Floating Our Way Out -- Part One
Title: Floating Our Way Out
Pairings: Brendon/Spencer, Ryan/Jon, background Mikey/Bob and Gabe/Bill if you squint.
Bands: Panic! at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, some Cobra Starship
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Ghost porn, voyeurism, sort-of/reverse-ish character death (dude, Brendon’s a ghost, therefore, he’s dead, technically).
Summary: Ghost!Brendon AU. Brendon died five years ago and haunts a rundown house on the outskirts of Chicago. Ryan moves in with him! Brendon has a crush on Spencer, but won't let Ryan tell Spencer that Brendon exists, in case Spencer's creeped out by him. Ryan and Jon and Spencer start a band. Meanwhile Brendon helps Ryan write songs when the others aren’t around, since they don't know he exists, but he's frustrated that he can't join in for the rest of it. Sad, awkward ghost love with a happy ending and some fuzzy cuteness along the way. Guest starring Gerard, Mikey and Gabe!
"We could have Jon come over, right, and maybe we could even have a band again, Spence." Ryan elbow's Spencer's side, smiling kind of hopefully, eyes twinkling, and Spencer grins back at him, giving in, and wow, Spencer's grin is blinding, it’s possibly the source of all good things in the universe, including unicorns and puppies and possibly several of Brendon's wet dreams. So maybe Brendon won't whoosh through the house screaming about anything at all. Spencer is sort of disgustingly hot.
There are times, very frustrating times, times like right now, that Brendon really wishes he weren't a ghost.
Author’s Notes: Biggest, most enormous thanks to sweetnovicane and skinofreality, my deliciously magnificent betas/sounding boards/cheerleaders of epic awesomeness. I would never have attempted BBB were it not for sweetnovicane and her wily, wily roommate ways, and I would never, ever have finished this fic if not for my desire to see skinofreality’s face while reading the finished product. Thank you both so much, you own me forever. <3
Also, there is a sequel (not to mention a threequel) in the works, which is already nearly hitting 30,000 words and isn’t done, in case anyone else is interested in getting on the beta-ing horse (or the cheerleading horse). The sequel is more ensemble-y, and the threequel is inexplicably about Pete and his guardian angel (Patrick). Don’t be shy if you feel like getting in on the cracky action. ^__^ I’m trying to get both done for Wave Two, and could ALWAYS use extra beta/pre-readery help.
--
Brendon doesn't keep track of the days very well, but he's pretty sure that the day the boys show up is a Sunday, because there's a kid on a bike going up and down the street, flinging newspapers at whatever looks breakable on people's porches.
"And you're sure you want this one, Ry?" There are two of them, coming up the steps. They're both pretty short, and one is all skinny limbs and floppy brown emo hair. The other is broader, with a beard and the kind of forearms Brendon has dreams about and hips that border on childbearing.
"I'm sure," the skinny one says, smiling a little, as they come in the door. Brendon watches from halfway out of the ceiling as they walk down the hall to the kitchen. "It has character, Spence. A sort of… dilapidated charm."
The other one snorts. "If by charm you mean possible health risks, yeah, okay, sure."
Brendon kind of wants to be offended; they have no right to be judging his house. But then again, it kind of is a run-down piece of shit, and it's not like he wants to live here. He doesn't even actually live here. It's sort of hard to live anywhere when you're dead.
The two of them wander around the house a little more, and Brendon drifts along the ceiling, watching as they judge the rooms-- Spencer is cheerfully pessimistic, saying things like, "Wow, Ryan, you can die from black mold inhalation and take a bath at the same time, that's glorious. A golden opportunity if I ever saw one," and, "Huh, look at this, the fireplace is only missing half its bricks. It'll probably take you at least a week to manage to burn this place to the ground." Ryan, on the other hand, puts up with the ribbing with a wry twist of his mouth and a condescending nod.
The argument ends when Ryan points out that there's a spare bedroom that they could, "Use it as a practice space, Spence, come on, there would even be room for your drums. Think about it."
And okay, so they're weird, and Ryan is clearly trying to dress like some combination of a cowboy, a homeless man, a riverboat gambler, and Brendon's grandfather, and Spencer is a grouchy bear-man-beast, but it would be kind of cool to be able to hear music again. Brendon's missed music. Kind of a lot. So he maybe won't whoosh through the house screaming about how their doom is nigh or anything. Yet. Brendon’s not eliminating it as an option entirely.
"We could have Jon come over, right, and maybe we could even have a band again, Spence." Ryan elbow's Spencer's side, smiling kind of hopefully, eyes twinkling, and Spencer grins back at him, giving in, and wow, Spencer's grin is blinding, it’s possibly the source of all good things in the universe, including unicorns and puppies and possibly several of Brendon's wet dreams.
So maybe Brendon won't whoosh through the house screaming about anything at all.
Spencer is sort of disgustingly hot.
There are times, very frustrating times, times like right now, that Brendon really wishes he weren't a ghost.
--
Ryan and Spencer come back three days later with a bunch of boxes, exchanging cheerful insults as they haul everything inside. Brendon wonders if they're brothers or sleeping together, but he's pretty sure it's one or the other. If it's both, though, he might have to reconsider that whole Spencer-is-hot premise and replace it with oh-god-oh-god-eww. But he doesn't think that’s the case, so.
If they're together, there's the downside of hey, Brendon will be sad because Spencer and his blinding smile have someone that is not Brendon, but the upside of hey, Brendon could probably watch them have sex, and Ryan is kind of weirdly pretty, so. And if they're brothers, well, whatever, at least then Brendon won’t have to watch Spencer sex up someone who isn’t him. Probably.
"I still can't believe you're going to live here," Spencer says, when all the boxes are in, and wait, what? Brendon had kind of been under the impression that they were moving in together, both of them-it’s not like there aren’t enough rooms, there are more than enough rooms. If Spencer isn’t going to live here, Brendon might have to be sad, and Brendon had kind of enjoyed his brief break from being terminally depressed.
Ryan rolls his eyes, and says, perfectly toneless, "Oh no, Ryan, you're going to live in a musty old house full of spiders and rats, that's so much worse than where you've been living for the past twenty years."
Spencer scowls, crossing his arms and cocking a bitchy hip. "I'm not saying the house is worse than the way your dad treated you, Ryan, geez, just, you have money now, it's not like you couldn't--" So, okay, they’re probably not brothers, then, if Ryan has a different dad. Half brothers, maybe, but they still don’t look anything alike. Which means they’re probably sleeping together. Brendon is going to pretend that that doesn’t make his stomach drop a little.
"I have money, yeah, Spence, but I kind of want it to last, so I can't buy something expensive," Ryan snaps back, hands on his hips. "I'm not going to waste this money, Spencer, I don't want to end up a year down the line with nothing but a big fat mortgage and a shitty guitar. I am going to live here, because it's cheap and I like it, okay, so stop looking at me like that, and I'm going to write, and then I'm going to publish a book, okay, lots of books, a million of them, and we're going to play music and you're going to stop bitching at me about every goddamn choice I make, because you are my best friend, not my mother, okay, and you're going to like it." He stops, huffing, eyes narrowed, finger in the middle of Spencer’s chest, and waits for Spencer's response.
Best friends, okay, Brendon can sort of buy that, even if they do touch a lot for best friends. Seriously a lot. They’re not very manly about it, either. Maybe they’re Canadian.
Spencer looks at him for a long moment, one eyebrow arched, smirking. "So what you're telling me is that this house makes you feel like a legitimate starving writer and I should stop messing with your delusions?"
Ryan’s mouth curls into a wry grin. "Also that. Shut up."
Spencer rolls his eyes and lightly punches Ryan's arm. "Come on, walk me to the car? I promised I'd meet Jon for lunch and tell him if you talked about him like a twelve year old girl at all today."
Ryan scowls at him again, but it looks suspiciously like he's trying to hide a blush. "I swear to god, if you tell him that thing I said about thinking his hands are pretty, I will break both your arms and you will never drum again, Spencer Smith."
Spencer grins that stupid blinding grin that makes Brendon's chest go all tight and squiggly, and pats Ryan's hand. "On second thought, you stay right there, and I'll run away really fast now, because I might have already texted him about that one." He makes a break for it while Ryan gapes at him, slowly turning red.
When the door slams, Ryan looks straight up, straight at Brendon, like he's known Brendon's been there the whole time, and says ruefully, "If I actually break his arms, it'll be ages before I can find another drummer."
Brendon maybe falls out of the ceiling a little in shock. When he recovers himself, he blinks at Ryan a little and says the first thing to come to the surface of his mind, which is maybe not the best idea, but, "You'll never find one as pretty."
Ryan makes a face. "Ew."
--
Most people can't see Brendon. Almost everyone can hear him, which is how he got rid of the last few people who wanted to buy the house, but only one of them ever actually saw him. Ryan, though, Ryan says he can see him perfectly, and he says it in that Ryan way, like of course I can see you, idiot, I have eyes and everything, like it isn't weird. He also says it like it isn't weird that Brendon even exists, and that's actually kind of nice. Brendon doesn’t tell him that part, though, because Ryan is totally the type to get a big head about it, Brendon can tell already.
Ryan hangs out with him just like he's a real person, talks to him and plays music and asks for Brendon's advice on chord progressions and harmonies, reads books out loud so Brendon can listen if he wants to. They play checkers, sometimes, and Ryan's put little labels on each piece, so all Brendon has to say is, "Dorothy forward," or, "Xavier double jumps Wanda.” All the red pieces are girls, all the black pieces are boys, and like half of them are named for superheroes, while the other half are literary characters, and okay, it's kind of awesome that Ryan is at least as much of a dork as Brendon is. When Ryan stays up late watching terribly pretentious movies with gratuitous nudity in French, Brendon thinks he's maybe actually a little more of dork, but he keeps that to himself, because Ryan would give him a bitchface, and Brendon doesn't like having to act like it's actually imposing.
Spencer comes over a lot, too, but Brendon doesn't show himself when he's around, because if Spencer can't see him, or worse, can and is afraid of him, Brendon doesn't think he could deal with that. Ryan assures him that Spencer is open minded and pretty weird, too, so he'd probably be able to see him-- that's mostly what it's about, having room in your brain to let the idea of Brendon in-- and that he wouldn't think Brendon was scary or an abomination against god or anything. But Brendon's actually pretty sure that he is an abomination against god. His parents were sure, that's why he's here, alone, and wow, okay, it still hurts to think of them. It's been five years, and he wonders what his sisters are doing now, if his brothers are done with college yet. Brendon kind of wishes he'd gotten to graduate high school. That would have been nice. But no, he's not going to risk it with Spencer. And Ryan, Ryan seems to understand, because he doesn't bring Brendon up, doesn't tell Spencer anything at all.
A small, rebellious part of Brendon kind of wishes that Ryan were more of an asshole and would just tell Spencer and get it over with, because then Brendon wouldn't have to wonder.
But that's a really small part.
--
Ryan thinks Brendon is possibly the most annoying-yet-cool thing to happen to him since he met Spencer when he was six. Brendon never shuts up, spends half his time bouncing around the house singing show tunes, and he makes fun of all of Ryan's hats. But he also likes the books Ryan reads, knows his way around a guitar, he listens to Ryan talk about Jon and Jon's pretty, pretty hands without making fun of him the way Spencer does, and he occasionally gives Ryan ideas for his novel. (Well, Ryan’s various novels. Ryan’s maybe having trouble picking one concept and sticking to it.) He also clearly has a crush on Spencer, which is either the most hilarious or the saddest thing that Ryan's ever seen.
"Spence is coming over tonight," Ryan warns him the next time Brendon floats into the room.
Brendon hums a little and grins a big, stupid idiot grin. "Is he staying over?"
Ryan tries to scowl, because the fact that Brendon watches Spencer sleep is sort of creepy, and he should be defending Spencer's honor or something in appropriate best-friend fashion. However, Brendon is like a tiny, dead puppy, and Ryan maybe has a weakness for that sort of thing, and also it's hilarious, so he can't actually manage the scowl. "Maybe. Probably. You know him." The weird thing is that Brendon does know him. Ryan talks about him all the time, and when Brendon talks back, it's like he knows the way Spencer is, without knowing anything in particular about him at all. When Ryan asked him about it once, all he said was that Spencer was just a Spencer, and Brendon didn't have to know a lot about him to understand what that meant. After that, Ryan was pretty sure that he didn't mind Brendon creeping on Spencer at all.
Brendon nods. "What are you guys doing?"
"Band practice, sort of. Jon might come over, too." Ryan doesn't rush through the latter part, like he would with Spencer. He still feels a blush rising into his cheeks.
Brendon beams at him. "The amazing Jon Walker? The Jon that invented magic and whose smile gives birth to kittens? That Jon?"
It's entirely possible that the kitten part is true, since Jon has fourteen million cats, and Ryan is distracted by the sort of horrifying and hysterical image of kittens spontaneously popping out of Jon's mouth before he fakes a scowl at Brendon. "Yes. That Jon."
Brendon rubs his hands together, giggling gleefully. "Awesome. Awesome, Ryan Ross, I can't wait." He pauses for a minute, then, "Will you put the blue sheets in the guest room?"
Ryan probably doesn't actually want to know, but he's a writer, he's curious, so, "Why?"
Brendon gives him a lopsided smile. "They match his eyes."
Ryan rolls his eyes and mutters something perfunctory about how creepy Brendon is, and how Brendon can’t see Spencer’s eyes if Spencer’s eyes are closed and he’s asleep, but he puts the blue sheets on the bed in the guest room before Spencer comes over nonetheless.
Ryan is an enabler.
--
Jon Walker is not what Brendon expects. Brendon expects Jon Walker to be tall, dark, and handsome, with a chiseled jaw and a Viking Beard of Awesome.
The Jon Walker that shows up at the door at two in the afternoon is short-- shorter even than Ryan and Spencer and Brendon-- and soft and, yes, okay, handsome, but the way teddy bears are handsome, not the way Viggo Mortensen is handsome. The Viking Beard of Awesome is mostly what Brendon expected, though. Otherwise, he's kind of plain and brown, but he looks cuddlesome, and when Ryan ducks his head and says hello, Jon Walker smiles a smile that does, yes, as Ryan said it did, spontaneously give birth to radiant light, glory, and tiny fuzzy kittens rolling through springtime grass.
Brendon finds that especially impressive, as it's late fall, so Jon Walker also mystically generates springtime and the flora that accompanies it. Brendon will agree with Ryan-- later-- that Jon Walker is pretty magical.
--
"Can you maybe actually hit the drums instead of petting them like kittens?" Ryan demands, crossing his arms and glaring at Spencer. "Because actual drumming would be really fucking useful right now."
"Can you maybe actually sing instead of criticizing what other people are doing?" Spencer snaps back, rolling his eyes.
Jon clears his throat. "Not to like, interrupt your awesome bitchfight, guys, but the song? That song we were, yknow, playing just then? We should maybe just play it again." His mouth quirks up a little, like maybe he secretly wants to laugh and is just too nice to make fun of them, and Ryan feels all the anger and frustration seep out of him.
"Yeah, Ryan," Spencer says, sneering a little, "let's just play the song."
Ryan sniffs and ignores Spencer's absolute, ridiculous childishness. "Fine, okay, just. Count us in." He grimaces at Jon, who still just looks like he's trying really hard not to laugh.
Spencer snorts, but counts them in, and Ryan tries to shut out his general irritation at how very awkward playing again is, tries to sing through it.
It sort of works, and each time they play through a song, it gets a little less uncomfortable, a little less stilted, until eventually, Ryan can feel the music thrumming through him almost exactly like it's supposed to.
--
Ryan plays his old band's demo for Brendon after Jon and Spencer leave. It's good, it's really good. But it's angry, and it's sad, and there's something futile and desperate in the way Ryan sings, too soft and too helpless. It tugs at all the places that are empty in Brendon’s own chest, the places that make him feel like maybe he really is dead.
So when Ryan hands him the first lines of a new song he's working on, Brendon hums something he thinks will suit Ryan's voice a little better. It's warm and easy and smooth, and Ryan frowns at him.
"That's not really my usual style," he says, but it's not a complaint, not exactly.
Brendon nods. "But maybe it should be."
Ryan smiles and hums, slow and thoughtful. "I think Jon would like it."
Brendon kind of wants to giggle every time Ryan mentions Jon, because Jon is awesome, and Brendon hopes that he and Ryan get married and have ten thousand adorable, musical genius babies. "That," Brendon says with a pompous sniff, "is because Jon Walker has excellent taste." He'll teach them how to sing and play the saxophone, it'll be the coolest thing ever. Brendon’s totally going to be the cool uncle figure, but, yknow, dead and see-through.
Ryan swats in his general direction, but sniggers a little nonetheless. "So what should come next?"
Brendon thinks about it and hums the next line to himself, then sings, tentatively, "Hey moon, please forget to fall down." When he looks up from the page, Ryan is blinking at him, eyes a little wide. "What?"
Ryan just keeps blinking. "You should, um. You should sing, Brendon, you should sing all the time."
Brendon feels himself blushing, and it sucks that that sort of thing sticks around even when you're incorporeal. "So, uh," he clears his throat. "Can, um, could you write something down for me? I've been wanting to write this thing down for ages, it's not really a song, not yet, you know, but I can't exactly--"
Ryan nods, still looking a little shell shocked. Brendon isn't sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but.
For the next three nights, they stay up late, writing all the things that have been in both of their heads for too long.
--
The weird thing about Brendon's creepy crush on Spencer is, the more Brendon is around Spencer, the more solid he gets, until Ryan can see the colors of Brendon's clothes-- his clothes change, and Ryan wouldn't have thought ghosts could change clothes, if he'd thought about it at all. At one point, Brendon falls in love with one of Ryan's ex-girlfriend's old hoodies while he watches Ryan unpack, a silly lavender thing, and Ryan kind of wishes he could give it to him, because it's not like he's even using it, and Brendon hardly ever admits to missing anything, wanting anything, but he's lusting after the hoodie like it's something magical.
"How do you get new clothes?" Ryan asks him, conversationally, while he's fucking around on the Xbox, like he's not trying to be sneaky about anything at all.
Brendon shrugs. "I don't get new ones. These are all ones my parents burned before they left."
Ryan blinks at him. He knows Brendon had a family, but he doesn't talk about them, except once, a mention of his sister, but Ryan had sort of assumed that they all died. Apparently not. "They burned your things?"
Brendon smiles wryly. "Yeah. They were, uh. Cleansing the house of my influence, I guess, so they burnt all my stuff. I guess they were hoping it would get rid of me? But it didn't work, so they left."
Ryan's quiet for a minute. He didn't ever like his father-- it's hard to like a man who kicks you around-- but at the same time, he can't imagine leaving him, and he can't imagine that his father would ever abandon him after burning all his worldly possessions, whether he was alive or not. "That's sort of horrible," he says, finally, because he doesn't actually have anything better to say.
"I guess," Brendon agrees, giving a half shrug. "It's been like five years now. At least I have things to change into. I wish I could shower. I mean, it's not like I actually sweat or anything, but I kind of miss the act of showering."
Ryan snorts, but doesn’t disagree. He's a big fan of showers himself. They're somehow cathartic. "So," he muses, thinking about it, "if I burnt something, you could have it?"
Brendon looks at him for a long moment, like he's trying to figure out what Ryan's getting at. "I guess? It might just have been because those things were sort of a part of me, like, they had my essence? I don't know. But maybe burning them is sort of like... killing them, so they can be ghosts, too?" He scratches his head. "I don't know," he says again, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture.
Ryan nods, humming, and sets the Xbox controller aside. "Give me a sec?" he says, not waiting for an answer before getting up and going to the bedroom. Brendon doesn't follow him, just hovers, looking perplexed, above the couch.
Ryan gets the hoodie from the box in his closet, along with a lighter and a fire-starter log from the cupboard in the kitchen. It might not work, no, but it's not like he's losing his favorite scarf or anything if it doesn't. It's just Keltie's hoodie.
Brendon just stares at him while he lights the log and waits for it to catch, and he only makes one little pained noise when Ryan stuffs the hoodie on top of the flames.
"Is it working?" Ryan asks after a minute. The hoodie is only half burnt, though, and the whole room smells like burning polyester.
Brendon blinks, swallows audibly, and says, "I don't know yet."
Ryan nods, and they watch the fire in silence.
After a minute or two, the hoodie gives up with a flare of grayish smoke, and there's nothing left but a smoking zipper on the fire-starter. He turns to ask Brendon if it worked, and there's the hoodie, softly translucent, in Brendon's hands.
Brendon turns it over wonderingly. "That's epic," he breathes, and tugs it on over his shirt. There's no zipper, so it hangs loose over his chest, but he looks thrilled. Ryan's throat maybe goes a little tight, because seeing Brendon happy makes him realize just how sad he'd been before. Ryan’s pretty sure there’s no way he’s going to be able to let Brendon go back.
Brendon beams and flings his arms through Ryan. It feels bizarre, like Ryan’s body is full of alkaseltzer, but it's as close as Brendon can get to hugging him, so Ryan tentatively wraps his arms around where Brendon sort of is and tries to hug back.
--
Ryan starts going out and getting things for him pretty often after that. New jeans, one time, and a band shirt another. Spencer leaves a stupid wooly cap over at Ryan's house one night, and Ryan sees Brendon watching it longingly, so he quietly burns that for him, too. Brendon doesn't take it off for weeks, and Ryan can hear him giggling when Spencer comes looking for it.
After that, Brendon's solid enough that Ryan can tell that his eyes are brown and that his skin is tan and that his favorite pair of jeans are black. Sometimes, when Brendon looks longingly at Ryan eating pizza or a sandwich, Ryan will burn him a piece, and no, he's not sure it's the same, but Brendon claims he can taste it, and no, he doesn't need it, exactly, not as sustenance anyway, but Ryan's pretty sure there are different kinds of need.
--
Brendon has pretty much decided that Spencer is the best thing since somebody invented the concept of adding cheese to things and then eating them. Spencer has a beard, a beard of sexy manfullness, and every time Brendon looks at it, he's pretty sure he would die from how cute it looks on Spencer's round almost-a-girl-cheeks if he weren't already dead. As it is, he has to stop himself from giggling in pure glee every time Spencer smiles and the light of all things awesome beams out from his white, shiny teeth to fill the world.
Brendon is maybe sort of retardedly smitten. He's pretty much okay with this idea, as long as he can keep looking at Spencer without Spencer noticing that he's looking. Ryan laughing at him doesn't help, but whatever, Ryan's a douche.
A douche who pays real money for cool things and then lights them on fire so Brendon can have them. Ryan's sort of an awesome douche. Whatever. Not the point. Spencer is adorable, and Brendon's afterlife's goal is to figure out some way to kiss his stupid, adorable face full of beard and smile and big blue eyes.
Nnnngh. That’s all there is to say. Nnnngh.
--
Ryan is standing in his music room, picking out a potential melody while Brendon hums along. It's soft, but cheery, and it sort of reminds Ryan of the Beatles, if the Beatles had been less British and had been influenced by 80's bubblegum pop.
"I think it needs more of a minor feeling in the bridge," Brendon says, floating down to an inch above Ryan's favorite chair. Ryan's pretty sure Brendon sits there just to be a pain in the ass, since it doesn't really matter which chair he sits in, since he's not actually able to feel chairs at all. He just has some sort of sick mission to mess with Ryan's head. Ryan is relatively sure this is what it would have been like, having a younger brother.
Ryan ignores the chair thing and obligingly darkens the tone, making it a little mournful, a little longing. "I kind of like it."
Brendon bobs his head. "Yeah, yeah, like-- it's kind of like having breakfast for dinner."
Two-months-ago-Ryan wouldn't have any idea what the hell Brendon was talking about, but now-Ryan just nods along, says, "Yeah, like, it's not what you're expecting, what you're used to, but it's satisfying in a different way."
"Exactly, Ryan Ross," Brendon says, beaming at him. "Exactly like that."
Ryan grins back at him, and plays the melody all the way through, now that they have it.
After that, he goes to the kitchen and makes pancakes, because the whole breakfast-for-dinner thing is kind of stuck in his head.
--
Spencer maybe secretly likes Ryan's horrible new house. It's huge and ugly and half falling apart, but there are like five rooms that have no actual conceivable use, and there's just something about the place that's weirdly comfortable. He'd never admit it to Ryan or anything, but it's homey, and Spencer sleeps better there than he does at his own house.
"Did I know you were coming over?" Ryan asks when he gets back from the store, laden with bags. "I guess I must have forgotten, sorry, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately."
Spencer goes to help him put things away, stacking cans of beans and soup in the pantry. "No, no, I didn't. I mean, I was-- do I actually have to warn you? You never used to warn me." It's different, sure, Ryan didn't usually have a lot of warning before he needed somewhere else to sleep, but still.
Ryan hip-checks him and shakes his head, smiling a little. It's nice to see him smile; it's not something Spencer's seen a lot of since Ryan's dad died. Not that Ryan was a big smiler before that, either, but. "No, no, I just wanted to know if I'm getting crazier than usual."
"Nope. At least not in that sense. What's keeping you from sleeping?" Ryan normally keeps weird hours, but they're more weird in the sense of getting up early and then napping like a cat in the sun than staying up all night.
Ryan shrugs. "I've been working on music a lot. New inspiration, I guess."
That's legitimately weird. Ryan hasn't written music in a long time, not since the Summer League, back when they were in high school, when he was dating Brent and writing angry songs about his father. "Is something bothering you?" Spencer doesn't mean to sound that incredulous, but Ryan's seemed better lately, and he doesn't write music when he's happy.
Ryan hums something under his breath, a little snatch of something cheery and fast. "No," he says, after a minute, "nothing's bothering me. This is maybe different."
"Is it Jon?" It could possibly be something weird and un-Ryan, like endless woeful unrequited love songs, but Spencer has a hard time believing that, either. Ryan tends to think that sort of thing is tasteless.
Ryan looks surprised. "No?" He snickers. "Although I should probably hit you or something, since he somehow knew about my secret collection of dog models."
"Plushies, Ryan. Stuffed animals," Spencer corrects automatically. "Dog models makes it sound like you have a bunch of pictures of dog furries, posing in skimpy lingerie." He mocks the pose, a hand on his hip, one behind his head, and gives a dramatic sigh, and there's a little giggle in response. He glares at Ryan, and Ryan belatedly covers his mouth, looking too amused to be apologetic. "Seriously, though, what are you writing?"
Ryan bites his lip. "Hang on, I'll get my notebook." When he comes back, he hands Spencer a page covered in a mess of scribbled lines of lyrics and musical notations-- words are just hollow birds; the world's just a broken bone, melt your headaches, call it home; putting out the lantern, find your own way back home.
"I like it," Spencer says. He does. "It's... brighter, somehow." It is. "It's kind of. Um, not your usual style?" It isn't.
"It isn't," Ryan agrees, smiling a secret smile, and Spencer doesn't ask, because he doesn't think Ryan will tell him.
--
As far as Brendon is concerned, Jon Walker’s general awesomeness is outstripped only by Spencer’s awesomeness, and by Jon Walker’s own awesomeness at playing the bass. His bass-playing abilities are not only useful in a band-having sense, but also useful in that they are how he talks to Ryan.
Every time he comes over, Jon sits down with Ryan in the music room, and, while they wait for Spencer (who is probably always late on purpose, just to give Ryan some time alone with Jon, because Spencer is appealingly sneaksome like that), he and Ryan send chords back and forth, echoing and responding to each other like a conversation. Ryan strums out a few notes, a question, and Jon ducks his head, smiles a secret half smile, and answers with warm notes, soft notes, notes that don't sound like anything in particular on their own, but mean more than Ryan will admit they do when he talks to Brendon later.
Brendon thinks that Jon Walker says more with his hands and his strings than he knows how to say out loud. Brendon also thinks that Jon Walker's hands and strings say that he thinks Ryan hung the moon and told it to be shiny.
--
"Can you just-- yeah, like that." Ryan nods, tapping his foot, as Spencer slows down the beat. "Awesome. Jon, then, okay, here, come in with-- awesome." He hums out the first line, actually sings along with the second, sings, "Breaks free of my wooden neck, left a nod over sleeping waves, like bobbing bait for bathing cod."
Spencer cocks his head at him, stops drumming. "What does that even mean?" he asks, arching an eyebrow.
Ryan would answer him, would tell him exactly what it means, except that he didn't write it, Brendon did, and Ryan doesn't have the faintest idea what it means. He scrabbles for something off-putting and pretentious. "It's... a literary reference, Spence, this old Russian philosopher-- you wouldn't get it," he says, in lieu of anything actually useful.
Jon snorts, but doesn't say anything, and Ryan is eminently grateful that Spencer is content to leave it at that.
--
Spencer is a pretty quiet sleeper, compared to Ryan. Ryan flails around with nightmares a lot, and he sometimes wakes up during the night. If Spencer did that, it would be really hard for Brendon to be as creepy as he is without being caught, because throwing your hand through a ghost is shocking enough to wake anyone up, as Ryan has proven on more than one occasion. So Brendon’s grateful that Spencer has an apparently generally-untroubled mind. When he’s out, he tends to stay out.
Brendon can interact with inanimate objects-- he can sit on chairs, beds, counters, whatever, and he can even sometimes move things a little-- like pulling Ryan's sleeve or something-- but he can't feel things, and his hands pass right through anything animate. Saying he can interact with the inanimate is actually sort of stretching the word "interact"-- he can recognize the space they occupy and interact with the space they're not occupying, sitting just above their presence, that sort of thing. He's not actually really touching them, not technically.
So when he lays on the bed beside Spencer, he’s not actually lying on the bed beside Spencer. He’s floating a few millimeters above the bed, watching Spencer sleep, because he’s a giant creeper, and that’s what giant creepers who are ghosts do.
Brendon would pretty much give anything-- he’d give his voice, like Ariel, okay, seriously-- to be able to reach out and touch the round curve of Spencer’s cheek and have Spencer feel something other than ionized air stinging his skin.
Brendon does the next best thing, scooting in as close as he can so he can feel Spencer’s breaths displacing the air around his face, and falls asleep to the rhythm of Spencer’s lungs.
Brendon always makes sure to wake up before Spencer does, or to leave quickly if he wakes up from a dream, because if Spencer knows, Brendon might have to stop, and Brendon knows, knows that he couldn’t stand it, knows that if Spencer knew, if Spencer could say no, Brendon would just dissipate and float away. And now that there’s actually something to stay for, to exist for, Brendon really, really doesn’t want that to happen.
--
The boy smiles at Spencer, eyes crinkling up behind square red glasses. "Hi," he says, and his voice is like music and that's retarded except for the part where it's true. His hands are on Spencer's hips, and his mouth is moving against the side of Spencer's neck, tongue flickering out against his skin.
"Do I know you?" Spencer finally manages, hands clenching in the boy's purple hoodie as their hips press together.
He smiles up at Spencer, impish and adorable, and kisses the corner of Spencer's mouth. His eyes are smiling, too, but there's an almost ironic twist to the curve of his mouth. "No," he says, nibbling on Spencer's lower lip until Spencer opens his mouth, and, "I'm Brendon," and then he's licking into Spencer's mouth.
Spencer, Spencer clings like he's drowning. "I'm, uh--" and then Brendon slips a hand into his hair and tips Spencer's head back and sucks on the spot just below his ear and Spencer can hardly breathe.
"I know who you are," he says into Spencer's skin, pressing his hips closer, twisting them mercilessly, and the hand he's still got on Spencer's hip is rubbing a thumb below the waistband of Spencer's jeans. Then he's undoing the button, knuckles pressing into the sensitive skin below Spencer's navel, and he drags the zipper down.
The sound snaps Spencer awake, and he's lying in Ryan's guestroom with a really uncomfortable hard on. Something buzzes against his left arm, but when he looks, there's nothing there.
--
Ryan laughs his ass off at Brendon. Brendon thinks it's kind of unnecessarily mean, but then, it's Ryan, and it maybe is a little bit funny, but.
"He almost saw me," Brendon hisses, and okay, he's maybe freaking out a little. "Can you imagine what would have happened?"
Ryan's giggling into his pillow. "He would have said, hello, hot boy in my bed, why are you staring at my raging hard on like you want to molest it?"
Ryan is stupid, and Brendon would really love to be able to hit him in the face. It's times like this that he curses his inability to touch things. With his fists. Also, times like when Spencer has a raging hard on and he really wants to molest it. He curses his incorporeality pretty badly at those times, too.
"Oh, fuck you," he grouses, and floats petulantly into the ceiling.
"I'm pretty sure he likes guys, if that helps," Ryan calls after him, still giggling.
It doesn't help. It just makes it even more horrible that Brendon can't have him. Brendon figures he should have maybe come to terms with this whole "being dead" thing by now, but he's pretty sure he's only getting less and less used to it.
--
"So, so, okay, wait," Spencer says, tapping his sticks on Ryan's leg. "What you're telling me is that this song isn't about fucking."
Jon bites his lip, viciously tamping down a giggle. Ryan glares at him anyways, but that's because Ryan is a ridiculous, oversensitive bitch.
"No," Ryan says, drawing the syllable out like he's trying not to strangle Spencer with his scrawny little hands. Spencer gets a sort of sick joy out of making Ryan sound like that. It's some sort of pseudo-sibling instinct or something. "No, Spencer, there isn't anything at all in this song that could possibly be construed as being about fucking. Even a little."
Jon makes this horrible little noise like he's dying, and buries his face in the arm of the couch. Spencer feels his pain, really, he does. Spencer would like to choke to death laughing at Ryan's bitchface, too.
"But," Spencer says, raising a drumstick to make his point, "see, the thing is, I'm pretty sure it's not about anything else, either, which brings me to the conclusion--" here, he taps Ryan's collarbone with the stick, ignoring his wince, "that it must be all thinly-veiled metaphors. About fucking."
Jon stops pretending not to be laughing and gives up, pushing himself off the couch and ambling into the hall, guffawing into his arm. Ryan glares pissily after him for a minute, then rounds on Spencer.
"There is something wrong with you," he says, and Spencer isn't disagreeing. Just, yknow, the thing wrong with him presently is that Ryan is singing a song about pianos and beards and Trojan horses and pretending that it somehow makes anything resembling sense.
Spencer doesn't say that, though, just stares Ryan down. Ryan stares back, but Spencer will totally win. He has sisters.
And sure enough, a minute later, Ryan rolls his eyes and throws up his hands and says, totally exasperated, "Fine! Okay, fine, Spence, it's totally secretly about fucking."
Spencer nods solemnly. "Damn straight it is."
--
"Ask him out, Ryan." Brendon pokes vaguely at Ryan’s side. It sort of tickles.
Brendon has no goddamn room to talk. "Tell Spencer you exist," Ryan retorts, and it's a low blow, but whatever.
Brendon narrows his eyes. "That's different. I'm a spooky dead thing. You're a pile of giant girl-eyes and spiky hips and Jon pretty obviously wants to lick you to death."
"Jon is not a dog, Brendon." Ryan's going for long-suffering exasperation, but he's pretty sure he just sounds like he's getting close to defeat.
Brendon holds up his hands like paws and pants for a second before shaking his head. "Naw, he's a kitty, Ryan, and wow, I was going to say something about giving him some milk or something, but that's beyond even my ability with gross puns."
Ryan groans and throws a pillow through him.
Brendon takes it like a man and whooshes through Ryan in retaliation, and okay, okay, that feels like being electrocuted and doused in cold water at the same time.
Ryan, of course, because he's totally mature and everything, restrains himself to throwing the TV remote through Brendon's head in return.
"Ask him ou-outtttt," Brendon sing-songs as he floats through the wall, probably to go curl up over Spencer's indent on the pillow or something equally pathetic. It's not like Ryan is just as bad, with his mooning over texts from Jon or anything.
Ryan sometimes fiddles around the bass that Jon leaves in the music room when he’s feeling especially like a total girl, just because it has a sense of Jon in it. No, Ryan’s totally a different sort of pathetic altogether.
--
Sometimes, Brendon watches Spencer jerk off. He knows it's creepy, and he feels a little bit like Edward Cullen, but Spencer is really hot, and Brendon is only human. A dead human, but still a human, okay, and humans have needs. And Brendon's needs just happen to be partially fulfilled by watching his sorta-roommate's best friend jerk off.
Also, it's kind of weird for Spencer to be jerking off in someone else's house, even if he does stay over more nights than not, so it's almost like Spencer's asking for it. Or something. That line of logic makes Brendon feel like he’s some sort of, like, sleep rapist or something. But Spencer keeps staying over, and Brendon keeps falling asleep in the bed with him, and pretty regularly now, Spencer wakes up halfway through the night with a boner, and. Well, instead of fleeing in terror like the first time, Brendon maybe sticks around, out of sight, to watch.
He’s seriously aware that it’s creepy, he is. But he’s kind of in love, and he’s pretty sure this is as close as he’s ever going to get to getting into Spencer Smith’s pants, so he sticks around. At least Brendon doesn’t jerk off to it. See, that would make him creepy.
--
Brendon is mostly content with people not knowing about him, other than Ryan. With the obvious exception of Spencer, Brendon doesn't really care if the world knows he exists.
Sometimes, though, people come to the house, and Brendon really wishes he was alive just so he could know what they’re doing there. In this case, there's a scraggly-haired dude sitting at Ryan's kitchen table, drumming his fingers nervously against his ripped up jeans. He's weirdly pale, like he doesn't ever actually see the light of day. He's got a big sketchbook tucked to his chest, and his eyes keep flicking nervously around the kitchen. Brendon wonders about that for a minute, actually, because it's almost like the guy is looking for him, like the guy can sense something's there.
"Hello?" the guy says, tentatively, looking in totally the wrong direction.
"Hang on a minute!" Ryan yells from the hall. "I'm just getting the-- ow, fuck-- the thing, gimme just a--"
The guy snickers a little, but his eyes stop scanning the room, and Brendon-- tucked above the kitchen cabinets, next to the ceiling-- relaxes a little. He doesn't leave, though, because there's a guy in Ryan's kitchen, a guy who isn't Spencer or Jon, and that's weird enough that Brendon just needs to know.
Ryan stumbles in a minute later-- because he always forgets that there's a tiny bit of uneven wood at the threshold where the hallway carpet switches to the battered hardwood of the kitchen floor-- with his arms piled high with folders.
"Dude," the guy at the table says, blinking owlishly. "That. Ross, that is a fuckton of paper."
Ryan snorts and drops them unceremoniously onto the table. "No kidding."
The guy rubs his hands together. "So, okay, yeah, where do I start?" He's got smudges of ink on his hands, on the curve of his jaw. Brendon can admire that sort of obvious absentmindedness.
"Uh... probably it doesn't matter. Just, you-- you said you can read music?"
The guy nods. "Yeah, yeah, no, totally." He pulls the top folder from the stack, flipping it open and leafing through the few pages. He hums a little, a familiar bar of music, and Brendon realizes that the papers are his songs-- well, they were his songs, now they're Ryan's, but. Those.
Ryan watches the as the guy goes through each folder, humming and muttering to himself. He’s hugging himself, and he doesn't move a muscle, and on Ryan, that, Brendon knows, means he's either really mad or really nervous, and since he hasn't threatened to bite the guy or tried to throw anything at him, Brendon's gonna go with nervous.
"Dude, dude," the guy says, waving a folder, "Is this song about fucking?"
Ryan groans and thunks his head into the table. Brendon tries not to giggle. It’s not easy.
--
"So, uh." Brendon bites his lip, because this is totally Ryan's house, too, he's not trying to pry. "Who was that?"
Ryan hesitates for a minute. "He's... Gerard." He palms the back of his neck awkwardly. "He does art stuff."
Brendon nods, because art stuff is awesome, right, it is, except that the guy-- Gerard! Gerard is a totally cool name for an art dude with scraggly hair and a fierce paleness to rival Brendon's own translucency!-- had been going through their music, Brendon's music, and that doesn't have anything to do with art. "Ryan," he says.
"Look, okay, he's just-- he's helping me out. With some of the notes I can't get. He maybe sings, some, too." Ryan doesn't meet Brendon's eyes, which is awesome, because Brendon sort of feels sick.
"Right," Brendon says, because he's not sure what else he can say that won't sound like bile. "Right, okay."
Ryan swallows and looks away. "Just, you know, to help. He's not. He's not joining the band or anything, just kind of. Coaching me and maybe, just. Other stuff, maybe, sort of. I don't know yet, okay?"
Brendon doesn't say anything. From the way Ryan's carefully studying his shoes, Brendon doesn't think he has to.
--
Ryan is maybe a terminal moron when it comes to Jon. Jon is cuddlesome and adorable and laid back and Ryan is none of those things even a little bit at all.
So Ryan might whine to Brendon a lot about how much he wants to have Jon's babies, and Brendon is usually pretty much awesome about humoring him and poking him gently in the direction of actually growing a spine.
However, there are some days when Brendon is kind of off about it.
"Man the fuck up, Ryan Ross! At least you can touch him!" Brendon yells, bright red even though he's translucent.
Ryan scowls back at him. Ryan kind of sucks at confrontation-- Spencer mentions all the time that Ryan gets sort of pissy when he's criticized. "Fuck you, okay, what do you even know about it? You don't know Jon, you haven’t even talked to him, and he probably doesn't even like guys, right, and it's not like you'd even know what the fuck you're talking about, anyways, okay, the guy you like doesn't know you're ali--" And then Ryan remembers that he's talking to a nineteen year old dead boy and that he's kind of a giant asshole.
Brendon gives him a teary sneer. "Yeah. That's because I'm not alive, Ryan, and even if, miracle of miracles, he wasn't terrified or horrified, and he liked me, where the hell would that go, huh?" He tries to glare for another moment, and then his chin wobbles, and he falls down to just above the floor and curls up, sobbing.
Ryan has never been good at people who cry. Mostly, it just kind of makes him hate himself.
--
Brendon thinks Ryan probably got how much the idea of someone else, someone not Brendon, not Ryan, singing Brendon's words bothered him, because Gerard doesn't come around after that first time. Brendon knows Ryan still sees him, is singing with him, because he goes out more-- that is, ever-- and comes home singing songs that aren't theirs, aren't Brendon's. Things even further out of his range; the sort of songs that Brendon knows help expand it.
Brendon tries not to let that bother him. Ryan's trying. It's not his fault that Brendon can't be all the things he wants to be. Brendon has more than he'd ever thought he'd have again, and that needs to be enough.
--
Spencer groans as Brendon licks a stripe across his hipbone, dragging his pajamas down around his thighs. Soft black hair brushes against Spencer's stomach, and then Brendon wraps his lips around him and swallows him down and Spencer really can't feel anything other than that anymore, so.
When he comes, fingers tight in Brendon's hair, Brendon swallows and pulls off and grins at him, this blinding, gorgeous grin, and Spencer's dizzy, really dizzy, and he's falling away.
And then he's in the goddamn guestroom with a mess on the sky blue sheets.
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Fuck."
--
Brendon doesn't always just sex Spencer up in his dreams. Spencer would be kind of sad about that, except that when he's not doing unthinkably awesome things to Spencer's nakedparts, Brendon has long, ridiculous conversations with him that don't actually make a lot of sense, and Spencer likes those almost as much as the sex.
"So, okay, Ryan and Jon, they totally have a gay thing going on," Spencer says one night, lying on his back in blue-green grass, looking up at a soft pink sky.
Brendon, head on Spencer's stomach, nods and giggles. "It's sort of tragic. Ryan needs to profess his love or some shit, no lie."
Spencer snorts. "Or something. Ryan's never been good at actually, you know, communicating like a human being. He's all... bottled up."
"Is he?" Brendon asks, humming a little. "I hadn't noticed."
The awake part of Spencer's brain wonders a little about that, but because he's dreaming, and that part is totally not the part behind the wheel, Spencer doesn't ask how the hell Brendon would know, anyway. "I think it's sort of about his dad, you know? The guy was an asshole. Ryan just kind of learned... not to say what was on his mind. Or much at all." He sang it, though-- that was half of what their band had been about, at least in Spencer's eyes: giving Ryan a way to communicate, a way not to just fold in on himself and give up trying at all.
Brendon hums again, musically this time. It sounds a little familiar, like-- "Is that Colors of the Wind?" he asks, blinking a little.
Brendon grins up at him, picking clumps of grass and littering his stomach with them. "I'm surprised. I didn't peg you as the Disney type."
Spencer shrugs. "I have sisters." Pocahontas was a big part of his childhood. And only mostly because of his sisters-- Spencer isn't going to lie, he maybe has a tiny weakness for John Smith and his cocky swagger.
Brendon snickers at him. Spencer stretches his arms up, tucks them behind his head. "This is nice," Brendon says softly, once he stops laughing at Spencer's secret fondness for Disney, turning on his side to look Spencer in the eye.
Spencer cards his fingers through Brendon's hair, brushing bits of teal grass out of the dark strands. "It is," he agrees, and wakes up.
It takes him a minute, blinking up at the dark ceiling, to remember where he is, that he's not in a field with a boy, that he's in Ryan's house, alone, and that it's the middle of the night, not the middle of a pink afternoon.
When everything floats back to him, Spencer starts to wonder if maybe he's actually going insane.
--
This visit-nominally for band practice-is mostly the same as all of Jon's other visits, except that Spencer is even later than usual, a couple hours late, and Ryan and Jon have been having a soft musical conversation for a long time now. Brendon is sitting behind the piano, peeking out and watching, because, okay, he's kind of a nosy bastard, and Spencer isn't here yet, so there's no one else to be a creeper over.
Ryan is playing the melody to a song he and Brendon had worked out a week ago, pausing here and there for Jon to feel his way through the sound, thread a bass line into it.
"I like it," Jon says, when Ryan stops.
Ryan's mouth quirks up at the corner, and he bites his lip a little. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Jon says, and looks down at his hands.
Ryan lifts his head, says, "Jon--" he stops, shakes his head, looks down again. "Never mind."
Jon tilts his head a little, hair falling into his eyes, and doesn't ask out loud, just picks out a low hum of a question on his bass.
Ryan's fingers shake a little when they try to give an answer.
"Jon," Ryan says again, low and awkward and a little helpless.
Jon reaches out, and hand stills Ryan's on the guitar, tightens over his fingers. He doesn't say anything, just laces their fingers together and strums them once over the strings, answering himself.
When Ryan looks up, cheeks pink, Jon leans in, all the way in, smiling his springtime-and-kittens smile, and Brendon drifts down into the floor, courteously leaves them to themselves as their mouths meet. He tries to ignore the jealous ache in his chest.
--
Spencer eventually shows up for practice, bundled up for the winter weather.
This is not the first time Brendon has heard Spencer play the drums. Brendon has heard it a dozen times over the months that Ryan has been living here, that the guys have been practicing here. Brendon knows, mentally, that Spencer plays the drums.
Feeling it, though, feeling the air vibrate through him, feeling the sound hum through the house-- that's different. That's amazing. Every fucking time. Spencer doesn't play the drums, Spencer is the beat, is the music, and the drums just let Brendon hear it.
Ryan didn’t laugh at Brendon when he said it after the first time, just smiled and nodded, the way a proud parent or sibling would-- yeah, that's my friend.
Brendon taps the rhythm out on his thigh while he sits, curled up behind the piano, listening to Spencer play. Softly, so softly, he sings under his breath along with Ryan. His voice is stronger, deeper, fuller than Ryan's, Ryan tells him this all the time, says it with an undercurrent of fond jealousy. But Brendon can't exactly get up on a stage and sing with them, so Ryan sings their words, his voice catching on things Brendon's would soar through. It's still beautiful, soft and elegant and evocative, but Brendon's chest aches with the need to sing along, really sing along, feel his voice winding around Ryan's, around the guitar, Jon's bass, Spencer's drums, even if only in this room.
Brendon reins it in, just sings silently along behind the piano and makes sure no one hears.
--
Spencer doesn't bother calling Ryan to tell him he's coming back over-- he only left fifteen minutes ago, what could Ryan possibly be doing that Spencer hasn't seen before? It's fucking cold out, Spencer wants his other sweater, and, distracted as he was by his argument with Jon over the merits of Cheetara versus Panthro, he's relatively sure he left it draped over the high hat of his drum kit. Or possibly in the guest room.
Trotting up the rickety steps, Spencer gives a perfunctory knock on the door and opens it. Ryan's not in the hall or the kitchen, so Spencer toes off his shoes-- Ryan threatens him with painful death if he tracks dirt around, and there's still mud in the driveway from the rainstorm last night-- and pads down the hall towards the music room.
Someone is singing, and for a moment, Spencer thinks it's Ryan. But Ryan's voice doesn't sound a thing like this. No offense to Ryan, his voice is kind of shaky. This, though, this is round and full and it pulls at things in Spencer's gut that he didn't know were there. Whoever it is, he's singing the song that the band-- if you can call Ryan and Spencer and Jon an actual band-- was practicing earlier, the one Ryan's randomly calling "Nine in the Afternoon." (Spencer had tried to explain that you had either nine in the morning or nine at night, but Ryan was completely disinterested in the facts of it.)
Spencer stands at the door for a minute, not wanting to interrupt, just listening. The voice is somehow familiar, just a little, tickling at something in the back of Spencer’s head. When the singing stops, he cracks the door, says, "Hey, that was fucking amazing, Ry, who've you been holding out on us?" And then he has a fucking heart attack, because Brendon, sexy dreams Brendon, is standing in the middle of the room, eyes-- pun fully appropriate-- the size of the moon.
Spencer’s eyes are probably about the same size, and he would blink them, right, except that his brain is frozen, because this isn’t happening, can’t be happening, and even if it is, it doesn’t make the least bit of sense at all.
"Spencer," can’t-possibly-actually-be-here-Brendon says, blinking like an owl.
"Spencer--" Ryan starts at the same time, cutting himself off when Spencer meets his eyes.
Brendon isn't real. Brendon is a figment of Spencer's not-getting-any-action-lately imagination, and yet here he is, standing, singing, in Ryan's house. Right here. Spencer kicks his brain into gear enough for it to autonomously decide that the correct reaction to this is probably anger, given that the situation at hand is sick and impossible and connected to Ryan. "I think," Spencer says, narrowing his eyes so he doesn't see red, "That we've established that I'm Spencer. Now, can we get to what the fuck is going on?"
Ryan coughs and looks at Brendon, who is kind of shaking. "Spence," Ryan says, "Look, this is Brendon, he's, uh, he's kind of been helping me write stuff."
Spencer growls, because that's not it, that's totally not the issue, the issue is that there's a guy, a guy Spencer thought was totally imaginary, standing in Ryan's house, and Ryan's acting like it's not a big deal, like he hasn't been fucking with Spencer's head somehow. Spencer is relatively sure that this mind-fuckery is somehow Ryan's fault. You can only read so much Chuck Palahniuk before it messes with your brain and causes you to become an evil mind-fucking genius. He hasn’t worked out exactly how it’s Ryan’s fault, yet, but he’ll get to that once his head stops spinning. "How about, instead of telling me about songs, okay, Ry, you tell me who the fuck he is and why the hell he's here. Or-“ he rounds on Brendon, “maybe you can tell me what’s going on, huh? What the fuck have you even been doing to my head? Jesus.” He tries to calm his breathing down, but he maybe has sort of a massive fear of not being in control of things,okay, and yes, he can handle not being in control of everything, but somehow, someone has been fucking with his brain, and that shit is just not cool. It’s his brain.
Ryan puts on his best bitch face. "Oh, well, fuck you. I'm sorry, am I not allowed to have friends that aren't you, Spencer? Is that not okay?"
Spencer deepens his glare, stalking forward to poke a finger at Brendon's chest. "Sure you are. When you--" Spencer stops, because poking a finger at Brendon's chest doesn't work. His finger goes into Brendon's chest, into fizzing air, thick like water and sparking like a live wire. He yanks his hand back belatedly, blinking rapidly. "What the fuck?"
Brendon's hands go up in front of him, and his eyes get even bigger, and he says, "I, just, I’m sorry, sorry, I don't--" and then he's gone through the floor, just, poof, straight down, and Spencer is left alone with Ryan.
--
"What the fuck?" Spencer asks again, voice low and dangerous.
Ryan doesn't really give a shit about Spencer's dangerous voice, though, because Brendon’s all freaked out, and Ryan's kind of worried about him. This is sort of the exact thing Brendon’s been terrified would happen, and Ryan kind of wants to kill things with his bare hands because he doesn’t like to see Brendon upset at all, let alone this upset. Yanking off his guitar strap, he snaps, "He's fucking dead already, Spencer, could you maybe not make it any worse?"
Spencer blinks at him, and Ryan rolls his eyes.
"What, Spence, you thought I was mystically creating human beings out of your perverse imagination? I had no idea you'd seen him before. This is his fucking house, okay, he died in it, and it would be really awesome if you didn't run him out of it by being a douche because you think his existence is somehow my fault. You're a fucking irrational fucktard, okay, shut the hell up."
Ryan doesn't wait for Spencer to say anything, just yanks the door open and points down the hall. "Make it better, Spencer James Smith, or I will make guitar strings out of your entrails before you can blink."
Spencer clears his throat, opens his mouth to say something. He meets Ryan's eyes, thinks better of it, and follows Ryan's pointing finger down the hall.
--
Part Two
Pairings: Brendon/Spencer, Ryan/Jon, background Mikey/Bob and Gabe/Bill if you squint.
Bands: Panic! at the Disco, My Chemical Romance, some Cobra Starship
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Ghost porn, voyeurism, sort-of/reverse-ish character death (dude, Brendon’s a ghost, therefore, he’s dead, technically).
Summary: Ghost!Brendon AU. Brendon died five years ago and haunts a rundown house on the outskirts of Chicago. Ryan moves in with him! Brendon has a crush on Spencer, but won't let Ryan tell Spencer that Brendon exists, in case Spencer's creeped out by him. Ryan and Jon and Spencer start a band. Meanwhile Brendon helps Ryan write songs when the others aren’t around, since they don't know he exists, but he's frustrated that he can't join in for the rest of it. Sad, awkward ghost love with a happy ending and some fuzzy cuteness along the way. Guest starring Gerard, Mikey and Gabe!
"We could have Jon come over, right, and maybe we could even have a band again, Spence." Ryan elbow's Spencer's side, smiling kind of hopefully, eyes twinkling, and Spencer grins back at him, giving in, and wow, Spencer's grin is blinding, it’s possibly the source of all good things in the universe, including unicorns and puppies and possibly several of Brendon's wet dreams. So maybe Brendon won't whoosh through the house screaming about anything at all. Spencer is sort of disgustingly hot.
There are times, very frustrating times, times like right now, that Brendon really wishes he weren't a ghost.
Author’s Notes: Biggest, most enormous thanks to sweetnovicane and skinofreality, my deliciously magnificent betas/sounding boards/cheerleaders of epic awesomeness. I would never have attempted BBB were it not for sweetnovicane and her wily, wily roommate ways, and I would never, ever have finished this fic if not for my desire to see skinofreality’s face while reading the finished product. Thank you both so much, you own me forever. <3
Also, there is a sequel (not to mention a threequel) in the works, which is already nearly hitting 30,000 words and isn’t done, in case anyone else is interested in getting on the beta-ing horse (or the cheerleading horse). The sequel is more ensemble-y, and the threequel is inexplicably about Pete and his guardian angel (Patrick). Don’t be shy if you feel like getting in on the cracky action. ^__^ I’m trying to get both done for Wave Two, and could ALWAYS use extra beta/pre-readery help.
--
Brendon doesn't keep track of the days very well, but he's pretty sure that the day the boys show up is a Sunday, because there's a kid on a bike going up and down the street, flinging newspapers at whatever looks breakable on people's porches.
"And you're sure you want this one, Ry?" There are two of them, coming up the steps. They're both pretty short, and one is all skinny limbs and floppy brown emo hair. The other is broader, with a beard and the kind of forearms Brendon has dreams about and hips that border on childbearing.
"I'm sure," the skinny one says, smiling a little, as they come in the door. Brendon watches from halfway out of the ceiling as they walk down the hall to the kitchen. "It has character, Spence. A sort of… dilapidated charm."
The other one snorts. "If by charm you mean possible health risks, yeah, okay, sure."
Brendon kind of wants to be offended; they have no right to be judging his house. But then again, it kind of is a run-down piece of shit, and it's not like he wants to live here. He doesn't even actually live here. It's sort of hard to live anywhere when you're dead.
The two of them wander around the house a little more, and Brendon drifts along the ceiling, watching as they judge the rooms-- Spencer is cheerfully pessimistic, saying things like, "Wow, Ryan, you can die from black mold inhalation and take a bath at the same time, that's glorious. A golden opportunity if I ever saw one," and, "Huh, look at this, the fireplace is only missing half its bricks. It'll probably take you at least a week to manage to burn this place to the ground." Ryan, on the other hand, puts up with the ribbing with a wry twist of his mouth and a condescending nod.
The argument ends when Ryan points out that there's a spare bedroom that they could, "Use it as a practice space, Spence, come on, there would even be room for your drums. Think about it."
And okay, so they're weird, and Ryan is clearly trying to dress like some combination of a cowboy, a homeless man, a riverboat gambler, and Brendon's grandfather, and Spencer is a grouchy bear-man-beast, but it would be kind of cool to be able to hear music again. Brendon's missed music. Kind of a lot. So he maybe won't whoosh through the house screaming about how their doom is nigh or anything. Yet. Brendon’s not eliminating it as an option entirely.
"We could have Jon come over, right, and maybe we could even have a band again, Spence." Ryan elbow's Spencer's side, smiling kind of hopefully, eyes twinkling, and Spencer grins back at him, giving in, and wow, Spencer's grin is blinding, it’s possibly the source of all good things in the universe, including unicorns and puppies and possibly several of Brendon's wet dreams.
So maybe Brendon won't whoosh through the house screaming about anything at all.
Spencer is sort of disgustingly hot.
There are times, very frustrating times, times like right now, that Brendon really wishes he weren't a ghost.
--
Ryan and Spencer come back three days later with a bunch of boxes, exchanging cheerful insults as they haul everything inside. Brendon wonders if they're brothers or sleeping together, but he's pretty sure it's one or the other. If it's both, though, he might have to reconsider that whole Spencer-is-hot premise and replace it with oh-god-oh-god-eww. But he doesn't think that’s the case, so.
If they're together, there's the downside of hey, Brendon will be sad because Spencer and his blinding smile have someone that is not Brendon, but the upside of hey, Brendon could probably watch them have sex, and Ryan is kind of weirdly pretty, so. And if they're brothers, well, whatever, at least then Brendon won’t have to watch Spencer sex up someone who isn’t him. Probably.
"I still can't believe you're going to live here," Spencer says, when all the boxes are in, and wait, what? Brendon had kind of been under the impression that they were moving in together, both of them-it’s not like there aren’t enough rooms, there are more than enough rooms. If Spencer isn’t going to live here, Brendon might have to be sad, and Brendon had kind of enjoyed his brief break from being terminally depressed.
Ryan rolls his eyes, and says, perfectly toneless, "Oh no, Ryan, you're going to live in a musty old house full of spiders and rats, that's so much worse than where you've been living for the past twenty years."
Spencer scowls, crossing his arms and cocking a bitchy hip. "I'm not saying the house is worse than the way your dad treated you, Ryan, geez, just, you have money now, it's not like you couldn't--" So, okay, they’re probably not brothers, then, if Ryan has a different dad. Half brothers, maybe, but they still don’t look anything alike. Which means they’re probably sleeping together. Brendon is going to pretend that that doesn’t make his stomach drop a little.
"I have money, yeah, Spence, but I kind of want it to last, so I can't buy something expensive," Ryan snaps back, hands on his hips. "I'm not going to waste this money, Spencer, I don't want to end up a year down the line with nothing but a big fat mortgage and a shitty guitar. I am going to live here, because it's cheap and I like it, okay, so stop looking at me like that, and I'm going to write, and then I'm going to publish a book, okay, lots of books, a million of them, and we're going to play music and you're going to stop bitching at me about every goddamn choice I make, because you are my best friend, not my mother, okay, and you're going to like it." He stops, huffing, eyes narrowed, finger in the middle of Spencer’s chest, and waits for Spencer's response.
Best friends, okay, Brendon can sort of buy that, even if they do touch a lot for best friends. Seriously a lot. They’re not very manly about it, either. Maybe they’re Canadian.
Spencer looks at him for a long moment, one eyebrow arched, smirking. "So what you're telling me is that this house makes you feel like a legitimate starving writer and I should stop messing with your delusions?"
Ryan’s mouth curls into a wry grin. "Also that. Shut up."
Spencer rolls his eyes and lightly punches Ryan's arm. "Come on, walk me to the car? I promised I'd meet Jon for lunch and tell him if you talked about him like a twelve year old girl at all today."
Ryan scowls at him again, but it looks suspiciously like he's trying to hide a blush. "I swear to god, if you tell him that thing I said about thinking his hands are pretty, I will break both your arms and you will never drum again, Spencer Smith."
Spencer grins that stupid blinding grin that makes Brendon's chest go all tight and squiggly, and pats Ryan's hand. "On second thought, you stay right there, and I'll run away really fast now, because I might have already texted him about that one." He makes a break for it while Ryan gapes at him, slowly turning red.
When the door slams, Ryan looks straight up, straight at Brendon, like he's known Brendon's been there the whole time, and says ruefully, "If I actually break his arms, it'll be ages before I can find another drummer."
Brendon maybe falls out of the ceiling a little in shock. When he recovers himself, he blinks at Ryan a little and says the first thing to come to the surface of his mind, which is maybe not the best idea, but, "You'll never find one as pretty."
Ryan makes a face. "Ew."
--
Most people can't see Brendon. Almost everyone can hear him, which is how he got rid of the last few people who wanted to buy the house, but only one of them ever actually saw him. Ryan, though, Ryan says he can see him perfectly, and he says it in that Ryan way, like of course I can see you, idiot, I have eyes and everything, like it isn't weird. He also says it like it isn't weird that Brendon even exists, and that's actually kind of nice. Brendon doesn’t tell him that part, though, because Ryan is totally the type to get a big head about it, Brendon can tell already.
Ryan hangs out with him just like he's a real person, talks to him and plays music and asks for Brendon's advice on chord progressions and harmonies, reads books out loud so Brendon can listen if he wants to. They play checkers, sometimes, and Ryan's put little labels on each piece, so all Brendon has to say is, "Dorothy forward," or, "Xavier double jumps Wanda.” All the red pieces are girls, all the black pieces are boys, and like half of them are named for superheroes, while the other half are literary characters, and okay, it's kind of awesome that Ryan is at least as much of a dork as Brendon is. When Ryan stays up late watching terribly pretentious movies with gratuitous nudity in French, Brendon thinks he's maybe actually a little more of dork, but he keeps that to himself, because Ryan would give him a bitchface, and Brendon doesn't like having to act like it's actually imposing.
Spencer comes over a lot, too, but Brendon doesn't show himself when he's around, because if Spencer can't see him, or worse, can and is afraid of him, Brendon doesn't think he could deal with that. Ryan assures him that Spencer is open minded and pretty weird, too, so he'd probably be able to see him-- that's mostly what it's about, having room in your brain to let the idea of Brendon in-- and that he wouldn't think Brendon was scary or an abomination against god or anything. But Brendon's actually pretty sure that he is an abomination against god. His parents were sure, that's why he's here, alone, and wow, okay, it still hurts to think of them. It's been five years, and he wonders what his sisters are doing now, if his brothers are done with college yet. Brendon kind of wishes he'd gotten to graduate high school. That would have been nice. But no, he's not going to risk it with Spencer. And Ryan, Ryan seems to understand, because he doesn't bring Brendon up, doesn't tell Spencer anything at all.
A small, rebellious part of Brendon kind of wishes that Ryan were more of an asshole and would just tell Spencer and get it over with, because then Brendon wouldn't have to wonder.
But that's a really small part.
--
Ryan thinks Brendon is possibly the most annoying-yet-cool thing to happen to him since he met Spencer when he was six. Brendon never shuts up, spends half his time bouncing around the house singing show tunes, and he makes fun of all of Ryan's hats. But he also likes the books Ryan reads, knows his way around a guitar, he listens to Ryan talk about Jon and Jon's pretty, pretty hands without making fun of him the way Spencer does, and he occasionally gives Ryan ideas for his novel. (Well, Ryan’s various novels. Ryan’s maybe having trouble picking one concept and sticking to it.) He also clearly has a crush on Spencer, which is either the most hilarious or the saddest thing that Ryan's ever seen.
"Spence is coming over tonight," Ryan warns him the next time Brendon floats into the room.
Brendon hums a little and grins a big, stupid idiot grin. "Is he staying over?"
Ryan tries to scowl, because the fact that Brendon watches Spencer sleep is sort of creepy, and he should be defending Spencer's honor or something in appropriate best-friend fashion. However, Brendon is like a tiny, dead puppy, and Ryan maybe has a weakness for that sort of thing, and also it's hilarious, so he can't actually manage the scowl. "Maybe. Probably. You know him." The weird thing is that Brendon does know him. Ryan talks about him all the time, and when Brendon talks back, it's like he knows the way Spencer is, without knowing anything in particular about him at all. When Ryan asked him about it once, all he said was that Spencer was just a Spencer, and Brendon didn't have to know a lot about him to understand what that meant. After that, Ryan was pretty sure that he didn't mind Brendon creeping on Spencer at all.
Brendon nods. "What are you guys doing?"
"Band practice, sort of. Jon might come over, too." Ryan doesn't rush through the latter part, like he would with Spencer. He still feels a blush rising into his cheeks.
Brendon beams at him. "The amazing Jon Walker? The Jon that invented magic and whose smile gives birth to kittens? That Jon?"
It's entirely possible that the kitten part is true, since Jon has fourteen million cats, and Ryan is distracted by the sort of horrifying and hysterical image of kittens spontaneously popping out of Jon's mouth before he fakes a scowl at Brendon. "Yes. That Jon."
Brendon rubs his hands together, giggling gleefully. "Awesome. Awesome, Ryan Ross, I can't wait." He pauses for a minute, then, "Will you put the blue sheets in the guest room?"
Ryan probably doesn't actually want to know, but he's a writer, he's curious, so, "Why?"
Brendon gives him a lopsided smile. "They match his eyes."
Ryan rolls his eyes and mutters something perfunctory about how creepy Brendon is, and how Brendon can’t see Spencer’s eyes if Spencer’s eyes are closed and he’s asleep, but he puts the blue sheets on the bed in the guest room before Spencer comes over nonetheless.
Ryan is an enabler.
--
Jon Walker is not what Brendon expects. Brendon expects Jon Walker to be tall, dark, and handsome, with a chiseled jaw and a Viking Beard of Awesome.
The Jon Walker that shows up at the door at two in the afternoon is short-- shorter even than Ryan and Spencer and Brendon-- and soft and, yes, okay, handsome, but the way teddy bears are handsome, not the way Viggo Mortensen is handsome. The Viking Beard of Awesome is mostly what Brendon expected, though. Otherwise, he's kind of plain and brown, but he looks cuddlesome, and when Ryan ducks his head and says hello, Jon Walker smiles a smile that does, yes, as Ryan said it did, spontaneously give birth to radiant light, glory, and tiny fuzzy kittens rolling through springtime grass.
Brendon finds that especially impressive, as it's late fall, so Jon Walker also mystically generates springtime and the flora that accompanies it. Brendon will agree with Ryan-- later-- that Jon Walker is pretty magical.
--
"Can you maybe actually hit the drums instead of petting them like kittens?" Ryan demands, crossing his arms and glaring at Spencer. "Because actual drumming would be really fucking useful right now."
"Can you maybe actually sing instead of criticizing what other people are doing?" Spencer snaps back, rolling his eyes.
Jon clears his throat. "Not to like, interrupt your awesome bitchfight, guys, but the song? That song we were, yknow, playing just then? We should maybe just play it again." His mouth quirks up a little, like maybe he secretly wants to laugh and is just too nice to make fun of them, and Ryan feels all the anger and frustration seep out of him.
"Yeah, Ryan," Spencer says, sneering a little, "let's just play the song."
Ryan sniffs and ignores Spencer's absolute, ridiculous childishness. "Fine, okay, just. Count us in." He grimaces at Jon, who still just looks like he's trying really hard not to laugh.
Spencer snorts, but counts them in, and Ryan tries to shut out his general irritation at how very awkward playing again is, tries to sing through it.
It sort of works, and each time they play through a song, it gets a little less uncomfortable, a little less stilted, until eventually, Ryan can feel the music thrumming through him almost exactly like it's supposed to.
--
Ryan plays his old band's demo for Brendon after Jon and Spencer leave. It's good, it's really good. But it's angry, and it's sad, and there's something futile and desperate in the way Ryan sings, too soft and too helpless. It tugs at all the places that are empty in Brendon’s own chest, the places that make him feel like maybe he really is dead.
So when Ryan hands him the first lines of a new song he's working on, Brendon hums something he thinks will suit Ryan's voice a little better. It's warm and easy and smooth, and Ryan frowns at him.
"That's not really my usual style," he says, but it's not a complaint, not exactly.
Brendon nods. "But maybe it should be."
Ryan smiles and hums, slow and thoughtful. "I think Jon would like it."
Brendon kind of wants to giggle every time Ryan mentions Jon, because Jon is awesome, and Brendon hopes that he and Ryan get married and have ten thousand adorable, musical genius babies. "That," Brendon says with a pompous sniff, "is because Jon Walker has excellent taste." He'll teach them how to sing and play the saxophone, it'll be the coolest thing ever. Brendon’s totally going to be the cool uncle figure, but, yknow, dead and see-through.
Ryan swats in his general direction, but sniggers a little nonetheless. "So what should come next?"
Brendon thinks about it and hums the next line to himself, then sings, tentatively, "Hey moon, please forget to fall down." When he looks up from the page, Ryan is blinking at him, eyes a little wide. "What?"
Ryan just keeps blinking. "You should, um. You should sing, Brendon, you should sing all the time."
Brendon feels himself blushing, and it sucks that that sort of thing sticks around even when you're incorporeal. "So, uh," he clears his throat. "Can, um, could you write something down for me? I've been wanting to write this thing down for ages, it's not really a song, not yet, you know, but I can't exactly--"
Ryan nods, still looking a little shell shocked. Brendon isn't sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but.
For the next three nights, they stay up late, writing all the things that have been in both of their heads for too long.
--
The weird thing about Brendon's creepy crush on Spencer is, the more Brendon is around Spencer, the more solid he gets, until Ryan can see the colors of Brendon's clothes-- his clothes change, and Ryan wouldn't have thought ghosts could change clothes, if he'd thought about it at all. At one point, Brendon falls in love with one of Ryan's ex-girlfriend's old hoodies while he watches Ryan unpack, a silly lavender thing, and Ryan kind of wishes he could give it to him, because it's not like he's even using it, and Brendon hardly ever admits to missing anything, wanting anything, but he's lusting after the hoodie like it's something magical.
"How do you get new clothes?" Ryan asks him, conversationally, while he's fucking around on the Xbox, like he's not trying to be sneaky about anything at all.
Brendon shrugs. "I don't get new ones. These are all ones my parents burned before they left."
Ryan blinks at him. He knows Brendon had a family, but he doesn't talk about them, except once, a mention of his sister, but Ryan had sort of assumed that they all died. Apparently not. "They burned your things?"
Brendon smiles wryly. "Yeah. They were, uh. Cleansing the house of my influence, I guess, so they burnt all my stuff. I guess they were hoping it would get rid of me? But it didn't work, so they left."
Ryan's quiet for a minute. He didn't ever like his father-- it's hard to like a man who kicks you around-- but at the same time, he can't imagine leaving him, and he can't imagine that his father would ever abandon him after burning all his worldly possessions, whether he was alive or not. "That's sort of horrible," he says, finally, because he doesn't actually have anything better to say.
"I guess," Brendon agrees, giving a half shrug. "It's been like five years now. At least I have things to change into. I wish I could shower. I mean, it's not like I actually sweat or anything, but I kind of miss the act of showering."
Ryan snorts, but doesn’t disagree. He's a big fan of showers himself. They're somehow cathartic. "So," he muses, thinking about it, "if I burnt something, you could have it?"
Brendon looks at him for a long moment, like he's trying to figure out what Ryan's getting at. "I guess? It might just have been because those things were sort of a part of me, like, they had my essence? I don't know. But maybe burning them is sort of like... killing them, so they can be ghosts, too?" He scratches his head. "I don't know," he says again, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture.
Ryan nods, humming, and sets the Xbox controller aside. "Give me a sec?" he says, not waiting for an answer before getting up and going to the bedroom. Brendon doesn't follow him, just hovers, looking perplexed, above the couch.
Ryan gets the hoodie from the box in his closet, along with a lighter and a fire-starter log from the cupboard in the kitchen. It might not work, no, but it's not like he's losing his favorite scarf or anything if it doesn't. It's just Keltie's hoodie.
Brendon just stares at him while he lights the log and waits for it to catch, and he only makes one little pained noise when Ryan stuffs the hoodie on top of the flames.
"Is it working?" Ryan asks after a minute. The hoodie is only half burnt, though, and the whole room smells like burning polyester.
Brendon blinks, swallows audibly, and says, "I don't know yet."
Ryan nods, and they watch the fire in silence.
After a minute or two, the hoodie gives up with a flare of grayish smoke, and there's nothing left but a smoking zipper on the fire-starter. He turns to ask Brendon if it worked, and there's the hoodie, softly translucent, in Brendon's hands.
Brendon turns it over wonderingly. "That's epic," he breathes, and tugs it on over his shirt. There's no zipper, so it hangs loose over his chest, but he looks thrilled. Ryan's throat maybe goes a little tight, because seeing Brendon happy makes him realize just how sad he'd been before. Ryan’s pretty sure there’s no way he’s going to be able to let Brendon go back.
Brendon beams and flings his arms through Ryan. It feels bizarre, like Ryan’s body is full of alkaseltzer, but it's as close as Brendon can get to hugging him, so Ryan tentatively wraps his arms around where Brendon sort of is and tries to hug back.
--
Ryan starts going out and getting things for him pretty often after that. New jeans, one time, and a band shirt another. Spencer leaves a stupid wooly cap over at Ryan's house one night, and Ryan sees Brendon watching it longingly, so he quietly burns that for him, too. Brendon doesn't take it off for weeks, and Ryan can hear him giggling when Spencer comes looking for it.
After that, Brendon's solid enough that Ryan can tell that his eyes are brown and that his skin is tan and that his favorite pair of jeans are black. Sometimes, when Brendon looks longingly at Ryan eating pizza or a sandwich, Ryan will burn him a piece, and no, he's not sure it's the same, but Brendon claims he can taste it, and no, he doesn't need it, exactly, not as sustenance anyway, but Ryan's pretty sure there are different kinds of need.
--
Brendon has pretty much decided that Spencer is the best thing since somebody invented the concept of adding cheese to things and then eating them. Spencer has a beard, a beard of sexy manfullness, and every time Brendon looks at it, he's pretty sure he would die from how cute it looks on Spencer's round almost-a-girl-cheeks if he weren't already dead. As it is, he has to stop himself from giggling in pure glee every time Spencer smiles and the light of all things awesome beams out from his white, shiny teeth to fill the world.
Brendon is maybe sort of retardedly smitten. He's pretty much okay with this idea, as long as he can keep looking at Spencer without Spencer noticing that he's looking. Ryan laughing at him doesn't help, but whatever, Ryan's a douche.
A douche who pays real money for cool things and then lights them on fire so Brendon can have them. Ryan's sort of an awesome douche. Whatever. Not the point. Spencer is adorable, and Brendon's afterlife's goal is to figure out some way to kiss his stupid, adorable face full of beard and smile and big blue eyes.
Nnnngh. That’s all there is to say. Nnnngh.
--
Ryan is standing in his music room, picking out a potential melody while Brendon hums along. It's soft, but cheery, and it sort of reminds Ryan of the Beatles, if the Beatles had been less British and had been influenced by 80's bubblegum pop.
"I think it needs more of a minor feeling in the bridge," Brendon says, floating down to an inch above Ryan's favorite chair. Ryan's pretty sure Brendon sits there just to be a pain in the ass, since it doesn't really matter which chair he sits in, since he's not actually able to feel chairs at all. He just has some sort of sick mission to mess with Ryan's head. Ryan is relatively sure this is what it would have been like, having a younger brother.
Ryan ignores the chair thing and obligingly darkens the tone, making it a little mournful, a little longing. "I kind of like it."
Brendon bobs his head. "Yeah, yeah, like-- it's kind of like having breakfast for dinner."
Two-months-ago-Ryan wouldn't have any idea what the hell Brendon was talking about, but now-Ryan just nods along, says, "Yeah, like, it's not what you're expecting, what you're used to, but it's satisfying in a different way."
"Exactly, Ryan Ross," Brendon says, beaming at him. "Exactly like that."
Ryan grins back at him, and plays the melody all the way through, now that they have it.
After that, he goes to the kitchen and makes pancakes, because the whole breakfast-for-dinner thing is kind of stuck in his head.
--
Spencer maybe secretly likes Ryan's horrible new house. It's huge and ugly and half falling apart, but there are like five rooms that have no actual conceivable use, and there's just something about the place that's weirdly comfortable. He'd never admit it to Ryan or anything, but it's homey, and Spencer sleeps better there than he does at his own house.
"Did I know you were coming over?" Ryan asks when he gets back from the store, laden with bags. "I guess I must have forgotten, sorry, I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately."
Spencer goes to help him put things away, stacking cans of beans and soup in the pantry. "No, no, I didn't. I mean, I was-- do I actually have to warn you? You never used to warn me." It's different, sure, Ryan didn't usually have a lot of warning before he needed somewhere else to sleep, but still.
Ryan hip-checks him and shakes his head, smiling a little. It's nice to see him smile; it's not something Spencer's seen a lot of since Ryan's dad died. Not that Ryan was a big smiler before that, either, but. "No, no, I just wanted to know if I'm getting crazier than usual."
"Nope. At least not in that sense. What's keeping you from sleeping?" Ryan normally keeps weird hours, but they're more weird in the sense of getting up early and then napping like a cat in the sun than staying up all night.
Ryan shrugs. "I've been working on music a lot. New inspiration, I guess."
That's legitimately weird. Ryan hasn't written music in a long time, not since the Summer League, back when they were in high school, when he was dating Brent and writing angry songs about his father. "Is something bothering you?" Spencer doesn't mean to sound that incredulous, but Ryan's seemed better lately, and he doesn't write music when he's happy.
Ryan hums something under his breath, a little snatch of something cheery and fast. "No," he says, after a minute, "nothing's bothering me. This is maybe different."
"Is it Jon?" It could possibly be something weird and un-Ryan, like endless woeful unrequited love songs, but Spencer has a hard time believing that, either. Ryan tends to think that sort of thing is tasteless.
Ryan looks surprised. "No?" He snickers. "Although I should probably hit you or something, since he somehow knew about my secret collection of dog models."
"Plushies, Ryan. Stuffed animals," Spencer corrects automatically. "Dog models makes it sound like you have a bunch of pictures of dog furries, posing in skimpy lingerie." He mocks the pose, a hand on his hip, one behind his head, and gives a dramatic sigh, and there's a little giggle in response. He glares at Ryan, and Ryan belatedly covers his mouth, looking too amused to be apologetic. "Seriously, though, what are you writing?"
Ryan bites his lip. "Hang on, I'll get my notebook." When he comes back, he hands Spencer a page covered in a mess of scribbled lines of lyrics and musical notations-- words are just hollow birds; the world's just a broken bone, melt your headaches, call it home; putting out the lantern, find your own way back home.
"I like it," Spencer says. He does. "It's... brighter, somehow." It is. "It's kind of. Um, not your usual style?" It isn't.
"It isn't," Ryan agrees, smiling a secret smile, and Spencer doesn't ask, because he doesn't think Ryan will tell him.
--
As far as Brendon is concerned, Jon Walker’s general awesomeness is outstripped only by Spencer’s awesomeness, and by Jon Walker’s own awesomeness at playing the bass. His bass-playing abilities are not only useful in a band-having sense, but also useful in that they are how he talks to Ryan.
Every time he comes over, Jon sits down with Ryan in the music room, and, while they wait for Spencer (who is probably always late on purpose, just to give Ryan some time alone with Jon, because Spencer is appealingly sneaksome like that), he and Ryan send chords back and forth, echoing and responding to each other like a conversation. Ryan strums out a few notes, a question, and Jon ducks his head, smiles a secret half smile, and answers with warm notes, soft notes, notes that don't sound like anything in particular on their own, but mean more than Ryan will admit they do when he talks to Brendon later.
Brendon thinks that Jon Walker says more with his hands and his strings than he knows how to say out loud. Brendon also thinks that Jon Walker's hands and strings say that he thinks Ryan hung the moon and told it to be shiny.
--
"Can you just-- yeah, like that." Ryan nods, tapping his foot, as Spencer slows down the beat. "Awesome. Jon, then, okay, here, come in with-- awesome." He hums out the first line, actually sings along with the second, sings, "Breaks free of my wooden neck, left a nod over sleeping waves, like bobbing bait for bathing cod."
Spencer cocks his head at him, stops drumming. "What does that even mean?" he asks, arching an eyebrow.
Ryan would answer him, would tell him exactly what it means, except that he didn't write it, Brendon did, and Ryan doesn't have the faintest idea what it means. He scrabbles for something off-putting and pretentious. "It's... a literary reference, Spence, this old Russian philosopher-- you wouldn't get it," he says, in lieu of anything actually useful.
Jon snorts, but doesn't say anything, and Ryan is eminently grateful that Spencer is content to leave it at that.
--
Spencer is a pretty quiet sleeper, compared to Ryan. Ryan flails around with nightmares a lot, and he sometimes wakes up during the night. If Spencer did that, it would be really hard for Brendon to be as creepy as he is without being caught, because throwing your hand through a ghost is shocking enough to wake anyone up, as Ryan has proven on more than one occasion. So Brendon’s grateful that Spencer has an apparently generally-untroubled mind. When he’s out, he tends to stay out.
Brendon can interact with inanimate objects-- he can sit on chairs, beds, counters, whatever, and he can even sometimes move things a little-- like pulling Ryan's sleeve or something-- but he can't feel things, and his hands pass right through anything animate. Saying he can interact with the inanimate is actually sort of stretching the word "interact"-- he can recognize the space they occupy and interact with the space they're not occupying, sitting just above their presence, that sort of thing. He's not actually really touching them, not technically.
So when he lays on the bed beside Spencer, he’s not actually lying on the bed beside Spencer. He’s floating a few millimeters above the bed, watching Spencer sleep, because he’s a giant creeper, and that’s what giant creepers who are ghosts do.
Brendon would pretty much give anything-- he’d give his voice, like Ariel, okay, seriously-- to be able to reach out and touch the round curve of Spencer’s cheek and have Spencer feel something other than ionized air stinging his skin.
Brendon does the next best thing, scooting in as close as he can so he can feel Spencer’s breaths displacing the air around his face, and falls asleep to the rhythm of Spencer’s lungs.
Brendon always makes sure to wake up before Spencer does, or to leave quickly if he wakes up from a dream, because if Spencer knows, Brendon might have to stop, and Brendon knows, knows that he couldn’t stand it, knows that if Spencer knew, if Spencer could say no, Brendon would just dissipate and float away. And now that there’s actually something to stay for, to exist for, Brendon really, really doesn’t want that to happen.
--
The boy smiles at Spencer, eyes crinkling up behind square red glasses. "Hi," he says, and his voice is like music and that's retarded except for the part where it's true. His hands are on Spencer's hips, and his mouth is moving against the side of Spencer's neck, tongue flickering out against his skin.
"Do I know you?" Spencer finally manages, hands clenching in the boy's purple hoodie as their hips press together.
He smiles up at Spencer, impish and adorable, and kisses the corner of Spencer's mouth. His eyes are smiling, too, but there's an almost ironic twist to the curve of his mouth. "No," he says, nibbling on Spencer's lower lip until Spencer opens his mouth, and, "I'm Brendon," and then he's licking into Spencer's mouth.
Spencer, Spencer clings like he's drowning. "I'm, uh--" and then Brendon slips a hand into his hair and tips Spencer's head back and sucks on the spot just below his ear and Spencer can hardly breathe.
"I know who you are," he says into Spencer's skin, pressing his hips closer, twisting them mercilessly, and the hand he's still got on Spencer's hip is rubbing a thumb below the waistband of Spencer's jeans. Then he's undoing the button, knuckles pressing into the sensitive skin below Spencer's navel, and he drags the zipper down.
The sound snaps Spencer awake, and he's lying in Ryan's guestroom with a really uncomfortable hard on. Something buzzes against his left arm, but when he looks, there's nothing there.
--
Ryan laughs his ass off at Brendon. Brendon thinks it's kind of unnecessarily mean, but then, it's Ryan, and it maybe is a little bit funny, but.
"He almost saw me," Brendon hisses, and okay, he's maybe freaking out a little. "Can you imagine what would have happened?"
Ryan's giggling into his pillow. "He would have said, hello, hot boy in my bed, why are you staring at my raging hard on like you want to molest it?"
Ryan is stupid, and Brendon would really love to be able to hit him in the face. It's times like this that he curses his inability to touch things. With his fists. Also, times like when Spencer has a raging hard on and he really wants to molest it. He curses his incorporeality pretty badly at those times, too.
"Oh, fuck you," he grouses, and floats petulantly into the ceiling.
"I'm pretty sure he likes guys, if that helps," Ryan calls after him, still giggling.
It doesn't help. It just makes it even more horrible that Brendon can't have him. Brendon figures he should have maybe come to terms with this whole "being dead" thing by now, but he's pretty sure he's only getting less and less used to it.
--
"So, so, okay, wait," Spencer says, tapping his sticks on Ryan's leg. "What you're telling me is that this song isn't about fucking."
Jon bites his lip, viciously tamping down a giggle. Ryan glares at him anyways, but that's because Ryan is a ridiculous, oversensitive bitch.
"No," Ryan says, drawing the syllable out like he's trying not to strangle Spencer with his scrawny little hands. Spencer gets a sort of sick joy out of making Ryan sound like that. It's some sort of pseudo-sibling instinct or something. "No, Spencer, there isn't anything at all in this song that could possibly be construed as being about fucking. Even a little."
Jon makes this horrible little noise like he's dying, and buries his face in the arm of the couch. Spencer feels his pain, really, he does. Spencer would like to choke to death laughing at Ryan's bitchface, too.
"But," Spencer says, raising a drumstick to make his point, "see, the thing is, I'm pretty sure it's not about anything else, either, which brings me to the conclusion--" here, he taps Ryan's collarbone with the stick, ignoring his wince, "that it must be all thinly-veiled metaphors. About fucking."
Jon stops pretending not to be laughing and gives up, pushing himself off the couch and ambling into the hall, guffawing into his arm. Ryan glares pissily after him for a minute, then rounds on Spencer.
"There is something wrong with you," he says, and Spencer isn't disagreeing. Just, yknow, the thing wrong with him presently is that Ryan is singing a song about pianos and beards and Trojan horses and pretending that it somehow makes anything resembling sense.
Spencer doesn't say that, though, just stares Ryan down. Ryan stares back, but Spencer will totally win. He has sisters.
And sure enough, a minute later, Ryan rolls his eyes and throws up his hands and says, totally exasperated, "Fine! Okay, fine, Spence, it's totally secretly about fucking."
Spencer nods solemnly. "Damn straight it is."
--
"Ask him out, Ryan." Brendon pokes vaguely at Ryan’s side. It sort of tickles.
Brendon has no goddamn room to talk. "Tell Spencer you exist," Ryan retorts, and it's a low blow, but whatever.
Brendon narrows his eyes. "That's different. I'm a spooky dead thing. You're a pile of giant girl-eyes and spiky hips and Jon pretty obviously wants to lick you to death."
"Jon is not a dog, Brendon." Ryan's going for long-suffering exasperation, but he's pretty sure he just sounds like he's getting close to defeat.
Brendon holds up his hands like paws and pants for a second before shaking his head. "Naw, he's a kitty, Ryan, and wow, I was going to say something about giving him some milk or something, but that's beyond even my ability with gross puns."
Ryan groans and throws a pillow through him.
Brendon takes it like a man and whooshes through Ryan in retaliation, and okay, okay, that feels like being electrocuted and doused in cold water at the same time.
Ryan, of course, because he's totally mature and everything, restrains himself to throwing the TV remote through Brendon's head in return.
"Ask him ou-outtttt," Brendon sing-songs as he floats through the wall, probably to go curl up over Spencer's indent on the pillow or something equally pathetic. It's not like Ryan is just as bad, with his mooning over texts from Jon or anything.
Ryan sometimes fiddles around the bass that Jon leaves in the music room when he’s feeling especially like a total girl, just because it has a sense of Jon in it. No, Ryan’s totally a different sort of pathetic altogether.
--
Sometimes, Brendon watches Spencer jerk off. He knows it's creepy, and he feels a little bit like Edward Cullen, but Spencer is really hot, and Brendon is only human. A dead human, but still a human, okay, and humans have needs. And Brendon's needs just happen to be partially fulfilled by watching his sorta-roommate's best friend jerk off.
Also, it's kind of weird for Spencer to be jerking off in someone else's house, even if he does stay over more nights than not, so it's almost like Spencer's asking for it. Or something. That line of logic makes Brendon feel like he’s some sort of, like, sleep rapist or something. But Spencer keeps staying over, and Brendon keeps falling asleep in the bed with him, and pretty regularly now, Spencer wakes up halfway through the night with a boner, and. Well, instead of fleeing in terror like the first time, Brendon maybe sticks around, out of sight, to watch.
He’s seriously aware that it’s creepy, he is. But he’s kind of in love, and he’s pretty sure this is as close as he’s ever going to get to getting into Spencer Smith’s pants, so he sticks around. At least Brendon doesn’t jerk off to it. See, that would make him creepy.
--
Brendon is mostly content with people not knowing about him, other than Ryan. With the obvious exception of Spencer, Brendon doesn't really care if the world knows he exists.
Sometimes, though, people come to the house, and Brendon really wishes he was alive just so he could know what they’re doing there. In this case, there's a scraggly-haired dude sitting at Ryan's kitchen table, drumming his fingers nervously against his ripped up jeans. He's weirdly pale, like he doesn't ever actually see the light of day. He's got a big sketchbook tucked to his chest, and his eyes keep flicking nervously around the kitchen. Brendon wonders about that for a minute, actually, because it's almost like the guy is looking for him, like the guy can sense something's there.
"Hello?" the guy says, tentatively, looking in totally the wrong direction.
"Hang on a minute!" Ryan yells from the hall. "I'm just getting the-- ow, fuck-- the thing, gimme just a--"
The guy snickers a little, but his eyes stop scanning the room, and Brendon-- tucked above the kitchen cabinets, next to the ceiling-- relaxes a little. He doesn't leave, though, because there's a guy in Ryan's kitchen, a guy who isn't Spencer or Jon, and that's weird enough that Brendon just needs to know.
Ryan stumbles in a minute later-- because he always forgets that there's a tiny bit of uneven wood at the threshold where the hallway carpet switches to the battered hardwood of the kitchen floor-- with his arms piled high with folders.
"Dude," the guy at the table says, blinking owlishly. "That. Ross, that is a fuckton of paper."
Ryan snorts and drops them unceremoniously onto the table. "No kidding."
The guy rubs his hands together. "So, okay, yeah, where do I start?" He's got smudges of ink on his hands, on the curve of his jaw. Brendon can admire that sort of obvious absentmindedness.
"Uh... probably it doesn't matter. Just, you-- you said you can read music?"
The guy nods. "Yeah, yeah, no, totally." He pulls the top folder from the stack, flipping it open and leafing through the few pages. He hums a little, a familiar bar of music, and Brendon realizes that the papers are his songs-- well, they were his songs, now they're Ryan's, but. Those.
Ryan watches the as the guy goes through each folder, humming and muttering to himself. He’s hugging himself, and he doesn't move a muscle, and on Ryan, that, Brendon knows, means he's either really mad or really nervous, and since he hasn't threatened to bite the guy or tried to throw anything at him, Brendon's gonna go with nervous.
"Dude, dude," the guy says, waving a folder, "Is this song about fucking?"
Ryan groans and thunks his head into the table. Brendon tries not to giggle. It’s not easy.
--
"So, uh." Brendon bites his lip, because this is totally Ryan's house, too, he's not trying to pry. "Who was that?"
Ryan hesitates for a minute. "He's... Gerard." He palms the back of his neck awkwardly. "He does art stuff."
Brendon nods, because art stuff is awesome, right, it is, except that the guy-- Gerard! Gerard is a totally cool name for an art dude with scraggly hair and a fierce paleness to rival Brendon's own translucency!-- had been going through their music, Brendon's music, and that doesn't have anything to do with art. "Ryan," he says.
"Look, okay, he's just-- he's helping me out. With some of the notes I can't get. He maybe sings, some, too." Ryan doesn't meet Brendon's eyes, which is awesome, because Brendon sort of feels sick.
"Right," Brendon says, because he's not sure what else he can say that won't sound like bile. "Right, okay."
Ryan swallows and looks away. "Just, you know, to help. He's not. He's not joining the band or anything, just kind of. Coaching me and maybe, just. Other stuff, maybe, sort of. I don't know yet, okay?"
Brendon doesn't say anything. From the way Ryan's carefully studying his shoes, Brendon doesn't think he has to.
--
Ryan is maybe a terminal moron when it comes to Jon. Jon is cuddlesome and adorable and laid back and Ryan is none of those things even a little bit at all.
So Ryan might whine to Brendon a lot about how much he wants to have Jon's babies, and Brendon is usually pretty much awesome about humoring him and poking him gently in the direction of actually growing a spine.
However, there are some days when Brendon is kind of off about it.
"Man the fuck up, Ryan Ross! At least you can touch him!" Brendon yells, bright red even though he's translucent.
Ryan scowls back at him. Ryan kind of sucks at confrontation-- Spencer mentions all the time that Ryan gets sort of pissy when he's criticized. "Fuck you, okay, what do you even know about it? You don't know Jon, you haven’t even talked to him, and he probably doesn't even like guys, right, and it's not like you'd even know what the fuck you're talking about, anyways, okay, the guy you like doesn't know you're ali--" And then Ryan remembers that he's talking to a nineteen year old dead boy and that he's kind of a giant asshole.
Brendon gives him a teary sneer. "Yeah. That's because I'm not alive, Ryan, and even if, miracle of miracles, he wasn't terrified or horrified, and he liked me, where the hell would that go, huh?" He tries to glare for another moment, and then his chin wobbles, and he falls down to just above the floor and curls up, sobbing.
Ryan has never been good at people who cry. Mostly, it just kind of makes him hate himself.
--
Brendon thinks Ryan probably got how much the idea of someone else, someone not Brendon, not Ryan, singing Brendon's words bothered him, because Gerard doesn't come around after that first time. Brendon knows Ryan still sees him, is singing with him, because he goes out more-- that is, ever-- and comes home singing songs that aren't theirs, aren't Brendon's. Things even further out of his range; the sort of songs that Brendon knows help expand it.
Brendon tries not to let that bother him. Ryan's trying. It's not his fault that Brendon can't be all the things he wants to be. Brendon has more than he'd ever thought he'd have again, and that needs to be enough.
--
Spencer groans as Brendon licks a stripe across his hipbone, dragging his pajamas down around his thighs. Soft black hair brushes against Spencer's stomach, and then Brendon wraps his lips around him and swallows him down and Spencer really can't feel anything other than that anymore, so.
When he comes, fingers tight in Brendon's hair, Brendon swallows and pulls off and grins at him, this blinding, gorgeous grin, and Spencer's dizzy, really dizzy, and he's falling away.
And then he's in the goddamn guestroom with a mess on the sky blue sheets.
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Fuck."
--
Brendon doesn't always just sex Spencer up in his dreams. Spencer would be kind of sad about that, except that when he's not doing unthinkably awesome things to Spencer's nakedparts, Brendon has long, ridiculous conversations with him that don't actually make a lot of sense, and Spencer likes those almost as much as the sex.
"So, okay, Ryan and Jon, they totally have a gay thing going on," Spencer says one night, lying on his back in blue-green grass, looking up at a soft pink sky.
Brendon, head on Spencer's stomach, nods and giggles. "It's sort of tragic. Ryan needs to profess his love or some shit, no lie."
Spencer snorts. "Or something. Ryan's never been good at actually, you know, communicating like a human being. He's all... bottled up."
"Is he?" Brendon asks, humming a little. "I hadn't noticed."
The awake part of Spencer's brain wonders a little about that, but because he's dreaming, and that part is totally not the part behind the wheel, Spencer doesn't ask how the hell Brendon would know, anyway. "I think it's sort of about his dad, you know? The guy was an asshole. Ryan just kind of learned... not to say what was on his mind. Or much at all." He sang it, though-- that was half of what their band had been about, at least in Spencer's eyes: giving Ryan a way to communicate, a way not to just fold in on himself and give up trying at all.
Brendon hums again, musically this time. It sounds a little familiar, like-- "Is that Colors of the Wind?" he asks, blinking a little.
Brendon grins up at him, picking clumps of grass and littering his stomach with them. "I'm surprised. I didn't peg you as the Disney type."
Spencer shrugs. "I have sisters." Pocahontas was a big part of his childhood. And only mostly because of his sisters-- Spencer isn't going to lie, he maybe has a tiny weakness for John Smith and his cocky swagger.
Brendon snickers at him. Spencer stretches his arms up, tucks them behind his head. "This is nice," Brendon says softly, once he stops laughing at Spencer's secret fondness for Disney, turning on his side to look Spencer in the eye.
Spencer cards his fingers through Brendon's hair, brushing bits of teal grass out of the dark strands. "It is," he agrees, and wakes up.
It takes him a minute, blinking up at the dark ceiling, to remember where he is, that he's not in a field with a boy, that he's in Ryan's house, alone, and that it's the middle of the night, not the middle of a pink afternoon.
When everything floats back to him, Spencer starts to wonder if maybe he's actually going insane.
--
This visit-nominally for band practice-is mostly the same as all of Jon's other visits, except that Spencer is even later than usual, a couple hours late, and Ryan and Jon have been having a soft musical conversation for a long time now. Brendon is sitting behind the piano, peeking out and watching, because, okay, he's kind of a nosy bastard, and Spencer isn't here yet, so there's no one else to be a creeper over.
Ryan is playing the melody to a song he and Brendon had worked out a week ago, pausing here and there for Jon to feel his way through the sound, thread a bass line into it.
"I like it," Jon says, when Ryan stops.
Ryan's mouth quirks up at the corner, and he bites his lip a little. "Yeah?"
"Yeah," Jon says, and looks down at his hands.
Ryan lifts his head, says, "Jon--" he stops, shakes his head, looks down again. "Never mind."
Jon tilts his head a little, hair falling into his eyes, and doesn't ask out loud, just picks out a low hum of a question on his bass.
Ryan's fingers shake a little when they try to give an answer.
"Jon," Ryan says again, low and awkward and a little helpless.
Jon reaches out, and hand stills Ryan's on the guitar, tightens over his fingers. He doesn't say anything, just laces their fingers together and strums them once over the strings, answering himself.
When Ryan looks up, cheeks pink, Jon leans in, all the way in, smiling his springtime-and-kittens smile, and Brendon drifts down into the floor, courteously leaves them to themselves as their mouths meet. He tries to ignore the jealous ache in his chest.
--
Spencer eventually shows up for practice, bundled up for the winter weather.
This is not the first time Brendon has heard Spencer play the drums. Brendon has heard it a dozen times over the months that Ryan has been living here, that the guys have been practicing here. Brendon knows, mentally, that Spencer plays the drums.
Feeling it, though, feeling the air vibrate through him, feeling the sound hum through the house-- that's different. That's amazing. Every fucking time. Spencer doesn't play the drums, Spencer is the beat, is the music, and the drums just let Brendon hear it.
Ryan didn’t laugh at Brendon when he said it after the first time, just smiled and nodded, the way a proud parent or sibling would-- yeah, that's my friend.
Brendon taps the rhythm out on his thigh while he sits, curled up behind the piano, listening to Spencer play. Softly, so softly, he sings under his breath along with Ryan. His voice is stronger, deeper, fuller than Ryan's, Ryan tells him this all the time, says it with an undercurrent of fond jealousy. But Brendon can't exactly get up on a stage and sing with them, so Ryan sings their words, his voice catching on things Brendon's would soar through. It's still beautiful, soft and elegant and evocative, but Brendon's chest aches with the need to sing along, really sing along, feel his voice winding around Ryan's, around the guitar, Jon's bass, Spencer's drums, even if only in this room.
Brendon reins it in, just sings silently along behind the piano and makes sure no one hears.
--
Spencer doesn't bother calling Ryan to tell him he's coming back over-- he only left fifteen minutes ago, what could Ryan possibly be doing that Spencer hasn't seen before? It's fucking cold out, Spencer wants his other sweater, and, distracted as he was by his argument with Jon over the merits of Cheetara versus Panthro, he's relatively sure he left it draped over the high hat of his drum kit. Or possibly in the guest room.
Trotting up the rickety steps, Spencer gives a perfunctory knock on the door and opens it. Ryan's not in the hall or the kitchen, so Spencer toes off his shoes-- Ryan threatens him with painful death if he tracks dirt around, and there's still mud in the driveway from the rainstorm last night-- and pads down the hall towards the music room.
Someone is singing, and for a moment, Spencer thinks it's Ryan. But Ryan's voice doesn't sound a thing like this. No offense to Ryan, his voice is kind of shaky. This, though, this is round and full and it pulls at things in Spencer's gut that he didn't know were there. Whoever it is, he's singing the song that the band-- if you can call Ryan and Spencer and Jon an actual band-- was practicing earlier, the one Ryan's randomly calling "Nine in the Afternoon." (Spencer had tried to explain that you had either nine in the morning or nine at night, but Ryan was completely disinterested in the facts of it.)
Spencer stands at the door for a minute, not wanting to interrupt, just listening. The voice is somehow familiar, just a little, tickling at something in the back of Spencer’s head. When the singing stops, he cracks the door, says, "Hey, that was fucking amazing, Ry, who've you been holding out on us?" And then he has a fucking heart attack, because Brendon, sexy dreams Brendon, is standing in the middle of the room, eyes-- pun fully appropriate-- the size of the moon.
Spencer’s eyes are probably about the same size, and he would blink them, right, except that his brain is frozen, because this isn’t happening, can’t be happening, and even if it is, it doesn’t make the least bit of sense at all.
"Spencer," can’t-possibly-actually-be-here-Brendon says, blinking like an owl.
"Spencer--" Ryan starts at the same time, cutting himself off when Spencer meets his eyes.
Brendon isn't real. Brendon is a figment of Spencer's not-getting-any-action-lately imagination, and yet here he is, standing, singing, in Ryan's house. Right here. Spencer kicks his brain into gear enough for it to autonomously decide that the correct reaction to this is probably anger, given that the situation at hand is sick and impossible and connected to Ryan. "I think," Spencer says, narrowing his eyes so he doesn't see red, "That we've established that I'm Spencer. Now, can we get to what the fuck is going on?"
Ryan coughs and looks at Brendon, who is kind of shaking. "Spence," Ryan says, "Look, this is Brendon, he's, uh, he's kind of been helping me write stuff."
Spencer growls, because that's not it, that's totally not the issue, the issue is that there's a guy, a guy Spencer thought was totally imaginary, standing in Ryan's house, and Ryan's acting like it's not a big deal, like he hasn't been fucking with Spencer's head somehow. Spencer is relatively sure that this mind-fuckery is somehow Ryan's fault. You can only read so much Chuck Palahniuk before it messes with your brain and causes you to become an evil mind-fucking genius. He hasn’t worked out exactly how it’s Ryan’s fault, yet, but he’ll get to that once his head stops spinning. "How about, instead of telling me about songs, okay, Ry, you tell me who the fuck he is and why the hell he's here. Or-“ he rounds on Brendon, “maybe you can tell me what’s going on, huh? What the fuck have you even been doing to my head? Jesus.” He tries to calm his breathing down, but he maybe has sort of a massive fear of not being in control of things,okay, and yes, he can handle not being in control of everything, but somehow, someone has been fucking with his brain, and that shit is just not cool. It’s his brain.
Ryan puts on his best bitch face. "Oh, well, fuck you. I'm sorry, am I not allowed to have friends that aren't you, Spencer? Is that not okay?"
Spencer deepens his glare, stalking forward to poke a finger at Brendon's chest. "Sure you are. When you--" Spencer stops, because poking a finger at Brendon's chest doesn't work. His finger goes into Brendon's chest, into fizzing air, thick like water and sparking like a live wire. He yanks his hand back belatedly, blinking rapidly. "What the fuck?"
Brendon's hands go up in front of him, and his eyes get even bigger, and he says, "I, just, I’m sorry, sorry, I don't--" and then he's gone through the floor, just, poof, straight down, and Spencer is left alone with Ryan.
--
"What the fuck?" Spencer asks again, voice low and dangerous.
Ryan doesn't really give a shit about Spencer's dangerous voice, though, because Brendon’s all freaked out, and Ryan's kind of worried about him. This is sort of the exact thing Brendon’s been terrified would happen, and Ryan kind of wants to kill things with his bare hands because he doesn’t like to see Brendon upset at all, let alone this upset. Yanking off his guitar strap, he snaps, "He's fucking dead already, Spencer, could you maybe not make it any worse?"
Spencer blinks at him, and Ryan rolls his eyes.
"What, Spence, you thought I was mystically creating human beings out of your perverse imagination? I had no idea you'd seen him before. This is his fucking house, okay, he died in it, and it would be really awesome if you didn't run him out of it by being a douche because you think his existence is somehow my fault. You're a fucking irrational fucktard, okay, shut the hell up."
Ryan doesn't wait for Spencer to say anything, just yanks the door open and points down the hall. "Make it better, Spencer James Smith, or I will make guitar strings out of your entrails before you can blink."
Spencer clears his throat, opens his mouth to say something. He meets Ryan's eyes, thinks better of it, and follows Ryan's pointing finger down the hall.
--
Part Two