Fic: Walking On A Wire
Brendon/Ryan PG
~2500 words
Summary: Brendon shrugs. "I don't really wanna go home." Ryan nods. He doesn't, either.
Disclaimer: Not true, never was, never will be, etc. etc.
This is a day late birthday present for
cellophne_chst because it was her birthday, and she should get tons of gifts. I love you, sweetie, and I have no idea what I'd ever do without you. <3 Thanks to
mockturtletale for the lovely beta job.
Practice is just winding down when Spencer shares the big news he told Ryan and Brent about a few hours earlier. Ryan had been anxious all through practice and screwing up his vocals, wondering why the hell Spencer would tell them after practice. He knows Ryan isn't good with waiting.
"So, guys," Spencer says, barely hiding his grin. "I'm pretty sure I found us another guitarist."
Brent and Ryan pause for a moment, looking at Spencer to make sure he's telling the truth. They've been looking for ages, they don't want to be let down. Once they've both determined that Spencer isn't making it up, they turn to each other, grinning and giving high fives.
"What's his name?" Ryan asks. "And where'd you find him? And Jesus fuck, Spence, why didn't you tell us earlier? He could've come to practice today!"
"Brendon, band class, and he didn't know yet if he could come today," Spencer explains. "His parents are weird, or something, I don't really know. He said they might not be cool with him being in a band? But he just text me saying he's good to come jam sometime."
Ryan and Brent are still grinning at each other, because this is exactly what they've all been needing. Someone willing to just come and try it out, see if the band was a fit. Hopefully it would be.
"There's just one thing," Spencer adds. "He's kind of a spazz. Really talkative and always in your space, are you gonna be able to handle that, Ry?"
Ryan frowns. "I dunno. I can try? I mean, we need a new guitarist since Trevor left. It's worth a shot, I guess."
"Maybe he'll be your kind of spazz, Ry," Brent throws in.
"Right, because I've got a type of spazz," Ryan snorts.
As it turns out, maybe Ryan just hadn't met the right type of spazz yet.
---
"God, Brendon, that's not -- the song doesn't go that way!" Ryan stops playing to glare and Brendon, his shoulders tense and curled in toward himself.
"Then how does it fucking go, Ryan?" Brendon spits back, balling his hands into fists at his sides. His nails are digging into his palms, and he uses the pain as a distraction.
"I've told you a hundred times!"
Brent and Spencer have slowly retreated to the back of Spencer's grandma's garage, having learned the hard way that sometimes it's best to just step back and let the other two duke it out. The fights never last too long.
"Then you sing it, Christ," Brendon shakes his head. He's used this argument before, he knows it's not going to work. Just like Ryan knows he's trying as hard as he fucking can to get things right, to be right, to prove himself.
"Maybe I will," Ryan says like it's actually someone he'd consider. Not even Brendon was expecting that. "We don't need you in the band anyway, I could sing and we could get a different guitarist and then we wouldn't have these goddamn problems."
Brendon's speechless for a moment, staring open-mouthed and Ryan. "Are you fucking --" he cuts himself off, shaking his head. "Fuck you, Ryan Ross." Struggling into his hoody, Brendon turns and marches out of the garage.
Everything is quiet for a moment, the three guys still in the garage left staring at Brendon as he walks away, until Spencer turns and glares at Ryan.
"What the fuck was that, Ryan?" he says, throwing his sticks on the ground and standing up. "Did you really just -- Did you just tell him to leave?"
Ryan blinks a few times. "Shit," he says at last. "I didn't mean it! Why's he gotta be so sensitive? He's known me for a year, he should know I don't mean it when I say shit like that!"
Spencer sighs, and it's half-frustrated, half-resigned. "Not everyone knows you as well as Brent and I do, Ry. It's not Brendon's fault you're a dick."
"Shit," Ryan says again, mimicking Spencer's sigh. "I should probably go find him, shouldn't I?"
Brent and Spencer nod simultaneously.
---
Ryan slows his car down when he sees Brendon walking down the sidewalk, rolling down the window and leaning across the passenger seat.
"Brendon, Bren, hey!" he calls out, and he doesn't know if Brendon's heard because he has his headphones in, but he slows down and folds his arms across his chest, so Ryan figures he must have. Ryan pulls the car to a stop on the side of the road and waits for Brendon to walk over. He wonders what it says about himself that he just assumes Brendon will.
"What do you want?" Brendon asks, pulling out his headphones and wrapping them around his iPod. "Thought you guys could get alone just fine without me."
"C'mon, Bren, you know I didn't mean that." Dusk is settling in, and Ryan's finding it harder and harder to make out the features on Brendon's face. "Get in the car, let's go for a drive."
Brendon stands there for a minute before finally opening the door and slipping in, buckling his seatbelt immediately. Ryan's never bothered with seatbelts, especially not in neighborhoods, but Brendon's always been a stickler. Whenever he's driving, he refuses to leave unless everyone's buckled in safe and tight. For whatever reason, Ryan reaches over and pulls his own seatbelt down.
He doesn't think the action goes unnoticed. He doesn't know why it matters to him.
Ryan starts the car again, and they drive for a while in a silence that's more cautious than tense. Brendon mindlessly reaches to Ryan's CD case and pulls out a Killer's disc, sliding it into the crappy old player. The air loosens up a bit as the music fills the car, Brendon singing along under his breath and Ryan humming quietly.
"I've gotta get gas," Ryan says after they've been driving for a while, taking random turns and mostly going in circles. Night has fully set in by now, and when Ryan turns his head to look at Brendon, all he can make out is Brendon's eyes, intent and staring back at him. He turns away before he has to try to figure out why holding Brendon's gaze makes his breath catch in his throat.
He sees Brendon nod out of the corner of his eye, though, so he pulls into the nearest 7-11. Brendon stays in the car while Ryan pays for the gas inside, staring so intently into nothing that he doesn't even realize it when Ryan slides back into his seat.
Ryan holds out a blue raspberry slurpee -- Brendon's favorite (Ryan's, too) -- and Brendon takes it with a smile on his face. "Thanks," he says. Ryan just nods, keeps himself busy with starting the car and pulling out onto the street.
"Got anywhere you wanna go?" he asks, glancing over to where Brendon is thoughtfully sipping slurpee through a straw.
Brendon shrugs. "I don't really wanna go home." Ryan nods. He doesn't, either.
---
They drive for a while in a silence that isn't really uncomfortable, just two people sitting in a car with nowhere to go. Every once in a while, one of them looks down at the clock: 8:00, 9:30, 12:00. When Ryan looks down again, it's almost two in the morning. He wonders what it means that they've been driving in silence for six hours, and then wonders when he started thinking that everything has to mean something.
Finally, Brendon speaks. "Take a right, up here."
Ryan does, and then continues to follow the directions Brendon gives him. It doesn't take long before Brendon's telling Ryan they're close.
"You've kinda gotta drive up the grass here, but it's worth it, trust me," he says, chewing on the straw of his slurpee. "No one comes out here anyway. I've been up here a few times."
With a nod, Ryan ignores the questions biting at his tongue in favor of staying silent and following directions. They end up at the top of a grassy hill, and Ryan turns off the car. Vegas summers are infamous for their heat during the day, but at night they can still get pretty cool, so Ryan doesn't make a move to get out of the car.
Brendon seems to have other ideas. He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car quickly, going out to sit against the bumper. After a moment's hesitation and a pause to turn the lights of the car back on, Ryan follows.
They're both quiet again for a while, just sitting on the hood of the car with the lights out in front of them and the starry sky above them. The lights of Vegas seem so far away, but it's still hard to miss them. Ryan wonders what it'd be like to be like that; so prominent that even from miles away, you're still recognizable. He wonders if he'd like it or hate it, figures it'd probably be a bit of both.
"It's nice up here," Ryan says, his voice loud in the too-quiet of night. "With the stars and the lights and everything."
Brendon nods next to him, laying back so he's looking up at the sky. "Yeah. I found it one afternoon while I was driving around, and I've come back out at night a few times. Not very often, 'cause it's hard to sneak out, but I kinda figure it's worth it even if I do get caught."
"It's really...peaceful." Ryan doesn't really know what else to say, so he doesn't say anything. He leans down next to Brendon, and tries not to notice the way the hairs on his arm stands up when their skin touches.
The silence stretches for a few more minutes before Ryan sighs. "You know I don't mean it, when I say shit like that, right?"
Ryan can feel Brendon shift, but it's still quiet for a long time. When he finally responds, his voice is quiet and Ryan has to strain to hear it. "Not really, no."
"Oh." Ryan swallows. He doesn't really know how to respond to that.
The silence this time is tense, words teetering on the edge of being said. Ryan's still trying to work out what to say, because he's really never been good with this kind of stuff on his own. Spencer just figured it out, had been around long enough and had been patient enough to just let it all fall into place, and shared all of that with Brent when he entered the picture. But Brendon... Ryan isn't sure how he can make Brendon understand.
"I just... say shit sometimes," he says, mentally cringing because he's never been able to get things out in spoken words, has always needed a piece of paper to sort out the jumbled mess in his head. "When I'm frustrated, or stressed, or... or whatever, it just comes out. I don't -- I don't mean it."
Ryan turns his head in time to catch Brendon's nod, and figures that's all he's going to get for now. That's fair, he figures, and bites his lip, trying to figure out what else he can add to make Brendon see he's sorry.
When he's about to say something else, Brendon stops him. "If you're going to keep trying to excuse it, don't."
And, oh. That's kind of harsh. Ryan rolls so he's facing the sky again, counting the stars and trying to find constellations, trying to figure out what he can say.
"I just mean," Brendon says after a moment, "that just because it's just who you are, doesn't make it okay. It's still going to hurt, even if I know that you don't mean it."
It's Ryan's turn to nod, because that makes sense, he supposes. No one's ever told him that before, though, and it's hard to hear, so the silence lingers for a while longer.
"I am sorry, though." Ryan realizes that's the first time he's said that outright that night (maybe the first time in much longer than that), and reminds himself to say it more often. He wonders what time it is now.
"I know," Brendon says, and it's not forgiveness, not necessarily, but it's something. Ryan will take it.
---
A few weeks later, Ryan drives Brendon back up to that spot on the hill. He gets Brendon another slurpee on the way, and tries to focus on driving, rather than the way Brendon swirls his tongue around the straw. It's not as easy as it used to be.
This time, they arrive just as the sun is setting, and Ryan cuts the lights and sits on the grass, leaning back against the car instead of on top of it. Brendon does the same, sitting closer to Ryan than Ryan thinks is necessary until he realizes that it's no closer than Brendon usually is, and wonders for the thousandth when he started noticing all these things.
He forces his eyes away from Brendon's hand on the grass between them and up to the sun as it slowly sets, thinking about summer and music and more nights just like this one. He wonders what Brendon's thinking about, and chances a glance at his face. Brendon's sucking on the straw again, and Ryan's eyes trace is stained-blue lips, slowly trailing his eyes up to Brendon's own. He finds Brendon staring back and looks away, fighting back a blush. He can't help but notice something in Brendon's eyes before he looks away, though, something that makes him smile.
"I'm thirsty," he says after a while, still staring straight ahead. He turns back to Brendon, making sure his eyes go straight to Brendon's. He still notices Brendon's smirk, though, and tries not to bite his lip. "Is there any of your slurpee left?"
Brendon grins and takes a long gulp of it, and then thrusts the cup at Ryan. "Nope!" he says, and Ryan rolls his eyes and puts the cup down on the grass next to them.
"Thanks, douche bag," Ryan teases. He's careful to keep his tone light, still afraid to say anything that Brendon might take too seriously. He's been trying hard these last few weeks to be better at that kind of thing.
"Well," Brendon says, and he drags the word out, turning to face Ryan, finally. "I suppose there's still one way you could have some of my slurpee." The grin hasn't left his face yet.
Ryan raises an eyebrow, not willing to believe that Brendon means what he thinks he means. This only seems to make Brendon's grin wider.
Before Ryan knows what's happening, Brendon's leaning forward, pressing his mouth to Ryan's. It's quick and simple, just a press of lips, and then Brendon's pulling back and looking away, blushing just slightly. Ryan's quiet for a moment before he smiles and pulls Brendon forward into another kiss. This one is simple too, nothing heated, just slow and sweet. In more ways than one, Ryan thinks.
He's not really thirsty anymore.
~2500 words
Summary: Brendon shrugs. "I don't really wanna go home." Ryan nods. He doesn't, either.
Disclaimer: Not true, never was, never will be, etc. etc.
This is a day late birthday present for
cellophne_chst because it was her birthday, and she should get tons of gifts. I love you, sweetie, and I have no idea what I'd ever do without you. <3 Thanks to
mockturtletale for the lovely beta job.
Practice is just winding down when Spencer shares the big news he told Ryan and Brent about a few hours earlier. Ryan had been anxious all through practice and screwing up his vocals, wondering why the hell Spencer would tell them after practice. He knows Ryan isn't good with waiting.
"So, guys," Spencer says, barely hiding his grin. "I'm pretty sure I found us another guitarist."
Brent and Ryan pause for a moment, looking at Spencer to make sure he's telling the truth. They've been looking for ages, they don't want to be let down. Once they've both determined that Spencer isn't making it up, they turn to each other, grinning and giving high fives.
"What's his name?" Ryan asks. "And where'd you find him? And Jesus fuck, Spence, why didn't you tell us earlier? He could've come to practice today!"
"Brendon, band class, and he didn't know yet if he could come today," Spencer explains. "His parents are weird, or something, I don't really know. He said they might not be cool with him being in a band? But he just text me saying he's good to come jam sometime."
Ryan and Brent are still grinning at each other, because this is exactly what they've all been needing. Someone willing to just come and try it out, see if the band was a fit. Hopefully it would be.
"There's just one thing," Spencer adds. "He's kind of a spazz. Really talkative and always in your space, are you gonna be able to handle that, Ry?"
Ryan frowns. "I dunno. I can try? I mean, we need a new guitarist since Trevor left. It's worth a shot, I guess."
"Maybe he'll be your kind of spazz, Ry," Brent throws in.
"Right, because I've got a type of spazz," Ryan snorts.
As it turns out, maybe Ryan just hadn't met the right type of spazz yet.
---
"God, Brendon, that's not -- the song doesn't go that way!" Ryan stops playing to glare and Brendon, his shoulders tense and curled in toward himself.
"Then how does it fucking go, Ryan?" Brendon spits back, balling his hands into fists at his sides. His nails are digging into his palms, and he uses the pain as a distraction.
"I've told you a hundred times!"
Brent and Spencer have slowly retreated to the back of Spencer's grandma's garage, having learned the hard way that sometimes it's best to just step back and let the other two duke it out. The fights never last too long.
"Then you sing it, Christ," Brendon shakes his head. He's used this argument before, he knows it's not going to work. Just like Ryan knows he's trying as hard as he fucking can to get things right, to be right, to prove himself.
"Maybe I will," Ryan says like it's actually someone he'd consider. Not even Brendon was expecting that. "We don't need you in the band anyway, I could sing and we could get a different guitarist and then we wouldn't have these goddamn problems."
Brendon's speechless for a moment, staring open-mouthed and Ryan. "Are you fucking --" he cuts himself off, shaking his head. "Fuck you, Ryan Ross." Struggling into his hoody, Brendon turns and marches out of the garage.
Everything is quiet for a moment, the three guys still in the garage left staring at Brendon as he walks away, until Spencer turns and glares at Ryan.
"What the fuck was that, Ryan?" he says, throwing his sticks on the ground and standing up. "Did you really just -- Did you just tell him to leave?"
Ryan blinks a few times. "Shit," he says at last. "I didn't mean it! Why's he gotta be so sensitive? He's known me for a year, he should know I don't mean it when I say shit like that!"
Spencer sighs, and it's half-frustrated, half-resigned. "Not everyone knows you as well as Brent and I do, Ry. It's not Brendon's fault you're a dick."
"Shit," Ryan says again, mimicking Spencer's sigh. "I should probably go find him, shouldn't I?"
Brent and Spencer nod simultaneously.
---
Ryan slows his car down when he sees Brendon walking down the sidewalk, rolling down the window and leaning across the passenger seat.
"Brendon, Bren, hey!" he calls out, and he doesn't know if Brendon's heard because he has his headphones in, but he slows down and folds his arms across his chest, so Ryan figures he must have. Ryan pulls the car to a stop on the side of the road and waits for Brendon to walk over. He wonders what it says about himself that he just assumes Brendon will.
"What do you want?" Brendon asks, pulling out his headphones and wrapping them around his iPod. "Thought you guys could get alone just fine without me."
"C'mon, Bren, you know I didn't mean that." Dusk is settling in, and Ryan's finding it harder and harder to make out the features on Brendon's face. "Get in the car, let's go for a drive."
Brendon stands there for a minute before finally opening the door and slipping in, buckling his seatbelt immediately. Ryan's never bothered with seatbelts, especially not in neighborhoods, but Brendon's always been a stickler. Whenever he's driving, he refuses to leave unless everyone's buckled in safe and tight. For whatever reason, Ryan reaches over and pulls his own seatbelt down.
He doesn't think the action goes unnoticed. He doesn't know why it matters to him.
Ryan starts the car again, and they drive for a while in a silence that's more cautious than tense. Brendon mindlessly reaches to Ryan's CD case and pulls out a Killer's disc, sliding it into the crappy old player. The air loosens up a bit as the music fills the car, Brendon singing along under his breath and Ryan humming quietly.
"I've gotta get gas," Ryan says after they've been driving for a while, taking random turns and mostly going in circles. Night has fully set in by now, and when Ryan turns his head to look at Brendon, all he can make out is Brendon's eyes, intent and staring back at him. He turns away before he has to try to figure out why holding Brendon's gaze makes his breath catch in his throat.
He sees Brendon nod out of the corner of his eye, though, so he pulls into the nearest 7-11. Brendon stays in the car while Ryan pays for the gas inside, staring so intently into nothing that he doesn't even realize it when Ryan slides back into his seat.
Ryan holds out a blue raspberry slurpee -- Brendon's favorite (Ryan's, too) -- and Brendon takes it with a smile on his face. "Thanks," he says. Ryan just nods, keeps himself busy with starting the car and pulling out onto the street.
"Got anywhere you wanna go?" he asks, glancing over to where Brendon is thoughtfully sipping slurpee through a straw.
Brendon shrugs. "I don't really wanna go home." Ryan nods. He doesn't, either.
---
They drive for a while in a silence that isn't really uncomfortable, just two people sitting in a car with nowhere to go. Every once in a while, one of them looks down at the clock: 8:00, 9:30, 12:00. When Ryan looks down again, it's almost two in the morning. He wonders what it means that they've been driving in silence for six hours, and then wonders when he started thinking that everything has to mean something.
Finally, Brendon speaks. "Take a right, up here."
Ryan does, and then continues to follow the directions Brendon gives him. It doesn't take long before Brendon's telling Ryan they're close.
"You've kinda gotta drive up the grass here, but it's worth it, trust me," he says, chewing on the straw of his slurpee. "No one comes out here anyway. I've been up here a few times."
With a nod, Ryan ignores the questions biting at his tongue in favor of staying silent and following directions. They end up at the top of a grassy hill, and Ryan turns off the car. Vegas summers are infamous for their heat during the day, but at night they can still get pretty cool, so Ryan doesn't make a move to get out of the car.
Brendon seems to have other ideas. He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car quickly, going out to sit against the bumper. After a moment's hesitation and a pause to turn the lights of the car back on, Ryan follows.
They're both quiet again for a while, just sitting on the hood of the car with the lights out in front of them and the starry sky above them. The lights of Vegas seem so far away, but it's still hard to miss them. Ryan wonders what it'd be like to be like that; so prominent that even from miles away, you're still recognizable. He wonders if he'd like it or hate it, figures it'd probably be a bit of both.
"It's nice up here," Ryan says, his voice loud in the too-quiet of night. "With the stars and the lights and everything."
Brendon nods next to him, laying back so he's looking up at the sky. "Yeah. I found it one afternoon while I was driving around, and I've come back out at night a few times. Not very often, 'cause it's hard to sneak out, but I kinda figure it's worth it even if I do get caught."
"It's really...peaceful." Ryan doesn't really know what else to say, so he doesn't say anything. He leans down next to Brendon, and tries not to notice the way the hairs on his arm stands up when their skin touches.
The silence stretches for a few more minutes before Ryan sighs. "You know I don't mean it, when I say shit like that, right?"
Ryan can feel Brendon shift, but it's still quiet for a long time. When he finally responds, his voice is quiet and Ryan has to strain to hear it. "Not really, no."
"Oh." Ryan swallows. He doesn't really know how to respond to that.
The silence this time is tense, words teetering on the edge of being said. Ryan's still trying to work out what to say, because he's really never been good with this kind of stuff on his own. Spencer just figured it out, had been around long enough and had been patient enough to just let it all fall into place, and shared all of that with Brent when he entered the picture. But Brendon... Ryan isn't sure how he can make Brendon understand.
"I just... say shit sometimes," he says, mentally cringing because he's never been able to get things out in spoken words, has always needed a piece of paper to sort out the jumbled mess in his head. "When I'm frustrated, or stressed, or... or whatever, it just comes out. I don't -- I don't mean it."
Ryan turns his head in time to catch Brendon's nod, and figures that's all he's going to get for now. That's fair, he figures, and bites his lip, trying to figure out what else he can add to make Brendon see he's sorry.
When he's about to say something else, Brendon stops him. "If you're going to keep trying to excuse it, don't."
And, oh. That's kind of harsh. Ryan rolls so he's facing the sky again, counting the stars and trying to find constellations, trying to figure out what he can say.
"I just mean," Brendon says after a moment, "that just because it's just who you are, doesn't make it okay. It's still going to hurt, even if I know that you don't mean it."
It's Ryan's turn to nod, because that makes sense, he supposes. No one's ever told him that before, though, and it's hard to hear, so the silence lingers for a while longer.
"I am sorry, though." Ryan realizes that's the first time he's said that outright that night (maybe the first time in much longer than that), and reminds himself to say it more often. He wonders what time it is now.
"I know," Brendon says, and it's not forgiveness, not necessarily, but it's something. Ryan will take it.
---
A few weeks later, Ryan drives Brendon back up to that spot on the hill. He gets Brendon another slurpee on the way, and tries to focus on driving, rather than the way Brendon swirls his tongue around the straw. It's not as easy as it used to be.
This time, they arrive just as the sun is setting, and Ryan cuts the lights and sits on the grass, leaning back against the car instead of on top of it. Brendon does the same, sitting closer to Ryan than Ryan thinks is necessary until he realizes that it's no closer than Brendon usually is, and wonders for the thousandth when he started noticing all these things.
He forces his eyes away from Brendon's hand on the grass between them and up to the sun as it slowly sets, thinking about summer and music and more nights just like this one. He wonders what Brendon's thinking about, and chances a glance at his face. Brendon's sucking on the straw again, and Ryan's eyes trace is stained-blue lips, slowly trailing his eyes up to Brendon's own. He finds Brendon staring back and looks away, fighting back a blush. He can't help but notice something in Brendon's eyes before he looks away, though, something that makes him smile.
"I'm thirsty," he says after a while, still staring straight ahead. He turns back to Brendon, making sure his eyes go straight to Brendon's. He still notices Brendon's smirk, though, and tries not to bite his lip. "Is there any of your slurpee left?"
Brendon grins and takes a long gulp of it, and then thrusts the cup at Ryan. "Nope!" he says, and Ryan rolls his eyes and puts the cup down on the grass next to them.
"Thanks, douche bag," Ryan teases. He's careful to keep his tone light, still afraid to say anything that Brendon might take too seriously. He's been trying hard these last few weeks to be better at that kind of thing.
"Well," Brendon says, and he drags the word out, turning to face Ryan, finally. "I suppose there's still one way you could have some of my slurpee." The grin hasn't left his face yet.
Ryan raises an eyebrow, not willing to believe that Brendon means what he thinks he means. This only seems to make Brendon's grin wider.
Before Ryan knows what's happening, Brendon's leaning forward, pressing his mouth to Ryan's. It's quick and simple, just a press of lips, and then Brendon's pulling back and looking away, blushing just slightly. Ryan's quiet for a moment before he smiles and pulls Brendon forward into another kiss. This one is simple too, nothing heated, just slow and sweet. In more ways than one, Ryan thinks.
He's not really thirsty anymore.