloria to get angrier?" Spencer asked, just in general.
Jon shrugged. "Maybe the devil and Pete Wentz are raging inside him."
Spencer grinned despite himself. Brendon sniffled into his toast.
Spencer made it two whole days before giving into temptation and accosting Brendon for The Question. The accosting was much easier than Spencer had expected, though Spencer was not sure exactly what he had expected, considering Brendon had taken up residence on the living room couch and had been immobile for at least eight hours. So, really, it was less accosting and more taking a quiet seat next to him, but it still kind of made Spencer feel like an ass when he asked, "So, what did you do?"
Brendon blinked slowly over at him, as if he was taking a long time to digest the question, then sighed and shrugged, sinking further into the comforter he still had wrapped around him. "I don't even know. Spence, what did I do?" he asked quietly, and Spencer felt like even more of an ass. (This was a life lesson Spencer made sure to promptly file away for future reference: there was nothing that would make you feel more like an ass than trying to be angry with Brendon Urie when he was sad.)
Spencer made it almost an entire minute before, with a disgruntled sigh of his own, opening his arms and gesturing for Brendon to shift over into them. He wound up with an armful that was more blanket than Brendon, really, but it was probably to be expected that a particularly thick comforter would have a greater BMI than Brendon. (Most things did, except Ryan, and Spencer was not going to make that comparison right now because it would make him feel like an ass again, and feeling like an ass made him irritable.)
"Well," Spencer said slowly once Brendon recovered from a fresh bout of sniffles, "what did you say to him that made him go all Howard Hughes-y on us?" He was trying very hard to sound sympathetic. It was not his forte.
There was a shift from somewhere within the blanket that Spencer assumed was another shrug. "We were just talking. About stuff. People. And, like, stuff," Brendon said in a muffled sort of voice, then employed some impressively tactical wiggling to get his head free of the comforter. This close, Spencer could see that his eyes were a post-crying sort of red, and he felt like an ass again.
"About Keltie," Brendon specified.
"Ah," said Spencer.
"About--" Brendon paused, frowned and took a deep breath. "About how he kind of feels bad because he's not actually in love with her, you know, like, he likes her and all, but, like, he's not in love, and he thinks he should be, and I was like, well, why don't you, like, break things off then, but then he got all moody and was like, you just don't understand, and I was like, no, I really don't, and he got all angry at me, and I might have told him he was pretty fucking stupid, but I'm pretty sure it was applicable at the time, expect now, like, now I feel like I'm the really fucking stupid one."
"... Oh," said Spencer. He tried to make it sound very sympathetic, but didn't feel like it came across, so he puctuated it by giving the bundle of Brendon/blanket symbiosis in his arms a tight squeeze.
Brendon sniffled. "I'm kind of a little bit in love with him, you know," he said.
"Oh," said Spencer. He didn't even have to try for the sympathy, this time.
"Do you think I'm stupid, Spence?" Brendon asked, sniffling again. Spencer made a mental note to run that comforter through the wash if Brendon ever let go of it, because the idea of Brendon's snot playing house in the seams was a little bit disgusting.
"Just in general," Spencer said honestly. "Not about Ryan."
"Oh," Brendon said quietly. "Okay." And then he fell quiet, and Spencer couldn't really think of anything else to say, either, so he just kind of sat there until Brendon fell asleep. (When they woke up in the morning, Spencer grumpily blamed Brendon for falling asleep on him in such a way that he couldn't move to bed without waking Brendon, but then Brendon chose that moment for a spectacular display of normalcy by declaring loudly and gleefully to a sleepy Jon that, guess what, I slept with Spencer Smith last night, and Spencer could not help but inwardly secretly forgive him for being a big fat Ryan Ross-hog.)
After a few more days of Brendon casting a black cloud of dreariness over the cabin with his moping and Ryan playing mad scientist in his room with his notebook and guitar (and, Spencer assumed, sneaking out when no one was looking to eat; some of Spencer's ramen was missing, and Ryan always did like to steal Spencer's ramen when he was stressed out), Jon turned to Spencer and said, "So, uh, maybe we should do something about this?"
"About what?" Spencer asked. He was currently intently focused on the Clone Wars, and also currently kicking some Republic ass, and thoroughly enjoying himself in the process. Wanting to make out with Jon Walker had sorely impaired his video game skills, and now that he was over that little phase, he was absolutely determined to bring his Rebel forces to victory. Or at least not die.
"Um, this?" Jon said with a dramatic flaily sweeping gesture that seemed to be intended to encompass the entire cabin and possibly most of Nevada.
"Oh," Spencer said. "Well, wait a second, I-- fuck, shitfuck, okay, yeah, you win." Spencer gave the screen one last loathesome look before setting his controller aside and turning to face Jon. "Okay, what do you propose?"
Jon shrugged. "I was hoping you'd have an idea?"
Spencer sighed, scratching at his head. "If I had any ideas, don't you think I'd've done something by now?" He had already tried talking to Ryan, knocking on his bedroom door occasionally only to be greeted with silence or, once or twice, an emphatic fuck off. And besides that, he had no earthly idea where to begin with Brendon.
"Yeah, well," said Jon. "Well, we could at least try to cheer Brendon up. He makes me depressed just looking at him."
As if to prove Jon's point, Brendon came shuffling in, still wrapped in his comforter, and gave Jon and Spencer an unbearably sad look as he sank down onto the couch next to Spencer.
Spencer raised an eyebrow at Jon. "Try being charming and hilarious," he suggested.
"Hey, Brendon," Jon said, offering a smile. Brendon turned his big, sad eyes over in Jon's direction. "What," Jon asked hopefully, "is worse than finding a worm in your apple?"
Brendon blinked at him, slowly, and let out a long sigh. "The Holocaust?" he offered rejectedly, sinking further into his blanket.
Jon looked disappointed. Spencer rolled his eyes. "I think I'll buy you a dictionary for Christmas, Jon Walker," he said, scooting over to once again gather Brendon into his arms. Brendon curled onto the couch, claiming Spencer's lap as a pillow. Spencer ruffled his hair a little bit, then took to kind of awkwardly petting the blanket around Brendon's shoulders in a manner he hoped was comforting. (Even though Spencer was not the most huggy dude around, he really didn't mind an occasional cuddle or two or ten.)
"Spence," Brendon said, shifting around to look up at Spencer, who blinked back down at him. "You're his best friend. What the hell am I supposed to do?"
"Well." Spencer frowned. "When I'm pissed at Ryan, I just punch him."
"Um," Brendon said. "I don't want to punch Ryan."
"Oh," said Spencer. "Well."
"I think you-and-Ryan is a little bit different from Spencer-and-Ryan," Jon said, moving over to join them on the couch, propping his chin on Spencer's shoulder. "In that, you know, Spencer and Ryan do not want to make beautiful babies together."
"You told him?" Brendon flailed as best he could wrapped up in his comforter, pouting indignantly.
Spencer rolled his eyes and flicked Brendon's pouty lower lip. "No, asshole."
"Oh," said Brendon. Then, "Ryan wants to make beautiful babies with me?"
"I've occasionally gotten that impression," said Jon.
"And you do have excellent birthing hips," said Spencer.
Brendon stared up at both of them for about three more seconds before rolling promptly to his feet and taking off down the hallway, his blanket left in a pile on the floor. Spencer winced at the loud thump of human meeting door. "Ryan, Ryan, we can name one after Pete, don't you think he'd like that!"
There were a few muffled scuffling noises, the sound of a closing door, and Brendon didn't come back. Spencer grinned, just a little, to himself.
"Spencer James Smith the Fifth," Jon said with his own grin. "Is that a smile I see?"
"Definitely not," Spencer said. He shifted a little, away from Jon, but Jon scooped him determinedly into a hug.
"Don't you dare," Jon said. "We are going to sit here and revel in our supreme conflict-resolving skills while simultaneously kicking ass and taking names." He picked up Spencer's game controller and handed it over, making himself at home on Spencer's shoulder.
Spencer gave him an odd look, but complied. (He was never really one to say no to kicking ass and taking names, and besides, the galaxy needed saving. Jon kind of failed at being straight even when Spencer did not want to make out with him, but at least now it was an endearing sort of failure.) For a while, they sat quietly, engrossed in the epic battle before them.
"You know, Spencer," Jon said eventually, his cheek still resting on Spencer's shoulder as Spencer battled epically. "You do have friends who aren't Ryan."
Spencer glanced over at him, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Yeah."
Sunrises from the front porch were quiet and picturesque, all soft lights and songbirds, and whenever Spencer happened to be awake when one was happening, he liked to sit and watch. Usually, this happened after all-night video game tournaments when everyone else had fallen asleep just a little too early, but today Spencer woke up restlessly with the first gray light breaking over the trees and, after a few minutes of aimless shifting and sheet-tangling, rolled to his feet and shuffled off toward the porch.
The unpredicted bug in this plan was that Ryan was already there, notebook open on his knees, scribbling away. Spencer eyed him for a moment, but figured, what the hell, and helped himself to the spot next to Ryan on the steps.
Ryan glanced over at him, cracking a smile. "Hey."
"Good to see you out and about," Spencer said.
Ryan shrugged. "Neurotic seclusion is nice, but all the bottled urine starts to smell after a while."
"That's pretty gross," Spencer said affably, leaning his head on Ryan's shoulder and letting his gaze drift down to the open page in Ryan's notebook. Ryan tilted it over a little so Spencer could see better. He skimmed down the page, then pursed his lips thoughtfully, re-reading, feeling Ryan's stare intent on his temple.
"Love song?" he asked eventually.
"Mhmm," Ryan said, frowning and taking the book back to doodle a curly sort of border in one corner. He paused, then drew a long line down the margin, ending it in a spiral. "I haven't shown it to anyone else, yet. You don't think that's too, you know--"
"Nah," said Spencer, giving in to the smile tugging at his lips. "It's good."
(end)