Hey! It's meh again with a random midnight post. WARNING: BOYSECKS TO THE EXTREME!
The tour starts in Florida, and Brendon's on center stage under the hot lights with the screams starting up again, louder and louder every time he shakes his hips, and he's missed this like oxygen. He can't help grinning helplessly over at Jon, who looks dapper in his dark coat; he can't see Spencer without turning around, but he can hear him pounding away at the drums, and man, he kind of misses the old kit's light-up glow, but the new set-up's kind of awesome, even though Spencer's sitting so high up and far away.
("I don't see a problem," Spencer had said when this point was raised during planning, "we're just, you know, setting things up like they should be." "What, you should be up way above us, having to look down?" "Duh.")
On his right, Ryan has his head down, focusing on his fingers as he finishes the bridge, cap shadowing his eyes. Brendon waits until he looks up, waits for the triumphant flick of his head that signals the change; Ryan grins at him, and Brendon beams, nervousexcited, back.
He steps up to the mic again and starts to tell the audience about a dream, running through a field of flowers towards a lover. As he talks, he moves towards Ryan and the screams rise and rise, shock and surprise and sheer glee welling up into a wall of sound. Brendon hates to give credit but Spencer and Ryan were totally right about this.
He and Ryan play it out like in rehearsal: a certain amount of steps, a certain amount of closeness – he drives his hips forward, reaches out towards Ryan's cheek – and then when Ryan jerks his chin at him incrementally, the sign, he snaps back, peeling away, and says dramatically into the mic, "But this is not that dream."
It hadn't been Brendon's idea, not really. Well, in a way, it kind of was, but only if you squinted and sort of tilted your head to the side. Brendon had been more of a muse, really, to Ryan the fucking insane artiste.
Only, Brendon has the idea that muses are supposed to lie on couches all swoony and pale and passive, and stuff, sighing deeply every now and then. Or maybe they're supposed to have really happening curls and do high-kicks on the side of pottery vases, but he might have picked that idea up from Disney, and he hasn't really been able to trust them since they killed off Simba's dad, because that was really, really harsh.
So maybe not a muse, then. Maybe the midwife to Ryan's stupid, stupid ideas. Only, like, masculine. A mid-man.
And now he's thinking of himself holding Ryan's hand while Ryan screams and swears in the throes of labor, and it's like that horrible scene from Alien only with ABBA or Cher or whatever playing, and strobe lights, and then he has to scrub his brain, so maybe not a midwife, either.
But the point is, he was just the inspiration; this is in no way his fault.
("BALLET DANCERS GETTING NAKED," Jon wrote down carefully in his notebook, tongue caught in his teeth. He paused, squinted at the huge, blocky capitals, then uncapped the sharpie again and added "!".
"Well, what else are we going to do?" Ryan said impatiently. "That's good, but it's not really different."
Spencer had leapt in. "We could get a- "
"We're not having live animals on stage, and that's final." Ryan paused. "Brendon doesn't count."
"Oh, that's not what you said in bed last night, Ross," Brendon said, as a joke, a joke! And okay, maybe he then pursed up his lips and blew loud smacking air kisses in Ryan's direction.
But it had been a joke - it was just, you know, just what he did. Spencer could just sit there and stare at you, if he wasn't in the mood to play, and Jon would just grin easily and sometimes pat him on the head; but Ryan would go red and duck his head, and maybe shove him, or get all pissy and definitely shove him, and either way, there was always something, it was always fun, there was always a reaction.
He stopped blowing kisses and noticed that the others were staring at him. Well, Spencer and Ryan were; Jon was drawing lopsided little hearts and squiggly little cats into the margins of the notebook.
Spencer and Ryan exchanged those serious, lengthy glances that they used when other people, normal people, actually had a conversation, and then Ryan said slowly "That's – that's actually a good idea, considering."
"Yeah," Spencer said, "they'll love it, and it'll cost less than hiring a matador."
"What?" Brendon demanded, "love what?"
"G-A-Y," Jon scribbled down obediently, and added with a flourish of sharpie, "KISSING!")
Brendon has to stand by the statement that it was not his fault.
But, you know, the actual staging was kind of fun. Spencer was right, they totally loved it. And Brendon loved it, too; loved walking across the stage, parroting his spiel about sunflower fields, and hearing the screaming reach a fevered pitch, the energy pulsing and battering. He fucking loves making them scream. (On the stage, that is, it's a little more annoying when you don't have your earplugs in and girls squeal, like, right in your ear; Brendon sometimes is seriously convinced that he's going to be deaf before he's thirty, and, you know, that'll suck).
So, yeah, he enjoys hamming it up. One night straight after their third show, Atlanta (it's still the honeymoon period, when they're all so happy to be back together, when playing shows is still an exhilarating novelty, when they're not yet exhausted from the pace) they all walk offstage together, laughing, tired and exhilarated. Jon and Spencer whisper something that might be "hurry, showers", the two-faced little schemers, and vanish before Brendon has even had time to unscrew the cap on the water bottle he's snatched up.
The thump of the beat is still sounding in his veins, blood pounding in his ears, makeup streaked with sweat.
Ryan smiles at him, tired and jubilant. He takes off his cap and runs his hand through his soaked hair, and pulls his guitar strap over his head, handing it to a tech as they walk past.
"That was awesome, right?" Brendon asks over his shoulder, beaming, and his cheeks hurt, and he can't remember right at this moment how he could have possibly been sick of this at the end of the last tour.
"Yeah," Ryan says, catching up to him as they walk from the backstage area down towards the corridor, "yeah, that actually went really well –"
They grin at each other, and then Brendon just – he doesn't even know why he does it, but one second he's smiling at Ryan, screams from the crowd outside still ongoing, still audible, and the next he's just, he's just leaning in, lips brushing against Ryan's, and he can smell him and feel the heat of his face. It's a dry swipe of lips against lips, nothing fancy, just -
And then he's pulling back and Ryan looks about as pole-axed as he feels, frozen in place.
Brendon laughs nervously. "Um," he says, suddenly desperate for something to do with his hands.
Ryan stares at him for a moment, and then he shakes his head, something going shuttered behind his eyes. "Hey, let's see if we can get to the showers before Jon does," he says, and jogs off after the others.
They go for tacos after the show, late late late. Not getting a spicy chicken burrito is so, so fucking hard, especially when Spencer orders one, but Brendon totally cares about the chickens (who deserve to live and to flap their flightless little chicken-y wings in freedom), so he steels himself, as mostly-per-usual, and when it's his turn he orders a meatless one instead. He has to think really, really hard about Chicken Run, though, with Spencer closing his eyes as he takes taunting, indelicate bites. Some people, jesus. Zack's order is even more painfully tempting.
And then there's Jon. "Food," Jon says, clapping his shoulder and leaning past him to squint at the register, "food, food, food. Tacos. Taco Bell."
"Taco Bell is for making out," Spencer says, grinning, and Ryan heaves a weary sigh, hip propped against the counter's edge.
"I don't want to know how you came to make that mental connection, I really don't."
"Making out," Brendon repeats quietly, apropos of nothing, and Ryan's hand jerks and soda slops through the ineffectual plastic lid of his cup, spilling over his fingers.
"Whoa, skills," Jon remarks, already armed with a fistful of napkins.
"God, Ross," Brendon says, punching him lightly in the arm. "Total skillfest."
"Okay," Spencer says, resting his elbows on the signing table. "What are the bets this time?"
"Tonight's my night," Jon nods. "Any guys show up in the meet-and-greet, and it's my turn to collect from all of you."
"But the girls bring presents," Brendon says. "I like the girls. Also, breasts, hello."
"There are never any guys," Ryan says, "or, like, a tiny proportion. Tiny." He fiddles with a button on his coat sleeve.
"I see them," Jon argues. "In the crowd sometimes –
" - adrift in a sea of estrogen –"
"The point is, they're out there."
"So is the truth," Spencer says solemnly.
Brendon starts to hum, then (seriously, how could he not? Come on), and Spencer harmonizes, tapping the beat against the edge of the table.
"It's just not a guy thing to do," Jon opines. "You know. You're – they're there for the music, they don't need to tell the lead singer how hot he is beforehand, after."
"I can always stand hearing that."
"Shut up, Brendon," Ryan says reflexively. He scratches the side of his nose. "Anyway, some guys do."
"Tell Brendon that he's hot?" Jon asks. "No, they don't."
Brendon pouts. "They could. My hotness surpasses all gender boundaries, right?" He jostles Ryan with his elbow. "Right? Come on, you all think I'm sexy, admit it already."
Spencer scribbles his name across someone's handbag, the 'S' sloppy and almost formless. "He means, some guys do wait for autographs," he corrects, and hands the bag back to the girl in front of him with a tight smile.
"But the whole thing, the whole point of the bet, is that they actually don't," Jon says. He sounds confused.
Spencer smirks just a little. "Yeah, but Ryan did."
"It was Pete," Ryan says defensively, hunching his shoulders. "And it was a long time ago. Stop laughing and sign the fucking things." He scrawls his name across someone's sneaker with a snap to his wrist.
Jon claps his hand over his mouth exaggeratedly. "Did you ask him to sign your shirt?"
"Did you tell him he was hot?"
"He totally did, look, he's going all red and stuff."
"That's rage," Ryan says, deadpan, head down, "shut up and sign."
Brendon catches his eye and grins at him. Ryan makes a face, but when Brendon keeps grinning, he smiles back, sharp and bright; it's only a quick flash across his face, and a second later he's turning back, nodding to the fan in front of him, biting his lip and signing her CD case.
Ryan hasn't smiled like that much since that brief but shining time between bringing Jon into the band and Ryan's father's death. Brendon's missed it.
He kicks Ryan's ankle gently under the table. "Hey," he whispers, when Ryan turns his head to look at him again, "did you get Pete to sign your purse?"
The next time they play, the next time Brendon has to make Ryan back up along the stage, try to kiss his cheek – and seriously, Ryan does not get to write the stage scripts ever again, as if anyone would back away from him being all seductive and stuff – there's an odd sort of frisson to the acting. Leaning in, grinding his hips – it's different, because for a second he almost thinks he's going to do it, and he can tell that Ryan's suddenly not entirely sure that he's not by the way he skitters back across the stage.
And – it's weird, a bit. It shouldn't be, because making out with a bandmate is like, mandatory in the scene, and it's not like anyone gives a fuck if you do, once or twice, as long as you laugh really hard afterwards. But it just is. Maybe because it's Ryan and he takes things so – he takes things differently; with Spencer or Jon Brendon can't imagine this sort of subtle bullshit, and the worst part is, he can't call Ryan on it because that might make it worse. It might actually even be all in his own head. It's just – weird, and Brendon wants it just to be over with already, but that's pretty hard when nearly every night he's meant to stalk Ryan across the stage.
Seriously, any other person would be totally cool with random acts of weirdness, but no, Brendon has to plant one on Ryan Ross, king of Taking Things Too Seriously. It seems even more impossibly unfair that since the kinda-sorta kiss thing - and Brendon really doesn't mean to - he finds himself watching, noticing things that he really, really (really) wouldn't normally. It's the weirdness' fault. If Ryan was cool about it, Brendon would be cool about it, too.
Like, one morning he gets up and staggers out into the lounge, Spencer and Jon still sleeping in the bunks.(Spencer pulls his curtain back as Brendon goes past, squinting blearily at him "Coffee," he murmurs. Brendon evades his clutching hands and makes hasty promises of "later, later.")
Ryan's out there already, bent over his notebook, his pen making little rasping noises as it slides over the paper, quick and furious.
"Hey," Brendon says, scratching at his stomach, "morning, man. Do we have food? Tell me we have food."
"We have s'more pop tarts," Ryan says, gesturing with the pen, "but they're revolting, I wouldn't."
Brendon makes a high-pitched little whining noise. "You have cereal, though, I can see it. I can see it, Ryan. Share."
Ryan rolls his eyes at him and rattles the box. "Spencer bought it at the last stop."
"Huh." Brendon has to weigh that one up carefully; cereal, yes, pissing Spencer off, really a no. Spencer is surprisingly and inventively vindictive.
His stomach makes the decision for him. "I'm your star," he tells Ryan, testing the explanation out. "I should get consideration. Your energies must all be bent on the noble goal of me not fainting onstage."
"Mmhmm," Ryan nods, snagging the box back after Brendon has plundered and ransacked sufficiently. "Totally. You're our diva."
"Shut up," Brendon says, "I have no designs on your crown," and he pulls his legs away fast, before Ryan's foot can connect.
Brendon gets revenge a little later, though, when Ryan's bent over the notebook once again, eyes distant. He gets up to get a can of Red Bull from the bus fridge, and before he opens it, he thinkshmmm. Quashing an evil, gleeful little cackle, he walks over to Ryan very, very quietly and presses its coldness against the bare curve of his neck.
Ryan squeaks, then swears. "You fucking – Brendon," he says, the very name spluttered vituperation, and Brendon smiles at him winningly and ruffles his hair.
"Diva diva diva," he sings softly, and Ryan's mouth twitches.
"You're an asshole."
"I know," Brendon sighs, sitting down again, "it's my cross to bear."
Ryan coughs something that sounds like no, it's ours but Brendon graciously overlooks it.
And, suddenly, it's just – normal. They're sitting there, Ryan squinting down at what he's written while Brendon clicks around idly on his sidekick.
And then he finds himself looking up, watching as Ryan sucks thoughtfully on the top of his pen... finds himself wondering idly what Ryan looks like naked, and, whoa.
Whoa, he thinks, and shit. And then, Ryan? What the fuck?
He really, really needs to get laid. He lost his casual hookup before the tour began, and he hasn't wanted to get into anything new. Maybe - probably - his libido is just confused, because there really are limits to how often and how thoroughly you can jerk off when you're stuck sharing a bus. It could be the bus' fault, even; proximity, whatever. Something's badly wrong, anyway, and he blames the weirdness. This is Ryan and he's seen Ryan go into a complete screaming meltdown while wearing a pink t-shirt and an unironic sweatband; seen him fast asleep with his mouth hanging open while Jon drew on his face (or, okay, that was mostly Brendon, but Jon helped); seen him with the world's worst hair cut hanging in long lank waves over his face as he stumbled around the back of their old van, half asleep and wearing only boxers that had been washed too many times, their original plaid print faded into a medley of greys and sagging from his bony hips.
"What?" Ryan looks up at him, frowning. Brendon blinks at him, considering. There's stubble dark on his chin, jaw, rough on his upper lip, and Ryan hasn't bothered to brush his hair yet. It's perfectly flat on one side, strangely rumpled on the other; and his ancient sweatpants – no, really, sweatpants – are frayed and split over his knees. He is, however, accessorizing the sweatpants and old t-shirt with his new Ice Cream sneakers and a pair of stripy socks that he probably had to hold up a Hot Topic for.
Yeah, no.
"What is it?"
"Your shoes," Brendon says finally. "They have, uh, lipsticks on them."
Ryan stares at him.
And then he stares some more.
"Yeah," he says at last. "Yeah, they do."
"I'm just saying."
"Huh," Brendon says thoughtfully, squinting into the mirror. "I think – does this look okay to you?"
"What?" Ryan asks, abandoning his attempt to persuade Jon to don eyeliner for the show again. Jon could probably lift Ryan up into the air with one hand, without breaking a sweat, but he still looks relieved at Ryan's switch in focus. Ryan's slight, but he's feisty, and he had Jon backed up into a corner.
"My eyes," Brendon clarifies. There's blue-black eyeshadow smeared from his eyebrows to his eyelids, violent against his pale, ghoulish foundation. He waggles his eyebrows at himself in the mirror; he looks awesome, except maybe one eye is more pronounced than the other, he's not sure. That's what he has Ryan for.
Ryan squints at him. "I don't know. Come over here, the light's better."
Brendon goes, and Ryan grabs his jaw and turns his head back and forth roughly under the light. "Yeah, no. No, this is kind of fucked-up."
"But still awesome, right?"
"Eyeshadow," Ryan says brusquely, holding out his hand. Spencer shoves the little round case and the brush into his hand, and Ryan takes his hand off Brendon's face long enough to open it, load his brush up with powder.
And then his hand's back on Brendon's jaw, and Brendon tries to stand still, he tries really hard. He can't help bouncing a little, nervously, on the balls of his feet; Ryan's so close, he can feel his breath hot against his face, and he's so fucking intense about it.
The brush moves quickly, with tiny jerks of Ryan's wrist; it's whiskery, almost too impersonal to be ticklish, over the thin skin above his eye.
Ryan's hand is steady, and his lower lip vanishes between his teeth as he concentrates.
Brendon tries to keep still, tries (fails) to keep his eyes closed, cast down. He tries desperately not to stare at Ryan's mouth or at the way the line of his throat shifts when he swallows; and then Ryan steps back. "All done."
"Thanks," Brendon says.
"No problem. Now put your rouge on," Ryan instructs him, and turns back to the mirror, frowning.
Brendon's jerking off in the quietness of his bunk, behind the false privacy of his curtain, when he finds himself thinking about the curve of Ryan's mouth again.
And that's just. God, is that fucked-up, to think about a guy, a friend, Ryan, while his hand's on his dick and he's pumping slow, warming up, trying not to make a sound.
So fucked-up, twisted even, and he tries not to notice the way his dick twitches at the thought.
No, he thinks very firmly, and tries very hard to think instead about the last time he got laid, instead, or the way the shirt that the interviewer from a couple of days ago was wearing clung to her breasts, and fitted so closely to her stomach that when she stood in the light he could make out the cleave of her ribcage, the faint shadowy dent of her navel.
That works, until suddenly he's thinking about the way Ryan bites his lip when he's thinking, the way his stupid low-cut t-shirts used to bare his collarbone and the soft pulse beating at the base of his throat. Brendon's hips jerk up, into his fist, and he curses under his breath. Fuck, he hadn't even been aware he'd even noticed that.
And fuck getting off, it isn't worth – it isn't worth thinking about that sort of shit and touching his dick, because 1. that's a good way to make sure that he can never look Ryan in the eye again, ever, and 2) that'd be – dude, no.
Brendon tucks himself back into his boxers and forces, forces himself to think unsexy thoughts. He closes his eyes, hands curled into fists at his sides, and starts to lovingly recall every folded crease in the wattle-like neck of his old English teacher, the mole high on her cheek and the sinister glint of her glasses as she looked over their rims to snap instructions.
And wow, does that work. Not work.
Only, only, soon it morphs into his eighth grade home room teacher, the one with bouncy brown curls and tight cardigans that buttoned up the front with, like, a million tiny tiny little buttons. She'd smelled like rosewater, overwhelmingly, and had had trim little ankles, and every boy in his class had practically popped a boner every time she took attendance.
And that's, that's. Brendon's hand creeps back to his dick, almost like magic, and he curls his toes and thinks really hard about the way her neck curved and the day she'd worn a black bra under a light, pastel shirt –
He's just starting to get into it again when Ryan's hands, of all fucking things, flash suddenly to the forefront of his mind; long thin fingers drumming impatiently against flat surfaces, slowly strumming a guitar. He thinks about the pale thin skin over Ryan's collarbone again, about the ridges of his spine showing through on the back of his neck, his fucking mouth, and oh fuck, oh fuck, hand moving faster, Brendon is so fucking screwed.
He comes with a harsh moan, drawing air in sharp through his nostrils, and yeah, fuck, so fucking screwed.
Brendon lies very still in the small cramped darkness of his bunk and listens to the other guys breathe. The ceiling is only a foot or so from his head. His hand is all sticky and gross, and he's still breathing fast, shudderingly, and. Wow, he's kind of a bad person, because god, did that work for him.
He starts to justify it to himself after he wipes his hand clean on his shirt (he's kind of gross, he knows it; he'll send Zack with laundry when they're in one place long enough). By the time he drifts off to sleep, he's managed to rationalize it.
Because, see, the more Brendon thinks about it, the more it makes sense. He kind of maybe has a thing for Ryan, that's become pretty hard to ignore. But if you look at it another, his unconscious is kind of genius. Brendon is kind of genius; he just didn't know it.
Because sex with Ryan – it'd be, huh. He guesses it could work. He's not really all that into guys, or he hasn't been, but imagine the possibilities: sex on tour, all the time, whenever he wants. Sex with a friend, even. Sex for fun, without having to bother with pick-up lines, or doing stupid shit like talking about your feelings, or remembering anniversaries, or having dinner with the parents, or (hopefully) VD -
It's a brilliant, brilliant idea.
Brendon is so smart. He just didn't realize it.
They sign autographs after that night's show – Zack's feeling charitable towards the fans tonight - and it's a total melee; one girl with a t-shirt too tight and glitter across her face like a starburst leans in close when he's signing a shirt for her and asks him what he's like in bed.
Brendon blinks. It never stops being weird what the hell some fans think is okay to just say to him, and he's too tired to think of anything snappy fast, so Jon answers instead.
"Like a teddy bear. Weirdly cuddly, weird amount of body hair."
Brendon snorts (even though the hair part is a total lie, Jon's very glib) and says, "Yeah, what he said."
Ryan laughs at them, in the natural way which he usually doesn't when confronted with a blank wall of excited girls in his face, and the weird questions and declarations of love hard to hear over the noise.
"Jon, you were totally a boy scout, right?
"Are you kidding," Brendon scoffs from his side of the bus lounge. "Duh, Spencer Smith. He's only like the world's biggest boy scout ever."
"Actually, I wasn't," Jon interrupts. "But my best friend when I was in grade school was. He taught me useful Boy Scout skills."
"Skills like lock-picking?" Spencer asks.
Jon looks mildly embarrassed. "Actually, I think that one was Tom. It might have been Scimeca, I don't know. I meant skills like. Like fire."
"Or cookie-selling."
"Or cookie– no, that's just the girls, I think." Spencer frowns.
"Shut up," Brendon says, "don't even try to tell me that little Jon didn't wander around the mean streets of Chicago in little knee socks and carrying a box of baked goodness, because I will call you aliar." He pauses. "And also accuse you of destroying my fondest hopes and dreams, and can you live with that, Spencer? Can you?"
Jon's eyes meet Spencer's over Brendon's head, a flash of warm, palpable fondness.
"No, Brendon," Spencer says, patting Brendon's knee, "I can't."
"That's what I'm saying," Brendon says contentedly, and he slides down until his head's resting in Ryan's lap.
"Mean streets?" Ryan asks. He looks down at Brendon with jaded acceptance. "I thought that the most there was to worry about in Chicago suburbia was, like, soccer moms."
"Hey," Spencer says, "don't mock the soccer moms, they're totally fearsome."
Ryan nods along to Spencer's pronouncement; his long fingers start to card the soft hair at the base of Brendon's skull with abstracted gentleness.
Brendon smirks at the touch, adds: "Also, it like, gets really cold. Little match girls could be dying on the Chicago streets!"
"A lot of those around," Jon agrees. "We have to sweep them up out of the gutter with the trash. They clog the drains."
"Jon," Spencer frowns, as Ryan continues to play with Brendon's hair, "that was mean."
"And my point is," Brendon continues, "is that the streets of Chicago are cold. And therefore mean. And when there's cold, there's, you know. Bears."
"Bears?"
"Bears?" Ryan stops playing with Brendon's bangs long enough to flick him on the forehead. "You're an idiot."
"Dude, you said soccer moms."
"And then there's Pete Wentz," Spencer adds. "Very scary."
"Mean, scary streets," Brendon repeats, "that's my whole entire point!"
He turns his head until he's nuzzling the inside of Ryan's thigh, just a little. Ryan twitches, a fine controlled tremor along the muscles of his legs, hand going still in Brendon's hair.
Jon nods. "Very mean. Bears, and Pete Wentz. I kept a switchblade in my little knee sock, you better believe it."
Brendon crows in triumph, and Spencer grins. "Dude, you totally have to end everything you say from now on with a 'or I'll cut you, bitch'."
Ryan laughs softly. "What, like, 'get me a drink-'"
"'-or I'll totally fucking cut you,'" Brendon finishes his sentence excitedly, "'bitch.' Yeah, just like that."
"Guys," Jon says, rolling his eyes.
"Guys what," Brendon prompts.
Jon shakes his head, the tan skin around his eyes going crinkly at their corners. When he grins his teeth are very white. "Guys," he says with deliberation, "shut up."
They wait. Spencer's chin rests on his fist; Brendon's head is still pillowed peacefully on Ryan's thigh but his eyebrows reach a comical height. Ryan clears his throat.
"Fine," Jon sighs. " 'Guys, shut up, or I'll cut you. Bitch.'" He frowns. "Bitches?"
"It'll do," Brendon declares, sitting up. Ryan pulls his hand back and looks at it like it's strange to him.
Brendon clambers over Spencer's knees to reach Jon, to hang around Jon's neck like a determined spider monkey. "It'll do, you just need to practice. It makes perfect!"
"We're cutting down his Red Bull," Spencer promises over Brendon's head. "If we have to put a kiddy lock on the bus fridge."
"You think I don't hear you," Brendon says loudly, "but you would be wrong." He pokes Jon in the side. "So, so wrong. Stand up, Jon Walker, I want to ride piggyback off the bus."
"Ryan," Brendon says, "Ryan, I got you a drink." He puts the juice by Ryan's elbow and smiles winningly.
Ryan looks up from his Sidekick, brow creasing. "...thanks?"
"No problem," Brendon says cheerily. "I can get you snacks, too, if you want. Candy? Popcorn? Cookies? I can do it all."
"Um," Ryan says, squinting at him. "No, I'm good. Thanks."
"No problem," Brendon repeats, and doesn't move away until Ryan looks up from the Sidekick and frowns at him.
"What?" Brendon asks.
"No, I'm asking you, what?"
"What?"
"Ryan."
"Brendon," Ryan says, raising his eyebrows.
"Do you want to listen to my ipod?" Brendon asks in a wheedling fashion, nudging it over to Ryan's side of the couch. "I have a full bar, and I don't think yours has any charge."
Ryan blinks. "I'm okay, Brendon." He turns another page in his book.
"Do you need more water? I can get you a refill. Or, um, ice!"
"…I'm okay. Thanks."
"I could give you a backrub," Brendon offers finally, and somewhere behind him Spencer explodes into hysterical laughter, Brendon's not sure why.
"You never offer to give me backrubs," Jon says mournfully.
"Sure I do. I just – I kind of suck at them, and you're really good, so it just makes logical sense for you to be giving them to me, you can't argue with facts, Jon Walker – but, uh, Ryan, if you're interested, I'm offering."
He thinks about wriggling his eyebrows or winking or something to really underline his point, but come on, that's so blatant that a two year-old could pick up on it. Not that Brendon has experience with two year-olds, that was totally hyperbole.
"I'm still okay," Ryan says, looking confused, and turns another page.
The situation is clearly desperate, and he decides that it's time to call upon the advice of older (wiser? Yeah, probably not, but certainly more experienced) guys. Very experienced guys.
Jon or Spencer? Ha. Ahaha. Ha.
In the end, he steals Jon's phone when Jon's half asleep on the couch and drooling gently on Spencer's shoulder, and scrolls through his address book.
'Treat him like a lady, woo him gently, buy him flowers and dinner and walk him to his bunk and just maybe he'll put out-' is as far as William gets before he breaks down into hysterical giggling. Brendon cuts off the call with a "Yeah, thanks. Ass."
"Dude, what the fuck," Ryan says, when they're prowling around they're hanging around the venue before soundcheck and he turns around to find Brendon close on his heels.
"I just thought I'd come along with," Brendon says glibly. "To, um, wherever. Wherever it is that you're going."
"The bathroom?"
"Exactly."
"Brendon," Ryan says, and he realizes that Ryan's peering at him anxiously. "Are you okay? You've been acting weird. Weirder. We can, like, get someone to talk to you, or take you to a doctor, or something -" and the worst part is, his habitual monotone is layered with earnestness and what Brendon finally identifies as genuine concern.
This is really not going at all well.
He locks himself in the bathroom and leaves an urgent, ten minute message on Pete's voicemail. This is a desperate measure (because, a: Pete kind of treats Ryan like a cross between a little brother and a pet - like, a show dog that had won its category via some completely unexpected fluke; and b: fuck knows how secure anything on Pete's sidekick really is.)
But then, the situation has become dire.
Pete doesn't get back to him for three days, and when he does, it's a text: id say get him drnuk but that doesn't wrok with ryan. so just use ur p33n like a pool q and let ur conscience b ur guide.
Pete really needs to stop conflating 'mentor' with 'Jiminy Cricket'. Brendon just doesn't get Pete's weird grasshopper thing.
That night, Jon waits until the dressing room door swings shut behind Ryan to peer at Brendon in an amused, addled fashion. "Dude," he said slowly, tipping his head to one side, "you were totally staring. At Ryan.'
"I was not!"
Spencer raises his eyebrows. "I corroborate Jon's version of events."
"Shut up," Brendon says automatically. "Also, you can prove nothing."
"Dude, you're the kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar, give it up already."
"I just –" He wishes they'd just stop staring at him. Spencer's lips are twitching, and Jon's wearing the wide-eyed look which he knows denotes deep and secret amusement. "It's just been a while, okay. I have a very confused libido. That's all, that's it."
Jon chuckles. "Brendon Urie, rock star, unable to get laid? You lie."
"Yeah, well," Brendon says sulkily. "The stuff with, you know, ended ages ago, and I don't want to pick up a groupie. They're clammy, and icky, and they post everything to their blogs!"
"…"
"…"
"Stop laughing at me, dickheads."
"And they call him a sex symbol," Jon says sadly to Spencer, who shakes his head.
"Oh, they wouldn't say that if they knew him. Or if they had to spend hours with him in an enclosed space when he's on a sugar high. Or if- "
"You suck, are you aware of this?"
"Seriously," Jon frowns, "you don't actually think your options are limited to groupies or bandmates? Because that's kind of sad."
"I don't want a groupie," Brendon says in a small voice, and magnificently ignores the question.
"Dude," Spencer says, not looking up from his sidekick, "why don't you, y'know, just ask him?"
"Because he might punch me," Brendon exclaims, sitting up. His glasses nearly fall off in his agitation. "Or laugh at me! Or punch me and laugh at me!"
Jon starts to chuckle quietly.
"Yeah, but he probably won't," Spencer says calmly. "Since you already kissed him, and he didn't try to knock you out."
"But that could have been shock! And – wait, how the fuck do you even know that?"
"Duh," Spencer says. "Best friend, remember?"
"You're – you two've talked about – you know you suck, right? Holy shit," Brendon says disbelievingly, "that's so fucking Mean Girls of you, oh my god."
Spencer starts to laugh, sweet and bubbling and irrepressible, and Jon bites his lip very hard to keep from following suit.
"I hear you, Brendon," he says terribly solemnly, "Spencer, you kept this to yourself? I can't believe that you didn't share this with me. Brendon's right, you're just like the mean girls who wouldn't let me come to their slumber parties back in middle school. I was never allowed to have pillow fights or braid hair or hear secrets. Spencer Smith, you're mean."
Spencer laughs harder.
"I – oh, fuck you," Brendon says, "can we just stop with the making fun of me for one second? I'm serious here."
"So am I," Jon assures him, "I like braiding hair," and Spencer starts to pound on his shoulder with mirth.
Brendon leaves in high dudgeon but with, he assures himself, his dignity intact. He doesn't even slam the door. It's kind of proof that he's grown as a person.
The funny part (for a given, black-humor, joke's-on-you definition of 'funny') is that it's not even any of his subtle, cunning stratagems which does the trick.
No, he's innocently flipping through Spin and eating a creamiscle, trying not to cross the streams and accidentally drip on the pages because it's Spencer's. So is the creamsicle, actually, only he didn't have to liberate it from under Spencer's nose; Spencer actually just let him have it, offered it, even. Brendon was touched, and thus he's trying to return the show of affection by not fucking up the magazine.
However, Ryan chooses that moment to snap (Brendon's not even paying any attention to him! He means to, that's part of the concerted plan of attack, but the article on The Fall is kind of fascinating and functionally distracting). Ryan makes a vexed noise and before Brendon even has time to look up properly, he has a hold on his collar – "Dude, you're totally choking me – um, Ryan?" – and is dragging him up out of the chair. The magazine falls from his lap and hits the bus floor with a muffled, rustling thump.
"What the fuck is going on?" Ryan asks him, point-blank, swinging his head around until he's right in Brendon's face. He practically barks it out, and his jaw is tight. "Are you trying to, I don't know, psych me out? Do you think this is funny? What the fuck."
Brendon swallows (sparks are almost-not-metaphorically crackling off Ryan's hair); he casts around for something smooth to say, some completely convincing explanation, but he's caught flat-footed by the heat in Ryan's eyes and instead he just blurts out "Look. I. I kind of want to maybe kiss you again."
Ryan says faintly, stepping back, "God," and then –"Brendon, just – quit it, okay, it's not funny."
For the next couple of days, Brendon trails after Ryan like a puppy, springing variations of 'why won't you mess around with me? Huh, huh, huh?' on him at random intervals.
"No."
"No, but really."
"No."
"Blowjobs know no gender," Brendon explains earnestly, as the bus rumbles through DC. "I'm open-minded when it comes to orgasms! That's why it'll work."
"They do if you're giving them," Ryan says slowly, like he's speaking to a very small child. Brendon hopes he doesn't have these sorts of conversations with very small children. "Or were you just planning on getting them?"
"Um," Brendon says. The way Ryan's glaring at him from under the brim of his cap warns him that a "maybe" isn't going to go down well. Brendon can pick up on subtle clues like that, easy. "No, I can give it a try. I mean, I totally can. I'm there. I have the mouth of a god, you know. Or you will."
"No."
"You have to give him points for persistence," Jon remarks, seemingly to the air.
Brendon beams at him. Ryan balls up a bag of Doritos and throws it at his head.
"It would be fun," Brendon promises. "No strings attached! Nothing but orgasms!"
"Yeah?" Ryan says, picking idly at one of his gloves. Brendon is mildly disappointed by the way Ryan is taking his brilliant proposition; okay, he hasn't hit him, or laughed at him (today), and he no longer seems to think of him as a crazy stalker, but then, he doesn't seem exactly keen. "Brendon, seriously, who gave you the drugs? Was it Jon? Do I have to have a talk with Zack?"
"Oh, haha," Brendon says impatiently, "look, I'm actually serious here. It's a great idea, I promise." He shoots Ryan his very, very best pleading look, which involves stratospheric widening of his eyes and faint, suggestive lip wobbling.
(Brendon would just like some respect. This is a brilliant plan and it deserves actual consideration.)
"You want someone to get you off while on tour," Ryan says slowly. "Okay. Why me?" The tiny glance he gives Brendon from under his eyelashes is barely perceptible, a quick wary flicker.
"The Pete thing," Brendon begins, and fuck, Ryan glares at him, so he switches tactics. "You get to get off too, so it's a beautiful symbiotic arrangement! It's win win."
"Brendon, you can stop the joke now. It wasn't funny to begin with."
"It's not a joke," Brendon says, but Ryan's already stomping away.
"Why," Ryan asks slowly, after their first show at Madison Square, "did we write a stage script which requires Brendon to grope me?"
Spencer shrugs. "I think you said something about 'contesting established hetero-normatism.' And something about artistic statements?"
"I think there was something about Bowie, too," Jon adds helpfully.
"-yeah, and something about following in Gerard Way's hallowed footsteps."
"This is sexual harassment," Ryan says, glaring at his feet. "I'm being harassed in my place of work."
"Dude," Brendon says, breaking his silence (removing heavy eye makeup takes concentration,otherwise cold cream gets in your eyes, and man, does that suck), "Not my fault. Jon has the planning minutes still in his notebook, I can back this shit up."
Ryan covers his eyes.
Spencer pats his shoulder kindly. "Suck it up. It's Brendon, he'll get distracted by something shiny sooner or later."
"Fuckbuddies are an old and hallowed musical tradition," he informs Ryan after their appearance on TRL, when he finds him sitting by himself in the back lounge, reading.
"Brendon," Ryan says, very seriously. He lets the book fall shut, although he keeps his thumb caught in the pages as a marker. "Look. If you're serious – if you – look, you want to get off, I get that. That part's obvious. Why the fuck are you asking me?"
"I don't know," Brendon admits. He smoothes his hair, tugs at the hem of his t-shirt. "I blame the stage show. It confused me. You know I'm easily led – oh, fuck it, Ryan, I don't fucking know."
"What even made you think I'd agree to something like this? To be your -" he snorts – "your experimental outlet?"
"Orgasms! Sex! What part are you not getting? What part is not awesome?"
"Brendon."
"I don't know," Brendon repeats, "but. But like, I really do think I'd like to kiss you. You know. I've thought about it a couple of times. Or kind of a lot."
Brendon's too busy staring at the mockingly bright plaid of his shoes to actually see how Ryan reacts to that, but when he doesn't hear laughter and doesn't experience a fist to the face (or a slap, slaps are more Ryan's line), he looks up. Ryan has his head tilted to the side, chin resting on his hand, and he actually looks, for the first time, like he's taking Brendon seriously.
Finally, god.
"Um," Ryan says, atypically ineloquent.
Which is not a no, and again, there's no laughter or punching, so Brendon decides to press his advantage. Get them while they're stunned, he is totally a tactical genius. No one can resist his beautiful, inevitable logic, because ultimately, who says no to sex? "Is that a yes? A yes to orgasms?"
Ryan kicks his ankle. "No."
"That's totally a yes," Brendon decides, "you can't hide these things from me, Ross, I am all-seeing."
Ryan opens his mouth to protest.
"I'm going to kiss you now," Brendon announces.
Quickly, before the shock dissipates and, like, the skepticism returns. (He is swift and cunning, like the cobra. He makes a note not say that around Gabe, though. Gabe is a little territorial.)
Ryan shuts his mouth. He looks slightly wide-eyed, and Brendon absolutely has to advantage of this. He licks his lips, and Ryan watches him do it.
They both try to take the lead and lean in at the same moment; Brendon's closed mouth hits Ryan's at entirely the wrong angle, the lines of their lips practically at right angles to each other.
They pull back, frowning, then lean in again; Brendon tilts his head at the exact opposite angle to the last time, and unfortunately, so does Ryan. The overcorrection produces a mirror image of their previous attempt; a photo in negative.
"Huh," Brendon says, leaning back; his lips are dry, but they tingle a little from brushing against Ryan's stubble, against Ryan's mouth. Ryan sits back, raises an eyebrow at him. "No, no, Ryan, wait, we're trying that again. That doesn't count as a first kiss -"
"The point of first kisses is that you don't get do-overs-"
"- and anyway, that suckiness was totally not my fault. I'm an awesome kisser. Like, I could win awards. I could kiss for America! If I opened up a kissing booth, the line would be around the block-"
"Well, it's not my fault," Ryan says, "stop talking, Brendon," and his hand comes up to wrap around the curve of Brendon's neck, jerks him abruptly forward.
It's still awkward, noses knocking against each other, the sinister clack of teeth, the rasp of Ryan's chin against his new and strange; and Brendon tries to pull away and ask for another do-over, because he can totally do better. Ryan's hand keeps him clamped in place. When he opens his mouth to complain, Ryan licks his way into his mouth, slow and inevitable in a way that makes Brendon's stomach kind of – wobble, weird. Ryan evidently has hidden talents that Brendon knew not.
"Mmph," he says appreciatively when Ryan pulls away. "That was-" He licks his lips. "That was kind of okay."
"Really," Ryan says dryly, "high praise."
"You know what I mean," Brendon sighs, and he quite honestly doesn't mean to, exactly, but then he's tugging Ryan forward, hauling him into his lap. Unbelievably, Ryan allows himself to be hauled, and thus Brendon finds himself with Ryan straddling his thighs, one hand gripping the couch tightly like he needs a secure anchor, and looking at him.
Brendon can't quite remember what he was going to do next, because that move wasn't really supposed to work.
They blink at each other. He's is seriously having to fight the urge to laugh nervously before Ryan sighs a little impatiently and presses his lips to the corner of his mouth.
And, right. That's what was supposed to follow his smooth lap maneuver, right. He lets Ryan push him back against the couch just a bit, and he's not quite sure where to put his hands; this is Ryan, this is a guy, it's not like he can just subtly palm his breasts, can he? Is he supposed to work in a subtle ass-grab instead, or would Ryan kick him?
He settles for just grasping Ryan's shoulders, thumbs pressing into the hollows of their sockets, and then Ryan bites his bottom lip, the pressure just between teasing and serious, and Brendon forgets the possible etiquette of the situation and slides his hands down Ryan's back; Ryan moans, and the kiss definitely slides past experimental into serious, deeper. Brendon lets them slip a little lower, settle on Ryan's hips, left bare where his t-shirt rides up above the line of his jeans.
And this is actual making out.
He can't help freezing up.
"Hey," Ryan says quietly, resting his cheek against Brendon's, and Brendon is not freaking out, he is not. This is merely the culmination of his genius plan (or, well, the actual culmination involves getting off, but this is clearly a rung on the ladder to that promised land of orgasms).
"I can actually hear you thinking. Should I- " and Ryan starts to shift, like he's going to move away, and Brendon finds himself gripping Ryan's hips tighter, until he stays still.
"That's a no," he informs him.
"Okay." Ryan smiles, quick and brief, and he knows that look, that's relief.
"Mmm," Brendon says approvingly. "Dude, you have to keep buying girl's deodorant. I like." He nuzzles Ryan's shoulder, leaning in closer until his lips brush the warm skin of his neck. "I definitely like."
"It's amazing what regular showering does for body odor," Ryan says dryly. "You should try it some time. Go crazy." But he rocks against Brendon just a bit, one long hand sliding to cup the back of his neck again, and his thin cheeks stretch around the curl of his smile.
Brendon brushes his lips lightly against the tip of Ryan's nose, and then, because he doesn't want it to come off as too hearts-and-flowers-y, flicks out his tongue in what is totally, totally a sexy tease.
Ryan sneezes.
"Oh, gross," Brendon says, pulling back, nose wrinkled.
"Did you just. Were you trying to molest my nose?" Ryan asks disbelievingly. "Seriously?"
"Did you just sneeze on me? Seriously?"
Sneezing is apparently a total mood-killer. Brendon will keep that in mind in the future.