BBB: Like or Like-Like (8/8)

[withoutacure1]

Part 8

“How are you this dumb?”

That is the first thing that Tom hears after answering the call that wakes him up at 2:20 in the morning. He’d only gotten to sleep twenty minutes ago.

“What? Who is this?”

The voice is most definitely annoyed when it announces, “This is Spencer Smith, calling on behalf of the greater Las Vegas area that has had to deal with the moping bundle of neuroses that you sent back to us.”

Tom immediately sits upright at the mention of Spencer’s name. Why the hell is Spencer calling him?

“I don’t… What?” he asks, intelligently.

“Brendon. You broke Brendon and I’m not even sure why.” Oh.

This is news to Tom. “How did I break Brendon?”

“I don’t know, by being your typical perceptive self? He’s all sad.” Spencer’s tone goes from scathing to worried in an instant.

He doesn’t like sound of that, Brendon being ‘all sad’. But he hasn’t done anything, it’s hardly his fault. “That’s hardly my fault. Brendon rejected me.” He winces at the admission, and plunges on ahead. “If you want to know why he’s sad, then maybe you should look at his parents.”

Tom’s never met them, but he really, really doesn’t like Brendon’s parents. It doesn’t help that he lays the blame of Brendon leaving squarely on their shoulders.

Spencer snorts on the other end of the line. “Listen, I think you maybe love him, and it doesn’t take a Mensa member to figure out how he feels about you-So you should fix this.”

Tom doesn’t know what the hell Spencer is on about, but he is so far off base that it is ridiculous. Tom had literally physically thrown himself at Brendon, and Brendon had rejected him soundly.

He chooses not to share that with Spencer. “I don’t like Brendon being sad any more than you do, but it has nothing to do with me. Brendon doesn’t have feelings for me.”

There is a long, palpable silence on the line, then, “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do-“ he sounds pretty disappointed about that, “but I think you need someone to tell you to get your head out of your ass.”

Jon has been telling him that for weeks.

“Brendon is head over heels for you, trust me.” Spencer pauses, the sound of someone shouting his name barely audible in the background. His voice is quieter, but infinitely more menacing when he speaks again, “I’ve got to go. Don’t screw this up.”

The line goes dead.

Spencer Smith has obviously seen enough action flicks to know that the most terrifying villains are the ones that simply imply their threats. He’s scary like that.

Tom blinks stupidly at the darkened motel room, trying to remember what city he’s in. Or even what day it is. He’s been touring for a good two weeks already, and he knows he’s somewhere in the Midwest.

Jon lets out a small snore from the next bed over. They’d sprung for a motel room, all of them having been utterly sick of sleeping in a van for fourteen days straight. In spite of the promise of semi-clean sheets, neither Nick nor Mikey have found their way back to the room after the show.

As his eyes adjust to the dark, he runs the conversation over in his head.

Spencer can’t be right. Brendon had given no sign that he even thinks of Tom that way at all. But why is Spencer trying to convince Tom to pursue Brendon? It kind of goes against Tom’s impression that he’s trying to win Brendon back.

Tom drops back to the bed with an exhausted groan. He has no idea what’s going through Spencer’s head, but he is too damn tired to try to work it out. He settles his head on the pillow and closes his eyes.

In spite of his weariness, sleep is a long time coming.

-

July

A week later finds Tom at an unfamiliar bus stop with his phone once again pressed to his ear.

“Um, hey. It’s Tom. I was wondering if you could do me a favor,” he says after the call connects.

That’s how, twenty minutes later, Tom is sitting in the passenger seat of Spencer Smith’s car.

Spencer hasn’t done much more than glare mutinously at him since he’d hefted his duffel bag into the back seat. Even now, he’s just watching Tom out of the corner of his eye as he navigates streets that are wholly unfamiliar to Tom.

Tom jumps a little in his seat when Spencer breaks the silence.

“I assume you’re here to take my advice.” Tom doesn’t know Spencer all that well, but he thinks that he sounds a whole lot like he’s gloating. Well, like he’s kind of annoyed and gloating.

“Yes?” he offers.

He knows that Spencer is technically younger than he is, but he is still an intimidating dude.

Tom has to grip the handle tightly to keep form slamming into the faux wood paneling of the passenger side door as Spencer swings the car over to the shoulder of the road. The car jerks to a stop, and Spencer turns steely eyes on Tom. “Was that a question? You’d better be sure. I didn’t call you just to have you come all the way here to be a total wuss.”

Tom still isn’t entirely sure why Spencer had called him. He does know that it was actually the kick in the ass he’d needed.

Things have been weird with the band since the tour started. Nick and Mikey are constantly sniping at each other, and Jon still hasn’t really forgiven him for whatever he imagines that Tom did to Brendon-no matter how many times Tom insists he didn’t do anything. He really didn’t do anything. Much.

And in the midst of all of that, Tom was pretty preoccupied with getting used to the feeling of not having Brendon around all of the time. He’s been constantly plagued by the feeling that he’s forgotten something.

The band was falling apart around him, and Tom could barely bring himself to care. When a break in their few Warped Tour dates came up, Tom found himself at a bus station buying a ticket that would eventually lead him to Vegas. He hadn’t really given much thought to what he would do once he got here, and now that Spencer is giving him the third degree, he’s only has honesty to fall back on.

“I’m just here to do something that I should have done a while ago. I need to talk to Brendon,” he says, keeping his eyes locked on Spencer’s and showing no fear. He hopes it’s enough to keep Spencer from leaving him for dead on the side of the road.

Spencer studies him with suspicion, but after a moment he seems satisfied by what he sees in Tom’s face. He nods once decisively and then pulls back onto the road.

“If you hurt him, I will hide your body where no one but the coyotes will ever find it.” Spencer turns from the wheel to grin hugely at Tom.

A shiver runs down Tom’s spine. He answers, “If I hurt him, I’d deserve it.”

As he watches the endless brown passing out the car window, he can’t help but think that clichés are clichés for a reason.

-

For as long as Brendon has known him, Spencer’s family has loved to throw parties.

When Spencer was ten, he had a party to celebrate getting his yellow belt in karate. When Spencer took a kamikaze dive off of the monkey bars and had his cast removed three months later, he had a party. When Spencer got his braces off, his parents had thrown him a party that could still cause Spencer to wince in remembered embarrassment. Brendon has seen all of the pictures, and they are glorious. So it’s no surprise to anyone that the Smith family pulls out all of the stops when there is something real to celebrate. Something real like a national holiday.

Brendon loves the Fourth of July. It’s the only time that anyone doesn’t think twice about someone playing with fire.

He hasn’t been in Spencer’s backyard for even five minutes before Mrs. Smith corners him by the drink cooler. He’s trying very hard to look like his full attention is on the light scolding he is getting for not stopping by to say hello when he first got to the party. In actuality, his attention is tied up in searching for Spencer among the chaos of party guests and patriotic streamers.

Spencer is not the kind of guy to be late to his own family’s Fourth of July party. It would be an affront to his sense of personal responsibility, or whatever it is Spencer chooses to call it in the place of ‘being a giant tool’.

Brendon had somehow wrangled permission out of his parents to let him miss what they viewed as a strictly family holiday in order to go to the Smiths’ party. He knows that their guilt-induced leniency is bound to wear thin at some point, so he is taking advantage of it while he can.

Mrs. Smith moves on to another guest eventually, leaving Brendon to brood over his lemonade in peace. Well, he doesn’t think he’s brooding, but when he catches Ryan’s eye from where he’s standing next to Spencer’s dad at the grill, that’s clearly what Ryan thinks he’s doing. Actually, Ryan would probably call it pouting, as he has been for the last few weeks.

Brendon hardly thinks that’s fair. It isn’t like Ryan is any better when he gets his heart broken. The only real difference is that in addition to moping tragically around Spencer’s basement, Ryan also writes furious and heart-wrenching entries in his diary. Or journal, as Ryan liked to call it.

He could just picture a page from one of Ryan’s journals:

Dear Diary,

Today I realized no one will ever love me as much as I love me. I feel a sense of renewed pain and isolation in the depths of my eternally burning soul.

Love, Ryan

Brendon snickers. He’ll admit, if only to himself, that Ryan isn’t that bad, but he is still ridiculous after a breakup and should not be throwing any stones from his single-paned vantage point.

Ryan appears at Brendon’s side a few minutes later, apparently deciding that even with his pouting Brendon is a better bet than Mr. Smith and a bottle of lighter fluid.

“Where’s Spencer?” are the first words out of Ryan’s mouth.

“I don’t know. Haven’t you put a chip in him yet? I know how you get nervous if he goes beyond a five mile radius of you.” He smiles sweetly at Ryan, and Ryan quirks an amused eyebrow back at him. Brendon really had missed the guy.

When he’d gotten back, he hadn’t known what to expect. He felt like everything should have changed, because so much had changed for him. But mostly, it really hadn’t.

Brendon was welcomed back in the band with open arms-from Spencer at least. His parents pretended that the last six months never happened. And aside from the valiant effort that they were making not to cringe whenever he said he was going to hang out with Ryan and Spencer, they were actually pretty convincing.

Apart from the giant, gaping hole behind his ribcage where his heart used to be, everything is comfortably the same.

“I wouldn’t even need to use a chip lately. He’s always with you, making sure you’re not going to shatter into a million emo pieces. I keep telling him you’re fine. You don’t have the emotional depth to be this pathetic for much longer,” Ryan says in his monotone, seeming to have little interest in the topic at hand.

If Brendon didn’t know Ryan so well, that would probably be enough to leave some sort of deep emotional scar. As it is, Brendon knows that’s as good as Ryan checking up on him to make sure he’s doing okay. Ryan Ross totally has a heart of gold.

“It’s nice to know that I can count on the support of my friends in my time of need.” Brendon tries to keep his tone as flippant as possible.

He must have missed the mark though, because Ryan’s eyes narrow at him and his fingers twitch by Brendon’s sleeve, as if he’s almost worked up the resolve to offer up something as comforting as a pat on the arm.

“I still think you should have listened to me,” Ryan says, his voice grudgingly sympathetic. At least, sympathetic for Ryan.

And maybe he should have listened to Ryan and told Tom how he felt. It isn’t like it would have ruined their relationship or anything. He has barely even exchanged more than a text message with Tom since he left Chicago. It isn’t like a confession of love would have resulted in much worse than that.

It isn’t even that he has regrets about not coming clean to Tom, exactly. It’s just that he misses Tom. Sure, it hadn’t exactly been all rainbows and sunshine to be around him all of the time and not be able to just take his hand the way he wanted to. But being around Tom had still been fun and comfortable even when it was desperately uncomfortable, and really kind of great.

It really did suck to have Tom around all of the time and then not anymore. He supposes that isn’t really a problem that Danielle can relate to now.

Brendon is just about to give Ryan a smartass retort about how desperate he’d have to be to take his advice, when Ryan’s attention is caught by something else.

“There’s Spencer.” It figures. Ryan can be entirely too predictable sometimes. “And someone’s with him.”

That is all the warning Brendon has before his subconscious smacks him in the face with feelings of happiness, hope and something akin to panic. His eyes are too busy drinking in the sight of Tom Conrad-looking entirely too much like a reluctantly imprinted duckling-shuffling along behind Spencer, to do much more than let out an unfortunate squeak of surprise.

For a moment he thinks he might be hallucinating, the victim of some sort of mean-spirited heatstroke brought on by spending too long in the cooler climes of Chicago and his own diminished mental capacity in the wake of falling for someone like Tom.

But no, Tom is here. Tom is here. Why is Tom here?

And why does Spencer look so pleased with himself?

“That’s Tom. Tom’s with him,” Brendon whispers furiously to Ryan.

“Huh. He’s cute,” Ryan says.

That is so entirely not the point. Why is he here?

Spencer spotted Brendon immediately upon entering the backyard, and is making a beeline for them, Tom following close behind him.

“Guess who I found?” Spencer calls out as he approaches.

“Found where?” Ryan asks, cutting to the heart of the matter. Sort of.

Spencer waves his hand vaguely through the air. “Bus station,” he says dismissively.

“I’m Ryan.” Ryan holds his hand at his side, not offering the shake that Spencer had presented to Tom upon first meeting. In Brendon’s current state of alarm, it feels almost like a gesture of solidarity. He’s touched.

“Um, Tom.”

“And we’re leaving,” Spencer says, grabbing Ryan by the elbow and dragging him in the direction of the picnic table piled high with potato salad.

Brendon never thought he’d seen the day when Spencer betrayed him and Ryan was almost on his side. And Tom is in Vegas. Weird things are afoot.

Tom doesn’t even bother to watch the other two leave. Brendon knows because his eyes haven’t left Tom’s since he walked right out of Brendon’s greatest dream and into Spencer’s backyard. Brendon knows that Tom can keep the staring thing up for hours, but he can only really maintain this kind of intense eye contact thing for about a minute before he starts to feel twitchy.

“So…” He isn’t really sure where to start. He can’t just blurt out ‘What the hell are you doing here?’, even if he really wants to. And Tom looks like he’s about to bolt at any second. Brendon isn’t really sure where to, since Spencer seems to have driven him, but he isn’t about to chance it.

“So,” Tom echoes. “Um, sorry for dropping in like this?”

God, Tom is a pain in the ass.

He’s also the best thing that Brendon has seen in weeks. Even better than a few days earlier when Ryan became the victim of a rogue sprinkler attack and stood in the middle of a patch of dead grass, dripping hair product and eyeliner all over, with a deeply affronted look on his face. Yeah, even better than that, even if he does look incredibly uneasy standing there in Spencer’s yard.

Brendon releases a loud breath, and answers Tom. “It’s no problem. I didn’t even know you were going to be in the area…”

His words are searching, but Tom just dips his head in a nod and shifts his weight a little.

“Didn’t know I was going to be,” he finally answers. “I kind of crashed the party, I guess.” He shrugs a shoulder to indicate the festivities around them.

“It’s cool. Spencer’s mom lives for stuff like this. You know, the more the merrier?”

Brendon hates his. This is small talk again. They sound like strangers and he doesn’t know how to stop it.

It feels like they’ve already rolled right on past the moment where they could just toss out a ‘hey’, smile at each other and be back where they were before everything up and changed on them. Brendon just wants things to stop being wrong between them.

One of Spencer’s little sisters runs by waving a tiny American flag and giggling. As the younger girl trips past their tense figures, Brendon suddenly knows just what to do.

“Come on,” Brendon reaches out and grabs Tom’s hand, touching him for the first time in far too long. “Let’s get out of here.”

He leads Tom through the backyard, past the house and to the street, tugging Tom resolutely by the hand the whole way.

Tom puts up no resistance, but shoots a troubled look over his shoulder back at the party. “Won’t Spencer get pissed that you’re leaving?”

Brendon glances back at Tom, noting the faintly worried expression on his face. At Brendon’s look, he mumbles out a, “What? He’s kind of a scary dude. I don’t want to piss him off.”

And that feels better. It feels more like talking to Tom should. Brendon can’t help but smile at that. “Ha! It’s kind of hard to think of Spencer as scary after seeing him get sick after a pizza binge or seeing him drool like newborn in his sleep.”

He feels Tom’s fingers tense slightly around his own, but the other boy’s expression remains blank, giving nothing away. “I’ll have to trust you on that. Where are we going?”

“We’re almost there. You’ll see.” Brendon squeezes Tom’s fingers and picks up his pace a little, walking faster past the houses lining Spencer’s street.

At the end of the street they come to a gated area. Behind the fence stands a small neighborhood park, complete with slide and swing set.

It isn’t their park, for one, it doesn’t have the same dilapidated charm, and it is sorely missing a tire swing. But there is one way in which all parks are kind of universally the same. In Brendon’s vast experience, he’s found that it’s hard to feel too troubled in a place designed to make people -children-happy. People don’t regularly get their hearts broken (again) five feet away from a ladybug shaped bouncer.

He is almost positive about that.

Brendon takes Tom past the jungle gym to the merry-go-round. He releases his slightly too firm grip on Tom’s hand and swings himself down onto the metal platform. Tom joins him, keeping the rubber coated, primary colored safety rail between them, sitting near Brendon, but not too close.

In the few minutes that pass with neither of them saying a word, Brendon becomes intimately acquainted with the uniquely summer sound of insects buzzing, and the faint sharp echo of actual crickets chirping. He didn’t even think that they had crickets in Summerlin, but he could swear that he can hear them in the quiet.

He gropes blindly for something to say to Tom, and ultimately lands on the fairly safe topic of his band. “So, um, how was the tour? I talked to Jon a bit, but…” his voice dies away.

What he doesn’t say-what he wants to say-is that he’s talked to Jon, but since Tom is apparently a huge proponent of the old out of sight out of mind adage, he isn’t really up to date with what’s going on with him. He’s afraid that would make him sound desperate, and a little bitter.

“It was good. Played a few shows, saw some shows.” Tom leans forward, clasping his hands between his knees. He doesn’t look at Brendon.

“Yeah?”

Brendon watches Tom’s fingers lock and unlock with a kind of fidgety movement that is completely unlike him. He makes a small, frustrated noise, and bursts out with the negation, “No. That was a lie. The tour actually kind of sucked.”

Tom seems to deflate a little with the words. He wrenches his fingers apart one last time and then collapses back against the platform.

Brendon drops back to lie on the merry-go-round, moving to mirror him. The metal in unexpectedly cool with the sun sinks closer to the horizon. He turns to watch Tom, his eyes tracing over the other boy’s profile in the half-light.

Tom’s gaze is unfocused, directed up at the sky as he continues, “Mikey was being impossible, so Nick was being impossible. They had a huge blowout right before the last show. Mikey said that he’s had it-that he was gonna like, be a full-time student and fulfill his lifelong dream of being a computer programmer or something. He went on this rant about how he was fucking sick of Nick, and sick of touring and how he wants to have a real life with his girlfriend in Chicago. I didn’t really get it, we were only on tour for like, three weeks,” Tom says in a rush of words. He looks honestly perplexed by Mikey’s defection.

Brendon puts aside his own unaddressed puzzlement for the moment to feel for Tom. “God, Tom. That fucking sucks.” It’s all he can do to keep himself from reaching through the railing and taking Tom’s hand. “Do you think he meant it-Mikey?”

“He meant it. After the last leg of the tour it looks like the band is done.” Tom mumbles his words to the darkening sky. “Sorry to just dump this on you. I didn’t even mean to say any of that, but I couldn’t really talk about this with the rest of the band.”

Brendon has to keep himself from responding for a moment. He knows that anything he says will most likely just sound like he’s laying a huge guilt trip on Tom for not trying to talk to him about this sooner. Tom has enough to deal with without Brendon unintentionally making him feel guilty about anything. Especially since said guilt trip would probably conclude with a ‘why didn’t you call me?’ and Brendon bursting into tears.

Brendon gets it, what Tom’s feeling. He knows exactly what it feels like to lose your band. It’s like having a part of you abruptly and inexorably cut off. Even if it didn’t turn out to be permanent in his case, he still gets it.

But he can’t exactly say, ‘It blows that your entire future imploded. Sorry.’ Instead, he just sticks with a wholly inadequate, “I’m sorry, Tom. I know how important the band was to you.”

“I guess I kind of saw it coming for a while,” Tom says with an abbreviated shrug. From what Brendon can tell, Tom doesn’t appear to be devastated so much as resolute.

“I doubt that makes it easier,” he replies.

“Yeah, it doesn’t.”

They let the quiet build between them for a little while. Brendon doesn’t know if he’s ever felt quite so useless in his life.

“You were right. You can’t see the stars here.” The merry-go-round jerks with Brendon’s startled movement when Tom breaks the silence.

The non-sequitur throws him for a moment, his eyes darting to the now dark sky. The reminder of that long-ago conversation sends a sharp pang through him. He really doesn’t want to think about stars or camping or Tom not loving him back.

“No, you can’t,” he says after a beat.

He’s not sure where to go from here; he isn’t sure what’s safe to say. He feels like he’s tiptoeing through a conversational minefield, not knowing which step will get him blown up and leave him in scattered bits too tiny to piece back together. It’s not as if Tom is going to blow up if Brendon says the wrong thing, but one misstep, and Tom can decimate him with his ignorant honesty.

Brendon is suddenly so very tired of this whole thing. In the absence of more conversation about the band, Brendon is back to needing answers to questions he hasn’t even dared ask yet. Well, he’s done with that.

“Is that why you’re here, to tell me about the band?” He sounds like an asshole. Brendon has the distant notion that somehow by asking like this he’s being a bad friend, but he figures being in love with the guy probably already landed him pretty squarely in that category. And he needs to know, he needs to be selfish this once. Even if it means walking with his eyes wide open into that bobby-trapped minefield.

It feels like forever passes before Tom answers him. “No. That’s not why I’m here.” Tom still doesn’t look away from the starless sky. “I came because I needed to talk to you.”

Brendon doesn’t even dare to imagine what that could mean. He certainly doesn’t let anything like hope spring up. He knows better than that by now.

He flashes Tom a smile that he won’t see, his tone joking in the way of an abysmally concealed defense mechanism. “You know you can tell me anything, Tom.”

That doesn’t even get a laugh, just results in a more serious slant to Tom’s brow. He turns his head to the side to look back at Brendon, and his solemn expression looks odd with his cheek pressed against the metal floor of the merry-go-round. It might have been funny at any other time.

“I hope I can. I don’t want things to be…different with us,” Tom says.

Normally Brendon can handle a lot from Tom. He had adapted fairly quickly to his friend’s quirks, and had even grown to love them in time -that probably should have been his first clue that he was headed for disaster, but he isn’t about to let Tom be this willfully stupid.

“Tom, in case you hadn’t noticed, things are already different. I moved back to Vegas, and you graduated and went on tour.” He momentarily feels bad for mentioning the band, even abstractly, but plows on ahead to the point that he needs to drive home. “You haven’t spoken to me in weeks. Everything is different.”

Tom’s answering wince does nothing to detract from the already comical nature of his appearance. “I know, I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. I thought it would make things better.” He sits up and leans his weight back on his elbows. He is the very picture of remorse, his face contrite.

Tom doesn’t need to explain to Brendon what things would be better. Tom was so worried about Brendon’s Big Gay Crush that he actually cut of all communication. And judging by the look on Tom’s face, by what he knows of Tom, it wasn’t for his own sake. Which means he’d done it because he was worried about Brendon and how Brendon would feel talking to Tom.

Well, Brendon feels like someone has just taken a nasty swipe at what’s left of his heart with a machete. One of the really vicious looking ones that could cut through his aorta as easily as freaking jungle vines.

“It-It didn’t make things better. I’m sorry I made you think that,” he breathes out.

Once upon a time, he didn’t think that anything would ever be more embarrassing than having someone pass out on top of him while his tongue was down their throat, then he didn’t think anything could be more mortifying than having one of his best friends reject him after becoming aware of his epically obvious pining. That doesn’t even begin to compare to having the guy he’s in love stop talking to him because it’s for his own good.

All of his greatest humiliations can be traced back to Tom Conrad. And he’s still hopelessly in love with the guy.

“Huh, what are you sorry for?” Tom shakes his head. “Never mind, that’s not what I came here to say,” he says, completely oblivious to the total mental breakdown Brendon is experiencing.

Thank god for small favors.

“Then what is it?” he forces out. He sounds like a jerk, but he doesn’t sound like he is going to cry. He’ll count it as a win.

“I’ve been on a bus all day trying to figure out what to say to you,” Tom says. All the while the words ‘I thought it would make things better’ are running through his mind on a sickening loop. Brendon watches with half a mind as Tom shifts uncomfortably and continues,” I guess I should start by saying that I like you.”

“Like me?” Brendon parrots the words back at Tom in confusion.

Tom wrinkles his nose in annoyance, which Brendon can only assume is at himself. “Not just like you.  I like-like you. I mean, I more than like you.” Brendon looks on in a daze as Tom runs his hand roughly through his hair in frustration. “I know it’s too late. You left Chicago, and I just let you go. And things are probably great with you and Spencer…” Tom rambles on, unmindful of the fact that Brendon is pretty sure that he’s just had a stroke.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” The words slip out unbidden, stopping Tom mid-tirade. At Tom’s look of abject hurt, Brendon’s hand shoots up in an attempt to wave away what he just said. “Fuck, I didn’t mean that. Say that again. Say that first part again.”

He can’t have heard that right, because Tom doesn’t feel that way about him. Because Brendon is simply not so stupid that he just didn’t notice something like that.

“I like you. In a more than friendly way.” Tom sounds so utterly put out by the admission that Brendon almost wants to smack him for trying to ruin what he is pretty sure is the best moment of his life. He manages to refrain for fear that Tom will take it back, or he’ll wake up and it will all be an absurdly real dream.

But Tom isn’t done, apparently the confession has shaken something loose in his head, and he’s just full of words all of a sudden. “I know you don’t see me like that, but I just have to put it out there. Jon’s been on my ass about it for weeks. And then Spencer called and made me realize that I was making us both miserable by being a dick about everything.” He takes a moment to breath. “I just want us to go back to the way we were before. I want us to be friends again.”

There is so much to process, so much history to rewrite.

But he can only think of one question that he needs to ask. “So you and Danielle-you’re not back together?”

“Huh? What’s Danielle got to do with anything?” Tom seems baffled by what Brendon considers to be a fairly integral part of this conversation.

“You went to the prom with her. You’ve been in love with her forever,” Brendon informs him, as if imparting new information.

“No I haven’t! I mean, yeah, I love her in an ‘I’ll always love you’ kind of way, but Dani and I are over.” Tom says the words emphatically, still looking mildly confused as to why they’re talking about this when he just confessed his love. He adds, “For good this time. Jon told you that.”

Now it is Brendon’s turn to be utterly confused. “I can quite positively say that Jon never told me any of that. Jon, like, tried to console me after you guys got back together, but I wasn’t really in the mood.”

“So when you said that you knew about the Prom…” Watching Tom’s face, Brendon practically see the light bulb go off, which is good for Tom, but still leaves him in the dark.

Tom sits up straighter and suddenly lurches forward, his hand clapping down on Brendon’s shoulders, bracketing his head. “Brendon, Danielle and I didn’t get back together. Nothing happened on Prom Night,” he says urgently.

Brendon can feel his eyes widen in shock, and something that feels a lot like relief. “So you never…”

“No, we never. I mean, not after the dance,” he corrects. Tom seems to collapse into himself a little as he says, “Not that it matters. The whole you and Spencer thing, and I get that you don’t feel-“

Tom is saying a lot of ridiculous things right now, things that really make no sense. But Brendon is letting all of that roll right off of him, he’s concentrating on the one thing that matters. Tom likes him.

He tunes back in as Tom begins to babble something about Spencer, and then cuts him off, “What do you mean, me and Spencer?” Then he has his own lightbulb moment. “Tom. Tom, we have both been pretty epically stupid.”

“I’m not about to argue, but I’d kind of like to know why.”

“Tom,” he says slowly, drawing his name out in a really pleasant way, “I have been obsessing over you for months now. I mean, not follow you home and stalk you obsessing, but I am so into you it’s kind of pathetic.”

Even knowing how Tom feels about him, he still feels like he’s baring his soul with the admission, like this could still go horribly wrong for him, leaving him friendless and alone in a playground on the Fourth of July.

“So you… Huh.” Tom mumbles the last word to himself, and appears to become lost in his own thoughts. “For months?”

“Yes. I kind of maybe love you.”

-

"Oh, that's good," Tom's voice sounds far away, he's not even entirely sure what it is he's saying. He's still too caught up with the whole 'I kind of maybe love you' bombshell.

Everyone who has ever called Tom an idiot is right. They were completely and totally correct in that conclusion. Because not only does Brendon have feelings for him, he kind of maybe loves him. Which is something he really should have noticed, as it seems Jon noticed and Spencer noticed.

Brendon is sitting less than a foot away from him, utterly motionless, as if hoping that his stillness will somehow trick Tom into thinking he's not there. And it occurs to him that Brendon is actually worried, that he doesn't know that Tom's heart is practically fucking bursting right now.

He bangs his elbow on the safety bar as he launches himself at Brendon. He'll probably have a hell of a bruise tomorrow, but he could really care less about that.

His lips crash somewhere around Brendon's chin, but he's quick to correct the mistake. By the time his mouth finds Brendon's, the other boy has given up his impression of a possum and has looped his arms around Tom's waist, tugging them closer together.

"Been wanting to do this for so long," Brendon mumbles against his mouth, arms sliding around Tom's neck.

And thank God for that, because Tom may not be very quick on the uptake, but apparently he has been waiting for this for months. He shifts so that Brendon is straddling his lap. "Me too, it just took me a really long time to get that. Sorry." His words are obscured by the skin of Brendon's neck. “Sorry."

Brendon wriggles above him, getting comfortable, fitting his body perfectly to Tom's. Tom pushes his hands up under Brendon's shirt, and lets his fingers knead at the soft skin of Brendon's back. Brendon pushes into his touch, mouth becoming more desperate on his. It is so, so good.

He's never really felt like this before, like his ribs are too tight, like he's feeling too much. Like he's so happy it almost hurts. It's a kind of revelation, like when he and his very first girlfriend discovered French kissing and didn't come up for air for hours. He feels like he might need days this time.

Tom slants his lips against Brendon's, the pads of his fingers gripping Brendon's hips, slowing the other boy's frantic movements. He wants to take his time, Brendon maybe loves him, and Tom thinks he maybe deserves a little romance.

Brendon's pants a hot breath against his face, looks a question at him. Tom just pulls him back in for another kiss, making an effort to be gentle and sweet, to kiss Brendon like it means something.

“Hey, Tom? What does this mean?” Brendon gasps between kisses, as if he’s reading Tom’s mind.

“Huh?” Tom responds absently.

Brendon pushes back away from him once again. “I’ve never- I mean, I’ve only dated Spencer, so we never had the talk, but-“ Brendon says haltingly. Tom can barely make out the blush on the tops of his cheeks.

Tom is equally at a loss, and only partly because his mind is still very much stuck on wanting to kiss Brendon. He hasn’t thought that far ahead, his plan had kind of ended at the whole talking to Brendon thing. Everything that had happened after that point seems more like a really good, at times awesomely graphic, dream. “I don’t- We’re friends, and y’know-“ he stutters out.

Tom’s discomfort seems to get Brendon to loosen up a little. He rolls his eyes, “I think the whole point of the talk is that neither of us know.”

“I-What were you and Spencer?” He blurts out. He really doesn’t mean to ask that, but, well-he’s flustered. The last time he had the talk he was fourteen and it hadn’t been a talk so much as he and Danielle agreeing to eat lunch together in the cafeteria every day.

“Um, boyfriends?” Brendon says, shooting Tom a quizzical look, clearly nonplussed by his mention of Spencer.

“Okay, then. We’re that,” Tom says in a rush, hoping to wrap this conversation up as quickly as possible, and only partly because he wants to get back to the kissing.

“So… we’re boyfriends?” Brendon asks, hesitant.

“…Yes.” He nods in confirmation as Brendon repositions himself on Tom’s lap. If Brendon were really serious about having this talk, he’d stop what he’s doing right now so that Tom can actually form coherent sentences.

Brendon’s eyes dart away from Tom’s face, and Tom can’t help but feel that that doesn’t bode well. With his eyes trained at some point over Tom’s shoulder, Brendon says, “You should stay.”

“What?”

“Here. You should stay here for a while.” Then Brendon adds in a flood of words, “I mean, you should mourn the passing of your band before you go back and try out that new one. Vegas is a good place to forget all that for a while. Plus, you wouldn’t be much of a boyfriend if you skipped town right after you confessed your love.”

“I didn’t confess my love!” Tom sputters out. And boy, is that the wrong thing to say. “Uh, not that I- You want me to stay here? With you?”

Brendon rolls his eyes again. “No, with Spencer. Of course with me.” Tom is too grateful that Brendon is willing to overlook his earlier statement to take issue with his words.

Tom has never claimed to be anything even close to a good boyfriend, but he’s pretty sure there’s only one right answer to that question. “Yeah. Yes, I’d love to stay.”

He only has a second to prepare himself for the full weight of Brendon Urie bearing down on him again, as he pushes himself more firmly against Tom. His lips pepper Tom’s face with kisses. “Awesome. This is going to be awesome. You can get to know Spencer better, and oooh- You get to meet Ryan, for real this time,” Brendon says between kisses.

Tom just nods along. Nothing has really been solved. He’s still going to go back to Chicago at some point, and Brendon won’t be there, but for right now, this is kind of perfect. He could stay like this forever.

As it turns out, he doesn’t have a lot of say in the matter. Something vibrates against his thigh, followed by a low buzzing noise. Brendon twists above him, dislodging Tom’s hand on his back. Tom watches as Brendon searches through his pockets, his hand slipping free with his phone gripped tightly in his fingers.

Brendon silences the phone without checking the display and drops it to the platform near Tom’s head. He settles back against Tom, his elbows digging lightly into Tom’s sides as he props his face up in his hands. Brendon shoots him a look from under his lashes that is entirely too guilty. That can’t be good, they haven’t been in a relationship long enough to warrant a look like that.

“What?” he croaks out, his voice preemptively grumpy. He seems to be saying that a lot lately.

Brendon’s frown deepens. “That might be my parents,” he explains. The look of guilt drops from his face, his lip giving a tiny quiver, causing Tom to feel the unaccustomed sensation of worry. That feeling is soon replaced by relief, as Brendon’s quivering lips bloom into a smile. “Or worse, it could be Spencer,” he adds.

Tom lets out a relieved sigh, “That wasn’t funny.” Brendon is such a pain in the ass. He suddenly has a pretty good idea of what a relationship with him is going to be like.

The phone buzzes again, and their heads snap toward the offending electronic device. Brendon abruptly looks guilty again.

“You aren’t going to answer that?” Tom hazards.

Brendon flops down on top of him, forcing the air out of Tom’s lungs with a quiet ‘oof’. He shakes his head vehemently, strands of his dark hair catching in Tom’s stubble. Tom can feel him mouthing absently at the fabric of his shirt, a wet patch growing over Tom’s heart. That should be really gross, but Tom is still caught up in the nice rosy glow of being able to touch Brendon whenever he wants to pay it any mind. And in fitting with this new turn of events, Tom raps his knuckles lightly against Brendon’s back in demand of an answer.

Brendon rubs his nose on Tom’s shirt, another thing that should be really gross and not at all endearing. He says, “We should go before someone send out a search party.”

Before Tom can utter a word of protest, Brendon has clamored up off of him, just barely missing a very important area. Brendon wiggles his fingers in Tom’s face in invitation.

Tom heaves a sigh and himself up off of the merry-go-round, his hand reaching out to curl around Brendon’s outstretched palm.

His shoulders tense a little as they leave the park. He can’t help but feel that everything that they’d hashed out in the park will cease to exist once they step back into the real world. Next to him, Brendon swings their hands between them as he weaves his way down the street. Tom feels Brendon’s fingers squeeze around his, and his worry dissipates.

They walk for blocks as the streetlights flicker to life. Tom has lost all track of the twists and turns they’ve taken, when Brendon jerks him to a stop with an insistent tug on his hand. He pulls Tom in front of him, taking hold of his other hand.

Brendon’s eyes search his face as he says solemnly, “So, I guess since we’re boyfriends now, that means that we’re serious.”

Sometimes Tom isn’t very good at reading situations, but this feels like a trap. “Yes?”

“And since you’re staying here…” Brendon trails off.

“Yes?” Tom says again.

Brendon’s face breaks out into a wide smile. “Don’t worry, I’m sure my parents are going to love you.”

“What-?” There he goes again.

Brendon’s eyes widen innocently up at him. It’s unnatural how natural that looks on him. And that is just not cool.

Tom tugs his hand free to point an accusing finger at Brendon. “You didn’t say anything about your parents.” He probably should have made that connection himself, but there’s been a lot going on, so he thinks that earns him some leeway.

Brendon barks out a loud laugh, presumably at the look on Tom’s face, and assures, “Don’t worry, I won’t let them hurt you. They’ve been on their best behavior.”

Tom is glad that one of them feels good about it, but he’s still not reassured. “Are you sure that it’ll be okay?”

Brendon’s face turns stony. “It’ll be fine. If they want me here, then they can deal with my boyfriend.”

Tom’s fingers clench in reflex around Brendon’s. As if a flip has switched, Brendon’s face lightens. “Plus, you’ll be there, so everything is going to be okay.”

Tom gives him a skeptical look as Brendon’s expression turns mischievous. He swings their clasped hands between them and says, “You should have seen the look on your face.”

Tom silences Brendon with a kiss, and the other boy laughs into his mouth. Brendon isn’t laughing for long.

Brendon pulls abruptly away from Tom when a loud crack splits the air. Tom is feeling a little dizzy with the sudden loss of contact and his first proper intake of air in quite a while. Another sound like gunfire breaks the quiet of the night, accompanied by a surge of color across the sky.

Brendon's head falls back, baring his throat to Tom, and Tom's eyes drop from the sky to focus in on the beating pulse.

Brendon lets out a sharp laugh, and then falls into a fit of giggles. Tom moves his eyes from the hollow of his neck to search his face, and tries not to be offended by Brendon breaking what he'd thought was a pretty freaking great mood.

"What?" Tom chokes out, completely puzzled, his hands still keeping Brendon in place, keeping him close.

Brendon visibly tries to get himself under back control, asks in a strained voice, "Hey, Tom?"

"What?" Tom repeats, trying not too sound too much like he's sulking. Because he's not. It's just that there was kissing, and now there's not.

Brendon tips forward, knocking his head on Tom's collarbone, and Tom controls a wince at the hard rap of it. Brendon giggles again, gasping out, "When I kiss you, it's like fireworks."

What the hell?

Brendon pushes back, his hand shooting up from where it was resting on Tom's chest to point toward the suddenly bright sky. He settles back against Tom, his head dropping to Tom's chest. And Tom just sits there with Brendon's body a reassuring weight against him as he watches colors burst across the black.

Tom tears his eyes away from a particularly awesome red and blue explosion to look back at Brendon. "You are the lamest person I've ever met," he says, voice hushed and all too fond.

It's certainly not enough to stop Tom from kissing Brendon. In fact, it's maybe the reason he does.

--


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