It's always early in the morning when Ryan comes to him.
He waits for it every day, hell, he's altered his sleeping patterns just to fit in that moment where they join together as one, where Brendon's not too overwhelming, when Ryan is open and not disconnected.
Sometimes it is about Ryan, and Brendon will lay him down on the studio's plush carpet, and watch the way Ryan relaxes under his fingers. The only time he lets anyone take care of him, and Brendon is glad to be that person.
Brendon's turn doesn't happen often, because he's just generally a light-hearted person. He personally thinks that its just because caring for Ryan is when it is really his time. But there are days when he feels like every part of him has been taken away, given to girls in venues, fans, winners of contests, and interviewers, and those are the days when Brendon knows it is his turn.
Most of the time, it is just about them in general. The quiet house they all bought together, with its quiet studio, quiet surroundings, offers as a calm landscape for Brendon to make Ryan his own. The back room of their tour bus is the place where they can have a conversation without words. Hotels act as a barrier between themselves and reality, with places full of privacy, but friends within close reach.
As time goes on, their couplings become infrequent, and sporadic in their planning. Messy sexual favors in buses along highway routes, and lips meeting flesh quickly and without any regard, somewhere between gas stations and performances. Eventually Ryan stops coming to him altogether, and Brendon does not have the selflessness to sacrifice his morals and go to him on his own.
Brendon longs for their coming together, and from the way Ryan goes still sometimes, and runs his hand over his hip where Brendon had once bruised, he knows Ryan does too.
Ryan comes to him sometime in June of two-thousand-and-eight.
It's the era of paisley prints and cowboy-esque scarves around Ryan's proud proud neck.
It's early morning, sometime just after one, he thinks, and the realization that his sleep pattern never adjusted hits him heavily, and curls in his stomach like the phantom of Ryan's once-had-been touches.
Without knowing who's settled their knocking against the studio doorway, Brendon drops his hands from the piano keys, and turns to meet cinnamon eyes.
Brendon wonders what's happening, maybe if his allergy medicine has started hallucinations of his desires, before Ryan makes himself at home next to Brendon on the piano throne.
More out of habit than any conscious thought, their hands entwine and Brendon uses the free fingers to prattle along the keys, feeling out every note in a small tone. "Things have changed for me." Ryan says, but offers a smile. Ryan's tuneless humming is what makes his head turn, but its Ryan's lips nestling against his own that makes his stomach swoop in a hazy free-fall. Without any required prodding of his own, his hand raises to brush through Ryan's hair, and then they are kissing without abandon, reckless and melodic, against Brendon's piano.
Wow, is the single thought his brain has to offer, as he watches Ryan, all honey colored eyes and the setting sun hanging in his hair, close the top of the piano in a flash of light brief on the strings before they are hidden. Ryan makes his way back over to Brendon, and the last murmur in Brendon's conscience is Keltie, before his heart is in control. It's all a downward spiral, from there, with them stripping as if their need for contact would quench their thirsts for something anything better than the people they were turning out to be.
Ryan knows that Ryan has changed Brendon in some ways, knows that he's changed him to be something that Ryan would want. He knows that he's made Brendon more withdrawn, more quiet and as contemplative as Ryan is himself. It's right now where Brendon is a pure, concentrated, boy of energy, so un-focused on keeping himself from slipping back to 'Brendon, the boy who lures every last bug out of hotel rooms with graham crackers and marshmallows' like he usually is, that Ryan loves him most.
Brendon slides his hands down Ryan's sides, flesh warming flesh colored like that of fresh cream. Ryan dips his head to mouth over the spot that's always made Brendon weak, and is rewarded with a satisfying choked sound. They relearn the expanse of each other's bodies under the wide vanity window that marks the room, hands wandering, hesitant, before the knowledge of each other's likes comes back. Ryan suspects that it never really left, because Brendon's already thumbing at the top of Ryan's slacks.
Ryan pushes them down, boxers coming with them, and doesn't allow himself time to feel self-conscious, because Brendon knows the body before him like the back of his hand, he's seen it all before. Brendon's naked before Ryan can do something about it, and Ryan helps lift him onto the piano. For a moment, Brendon looks like he's going to complain about defiling the only thing in the house that's purely his, but then he gives it, gives himself, over just like everything else, with unrelenting passion and without hesitation.
Tonight it's Brendon's turn, and Ryan is gentle, possibly gentler than he ever has been. He's carefully nudging apart Brendon's legs, preparing him with subtle touches still enough to break Brendon's resistance down around Ryan's fingertips. Then it's all a blur, until he gets the heady rush of toomuch, that alerts him that Ryan's sliding forward, keeping his fingertips on Brendon's face, turning his chin to meet Ryan's lips. It's everything Brendon's ever wanted; the smooth piano under his back, Ryan steady above him.
Brendon wants to say 'I love you', but he can't, because it can't work in a hateful world, and he shouldn't ever have the beautiful boy above him, so he pours the 'I love you' onto Ryan's skin, and lets the light from the setting sun bathe them.
Seeing Brendon spread out along his piano, cool skin clashing with the dark ebony, Ryan can't help but bury his face against Brendon's neck, and he hears Brendon through the touches on his skin.
When Ryan leaves Panic At The Disco, taking Jon with him, the next year, it's the hardest thing he's ever done.
Every night for the next two years, Brendon returns to the music room, and looks out through the giant vanity window. He has a vague memory of something to do with 'I love you' coming off his fingertips.
He makes it into a song that will never be recorded.
One day, he gets a letter from Ryan Ross.
He doesn't open it until Spencer has gone to bed.
He never tells Spencer what it said, and Spencer never asks why the window in the Piano Room has to be replaced.
The Young Veins only tours through California once.
One of the venue owners overhears fans that night, "That's honestly the best show they've done, like, ever." The other fan remarks, "Ryan seemed really enthusiastic tonight." The first fan nods, replying, "It's as if he suspected Brendon to be watching." She snorts, and blushes when her friend says, "You're such a Rydon fangirl!"
The girl shakes her head. "No. I just don't like seeing best friends lose each other."
"Panic! At The Disco is here with us today. Brendon, how has touring been going?"
"It's been going awesome!" The dark haired boy smiles winningly. "Our fans keep us going."
"I bet they do! How is this tour different from your last tour, ?"
"Well --" Brendon Urie pauses for a moment, until Spencer Smith, the drummer, pokes his shoulder. "Well obviously there's no Jon, no Ryan. But really, this tour is about us. It's about the fans coming away from the shows thinking, 'They've really changed.'" Brendon laughs, "And hopefully they think we've changed for the better!"
"So things have changed for you?"
Brendon goes still, eyes going distant. "Things have changed for me." But then he smiles. "But that's okay." He says quietly.
There's a long period of almost four years where Panic tours, and they cross paths with The Young Veins. It's nothing but professional courtesy between the two, and the fans seem at peace.
Brendon and Ryan fight on the next tour.
"I fucking love you, Ryan!"
Sobbing back, "I love y-You shouldn't love me!"
Spencer James Smith The Fifth has pieced together everything.
By the age of seventy-three he has put together everything he can remember, with the help of Jonathan Walker.
He can't remember anything about himself, really, but he knows a few things.
One, he knows he was the drummer for Panic! At The Disco.
The second thing is, two of his best friends once loved each other very much, in the way only best friends can. So much, that they both pushed each other away and went about their lives as if daily life had never included an impromptu waltz around the bus with each other, making teens hearts beat faster, and running through sun-filled meadows for that 'perfect, passionate kiss.'
Three, he's absolutely certain about this one, he has absolutely every interview, every single thing that Panic has ever said to the press, in the binder he's holding. In between the interviews, he has pages upon pages where Jon has helped him write down what they really meant by the things they said, what the inside jokes that they could remember from the interview were, and the number of times Ryan and Brendon looked at each other in that way. He has their entire story in this book he's holding.
Jon prods him gently, and takes the book from Spencer's aged and arthritis-warped hands, and does his best to make it across the room to where the chocolate eyed and hazel eyed old men sit a safe distance away from each other, because neither knows who the other is.
Spencer and Jon make them read it together. Every last word, in one sitting.
Jon can see the shaking in Ryan's hand when he sees something, and Jon knows it's the picture he took of Brendon and Ryan at the cabin, heads bent down over Ryan's guitar, re-stringing it with cautious hands, and Brendon is looking up at Ryan, Ryan's looking down at Brendon, one of the most real smiles Jon had ever seen on his face.
When Brendon passes away, Ryan's adamant about him being buried in this strange field where there's a huge and ancient crumbling wall, a giant window embedded into the side of the tumbling structure.
Ryan joins him there two years later.
It's a sunny day and there are flowers everywhere. Dew glints off the young blond boy's hair, and he's tapping a rock with makeshift sticks. There's a honey-eyed boy sitting under a tree, a dark haired boy utilizing his lap as a pillow. Watching with a small smile, the older of the four boys calls out to them, "GUYS. Listen to me damnit! There is a fricking WALL over here!"
And he laughs as they all scramble to their feet, racing to the crumbling wall.
"That window shure is ednormous." Says the little boy with the wide doe-eyes full of awe.
" 'Enormous' Bren, it's 'enormous'." Corrects the boy with the honey eyes.
The blond nods, and sits down quietly, watching as the two boys wander closer with a smile for the dark haired boy beside him.
'Bren' looks up at the window, and a sunny smile breaks across his face.
His hand finds the taller boys', and he tugs him forward to touch where the glass has been buried under dirt.
He traces a heart into the glass, and Ryan's hand closes over his as they draw a strange bat-like shape around it.