A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (1/3)
Headers and Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two | Chapter Three | Chapter Three cont.
CHAPTER ONE
LAS VEGAS - JULY 2007
Dave Sloan, who’s been working on Ryan’s team for longer than Ryan can remember, wants to leave the lab to work with the NSA. Has already left, in fact. Ryan is running behind on interviewing for someone to replace him.
He wouldn’t be if everyone who applied for the position wasn’t a complete moron. Not unqualified, exactly, just... wrong in some way or the other. Ryan has seen more than thirty candidates, and the one he liked best so far was a girl who smiled politely when looking around Ryan’s office and claimed to be interested in learning more about ‘spiders and other insects’. Ryan wanted to drop her in a dumpster within the first five minutes of the interview. After half an hour, he wanted to kill himself. Luckily, Spencer was there to stop him on both counts.
He sends off an email to Brendon after an especially trying day, commenting on the draft of an article Brendon sent him for early review and adding a few choice words about how people might want to take the fact that they have haemophobia into account before deciding they want to advance from print tech to CSI.
Brendon’s answer comes back a few days later-annoyingly overflowing with smilies as usual-with an adjusted draft of his article and the words maybe you should steal someone from another team?
Ryan reads the line three times. He already tried getting someone from another shift to move to nights-without success-but maybe he could get someone straight from another lab. One of the labs ranking just outside of the top ten, meaning high enough status to have attracted good candidates a few years ago and low enough for those people to be willing to move up the ladder. Like Phoenix or Chicago. Maybe San Francisco.
Or maybe Seattle.
Ryan picks up his phone. It rings for a very long time before someone finally answers.
“Hello?”
“You’re hired.”
“Um, great?” the person on the other line says, sounding very confused. “Who is this?”
Ryan frowns. “Aren’t you at work?” he asks. “Wait. Were you sleeping just now?”
The line goes quiet for a while.
“Ryan Ross?” Brendon says finally, and Ryan confirms with a hum. “Um... you’re-really? That’s actually you?”
“I thought you would be working,” Ryan says, still bewildered. “Um... should I not have-I just, your number was in the footer of your e-mails. And I thought-”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Brendon says quickly. “Of course you can call. Anytime. Um. I was just surprised, that’s all. Shit, what time is it?”
Ryan checks his watch. “2:35. I’m sorry. I really thought you’d be at work.”
Brendon launches into another string of reassurances, followed by a long explanation about triple shifts and people on sick leave and upcoming court days until Ryan can’t do anything but grin ridiculously at the bouncy energy at the other end of the line.
“Sorry, me and phones,” Brendon cuts himself off, sounding embarrassed. “I just-they make me babble. I’m sorry. Just cut me off, seriously. Like, just go ‘Brendon, shut up’ or something, because my mouth? Just goes off and then-”
“I want you to come to Vegas,” Ryan says. “Work on my team. What do you say?”
The line goes very, very quiet.
“Brendon?”
“Um, yeah,” Brendon says. “I mean, yeah, I’m still here. I’m just. Sorry? Could you repeat that?”
“You told me to steal someone away,” Ryan says. “So I am. I want you. On my team. It’s a great team. Smart people. You’d fit right in.”
There’s another long silence.
“I don’t know, Ryan,” Brendon says finally. “I like the Seattle lab. I’m close to making CSI-III here, and my boss told me that she’ll be transferring next year and wants to put in a good word for me to replace her.”
“We are the number three lab in the country,” Ryan says. “And we have the most extensive forensic library anywhere outside of federal archives. You would be a CSI-III in less than a year. And you’d be able to do more research for your Ph.D.”
“Yeah, but. My life is here, you know? I have an apartment. And friends, and-”
“A boyfriend?” Ryan asks, suppressing the small sting of something that comes with the word.
“Um, kind of,” Brendon stutters. “Or, I don’t know. Boyfriend-ish-type...thingy. We’ve been on two dates. He said I was ‘really intense’. I don’t think he meant it in a good way. Hey, maybe Vegas wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I like intense,” Ryan says.
“Do you now?”
“Yeah,” Ryan replies. And then shakes himself, because, um, that came out a lot lower and huskier than he’d intended. “I mean, lots of energy is pretty much a requirement,” he says quickly. “We work long days. Nights, I mean. And days, sometimes. It’s good if you don’t need a lot of sleep.”
“Yeah, well,” Brendon says. “I guess I’m perfect for you then. I don’t really sleep.”
“So, will you come to Vegas?”
“I don’t know,” Brendon says. “I need to think about it. It’s not something I can just-”
“I’ll let you play with my bugs,” Ryan says. Blurts really. And then promptly wishes he could turn back time, or at least fix his brain-to-mouth filter so that he can get through a professional phone call without saying things that are completely weird.
Brendon laughs.
“Really, Ross? Your bugs?” he says, voice low and totally teasing. “Even the big ones?”
Ryan feels himself flush. And really, how is that a dirty joke? There is no reason it should be.
“Um,” he says. Brendon laughs louder.
“Let me think about it,” he says. “The job thing. Not the bug thing. Obviously. Unless you wanted me to-oh God. Um. Forget I said that. Career. Yes. I’ll think about it and call you back? Tonight? Is tonight okay? Or I could probably give you an answer this afternoon if you needed me to? Except I’ll be in court until five. After five? Oh God, please just shut me up. I’ll call you, okay?”
“Okay,” Ryan says, smiling again, feeling things settle back into balance. “Let me know?”
“I will,” Brendon says, and Ryan can practically hear the smile through the land line. “Talk to you later.”
He sounds happy. Giddy almost. And Ryan suddenly knows what the answer will be, even if he has to wait another day for confirmation. They say goodbye and hang up. Ryan puts his phone down, stares at it, wondering if he just made a really big mistake.
AUGUST 2007
Brendon feels like he’s still up in the air as he walks through the airport hallways on his way to baggage claim two weeks later. He’s in Las Vegas. Ryan Ross singled him out to be a part of his team at one of the top three labs in the country. Brendon can’t feel his feet.
They’ve kept in contact through email. Nearly all of it was professional stuff, but any writing comes with personality, and Brendon has spent more hours than he’s willing to admit re-reading the little comments thrown in here and there. Ryan has a dry sense of humour that Brendon always enjoys, even if he sometimes doesn’t get it completely.
Four years.
He’s got a whole colony of butterflies in his stomach that are only partly from job-related nerves. He had hoped to be back on his feet by now from when he fell head over heels when they first met, but it hasn’t really happened. Brendon is set on handling it though. Ryan might be married or something for all he knows. Or dating someone. Or simply not interested in Brendon in a romantic way. Brendon hasn’t exactly been sitting at home gazing longingly out of a tower window, but the thought has always been there at the back of his head-an annoying and emotionally crippling spark of hope that just refuses to go out.
He doesn’t see Ryan anywhere when he enters the arrival hall, so he gets a trolley and starts looking for his bags. They’re huge, neon-coloured beasts in a sea of conventional black and grey, and Brendon spots one of them immediately. He’s just managed to get it down from the conveyor belt when a guy shows up with the other one, smiling as he puts it down.
“Hi,” he says, and Brendon feels himself echoing the smile. “Sorry if I’m butting in, but I saw this round the corner, and I thought-um. Your bags are really cool.”
He gives Brendon another blinding smile, and Brendon’s eyes automatically flicker up and down his body. Helpful Stranger Guy is quite a bit taller than he is. Light-brown hair and a close-cropped beard, gorgeous smile, blue eyes, nice build. Kind of burning hot, actually; very much the type of guy Brendon likes to go for when he’s in a certain mood.
“Thanks,” he says, going into flirt mode without really thinking about it. The guy holds out his hand.
“I’m Spencer,” he says. Brendon adds ‘really nice hands’ to the list.
“Brendon,” he replies. “Nice to meet you.”
The guy freezes, looking Brendon up and down like he just realised something really awkward. Brendon is just about to ask when Ryan Ross comes up to them, looking about fifty times better than even Brendon’s rose-coloured memories prepared him for. Hot Stranger Guy steps aside a little but makes no move to leave, looking from Ryan to Brendon, and, um. That’s also a bit awkward.
Brendon manages some kind of greeting that hopefully doesn’t make him sound like a moron, and he and Ryan shake hands and make small talk about the flight. Ryan is friendly, if a little distant. Professional. Brendon does his best to hide his disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan says suddenly, turning to the guy who is still standing next to them. And who is now, Brendon realises, watching the two of them with a very guarded look on his face. “Brendon Urie, Spencer Smith. Spencer’s the Assistant Supervisor on our team. We’ve been working together for-
“-almost seven years,” Spencer says, finishing the sentence seamlessly. “Ryan tells me you’re good. Nice to meet you.”
Their second handshake is considerably cooler than the first. Spencer smiles, but it’s smaller and doesn’t really reach his eyes. He keeps looking between Ryan and Brendon, growing steadily stiffer at Ryan’s side. And yeah, realising that you’ve just accidentally tried to hit on your new colleague in front of your boss is pretty awkward-Brendon’s a bit embarrassed too-but the way Spencer is closing up completely feels like an exaggerated reaction, especially since he seems to gravitate closer to Ryan the longer he and Brendon talk.
Brendon feels something cold and uncomfortable start to trickle down his spine.
Seven years is a lot longer than four.
Ryan leads them out to his car. Spencer throws Brendon’s bags into the back, and Brendon tries to lighten the mood by making a stupid joke about valiant knights. For a second, the smile Brendon saw before Ryan came up to them returns, and Brendon thinks he even sees a small blush creep down Spencer’s neck. A moment later, the expression changes to guilty, and then to hurt when Ryan opens the passenger door and asks Brendon to jump in.
Spencer gets in the back seat, slamming the door. Brendon watches him and Ryan have an almost five-minutes long conversation consisting entirely of looks, eyebrow-movements and shrugs, all communicated through the rear-view mirror. It ends up with Ryan looking apologetic but somehow closed off (Brendon doesn’t really get all the nuances) and Spencer heaving a sigh. Moments later, they’re both smiling-really goofily, like they have the world’s best secret to share-and Brendon looks from one to the other, feeling his stomach sink.
The ride continues with Brendon offering polite answers to the equally polite questions Ryan and Spencer (mostly Spencer, actually) ask, while pretending to be fascinated by the desert stretching out in every direction. A lot of things about the kind of hot-and-cold treatment Brendon’s been getting since he met Ryan are starting to make a lot more sense. Others just get steadily more confusing, like how Ryan and Spencer spend ten minutes bickering about mops like a married couple but seem to live in different apartments. Or how Spencer drops his wallet when they stop for gas and a couple of condoms fall out-which makes Spencer blush and not meet Brendon’s eyes while Ryan cracks a joke about how he can’t believe Spencer still only uses black ones. Or how Spencer obviously has a habit of flirting with strangers in airports, while at the same time, there is something about how he looks at Ryan, and leans into his space to point directions, and lets his fingers brush over Ryan’s arm when he draws back, that clearly says mine.
Brendon can’t figure them out, but he’s pretty sure that whatever the two of them have going on, it’s not something he wants to get in the middle of in the first week at his new job.
Ryan and Spencer drop him off at his hotel, and Ryan gets out of the car with him while Spencer switches places to sit in the passenger seat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ryan says, reaching out to shake Brendon’s hand again. Their fingers linger a moment too long, and Brendon wonders if he’s alone in feeling like a current of electricity just went right through him. From the way that Ryan takes an extra breath when they break apart-slow and carefully measured-he doesn’t really think so.
OCTOBER 2007
Less than two months after Ryan manages to get Brendon to join their team, the fourth CSI on it announces that she’s pregnant and won’t be able to work for much longer. She and her husband have decided that they both want to spend quite a lot of time at home, and for Gemma, that means finding a job with less overtime and more sociable hours.
Which means Ryan has to start interviewing people. Again.
Someone up on a higher plane must seriously hate him.
He’s sitting by his desk and feeling sorry for himself when Brendon steps into his office. If the smell is anything to go by, he pulled the short stick with Spencer and got to spend some quality time with the decomposing body Wentz’s team found in a duffel bag.
Ryan wants to touch him anyway. He really doesn’t want to know what that means for his mental health.
“Hi, Ross,” Brendon says. “I was thinking of calling it a night and going down to Lucy’s for breakfast. You wanna come?”
One of the main problems working with Brendon-seeing Brendon when you talk to him-that Ryan’s discovered in the past weeks is that everything he says turns to innuendo in Ryan’s head, even when it’s obvious that Brendon didn’t mean for it to.
Which is pretty much all the time, so far; Brendon has been professional to a T from day one. He’s friendly and attentive, but he doesn’t flirt on the job. At least not with Ryan. Or with Spencer, for some reason. The rest of the night shift gets a dirtier version of him: a joking, smiling Brendon who likes to pout and wink a lot. Most of the techs fell madly in love with him within the first week.
(Ryan isn’t jealous, exactly. Or disappointed. It’s not like the fact that they kissed four years ago and might have flirted a little bit over email since then made him think that Brendon would start working at the lab and instantly try to seduce him. He certainly wasn’t worried about it. Definitely not to the point where he had outlines to speeches in his head along the lines of ‘we shouldn’t because we work together’. Because even though Brendon is, admittedly, really, really hot, Ryan is not a person who is controlled by his dick, and once his brain starts getting that, things will be just fine.)
He gives himself a mental shake. Brendon is looking at him. Waiting for an answer to his question. Right.
“Lemons,” Ryan says.
“Sorry?”
“Use lemons in the shower,” Ryan clarifies, even though he’s pretty sure that Brendon asked him about something completely different. “To get the smell out of your skin and hair. From the decomp?”
Brendon visibly pales, then lifts a hand and presses the back of it against his face. He’s out of Ryan’s office so fast that Ryan wonders if he teleported away. Then he realises what what he just said must have sounded like.
Fuck.
He’s still slumped over his desk with his face in his hands when Detective Wentz comes in, whistling.
“Bad night?”
“No,” Ryan sighs, leaning back into his chair while Pete takes the one across from him. “Not exactly. I’m an idiot and the universe hates me, but other than that, things are great.”
“Good,” Pete says, choosing to ignore the sarcasm. “Then you can help me out with something. I need an idea for a date. Special occasion coming up. I need something low-profile but still romantic as hell.”
Ryan groans. “Ask someone else.”
“I probably will,” Pete admits happily, “because, frankly, your track record is kind of shitty, but come on, humour me here.”
“How about this,” Ryan says, annoyed. “Make dinner reservations for somewhere amazing, tell your date to put on high heels and and her favourite sparkly cocktail dress, pick her up in your best suit, give her roses and then tell her she smells like death. How’s that?”
“Depends,” Pete says, and Ryan can’t tell if he’s actually considering the idea or if he’s trying to keep from laughing himself sick. “Would there be role-playing involved? Beautiful dead victim left at the mercy of the enamoured coroner? That kind of thing?”
Ryan just looks at him.
“So,” Pete says, leaning back in his chair. “Other than solving high-profile cases and failing at life, what are you up to?”
Ryan gives him another dirty look. This time Pete does laugh.
“I’m trying to muster the energy to start interviewing people for Gemma’s position,” Ryan says once Pete quiets down. “You don’t happen to know anyone wanting to transfer, do you?”
He expects Pete to say no. Maybe pat him a bit consolingly on the shoulder.
“I actually might,” Pete says instead. “A guy I know from way back. Jon Walker. He’s great. Works in Canada right now and is doing really well. A promotion he was working for fell through last week back because the department couldn’t get the funding, and with the way he bitches about the cold, I think he could probably be persuaded to move south for a while. Want me to give him a call?”
“Please,” Ryan says. “Ask him to come down for an interview. I’d love to meet him.”
“Okay,” Pete replies, getting out of his chair. “Will do. And now I’m going to go find Urie and see if he has any ideas for my special date. He seems like a guy who’d have a flair for romance.”
Ryan thinks of how Brendon is probably in the showers right now, rubbing lemon juice into his skin instead of sitting happily in a booth with a stack of pancakes in front of him. It makes him feel like the world’s biggest asshole.
He gets out of his office shortly after Pete leaves, heads down to the local diner, asks for a double breakfast order on take-away and places the cartons carefully on Brendon’s desk before going home to try and get some sleep.
He might not be able to take back all the stupid stuff he does, but at least he can try to apologise with processed sugar.
NOVEMBER 2007
Three months after Brendon moves to Las Vegas, a young woman is found dead in the mountains. The body is in bad enough shape that the case stands and falls on whether they are able to prove the time of death by the state of development of various insects, and since Ryan is the resident expert on all things that crawl, the case is handed over to the night shift. From what Pete tells them, they need five days. So far, Brendon knows that Ryan’s been able to prove three, and the way he’s handling it is making Brendon worry. Ryan always talks about the importance of impartial, objective evidence. He’s the one telling Brendon to accept and let go if his results end up telling him something he doesn’t want to hear. And now, Ryan is sitting in the spare parking lot in the middle of the night, studying a dead pig wrapped tightly in the blanket originally found around the victim for hours on end, with nothing more than hope backing up his research.
Brendon doesn’t know what to think.
It’s shortly after 2 AM. Brendon finds Ryan on a bench, eyes focused on the pig about ten yards away. He walks up to him slowly, sits down. Ryan isn’t wearing a jacket.
“I brought you some coffee.”
Ryan doesn’t look up. “Thanks.”
“Here,” Brendon says, unscrewing the lid of the thermos and pouring some coffee into it. “How are you holding up?”
Ryan shrugs. “Twelve hours down, about a hundred more to go.” He doesn’t make any attempts to take the cup. Brendon moves a little closer.
“Seriously, man, you okay?”
Ryan shrugs again. “Fine.”
Brendon holds up the cup directly in front of Ryan’s face. Ryan starts and looks at the cup, then at Brendon, like he’s registering both of them for the first time. Then he takes the cup and drinks deeply, seemingly not caring that coffee that temperature should logically scald his mouth.
“You got more?”
“Sure,” Brendon says, filling up the cup. He folds out the blanket he brought as well and wraps it around Ryan, who gives him a grateful smile.
“Thanks. I guess it is pretty cold out here.”
“Forty-two degrees,” Brendon says. “It’s friggin’ November, Ross.”
Ryan shrugs. Again. “I guess I didn’t think about it. Got wrapped up in the case. You know how it is.”
Brendon wants to argue, but something about the way Ryan grips a little too tightly at the edges of the blanket makes him hesitate.
“It’s just. This victim was found by chance,” Ryan continues. “If the climber who found her hadn’t taken a fall, she most likely never would have been found. That’s what I hate about the desert and the mountains here, sometimes: they just swallow the evidence. And people never know what happened to someone they loved.”
Ryan keeps looking down at his hands after he’s done talking. His shoulders go up under the blanket, and the fingers of his left hand twitch uncomfortably. Brendon feels like Ryan is trying to tell him something, like a penny should be dropping somewhere in his head. Maybe it would if he knew Ryan better, or if he had Spencer’s ability to look at Ryan and just get things. As it is, Ryan just confuses him.
He leans his head back, looks up at the sky. The city lights are a bit too bright for him to be able to see many stars, but Brendon makes out a few of his favourite constellations.
“You know, when I was a kid, my parents used to say that every star was a wish or a prayer that God had fulfilled for someone,” he says. “I used to think that was really cool.”
Ryan looks up at him, smiles a little. “I thought they were considered to be the unfulfilled ones?”
“I know,” Brendon says. “The other kids were pretty quick to point that out once I started school. I guess the version my parents used worked better with the message they were trying to teach.”
“They’re Mormon,” he clarifies, when it becomes clear that Ryan is waiting for him to continue the story. “They’re all back in Salt Lake City. I moved to Seattle on my own after High School.”
There’s so much more he could say about that, things he never tells anyone and that he realises that he kind of would like to tell Ryan. Maybe it’s getting to know each other at a distance-through email and a short chat session here and there-leaving room for Brendon to imagine a level of intimacy in their words that might not have been there. Or maybe it’s just that Brendon is realising more and more that he really, really likes this guy.
“Do you see them a lot?” Ryan asks. “Or, like, talk on the phone, that sort of thing?”
“Not as much as I’d like.”
It’s not a lie, but it feels enough like one to leave a bitter taste on Brendon’s tongue. It’s been over two years since the last time he went back to see his family. It’s not like they don’t welcome him home, because they do, but it’s not the same, and he hates walking around the house feeling wrong, hates seeing hope light up in their eyes at the dinner table every time he mentions one of his female friends. Like maybe he’ll change. Maybe he’ll be saved.
Brendon knows they care. Knows his mom and sister still pray for him at night.
Somehow, that makes it even worse.
He shifts a little closer. Ryan doesn’t protest, and when Brendon shivers a little, he lifts the edge of the blanket for Brendon to share. They huddle together through the night, Ryan’s watch beeping at hourly intervals, telling him to get up and collect new samples. Somewhere after 6 AM, Spencer comes to look for them.
“Breakfast run?” he says, raising an eyebrow at the two of them. “I need to stay for another few hours until the day shift comes on, but Carden’s team is here if one of you wants to take a break and maybe bring back bagels.”
He’s looking at Brendon as he says it, so Brendon gets up from the bench and gives Spencer what he hopes is a friendly smile. “Sure. What kind do you want?”
He makes a run through the lab and picks up orders from some of the techs that are staying on as well and then makes his way out to his car. When he passes by the main building, he sees a glimpse of the spare parking lot in the distance. There are two people on the bench, sitting close together with one of them resting their head on the other one’s shoulder.
Brendon swallows down his disappointment and puts his focus back on the road.
***
“Watch your head.”
Ryan ducks under a low-hanging beam and moves his flashlight back and fourth to try and make out the way back to the ladder. They’re in an abandoned mine shaft just outside of the city, heading back to the surface after finishing with a scene. Construction workers found a body buried in the wall of one of the passages when they went through the mine in preparation for digging for a new mall. The only way down is on foot, so Ryan and Brendon have been getting quite a work out. Ryan tries to keep his eyes off the way Brendon’s shirt is clinging to his back. Every time he forgets, he manages to stumble on something.
“Over here,” Brendon calls from somewhere to the right. Ryan moves in the direction of the voice, forgets to keep his eyes on the path and falls head-first to the ground when there’s a rock suddenly in the way.
“Ow!”
He clenches his jaw around most of the pain, feeling embarrassed more than anything. His hands sting where he used them to break his fall, and the knees of his pants probably aren’t in great shape either. He pushes himself up to a sitting position, wincing.
“Jesus Christ, you okay?” Brendon is there before Ryan even has time to get to his feet, crouching down beside him and moving his flashlight over Ryan’s body. “God, Ross, don’t scare me like that. I thought you’d fallen off a ledge or something.”
“I’m fine,” Ryan says, getting up and starting to dust himself off. And stopping a second later when he realises that apart from hurting like hell, it’s probably getting blood from the cuts all over his clothes. “Just scraped my hands a bit.”
“Here, let me see,” Brendon says, grabbing one of them and holding it up to the light. “Shit, that doesn’t look good. Hold this?”
He hands his flashlight to Ryan, who tries to balance it between his upper arm and the side of his body. Brendon pulls a bottle of water out of his bag, cleans off his own hands as best he can, then starts to carefully wash away the blood and grime on Ryan’s.
Ryan hisses at the contact, forcing himself to keep his hands still. Brendon stutters out an apology, and the touch turns even gentler. Ryan keeps his eyes down.
“We don’t have any bandages,” Brendon says, sounding worried. “I usually keep a first aid kit on me, but I left it in the car when we had to take a backpack instead of the kits so that I could fit the extra brushes and stuff. Fucking stupid.”
“It’s okay,” Ryan says, pulling his hands back and rolling down the cuffs of his shirt as far as he can. “I’ll manage. Let’s just get back up.”
They get to the ladder without incident, but once there, the progress stops. Ryan can’t hold on to it. Every time he tries, the rungs press against the cuts on his hands, and it hurts like a son of a bitch. After the fourth attempt, Brendon steps close again.
“Use your wrists,” he says. “Like, hook them under the rungs. Yes. Like that. And then stay close to the ladder to keep your weight off them. Good. And I’ll climb with you for extra balance, okay?”
Ryan nods and hooks his right wrist under the first rung, pushes himself up. He almost falls down again when Brendon follows. Not beneath him but literally behind him, pressing his whole upper body against Ryan’s back and reaching around him to grab the ladder with both hands.
“You okay?”
Ryan closes his eyes, takes a couple of calming breaths. Maybe if he focuses on the pain in his hands, he won’t think about how perfectly Brendon’s body moulds itself to his back. Or how hot Brendon’s breath is at the side of his neck.
He looks up. The ladder seems practically endless. Fuck.
He hooks his left wrist around the next rung, pushes up. Brendon’s body slides down his and then all the way up again, and Ryan clenches his teeth to keep himself from making a sound. He takes another step and falters a little. Immediately, Brendon is there, pressing into him, steadying him.
“Relax, I’ve got you.”
Ryan takes another deep breath and manages a nod.
It takes them a while to get to the top, and once they’re there, Ryan keeps his eyes firmly on the ground as they walk towards the exit of the mine. The construction team and the couple of officers that answered the 911 meet them at the entrance, and Ryan is quickly whisked off to the first aid station.
He gets back to the car and finds Brendon packed up and ready to go. Ryan gets in the passenger seat and takes out his phone to have something else to think about than how easy it felt to climb out of the mine with Brendon. How natural it was to just let go and trust him.
Ryan doesn’t trust people like that. It takes months, years. And Brendon just put his arms around him and slipped under Ryan’s skin like it was nothing. Ryan has no idea what to do with his head.
His phone beeps. And beeps. And continues to do so for at least a minute. Ryan frowns and checks the log. Spencer has called him almost twenty times. And left several messages.
JACKIE HAD HER BB!!! the first one says. ROOM 986 @MOUNTAINVIEW. GOING NOW, MEET ME THERE. And then a quick HURRY THE FUCK UP, followed by a request for Ryan to bring flowers.
Ryan stares down at the screen, trying to catch up with the emotional reaction that is making his head spin until he’s dizzy with it. There’s excitement and surprise, mixed with confusion and a heady dose of guilt that he doesn’t fully understand. A baby. Ryan’s an uncle. He doesn’t know whether to be happy or terrified.
“Everything okay?” Brendon asks. Ryan almost jumps in his seat, and the swirling thing inside him throws him for another one-eighty.
“Yeah,” he says. “Or I think so. Spencer’s sister just had her first baby. Can you drop me off at Mountainview before heading back to the lab, please?”
“Oh,” Brendon says, and then he breaks into a smile. “Sure. That’s great!”
“Yeah,” Ryan says again, feeling things inside of him start to settle a little. “I guess it’s pretty cool.”
“Are you kidding me?” Brendon says excitedly. “Kids are the best. You’ll see. Especially other people’s kids, because then you get to do all the fun stuff and then give them back when they’re all screamy and smelly.”
Ryan chuckles. “Good to know.”
“So, you’re pretty close with Smith’s family, huh?” Brendon says, turning his eyes back on the road. “Do you spend a lot of time with them?”
“I guess,” Ryan says. “Christmas, every year. Thanksgiving. The twins’ birthday, his parents’ birthdays-Spencer’s birthday, of course. We actually-usually we combine our birthdays, because they’re really close together, so there’s that. Um. Easter. Fourth of July.” He trails off, shocked at how long the list actually is.
“Wow, they really treat you as part of the family, don’t they?” Brendon says. “That’s pretty cool.” It comes out sounding... off, somehow. Ryan can’t tell what the underlying emotion is supposed to be.
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Ryan says honestly. Now that he does though, he thinks that maybe he should have. Spencer’s family is something that has just been there over the years. A constant support that’s just grown to be more and more a part of his life. And it-
It shouldn’t be. Ryan was invited into the family eight years ago as Spencer’s boyfriend. With their relationship long over, Ryan doesn’t really have a valid reason to be part of it anymore.
There’s a weird feeling in his gut as the thought crosses his mind. He tries to ignore it and turns his attention back to Brendon, starts talking about the evidence they found in the mine. And does his best to forget how Brendon practically carried him out of there.
That works pretty well for another thirty miles. And then the next epiphany hits:
The day Spencer does find someone else-someone who means more to him than just hooking up-Ryan really will be ‘just a friend’.
He can’t fucking breathe.
It makes no sense. It’s not like Spencer finding someone else would mean that he and his family would never talk to Ryan again. He’d probably still get invited to dinner. Probably not as much as he has-and maybe not Christmas and Thanksgiving, because Spencer’s new boyfriend might be uncomfortable with that-but things should be just fine. Ryan doesn’t need candied yams and caramel fudge. And he never wanted a family. Actively never wanted one, even. He’s been fine on his own. He doesn’t want-he just-
He’s not an uncle.
“Can you pull over, please? Like, right now?”
Brendon gives him a worried look, but does as Ryan says. Ryan gets out of the car and walks away from it, putting his arms over his head and trying to get himself back under control.
“Ross, wait!”
Brendon catches up with him after about a hundred yards, grabbing his elbow and spinning him around. Ryan shrugs him off, turns around, keeps walking.
“Ryan!”
This time, Brendon grabs both of Ryan’s arms, forcing him to keep still until he slows down.
“I’m just,” Ryan says, not really sure what words he’s using. “I’m not supposed to be there anymore. Or maybe I am and I’ve just been really fucking stupid! And what if it’s like that? Jesus, what if I just-what if-God. And what if I could fix it, and it works out and it turns out I’m crap with babies? What if I drop it? What if I still can’t be all the things he-? What if-”
“Ryan,” Brendon says again. Ryan shuts up. Takes a deep breath.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Brendon says. “But family should be about belonging somewhere, having someone who loves you enough that you don’t need to be all the things people say you should be.”
Ryan stares at him, and after a couple of seconds Brendon looks away, bites his lip. Ryan swallows. Hard. There’s something about the look on Brendon’s face Ryan can’t pin down, that makes him want to reach out, pull Brendon to him and get the feeling back of being far too close that has nothing to do with getting each other naked. And that’s just-
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
He swallows again, pushes it down. He really can’t afford to add idiotic fucking feelings for Brendon to the mess inside his head right now.
“Thanks,” he says, pulling himself away carefully from Brendon’s grip and starting to walk back towards the car. “I’m sorry. I just-They’re so small, you know. Babies. Like, you could break them by just-I’m sorry I freaked.”
Brendon looks up at him, and Ryan imagines that the answering smile is about as real as his own.
“Any time.”
They drive back into town in silence, and Brendon drops him off at the hospital entrance. Ryan takes the elevator to the ninth floor and walks down the corridor, heart beating faster in his chest when Ginger Smith spots him and waves him into a room where everyone knows his name, smiles at him and lets Spencer hug him first.
Ryan can’t believe he never noticed how everyone automatically leaves him a spot at Spencer’s side, just like they always move aside to let Cliff in next to Jackie. It’s what Ryan’s been avoiding and fighting against for most of his life, and now he’s here-in the middle of it and without having realised that it happened-feeling sick to his stomach at the thought of losing it again.
He gives Jackie the flowers he picked up on the way: pale and deep pink roses in full bloom, for gratitude and joy. She takes them with a huge smile and gives him an extra hug. Spencer wraps an arm around his waist when he steps back again, fusses over his bandaged hands and then goes back to the conversation he was having with his dad about helping him build a new deck in the back yard. Ryan carefully lets his head drop to Spencer’s shoulder, focusing on the warmth of him and doing his best to ignore the fear, guilt and confusion that is still making his head spin.
The fact that he still hears Brendon’s voice inside of his head isn’t really helping.
Next chapter
CHAPTER ONE
LAS VEGAS - JULY 2007
Dave Sloan, who’s been working on Ryan’s team for longer than Ryan can remember, wants to leave the lab to work with the NSA. Has already left, in fact. Ryan is running behind on interviewing for someone to replace him.
He wouldn’t be if everyone who applied for the position wasn’t a complete moron. Not unqualified, exactly, just... wrong in some way or the other. Ryan has seen more than thirty candidates, and the one he liked best so far was a girl who smiled politely when looking around Ryan’s office and claimed to be interested in learning more about ‘spiders and other insects’. Ryan wanted to drop her in a dumpster within the first five minutes of the interview. After half an hour, he wanted to kill himself. Luckily, Spencer was there to stop him on both counts.
He sends off an email to Brendon after an especially trying day, commenting on the draft of an article Brendon sent him for early review and adding a few choice words about how people might want to take the fact that they have haemophobia into account before deciding they want to advance from print tech to CSI.
Brendon’s answer comes back a few days later-annoyingly overflowing with smilies as usual-with an adjusted draft of his article and the words maybe you should steal someone from another team?
Ryan reads the line three times. He already tried getting someone from another shift to move to nights-without success-but maybe he could get someone straight from another lab. One of the labs ranking just outside of the top ten, meaning high enough status to have attracted good candidates a few years ago and low enough for those people to be willing to move up the ladder. Like Phoenix or Chicago. Maybe San Francisco.
Or maybe Seattle.
Ryan picks up his phone. It rings for a very long time before someone finally answers.
“Hello?”
“You’re hired.”
“Um, great?” the person on the other line says, sounding very confused. “Who is this?”
Ryan frowns. “Aren’t you at work?” he asks. “Wait. Were you sleeping just now?”
The line goes quiet for a while.
“Ryan Ross?” Brendon says finally, and Ryan confirms with a hum. “Um... you’re-really? That’s actually you?”
“I thought you would be working,” Ryan says, still bewildered. “Um... should I not have-I just, your number was in the footer of your e-mails. And I thought-”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Brendon says quickly. “Of course you can call. Anytime. Um. I was just surprised, that’s all. Shit, what time is it?”
Ryan checks his watch. “2:35. I’m sorry. I really thought you’d be at work.”
Brendon launches into another string of reassurances, followed by a long explanation about triple shifts and people on sick leave and upcoming court days until Ryan can’t do anything but grin ridiculously at the bouncy energy at the other end of the line.
“Sorry, me and phones,” Brendon cuts himself off, sounding embarrassed. “I just-they make me babble. I’m sorry. Just cut me off, seriously. Like, just go ‘Brendon, shut up’ or something, because my mouth? Just goes off and then-”
“I want you to come to Vegas,” Ryan says. “Work on my team. What do you say?”
The line goes very, very quiet.
“Brendon?”
“Um, yeah,” Brendon says. “I mean, yeah, I’m still here. I’m just. Sorry? Could you repeat that?”
“You told me to steal someone away,” Ryan says. “So I am. I want you. On my team. It’s a great team. Smart people. You’d fit right in.”
There’s another long silence.
“I don’t know, Ryan,” Brendon says finally. “I like the Seattle lab. I’m close to making CSI-III here, and my boss told me that she’ll be transferring next year and wants to put in a good word for me to replace her.”
“We are the number three lab in the country,” Ryan says. “And we have the most extensive forensic library anywhere outside of federal archives. You would be a CSI-III in less than a year. And you’d be able to do more research for your Ph.D.”
“Yeah, but. My life is here, you know? I have an apartment. And friends, and-”
“A boyfriend?” Ryan asks, suppressing the small sting of something that comes with the word.
“Um, kind of,” Brendon stutters. “Or, I don’t know. Boyfriend-ish-type...thingy. We’ve been on two dates. He said I was ‘really intense’. I don’t think he meant it in a good way. Hey, maybe Vegas wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I like intense,” Ryan says.
“Do you now?”
“Yeah,” Ryan replies. And then shakes himself, because, um, that came out a lot lower and huskier than he’d intended. “I mean, lots of energy is pretty much a requirement,” he says quickly. “We work long days. Nights, I mean. And days, sometimes. It’s good if you don’t need a lot of sleep.”
“Yeah, well,” Brendon says. “I guess I’m perfect for you then. I don’t really sleep.”
“So, will you come to Vegas?”
“I don’t know,” Brendon says. “I need to think about it. It’s not something I can just-”
“I’ll let you play with my bugs,” Ryan says. Blurts really. And then promptly wishes he could turn back time, or at least fix his brain-to-mouth filter so that he can get through a professional phone call without saying things that are completely weird.
Brendon laughs.
“Really, Ross? Your bugs?” he says, voice low and totally teasing. “Even the big ones?”
Ryan feels himself flush. And really, how is that a dirty joke? There is no reason it should be.
“Um,” he says. Brendon laughs louder.
“Let me think about it,” he says. “The job thing. Not the bug thing. Obviously. Unless you wanted me to-oh God. Um. Forget I said that. Career. Yes. I’ll think about it and call you back? Tonight? Is tonight okay? Or I could probably give you an answer this afternoon if you needed me to? Except I’ll be in court until five. After five? Oh God, please just shut me up. I’ll call you, okay?”
“Okay,” Ryan says, smiling again, feeling things settle back into balance. “Let me know?”
“I will,” Brendon says, and Ryan can practically hear the smile through the land line. “Talk to you later.”
He sounds happy. Giddy almost. And Ryan suddenly knows what the answer will be, even if he has to wait another day for confirmation. They say goodbye and hang up. Ryan puts his phone down, stares at it, wondering if he just made a really big mistake.
AUGUST 2007
Brendon feels like he’s still up in the air as he walks through the airport hallways on his way to baggage claim two weeks later. He’s in Las Vegas. Ryan Ross singled him out to be a part of his team at one of the top three labs in the country. Brendon can’t feel his feet.
They’ve kept in contact through email. Nearly all of it was professional stuff, but any writing comes with personality, and Brendon has spent more hours than he’s willing to admit re-reading the little comments thrown in here and there. Ryan has a dry sense of humour that Brendon always enjoys, even if he sometimes doesn’t get it completely.
Four years.
He’s got a whole colony of butterflies in his stomach that are only partly from job-related nerves. He had hoped to be back on his feet by now from when he fell head over heels when they first met, but it hasn’t really happened. Brendon is set on handling it though. Ryan might be married or something for all he knows. Or dating someone. Or simply not interested in Brendon in a romantic way. Brendon hasn’t exactly been sitting at home gazing longingly out of a tower window, but the thought has always been there at the back of his head-an annoying and emotionally crippling spark of hope that just refuses to go out.
He doesn’t see Ryan anywhere when he enters the arrival hall, so he gets a trolley and starts looking for his bags. They’re huge, neon-coloured beasts in a sea of conventional black and grey, and Brendon spots one of them immediately. He’s just managed to get it down from the conveyor belt when a guy shows up with the other one, smiling as he puts it down.
“Hi,” he says, and Brendon feels himself echoing the smile. “Sorry if I’m butting in, but I saw this round the corner, and I thought-um. Your bags are really cool.”
He gives Brendon another blinding smile, and Brendon’s eyes automatically flicker up and down his body. Helpful Stranger Guy is quite a bit taller than he is. Light-brown hair and a close-cropped beard, gorgeous smile, blue eyes, nice build. Kind of burning hot, actually; very much the type of guy Brendon likes to go for when he’s in a certain mood.
“Thanks,” he says, going into flirt mode without really thinking about it. The guy holds out his hand.
“I’m Spencer,” he says. Brendon adds ‘really nice hands’ to the list.
“Brendon,” he replies. “Nice to meet you.”
The guy freezes, looking Brendon up and down like he just realised something really awkward. Brendon is just about to ask when Ryan Ross comes up to them, looking about fifty times better than even Brendon’s rose-coloured memories prepared him for. Hot Stranger Guy steps aside a little but makes no move to leave, looking from Ryan to Brendon, and, um. That’s also a bit awkward.
Brendon manages some kind of greeting that hopefully doesn’t make him sound like a moron, and he and Ryan shake hands and make small talk about the flight. Ryan is friendly, if a little distant. Professional. Brendon does his best to hide his disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan says suddenly, turning to the guy who is still standing next to them. And who is now, Brendon realises, watching the two of them with a very guarded look on his face. “Brendon Urie, Spencer Smith. Spencer’s the Assistant Supervisor on our team. We’ve been working together for-
“-almost seven years,” Spencer says, finishing the sentence seamlessly. “Ryan tells me you’re good. Nice to meet you.”
Their second handshake is considerably cooler than the first. Spencer smiles, but it’s smaller and doesn’t really reach his eyes. He keeps looking between Ryan and Brendon, growing steadily stiffer at Ryan’s side. And yeah, realising that you’ve just accidentally tried to hit on your new colleague in front of your boss is pretty awkward-Brendon’s a bit embarrassed too-but the way Spencer is closing up completely feels like an exaggerated reaction, especially since he seems to gravitate closer to Ryan the longer he and Brendon talk.
Brendon feels something cold and uncomfortable start to trickle down his spine.
Seven years is a lot longer than four.
Ryan leads them out to his car. Spencer throws Brendon’s bags into the back, and Brendon tries to lighten the mood by making a stupid joke about valiant knights. For a second, the smile Brendon saw before Ryan came up to them returns, and Brendon thinks he even sees a small blush creep down Spencer’s neck. A moment later, the expression changes to guilty, and then to hurt when Ryan opens the passenger door and asks Brendon to jump in.
Spencer gets in the back seat, slamming the door. Brendon watches him and Ryan have an almost five-minutes long conversation consisting entirely of looks, eyebrow-movements and shrugs, all communicated through the rear-view mirror. It ends up with Ryan looking apologetic but somehow closed off (Brendon doesn’t really get all the nuances) and Spencer heaving a sigh. Moments later, they’re both smiling-really goofily, like they have the world’s best secret to share-and Brendon looks from one to the other, feeling his stomach sink.
The ride continues with Brendon offering polite answers to the equally polite questions Ryan and Spencer (mostly Spencer, actually) ask, while pretending to be fascinated by the desert stretching out in every direction. A lot of things about the kind of hot-and-cold treatment Brendon’s been getting since he met Ryan are starting to make a lot more sense. Others just get steadily more confusing, like how Ryan and Spencer spend ten minutes bickering about mops like a married couple but seem to live in different apartments. Or how Spencer drops his wallet when they stop for gas and a couple of condoms fall out-which makes Spencer blush and not meet Brendon’s eyes while Ryan cracks a joke about how he can’t believe Spencer still only uses black ones. Or how Spencer obviously has a habit of flirting with strangers in airports, while at the same time, there is something about how he looks at Ryan, and leans into his space to point directions, and lets his fingers brush over Ryan’s arm when he draws back, that clearly says mine.
Brendon can’t figure them out, but he’s pretty sure that whatever the two of them have going on, it’s not something he wants to get in the middle of in the first week at his new job.
Ryan and Spencer drop him off at his hotel, and Ryan gets out of the car with him while Spencer switches places to sit in the passenger seat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Ryan says, reaching out to shake Brendon’s hand again. Their fingers linger a moment too long, and Brendon wonders if he’s alone in feeling like a current of electricity just went right through him. From the way that Ryan takes an extra breath when they break apart-slow and carefully measured-he doesn’t really think so.
OCTOBER 2007
Less than two months after Ryan manages to get Brendon to join their team, the fourth CSI on it announces that she’s pregnant and won’t be able to work for much longer. She and her husband have decided that they both want to spend quite a lot of time at home, and for Gemma, that means finding a job with less overtime and more sociable hours.
Which means Ryan has to start interviewing people. Again.
Someone up on a higher plane must seriously hate him.
He’s sitting by his desk and feeling sorry for himself when Brendon steps into his office. If the smell is anything to go by, he pulled the short stick with Spencer and got to spend some quality time with the decomposing body Wentz’s team found in a duffel bag.
Ryan wants to touch him anyway. He really doesn’t want to know what that means for his mental health.
“Hi, Ross,” Brendon says. “I was thinking of calling it a night and going down to Lucy’s for breakfast. You wanna come?”
One of the main problems working with Brendon-seeing Brendon when you talk to him-that Ryan’s discovered in the past weeks is that everything he says turns to innuendo in Ryan’s head, even when it’s obvious that Brendon didn’t mean for it to.
Which is pretty much all the time, so far; Brendon has been professional to a T from day one. He’s friendly and attentive, but he doesn’t flirt on the job. At least not with Ryan. Or with Spencer, for some reason. The rest of the night shift gets a dirtier version of him: a joking, smiling Brendon who likes to pout and wink a lot. Most of the techs fell madly in love with him within the first week.
(Ryan isn’t jealous, exactly. Or disappointed. It’s not like the fact that they kissed four years ago and might have flirted a little bit over email since then made him think that Brendon would start working at the lab and instantly try to seduce him. He certainly wasn’t worried about it. Definitely not to the point where he had outlines to speeches in his head along the lines of ‘we shouldn’t because we work together’. Because even though Brendon is, admittedly, really, really hot, Ryan is not a person who is controlled by his dick, and once his brain starts getting that, things will be just fine.)
He gives himself a mental shake. Brendon is looking at him. Waiting for an answer to his question. Right.
“Lemons,” Ryan says.
“Sorry?”
“Use lemons in the shower,” Ryan clarifies, even though he’s pretty sure that Brendon asked him about something completely different. “To get the smell out of your skin and hair. From the decomp?”
Brendon visibly pales, then lifts a hand and presses the back of it against his face. He’s out of Ryan’s office so fast that Ryan wonders if he teleported away. Then he realises what what he just said must have sounded like.
Fuck.
He’s still slumped over his desk with his face in his hands when Detective Wentz comes in, whistling.
“Bad night?”
“No,” Ryan sighs, leaning back into his chair while Pete takes the one across from him. “Not exactly. I’m an idiot and the universe hates me, but other than that, things are great.”
“Good,” Pete says, choosing to ignore the sarcasm. “Then you can help me out with something. I need an idea for a date. Special occasion coming up. I need something low-profile but still romantic as hell.”
Ryan groans. “Ask someone else.”
“I probably will,” Pete admits happily, “because, frankly, your track record is kind of shitty, but come on, humour me here.”
“How about this,” Ryan says, annoyed. “Make dinner reservations for somewhere amazing, tell your date to put on high heels and and her favourite sparkly cocktail dress, pick her up in your best suit, give her roses and then tell her she smells like death. How’s that?”
“Depends,” Pete says, and Ryan can’t tell if he’s actually considering the idea or if he’s trying to keep from laughing himself sick. “Would there be role-playing involved? Beautiful dead victim left at the mercy of the enamoured coroner? That kind of thing?”
Ryan just looks at him.
“So,” Pete says, leaning back in his chair. “Other than solving high-profile cases and failing at life, what are you up to?”
Ryan gives him another dirty look. This time Pete does laugh.
“I’m trying to muster the energy to start interviewing people for Gemma’s position,” Ryan says once Pete quiets down. “You don’t happen to know anyone wanting to transfer, do you?”
He expects Pete to say no. Maybe pat him a bit consolingly on the shoulder.
“I actually might,” Pete says instead. “A guy I know from way back. Jon Walker. He’s great. Works in Canada right now and is doing really well. A promotion he was working for fell through last week back because the department couldn’t get the funding, and with the way he bitches about the cold, I think he could probably be persuaded to move south for a while. Want me to give him a call?”
“Please,” Ryan says. “Ask him to come down for an interview. I’d love to meet him.”
“Okay,” Pete replies, getting out of his chair. “Will do. And now I’m going to go find Urie and see if he has any ideas for my special date. He seems like a guy who’d have a flair for romance.”
Ryan thinks of how Brendon is probably in the showers right now, rubbing lemon juice into his skin instead of sitting happily in a booth with a stack of pancakes in front of him. It makes him feel like the world’s biggest asshole.
He gets out of his office shortly after Pete leaves, heads down to the local diner, asks for a double breakfast order on take-away and places the cartons carefully on Brendon’s desk before going home to try and get some sleep.
He might not be able to take back all the stupid stuff he does, but at least he can try to apologise with processed sugar.
NOVEMBER 2007
Three months after Brendon moves to Las Vegas, a young woman is found dead in the mountains. The body is in bad enough shape that the case stands and falls on whether they are able to prove the time of death by the state of development of various insects, and since Ryan is the resident expert on all things that crawl, the case is handed over to the night shift. From what Pete tells them, they need five days. So far, Brendon knows that Ryan’s been able to prove three, and the way he’s handling it is making Brendon worry. Ryan always talks about the importance of impartial, objective evidence. He’s the one telling Brendon to accept and let go if his results end up telling him something he doesn’t want to hear. And now, Ryan is sitting in the spare parking lot in the middle of the night, studying a dead pig wrapped tightly in the blanket originally found around the victim for hours on end, with nothing more than hope backing up his research.
Brendon doesn’t know what to think.
It’s shortly after 2 AM. Brendon finds Ryan on a bench, eyes focused on the pig about ten yards away. He walks up to him slowly, sits down. Ryan isn’t wearing a jacket.
“I brought you some coffee.”
Ryan doesn’t look up. “Thanks.”
“Here,” Brendon says, unscrewing the lid of the thermos and pouring some coffee into it. “How are you holding up?”
Ryan shrugs. “Twelve hours down, about a hundred more to go.” He doesn’t make any attempts to take the cup. Brendon moves a little closer.
“Seriously, man, you okay?”
Ryan shrugs again. “Fine.”
Brendon holds up the cup directly in front of Ryan’s face. Ryan starts and looks at the cup, then at Brendon, like he’s registering both of them for the first time. Then he takes the cup and drinks deeply, seemingly not caring that coffee that temperature should logically scald his mouth.
“You got more?”
“Sure,” Brendon says, filling up the cup. He folds out the blanket he brought as well and wraps it around Ryan, who gives him a grateful smile.
“Thanks. I guess it is pretty cold out here.”
“Forty-two degrees,” Brendon says. “It’s friggin’ November, Ross.”
Ryan shrugs. Again. “I guess I didn’t think about it. Got wrapped up in the case. You know how it is.”
Brendon wants to argue, but something about the way Ryan grips a little too tightly at the edges of the blanket makes him hesitate.
“It’s just. This victim was found by chance,” Ryan continues. “If the climber who found her hadn’t taken a fall, she most likely never would have been found. That’s what I hate about the desert and the mountains here, sometimes: they just swallow the evidence. And people never know what happened to someone they loved.”
Ryan keeps looking down at his hands after he’s done talking. His shoulders go up under the blanket, and the fingers of his left hand twitch uncomfortably. Brendon feels like Ryan is trying to tell him something, like a penny should be dropping somewhere in his head. Maybe it would if he knew Ryan better, or if he had Spencer’s ability to look at Ryan and just get things. As it is, Ryan just confuses him.
He leans his head back, looks up at the sky. The city lights are a bit too bright for him to be able to see many stars, but Brendon makes out a few of his favourite constellations.
“You know, when I was a kid, my parents used to say that every star was a wish or a prayer that God had fulfilled for someone,” he says. “I used to think that was really cool.”
Ryan looks up at him, smiles a little. “I thought they were considered to be the unfulfilled ones?”
“I know,” Brendon says. “The other kids were pretty quick to point that out once I started school. I guess the version my parents used worked better with the message they were trying to teach.”
“They’re Mormon,” he clarifies, when it becomes clear that Ryan is waiting for him to continue the story. “They’re all back in Salt Lake City. I moved to Seattle on my own after High School.”
There’s so much more he could say about that, things he never tells anyone and that he realises that he kind of would like to tell Ryan. Maybe it’s getting to know each other at a distance-through email and a short chat session here and there-leaving room for Brendon to imagine a level of intimacy in their words that might not have been there. Or maybe it’s just that Brendon is realising more and more that he really, really likes this guy.
“Do you see them a lot?” Ryan asks. “Or, like, talk on the phone, that sort of thing?”
“Not as much as I’d like.”
It’s not a lie, but it feels enough like one to leave a bitter taste on Brendon’s tongue. It’s been over two years since the last time he went back to see his family. It’s not like they don’t welcome him home, because they do, but it’s not the same, and he hates walking around the house feeling wrong, hates seeing hope light up in their eyes at the dinner table every time he mentions one of his female friends. Like maybe he’ll change. Maybe he’ll be saved.
Brendon knows they care. Knows his mom and sister still pray for him at night.
Somehow, that makes it even worse.
He shifts a little closer. Ryan doesn’t protest, and when Brendon shivers a little, he lifts the edge of the blanket for Brendon to share. They huddle together through the night, Ryan’s watch beeping at hourly intervals, telling him to get up and collect new samples. Somewhere after 6 AM, Spencer comes to look for them.
“Breakfast run?” he says, raising an eyebrow at the two of them. “I need to stay for another few hours until the day shift comes on, but Carden’s team is here if one of you wants to take a break and maybe bring back bagels.”
He’s looking at Brendon as he says it, so Brendon gets up from the bench and gives Spencer what he hopes is a friendly smile. “Sure. What kind do you want?”
He makes a run through the lab and picks up orders from some of the techs that are staying on as well and then makes his way out to his car. When he passes by the main building, he sees a glimpse of the spare parking lot in the distance. There are two people on the bench, sitting close together with one of them resting their head on the other one’s shoulder.
Brendon swallows down his disappointment and puts his focus back on the road.
***
“Watch your head.”
Ryan ducks under a low-hanging beam and moves his flashlight back and fourth to try and make out the way back to the ladder. They’re in an abandoned mine shaft just outside of the city, heading back to the surface after finishing with a scene. Construction workers found a body buried in the wall of one of the passages when they went through the mine in preparation for digging for a new mall. The only way down is on foot, so Ryan and Brendon have been getting quite a work out. Ryan tries to keep his eyes off the way Brendon’s shirt is clinging to his back. Every time he forgets, he manages to stumble on something.
“Over here,” Brendon calls from somewhere to the right. Ryan moves in the direction of the voice, forgets to keep his eyes on the path and falls head-first to the ground when there’s a rock suddenly in the way.
“Ow!”
He clenches his jaw around most of the pain, feeling embarrassed more than anything. His hands sting where he used them to break his fall, and the knees of his pants probably aren’t in great shape either. He pushes himself up to a sitting position, wincing.
“Jesus Christ, you okay?” Brendon is there before Ryan even has time to get to his feet, crouching down beside him and moving his flashlight over Ryan’s body. “God, Ross, don’t scare me like that. I thought you’d fallen off a ledge or something.”
“I’m fine,” Ryan says, getting up and starting to dust himself off. And stopping a second later when he realises that apart from hurting like hell, it’s probably getting blood from the cuts all over his clothes. “Just scraped my hands a bit.”
“Here, let me see,” Brendon says, grabbing one of them and holding it up to the light. “Shit, that doesn’t look good. Hold this?”
He hands his flashlight to Ryan, who tries to balance it between his upper arm and the side of his body. Brendon pulls a bottle of water out of his bag, cleans off his own hands as best he can, then starts to carefully wash away the blood and grime on Ryan’s.
Ryan hisses at the contact, forcing himself to keep his hands still. Brendon stutters out an apology, and the touch turns even gentler. Ryan keeps his eyes down.
“We don’t have any bandages,” Brendon says, sounding worried. “I usually keep a first aid kit on me, but I left it in the car when we had to take a backpack instead of the kits so that I could fit the extra brushes and stuff. Fucking stupid.”
“It’s okay,” Ryan says, pulling his hands back and rolling down the cuffs of his shirt as far as he can. “I’ll manage. Let’s just get back up.”
They get to the ladder without incident, but once there, the progress stops. Ryan can’t hold on to it. Every time he tries, the rungs press against the cuts on his hands, and it hurts like a son of a bitch. After the fourth attempt, Brendon steps close again.
“Use your wrists,” he says. “Like, hook them under the rungs. Yes. Like that. And then stay close to the ladder to keep your weight off them. Good. And I’ll climb with you for extra balance, okay?”
Ryan nods and hooks his right wrist under the first rung, pushes himself up. He almost falls down again when Brendon follows. Not beneath him but literally behind him, pressing his whole upper body against Ryan’s back and reaching around him to grab the ladder with both hands.
“You okay?”
Ryan closes his eyes, takes a couple of calming breaths. Maybe if he focuses on the pain in his hands, he won’t think about how perfectly Brendon’s body moulds itself to his back. Or how hot Brendon’s breath is at the side of his neck.
He looks up. The ladder seems practically endless. Fuck.
He hooks his left wrist around the next rung, pushes up. Brendon’s body slides down his and then all the way up again, and Ryan clenches his teeth to keep himself from making a sound. He takes another step and falters a little. Immediately, Brendon is there, pressing into him, steadying him.
“Relax, I’ve got you.”
Ryan takes another deep breath and manages a nod.
It takes them a while to get to the top, and once they’re there, Ryan keeps his eyes firmly on the ground as they walk towards the exit of the mine. The construction team and the couple of officers that answered the 911 meet them at the entrance, and Ryan is quickly whisked off to the first aid station.
He gets back to the car and finds Brendon packed up and ready to go. Ryan gets in the passenger seat and takes out his phone to have something else to think about than how easy it felt to climb out of the mine with Brendon. How natural it was to just let go and trust him.
Ryan doesn’t trust people like that. It takes months, years. And Brendon just put his arms around him and slipped under Ryan’s skin like it was nothing. Ryan has no idea what to do with his head.
His phone beeps. And beeps. And continues to do so for at least a minute. Ryan frowns and checks the log. Spencer has called him almost twenty times. And left several messages.
JACKIE HAD HER BB!!! the first one says. ROOM 986 @MOUNTAINVIEW. GOING NOW, MEET ME THERE. And then a quick HURRY THE FUCK UP, followed by a request for Ryan to bring flowers.
Ryan stares down at the screen, trying to catch up with the emotional reaction that is making his head spin until he’s dizzy with it. There’s excitement and surprise, mixed with confusion and a heady dose of guilt that he doesn’t fully understand. A baby. Ryan’s an uncle. He doesn’t know whether to be happy or terrified.
“Everything okay?” Brendon asks. Ryan almost jumps in his seat, and the swirling thing inside him throws him for another one-eighty.
“Yeah,” he says. “Or I think so. Spencer’s sister just had her first baby. Can you drop me off at Mountainview before heading back to the lab, please?”
“Oh,” Brendon says, and then he breaks into a smile. “Sure. That’s great!”
“Yeah,” Ryan says again, feeling things inside of him start to settle a little. “I guess it’s pretty cool.”
“Are you kidding me?” Brendon says excitedly. “Kids are the best. You’ll see. Especially other people’s kids, because then you get to do all the fun stuff and then give them back when they’re all screamy and smelly.”
Ryan chuckles. “Good to know.”
“So, you’re pretty close with Smith’s family, huh?” Brendon says, turning his eyes back on the road. “Do you spend a lot of time with them?”
“I guess,” Ryan says. “Christmas, every year. Thanksgiving. The twins’ birthday, his parents’ birthdays-Spencer’s birthday, of course. We actually-usually we combine our birthdays, because they’re really close together, so there’s that. Um. Easter. Fourth of July.” He trails off, shocked at how long the list actually is.
“Wow, they really treat you as part of the family, don’t they?” Brendon says. “That’s pretty cool.” It comes out sounding... off, somehow. Ryan can’t tell what the underlying emotion is supposed to be.
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Ryan says honestly. Now that he does though, he thinks that maybe he should have. Spencer’s family is something that has just been there over the years. A constant support that’s just grown to be more and more a part of his life. And it-
It shouldn’t be. Ryan was invited into the family eight years ago as Spencer’s boyfriend. With their relationship long over, Ryan doesn’t really have a valid reason to be part of it anymore.
There’s a weird feeling in his gut as the thought crosses his mind. He tries to ignore it and turns his attention back to Brendon, starts talking about the evidence they found in the mine. And does his best to forget how Brendon practically carried him out of there.
That works pretty well for another thirty miles. And then the next epiphany hits:
The day Spencer does find someone else-someone who means more to him than just hooking up-Ryan really will be ‘just a friend’.
He can’t fucking breathe.
It makes no sense. It’s not like Spencer finding someone else would mean that he and his family would never talk to Ryan again. He’d probably still get invited to dinner. Probably not as much as he has-and maybe not Christmas and Thanksgiving, because Spencer’s new boyfriend might be uncomfortable with that-but things should be just fine. Ryan doesn’t need candied yams and caramel fudge. And he never wanted a family. Actively never wanted one, even. He’s been fine on his own. He doesn’t want-he just-
He’s not an uncle.
“Can you pull over, please? Like, right now?”
Brendon gives him a worried look, but does as Ryan says. Ryan gets out of the car and walks away from it, putting his arms over his head and trying to get himself back under control.
“Ross, wait!”
Brendon catches up with him after about a hundred yards, grabbing his elbow and spinning him around. Ryan shrugs him off, turns around, keeps walking.
“Ryan!”
This time, Brendon grabs both of Ryan’s arms, forcing him to keep still until he slows down.
“I’m just,” Ryan says, not really sure what words he’s using. “I’m not supposed to be there anymore. Or maybe I am and I’ve just been really fucking stupid! And what if it’s like that? Jesus, what if I just-what if-God. And what if I could fix it, and it works out and it turns out I’m crap with babies? What if I drop it? What if I still can’t be all the things he-? What if-”
“Ryan,” Brendon says again. Ryan shuts up. Takes a deep breath.
“I don’t know what’s going on here,” Brendon says. “But family should be about belonging somewhere, having someone who loves you enough that you don’t need to be all the things people say you should be.”
Ryan stares at him, and after a couple of seconds Brendon looks away, bites his lip. Ryan swallows. Hard. There’s something about the look on Brendon’s face Ryan can’t pin down, that makes him want to reach out, pull Brendon to him and get the feeling back of being far too close that has nothing to do with getting each other naked. And that’s just-
Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
He swallows again, pushes it down. He really can’t afford to add idiotic fucking feelings for Brendon to the mess inside his head right now.
“Thanks,” he says, pulling himself away carefully from Brendon’s grip and starting to walk back towards the car. “I’m sorry. I just-They’re so small, you know. Babies. Like, you could break them by just-I’m sorry I freaked.”
Brendon looks up at him, and Ryan imagines that the answering smile is about as real as his own.
“Any time.”
They drive back into town in silence, and Brendon drops him off at the hospital entrance. Ryan takes the elevator to the ninth floor and walks down the corridor, heart beating faster in his chest when Ginger Smith spots him and waves him into a room where everyone knows his name, smiles at him and lets Spencer hug him first.
Ryan can’t believe he never noticed how everyone automatically leaves him a spot at Spencer’s side, just like they always move aside to let Cliff in next to Jackie. It’s what Ryan’s been avoiding and fighting against for most of his life, and now he’s here-in the middle of it and without having realised that it happened-feeling sick to his stomach at the thought of losing it again.
He gives Jackie the flowers he picked up on the way: pale and deep pink roses in full bloom, for gratitude and joy. She takes them with a huge smile and gives him an extra hug. Spencer wraps an arm around his waist when he steps back again, fusses over his bandaged hands and then goes back to the conversation he was having with his dad about helping him build a new deck in the back yard. Ryan carefully lets his head drop to Spencer’s shoulder, focusing on the warmth of him and doing his best to ignore the fear, guilt and confusion that is still making his head spin.
The fact that he still hears Brendon’s voice inside of his head isn’t really helping.
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