We'll Reinvent Love [10/10]
Title: We’ll Reinvent Love [10/10]
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Their eyes lock for just a moment too long, and it feels like the first step off the edge of a cliff.
Disclaimer: Don’t sue for wishful thinking.
Completed in 30,705 words.
“Home sweet home,” Jon says, as they pull into the driveway of the cabin.
They grab duffels out of the trunk and head inside, leaving the trailer to unpack later. It’s…well, it’s definitely a cabin, Brendon thinks as they step inside. Everything is wood, from the floor to the exposed ceiling beams. The first floor is basically one big room, but the kitchen and what will be the music room are separated by the staircase. There’s a gigantic overstuffed couch in front of the TV, right next to a huge fireplace that he’s pretty sure they won’t be using; even here in the mountains, it’s a good 80 degrees. Above the fireplace, much to Brendon’s delight, is a huge stuffed buffalo head.
They admire the view from the front porch over the lake, and through the trees, they can see one of those cheap floating docks. They go upstairs to claim bedrooms. Brendon’s room has a skylight, and it takes a grand total of five minutes for him to find a ladder and climb onto the roof, where the view is even better.
They christen the cabin by smoking on the roof, and by the time they’ve hauled their instruments in from the trailer, it’s late afternoon. They deicde to unpack, and Brendon's nervous when they all reconvene in the living room, but Ryan doesn't say anything, doesn't look at Brendon differently, just curls in a chair with his notebook. Brendon grabs his guitar and perches on the couch.
“Noses for cooking duty,” Spencer says, and he and Jon have their fingers up immediately.
“Fucksticks,” Brendon pouts, his hands full of guitar.
“Huh?” Ryan says a half-second later, looking up from his notebook with his eyes unfocused.
“That’s so not fair,” Brendon protests.
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Spencer says.
“Sweet. Halo or Rock Band, Spence?” Jon asks.
“Rock Band? Seriously? We are a fucking rock band,” Ryan points out, disgruntled.
“Yeah, but it’s more fun when there are scores,” Jon counters.
“And you get to wear, like, space goggles. Off to the kitchen, wifey, I’m hungry,” Spencer grins. Ryan flips him off and gets up with a sigh.
“Make sure he doesn’t burn the house down,” Jon says to Brendon as he follows. Brendon gives him a quick salute.
Ryan’s staring disconsolately into the cupboard. “Pasta?” he says half-heartedly.
“You forget, you’re cooking with Brendon Urie, chef extraordinaire. I will make you pasta like you’ve never had before.”
“What do I have to do?” Ryan asks.
“Put a pot of water on the stove, you’ll burn anything else,” Brendon laughs. It’s sadly true, he knows from experience, but he can hear the hesitation in his own voice, the question of whether he’s allowed to joke with Ryan yet.
While Ryan fills a pot, Brendon starts slicing garlic, tomatoes, and olives. Ryan sits at the table when he’s done and watches, and it’s not as awkward as Brendon would have expected. It’s peaceful, the smell of garlic and the distant sounds of Rock Band, and the rhythm of chopping always sends him back to nights spent helping his mom cook.
“Brendon?” he hears from behind him, timid.
“Yeah?” His heartbeat speeds up a little; he can’t help it. There’s a long silence.
“Never mind.” Ryan’s voice sounds disappointed, somehow. Brendon tries to bury his own disappointment.
“Here, you should at least try to be some sort of help,” Brendon says lightly, and he turns around, brandishing the chopping knife and a packet of sage. Ryan raises an eyebrow and wrinkles his nose.
“Fine, but I’m going to end up bleeding into the sauce,” he threatens. “What do I do?”
“Here, you want to just put these on the chopping board, I already washed them.” Brendon watches from over Ryan’s shoulder. “And then you cut them up. Not too big…No, not like that, that’s how you take off a finger,” Brendon says urgently. Ryan looks at him, and somehow, just the set of his mouth is dripping with sarcasm.
“Do I need to say I told you so?” he says dryly. Brendon rolls his eyes.
“I can’t stop you. Here, like this, you’ve got to hold the tip down with your palm so you get more control. That’s right,” he instructs, and somehow ends up watching Ryan’s face, screwed up in concentration, instead of the knife.
“Done,” Ryan says triumphantly.
“Good,” Brendon smiles.
They grin at each other for a long moment, and Brendon feels like it’s uncharted territory. How long is too long? Cause, yeah, their smiles are genuine enough, but they’re still so new.
“Now what?” Ryan asks, nervously clearing his throat.
“Oh. Right. Um. We’ll need a small saucepan and some butter, hang on,” Brendon says, and it’s a relief to be back where he knows what he’s doing.
*****
Their first day is a fairly lazy one. There’s not much for Spencer and Jon to do until they’ve got lyrics and a melody, so they head down to the lake. Brendon’s fingers are itching to try out a new chord progression, but it’s too gorgeous outside to sit in the music room, so he brings his guitar out to the porch. He can see Spencer and Jon having what looks like an epic splash battle.
“Hey,” comes Ryan’s voice from behind him. He’s curled in a chair with his notebook on his lap.
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t see you,” Brendon says awkwardly.
“No problem,” Ryan smiles cautiously.
Brendon gestures wordlessly to a chair, and Ryan nods, so he settles down and starts to play. He fiddles around for a while, just fingering his way through some new ideas. He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him, making his skin prickle.
“What are you working on?” Brendon asks.
“Nothing. I have no idea what to write about,” Ryan says sheepishly, and Brendon can see his hair sticking up where he must have been running a hand through it in frustration.
“Write about anything,” Brendon says, and Ryan shoots him a pointed, you-are-so-not-helping look. Brendon rolls his eyes. “Write about the clouds,” he says randomly, and returns to his guitar.
He can feel Ryan watching him for a second more before bursting out, “How am I supposed to-“ He cuts himself off abruptly and scribbles a few lines in his notebook, pen scratching angrily at the page. “I’m not stoned enough for this,” he says, and gets up, leaving his notebook on his chair.
Brendon tries to resist, but it’s right there, still open to Ryan’s last page. He grabs it guiltily, fingers shaking.
In Ryan’s unmistakable spiky handwriting, there are three lines, scattered across the page and seemingly unrelated.
First, at the top, written large and underlined: If you just knew.
And then, father down: I never gave a damn about the weather, and it never gave a damn about me.
If I go to hell will you come with me or just leave?
Brendon glances up quickly at the door to make sure Ryan’s still occupied, then leafs back a page. Here, there are just two sloppy paragraphs.
Well, he was just hanging around, then he fell in love
and he didn't know how, but he couldn't get out.
Just hanging around, then he fell in love.
There’s an arrow drawn from those lines, extending to a note that says “So fucking subtle.” Brendon almost laughs, but there’s something funny going on in his stomach after reading. He goes on to the next block of text.
When the moon found the sun, he looked like he was barely hanging on
but her eyes saved his life
in the middle of summer.
Brendon’s heart flip-flops a little. Under a messy cross-out before “her,” he can read the original: “his.”
“Brendon, want lemonade?” he hears Ryan call from inside, and he’s jolted back to reality.
“No thanks,” he calls back, and hastily replaces the notebook. He’s back in his seat, strumming innocently, when Ryan comes back out with a lit joint in one hand and a glass in the other. There’s still something strange happening in Brendon’s chest, but he makes himself remember, it was all past tense.
*****
The clock on his nightstand reads 3:16 when he gives up on sleep that night. He has a vague memory of his mother saying it takes three days to get accustomed to sleeping in a new place, but it might just be that he slept too much yesterday and hasn’t exactly gotten any exercise today. He scrubs at his eyes, doesn’t bother to put on a shirt before opening his door slowly and padding down the stairs.
There’s light seeping into the living room from the kitchen. Ryan’s sitting there, shirtless and messy-haired, greeting Brendon with a smile.
“Hey,” Brendon says quietly, opening the cupboard.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Ryan asks rhetorically, and scoops up another spoonful of Cocoa Pebbles.
“Nope.”
“First three nights in a new place, my mom always said,” Ryan says around a mouthful.
“Mine too. I think there’s a book somewhere about things all moms should know,” Brendon smiles, and settles himself at the small wood table.
“Your eyes’ll get stuck that way, seventy percent of body heat is released through the top of your head, Band-Aids should be easily reachable at all times?” Ryan rattles off wryly.
“Light a candle when you’re cutting onions, always get a gift receipt, children are faking sick unless there is physical proof in the form of vomit,” Brendon lists. Ryan laughs.
Brendon smiles down at his bowl of Lucky Charms. The silence stretches, companionable and comfortable in a way that Brendon's still getting used to, broken only by chewing and the clink of spoons, until they say goodnight around four in the morning. Brendon falls asleep the instant his head hits the pillow.
*****
Their days soon settle into a lazy sort of routine. They wake up around ten or eleven. Most of the day is spent swimming, playing video games, walking in the woods, getting stoned, and occasionally working on music. Ryan writes a lot, but doesn’t show them anything; Brendon fiddles with melodies on his guitar. At night, they eat dinner and smoke some more and watch movies until they fall asleep.
More than ever, somehow, Brendon realizes how lucky he is to have friends like Jon and Spencer. He never really appreciated Spencer’s wry sense of humor, or Jon’s way of saying exactly the right thing in any given situation without seeming to try. They’re just easy to be around, easy and accepting even after all the stupid shit with Ryan. Brendon still feels embarrassed about that when he lets himself think of it, but one time when he tries to apologize, Spencer looks at him so fiercely when he says “Forget it,” that Brendon has no other choice.
As for Ryan, things are going better than Brendon ever would have hoped. It’s not like it’s effortless. Brendon still sometimes sees Ryan smiling a little too eagerly, almost nervously, as if to reassure Brendon, or maybe himself. Brendon wants to tell him not to try so hard.
Ryan doesn’t say anything about the song. Brendon assumes he never found it.
*****
“Whose idea was this?” Jon asks, licking melted marshmallow off his fingers. Brendon raises a hand.
“Genius,” Spencer says fervently.
“Ah, fuck.” Ryan pulls his stick out of the little campfire, waving his marshmallow around to stop it burning. “How the hell do you do this, Bren?”
Brendon looks up from where his marshmallow is turning a light, even gold. “Magic,” he grins. Ryan glares at him.
“Gimme,” Jon says, and grabs the blackened remains from the end of Ryan’s stick.
Brendon carefully places his chocolate bar on the edge of the rocks so it can start to melt, then scoots around so he can take Ryan’s stick. They both go for the marshmallows at the same time, so that their hands brush.
“Sorry,” Ryan mumbles.
“That’s right, leave it to the expert,” Brendon says lightly. Ryan smiles. “Here, you have to find a place where the flames aren’t that high…Right, now just turn it slowly.”
Ryan starts turning his stick unevenly, so that the marshmallow brushes against one of the burning logs. “Shit.”
“Dumbass. Here, let me,” Brendon says, and he places his hands over Ryan’s without really thinking about it. It’s not until he sees Spencer and Jon exchange a look out of the corner of his eye that he realizes, maybe friends don’t do this sort of thing. It’s almost a relief to declare that they’re done, so he can release Ryan’s hands and scoot back to his own place.
Still, he can see Ryan smiling as he takes the first bite, and when he sees Brendon watching him, he grins, his teeth covered in white goo.
*****
“Where is everybody?” Brendon asks sleepily.
“Ryan’s out on the porch, said nobody’s allowed to disturb him until he’s finished some lyrics. Spencer’s in town for toilet paper,” Jon says. “Wake and bake?” He offers up his half-smoked joint. Brendon flops down comfortably next to him.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Although at this rate we’re going to be out of weed in a week,” Jon says mournfully.
“We’ll find more,” Brendon says optimistically.
“Mmph.” There’s a strech of silence as they pass the joint back and forth, and somewhere in it, Brendon ends up staring at Ryan’s back through the sliding glass door. He can see Ryan scribbling angrily, crossing something out.
“You and Ryan have been pretty good lately,” Jon comments, following his gaze.
“Good?” Brendon chuckles, because he makes it sound like they’re untrained puppy dogs.
“You know. Cozy,” Jon says, and makes a vague sort of waving motion with his free hand.
“I guess,” Brendon says slowly. “We just…I don’t know. Things are different. Better.” Jon’s watching him intently.
“Don’t let the past stand in the way,” Jon says eventually, and before Brendon can process that particular sentence, Jon’s passing him the last inch of the joint and standing up. “You finish this sucker, I’ll make eggs.”
Brendon sits there long after the roach burns itself out, trying to figure out what he’s missing, watching Ryan’s bowed head as he writes.
*****
“Guys, seeing as it is rainy, I vote we get really, really stoned,” Jon announces.
“I don’t see the connection, but, motion seconded,” Spencer says, and promptly takes a seat on the couch. Jon runs up the stairs and comes back with his bowl and a baggie, by which time Brendon’s sitting next to Ryan and they’ve decided on “Cabin Fever” as properly ironic viewing material.
The bowl makes the rounds until they’re practically immobile. Spencer ends up lying down, feet over the arm of the couch and head in Jon’s lap. Ryan’s staring slack-jawed at the window. Brendon’s considering the TV screen.
“Guys,” he says. “Guys, what if a guy with a dog with a virus with a…wait. No. What if there’s a virus, and we die?”
“Guys,” Spencer says. “Guys, our name should be Mellow At The Disco. Seriously. Do we ever panic? No. We don’t. We’re totally mellow.”
“I think Jon’s asleep,” Ryan observes.
“See? Mellow.”
“No, but guys, what if there’s a virus?” Brendon says, somewhat urgently.
“I need food.” Ryan pulls himself to his feet with what looks like a huge effort. Brendon follows.
“Ryan? Ryan, I don’t want a virus. And I don’t want to have to light a crazy dude on fire,” he says, and the more he thinks about it, the more worried he gets.
“Cheetos? Pringles? Pirate’s booty?” Ryan muses, staring into the cupboard.
“Virus,” Brendon says firmly.
“Pirate’s Booty. That’s a funny name. No, all of the above. Wait, what are you talking about?” Ryan says, and turns to Brendon with his arms full of plastic bags.
“I’m talking about flesh-eating viruses and dying,” Brendon says, and whatever Spencer says, he is totally panicking.
“Oh.” Ryan considers for a moment, biting at his lower lip. “Don’t worry,” he says eventually, and smiles at Brendon.
“Why?”
“I’ll protect you,” Ryan says, as if it should be obvious. He gives Brendon one last warm smile before heading back into the living room.
*****
"We need milk and your stupid fake bacon, I'm going out," Ryan says, as Brendon comes into the kitchen.
"I'll go with you, you always get the wrong kind," Brendon mumbles, still half-asleep. Ryan pauses for a second before nodding.
It’s a grey sort of morning, oppressive and muggy, but the woods are still beautiful as they drive down the narrow, meandering road that leads to town.
“Music?” Brendon asks, a couple minutes in, when the silence starts to make the air even more thick.
“Yeah,” Ryan says, and they both reach for the dial at the same time, fingers brushing, and recoil just as quickly. “Sorry,” Ryan mutters.
Brendon flips through channel after channel, finds static and pop and more static, before settling on a classical station. He smiles a little when he recognizes the piece, "Rhapsody In Blue," and starts air-piano-ing in sync.
“They should have piano in Rock Band,” he remarks.
“I’m sorry for being such an asshole when my dad died,” Ryan blurts out, and Brendon’s fingers freeze in midair.
“I. Wow. Okay,” he says tentatively, because seriously, where the fuck did that come from?
“I’m sorry,” Ryan says again, stronger, like he’s not sure Brendon believes him. “I couldn’t. I just.” He takes a deep breath. “It just made me go…numb. For a long time. Completely shut off. I don’t. I can’t even describe what was going on in my head. Something along the lines of…of nobody being able to…to love me. I’m sorry.”
Brendon doesn’t quite know what to do with that last not-quite-confession.
“It’s okay,” he says softly. He doesn’t know why Ryan brought it up, but it’s okay. Ryan glances over at him, and there’s something Brendon thinks must be frustration in his eyes, a sort of helplessness, like Brendon still needs convincing. “Really, it’s okay,” Brendon repeats.
Chopin plays gently in the background, and Brendon’s seized by a sudden urge to reach out and take Ryan’s hand.
“He used to tell me to stop dressing like a faggot,” Ryan says matter-of-factly.
“I should be the one saying sorry.”
Ryan snaps his head around so suddenly Brendon’s afraid they’re going to go off the road.
“No,” he says vehemently. “Fuck, Brendon, no, that’s not what I meant. You didn’t do anything wrong, you…you never did.” There’s still that veiled frustration in his eyes that Brendon, for the life of him, doesn’t understand.
“Thanks,” he says eventually, and he doesn’t take Ryan’s hand, just curls his fingers briefly over where it’s clenched around the gearshift.
They pull into town not long after, make a quick grocery run, and then go over to the movie store.
“Nothing subtitled,” Brendon says, as they walk through the door.
“Nothing with spontaneous musical outbursts,” Ryan counters. Predictably, it takes them a while.
They’re still bickering happily over the cinematic value of John Waters movies when they walk through the front door, but Brendon hears a snippet of Spencer and Jon’s conversation from the kitchen table.
“…nudge in the right direction?” Spencer’s saying.
“Fucking powerful shove is more like it,” Jon mumbles, and then they’re turning around, looking vaguely guilty.
Ryan and Jon get dinner duty that night, while Spencer and Brendon watch the sun set from the porch.
“How have you and Ryan been lately?” Spencer says, too casually, and it’s so reminiscent of Jon’s question of three days ago that Brendon’s tempted to roll his eyes.
“Fine,” he replies.
“You don’t have to be afraid, you know,” Spencer says.
“Huh?” Cause, really, what the fuck.
Spencer hesitates. “You’re not going to make the same mistakes you did before,” has says slowly. Brendon can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be a reassurance, or if there’s an unsaid “or else…” there.
“I have to pee,” he says, and he almost knocks his chair over in his haste to get inside, because it’s just too much, all of a sudden. The air is still close and suffocating, and it seems like everybody knows something he doesn’t, and he’s fucking sick of all of it. He takes the stairs two at a time and scrambles up the ladder to the roof, and there’s a thin breeze blowing, so he can breathe again.
He rests his chin on his knees and tries to calm down. There’s no way Spencer could be encouraging him to…well. No. There’s no way, there’s no reason to even consider it.
Unless…no. Ryan hasn’t done anything that could be construed as an effort towards more than friendship. He’s just really trying to be friends, is all. He probably never even got the fucking lyrics.
There’s no reason to freak out. No reason to hope.
*****
They don’t actually get much done until about two weeks in, when Ryan finally announces that he has some lyrics that are workable. They convene in the music room and Ryan averts his eyes as they all crowd around his notebook.
She held the world upon a string, but she didn't ever hold me,
spun the stars on her fingernails, but it never made her happy
‘cause she couldn't ever have me.
Brendon knows what it’s about even before he comes to the third paragraph.
But who could love me?
I am out of my mind.
He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him as he finishes reading, waiting for a reaction, but he’s not quite sure how he feels about the song. Spencer and Jon exchange one of those significant-yet-unreadable looks.
“So what do you think for the main melody?” Ryan asks, businesslike.
“Cabaret punk,” Jon says seriously.
Brendon laughs. “Something like this?” he asks, with a grin, and starts improvising on the keyboard, loud and dramatic. He gets into it, bobbing his head in time and snaking his torso back and forth. After a minute or so, though, he realizes he can hear Spencer and Jon laughing, but not Ryan, which is usually a good sign that Ryan’s pissed off and wants to get down to business. He stops abruptly and looks up at Ryan apologetically.
Instead of the expected glare, Ryan’s smiling at him, wide and almost embarrassed. An image of William’s Polaroid flickers unbidden across Brendon’s mind. He pushes it away, clears his throat. Ryan’s smile disappears like someone switched it off.
“Okay, but seriously,” Ryan says.
*****
Brendon thinks it was Jon’s idea to bring every single horror movie about cabins ever made. Of course, the Evil Dead trilogy doesn’t really count as horror, especially not when he’s stoned, but by the time they’ve worked their way to the third movie, Brendon’s high is mostly gone and it’s completely dark outside. He envies Jon his peaceful snoring. The bit where Ash is in the pit in the ground is totally freaky, okay, and Brendon’s entirely justified in clinging to Spencer like there’s no tomorrow.
“Gerroff,” Spencer grunts. “Was almost asleep.”
Brendon wraps his arms around his own knees instead, then decides another bowl would probably help with his terror. But by the time he’s finished packing it, Spencer’s out for the count, leaving only Ryan, whose right eyebrow is raised into his hairline, his mouth gaping open as if to enquire how special effects could possibly be this bad. He makes grabby hands at Brendon, and they share two more bowls before returning their attention to the movie.
“Necronomicon,” Ryan says slowly.
“Necronomnomnom,” Brendon giggles. Ryan stares at him, mouth curving slowly into a smile until he’s laughing too, loud enough to wake Spencer, who flips them off and shambles away, up the stairs. Jon’s still snoring. They learned long ago that nothing short of a sonic boom will wake Jon if he falls asleep stoned.
So it’s just the two of them, essentially, huddled close in the dark as they finish the movie in silence. They stay there long after the credits start, too lazy to move. Brendon doesn’t quite know when Ryan’s head ended up on his shoulder, but he doesn’t mind. He can smell Ryan’s shampoo.
“You smell good,” Brendon says softly,
“I know, you told me,” Ryan replies through a yawn.
“When?”
“That first day. You know,” Ryan says, and makes a contented little noise as he burrows deeper into Brendon’s neck.
“Oh. Right,” Brendon replies.
They wait. Brendon’s talking himself into moving when Ryan speaks again.
“Bren?” he asks, barely a whisper.
“I know,” Brendon says. He doesn’t know what he knows, but…he just does.
*****
“I’m going for a swim before dinner, anybody want to come?” Ryan asks.
“Sure,” Brendon says.
“We’ll be down in a bit, we need to finish this level,” Spencer says, all his attention focused on the TV.
The late afternoon light is just starting to turn golden as they head down the path toward the dock, so that when Ryan stops at the edge to take off his shirt and shorts, the sun makes his skin glow. Brendon’s suddenly uncomfortably warm, so he turns around and quickly strips down to his boxers. When he looks again, Ryan’s standing at the edge of the water, delicately dipping a toe in to test the temperature. Brendon rolls his eyes before getting a running start.
Ryan doesn’t have time to turn around before Brendon hits him, so he shrieks in surprise as he goes flying. They hit the water together, surface sputtering and gasping, with Brendon grinning mischievously and Ryan looking amused in spite of himself.
“You are going down,” he promises, when he’s caught his breath. Brendon laughs and starts backstroking away.
Ryan chases him in a full circle, out into the deeper water where they can no longer stand and back again, until they’re standing on their tiptoes, splashing each other breathlessly. Brendon can’t stop laughing, watching Ryan’s thin little arms flailing in his efforts to move as much water as possible. Without warning, Ryan lunges forward, and Brendon doesn’t have time to react before Ryan’s jumping up and dunking him.
Brendon surges to his feet again, still laughing, with Ryan wrapped around his torso, hands scooping up water into Brendon’s face. He takes a deep breath and tilts forward so that Ryan goes under too, trying to wrestle Ryan away from him.
It all seems impossibly innocent until it just isn’t. They surface again and time freezes, Ryan’s legs entwined around Brendon’s waist, Brendon’s hands on Ryan’s hips, their breath caught in their throats as they realize simultaneously how close their bodies are. He can feel them inhale together.
It’s sudden, dizzying, the surge of longing that rushes through him when he looks at Ryan’s lips, wet and parted, and again when he notices Ryan’s eyes, wide and helpless as he stares at Brendon’s own lips. His skin is warm and tingling where it touches Ryan’s, and his heart is racing, and he can feel this terrifying sense of right, like he’s coming home instead of possibly fucking up every bit of progress they’ve made.
“Look out below!” he hears Spencer cry from somewhere in the trees, and Brendon and Ryan release each other like they’ve been shocked.
They fuck around for a while, play chicken, but Ryan and Brendon don’t touch again. Through dinner (sandwiches, since they’re feeling lazy) he doesn’t talk, just thinks of the sunlight on Ryan’s skin and those shared heartbeats. Right after dinner, he claims to be tired, and climbs the stairs alone. He pulls himself up onto the roof without really deciding to.
The light is slanting golden-orange over the water, bright enough that Brendon has to hold a hand over his eyes. He lies back against the gritty shingles and lets the last rays of the sun warm him, and he watches as the sun slips down slowly, almost imperceptibly, until everything is blazing orange. He keeps replaying the look on Ryan’s face, but above all, he remembers the feeling of absolute comfort, the warmth that flooded through him when he touched Ryan.
What would have happened if they had kissed? It could have ruined everything, sent them back to caution and awkwardness and uncertainty. And yet…Brendon doesn’t think, somehow, it would have gone that way. He remembers Spencer’s words.
The first chill of dusk hits him just as the knock sounds on the glass of the skylight.
“Hey,” Ryan calls softly, and Brendon smiles as an invitation. Ryan places two blankets on the rooftop before swinging himself through the opening. “Thought you might get cold,” he says, and hands one to Brendon.
“Thanks.”
Brendon scoots over slightly, sitting up with his arms wrapped around his knees, and Ryan sits next to him. There’s silence as Ryan takes in the view, as orange shifts to pink and red, and even with what happened earlier, it’s comfortable, nothing like the tension of…god, it really was only three weeks ago.
Ryan stares down at the smooth surface of the water, then up to where the moon is just starting to show through the darkening sky.
“I used to sleep outside sometimes, when I was a kid,” he says absently. “When things got really bad.”
Brendon watches his silhouette, and waits.
“It was like…when Mom moved out, there were too many memories in the house, I couldn’t get away from them. I didn’t want to be near anything that reminded me of her. So I just snuck outside after dad was asleep and slept in my treehouse. Seeing the stars made it easier.”
“When you have too much going on inside you, you need somewhere for it to go,” Brendon says softly. Ryan nods.
“Remember that night you came over, and we went for a drive?”
“Yeah,” Brendon smiles. It feels like an eternity, not years but decades, fucking centuries.
“I was planning on doing it again that night. It didn’t…I mean. By that time, after a few years of doing that, it always made me feel worse afterward. Even though I couldn’t sleep inside. It was like there was nowhere left to go.” He says it slowly, like he’s not sure how to articulate it. “You were…you were nothing like anything I’d known before. You changed everything.”
Their eyes lock for just a moment too long, and it feels like the first step off the edge of a cliff.
But with the last hint of sunlight casting purple-pink shadows over Ryan’s skin, everything seems far, away, so impossibly distant as to have never existed at all, and the surprised feeling that blossoms in Brendon’s chest isn’t so much hope as certainty.
Ryan catches himself, ducks his head like he’s said something unforgivable.
“Ryan,” Brendon says. “It’s okay.” He doesn’t know how to convey how much he means with the last word.
Ryan looks up at him again, his eyes hopeful, sparkling browngoldamber just like Brendon remembers. They stare at each other for a long moment, and Brendon feels like he’s waiting, but he’s not sure what for.
Maybe Ryan was waiting too, because after a minute he bites his lip, turns away looking frustrated, and mutters, “I should go, I want to do some writing before I go to sleep.”
“Oh,” Brendon says. “Okay.”
He follows Ryan down the ladder, thinking that maybe he’ll watch a movie with Jon and Spencer.
“So. I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” Ryan says dully.
“Yeah,” Brendon says, and he wants to stop Ryan as he heads for the door, shoulders slumped, but he doesn’t know what he could say. Ryan stops anyway, one hand on the knob, and turns around with his eyes blazing.
“Brendon, are you stupid? I don’t know what else I can do to fix this. Am I doing something wrong?” he says suddenly, and his voice sounds like it’s on the verge of breaking.
“No, you’re not…what are you talking about?” Brendon asks, bewildered.
“The song. The lyrics you stuck in my bag. I thought that meant…if I fixed this, if I made everything okay…” Ryan hesitates, twisting at his hands.
“Oh,” Brendon breathes.
“I love you,” Ryan says simply.
Brendon can’t move except to let a smile curl across his lips slowly. He can’t think, can’t speak, can’t fucking breathe; after everything, after years of waiting, what else is there to do? It’s all been said.
Ryan moves for him, lunging across the room to hurl himself into Brendon’s arms, and they fucking collide into the kiss, hands grasping and pulling, every inch of skin on fire, and Brendon can hear this rushing in his ears and the galloping beat of his heart sounds like finallyfinallyfinallyIloveyou, and like it always does when he kisses Ryan, the rest of the world ceases to matter, ceases to exist.
“I love you,” Ryan says again, forcefully, into Brendon’s lips.
“I love you too,” Brendon responds, half-laughing with relief, because finallyfinallyfinally he can say it, say what he’s been waiting to say for fucking years.
Ryan’s smiling into the kiss, they both are, arms wrapped around each other as tightly as they’ll go, lips molding together until Brendon can’t breathe but doesn’t care. He can’t touch enough, can’t help himself as he moves his hands over Ryan’s jaw (a day’s worth of stubble) and his neck (pulse pounding below his ear) and his back (every vertebra, every rib) and his stomach under his shirt (barely-there trail of hair, hot skin quivering under his fingers) and he almost doesn’t want to separate their lips to pull off Ryan’s shirt, because now that he’s touching Ryan again he doesn’t know how he ever stopped.
“Bed,” Ryan whispers breathlessly, and they almost trip over the ladder as they stumble to the bed, so that they’re laughing when they tumble down together, Ryan on top of Brendon, their curves and angles fitting together just as perfectly as they always have. Brendon ducks his head to kiss a gentle trail up Ryan’s neck, moving slowly along his jaw to his lips, and then Ryan splays long fingers over Brendon’s cheek and grinds his hips down desperately and Brendon arches up against him, hooks his foot over Ryan’s calf. Ryan fumbles at the hem of Brendon’s shirt, watching him with wild eyes as he tugs it off, and he tilts his hips up again as he leans in to suck at Brendon’s lower lip.
“Slow down,” Brendon gasps out, and Ryan breaks the kiss, panting, resting their foreheads together.
“You’re not backing out on me now, are you?” he breathes, and, still, behind the joking tone is a genuine fear.
“Never,” Brendon promises. “But I just…” he lets the words trail off, brushes his fingers across Ryan’s jaw and down his neck, massaging circles into the round of his shoulder, stroking the dip of his collarbone slowly, reverently. When their lips meet again it’s tender, searching, relearning the textures and tastes of each other’s mouths after all the long months of separation.
“I love you,” he murmurs into Ryan’s lips.
“Love you too,” Ryan smiles back.
They take their time, trading soft, sweet kisses, laughing at how Ryan has to wriggle to slide his jeans over his hips, Brendon running a hand through Ryan’s hair, Ryan nuzzling into Brendon’s neck, until they’re both naked, and then they take a deep breath and part just to look at each other again.
“Did you pack…” Ryan asks.
“Yeah,” Brendon says, because he never got around to taking everything out of his travel bag, thank god.
“I want…I want to show you,” Ryan says hesitantly, and Brendon’s heart pounds even faster, if it’s possible, but he nods.
Ryan preps him slowly, carefully, and the first finger is strange, but the drag of it is eclipsed by the fierce look on Ryan’s face, the hunger in his eyes as he watches Brendon’s reaction. Those eyes are enough to make Brendon ignore the slight discomfort, ignore everything else, because right about now he’d give just about anything to be closer to Ryan.
Still, it hurts when Ryan slides in. Ryan whimpers when he starts to move, biting at his lip, looking just as overwhelmed as Brendon feels. He’s being pulled apart, ripped inside-out and laid open, until he’s completely and utterly exposed like he’s never been in his life, and if Ryan wasn’t looking down at him like that, like he’s beautiful, he doesn’t know if we would be able to take it. The slight pain, the burning stretch of it, that was expected, but he never imagined, never tried to understand, how difficult it must have been for Ryan to give him this, to let himself be absolutely stripped of anything resembling control.
He knows, then, how much Ryan must have trusted him. There was no way it could have been easy for him, especially (Brendon mentally shudders) those last couple times. And still, he just kept giving himself to Brendon, like he needed it. Like he needed Brendon.
Brendon tilts his hips up, because as painfully full as he is, he wants more, he wants Ryan closer, deeper. He can feel hot glowing sparks shooting up his spine, down his limbs, behind his eyes, can feel his heartbeat in his throat with every moan from Ryan’s lips. He’s on fire, skin blazing, every inch of his body humming with feeling, till it’s almost too much to feel all at once, too much, to hear his own low whimpers and Ryan’s gasping breaths, and it’s too much and not enough.
He can feel Ryan getting close, feel him trembling, so he reaches down to curl a hand around himself, groaning helplessly, and Ryan’s answering “Jesus,” makes him look up, lock eyes with Ryan as they move together, faster, closer, and everything is stripped from Ryan’s gaze except pure, naked love. Brendon lets the world fall away as he comes, feeling nothing but blinding heat in his stomach and, even better, a soft glowing warmth in his chest.
Ryan follows a second later, collapsing on top of Brendon, and Brendon can feel his smile.
“I love you,” is the first thing he’s conscious of saying, running a hand over the back of Ryan’s head. “I love you.”
Ryan ties off the condom, throws it away and then cuddles close again, and Brendon thinks of that stupid timeless phrase: falling in love. The first time, it was falling, tripping and stumbling blindly into an endless drop, something terrifying and uncontrollable and, in the end, unbearable. This…this doesn’t feel so much like falling. This is something soft and warm and completely new, like they’ve emerged from something dark and dangerous into vivid sunlight. He buries his nose in Ryan’s hair, inhaling that perfect familiar scent, and he’s so far from falling. This is home, this is rock solid and welcoming, this is the most sure he’s been of anything in his life. For the first time in years, he’s got his feet on the ground.
“God, I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry for everything,” Ryan whispers into his neck, tracing up and down Brendon’s stomach with one cool finger.
“Fuck, no, I think we both-“ Brendon protests.
“I wanted to tell you so many times-“
“Me too, every fucking time I looked at you, and-“
“I didn’t know what everyone else would say, you were right, I didn’t know if love would be enough to make it work-“
“I hurt you, I was such an asshole, I’m sorry-“
“The look on your face when I told you, I couldn’t-“
“I never actually slept with William-“
They’re tripping over their own words, cutting each other off, half laughing and half crying, slipping in breathless kisses between words.
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t…it’s done, it doesn’t matter,” Brendon says eventually, and Ryan takes a deep breath and nods, smiling.
“It doesn’t,” he agrees. “There’s time for apologies later, but I love you. It’s enough, it’ll be enough.”
“More than enough,” Brendon promises, and pulls him close for a kiss.
“Everything’s different now. I love you, I did then and I do now, but it’s different, it’s so much better.”
They lie twined together until the sun starts to rise, running hands over each other's bare skin, kissing softly, leaving everything else behind.
*****
Brendon doesn’t know what the rest of the song is about, but every time he and Ryan sing the last line together, he remembers those words, that slow imperceptible shift from what they had then, the uncertainty and pain, to what they have now, the warmth and friendship and trust.
“We must reinvent love,” he sings every night, and he locks eyes with Ryan and smiles.
The End
AN: I can't believe this is actually over. I started this kind of on a whim and it just...spiraled out of control, in the best possible way. This was my first slash story, and I'm so fucking proud of it. I'm also incredibly grateful for the people it's allowed me to meet, all of you who have friended me over the course of these last couple months, everyone who comments, just, everyone. To name some names: emberflie and rydenross_urie, whose comments always make me smile so hard. takkatakkatakka, who's pretty much an AMAZING poet/author. attackdbyleaves, who is an absolute sweetheart and does things like send me the link to "Open Happiness" just to cheer me up and ask how life is going. And last but so far from least, lolab, Colin, for the constant guidance, inspiration, and above all, friendship. I don't know where I'd be, bb, without your pictures and prompts and keymashes, not to mention the advice, sympathy, and long conversations about life, not just writing.
Okay. *wipes eyes*
Enough sappiness. Down to business. If you want to read more of what I've written, read my Master List, or just add me; I always add back, and I always try to get to know everybody. As for my upcoming projects, the next item on the list is to finish That’s Amore, fondly known as italy!fic, and then I'm starting a series called "K is for Kinks," basically the same premise as Colin's ~Bden's Sekrit Kinks series, but centering on Ryan and culminating in GSF. Also, I'll be doing a Gabilliam standalone at some point. Keep an eye out for those.
Before you go, I'd just like to request that you leave a comment :) Even if you've been lurking this whole time, don't be afraid to just say hi! I'd really like to know what everyone thought of this.
Okay. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. I love you all.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Their eyes lock for just a moment too long, and it feels like the first step off the edge of a cliff.
Disclaimer: Don’t sue for wishful thinking.
Completed in 30,705 words.
“Home sweet home,” Jon says, as they pull into the driveway of the cabin.
They grab duffels out of the trunk and head inside, leaving the trailer to unpack later. It’s…well, it’s definitely a cabin, Brendon thinks as they step inside. Everything is wood, from the floor to the exposed ceiling beams. The first floor is basically one big room, but the kitchen and what will be the music room are separated by the staircase. There’s a gigantic overstuffed couch in front of the TV, right next to a huge fireplace that he’s pretty sure they won’t be using; even here in the mountains, it’s a good 80 degrees. Above the fireplace, much to Brendon’s delight, is a huge stuffed buffalo head.
They admire the view from the front porch over the lake, and through the trees, they can see one of those cheap floating docks. They go upstairs to claim bedrooms. Brendon’s room has a skylight, and it takes a grand total of five minutes for him to find a ladder and climb onto the roof, where the view is even better.
They christen the cabin by smoking on the roof, and by the time they’ve hauled their instruments in from the trailer, it’s late afternoon. They deicde to unpack, and Brendon's nervous when they all reconvene in the living room, but Ryan doesn't say anything, doesn't look at Brendon differently, just curls in a chair with his notebook. Brendon grabs his guitar and perches on the couch.
“Noses for cooking duty,” Spencer says, and he and Jon have their fingers up immediately.
“Fucksticks,” Brendon pouts, his hands full of guitar.
“Huh?” Ryan says a half-second later, looking up from his notebook with his eyes unfocused.
“That’s so not fair,” Brendon protests.
“We’ll do it tomorrow,” Spencer says.
“Sweet. Halo or Rock Band, Spence?” Jon asks.
“Rock Band? Seriously? We are a fucking rock band,” Ryan points out, disgruntled.
“Yeah, but it’s more fun when there are scores,” Jon counters.
“And you get to wear, like, space goggles. Off to the kitchen, wifey, I’m hungry,” Spencer grins. Ryan flips him off and gets up with a sigh.
“Make sure he doesn’t burn the house down,” Jon says to Brendon as he follows. Brendon gives him a quick salute.
Ryan’s staring disconsolately into the cupboard. “Pasta?” he says half-heartedly.
“You forget, you’re cooking with Brendon Urie, chef extraordinaire. I will make you pasta like you’ve never had before.”
“What do I have to do?” Ryan asks.
“Put a pot of water on the stove, you’ll burn anything else,” Brendon laughs. It’s sadly true, he knows from experience, but he can hear the hesitation in his own voice, the question of whether he’s allowed to joke with Ryan yet.
While Ryan fills a pot, Brendon starts slicing garlic, tomatoes, and olives. Ryan sits at the table when he’s done and watches, and it’s not as awkward as Brendon would have expected. It’s peaceful, the smell of garlic and the distant sounds of Rock Band, and the rhythm of chopping always sends him back to nights spent helping his mom cook.
“Brendon?” he hears from behind him, timid.
“Yeah?” His heartbeat speeds up a little; he can’t help it. There’s a long silence.
“Never mind.” Ryan’s voice sounds disappointed, somehow. Brendon tries to bury his own disappointment.
“Here, you should at least try to be some sort of help,” Brendon says lightly, and he turns around, brandishing the chopping knife and a packet of sage. Ryan raises an eyebrow and wrinkles his nose.
“Fine, but I’m going to end up bleeding into the sauce,” he threatens. “What do I do?”
“Here, you want to just put these on the chopping board, I already washed them.” Brendon watches from over Ryan’s shoulder. “And then you cut them up. Not too big…No, not like that, that’s how you take off a finger,” Brendon says urgently. Ryan looks at him, and somehow, just the set of his mouth is dripping with sarcasm.
“Do I need to say I told you so?” he says dryly. Brendon rolls his eyes.
“I can’t stop you. Here, like this, you’ve got to hold the tip down with your palm so you get more control. That’s right,” he instructs, and somehow ends up watching Ryan’s face, screwed up in concentration, instead of the knife.
“Done,” Ryan says triumphantly.
“Good,” Brendon smiles.
They grin at each other for a long moment, and Brendon feels like it’s uncharted territory. How long is too long? Cause, yeah, their smiles are genuine enough, but they’re still so new.
“Now what?” Ryan asks, nervously clearing his throat.
“Oh. Right. Um. We’ll need a small saucepan and some butter, hang on,” Brendon says, and it’s a relief to be back where he knows what he’s doing.
*****
Their first day is a fairly lazy one. There’s not much for Spencer and Jon to do until they’ve got lyrics and a melody, so they head down to the lake. Brendon’s fingers are itching to try out a new chord progression, but it’s too gorgeous outside to sit in the music room, so he brings his guitar out to the porch. He can see Spencer and Jon having what looks like an epic splash battle.
“Hey,” comes Ryan’s voice from behind him. He’s curled in a chair with his notebook on his lap.
“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t see you,” Brendon says awkwardly.
“No problem,” Ryan smiles cautiously.
Brendon gestures wordlessly to a chair, and Ryan nods, so he settles down and starts to play. He fiddles around for a while, just fingering his way through some new ideas. He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him, making his skin prickle.
“What are you working on?” Brendon asks.
“Nothing. I have no idea what to write about,” Ryan says sheepishly, and Brendon can see his hair sticking up where he must have been running a hand through it in frustration.
“Write about anything,” Brendon says, and Ryan shoots him a pointed, you-are-so-not-helping look. Brendon rolls his eyes. “Write about the clouds,” he says randomly, and returns to his guitar.
He can feel Ryan watching him for a second more before bursting out, “How am I supposed to-“ He cuts himself off abruptly and scribbles a few lines in his notebook, pen scratching angrily at the page. “I’m not stoned enough for this,” he says, and gets up, leaving his notebook on his chair.
Brendon tries to resist, but it’s right there, still open to Ryan’s last page. He grabs it guiltily, fingers shaking.
In Ryan’s unmistakable spiky handwriting, there are three lines, scattered across the page and seemingly unrelated.
First, at the top, written large and underlined: If you just knew.
And then, father down: I never gave a damn about the weather, and it never gave a damn about me.
If I go to hell will you come with me or just leave?
Brendon glances up quickly at the door to make sure Ryan’s still occupied, then leafs back a page. Here, there are just two sloppy paragraphs.
Well, he was just hanging around, then he fell in love
and he didn't know how, but he couldn't get out.
Just hanging around, then he fell in love.
There’s an arrow drawn from those lines, extending to a note that says “So fucking subtle.” Brendon almost laughs, but there’s something funny going on in his stomach after reading. He goes on to the next block of text.
When the moon found the sun, he looked like he was barely hanging on
but her eyes saved his life
in the middle of summer.
Brendon’s heart flip-flops a little. Under a messy cross-out before “her,” he can read the original: “his.”
“Brendon, want lemonade?” he hears Ryan call from inside, and he’s jolted back to reality.
“No thanks,” he calls back, and hastily replaces the notebook. He’s back in his seat, strumming innocently, when Ryan comes back out with a lit joint in one hand and a glass in the other. There’s still something strange happening in Brendon’s chest, but he makes himself remember, it was all past tense.
*****
The clock on his nightstand reads 3:16 when he gives up on sleep that night. He has a vague memory of his mother saying it takes three days to get accustomed to sleeping in a new place, but it might just be that he slept too much yesterday and hasn’t exactly gotten any exercise today. He scrubs at his eyes, doesn’t bother to put on a shirt before opening his door slowly and padding down the stairs.
There’s light seeping into the living room from the kitchen. Ryan’s sitting there, shirtless and messy-haired, greeting Brendon with a smile.
“Hey,” Brendon says quietly, opening the cupboard.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Ryan asks rhetorically, and scoops up another spoonful of Cocoa Pebbles.
“Nope.”
“First three nights in a new place, my mom always said,” Ryan says around a mouthful.
“Mine too. I think there’s a book somewhere about things all moms should know,” Brendon smiles, and settles himself at the small wood table.
“Your eyes’ll get stuck that way, seventy percent of body heat is released through the top of your head, Band-Aids should be easily reachable at all times?” Ryan rattles off wryly.
“Light a candle when you’re cutting onions, always get a gift receipt, children are faking sick unless there is physical proof in the form of vomit,” Brendon lists. Ryan laughs.
Brendon smiles down at his bowl of Lucky Charms. The silence stretches, companionable and comfortable in a way that Brendon's still getting used to, broken only by chewing and the clink of spoons, until they say goodnight around four in the morning. Brendon falls asleep the instant his head hits the pillow.
*****
Their days soon settle into a lazy sort of routine. They wake up around ten or eleven. Most of the day is spent swimming, playing video games, walking in the woods, getting stoned, and occasionally working on music. Ryan writes a lot, but doesn’t show them anything; Brendon fiddles with melodies on his guitar. At night, they eat dinner and smoke some more and watch movies until they fall asleep.
More than ever, somehow, Brendon realizes how lucky he is to have friends like Jon and Spencer. He never really appreciated Spencer’s wry sense of humor, or Jon’s way of saying exactly the right thing in any given situation without seeming to try. They’re just easy to be around, easy and accepting even after all the stupid shit with Ryan. Brendon still feels embarrassed about that when he lets himself think of it, but one time when he tries to apologize, Spencer looks at him so fiercely when he says “Forget it,” that Brendon has no other choice.
As for Ryan, things are going better than Brendon ever would have hoped. It’s not like it’s effortless. Brendon still sometimes sees Ryan smiling a little too eagerly, almost nervously, as if to reassure Brendon, or maybe himself. Brendon wants to tell him not to try so hard.
Ryan doesn’t say anything about the song. Brendon assumes he never found it.
*****
“Whose idea was this?” Jon asks, licking melted marshmallow off his fingers. Brendon raises a hand.
“Genius,” Spencer says fervently.
“Ah, fuck.” Ryan pulls his stick out of the little campfire, waving his marshmallow around to stop it burning. “How the hell do you do this, Bren?”
Brendon looks up from where his marshmallow is turning a light, even gold. “Magic,” he grins. Ryan glares at him.
“Gimme,” Jon says, and grabs the blackened remains from the end of Ryan’s stick.
Brendon carefully places his chocolate bar on the edge of the rocks so it can start to melt, then scoots around so he can take Ryan’s stick. They both go for the marshmallows at the same time, so that their hands brush.
“Sorry,” Ryan mumbles.
“That’s right, leave it to the expert,” Brendon says lightly. Ryan smiles. “Here, you have to find a place where the flames aren’t that high…Right, now just turn it slowly.”
Ryan starts turning his stick unevenly, so that the marshmallow brushes against one of the burning logs. “Shit.”
“Dumbass. Here, let me,” Brendon says, and he places his hands over Ryan’s without really thinking about it. It’s not until he sees Spencer and Jon exchange a look out of the corner of his eye that he realizes, maybe friends don’t do this sort of thing. It’s almost a relief to declare that they’re done, so he can release Ryan’s hands and scoot back to his own place.
Still, he can see Ryan smiling as he takes the first bite, and when he sees Brendon watching him, he grins, his teeth covered in white goo.
*****
“Where is everybody?” Brendon asks sleepily.
“Ryan’s out on the porch, said nobody’s allowed to disturb him until he’s finished some lyrics. Spencer’s in town for toilet paper,” Jon says. “Wake and bake?” He offers up his half-smoked joint. Brendon flops down comfortably next to him.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. Although at this rate we’re going to be out of weed in a week,” Jon says mournfully.
“We’ll find more,” Brendon says optimistically.
“Mmph.” There’s a strech of silence as they pass the joint back and forth, and somewhere in it, Brendon ends up staring at Ryan’s back through the sliding glass door. He can see Ryan scribbling angrily, crossing something out.
“You and Ryan have been pretty good lately,” Jon comments, following his gaze.
“Good?” Brendon chuckles, because he makes it sound like they’re untrained puppy dogs.
“You know. Cozy,” Jon says, and makes a vague sort of waving motion with his free hand.
“I guess,” Brendon says slowly. “We just…I don’t know. Things are different. Better.” Jon’s watching him intently.
“Don’t let the past stand in the way,” Jon says eventually, and before Brendon can process that particular sentence, Jon’s passing him the last inch of the joint and standing up. “You finish this sucker, I’ll make eggs.”
Brendon sits there long after the roach burns itself out, trying to figure out what he’s missing, watching Ryan’s bowed head as he writes.
*****
“Guys, seeing as it is rainy, I vote we get really, really stoned,” Jon announces.
“I don’t see the connection, but, motion seconded,” Spencer says, and promptly takes a seat on the couch. Jon runs up the stairs and comes back with his bowl and a baggie, by which time Brendon’s sitting next to Ryan and they’ve decided on “Cabin Fever” as properly ironic viewing material.
The bowl makes the rounds until they’re practically immobile. Spencer ends up lying down, feet over the arm of the couch and head in Jon’s lap. Ryan’s staring slack-jawed at the window. Brendon’s considering the TV screen.
“Guys,” he says. “Guys, what if a guy with a dog with a virus with a…wait. No. What if there’s a virus, and we die?”
“Guys,” Spencer says. “Guys, our name should be Mellow At The Disco. Seriously. Do we ever panic? No. We don’t. We’re totally mellow.”
“I think Jon’s asleep,” Ryan observes.
“See? Mellow.”
“No, but guys, what if there’s a virus?” Brendon says, somewhat urgently.
“I need food.” Ryan pulls himself to his feet with what looks like a huge effort. Brendon follows.
“Ryan? Ryan, I don’t want a virus. And I don’t want to have to light a crazy dude on fire,” he says, and the more he thinks about it, the more worried he gets.
“Cheetos? Pringles? Pirate’s booty?” Ryan muses, staring into the cupboard.
“Virus,” Brendon says firmly.
“Pirate’s Booty. That’s a funny name. No, all of the above. Wait, what are you talking about?” Ryan says, and turns to Brendon with his arms full of plastic bags.
“I’m talking about flesh-eating viruses and dying,” Brendon says, and whatever Spencer says, he is totally panicking.
“Oh.” Ryan considers for a moment, biting at his lower lip. “Don’t worry,” he says eventually, and smiles at Brendon.
“Why?”
“I’ll protect you,” Ryan says, as if it should be obvious. He gives Brendon one last warm smile before heading back into the living room.
*****
"We need milk and your stupid fake bacon, I'm going out," Ryan says, as Brendon comes into the kitchen.
"I'll go with you, you always get the wrong kind," Brendon mumbles, still half-asleep. Ryan pauses for a second before nodding.
It’s a grey sort of morning, oppressive and muggy, but the woods are still beautiful as they drive down the narrow, meandering road that leads to town.
“Music?” Brendon asks, a couple minutes in, when the silence starts to make the air even more thick.
“Yeah,” Ryan says, and they both reach for the dial at the same time, fingers brushing, and recoil just as quickly. “Sorry,” Ryan mutters.
Brendon flips through channel after channel, finds static and pop and more static, before settling on a classical station. He smiles a little when he recognizes the piece, "Rhapsody In Blue," and starts air-piano-ing in sync.
“They should have piano in Rock Band,” he remarks.
“I’m sorry for being such an asshole when my dad died,” Ryan blurts out, and Brendon’s fingers freeze in midair.
“I. Wow. Okay,” he says tentatively, because seriously, where the fuck did that come from?
“I’m sorry,” Ryan says again, stronger, like he’s not sure Brendon believes him. “I couldn’t. I just.” He takes a deep breath. “It just made me go…numb. For a long time. Completely shut off. I don’t. I can’t even describe what was going on in my head. Something along the lines of…of nobody being able to…to love me. I’m sorry.”
Brendon doesn’t quite know what to do with that last not-quite-confession.
“It’s okay,” he says softly. He doesn’t know why Ryan brought it up, but it’s okay. Ryan glances over at him, and there’s something Brendon thinks must be frustration in his eyes, a sort of helplessness, like Brendon still needs convincing. “Really, it’s okay,” Brendon repeats.
Chopin plays gently in the background, and Brendon’s seized by a sudden urge to reach out and take Ryan’s hand.
“He used to tell me to stop dressing like a faggot,” Ryan says matter-of-factly.
“I should be the one saying sorry.”
Ryan snaps his head around so suddenly Brendon’s afraid they’re going to go off the road.
“No,” he says vehemently. “Fuck, Brendon, no, that’s not what I meant. You didn’t do anything wrong, you…you never did.” There’s still that veiled frustration in his eyes that Brendon, for the life of him, doesn’t understand.
“Thanks,” he says eventually, and he doesn’t take Ryan’s hand, just curls his fingers briefly over where it’s clenched around the gearshift.
They pull into town not long after, make a quick grocery run, and then go over to the movie store.
“Nothing subtitled,” Brendon says, as they walk through the door.
“Nothing with spontaneous musical outbursts,” Ryan counters. Predictably, it takes them a while.
They’re still bickering happily over the cinematic value of John Waters movies when they walk through the front door, but Brendon hears a snippet of Spencer and Jon’s conversation from the kitchen table.
“…nudge in the right direction?” Spencer’s saying.
“Fucking powerful shove is more like it,” Jon mumbles, and then they’re turning around, looking vaguely guilty.
Ryan and Jon get dinner duty that night, while Spencer and Brendon watch the sun set from the porch.
“How have you and Ryan been lately?” Spencer says, too casually, and it’s so reminiscent of Jon’s question of three days ago that Brendon’s tempted to roll his eyes.
“Fine,” he replies.
“You don’t have to be afraid, you know,” Spencer says.
“Huh?” Cause, really, what the fuck.
Spencer hesitates. “You’re not going to make the same mistakes you did before,” has says slowly. Brendon can’t tell whether it’s supposed to be a reassurance, or if there’s an unsaid “or else…” there.
“I have to pee,” he says, and he almost knocks his chair over in his haste to get inside, because it’s just too much, all of a sudden. The air is still close and suffocating, and it seems like everybody knows something he doesn’t, and he’s fucking sick of all of it. He takes the stairs two at a time and scrambles up the ladder to the roof, and there’s a thin breeze blowing, so he can breathe again.
He rests his chin on his knees and tries to calm down. There’s no way Spencer could be encouraging him to…well. No. There’s no way, there’s no reason to even consider it.
Unless…no. Ryan hasn’t done anything that could be construed as an effort towards more than friendship. He’s just really trying to be friends, is all. He probably never even got the fucking lyrics.
There’s no reason to freak out. No reason to hope.
*****
They don’t actually get much done until about two weeks in, when Ryan finally announces that he has some lyrics that are workable. They convene in the music room and Ryan averts his eyes as they all crowd around his notebook.
She held the world upon a string, but she didn't ever hold me,
spun the stars on her fingernails, but it never made her happy
‘cause she couldn't ever have me.
Brendon knows what it’s about even before he comes to the third paragraph.
But who could love me?
I am out of my mind.
He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him as he finishes reading, waiting for a reaction, but he’s not quite sure how he feels about the song. Spencer and Jon exchange one of those significant-yet-unreadable looks.
“So what do you think for the main melody?” Ryan asks, businesslike.
“Cabaret punk,” Jon says seriously.
Brendon laughs. “Something like this?” he asks, with a grin, and starts improvising on the keyboard, loud and dramatic. He gets into it, bobbing his head in time and snaking his torso back and forth. After a minute or so, though, he realizes he can hear Spencer and Jon laughing, but not Ryan, which is usually a good sign that Ryan’s pissed off and wants to get down to business. He stops abruptly and looks up at Ryan apologetically.
Instead of the expected glare, Ryan’s smiling at him, wide and almost embarrassed. An image of William’s Polaroid flickers unbidden across Brendon’s mind. He pushes it away, clears his throat. Ryan’s smile disappears like someone switched it off.
“Okay, but seriously,” Ryan says.
*****
Brendon thinks it was Jon’s idea to bring every single horror movie about cabins ever made. Of course, the Evil Dead trilogy doesn’t really count as horror, especially not when he’s stoned, but by the time they’ve worked their way to the third movie, Brendon’s high is mostly gone and it’s completely dark outside. He envies Jon his peaceful snoring. The bit where Ash is in the pit in the ground is totally freaky, okay, and Brendon’s entirely justified in clinging to Spencer like there’s no tomorrow.
“Gerroff,” Spencer grunts. “Was almost asleep.”
Brendon wraps his arms around his own knees instead, then decides another bowl would probably help with his terror. But by the time he’s finished packing it, Spencer’s out for the count, leaving only Ryan, whose right eyebrow is raised into his hairline, his mouth gaping open as if to enquire how special effects could possibly be this bad. He makes grabby hands at Brendon, and they share two more bowls before returning their attention to the movie.
“Necronomicon,” Ryan says slowly.
“Necronomnomnom,” Brendon giggles. Ryan stares at him, mouth curving slowly into a smile until he’s laughing too, loud enough to wake Spencer, who flips them off and shambles away, up the stairs. Jon’s still snoring. They learned long ago that nothing short of a sonic boom will wake Jon if he falls asleep stoned.
So it’s just the two of them, essentially, huddled close in the dark as they finish the movie in silence. They stay there long after the credits start, too lazy to move. Brendon doesn’t quite know when Ryan’s head ended up on his shoulder, but he doesn’t mind. He can smell Ryan’s shampoo.
“You smell good,” Brendon says softly,
“I know, you told me,” Ryan replies through a yawn.
“When?”
“That first day. You know,” Ryan says, and makes a contented little noise as he burrows deeper into Brendon’s neck.
“Oh. Right,” Brendon replies.
They wait. Brendon’s talking himself into moving when Ryan speaks again.
“Bren?” he asks, barely a whisper.
“I know,” Brendon says. He doesn’t know what he knows, but…he just does.
*****
“I’m going for a swim before dinner, anybody want to come?” Ryan asks.
“Sure,” Brendon says.
“We’ll be down in a bit, we need to finish this level,” Spencer says, all his attention focused on the TV.
The late afternoon light is just starting to turn golden as they head down the path toward the dock, so that when Ryan stops at the edge to take off his shirt and shorts, the sun makes his skin glow. Brendon’s suddenly uncomfortably warm, so he turns around and quickly strips down to his boxers. When he looks again, Ryan’s standing at the edge of the water, delicately dipping a toe in to test the temperature. Brendon rolls his eyes before getting a running start.
Ryan doesn’t have time to turn around before Brendon hits him, so he shrieks in surprise as he goes flying. They hit the water together, surface sputtering and gasping, with Brendon grinning mischievously and Ryan looking amused in spite of himself.
“You are going down,” he promises, when he’s caught his breath. Brendon laughs and starts backstroking away.
Ryan chases him in a full circle, out into the deeper water where they can no longer stand and back again, until they’re standing on their tiptoes, splashing each other breathlessly. Brendon can’t stop laughing, watching Ryan’s thin little arms flailing in his efforts to move as much water as possible. Without warning, Ryan lunges forward, and Brendon doesn’t have time to react before Ryan’s jumping up and dunking him.
Brendon surges to his feet again, still laughing, with Ryan wrapped around his torso, hands scooping up water into Brendon’s face. He takes a deep breath and tilts forward so that Ryan goes under too, trying to wrestle Ryan away from him.
It all seems impossibly innocent until it just isn’t. They surface again and time freezes, Ryan’s legs entwined around Brendon’s waist, Brendon’s hands on Ryan’s hips, their breath caught in their throats as they realize simultaneously how close their bodies are. He can feel them inhale together.
It’s sudden, dizzying, the surge of longing that rushes through him when he looks at Ryan’s lips, wet and parted, and again when he notices Ryan’s eyes, wide and helpless as he stares at Brendon’s own lips. His skin is warm and tingling where it touches Ryan’s, and his heart is racing, and he can feel this terrifying sense of right, like he’s coming home instead of possibly fucking up every bit of progress they’ve made.
“Look out below!” he hears Spencer cry from somewhere in the trees, and Brendon and Ryan release each other like they’ve been shocked.
They fuck around for a while, play chicken, but Ryan and Brendon don’t touch again. Through dinner (sandwiches, since they’re feeling lazy) he doesn’t talk, just thinks of the sunlight on Ryan’s skin and those shared heartbeats. Right after dinner, he claims to be tired, and climbs the stairs alone. He pulls himself up onto the roof without really deciding to.
The light is slanting golden-orange over the water, bright enough that Brendon has to hold a hand over his eyes. He lies back against the gritty shingles and lets the last rays of the sun warm him, and he watches as the sun slips down slowly, almost imperceptibly, until everything is blazing orange. He keeps replaying the look on Ryan’s face, but above all, he remembers the feeling of absolute comfort, the warmth that flooded through him when he touched Ryan.
What would have happened if they had kissed? It could have ruined everything, sent them back to caution and awkwardness and uncertainty. And yet…Brendon doesn’t think, somehow, it would have gone that way. He remembers Spencer’s words.
The first chill of dusk hits him just as the knock sounds on the glass of the skylight.
“Hey,” Ryan calls softly, and Brendon smiles as an invitation. Ryan places two blankets on the rooftop before swinging himself through the opening. “Thought you might get cold,” he says, and hands one to Brendon.
“Thanks.”
Brendon scoots over slightly, sitting up with his arms wrapped around his knees, and Ryan sits next to him. There’s silence as Ryan takes in the view, as orange shifts to pink and red, and even with what happened earlier, it’s comfortable, nothing like the tension of…god, it really was only three weeks ago.
Ryan stares down at the smooth surface of the water, then up to where the moon is just starting to show through the darkening sky.
“I used to sleep outside sometimes, when I was a kid,” he says absently. “When things got really bad.”
Brendon watches his silhouette, and waits.
“It was like…when Mom moved out, there were too many memories in the house, I couldn’t get away from them. I didn’t want to be near anything that reminded me of her. So I just snuck outside after dad was asleep and slept in my treehouse. Seeing the stars made it easier.”
“When you have too much going on inside you, you need somewhere for it to go,” Brendon says softly. Ryan nods.
“Remember that night you came over, and we went for a drive?”
“Yeah,” Brendon smiles. It feels like an eternity, not years but decades, fucking centuries.
“I was planning on doing it again that night. It didn’t…I mean. By that time, after a few years of doing that, it always made me feel worse afterward. Even though I couldn’t sleep inside. It was like there was nowhere left to go.” He says it slowly, like he’s not sure how to articulate it. “You were…you were nothing like anything I’d known before. You changed everything.”
Their eyes lock for just a moment too long, and it feels like the first step off the edge of a cliff.
But with the last hint of sunlight casting purple-pink shadows over Ryan’s skin, everything seems far, away, so impossibly distant as to have never existed at all, and the surprised feeling that blossoms in Brendon’s chest isn’t so much hope as certainty.
Ryan catches himself, ducks his head like he’s said something unforgivable.
“Ryan,” Brendon says. “It’s okay.” He doesn’t know how to convey how much he means with the last word.
Ryan looks up at him again, his eyes hopeful, sparkling browngoldamber just like Brendon remembers. They stare at each other for a long moment, and Brendon feels like he’s waiting, but he’s not sure what for.
Maybe Ryan was waiting too, because after a minute he bites his lip, turns away looking frustrated, and mutters, “I should go, I want to do some writing before I go to sleep.”
“Oh,” Brendon says. “Okay.”
He follows Ryan down the ladder, thinking that maybe he’ll watch a movie with Jon and Spencer.
“So. I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” Ryan says dully.
“Yeah,” Brendon says, and he wants to stop Ryan as he heads for the door, shoulders slumped, but he doesn’t know what he could say. Ryan stops anyway, one hand on the knob, and turns around with his eyes blazing.
“Brendon, are you stupid? I don’t know what else I can do to fix this. Am I doing something wrong?” he says suddenly, and his voice sounds like it’s on the verge of breaking.
“No, you’re not…what are you talking about?” Brendon asks, bewildered.
“The song. The lyrics you stuck in my bag. I thought that meant…if I fixed this, if I made everything okay…” Ryan hesitates, twisting at his hands.
“Oh,” Brendon breathes.
“I love you,” Ryan says simply.
Brendon can’t move except to let a smile curl across his lips slowly. He can’t think, can’t speak, can’t fucking breathe; after everything, after years of waiting, what else is there to do? It’s all been said.
Ryan moves for him, lunging across the room to hurl himself into Brendon’s arms, and they fucking collide into the kiss, hands grasping and pulling, every inch of skin on fire, and Brendon can hear this rushing in his ears and the galloping beat of his heart sounds like finallyfinallyfinallyIloveyou, and like it always does when he kisses Ryan, the rest of the world ceases to matter, ceases to exist.
“I love you,” Ryan says again, forcefully, into Brendon’s lips.
“I love you too,” Brendon responds, half-laughing with relief, because finallyfinallyfinally he can say it, say what he’s been waiting to say for fucking years.
Ryan’s smiling into the kiss, they both are, arms wrapped around each other as tightly as they’ll go, lips molding together until Brendon can’t breathe but doesn’t care. He can’t touch enough, can’t help himself as he moves his hands over Ryan’s jaw (a day’s worth of stubble) and his neck (pulse pounding below his ear) and his back (every vertebra, every rib) and his stomach under his shirt (barely-there trail of hair, hot skin quivering under his fingers) and he almost doesn’t want to separate their lips to pull off Ryan’s shirt, because now that he’s touching Ryan again he doesn’t know how he ever stopped.
“Bed,” Ryan whispers breathlessly, and they almost trip over the ladder as they stumble to the bed, so that they’re laughing when they tumble down together, Ryan on top of Brendon, their curves and angles fitting together just as perfectly as they always have. Brendon ducks his head to kiss a gentle trail up Ryan’s neck, moving slowly along his jaw to his lips, and then Ryan splays long fingers over Brendon’s cheek and grinds his hips down desperately and Brendon arches up against him, hooks his foot over Ryan’s calf. Ryan fumbles at the hem of Brendon’s shirt, watching him with wild eyes as he tugs it off, and he tilts his hips up again as he leans in to suck at Brendon’s lower lip.
“Slow down,” Brendon gasps out, and Ryan breaks the kiss, panting, resting their foreheads together.
“You’re not backing out on me now, are you?” he breathes, and, still, behind the joking tone is a genuine fear.
“Never,” Brendon promises. “But I just…” he lets the words trail off, brushes his fingers across Ryan’s jaw and down his neck, massaging circles into the round of his shoulder, stroking the dip of his collarbone slowly, reverently. When their lips meet again it’s tender, searching, relearning the textures and tastes of each other’s mouths after all the long months of separation.
“I love you,” he murmurs into Ryan’s lips.
“Love you too,” Ryan smiles back.
They take their time, trading soft, sweet kisses, laughing at how Ryan has to wriggle to slide his jeans over his hips, Brendon running a hand through Ryan’s hair, Ryan nuzzling into Brendon’s neck, until they’re both naked, and then they take a deep breath and part just to look at each other again.
“Did you pack…” Ryan asks.
“Yeah,” Brendon says, because he never got around to taking everything out of his travel bag, thank god.
“I want…I want to show you,” Ryan says hesitantly, and Brendon’s heart pounds even faster, if it’s possible, but he nods.
Ryan preps him slowly, carefully, and the first finger is strange, but the drag of it is eclipsed by the fierce look on Ryan’s face, the hunger in his eyes as he watches Brendon’s reaction. Those eyes are enough to make Brendon ignore the slight discomfort, ignore everything else, because right about now he’d give just about anything to be closer to Ryan.
Still, it hurts when Ryan slides in. Ryan whimpers when he starts to move, biting at his lip, looking just as overwhelmed as Brendon feels. He’s being pulled apart, ripped inside-out and laid open, until he’s completely and utterly exposed like he’s never been in his life, and if Ryan wasn’t looking down at him like that, like he’s beautiful, he doesn’t know if we would be able to take it. The slight pain, the burning stretch of it, that was expected, but he never imagined, never tried to understand, how difficult it must have been for Ryan to give him this, to let himself be absolutely stripped of anything resembling control.
He knows, then, how much Ryan must have trusted him. There was no way it could have been easy for him, especially (Brendon mentally shudders) those last couple times. And still, he just kept giving himself to Brendon, like he needed it. Like he needed Brendon.
Brendon tilts his hips up, because as painfully full as he is, he wants more, he wants Ryan closer, deeper. He can feel hot glowing sparks shooting up his spine, down his limbs, behind his eyes, can feel his heartbeat in his throat with every moan from Ryan’s lips. He’s on fire, skin blazing, every inch of his body humming with feeling, till it’s almost too much to feel all at once, too much, to hear his own low whimpers and Ryan’s gasping breaths, and it’s too much and not enough.
He can feel Ryan getting close, feel him trembling, so he reaches down to curl a hand around himself, groaning helplessly, and Ryan’s answering “Jesus,” makes him look up, lock eyes with Ryan as they move together, faster, closer, and everything is stripped from Ryan’s gaze except pure, naked love. Brendon lets the world fall away as he comes, feeling nothing but blinding heat in his stomach and, even better, a soft glowing warmth in his chest.
Ryan follows a second later, collapsing on top of Brendon, and Brendon can feel his smile.
“I love you,” is the first thing he’s conscious of saying, running a hand over the back of Ryan’s head. “I love you.”
Ryan ties off the condom, throws it away and then cuddles close again, and Brendon thinks of that stupid timeless phrase: falling in love. The first time, it was falling, tripping and stumbling blindly into an endless drop, something terrifying and uncontrollable and, in the end, unbearable. This…this doesn’t feel so much like falling. This is something soft and warm and completely new, like they’ve emerged from something dark and dangerous into vivid sunlight. He buries his nose in Ryan’s hair, inhaling that perfect familiar scent, and he’s so far from falling. This is home, this is rock solid and welcoming, this is the most sure he’s been of anything in his life. For the first time in years, he’s got his feet on the ground.
“God, I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry for everything,” Ryan whispers into his neck, tracing up and down Brendon’s stomach with one cool finger.
“Fuck, no, I think we both-“ Brendon protests.
“I wanted to tell you so many times-“
“Me too, every fucking time I looked at you, and-“
“I didn’t know what everyone else would say, you were right, I didn’t know if love would be enough to make it work-“
“I hurt you, I was such an asshole, I’m sorry-“
“The look on your face when I told you, I couldn’t-“
“I never actually slept with William-“
They’re tripping over their own words, cutting each other off, half laughing and half crying, slipping in breathless kisses between words.
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t…it’s done, it doesn’t matter,” Brendon says eventually, and Ryan takes a deep breath and nods, smiling.
“It doesn’t,” he agrees. “There’s time for apologies later, but I love you. It’s enough, it’ll be enough.”
“More than enough,” Brendon promises, and pulls him close for a kiss.
“Everything’s different now. I love you, I did then and I do now, but it’s different, it’s so much better.”
They lie twined together until the sun starts to rise, running hands over each other's bare skin, kissing softly, leaving everything else behind.
*****
Brendon doesn’t know what the rest of the song is about, but every time he and Ryan sing the last line together, he remembers those words, that slow imperceptible shift from what they had then, the uncertainty and pain, to what they have now, the warmth and friendship and trust.
“We must reinvent love,” he sings every night, and he locks eyes with Ryan and smiles.
The End
AN: I can't believe this is actually over. I started this kind of on a whim and it just...spiraled out of control, in the best possible way. This was my first slash story, and I'm so fucking proud of it. I'm also incredibly grateful for the people it's allowed me to meet, all of you who have friended me over the course of these last couple months, everyone who comments, just, everyone. To name some names: emberflie and rydenross_urie, whose comments always make me smile so hard. takkatakkatakka, who's pretty much an AMAZING poet/author. attackdbyleaves, who is an absolute sweetheart and does things like send me the link to "Open Happiness" just to cheer me up and ask how life is going. And last but so far from least, lolab, Colin, for the constant guidance, inspiration, and above all, friendship. I don't know where I'd be, bb, without your pictures and prompts and keymashes, not to mention the advice, sympathy, and long conversations about life, not just writing.
Okay. *wipes eyes*
Enough sappiness. Down to business. If you want to read more of what I've written, read my Master List, or just add me; I always add back, and I always try to get to know everybody. As for my upcoming projects, the next item on the list is to finish That’s Amore, fondly known as italy!fic, and then I'm starting a series called "K is for Kinks," basically the same premise as Colin's ~Bden's Sekrit Kinks series, but centering on Ryan and culminating in GSF. Also, I'll be doing a Gabilliam standalone at some point. Keep an eye out for those.
Before you go, I'd just like to request that you leave a comment :) Even if you've been lurking this whole time, don't be afraid to just say hi! I'd really like to know what everyone thought of this.
Okay. Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. I love you all.