Fic: Colour Wheel (2/2)
Title: Colour Wheel (2/2)
The studio is maybe, probably, definitely, the coolest thing ever.
There’s something about the atmosphere, the environment, the fact that he is writing and singing on an honest to God CD that leaves the colours pooling behind his eyelids and Ryan’s lyrics draining off his tongue, even when he’s not in a recording booth.
“Jesus Christ,” Spencer says, and he leans further back in the chair. “Shut the fuck up, Brendon Urie.”
“Uh, no, Spencer Smith.” He’s sure the guy smiles, positive. Brendon bounds over, presses his lips to Spencer’s forehead. “Dude, fuck, this is what it must feel like to Ariel when she’s on land with the Prince. I swear to God.”
Spencer laughs, but Ryan’s sitting in the background, headphones on and Brendon hadn’t even known he was listening. “Dorothy in the Emerald City.”
Brendon grins, and sees yellow. “This feels an awful lot like something magic, Toto.”
*
This? This not so much.
“I don’t...I just can’t anymore, Brendon.”
He’s not sure which part of him is hurting, thinks it could be the space beneath his fingernails, somewhere in his intestines, he doesn’t even know, but it’s halfway to unbearable. “What can’t you-“
“This -” And Audrey’s all gestures, wild arms and wide eyes (they’re bloodshot, rimmed with a black that Brendon doesn’t think is just eyeliner.)
“What?”
Her arms shake and she clenches her fists against her eyes. When she looks up, it’s exhausted and resigned and when she says, “You, Brendon, I can’t do you anymore,” Brendon feels like he could explode, feels like there’s a land mine burning beneath his feet.
Brendon blinks, clenches his fingers in his jean pockets. “Was the sex bad or whatever? Because, like, I’m pretty sure I’ll get better.”
“Fuck.” She presses her fingers against closed eyes again and Brendon thinks she could be crying. She looks up at him. “I don’t think I’m the one you want.”
“What’s that even mean?”
Audrey sighs, talks to the floor. “Look, you’ve got fame and stardom on your horizon. I told you already I want my own, I’m not gonna ride on anyone’s coattails, least of all yours.”
“Audrey, fuck, that’s not even a real excuse, look -” He reaches out, grabs at her arm. She pulls away. “No, Brendon, goodbye. Just, good luck and goodbye.”
Brendon bites his tongue and works too hard to blink back bright spots that appear behind his eyes. He thinks that if this were a movie - he thinks that if this were TV - if this were anything but real life something better would be round the corner. Maybe Bright Eyes would be the soundtrack. Maybe that’s melodramatic. Point is, he can’t help feeling like he’s lost something, even if Audrey wasn’t really worth it in the first place.
*
Break-up depression is really a chick thing and Brendon figures he’ll probably care as soon as it stops hurting.
“You alright?” Ryan asks, and Brendon clenches his eyes shut, buries hard beneath the covers of the bed.
“Fine.”
“Okay,” Ryan says, and he pulls back the sheets, strips them from Brendon’s back and Brendon just curls up, works the foetal position. He hears a sigh somewhere above him and feels the bed dip. Ryan’s spindly legs are stretched out behind him and Brendon can feel his breath on the back of his neck.
Ryan sighs again, stares at the ceiling. “Do you want like, a hug or whatever?”
Brendon pauses, beat, before rolling over and saying, “Yeah, okay.”
*
They have an album tucked beneath their belt, so Brendon figures it’s ridiculous that they’re yet to play for a real audience, for a crowd, for anyone. They’ve built a fanbase out of Ryan’s pretty face and recorded demos and fuck, out of Pete Wentz, none of it’s been hard-earned and when they go to play their first real gig, the jitters shake their way from Brendon’s toes to his forehead.
The audience though, they’re there and real and fuck, they’re tangible. They’re not a haze of imagination, they’re faces that Brendon can see, eyelashes he can count, sweat he can feel and when he gets on stage he sings until his throat’s raw.
“We were so, so terrible,” Ryan says, and it’s been three, four, five minutes since they staggered off stage, collapsed into the backdrop behind curtain and lights, away from crowd and voices.
“Then stop smiling, loser.”
The only thing Brendon will ever, ever regret about this night is that he didn’t have to woo the crowd, didn’t have to win them with raw talent or charisma.
They were long won.
*
The Academy Is… is sorta amazing and Brendon doesn’t think he’d be able to say that five times fast, but really, he’s always been pretty useless with that shit. The guys, Bill, Siska, all of them, they make the tour easier than Brendon figures they deserve.
Tonight, Siska’s sitting on the sofa, legs curled up beneath him opposite a guy that Brendon’s only ever seen backstage. They’re playing red hands and Brendon doesn’t think Siska’s winning.
“Fuck,” Siska says after a particularly loud slap. The other guy just laughs, mumbles out something that sounds a lot like poor baby.
The door swings open though, sudden and abrupt and Butcher is there, wild eyed and big grinned and he pulls Siska up by the arm, drags him out with a laugh. The guy on the couch blinks, chuckles again, and moves to fiddle with the guitar in the corner. Brendon shrugs, taps out a rhythm on his knee until Aladdin bleeds beneath his tongue, and he sings A Whole New World like he wrote it, said it, felt it. When the guy hums along, well, Brendon hesitates to use the word fate, but silver trickles through his irises, across his pupils until it’s all he can see.
“A whole new world,” the guy murmurs, breathes out into open space and Brendon stops, stares and the guy mustn’t realise, keeps going. “Don’t you dare close your eyes.”
The silence is sort of telling and when he leans back, blinks at Brendon’s grin, he just laughs, throws his hands up and shrugs in a way that Brendon can maybe identify with.
“What an introduction,” he says. “I sing better in the shower.”
Brendon laughs, rocks back onto his heels and flashes the grin that won Audrey. “Hey, you seen me on stage? I sing better like, anywhere else.”
The guy runs a hand through his hair and returns a grin that goes straight to Brendon’s belly. “I’m Jon.”
“Brendon.”
*
There’s a million awful ways to break up with someone. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
“We can still be friends.”
(goodbye and goodluck).
Brendon doesn’t even know, but maybe all of them apply to Brent.
It wasn’t him.
It was them.
Brendon closes his eyes and sees black.
*
Brendon’s not sure what Ryan’s dad thought in, but he supposes that in reality, it doesn’t matter all that much now because the guy’s dead.
Spencer says the phone call’s not a surprise and Brendon opens his mouth, closes it, opens it.
“Maybe you shouldn’t say anything,” Spencer says, and he squints bleary-blues out the window. Ryan’s sitting on the grass outside the bus, eyes pointing skyward and fingers deep in the earth. Brendon turns to watch too. He almost doesn’t hear Jon slide in beside him. “I don’t know him well enough.”
Brendon purses his lips, chews on the inside of his cheek. “Me neither.”
Jon shrugs, presses his forehead against the glass and says, “Moments like this make me wish I smoked.”
Brendon flashes him a grin before pulling himself up. He can feel Spencer’s eyes on him when he pulls open the door to the bus and heads outside.
By the time he gets to Ryan, his shadow is tall, casts over Ryan like the bad guy in black and white films and that’s nothing Brendon wants. He pauses, toes the dirt with his shoe and says, “Do you like-“
Ryan stands up. Stares. Sighs.
“Do you want company?” Brendon tries and Ryan closes his eyes, lashes laid flush against his cheeks and Brendon has to remind himself to breath.
“I don’t know,” Ryan says, and doubles over, throws up on Brendon’s shoes.
I’m-hurting, Ryan thinks, and-I-don’t-know-why.
Brendon doesn’t think at all.
*
Spencer and Ryan go back to Vegas for the funeral and Brendon does The Right Thing and stays back and doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t talk about family and tunes their bus playlist to not play any depressing songs.
When they get back, Brendon paints a smile on his face and wanders around like a doll or a clown. He censors himself in all the worst ways and he figures it probably doesn’t matter in the long run because Ryan won’t even look at him, let alone talk.
“It’ll get better,” Spencer says, and Brendon thinks, black.
When?
*
Brendon pulls back the curtain to Ryan’s bunk like it’s opening night of Depressing!the musical and Ryan only stares back with half-lidded eyes and clenched lips. There’s no applause, and without an audience, Brendon’s always a little lost.
“Hi,” he says.
Ryan doesn’t even blink, but his face softens just enough to be noticeable. “Hi.”
Brendon bites his lower lip before caving, pushing Ryan over against the wall of the bus and pulling himself over the edge of the thin mattress. He’s not good at this, at comfort and quiet, and Ryan, he’s stiff to the touch and when Brendon finally thinks red-fuck-it, and wraps arms around Ryan’s waist, he’s almost surprised not to be pushed straight out of the bed.
They just hug and Brendon breathes in the moment, Ryan’s hair and skin and just, he holds on. “I won’t say anything if you promise me that you’ll be alright in the morning.”
The silence pools between them, runs down Brendon’s legs and sprawls beneath his toes. He’s stopped hoping for an answer when Ryan says, “Okay.”
*
The break is almost too welcome, a bed at the end of a long day, and when Brendon’s had enough of his family, he somehow ends up at Ryan’s.
The door swings wide and Ryan blinks, almost startled.
“Do you know what’s fun about being Mormon?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Brendon states. “Fuck-all. Stupid like, fucking religious practices. Who needs them?”
Ryan quirks a grin. “Not you?”
“Not me.” Brendon manages to squirm his way past Ryan and into the wide apartment. He stops dead. “Wow, this is like, bare.”
It is, too. The floorboards stretch from one wall to the other and the only thing that mars it is Ryan’s open suitcase and a tiny television tucked into the corner. Brendon can see the Animal Planet logo in the corner of the screen as lions tussle in the middle.
Ryan rolls his eyes. “Fuck off, I’ve pretty much been here for two hours, I’m sorry if I haven’t had time to set up house in between states on tour.”
Brendon laughs, but he collapses onto the floor sprawls himself out and reaches his arms up in the universal language of hug? Ryan grins, and he lies down too, but not into Brendon. The dialogue from the tiny television drowns in the low hum of Brendon’s voice as he murmurs out wordless tunes. This is easy, and Brendon, he can’t pinpoint it, but some part of him, something in his belly, intestines, liver, there’s something there that catches, beats, breathes on its own when Ryan’s there.
“This is nice,” he mumbles.
“Lying on the floor?” Ryan quirks a brow, rolls his eyes and it’s just, Brendon doesn’t mean to, has always figured his control was a little better, but he leans in, closes a gap that’s always been too small and presses his lips against Ryan’s. It’s not intentional, not planned, but Brendon won’t ever regret it.
It’s over quick, Ryan doesn’t open his lips and there’s no Hollywood ending, he backs off with wide eyes the colour of burnt almonds that seeps through Brendon’s skin until it’s all he can see. Ryan sighs, and he puts two hands on either side of Brendon’s face. “It’s just a crush,” he says and Brendon wants to ask whose? But he doesn’t.
*
Jon thinks in snapshots and whole pictures. In galleries and photo-blogs and Brendon thinks that even that would be better than fucking colours.
“I get like…” Brendon takes a deep breath, scuffs his toe in the dirt and stares at the sky. “I feel weird around him.”
Jon’s fiddling with the camera lens. He needs subjects (models) for the pictures in his head, so when he says, “What?” it isn’t entirely selfless.
Brendon just shrugs.
“Good weird or bad weird?” This much is him giving a damn.
Brendon chews the inside of his cheek, thinks, powder-blue-violet. “Good.”
“Okay,” Jon says, and he drops the camera to the grass before collapsing back against the trunk of the tree. Brendon’s shadow is tall on the earth and Jon wonders if it’d look anywhere near as imposing from a million feet above.
“It’s just a crush,” Brendon says and that’s it, end of conversation.
Jon won’t ever ask ‘who’?
*
It doesn’t hurt at first, but the shock knocks him to the ground and leaves crimson burning behind his eyes. There’s a jackhammer pounding through his forehead and when he blinks awake, he almost feels hungover.
There’s powdered sky around Ryan’s eyes, ocean, sapphire, Brendon doesn’t know, but the colour flashes through his legs and Brendon reaches up, wraps fingers around Ryan’s arms as he pulls him up. “What happened?” he mumbles, and his head lolls, rocks on its own right and Ryan’s voice is tight and brittle when he says, “Some fucker threw a bottle.”
“Oh,” Brendon says, and all he feels is Ryan being pulled away, Zach and security dragging him off and he’s backstage, some doctor with blue hair and a nose ring up in his face.
“How many fingers?” she says, and Brendon can hear Spencer talking, saying fuck, we can’t go back out. Jon’s whispering in a tone Brendon’s never heard before. What if they do it again? Jesus and Brendon wishes they were closer.
“Mr. Urie,” the woman asks, and it’s slow this time. “I need you to tell me how many fingers I’m holding up.”
“What?”
She stares at him then quickly pulls back his eyelids and flashes in a light. She puts it down. “I’ll ask you only once more, Mr. Urie, how many fingers?”
“What? Three.” She sighs, and maybe it’s relief, but Brendon can’t figure why because like, it was just a bottle.
She makes a gesture and Spencer, Jon and Ryan rush forward and Spencer’s quick, says, “We can stay back here. We don’t have to go back out.”
Brendon blinks. “We sorta do.”
The others each cast him a disbelieving look.
“Like,” he says, and he breathes deep, “like you fall off a horse, you get back on the fucker, right?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything and Spencer furrows a brow. “Horses don’t throw shit at you though.”
“They could if they wanted to - y’know, stand up on their back legs and just start hurling.”
“Jesus,” Jon laughs. “Maybe you should have your head checked out again.”
Ryan sighs, presses cool fingers to the bruise on Brendon’s head and there’s something there, something passed make-up and cover-up that Brendon can’t quite pinpoint, he’s not sure why it makes him think, pink.
“Let’s go,” Ryan says. “You die on stage I’ll fucking kill you.”
Brendon grins. “Can’t kill something that doesn’t want to die.”
Ryan offers a hand, and Brendon refuses, struts out like he’s got something to prove (he has) and when he takes up the mike, he grins at the crowd. “Let’s see how you go with my other side.”
*
Tonight it’s not just New York City they’re playing for, not just America, but fuck, Brendon thinks, gold, it’s the whole fucking world. Billions of people and the only thing that causes any divide is a television screen and time zones and Brendon just, fuck, but he’s nervous.
“What happens if we win?” Brendon asks.
Ryan shrugs. “We get up, make a speech, get congratulated by Paris Hilton and are welcomed into a galaxy of universal acceptance.”
Brendon grins, but even to him it feels queasy. “Could’ve done with that in high school.”
Ryan smirks. “I reckon, huh?”
“Fuck,” Spencer says. “We’re at the VMA’s. Last year, I was watching this shit, it was all anyone talked about the next day and now it’s like, it’s us.”
Jon grins wide, and Brendon just, groans and puts his head between his knees. Ryan sidles up beside him, runs a hand through his hair. “It’ll be awesome,” he whispers, and he presses his lips against the back of Brendon’s neck so fast that Brendon’s not sure if he imagined it. “I’ll hold your hand if you want.”
Brendon’s head darts up, but Ryan’s already turned away, talking to Jon about the hot blonde girl in their dancing troupe.
*
It’s not a full moon when it happens. There are no stars in the sky or bird calls in the distance. If Brendon were a romantic, if this were a movie, if Ryan were a girl - it’d be different. All of it and Brendon doesn’t think he’d want it as much as he does.
“I don’t think it’s a crush,” he says, and it’s as honest as he’ll ever be, as he ever could. There are better declarations, but Brendon only has a head full of colour and a heart full of music, neither one has an ounce spare for romance.
It’s just the two of them and Ryan sighs, breathes out in the open space and turns to stare out the window of the tour bus. Brendon leans back, watches the ceiling with tired eyes (tired heart) and counts the specks of dirt, the lines and marks. The clock chimes and the bus staggers like a drunken whore walking the line of sobriety and Brendon feels the cold bite at his toes, at his fingers.
“I don’t love you,” Ryan says, and Brendon starts, ignores the ache blossoming in his chest, crawling up his stomach, constricting his lungs. Ryan turns in his seat, drops his chin down onto his clenched fist. “But I could.”
Brendon stops, blinks and he doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh or cry, just tilts his head to the side and says. “Yeah?”
Ryan pauses. Nods. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Brendon murmurs and they don’t kiss, they don’t hug or make love or even fuck. Not yet. This isn’t fiction, not movie, song, book. Brendon lays his head on the table, shuts his eyes and thinks, white.
White.
The studio is maybe, probably, definitely, the coolest thing ever.
There’s something about the atmosphere, the environment, the fact that he is writing and singing on an honest to God CD that leaves the colours pooling behind his eyelids and Ryan’s lyrics draining off his tongue, even when he’s not in a recording booth.
“Jesus Christ,” Spencer says, and he leans further back in the chair. “Shut the fuck up, Brendon Urie.”
“Uh, no, Spencer Smith.” He’s sure the guy smiles, positive. Brendon bounds over, presses his lips to Spencer’s forehead. “Dude, fuck, this is what it must feel like to Ariel when she’s on land with the Prince. I swear to God.”
Spencer laughs, but Ryan’s sitting in the background, headphones on and Brendon hadn’t even known he was listening. “Dorothy in the Emerald City.”
Brendon grins, and sees yellow. “This feels an awful lot like something magic, Toto.”
*
This? This not so much.
“I don’t...I just can’t anymore, Brendon.”
He’s not sure which part of him is hurting, thinks it could be the space beneath his fingernails, somewhere in his intestines, he doesn’t even know, but it’s halfway to unbearable. “What can’t you-“
“This -” And Audrey’s all gestures, wild arms and wide eyes (they’re bloodshot, rimmed with a black that Brendon doesn’t think is just eyeliner.)
“What?”
Her arms shake and she clenches her fists against her eyes. When she looks up, it’s exhausted and resigned and when she says, “You, Brendon, I can’t do you anymore,” Brendon feels like he could explode, feels like there’s a land mine burning beneath his feet.
Brendon blinks, clenches his fingers in his jean pockets. “Was the sex bad or whatever? Because, like, I’m pretty sure I’ll get better.”
“Fuck.” She presses her fingers against closed eyes again and Brendon thinks she could be crying. She looks up at him. “I don’t think I’m the one you want.”
“What’s that even mean?”
Audrey sighs, talks to the floor. “Look, you’ve got fame and stardom on your horizon. I told you already I want my own, I’m not gonna ride on anyone’s coattails, least of all yours.”
“Audrey, fuck, that’s not even a real excuse, look -” He reaches out, grabs at her arm. She pulls away. “No, Brendon, goodbye. Just, good luck and goodbye.”
Brendon bites his tongue and works too hard to blink back bright spots that appear behind his eyes. He thinks that if this were a movie - he thinks that if this were TV - if this were anything but real life something better would be round the corner. Maybe Bright Eyes would be the soundtrack. Maybe that’s melodramatic. Point is, he can’t help feeling like he’s lost something, even if Audrey wasn’t really worth it in the first place.
*
Break-up depression is really a chick thing and Brendon figures he’ll probably care as soon as it stops hurting.
“You alright?” Ryan asks, and Brendon clenches his eyes shut, buries hard beneath the covers of the bed.
“Fine.”
“Okay,” Ryan says, and he pulls back the sheets, strips them from Brendon’s back and Brendon just curls up, works the foetal position. He hears a sigh somewhere above him and feels the bed dip. Ryan’s spindly legs are stretched out behind him and Brendon can feel his breath on the back of his neck.
Ryan sighs again, stares at the ceiling. “Do you want like, a hug or whatever?”
Brendon pauses, beat, before rolling over and saying, “Yeah, okay.”
*
They have an album tucked beneath their belt, so Brendon figures it’s ridiculous that they’re yet to play for a real audience, for a crowd, for anyone. They’ve built a fanbase out of Ryan’s pretty face and recorded demos and fuck, out of Pete Wentz, none of it’s been hard-earned and when they go to play their first real gig, the jitters shake their way from Brendon’s toes to his forehead.
The audience though, they’re there and real and fuck, they’re tangible. They’re not a haze of imagination, they’re faces that Brendon can see, eyelashes he can count, sweat he can feel and when he gets on stage he sings until his throat’s raw.
“We were so, so terrible,” Ryan says, and it’s been three, four, five minutes since they staggered off stage, collapsed into the backdrop behind curtain and lights, away from crowd and voices.
“Then stop smiling, loser.”
The only thing Brendon will ever, ever regret about this night is that he didn’t have to woo the crowd, didn’t have to win them with raw talent or charisma.
They were long won.
*
The Academy Is… is sorta amazing and Brendon doesn’t think he’d be able to say that five times fast, but really, he’s always been pretty useless with that shit. The guys, Bill, Siska, all of them, they make the tour easier than Brendon figures they deserve.
Tonight, Siska’s sitting on the sofa, legs curled up beneath him opposite a guy that Brendon’s only ever seen backstage. They’re playing red hands and Brendon doesn’t think Siska’s winning.
“Fuck,” Siska says after a particularly loud slap. The other guy just laughs, mumbles out something that sounds a lot like poor baby.
The door swings open though, sudden and abrupt and Butcher is there, wild eyed and big grinned and he pulls Siska up by the arm, drags him out with a laugh. The guy on the couch blinks, chuckles again, and moves to fiddle with the guitar in the corner. Brendon shrugs, taps out a rhythm on his knee until Aladdin bleeds beneath his tongue, and he sings A Whole New World like he wrote it, said it, felt it. When the guy hums along, well, Brendon hesitates to use the word fate, but silver trickles through his irises, across his pupils until it’s all he can see.
“A whole new world,” the guy murmurs, breathes out into open space and Brendon stops, stares and the guy mustn’t realise, keeps going. “Don’t you dare close your eyes.”
The silence is sort of telling and when he leans back, blinks at Brendon’s grin, he just laughs, throws his hands up and shrugs in a way that Brendon can maybe identify with.
“What an introduction,” he says. “I sing better in the shower.”
Brendon laughs, rocks back onto his heels and flashes the grin that won Audrey. “Hey, you seen me on stage? I sing better like, anywhere else.”
The guy runs a hand through his hair and returns a grin that goes straight to Brendon’s belly. “I’m Jon.”
“Brendon.”
*
There’s a million awful ways to break up with someone. “It’s not you, it’s me.”
“We can still be friends.”
(goodbye and goodluck).
Brendon doesn’t even know, but maybe all of them apply to Brent.
It wasn’t him.
It was them.
Brendon closes his eyes and sees black.
*
Brendon’s not sure what Ryan’s dad thought in, but he supposes that in reality, it doesn’t matter all that much now because the guy’s dead.
Spencer says the phone call’s not a surprise and Brendon opens his mouth, closes it, opens it.
“Maybe you shouldn’t say anything,” Spencer says, and he squints bleary-blues out the window. Ryan’s sitting on the grass outside the bus, eyes pointing skyward and fingers deep in the earth. Brendon turns to watch too. He almost doesn’t hear Jon slide in beside him. “I don’t know him well enough.”
Brendon purses his lips, chews on the inside of his cheek. “Me neither.”
Jon shrugs, presses his forehead against the glass and says, “Moments like this make me wish I smoked.”
Brendon flashes him a grin before pulling himself up. He can feel Spencer’s eyes on him when he pulls open the door to the bus and heads outside.
By the time he gets to Ryan, his shadow is tall, casts over Ryan like the bad guy in black and white films and that’s nothing Brendon wants. He pauses, toes the dirt with his shoe and says, “Do you like-“
Ryan stands up. Stares. Sighs.
“Do you want company?” Brendon tries and Ryan closes his eyes, lashes laid flush against his cheeks and Brendon has to remind himself to breath.
“I don’t know,” Ryan says, and doubles over, throws up on Brendon’s shoes.
I’m-hurting, Ryan thinks, and-I-don’t-know-why.
Brendon doesn’t think at all.
*
Spencer and Ryan go back to Vegas for the funeral and Brendon does The Right Thing and stays back and doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t talk about family and tunes their bus playlist to not play any depressing songs.
When they get back, Brendon paints a smile on his face and wanders around like a doll or a clown. He censors himself in all the worst ways and he figures it probably doesn’t matter in the long run because Ryan won’t even look at him, let alone talk.
“It’ll get better,” Spencer says, and Brendon thinks, black.
When?
*
Brendon pulls back the curtain to Ryan’s bunk like it’s opening night of Depressing!the musical and Ryan only stares back with half-lidded eyes and clenched lips. There’s no applause, and without an audience, Brendon’s always a little lost.
“Hi,” he says.
Ryan doesn’t even blink, but his face softens just enough to be noticeable. “Hi.”
Brendon bites his lower lip before caving, pushing Ryan over against the wall of the bus and pulling himself over the edge of the thin mattress. He’s not good at this, at comfort and quiet, and Ryan, he’s stiff to the touch and when Brendon finally thinks red-fuck-it, and wraps arms around Ryan’s waist, he’s almost surprised not to be pushed straight out of the bed.
They just hug and Brendon breathes in the moment, Ryan’s hair and skin and just, he holds on. “I won’t say anything if you promise me that you’ll be alright in the morning.”
The silence pools between them, runs down Brendon’s legs and sprawls beneath his toes. He’s stopped hoping for an answer when Ryan says, “Okay.”
*
The break is almost too welcome, a bed at the end of a long day, and when Brendon’s had enough of his family, he somehow ends up at Ryan’s.
The door swings wide and Ryan blinks, almost startled.
“Do you know what’s fun about being Mormon?”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Brendon states. “Fuck-all. Stupid like, fucking religious practices. Who needs them?”
Ryan quirks a grin. “Not you?”
“Not me.” Brendon manages to squirm his way past Ryan and into the wide apartment. He stops dead. “Wow, this is like, bare.”
It is, too. The floorboards stretch from one wall to the other and the only thing that mars it is Ryan’s open suitcase and a tiny television tucked into the corner. Brendon can see the Animal Planet logo in the corner of the screen as lions tussle in the middle.
Ryan rolls his eyes. “Fuck off, I’ve pretty much been here for two hours, I’m sorry if I haven’t had time to set up house in between states on tour.”
Brendon laughs, but he collapses onto the floor sprawls himself out and reaches his arms up in the universal language of hug? Ryan grins, and he lies down too, but not into Brendon. The dialogue from the tiny television drowns in the low hum of Brendon’s voice as he murmurs out wordless tunes. This is easy, and Brendon, he can’t pinpoint it, but some part of him, something in his belly, intestines, liver, there’s something there that catches, beats, breathes on its own when Ryan’s there.
“This is nice,” he mumbles.
“Lying on the floor?” Ryan quirks a brow, rolls his eyes and it’s just, Brendon doesn’t mean to, has always figured his control was a little better, but he leans in, closes a gap that’s always been too small and presses his lips against Ryan’s. It’s not intentional, not planned, but Brendon won’t ever regret it.
It’s over quick, Ryan doesn’t open his lips and there’s no Hollywood ending, he backs off with wide eyes the colour of burnt almonds that seeps through Brendon’s skin until it’s all he can see. Ryan sighs, and he puts two hands on either side of Brendon’s face. “It’s just a crush,” he says and Brendon wants to ask whose? But he doesn’t.
*
Jon thinks in snapshots and whole pictures. In galleries and photo-blogs and Brendon thinks that even that would be better than fucking colours.
“I get like…” Brendon takes a deep breath, scuffs his toe in the dirt and stares at the sky. “I feel weird around him.”
Jon’s fiddling with the camera lens. He needs subjects (models) for the pictures in his head, so when he says, “What?” it isn’t entirely selfless.
Brendon just shrugs.
“Good weird or bad weird?” This much is him giving a damn.
Brendon chews the inside of his cheek, thinks, powder-blue-violet. “Good.”
“Okay,” Jon says, and he drops the camera to the grass before collapsing back against the trunk of the tree. Brendon’s shadow is tall on the earth and Jon wonders if it’d look anywhere near as imposing from a million feet above.
“It’s just a crush,” Brendon says and that’s it, end of conversation.
Jon won’t ever ask ‘who’?
*
It doesn’t hurt at first, but the shock knocks him to the ground and leaves crimson burning behind his eyes. There’s a jackhammer pounding through his forehead and when he blinks awake, he almost feels hungover.
There’s powdered sky around Ryan’s eyes, ocean, sapphire, Brendon doesn’t know, but the colour flashes through his legs and Brendon reaches up, wraps fingers around Ryan’s arms as he pulls him up. “What happened?” he mumbles, and his head lolls, rocks on its own right and Ryan’s voice is tight and brittle when he says, “Some fucker threw a bottle.”
“Oh,” Brendon says, and all he feels is Ryan being pulled away, Zach and security dragging him off and he’s backstage, some doctor with blue hair and a nose ring up in his face.
“How many fingers?” she says, and Brendon can hear Spencer talking, saying fuck, we can’t go back out. Jon’s whispering in a tone Brendon’s never heard before. What if they do it again? Jesus and Brendon wishes they were closer.
“Mr. Urie,” the woman asks, and it’s slow this time. “I need you to tell me how many fingers I’m holding up.”
“What?”
She stares at him then quickly pulls back his eyelids and flashes in a light. She puts it down. “I’ll ask you only once more, Mr. Urie, how many fingers?”
“What? Three.” She sighs, and maybe it’s relief, but Brendon can’t figure why because like, it was just a bottle.
She makes a gesture and Spencer, Jon and Ryan rush forward and Spencer’s quick, says, “We can stay back here. We don’t have to go back out.”
Brendon blinks. “We sorta do.”
The others each cast him a disbelieving look.
“Like,” he says, and he breathes deep, “like you fall off a horse, you get back on the fucker, right?”
Ryan doesn’t say anything and Spencer furrows a brow. “Horses don’t throw shit at you though.”
“They could if they wanted to - y’know, stand up on their back legs and just start hurling.”
“Jesus,” Jon laughs. “Maybe you should have your head checked out again.”
Ryan sighs, presses cool fingers to the bruise on Brendon’s head and there’s something there, something passed make-up and cover-up that Brendon can’t quite pinpoint, he’s not sure why it makes him think, pink.
“Let’s go,” Ryan says. “You die on stage I’ll fucking kill you.”
Brendon grins. “Can’t kill something that doesn’t want to die.”
Ryan offers a hand, and Brendon refuses, struts out like he’s got something to prove (he has) and when he takes up the mike, he grins at the crowd. “Let’s see how you go with my other side.”
*
Tonight it’s not just New York City they’re playing for, not just America, but fuck, Brendon thinks, gold, it’s the whole fucking world. Billions of people and the only thing that causes any divide is a television screen and time zones and Brendon just, fuck, but he’s nervous.
“What happens if we win?” Brendon asks.
Ryan shrugs. “We get up, make a speech, get congratulated by Paris Hilton and are welcomed into a galaxy of universal acceptance.”
Brendon grins, but even to him it feels queasy. “Could’ve done with that in high school.”
Ryan smirks. “I reckon, huh?”
“Fuck,” Spencer says. “We’re at the VMA’s. Last year, I was watching this shit, it was all anyone talked about the next day and now it’s like, it’s us.”
Jon grins wide, and Brendon just, groans and puts his head between his knees. Ryan sidles up beside him, runs a hand through his hair. “It’ll be awesome,” he whispers, and he presses his lips against the back of Brendon’s neck so fast that Brendon’s not sure if he imagined it. “I’ll hold your hand if you want.”
Brendon’s head darts up, but Ryan’s already turned away, talking to Jon about the hot blonde girl in their dancing troupe.
*
It’s not a full moon when it happens. There are no stars in the sky or bird calls in the distance. If Brendon were a romantic, if this were a movie, if Ryan were a girl - it’d be different. All of it and Brendon doesn’t think he’d want it as much as he does.
“I don’t think it’s a crush,” he says, and it’s as honest as he’ll ever be, as he ever could. There are better declarations, but Brendon only has a head full of colour and a heart full of music, neither one has an ounce spare for romance.
It’s just the two of them and Ryan sighs, breathes out in the open space and turns to stare out the window of the tour bus. Brendon leans back, watches the ceiling with tired eyes (tired heart) and counts the specks of dirt, the lines and marks. The clock chimes and the bus staggers like a drunken whore walking the line of sobriety and Brendon feels the cold bite at his toes, at his fingers.
“I don’t love you,” Ryan says, and Brendon starts, ignores the ache blossoming in his chest, crawling up his stomach, constricting his lungs. Ryan turns in his seat, drops his chin down onto his clenched fist. “But I could.”
Brendon stops, blinks and he doesn’t smile, doesn’t laugh or cry, just tilts his head to the side and says. “Yeah?”
Ryan pauses. Nods. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” Brendon murmurs and they don’t kiss, they don’t hug or make love or even fuck. Not yet. This isn’t fiction, not movie, song, book. Brendon lays his head on the table, shuts his eyes and thinks, white.
White.