fic: I Thought (1/2)
Title: I Thought
Word Count: 14,387
Rating: R, possibly NC-17
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon, though the canon girlfriends make an appearance
Disclaimer: Trust me, if I owned these boys they would not be doing each other. Also, if this is true, then I'm going to have to see if I can read other peoples' minds as well.
Summary: In the beginning, the Thing that Brendon and Ryan start up isn't supposed to be anything other than a way to relax and unwind. After awhile, Brendon stops being sure what it actually is, and what either of them want.
Notes: So, on a note that has nothing to do with this story first, my old LJ was
qtiphawaii, and I've posted fic from that username before. This is the account I'm using now.
On a separate note....what? 14,387 words? When I started this fic, I was thinking maybe, oh, 5,000 or so. I'm really not sure what happened in the intervening time, but obviously something did, and this is the result.
I Thought
Working at the Smoothie Hut was most bearable on the days that Brendon got visits from his friends. Most often it was Spencer and Ryan, dropping in casually together during their mysterious best friend bonding times. They normally didn’t stay too long, just enough time to order drinks and joke with Brendon for a few minutes, sometimes letting him know if their practice time had changed, or telling him what they’d been doing that day. Other times it was Brent, who would shuffle in awkwardly as though he felt guilty for dragging Brendon into the band that had made this job necessary. He would always leave his change in the tip jar and mutter, “See you at rehearsal,” before he hurried back out.
On the occasional day, however, Ryan would come in by himself, and those were Brendon’s favourite days. When it was only Ryan without Spencer alongside, he’d bring a notebook and sit at the table nearest to the counter, hunched over and writing furiously. Occasionally Brendon would catch Ryan looking at him, and whenever that happened, Brendon would raise his eyebrows and grin. Ryan would ruffle his perfectly straightened hair with one long-fingered hand and smile back with chagrin, asking for a synonym for promiscuity, or fame. He always stayed until Brendon had a break, and then he’d let Brendon drape himself around his thin frame, carefully keeping the scribbled notebook shut.
Brendon didn’t mind the secrecy, because when he went back to work, sometimes Ryan would come right up to the counter and lean over, reading bits of what he’d been working on in a low, flat voice that was almost lost in the drone of the blenders. Since Brendon was pretty sure that even Spencer didn’t get to hear Ryan’s words before they were polished enough to bring before the whole band, hearing them rough and low and uncertain was a special thrill that he couldn’t describe.
By the fourth or fifth time this happened, Brendon started just giving Ryan his smoothies for free, and his manager didn’t even bat an eye. When he asked her later, she grinned and told him, “That boy looks half starved. Besides, he keeps up employee morale.”
The evening of that conversation, when he got to his apartment, he was so focused on getting upstairs and inside that he almost tripped over Ryan, who was lounging on the part of the landing around the corner from the first part of the stairs so that he was invisible until Brendon was nearly on top of him.
“Jesus, Ross, way to nearly give me a heart attack!” Brendon exclaimed, clutching at the railing of the stairwell with one hand, and pressing the other to his chest in an action that was only slightly more dramatic than what the situation called for.
Ryan just picked himself up and brushed off the back of his jeans, announcing, “I’m going to stay with you tonight.”
“Umm, okay, you can invite yourself over, that’s fine,” Brendon replied as he finished climbing the stairs and unlocked the door to his small apartment. Once in, he dropped his backpack and work visor by the door and threw himself down on the sofa. “God, I’m exhausted,” he complained.
In response, Ryan snorted, but he looked faintly sympathetic. “Let’s watch a movie or something,” he suggested, picking his way over to the television that Brendon had found in a second hand store earlier that month.
“Can’t,” Brendon explained, “I don’t have a VCR or DVD player or anything like that. But we can watch TV. I get basic cable.”
“Okay,” Ryan agreed, clicking on the television and joining Brendon, who had sat up to make more room for him on the couch.
As it turned out, the only decent thing on was a documentary on blue whales, and Ryan seemed interested, so Brendon kept it on. Slouching down, he leaned his head sideways against Ryan’s shoulder. When he glanced over to be sure that the other boy wasn’t supremely uncomfortable, he found Ryan looking intently at the television, pale skin flickering with the blues of the deep ocean, wearing the tiniest hint of a smile.
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When the Pete Wentz Thing happened, Brendon was at work. Ryan burst through the door, all shining eyes and a bright grin. He was wearing basketball shorts and a baggy T-shirt that Brendon was almost certain he’d seen Ryan sleep in, as if he’d left the house too quickly to even get dressed, and his hair was unstraightened, sticking up in every direction. That was Brendon’s first clue that something had happened.
“When do you get your break?” Ryan asked, breathless, as he leaned heavily on his elbows on the counter, chin almost resting in one of the blenders.
Smiling back, because it was impossible not to when Ryan was glowing as happily as he was right now, Brendon said, “I’ve got fifteen minutes, and then I have a half hour ‘lunch’ break. What’s up?”
Ryan only shook his head, getting his expression under control enough that his lips were pressed into a line, although he couldn’t keep them from curving up at the edges. “I’ll tell you when you’re on break. I think you need to be outside for this.”
With a shrug, Brendon returned to washing out blenders. If Ryan was set on not telling, Brendon wasn’t going to be able to convince him to talk until he was ready, so there wasn’t much use forcing the issue.
All the same, the next fourteen minutes ticked by incredibly slowly, especially with Ryan wandering around the store, unable to sit down. Brendon watched him look at the available merchandise, flip through a recipe book several times, try to sit at his normal table and almost immediately jump up, admire all the pictures on the walls, and finally come back over to lean on the counter and stare at Brendon as he blended bananas and strawberries.
Finally he was able to clock out, leaving his apron and visors on a hook in the back before walking out to meet Ryan. Now that he was about to find out whatever it was that Ryan was so excited about, he felt calmer, like he could wait forever without sweat. On the other hand, Ryan looked like he was going to burst if they didn’t get outside right away, so Brendon hastened them through the door.
As soon as they were clear of the front door, standing in the hot, early-Nevada-summer-sun-baked parking lot, Brendon started to ask, “So, dude, what’s-” but was cut off by Ryan exploding, “Pete Wentz wants to sign us!”
In the silence that followed, Brendon and Ryan stared at one another, Brendon’s mouth open in a small o of shock. “Wait,” he finally managed, “Let me make sure I just heard you right. Because I thought you said-”
“Pete Wentz wants to sign us!” Ryan interrupted again, half-laughing and half-yelling, “I sent him the links to our music, and he liked it, and we talked online, and he’s going to fly out to see us!”
Brendon grabbed Ryan’s upper arms, trying to keep from jumping up and down, or screaming, and said, “Ryan Ross, if you are playing some kind of joke on me then I will go to hairdressing school, I swear.” Even as he was saying it, though, he knew from the unbridled happiness that so rarely made it to Ryan’s face that he was completely serious.
Shaking his head, Ryan put his hands on Brendon’s shoulders and tilted his head forward until their foreheads met. Looking him in the eye, Ryan quietly said, “No, Brendon, it’s real. It’s real.”
Without really knowing what he was doing, Brendon stayed there, breathing quietly, his lungs filling with the thick desert air and the thicker air between them, for what felt like an eternity before he let himself go, spinning back away from Ryan and twirling in circles with his arms flung out to either side of him. “We did it!” he yelled, the words ringing through the parking lot, “We did it, we did it!”
Ryan joined him, and Brendon spun back around to him and grabbed him, fisting one hand in his hair and the other in the back of his T-shirt. Both of Ryan’s arms came to rest around his waist, and they chanted together, “We did it, we made it,” winded and thrilled, before falling silent again.
Since they still had twenty minutes before Brendon had to be back working again, they walked to the grocery store to buy Poptarts that they ate untoasted, sodas, and fruit snacks. On the way back they got into a fruit snack war that Brendon, admittedly, began. Rather than roll his eyes and tell Brendon to stop being so immature, however, Ryan joined in, trying to get the fruit snacks down the front of Brendon’s collared shirt. After awhile he gave up on dodging them, and started ducking to try to catch them out of the air, yelling in triumph whenever he did.
Their messing around made Brendon two minutes late returning to his shift, but he didn’t even care that they’d be docking him for a full half hour. He was too drunk on the thoughts of labels, and how Ryan’s eyes had looked, crinkling at the edges as he laughed. Thinking back, Brendon was pretty sure that he’d never seen the other boy look so absolutely guileless and happy, in the months that they’d been practicing together. It made him much more beautiful than when he was trying to be serious and deep.
Secretly, he hoped that Ryan didn’t smile like that at very many other people. It seemed too open and personal to share with the rest of the world, and it made something twist in an indefinable place somewhere within Brendon when he considered it.
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When Pete Wentz actually came to hear them play, just Brendon, Ryan, and the sound system playing for Spencer and Brent, he wasn’t anything like what Brendon had pictured. For one thing, he was so much shorter, which made him somewhat less intimidating. For another, as soon as he saw them, his face broke into a huge, almost comical grin, which seemed to throw Ryan off-kilter. Brendon could tell that Ryan was nervous, because his tone was even flatter than normal as he introduced himself.
As they approached the microphone and guitar stands, Pete bypassed the chair that they had set out for him and hopped onto the workbench at the side of the garage. He spread his hands and told them, “Let’s hear it. I’m psyched.” When Brendon stole a look at Ryan, head bent and bangs falling in his face as he made sure his guitar was still in tune, a light pink had risen in his cheeks, and his was biting his lip hard in concentration.
Brendon was still watching Ryan when he looked up again, and Brendon ignored the tense knot in his own stomach long enough to purposely grin at him and mouth, “Ready?”
Looking a little ill, Ryan nodded, took a breath, and then smiled back, a real smile. They launched into the first song, not taking their eyes off of each other until the end.
As soon as they finished, Pete hopped down from the table, clapping madly and throwing in the occasional whoop before Brendon could even start to hold his breath in anticipation. Pete launched himself at both of them, throwing an arm around each boy to pull them into a three-person hug. “My first little protégés!” he crowed, “I love it. You guys are going to be chart toppers in no time. You’ve got a few kinks to work out, but then again…” Pausing, he drew back and winked lewdly, “who doesn’t have some kinks?”
Ryan’s face went even redder than it had before they’d begun, and Brendon laughed nervously. Pete just threw back his head and brayed, and Brendon wasn’t sure whether or not to like this tiny, lovely man wearing too much eye makeup and making jokes that could mean anything. Then Pete went on to say, “So, I think we should wait until all four of you are together to talk about contracts, but I will say that the first thing you’re going to need to be part of Decaydance are Sidekicks so I can get hold of you anytime I please.”
He freed them again, rubbed his hands together, and asked, “So, who’s up for dinner?” Brendon decided that he might have to dislike Pete, especially with Ryan shyly saying, “Sure. You want to, Bren?” and giving Pete that smile.
“Excellent,” Pete replied enthusiastically before Brendon could answer, and started to lead them around the front of the house to where his car was parked. “Oh, the one thing I can tell you that you’re going to need to watch out for when you’re actually onstage. Maybe look at the audience once in awhile.”
Brendon shot him a quick look, but he was just unlocking the doors, and nothing in his face said that he was making fun of them, so Brendon let it go. As they got into the car, both of them in the backseat, a thin hand slipped into his just long enough to squeeze, and Ryan whispered, “We’re going out to dinner with Pete Wentz.”
The awe in his voice rang in Brendon’s ear, irritating him, and he didn’t say much in the car, even though Ryan kicked his foot a few times and huffed under his breath every time he had to answer Pete’s questions without any help. When they got to the restaurant and sat, Pete lounging across from them in the booth with his feet stretched out along the seat, Ryan announced, “I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” and glared at Brendon until, feeling like a fifteen-year-old girl, Brendon said, “Um, yeah, me too.”
Pete, perusing the menu, just waved and said, “Okay, I’ll order you guys something to drink if you’re not back.”
Brendon was about to tell him what he wanted to drink, but Ryan was already shoving him along towards the bathrooms with a hand on the small of his back, so he decided he’d have to put up with whatever he got. They marched past the telephones and into the bathroom, which was large and clean, and Ryan struck his bitchiest pose, leaning against the wall with a hand on one hip and the other cocked, head tilted to one side so that his hair fell across one of his eyes.
“What’s up?” Brendon asked, feigning innocence. In response, Ryan rolled his eyes.
“I don’t know, maybe you should tell me. You’ve been in a shitty mood since we finished playing. I don’t get it. We’re getting an offer for a spot on Fueled By Ramen, and you’re acting like a kid having a tantrum. What’s that about?”
With a shrug, Brendon admitted, “I don’t know. Does it strike you as completely normal that this was so easy? Send for Pete Wentz, he comes, he apparently likes us even when we’re not playing our best, and missing two people. I just…” Ryan was looking at him as though he wanted to say something harsh, and Brendon’s defenses went up even further. Hurriedly he added, “Maybe you were too busy staring at him to think about it.”
Clapping a hand over his mouth, when he chanced a look at Ryan, he wondered if Ryan was going to scratch his eyes out. Not his throat, because he was the singer, but his eyes were a definite possibility. Instead, pulling a scowl, Ryan said disbelievingly, “Are you…serious? God, Brendon, you’re an idiot. He’s one of my idols. But he’s…this has all happened because of us. We fucking worked for this, and if I thought Pete was giving us an advantage on anything other than that…”
He didn’t finish, but let the sentence hang meaningfully, and Brendon felt incredibly chagrinned. Hanging his head, he said, “Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” There was a pause, and then a cool hand cupped his jaw and forced him to look up. Ryan was staring at him as though considering something.
“Were you jealous?” he finally asked, and Brendon’s eyes widened. He didn’t want to say that that was exactly what the feeling had been like, when Ryan was looking adoringly at Pete, so he shook his head.
“I just don’t want this to be for the wrong reasons,” he muttered, and Ryan sighed. “I know,” he replied, “and it’s not. It’s about us.”
Brendon met his eyes again, and found Ryan looking earnestly at him. Then Ryan heaved another sigh and stepped forward, enfolding Brendon in his skinny embrace. Dry lips brushed the side of Brendon’s cheek, and even though he was pretty sure that it had been an accident, it felt calming nonetheless. When he pulled back he smiled tentatively, and Ryan smiled back, openly. “You’re an idiot,” he reiterated, but fondly this time.
When Brendon had stopped comparing Ryan’s grin to the one he’d flashed at Pete, which he was pretty sure now weren’t at all the same, he jerked his head towards the door. “We should get back out there before he thinks we’re up to something,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. Ryan rolled his eyes and knocked his shoulder against Brendon’s before opening the door and leading them back to the table.
“I ordered you guys ginger ales,” Pete told them when they were seated again. Brendon revised his earlier opinion. Pete Wentz was awesome.
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That night, Ryan had Pete drop them both off at Brendon’s apartment, and they headed up the stairs together, practically humming with excitement. They pulled out the sofa bed and lay down, but Brendon was far too wound up still to sleep. They had an early practice in the morning, so he tried to be quiet as he adjusted how he was lying over and over.
After awhile he heard a quiet, “Shut up, Brendon.”
“Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” he whispered back.
“No, I just never fell asleep,” was the clipped reply.
Brendon rolled onto his side, squinting in the dark to see Ryan lying next to him. Ignoring Ryan’s tone of voice, he said, “Yeah, me neither. I’m too wound up still. I don’t think I’m going to sleep for the next couple months.”
With a snort, Ryan said, “When aren’t you like that?”
Laughing, a too-loud noise in the shadowy room, Brendon joked, “Sex. Sex calms me down.” It was mostly a lie, because he hadn’t ever gone further than kissing, but Ryan didn’t need to know that.
There was a long silence, and then Ryan loomed up next to him, reaching a hand so that he was hanging above Brendon. In confusion, Brendon looked up at him, unable to read the expression in his eyes. “Ryan, what-”
“I just thought maybe we could…it wouldn’t have to mean anything, but it’d be something to do when we couldn’t sleep, or were stressed or whatever,” Ryan replied, and already one of his thin hands was sliding down Brendon’s side.
“Um,” Brendon said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say, and besides, Ryan was above him looking so open and honest, and a little bit scared, like he half-expected to be shoved away. That’s what did it for him. “It wouldn’t have to mean anything, just to relax,” he repeated.
His former priest’s face came to mind, stern and reproachful, telling the high school youth group, “Sexual intercourse in any form outside of the bonds of marriage is a sin. Lustful thoughts are sins. Keep yourself pure and clean.” Without ever needing to say it, it was obvious what the priest thought about same sex unions of any kind, even when they were just friends helping each other out, like this. It filled Brendon with the same thrill of rebellion that the band had, that renouncing the church had, that signing his lease agreement had.
Brendon managed to choke out, “Okay,” before Ryan reached the top of his boxers and curled his fingers into them, sliding them down over his hips. Already Brendon was half-hard, looking up at Ryan’s determined face, and when the large hand closed over his cock, it pulled a surprised groan from him.
It was different, having Ryan touching him, and Brendon closed his eyes experimentally, trying to picture a girl, or anything that wasn’t Ryan with his unmasked eyes full of an expression that Brendon couldn’t read in the dark of the room. No matter how hard he tried to settle on one of his fallback fantasies, however, the image of Ryan was apparently burned through his eyelids, so finally he just opened them again.
Ryan was looking at his hand around Brendon’s cock, as though he’d never seen anything like it before. Brendon took that as a good sign, trying to shake the idea that came with it of Ryan and Spencer getting each other off this way, just because it was better when it was someone else. Then Ryan looked back up at him, and Brendon arched his back, biting his bottom lip to hold in his moan, and came messily over his stomach and Ryan’s hand.
Once he’d gotten his breath back, sucking in great gulps of air, he asked, “Do you want me to…for you?” because it seemed like the polite thing to do. Ryan shook his head quickly.
“It’s okay, I’ll just…” he motioned towards himself, and reached down.
That seemed amazingly unfair, so Brendon reached out and stopped him, albeit a bit hesitantly, because maybe Ryan actually didn’t want Brendon to touch him. “Are you sure? I don’t mind, and you did me, so…”
Ryan bit his lip and nodded, saying, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
This was even stranger than being touched by Ryan, wrapping his hand around Ryan’s hard cock, a little bigger than his own, and hearing the rush of air as Ryan exhaled all at once. He jerked experimentally, trying to match the pace that Ryan had set with him, as he assumed that that’s how Ryan liked it best. Pre-come was already leaking from the head after a minute or so, and Brendon slicked it down the sides so that his hand slid more easily, and Ryan moaned.
Pressing hard into the vein that ran along the bottom, Brendon got another, higher noise from Ryan, almost a squeak, and then he felt the telltale rush just under the skin at the same time that Ryan warned, “Close.” It was only another few tugs before Ryan was stiffening, grabbing at the sheets as his eyes rolled back and he gasped out through his mouth.
It was the first time Brendon had ever seen someone else orgasm up close, porn notwithstanding, and he watched closely as Ryan shuddered through the aftershocks, eyes fluttering shut. Once he was through, softening, he immediately rolled over, away from Brendon, pulling up his boxers without cleaning himself up. Into the dark, Brendon said, “Um, thanks.”
“No problem. Go to sleep.”
It doesn’t have to mean anything.
Brendon fell asleep within minutes, exhausted and overloaded with thoughts.
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The next morning, he awoke sticky and chilly, as during the night Ryan had managed to take possession of the sheets and twist himself up in them. Wrinkling his nose as he climbed out of bed and softly padded into the bathroom he made a mental note to take the sheets down to the laundry room before sleeping under them again.
Standing in the shower, Brendon felt itchy and uncertain. What did Ryan expect now? Was this going to become a thing, or was it a one-night-stand? Brendon had never really looked at guys in that way before, but Ryan wasn’t like any other guys that he had known. He was pretty, and inspired, and not a clone of every other upstanding young man in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Besides, he came and sat in the Smoothie Hut, sharing his time and thoughts with Brendon, showing an interest that no one else seemed to lately. Also, there were his bright, unreserved grins that were so rare, but that somehow Brendon managed to warrant.
Before he knew it, his hand was around his cock, jerking to the picture of Ryan’s creamy skin under his fingers, and Ryan’s quiet assurance that Brendon didn’t have to do anything for him if he didn’t want to. The only problem was how much he’d wanted to.
After he came, he stood shaking in the spray, and then turned up the water until it was scorching his skin so badly that he felt faint.
In the other room, Ryan was up, and the bed was made. He quirked his lips as he walked past Brendon and into the bathroom, but even though Brendon waited all morning and then for the rest of the day thereafter, Ryan didn’t say a word about the previous night.
Practice was slightly off, with all of them getting frustrated to the point of yelling. Even Brent, who tried to stay out of the fights as much as possible, got in on it, and finally, seething, Ryan said, “Just forget it. We’re done for the night,” and actually walked out. That was more telling than anything, because normally he was the last one holding it together.
With the way the evening had gone, the last thing that Brendon expected was for a shape to be lounging against the lamppost when he had packed up his gear and steeled himself for the walk home, brushing off offers of rides from Spencer and Brent. Instead, Ryan peeled himself out of the shadows and stepped forward waving the keys to his car. “Come on, let’s get home,” he said, voice betraying no emotion whatsoever. A moment’s hesitation on Brendon’s part, and Ryan huffed, opening the passenger door and then walking around to the driver’s side.
“Are you coming or not? Because I really don’t want to wait on your stairs again.” Ryan’s voice floated back around the car and Brendon gave up, dropping into the passenger seat.
They spent the entire ride back to Brendon’s apartment with the radio turned up so loudly that it made any talking impossible, and Brendon wondered to himself when it had become accepted for them to both go back to his apartment.
Still without speaking they climbed the stairs, and Brendon went straight to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Bent over to look for the new toothpaste that he knew he’d bought the other day and stashed under the sink, he wasn’t aware of Ryan approaching from behind until suddenly a pair of hands had grabbed his waist and spun him around.
Vision skewed by the bangs that fell into one eye as he stood, Brendon’s depth perception was off when Ryan yanked him in and kissed him, hard. He overbalanced, and for a few moments they were locked in an awkward, half-falling embrace, until Brendon reached behind him for the countertop and grabbed onto it. Once he was steady, Ryan stepped a bit closer so that they were pressed fully together, and continued about his business of ravishing Brendon’s mouth more thoroughly than anyone had ever done before.
By the time Ryan pulled away, Brendon was seriously considering either punching Ryan or reevaluating his own claims of heterosexuality. At least, he was until Ryan started working at his belt, carefully keeping his eyes downcast, and muttered, “It’s been a long day. You want to unwind?”
Then Brendon got it clearly, got that they were just each other’s vessels for de-stressing, so he carefully pushed all of the other thoughts and questions to the back of his mind and barely got out, “Yeah,” before Ryan’s mouth was stretching obscenely around his cock, sliding up and down enthusiastically.
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It got to be a pattern, where if one of them were stressed, they would wait until there was a moment of downtime, even though that was increasingly rare between their practices, Brendon’s job, Brendon’s school, and being too tired to stay awake for more than a minute after getting home. When they did have time, though, it was all hand jobs and going down on each other, stifling their moans into the sheets of Brendon’s couch bed, then one of Pete’s guest room mattresses, and finally wherever they could find time alone in the back hallways of a recording studio.
Sometimes Brendon couldn’t believe he’d actually managed to graduate high school, and he wondered if he would have at all without Ryan’s veiled glances and encouraging touches.
Eventually it meant Ryan climbing up into Brendon’s top bunk on the bus, and when Brendon said, “But won’t they hear?” Ryan’s reply was, “It won’t sound like anything other than someone getting off. We’ll be quiet.”
In the morning there were no sideways glances, no questioning eyes, so Brendon assumed Ryan must have been right. All the same, he hadn’t ever managed to shake the idea that the lack of questions meant that maybe this wasn’t the first time Ryan had been in something like whatever it was that they had going, and it ate at him for reasons that he didn’t want to examine too closely. In early October, somewhere along the road from New York to South Carolina, Brendon edged into the back lounge where Spencer was sitting alone, reading.
Flopping down on the couch beside the other boy, he folded his legs into a pretzel and asked, “Hey Spence?”
Spencer looked up warily. Brendon wasn’t very good at hiding emotions, and he knew it was obvious that he was nervous now.
“What did you do?”
Glowering, Brendon said, “I didn’t do anything. I just had a question. About, um,”
Meticulously, Spencer closed his book and set it down on the arm of the couch, raising one eyebrow. “You had a question about um?” he repeated, and Brendon got the distinct feeling that he was being laughed at before he’d even gotten to the embarrassing questions.
Letting out a breath of air, Brendon asked in as cool a manner as possible, “So, have you and Ryan ever been….you know….together?”
Immediately Spencer’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “What??” he coughed, voice sounding strangled. Suddenly Brendon was seized by a fit of giggles, because he had never seen Spencer look so caught off-guard as he did right now, one hand paused in the air, his jaw drooping in shock. “What…Brendon, is this some kind of joke?” he said finally, eyes narrowing as Brendon crossed his arms over his stomach and laughed almost hysterically at the ridiculousness of the whole situation.
When he had calmed down enough, he said, “No, Spencer, I swear, I’m not joking. Just…have you?”
“I…what…no,” he sputtered, brushing his bangs back from his face, “Ryan’s like my brother, man, that’s just…why would you even think that…oh!” As though he’d figured something key out, he cocked his head and in a very delicate, understanding tone, he continued, “Brendon, do you have a crush on one of us? Because we’re not…gay.”
Brendon opened his mouth to explain that he wasn’t gay (really, he wasn’t, it was just this thing that had kind of happened), but Spencer held up a hand and continued, “It’s okay if you are. None of us are going to hold it against you, and it won’t be weird or anything, but Ryan’s straight, and I am too, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to pursue anything there. We’re both open and willing to talk to you if you need an ear, though, and we’ll support you no matter what.”
With Spencer looking so brave, and like he was trying incredibly hard to be open about the idea, Brendon almost felt bad divesting him of it. However, Brendon was worried that if he didn’t say something now, he wouldn’t ever be able to convince Spencer that he was telling the truth later on. “Spence!” he exclaimed, waving his hands in front of Spencer’s face before he could continue on with assuring Brendon that he should use lube, or something equally horrible for both of them to have to talk about, “I’m not gay!”
Mid-breath, Spencer deflated, softly saying, “What? But then, why would you think that Ryan and I…?”
“Oh,” Brendon replied, standing up and feeling unexplainably relieved, “No real reason. I was just wondering.”
He left humming, with Spencer staring slightly agape after him.
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Jac was the first one of Ryan’s girlfriends who Brendon actually met. He disliked her on sight, with her pretty, perfect face, platinum blond hair, and the way her eyes strayed to everyone but Ryan when they were out together. Most of all, he hated that whenever Ryan was with her, the guarded look that he normally carried didn’t soften away-he just learned to hide it behind more and more makeup. Brendon told himself that he didn’t want Ryan to get hurt by anything, and Jac was just opening up that possibility. He cared about him the same way that he would have if it were Spencer or Brent.
All the same, when Audrey offered, Brendon stopped slipping into Ryan’s bunk, and started trying to room with Brent whenever they stopped at a hotel.
That resolve came to a crashing halt just before Christmas, while they were back at home after the end of the Nintendo Fusion tour, and all starting to itch for the Truckstops and State Lines tour, which wasn’t starting until February. Brendon hadn’t thought that he would start to long for a constantly moving house again, with dubious food and less privacy than his parents’ home, but he did. He was, without a doubt, homesick.
His bedroom was just as austere as when he’d first gotten back, because he’d been too lazy to unpack at first, and then decided that living out of his suitcase worked just as well when he’d be back on the road in a couple months anyway. It was easier than settling in and then having to uproot again.
Lying in the middle of his bed, staring at his childhood ceiling, he flipped his Sidekick over and over in one hand, trying to will it to ring as he’d been doing for the last hour or so. Just as he was giving up, flipping over onto his stomach to try to nap for awhile, it began to buzz in his hand. Brendon squinted at the screen, and then flipped it open. A text message from Ryan was scrawled across the screen.
Hey Bren, what’s up?
Rolling his eyes, he typed back, Absolutely nothing. Bored out of my mind. You?
Want to hang out? I could come over. Dad wouldn’t mind.
Without a doubt of what that meant, Brendon typed back, Yeah, sure. My parents are out, so just let yourself in.
He half-expected Ryan to show up with a black eye, or some swelled bruise, because generally when Ryan’s dad “wouldn’t mind” if he was out of the house, it meant that the man was drunk and raging. Consequently, when footsteps sounded outside of his door, Brendon looked up anxiously. Ryan, however, looked perfectly normal, although he was toeing the fronts of his shoes together as if he had something on his mind.
“You going to come in?” Brendon finally queried, and Ryan nodded, coming to sit gingerly beside him.
They sat in silence, Brendon keeping a hand on his knee so he wouldn’t start bouncing it, and after a minute he started to ask, “Something wrong, Ry?” As he spoke, he turned towards Ryan, concernedly reaching out his free hand for Ryan’s.
As if it were some kind of invitation, Ryan surged forward, pushing Brendon onto his back and straddling him, panting against his mouth as he pressed his tongue between Brendon’s lips in a hungry, desperate sort of kiss. He mumbled something into the kiss, something that sounded like, “Nothing you don’t fix,” although Brendon wasn’t sure, and when he asked, Ryan wouldn’t repeat it.
They were both shirtless by the time Brendon’s mind cleared and he pulled back sharply to say, “What about Jac and Audrey? We…both have…” Ryan held a long finger against his mouth, shaking his head.
“It’s just this thing we have, Brendon. I thought…I mean, it’s not cheating because you were first. This was first, and it’s not even…it’s not like with them, okay?”
Brendon took one look at Ryan’s expression and told him, “Okay.”
He came harder than he had in months.
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Just as he’d predicted, Jac broke Ryan’s heart, and Brendon broke Audrey’s not even two months later. It was the soonest that he got a chance to actually talk to her for longer than five minutes.
The first night after Jac had left him, Ryan sought out Brendon and said, “Fuck me. Please,” with such a flat, broken expression that Brendon wanted to say no and couldn’t.
They were at a little club, being mashed together in the crowd, and Brendon took Ryan by one of his thin wrists and pulled him along after him out to Ryan’s car, waiting in a dark corner of the parking lot. Inside, huddled into the backseat, Brendon pressed a kiss to Ryan’s neck and told him, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
It had been days since Ryan had looked like himself, with the breakup looming for long before it actually happened, but now he smiled slightly. It tore at Brendon, at the corner that he carefully tucked away because it wasn’t supposed to mean anything, because Ryan looked so hopeful, not like the bitter, cynical smile that he’d been wearing almost constantly lately. Hands following the curve of Brendon’s ass, pressing their hips together so that Brendon shuddered and thrust involuntarily, Ryan whispered, “I know you don’t. That’s why we’re doing it this way.”
“What-” do you mean, he wanted to ask, because Ryan was always so goddamn cryptic, but Ryan cut him off with his mouth and started to undo his pants.
Brendon was glad that the streetlights were bright, because he loved looking at Ryan’s lean body laid out beneath his own. Ryan was lithe and pale, graceful enough that he looked like he should have been a dancer, and proportioned perfectly from the line of his throat to his cock. Gently Brendon ran his hands up Ryan’s thighs, awkwardly lifting them off the seat to hook them over his shoulders because it seemed like the only way this would work out that he could still watch Ryan, and he might’ve read a little bit about this, just in case.
For a moment, Ryan looked surprised, but then he nodded. “I have some…um…stuff. Here.” He reached onto the floor, patting around until he’d gotten hold of his jeans, and then withdrew a small bottle from his pocket.
“You were prepared,” Brendon said, laughing lightly as he covered his fingers and cock with a generous amount of the lubricant. Hand shaking, he pressed a finger to the crease of Ryan’s ass, pressing lightly, but not enough to penetrate. Ryan’s dark-lined eyes were liquid amber around his dilated pupils as he responded, “Maybe. Yeah. I wanted-this. I wanted this.”
Brendon sucked in a breath and pressed a finger in slowly, watching as Ryan went stiff and clutched at the worn seat. “Are you okay?” he asked, ready to stop, because if Ryan was in pain, then there was nothing at all sexy or desirable about that.
“I’m fine. Please, just…Brendon, please,” Ryan encouraged through gritted teeth, and because despite the research, Brendon still didn’t know much about the mechanisms of this, he nodded, slid his finger out, and aligned his cock.
This time when he pushed in, Ryan actually whimpered, but grabbed Brendon by the shoulders and pulled at him, chanting, “Brendon, Brendon, don’t stop, you fucker.”
That was all it took for Brendon to continue until he couldn’t anymore, rocking his hips and trying not to go too hard. It was almost impossible, because Ryan felt so fucking good, and he reached down to wrap his hand around Ryan’s cock, hard and already leaking. When he dragged his eyes back to Ryan’s face, Ryan had his head thrown back, sucking in and gusting out air, which almost pushed Brendon over the edge right there.
Instead, he started blabbering, unable to control what was coming out of his mouth because this much Ryan was a sensory overload that, in the moment, he couldn’t even pretend was only about the sex. “Ryan, god, Ryan, oh fuck. You’re-Ryan, this is so fucking-ohh, god.”
In the end, all it took was a squeeze from Ryan’s legs, still tightly clasped over his shoulders, which pushed Brendon the final step, and he came without pulling out, voice breaking on Ryan’s name. It only took another few jerks before Ryan was coming too.
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“Fuck you, Brendon, do you even care that we’re breaking up?”
“Of course I care, Audrey. I just don’t know what you want me to say. What am I supposed to do? It’s just not working, you know that as well as I do.
Audrey could glare daggers, and she was doing so now, trying to level Brendon with her narrowed eyes, strands of hair in alternating colors framing her petite face and tumbling over her perfect breasts. It was an utterly gorgeous picture, with the moon glinting off of her nose ring as they stood outside the back of the venue that Panic! had just played in Anaheim, California, finally close enough to her new career in the Hollywood modeling scene for Audrey to come and watch them, and for Brendon to break up with her.
“It’s not working because you aren’t working, Brendon.”
“Aud, I wanted to do this. You’re…I did want you. I do. But we’ve been barely hanging on to this.”
He’d tried with Audrey-he really had, no matter what she said. Apparently, though, wanting to want to be with someone just wasn’t enough. No matter what he told himself, he couldn’t be with someone who he looked through instead of at. It wasn’t fair to either of them, especially when it was for reasons that he didn’t know how to name.
“Oh, that is fucking rich. You want me? Give me a break. You don’t care about anything or anyone other than your fucking band. Just like Ryan. That’s why his relationship went to shit, you know? Because he was always too busy with Spencer or…or you, to even try. You’re just like him. It’s always, Ryan this, Ryan that. Why don’t you just go fuck yourself on his prick?”
She was practically yelling now, but Brendon could see that tears were collecting at the corners of her eyes, too. Shaking his head, he whispered, “Audrey, I’m sorry,” and when he opened his arms, she came into them, laying her head on his shoulder and sobbing. She didn’t pull away for a few minutes, and when she did, her face was streaked with mascara, and she was still beautiful. Brendon’s heart clenched, and he thought, Maybe I could take her back.
Then he looked past her, to where through the windows he could see Brent lounging in a corner, and Ryan and Spencer bent together close by, laughing at some private conversation. Spencer’s head was tilted down, but Ryan’s was tossed back, light playing over his forehead and Adam’s apple to give him a golden glow, and knew that he wasn’t going to change his mind about Audrey.
In that few seconds that his attention was distracted, she turned and followed his gaze. Biting her lip, she said, “I see. Goodbye, Brendon.”
“Audrey, you know you can always call, or…”
“Goodbye, Brendon Urie.”
Her body silhouetted in the dim light, she walked away, hips swaying. Brendon ran a hand through his hair and then jammed both hands into his pockets as he went back into the club and dropped down heavily between Ryan and Brent. “Audrey and I broke up,” he said flatly, completely breaking into the conversation that they were having, and not really caring. A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and Brent told him he was sorry, Spencer frowned sympathetically and said acidly, though honestly, “Well, no one saw that coming. But I hope you’re okay.”
Ryan just looked at the table, chewing on his lip as if that would hide the way that he was smiling.
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Part Two