(no subject)
I was like, saving this for a rainy day or whatever. This weekend was chock full of them in the northeast, and it just so happens that my favorite gigantic was in dire need of a surprise present.
Surprise!
the surprise of our glory days
brendon urie/shia labeouf
2000 words
betaed by the phenomenal 1001cranes, titled by Adele
Lorenzo goes with him when he gets the money together, the two of them standing with their hands balled into fists, stuffed in their coat pockets, waiting for the engraver to finish.
Lorenzo goes with him when he gets the money together, the two of them standing with their hands balled into fists, stuffed in their coat pockets, waiting for the engraver to finish. Lorenzo calls it blood money, and Shia usually laughs him off, but it’s not like he’s wrong. He’s participated in almost as many sleep and food studies as Shia has.
He tells Brendon he’s taking a class.
- -
He spends two months with the ring burning a hole in his pocket.
- -
“You stopped being a pussy yet?” Lorenzo asks, leaning his elbows against the counter. Shia shrugs, shifting back on the stool and shoving another piece of over-drenched waffle into his mouth. He mumbles something, and Lorenzo rolls his eyes, like that trick was ever actually going to work. “You actually think he’s gonna say no?”
Shia shrugs, wiping at his mouth with a spare, semi-clean napkin. “I think he might say yes,” he says.
Lorenzo snorts, and then Eli shouts out, “Table seven’s up, four eggs and hash.”
“Get out of here,” Lorenzo says, popping Shia in the shoulder a little too hard to pass as gentle chiding. “Go make an honest man out of that boy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shia says, but he ends up taking the long way to work so he can call Brendon before his morning class and talk to him until they both get cold from the morning chill.
- -
This semester, Brendon’s an architecture major. He spends a lot of time wearing tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows, skinny pants and lace-ups with no socks. He chews on pencils as he sketches blueprints for buildings that will probably never get built. He always has charcoal smudges on his thumbs that wipe off on their sheets, getting on their clothes, their dishes, the walls.
He’s bent in half over the kitchen table when Shia gets home, glasses sliding down his nose. “Hey,” Shia says by way of greeting, getting close enough to press the word against the skin of Brendon’s neck.
“Mm,” he mumbles, turning in the circle of Shia’s arms. “Hey.” Shia ignores the greeting to kiss Brendon square on the month, and Brendon snorts, but kisses him back, hands curling around Shia’s neck. “What was that for?”
“Just saying hello.”
Brendon laughs. “Hello.” He pulls back slightly, peeking over his shoulder to make sure he won’t mess up his paperwork before scooting up onto the table and dropping his legs open and making room for Shia to step closer. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Shia starts to pull back, annoyed at the flush starting to creep up his neck. “You see me every day.”
Brendon rolls his eyes, hooking his hands in Shia’s beltloops to keep him close. “Yeah,” he says. “In bed in the morning, Shai. That doesn’t count.”
“‘That doesn’t count,’” Shia mimics, laughing for real when Brendon smacks at his shoulder.
“Okay, whatever. Aren’t you Mr. Romance?” He tries to drop his legs, but Shia tugs him closer, keeping his hands on Brendon’s legs, holding him up. “Let go, roommate,” he says. “Who says I want to be close to you now?”
“You always wanna be close to me,” Shia says, and Brendon laughs, still trying to wriggle away.
“You wish.”
“I know.” Shia drops his head down to nose at Brendon’s neck again, breathing him in again, happy to be close.
Brendon’s got his stuff out; pencils and rulers and notes, but Shia bends him back anyway, ignoring the crunch of noise and starting to unbutton his shirt. Brendon’s distracted, eyes blown and brown when Shia picks his head up and their gazes meet.
“Woah, woah,” he mumbles, pressing his hand to Shia’s chest to stop him from moving any closer. “Dude. We eat on this table.”
The only noise in the room is the ragged sound of their breathing. Shia’s quickly losing control of the situation, just by looking into Brendon’s eyes, and he’s completely lost when Brendon laughs, dropping his head back onto the wood with a heavy thunk.
“You laughing at my skills?”
Brendon lifts his head with a smirk. “You have skills?”
“Shut up,” Shia groans, laughing as Brendon kicks his foot against his side. Shia should have expected it, with his fucking luck, feels the color dragging from his face when Brendon blinks, sitting up straighter.
“What’s in your pocket?” There’s no beating around the bush.
“If I say ‘nothing’, is it gonna start a fight?”
Brendon has the appearance of a calm person, but that doesn’t actually mean he is one. He chews on his mouth, eyeing Shia warily, and eventually says, “Is it something to fight about?”
Shia shrugs. “Not if you don’t want it to be.”
“Cop out,” Brendon says, but for once, for the first fucking time ever, he doesn’t argue.
- -
Shia plans it meticulously. He spins it from different angles. He has way more conversations with both of his parents about weddings and marriages, about how frequently these things fall apart.
In March, Jeff comes down from Montana and they have lunch. It’s a semi-silent affair, except for when they both speak at once and finally Jeff says, “You still pussying out about it or you ask him yet?”
Shia shrugs. “It hasn’t been right.”
Jeff rolls his eyes and Shia blinks at him, stomach tightening with the same, familiar awareness that looking at his father is almost like looking into mirror from thirty years in the future. “It’s never gonna be right,” Jeff says, swallowing the last of his drink. “You really think I got down on my knees for your mother?”
Shia laughs, even though he doesn’t mean to and says, “I already know way too much about your sex life, okay? Please stop to save me more scarring and medical bills.”
“Fuck psycho babble, Shia,” he says. “You listen to me.”
“There aren’t enough earplugs in the world,” Shia grumbles, but Jeff grips onto his forearm, squeezing firm, hard enough to hurt. “What?” he asks, shaking Jeff’s hand off. “Speak.”
Jeff snorts. “Speak, he says. Listen, boy, was I happy when your mother told me how you like to take it?”
Shia’s heard this before, a hundred times, in a hundred more public places, but his face still heats up, cheeks turning a crispy pink. “Pop,” he hisses, voice low. “Shut up.”
“And marriage.” Jeff continues like he hadn’t heard. He snorts. “But I’ve met him,” he says. “Your Brendon. He keeps you on your toes.”
“All the fucking time,” Shia admits, and he can’t stop himself from smiling. “You don’t even know.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jeff says, taking the final bite of his burger. “But he’s a nice enough kid. Make an honest man out of him.” Shia winces in anticipation, and his father doesn’t let him down. “Or is he the little woman? I never know with you fucking guys.”
Shia groans, and then flags down their server to settle their bill. “This is why I don’t hang out with you,” he says, dropping the money for tip on the counter. “You’re a mess.”
Jeff doesn’t respond, and they don’t hug when they part ways, but Shia does remember to call out a belated, “thank you,” even though he’s not quite sure why.
- -
“I’m thinking of changing my major,” Brendon says at the beginning of April. They’re tucked together on the beat up couch in their apartment, legs tangled together with Brendon’s chin hooked over Shia’s shoulder. When he speaks, his breath tickles Shia’s skin.
“Oh yeah?” Shia asks, lolling his head against the cracked red leather, turning to meet Brendon’s eyes.
He shrugs, scratching his nails against his neck. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not really good.”
“No,” Shia agrees. “You’re excellent.”
Brendon laughs, low and throaty, batting his head against Shia’s chin. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Shia agrees again. “I know.”
“You don’t seem surprised that I want to change,” Brendon says, sounding uncertain.
Shia shifts closer, covering the last half-inch of space between them and presses a flimsy kiss to the hinge of Brendon’s jaw. “This is like, the eighth time you’ve changed your major since I met you five years ago,” he says. “I’ve gotten immune to the shock.”
“Shut up,” Brendon grumbles, but he’s smiling, so Shia doesn’t.
“I mean, dude, I was totally on board with archeology. I burn something fierce, but who knows. Maybe Egypt would’ve been good for me.”
“We would have had to buy stock in SPF 30.”
“Shut up,” Shia mimics, and then they’re off again, half-laughing, half-kissing in the low light of the sun-setting and the blue light filtering out from the TV.
“Make me,” Brendon breathes, but Shia’s already halfway there, pushing both their shirts off and bending Brendon back, slotting their hips together.
“Think I’m doing a pretty good job,” he grits out, and Brendon grunts out a sound halfway between laughter and exasperation.
Brendon grinds their mouths together hard and breathes, “you wish,” squeezing his eyes shut from the feel of it, the two of them rutting together like they have somewhere else to be.
“Always,” Shia says. It’s still true.
- -
At the end of the semester, Brendon says, “I’m thinking, like. Music, right? I was in that band in high school with Spence. We were pretty good.”
Shia wraps an arm around his shoulders as they make the trek home from campus. “I’ve heard the demos,” he says, kicking at specks of nothing on the sidewalk. “You guys were pretty tight.”
“Like a baby’s bottom,” Brendon says, and then laughs harder than the joke really warrants, practically choking on it.
“You’re seriously an idiot,” Shia says, patting him on the back a little harder than necessary, probably.
“You seriously love me,” Brendon says.
It’s not a new realization, but Shia still takes his time processing it, and he blurts out, “marry me,” without even really thinking about it. Months of planning, of worrying, and he spends more concentration focusing on the contours of Brendon’s face in the sunshine than he does thinking about how he’d phrased the question.
“What?” Brendon asks, because at least one of them is paying attention.
“Marry me,” Shia repeats, finding his voice.
“Are you crazy?” Brendon asks, disbelief clouding his eyes. “That’s not even legal in this state yet.”
Shia doesn’t let himself smile as big as he wants to. Brendon hasn’t even said yes yet, but he can feel the grin clinging to the sides of his mouth already. “So marry me in Boston or New York.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You said that.”
“I was stating the obvious so maybe you would stop talking.” Shia tugs the ring out of his jeans pocket, reveling in the fact that Brendon’s eyes go wide. “Tell me that’s not a ring.”
“Can’t,” Shia says. There’s fear curling in his gut, but he ignores it, stares Brendon down and holds his breath. “Catch.” He tosses over the ring box, stuffing his hands into his pockets so Brendon can’t see how hard he’s clenching them into fists.
Brendon catches it. He says, “you’re crazy,” repeating himself again, but he still opens it, peering down at the glinting silver band. “You had it engraved,” he says, but it’s mostly to himself. “What the fuck, Shia. When did you do this?”
“A couple months ago.”
“A couple months?”
“I wanted the time to be right.”
“Right.” Brendon says. “For your insanity.”
“Sure.”
“How did you keep a secret for this long?”
Shia smirks at him, and Brendon smiles back before stopping himself. “Practice,” he says, and then, “so. What do you say?”
Surprise!
the surprise of our glory days
brendon urie/shia labeouf
2000 words
betaed by the phenomenal 1001cranes, titled by Adele
Lorenzo goes with him when he gets the money together, the two of them standing with their hands balled into fists, stuffed in their coat pockets, waiting for the engraver to finish.
Lorenzo goes with him when he gets the money together, the two of them standing with their hands balled into fists, stuffed in their coat pockets, waiting for the engraver to finish. Lorenzo calls it blood money, and Shia usually laughs him off, but it’s not like he’s wrong. He’s participated in almost as many sleep and food studies as Shia has.
He tells Brendon he’s taking a class.
- -
He spends two months with the ring burning a hole in his pocket.
- -
“You stopped being a pussy yet?” Lorenzo asks, leaning his elbows against the counter. Shia shrugs, shifting back on the stool and shoving another piece of over-drenched waffle into his mouth. He mumbles something, and Lorenzo rolls his eyes, like that trick was ever actually going to work. “You actually think he’s gonna say no?”
Shia shrugs, wiping at his mouth with a spare, semi-clean napkin. “I think he might say yes,” he says.
Lorenzo snorts, and then Eli shouts out, “Table seven’s up, four eggs and hash.”
“Get out of here,” Lorenzo says, popping Shia in the shoulder a little too hard to pass as gentle chiding. “Go make an honest man out of that boy.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Shia says, but he ends up taking the long way to work so he can call Brendon before his morning class and talk to him until they both get cold from the morning chill.
- -
This semester, Brendon’s an architecture major. He spends a lot of time wearing tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows, skinny pants and lace-ups with no socks. He chews on pencils as he sketches blueprints for buildings that will probably never get built. He always has charcoal smudges on his thumbs that wipe off on their sheets, getting on their clothes, their dishes, the walls.
He’s bent in half over the kitchen table when Shia gets home, glasses sliding down his nose. “Hey,” Shia says by way of greeting, getting close enough to press the word against the skin of Brendon’s neck.
“Mm,” he mumbles, turning in the circle of Shia’s arms. “Hey.” Shia ignores the greeting to kiss Brendon square on the month, and Brendon snorts, but kisses him back, hands curling around Shia’s neck. “What was that for?”
“Just saying hello.”
Brendon laughs. “Hello.” He pulls back slightly, peeking over his shoulder to make sure he won’t mess up his paperwork before scooting up onto the table and dropping his legs open and making room for Shia to step closer. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Shia starts to pull back, annoyed at the flush starting to creep up his neck. “You see me every day.”
Brendon rolls his eyes, hooking his hands in Shia’s beltloops to keep him close. “Yeah,” he says. “In bed in the morning, Shai. That doesn’t count.”
“‘That doesn’t count,’” Shia mimics, laughing for real when Brendon smacks at his shoulder.
“Okay, whatever. Aren’t you Mr. Romance?” He tries to drop his legs, but Shia tugs him closer, keeping his hands on Brendon’s legs, holding him up. “Let go, roommate,” he says. “Who says I want to be close to you now?”
“You always wanna be close to me,” Shia says, and Brendon laughs, still trying to wriggle away.
“You wish.”
“I know.” Shia drops his head down to nose at Brendon’s neck again, breathing him in again, happy to be close.
Brendon’s got his stuff out; pencils and rulers and notes, but Shia bends him back anyway, ignoring the crunch of noise and starting to unbutton his shirt. Brendon’s distracted, eyes blown and brown when Shia picks his head up and their gazes meet.
“Woah, woah,” he mumbles, pressing his hand to Shia’s chest to stop him from moving any closer. “Dude. We eat on this table.”
The only noise in the room is the ragged sound of their breathing. Shia’s quickly losing control of the situation, just by looking into Brendon’s eyes, and he’s completely lost when Brendon laughs, dropping his head back onto the wood with a heavy thunk.
“You laughing at my skills?”
Brendon lifts his head with a smirk. “You have skills?”
“Shut up,” Shia groans, laughing as Brendon kicks his foot against his side. Shia should have expected it, with his fucking luck, feels the color dragging from his face when Brendon blinks, sitting up straighter.
“What’s in your pocket?” There’s no beating around the bush.
“If I say ‘nothing’, is it gonna start a fight?”
Brendon has the appearance of a calm person, but that doesn’t actually mean he is one. He chews on his mouth, eyeing Shia warily, and eventually says, “Is it something to fight about?”
Shia shrugs. “Not if you don’t want it to be.”
“Cop out,” Brendon says, but for once, for the first fucking time ever, he doesn’t argue.
- -
Shia plans it meticulously. He spins it from different angles. He has way more conversations with both of his parents about weddings and marriages, about how frequently these things fall apart.
In March, Jeff comes down from Montana and they have lunch. It’s a semi-silent affair, except for when they both speak at once and finally Jeff says, “You still pussying out about it or you ask him yet?”
Shia shrugs. “It hasn’t been right.”
Jeff rolls his eyes and Shia blinks at him, stomach tightening with the same, familiar awareness that looking at his father is almost like looking into mirror from thirty years in the future. “It’s never gonna be right,” Jeff says, swallowing the last of his drink. “You really think I got down on my knees for your mother?”
Shia laughs, even though he doesn’t mean to and says, “I already know way too much about your sex life, okay? Please stop to save me more scarring and medical bills.”
“Fuck psycho babble, Shia,” he says. “You listen to me.”
“There aren’t enough earplugs in the world,” Shia grumbles, but Jeff grips onto his forearm, squeezing firm, hard enough to hurt. “What?” he asks, shaking Jeff’s hand off. “Speak.”
Jeff snorts. “Speak, he says. Listen, boy, was I happy when your mother told me how you like to take it?”
Shia’s heard this before, a hundred times, in a hundred more public places, but his face still heats up, cheeks turning a crispy pink. “Pop,” he hisses, voice low. “Shut up.”
“And marriage.” Jeff continues like he hadn’t heard. He snorts. “But I’ve met him,” he says. “Your Brendon. He keeps you on your toes.”
“All the fucking time,” Shia admits, and he can’t stop himself from smiling. “You don’t even know.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jeff says, taking the final bite of his burger. “But he’s a nice enough kid. Make an honest man out of him.” Shia winces in anticipation, and his father doesn’t let him down. “Or is he the little woman? I never know with you fucking guys.”
Shia groans, and then flags down their server to settle their bill. “This is why I don’t hang out with you,” he says, dropping the money for tip on the counter. “You’re a mess.”
Jeff doesn’t respond, and they don’t hug when they part ways, but Shia does remember to call out a belated, “thank you,” even though he’s not quite sure why.
- -
“I’m thinking of changing my major,” Brendon says at the beginning of April. They’re tucked together on the beat up couch in their apartment, legs tangled together with Brendon’s chin hooked over Shia’s shoulder. When he speaks, his breath tickles Shia’s skin.
“Oh yeah?” Shia asks, lolling his head against the cracked red leather, turning to meet Brendon’s eyes.
He shrugs, scratching his nails against his neck. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not really good.”
“No,” Shia agrees. “You’re excellent.”
Brendon laughs, low and throaty, batting his head against Shia’s chin. “You’re an asshole.”
“Yeah,” Shia agrees again. “I know.”
“You don’t seem surprised that I want to change,” Brendon says, sounding uncertain.
Shia shifts closer, covering the last half-inch of space between them and presses a flimsy kiss to the hinge of Brendon’s jaw. “This is like, the eighth time you’ve changed your major since I met you five years ago,” he says. “I’ve gotten immune to the shock.”
“Shut up,” Brendon grumbles, but he’s smiling, so Shia doesn’t.
“I mean, dude, I was totally on board with archeology. I burn something fierce, but who knows. Maybe Egypt would’ve been good for me.”
“We would have had to buy stock in SPF 30.”
“Shut up,” Shia mimics, and then they’re off again, half-laughing, half-kissing in the low light of the sun-setting and the blue light filtering out from the TV.
“Make me,” Brendon breathes, but Shia’s already halfway there, pushing both their shirts off and bending Brendon back, slotting their hips together.
“Think I’m doing a pretty good job,” he grits out, and Brendon grunts out a sound halfway between laughter and exasperation.
Brendon grinds their mouths together hard and breathes, “you wish,” squeezing his eyes shut from the feel of it, the two of them rutting together like they have somewhere else to be.
“Always,” Shia says. It’s still true.
- -
At the end of the semester, Brendon says, “I’m thinking, like. Music, right? I was in that band in high school with Spence. We were pretty good.”
Shia wraps an arm around his shoulders as they make the trek home from campus. “I’ve heard the demos,” he says, kicking at specks of nothing on the sidewalk. “You guys were pretty tight.”
“Like a baby’s bottom,” Brendon says, and then laughs harder than the joke really warrants, practically choking on it.
“You’re seriously an idiot,” Shia says, patting him on the back a little harder than necessary, probably.
“You seriously love me,” Brendon says.
It’s not a new realization, but Shia still takes his time processing it, and he blurts out, “marry me,” without even really thinking about it. Months of planning, of worrying, and he spends more concentration focusing on the contours of Brendon’s face in the sunshine than he does thinking about how he’d phrased the question.
“What?” Brendon asks, because at least one of them is paying attention.
“Marry me,” Shia repeats, finding his voice.
“Are you crazy?” Brendon asks, disbelief clouding his eyes. “That’s not even legal in this state yet.”
Shia doesn’t let himself smile as big as he wants to. Brendon hasn’t even said yes yet, but he can feel the grin clinging to the sides of his mouth already. “So marry me in Boston or New York.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You said that.”
“I was stating the obvious so maybe you would stop talking.” Shia tugs the ring out of his jeans pocket, reveling in the fact that Brendon’s eyes go wide. “Tell me that’s not a ring.”
“Can’t,” Shia says. There’s fear curling in his gut, but he ignores it, stares Brendon down and holds his breath. “Catch.” He tosses over the ring box, stuffing his hands into his pockets so Brendon can’t see how hard he’s clenching them into fists.
Brendon catches it. He says, “you’re crazy,” repeating himself again, but he still opens it, peering down at the glinting silver band. “You had it engraved,” he says, but it’s mostly to himself. “What the fuck, Shia. When did you do this?”
“A couple months ago.”
“A couple months?”
“I wanted the time to be right.”
“Right.” Brendon says. “For your insanity.”
“Sure.”
“How did you keep a secret for this long?”
Shia smirks at him, and Brendon smiles back before stopping himself. “Practice,” he says, and then, “so. What do you say?”