orphaned ficlets of a bandom persuasion
So I've got these snippety bits of fic. They're extracted from longer stories that don't work and never will. But these bits are salvageable.
The first two are from a story where Jon and Ryan are both half in love with each other but don't know it; Jon thinks Ryan's oblivious, so he tries harder and harder to get his attention, which makes Ryan thinks Jon's just being a tease. They're failboats and it's frustrating-the story even more so, because it doesn't work.
The third is from an epic girl!Ryan/girl!Spencer story, also featuring failboat behavior (as well as lots of heavy stuff about gender and sexuality and friendship that I don't have the mental energy to wrangle…right now.)
Jon/Ryan UST
Jon's asked Spencer, and he figures Spencer ought to know. All that asking did, though, was reinforce his idea that Ryan is an inscrutable creature, even to his closest friends. Because there's no way Spencer's right-there's no way Ryan and Brendon haven't fucked.
But he's asked Brendon, too, and it reinforced his idea that Brendon is an unfailingly forthright guy, especially when you catch him a little bit sauced. No, Brendon said. I wish. And now that I wish is practically playing out in front of Jon's eyes here in this crowded club at a private label party that ought to be fun but maybe isn't, at least not for Jon. There's been too much beer but not quite enough, so that his head buzzes but he doesn't completely float away to that place of not caring he desperately needs right about now. It doesn't matter if he's sure what he's seeing is nothing. Being sure with your head and being sure with your gut are not the same thing. Or your dick.
Brendon's hot. Sure. But it's Ryan's hips he's watching as the two of them fall into the music and, thanks to Brendon, move together way more effortlessly than they do on the stage. It's not sex on the dance floor, but it's fluid and Ryan is just…beautiful. One of Brendon's hands pushes and pulls at Ryan's hips sometimes, to steady them, to keep Ryan's moves just as smooth as his. Ryan moves his hands in counterpoint against Brendon's shoulders.
It's a sensually bouncing, shadowy little techno world they're in, and Brendon's eyes are dark and his face is lit into an unselfconscious smile, and Ryan's eyes are bright and his lips are flushed deep pink and murmuring along with the repetitive hook of the song. One would swear the two of them were trying to make half the room horny, but they're lost in their own little world and, really, they're probably not even trying to make each other horny, not even as drunk as they undoubtedly are.
In the middle of a faster song, Brendon turns around and Jon watches Ryan's hands take hold of his hips and pull them back into his a little. Jon's pulse bounces at his throat. But they're not grinding, just leaning on each other and moving to the rhythm, bantering the way they always do, even when they're not touching: Ryan trying for blasé and sardonic and failing in the face of Brendon's wide-open smiling and sly sarcasm.
Jon watches, and as much as it makes him flush with desire, it's frustrating as hell. Ryan's dancing with Brendon maybe exactly like he'd be dancing with Jon. He can imagine being close enough to feel the heat coming off him, close enough to have those hands blithely clutching his hips, close enough not to be close enough at all.
Ryan has been weird for days. Even Spencer's giving him a wide berth. That's actually Jon's first clue.
His second is that Ryan's even more sharply divided into his Ryanness than usual, the liquid eyes and the soft hands contrasted with those eyes' opacity and those hands only giving and not taking a damn thing. The more friendly he seems, the more closed off he really is. He maybe doesn't even know he's doing it. He's been talking to Jon a lot, suspiciously a lot, as if to prove things are normal when all it does it prove the opposite.
It doesn't work the same way with Ryan and Spencer. They pick fights. Jon would really like to ask them both separately what the fight's about, if only to hear how comically different-and completely inaccurate-their answers are.
When Spencer gives Ryan a wide berth, Brendon does the same with Spencer, which means he's shuttling like a pinball between Ryan and Jon. This is actually helpful. One has no choice but to deal with Brendon, to time the flipping of that button just right; and if one does, he can spin him perfectly into the other, like a challenge. Like a signal. Brendon even seems to know it, to crave it.
On the bus, Ryan tugs at Brendon's shirt, making it lie right. Before they head out to this probably tedious party someone's throwing for them, Ryan has talked Brendon into putting on some makeup. Brendon's in some fleeting glam phase off stage anyway lately, and it seems to please Ryan, if only because it sometimes pleases Brendon to be his fashion experiment. But when Spencer yells at them again from outside the bus to hurry the hell up and Ryan pulls off the scarf he's wearing and ties it around Brendon's neck, Brendon gives Jon a plaintive grimace. It really is the least flattering shade of purple in the history of the world. Even Jon recognizes that.
Just then, Spencer bellows something sarcastic at Ryan. Ryan sweeps out of the bus, already glaring at him through the door before he opens it. Only Ryan can make Spencer bellow like that; only Spencer can make Ryan sweep.
Brendon crosses over to Jon and rests his forehead against Jon's shoulder, mumbling into his collarbone, "What the fuck is up with them?"
Jon's fingers work at the decorative knot on the scarf. "Ryan."
Later, on somebody's patio, Ryan comes outside to find Jon a little stoned and wearing the terrible purple scarf. He's been wearing it all night. It only looks slightly more ridiculous with his jeans and t-shirt than it did with Brendon's, which is to say it should please Ryan. But Ryan stops in front of him, squinting at him like he can't quite see him in the glow of the candles and lanterns littering the railings. Before Jon knows it, Ryan has taken the scarf back, layering it over the one he's already wearing.
"You're gonna be miserably hot, you know," Jon says.
Ryan shrugs. "I'm already miserably hot." Jon can't tell if he's talking about the temperature or making some ambiguous snarky remark about his looks. Or both.
Ryan doesn't move away from him, but he turns around and looks out over the dark back yard. Jon is overwhelmed with the need to have his hands on him, to really touch him and not just do this weird thing they've been doing for days, so he throws his arms around his neck, forearms flat against his chest, resting his body easy against his back. Waiting.
"We cool?" Jon finally asks.
Ryan's shoulders stiffen. "Aren't we?"
"Yeah. You know, you're making Spencer bitchy."
Ryan's shoulders bounce as he chuckles. "I know."
"So stop."
Ryan drops his head and rubs his scratchy jaw against Jon's arm. His lips brush his wrist. "Okay. But you tell him."
"Tell him you're stopping?"
"Yeah."
Jon chuckles softly. "Sure."
They stay there like that for a while, Jon's lips in Ryan's hair, Ryan's hand shoved into his pockets.
girl!Ryan
Anyone else might be happy with the offer of a photo spread in Out magazine, one with a top photographer and a kick-ass stylist and someone to take her art seriously instead of call her a fucking emo queen. But Ryan Ross is not anyone.
"Oh my fucking god," she moans. "I am so motherfucking tired of being a lesbian."
Ryan's mad. Really mad. Spencer can tell by how she seems loose and in control, but she's not really breathing. It's been a long time coming, this tantrum, and Spencer gets it. As if the only interesting thing about Ryan is who she fucks. As if her novelty is what keeps them selling records, not her talent. That's actually the worst of it, the idea that that might actually be true.
Jon's clearly absorbing the bad mood full force, because he's not making jokes at all. He looks solemn and focused, like he's going to bodily force her into being cuddled, or else let her take her frustration out on him with her bony elbows. Sometimes Ryan picks fights with Jon as an excuse to do some cathartic wrestling. Brendon's taken to doing the same thing with Jon. It's kind of ridiculous.
As is Ryan's face. She thinks she's so calm and cool and serious, but she has no idea how sometimes-way less than people think, but it's still a thing-she's so melodramatic it's crazy. But in the same way her lyrics are: melodrama and sarcasm both masking what she's feeling. Or not masking it at all, just taking the sting out of it by putting her particular self-effacing spin on it.
So when Ryan sighs and throws up her hands in the air and moans, "Oh my fucking god, I'm so motherfucking tired of being a lesbian," it's the most serious thing ever. But it's also ridiculous.
But never underestimate the ability of Brendon Urie to top anyone in ridiculousness.
"Oh, really?" he says, waggling his eyebrows. "You know, if you wanted to make a serious effort at change, I could…" Then he makes his fingers into a V, bringing it up to his mouth and wiggling his tongue into it. Spencer hasn't seen anyone do that since junior high; she'd forgotten just how effectively obscene the gesture was.
For a split second, Spencer is a little freaked. Jon, too, apparently. He was already moving toward Ryan, and now he's practically stepping between her and Brendon. Good thing: Ryan's not above putting her bony elbows to use on Brendon-who doesn't pull punches, especially not with Ryan.
But apparently there's no real danger. Ryan's face dissolves into a smile, and she collapses into Jon's arms, giggling.
She aims a wicked grin in Brendon's direction. "Babe, I could totally school you at cunnilingus."
"Hey now," Jon says, in mock offense and horror. Probably mostly because he didn't have the balls to be that crude himself, and it totally worked.
"In case you jokers didn't know it," Ryan adds, "I am awesome at eating pussy."
At that, Brendon falls over the back of the couch, giggling. Spencer finally has no choice but to give in, too.
The next morning, Jon's on the phone with Pete, telling him they want to call their second album Awesome at Eating-
"Fucker," Ryan swears, kicking him in the shins.
"-Breakfast," Jon finishes, frowning at Ryan even though he's also grinning. "Awesome at Eating Breakfast. Because Ryan is."
"Totally," Brendon chimes in.
"God, I hate you fuckers," Ryan hisses.
She looks to Spencer for support in her indignation, but Spencer can only smile. She pretty much loves these fuckers.
~
The first two are from a story where Jon and Ryan are both half in love with each other but don't know it; Jon thinks Ryan's oblivious, so he tries harder and harder to get his attention, which makes Ryan thinks Jon's just being a tease. They're failboats and it's frustrating-the story even more so, because it doesn't work.
The third is from an epic girl!Ryan/girl!Spencer story, also featuring failboat behavior (as well as lots of heavy stuff about gender and sexuality and friendship that I don't have the mental energy to wrangle…right now.)
Jon/Ryan UST
Jon's asked Spencer, and he figures Spencer ought to know. All that asking did, though, was reinforce his idea that Ryan is an inscrutable creature, even to his closest friends. Because there's no way Spencer's right-there's no way Ryan and Brendon haven't fucked.
But he's asked Brendon, too, and it reinforced his idea that Brendon is an unfailingly forthright guy, especially when you catch him a little bit sauced. No, Brendon said. I wish. And now that I wish is practically playing out in front of Jon's eyes here in this crowded club at a private label party that ought to be fun but maybe isn't, at least not for Jon. There's been too much beer but not quite enough, so that his head buzzes but he doesn't completely float away to that place of not caring he desperately needs right about now. It doesn't matter if he's sure what he's seeing is nothing. Being sure with your head and being sure with your gut are not the same thing. Or your dick.
Brendon's hot. Sure. But it's Ryan's hips he's watching as the two of them fall into the music and, thanks to Brendon, move together way more effortlessly than they do on the stage. It's not sex on the dance floor, but it's fluid and Ryan is just…beautiful. One of Brendon's hands pushes and pulls at Ryan's hips sometimes, to steady them, to keep Ryan's moves just as smooth as his. Ryan moves his hands in counterpoint against Brendon's shoulders.
It's a sensually bouncing, shadowy little techno world they're in, and Brendon's eyes are dark and his face is lit into an unselfconscious smile, and Ryan's eyes are bright and his lips are flushed deep pink and murmuring along with the repetitive hook of the song. One would swear the two of them were trying to make half the room horny, but they're lost in their own little world and, really, they're probably not even trying to make each other horny, not even as drunk as they undoubtedly are.
In the middle of a faster song, Brendon turns around and Jon watches Ryan's hands take hold of his hips and pull them back into his a little. Jon's pulse bounces at his throat. But they're not grinding, just leaning on each other and moving to the rhythm, bantering the way they always do, even when they're not touching: Ryan trying for blasé and sardonic and failing in the face of Brendon's wide-open smiling and sly sarcasm.
Jon watches, and as much as it makes him flush with desire, it's frustrating as hell. Ryan's dancing with Brendon maybe exactly like he'd be dancing with Jon. He can imagine being close enough to feel the heat coming off him, close enough to have those hands blithely clutching his hips, close enough not to be close enough at all.
Ryan has been weird for days. Even Spencer's giving him a wide berth. That's actually Jon's first clue.
His second is that Ryan's even more sharply divided into his Ryanness than usual, the liquid eyes and the soft hands contrasted with those eyes' opacity and those hands only giving and not taking a damn thing. The more friendly he seems, the more closed off he really is. He maybe doesn't even know he's doing it. He's been talking to Jon a lot, suspiciously a lot, as if to prove things are normal when all it does it prove the opposite.
It doesn't work the same way with Ryan and Spencer. They pick fights. Jon would really like to ask them both separately what the fight's about, if only to hear how comically different-and completely inaccurate-their answers are.
When Spencer gives Ryan a wide berth, Brendon does the same with Spencer, which means he's shuttling like a pinball between Ryan and Jon. This is actually helpful. One has no choice but to deal with Brendon, to time the flipping of that button just right; and if one does, he can spin him perfectly into the other, like a challenge. Like a signal. Brendon even seems to know it, to crave it.
On the bus, Ryan tugs at Brendon's shirt, making it lie right. Before they head out to this probably tedious party someone's throwing for them, Ryan has talked Brendon into putting on some makeup. Brendon's in some fleeting glam phase off stage anyway lately, and it seems to please Ryan, if only because it sometimes pleases Brendon to be his fashion experiment. But when Spencer yells at them again from outside the bus to hurry the hell up and Ryan pulls off the scarf he's wearing and ties it around Brendon's neck, Brendon gives Jon a plaintive grimace. It really is the least flattering shade of purple in the history of the world. Even Jon recognizes that.
Just then, Spencer bellows something sarcastic at Ryan. Ryan sweeps out of the bus, already glaring at him through the door before he opens it. Only Ryan can make Spencer bellow like that; only Spencer can make Ryan sweep.
Brendon crosses over to Jon and rests his forehead against Jon's shoulder, mumbling into his collarbone, "What the fuck is up with them?"
Jon's fingers work at the decorative knot on the scarf. "Ryan."
Later, on somebody's patio, Ryan comes outside to find Jon a little stoned and wearing the terrible purple scarf. He's been wearing it all night. It only looks slightly more ridiculous with his jeans and t-shirt than it did with Brendon's, which is to say it should please Ryan. But Ryan stops in front of him, squinting at him like he can't quite see him in the glow of the candles and lanterns littering the railings. Before Jon knows it, Ryan has taken the scarf back, layering it over the one he's already wearing.
"You're gonna be miserably hot, you know," Jon says.
Ryan shrugs. "I'm already miserably hot." Jon can't tell if he's talking about the temperature or making some ambiguous snarky remark about his looks. Or both.
Ryan doesn't move away from him, but he turns around and looks out over the dark back yard. Jon is overwhelmed with the need to have his hands on him, to really touch him and not just do this weird thing they've been doing for days, so he throws his arms around his neck, forearms flat against his chest, resting his body easy against his back. Waiting.
"We cool?" Jon finally asks.
Ryan's shoulders stiffen. "Aren't we?"
"Yeah. You know, you're making Spencer bitchy."
Ryan's shoulders bounce as he chuckles. "I know."
"So stop."
Ryan drops his head and rubs his scratchy jaw against Jon's arm. His lips brush his wrist. "Okay. But you tell him."
"Tell him you're stopping?"
"Yeah."
Jon chuckles softly. "Sure."
They stay there like that for a while, Jon's lips in Ryan's hair, Ryan's hand shoved into his pockets.
girl!Ryan
Anyone else might be happy with the offer of a photo spread in Out magazine, one with a top photographer and a kick-ass stylist and someone to take her art seriously instead of call her a fucking emo queen. But Ryan Ross is not anyone.
"Oh my fucking god," she moans. "I am so motherfucking tired of being a lesbian."
Ryan's mad. Really mad. Spencer can tell by how she seems loose and in control, but she's not really breathing. It's been a long time coming, this tantrum, and Spencer gets it. As if the only interesting thing about Ryan is who she fucks. As if her novelty is what keeps them selling records, not her talent. That's actually the worst of it, the idea that that might actually be true.
Jon's clearly absorbing the bad mood full force, because he's not making jokes at all. He looks solemn and focused, like he's going to bodily force her into being cuddled, or else let her take her frustration out on him with her bony elbows. Sometimes Ryan picks fights with Jon as an excuse to do some cathartic wrestling. Brendon's taken to doing the same thing with Jon. It's kind of ridiculous.
As is Ryan's face. She thinks she's so calm and cool and serious, but she has no idea how sometimes-way less than people think, but it's still a thing-she's so melodramatic it's crazy. But in the same way her lyrics are: melodrama and sarcasm both masking what she's feeling. Or not masking it at all, just taking the sting out of it by putting her particular self-effacing spin on it.
So when Ryan sighs and throws up her hands in the air and moans, "Oh my fucking god, I'm so motherfucking tired of being a lesbian," it's the most serious thing ever. But it's also ridiculous.
But never underestimate the ability of Brendon Urie to top anyone in ridiculousness.
"Oh, really?" he says, waggling his eyebrows. "You know, if you wanted to make a serious effort at change, I could…" Then he makes his fingers into a V, bringing it up to his mouth and wiggling his tongue into it. Spencer hasn't seen anyone do that since junior high; she'd forgotten just how effectively obscene the gesture was.
For a split second, Spencer is a little freaked. Jon, too, apparently. He was already moving toward Ryan, and now he's practically stepping between her and Brendon. Good thing: Ryan's not above putting her bony elbows to use on Brendon-who doesn't pull punches, especially not with Ryan.
But apparently there's no real danger. Ryan's face dissolves into a smile, and she collapses into Jon's arms, giggling.
She aims a wicked grin in Brendon's direction. "Babe, I could totally school you at cunnilingus."
"Hey now," Jon says, in mock offense and horror. Probably mostly because he didn't have the balls to be that crude himself, and it totally worked.
"In case you jokers didn't know it," Ryan adds, "I am awesome at eating pussy."
At that, Brendon falls over the back of the couch, giggling. Spencer finally has no choice but to give in, too.
The next morning, Jon's on the phone with Pete, telling him they want to call their second album Awesome at Eating-
"Fucker," Ryan swears, kicking him in the shins.
"-Breakfast," Jon finishes, frowning at Ryan even though he's also grinning. "Awesome at Eating Breakfast. Because Ryan is."
"Totally," Brendon chimes in.
"God, I hate you fuckers," Ryan hisses.
She looks to Spencer for support in her indignation, but Spencer can only smile. She pretty much loves these fuckers.
~