fic: Faster than you go when you're alone
Fandom: Panic
Pairing: Jon/Spencer
Warnings: kissing, drinking, cursing, references to casual sex. A solid PG-13, I'd say.
Words: 23,983
Notes: I started writing this last November. It was supposed to be a 3000 word one-off to please estei, something quick before I had to write my Yuletide story and gave up fic for January. Now it's three and a half months later and I was pretty sure this story would never end, and also I kind of didn't want it to. And I know it's a bad thing when the person who you're writing a story for has to beta it, too, but Meghan was totally game and totally read this bad boy more times than I did. I also managed to shoehorn delighter back into this fandom just to read it for me because she is ever-loving, and thissugarcane took a look at it too and late last night I even got owench to read it over. So thanks go to all of them, because I make a lot of typos and obvs need a lot of coddling. ♥ ♥ ♥
Summary: It's July 2006 and Jon Walker is kind of selfish, and kind of oblivious, and kind of in love with the drummer. None of these things are making this tour easy.
Jon wakes up and the bus is entirely dark except for a yellow smudge of light up near the front. It reflects off the windows and through the crack in his curtain, and if he squints Jon can see Spencer’s back where he’s bent over his duffel, stripping off a t-shirt.
Jon blinks. Wonders what time it is. The bus isn’t moving. He sends a hand fumbling under his pillow for his phone.
Jon watches Spencer wrangle a new shirt over his shoulders and around his elbows. Then Spencer crouches down out of sight, and Jon closes his eyelids in a slow blink. When he opens them again it’s because he can hear the front door squeaking open. A second later a sigh of humid Florida air touches his face.
Spencer’s gone, Jon realizes. He got off the bus. He left.
But he doesn’t find his phone in his sheets, and he doesn’t know the time, and when he closes his eyes again - another slow blink - he’s asleep.
--
Jon wakes up again and it’s bright out and the bus still isn’t moving. He crawls out of bed to find Brendon and Ryan slouched at the table eating a greasy fast food breakfast in a kind of miserable, companionable silence that Jon can’t help but break just by being there.
Brendon, chewing, looks up and says, “Hey.”
“Morning,” Jon sits down on the couch across from them, sliding into a sprawl, and wonders if there’s any other breakfast lying around, and where they got theirs, and if they didn’t get him any because they didn’t remember or because they didn’t care. Which is kind of an unfair thought to have, but Jon is hungry and wishes he had some deep-fried potato to put in his mouth.
But as the silence lengthens - Ryan crumpling up his paper bag and pulling over the copy of Spin that lists Brendon as the seventeenth hottest star under 25 - Jon remembers something.
“Hey,” he says. “Where’s Spencer?”
Brendon shakes his head, mouth full of muffin.
Ryan shrugs without glancing away from his magazine. “Asleep.”
And Jon is about to say, but he left when the curtain to Spencer’s bunk twitches and he slides to the ground looking pale and groggy. His hair is a rat’s nest and half his face is creased to match his pillow case.
“Guys,” he says, “Your food stinks.”
“Sorry,” Brendon says, as Ryan mutters, “Stinks deliciously, you mean.”
Spencer yawns and staggers over to get a bottle of water, and Jon watches him, trying to figure out if the snug grey t-shirt is the same one he saw in the middle of the night, or if he dreamt it.
Jon considers the creepiness and also the dumbness of having a dream about Spencer changing his t-shirt, and then without meaning to finds himself watching Spencer stretch: the shy appearance of a strip of skin under the yawning hem. Spencer’s spine arches and his belly curves and Jon can see the line of his hipbone. It draws the eye down.
Then Spencer shrugs the t-shirt back down, self-conscious in an unconscious way.
He glances at Jon, before Jon can look away and pretend he wasn’t watching.
“Did you eat?” Spencer asks.
“No,” Jon still feels slightly wronged by that fact, even if he tries not to look like it.
“Let’s go find something that at least has a vegetable in it,” Spencer says, even as he grabs the garbage off the table and shoves it in the trash hole under the microwave. Ryan waves his magazine in acknowledgement.
Jon thinks that a vegetable sounds pretty good. He gets up to find his flipflops.
--
Tonight they’re playing Fort Lauderdale: an outdoor concert at this huge nightclub that is all silver lights and red curtains inside, but apparently jungle-themed outside. There are girls in hand-made t-shirts on the other side of the fence during sound check. There is someone who is paid to go get them coffee from the diner down the street.
Jon stands gulping a half-decent medium drip beside the soundboard on stage left, hoping it will banish his bus-induced diesel fume headache. Their sound guy is named Boink, and he is fifty but looks seventy and has this problem where he is constantly hitting on all the girls backstage, be they roadies or acrobats or Greta. The band pays him about a million dollars an hour, and Jon is watching him remix Ryan’s monitors for the sixth time in as many shows. He can hear a buzz, apparently.
To help narrow it down, Ryan keeps playing the same chord progression over and over again. A minor, F, C, G. Over and over, using every instrument they have. Twenty times. Every time, Boink says, “Yup,” And Ryan says, “No, it’s still there.”
Spencer comes over to watch, too, and elbows Jon lightly and says, “Hey.”
Jon tips his cup and says, “Sometimes it looks like Boink’s going to put his hands around Ryan’s neck and squeeze till his head pops off.”
Spencer nods. “Ryan likes to keep his relationships honest that way.”
Jon wants to say, so I could throttle him too, if I wanted? but decides that seeing as he is barely a month into the tour with these guys whereas Ryan and Spencer have known each other since grade school, he’d better keep his mouth shut.
Still, he likes to think Spencer would’ve laughed.
“So how are you doing?” Spencer says, then.
And this is the kind of thing that Jon likes about Spencer. He asks. Jon always feels absurdly grateful whenever Spencer asks. Because he always means it. It makes whatever answer Jon would’ve given thirty seconds ago - miserable, sweaty, tired, irritated to hell by A minor, F, C, G - evaporate.
Instead, Jon smirks and gestures at the fence and says, “That crowd out there is going to be awesome. You can tell because they’ve been having group singalongs by track order for the past hour.”
“I know, right? Tell me about it,” Andy says, slouching into their conversation without having heard a word of it. He is carrying a shot of espresso in a very small white porcelain cup.
Jon would wonder how the hell he swung that, when the rest of them got diner coffee in styrofoam, but it’s kind of obvious. Andy is the keyboardist for OK Go, and he is wearing a three piece suit and a peridot bowtie. Honestly, he probably just had to ask, and someone moved mountains to make sure the bone china was clean.
Andy takes a sip of his coffee and gives Spencer a pleasant look. “Nice suspenders, Smith.”
Spencer plucks at his frilled collar, and returns politely: “Thanks. I like your brooch.”
Jon doesn’t say anything. Andy is kind of intimidating. Jon heard he cooks his whole bus bacon and toast and asparagus for breakfast using nothing but a microwave and a hot plate. That, and OK Go is responsible for probably the most popular music video ever posted to Youtube. They don’t act like it, though. They’ve always been really nice about everything. Super professional. Their bassist Tim is actually really awesome. But Jon just gets this weird feeling from Andy. Not competitive, or aggressive or anything. Just like, something masculine and voiceless and blunt.
Something that is all over Spencer.
Jon shifts, polite smile evaporating as he listens to Spencer and Andy talk in a half-ironic, half-serious way about cummerbunds. He slips away before he’s expected to say anything, and goes to double-check his own monitor.
--
Later, in the very darkest part of the morning, he catches Spencer leaving the bus again.
Again, he doesn’t say anything. Because honestly it’s none of his business. Jon’s just lying there with his entire Brand New collection on randomized repeat in his headphones and he watches Spencer change out of his frilly shirt - suspenders long gone, evidently - and into another cotton t-shirt. He has pointed shoulderblades that cast surprising shadows against the freckles on his back. His arms flex as he drops the shirt over himself, pulls it down. He is wearing shorts, he ties on a pair of runners, he pushes his hair out of his eyes and it falls right back into them.
Spencer goes down the steps, and into the night, and Jon wonders if he should stay awake to make sure that the driver doesn’t accidentally leave without him.
He decides to keep an eye cracked, just in case.
But when he wakes up, they’re in Orlando, and Spencer is sleeping in his bunk with his face buried in his pillow.
--
Two days later they’re in Norfolk, Virginia and Jon’s having this kind of weird lunch with Ryan where they stand together in the line for takeout in the foodcourt and make small talk.
Ryan says, “I guess she’s pretty intense.”
And Jon goes, “Yeah, I bet.”
“They’ve got some really good stuff planned for their act, though. Audience participation, but not lame.” Ryan continues.
“Awesome,” says Jon, scanning the menu.
That’s about all they have to say. Lately Ryan’s been getting morose - or just introspective, it’s hard to tell - at the drop of a hat. And anyway, Jon doesn’t think it’s his place to comment on the opening acts that Pete, or Pete’s guy, or whoever, paired them up with. Jon’s the replacement. It’s his job to play Brent’s parts better than Brent did, and to try to convince the fans not to hate him.
So instead of saying anything else, Jon orders a greek salad and some kababs.
Spencer and Brendon are across the mall getting Spencer a new pair of jeans because his old ones were hanging off his hips like clown pants. Ryan’s words, not his. Jon kind of wishes he’d gone with them, but he was hungry enough to risk some flat conversation. Ryan has got himself a pita with a giant bowl of tzatziki, and so Jon follows him to a plastic table beside a bank of potted plastic plants. Ryan is gazing at the display window of a nearby store. It seems to sell gold lamé hotpants and skin-tight pinstripe trousers exclusively.
“Hey,” Jon says as he manipulates the pits out of the kalamata olives in his dish. “We should get Andy and Tim and those guys a goodbye gift.”
Ryan perks up as he spoons tzatziki into his pita. “Like a ‘thanks for coming on our tour’ present.”
“Exactly,” says Jon.
“That’s so classy,” says Ryan. He takes a chunk out of his pita and chews for a while. “That’s a really good idea.”
Jon smiles at his kabab, because Ryan’s approval never feels easy to come by.
After they eat, Spencer and Brendon come find them in the hotpants store where Ryan is mulling over ironic fishnet elbow gloves versus items that might actually pass OK Go’s stringent fashion requirements. Tweed bowler hats, maybe. He asks the opinion of the middle-aged goth behind the counter, who brings out a tray of silk rosette brooches with rhinestones. Ryan hums, and Spencer makes a face. They all decide to think about it some more.
When they get back to the bus Spencer changes into his new jeans and everyone watches him stand in front of the full-length mirror.
Ryan says, “Those look fucking awesome, Spence.”
“I know, right?” says Brendon, proud. “I found them. I made him try them on.”
“They’re like a corset for my balls,” Spencer tells them, slouching at himself in the mirror. The jeans are grey and tight. Spencer is wearing a dark collared shirt that makes his eyes look crazy blue and he looks just. Really good.
Jon doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t trust himself to hit the right note. He goes back to pretending to read his book.
But he peeks, and so he sees Ryan come over and puts his hands in Spencer’s back pockets and his chin on Spencer’s shoulder as he drawls, “Whatever, you’ll get used to it.”
And then Brendon turns on the xbox, and that’s the end of the conversation.
--
Norfolk is the last show with OK Go, actually. And Tim the bassist is making sure everyone knows it. He spends the afternoon wandering around in his little cap and huge glasses and magenta trousers being loudmouthed and endearing. “You’ll miss us,” he says to Ryan. “Dandyism is a cultivated art, and not a lot of bands are going to live up to your style standards.”
“Of course we’ll miss you,” says Brendon, eyes wide and pretty much shocked Tim would imply otherwise. “You guys are only the best choreographed dancers ever.”
“Brendon Urie, I’m going to miss you the most,” says Tim, sadly.
And later, at the afterparty, when Ryan presents their frontman Damian with the matching set of four lace cravats he found through his underground antique costume ring or whatever, Tim actually tears up and insists on hugging everyone while wearing his new cravat over his old neckerchief.
It could be the booze, but Jon feels a little melancholy, too. For what it’s worth, this first leg of the tour’s been good. Sold out shows, Pete dropping by occasionally to make sure they’re okay, and OK Go around with their years and years of touring experience to lend their philosophical insight whenever a venue fucks up the technical rider or the pyrotechnic trailer breaks down or someone has a fashion emergency like a dropped hem or a busted zipper. It’s sad that they’re not doing the rest of the tour together. It’s been good times.
At least, Jon feels sad until he sees Spencer across the room, standing under a gaudy wall ornament and talking to Andy the keyboardist. Andy is wearing a dove grey vest, and his sleeves are rolled up to show tanned forearms that look casually rugged and capable even from this far away. Spencer’s not wearing the new jeans, but a pair of wool trousers that look both authentically last-century and also sexy as hell. Andy reaches over and plucks one of Spencer’s suspenders. Spencer looks down, smiling.
Jon’s never really seen that smile, before. It’s not coy, or even flirty. It’s a decision already made.
--
Jon goes back to the bus early. Spencer comes back late.
Ryan is asleep and Brendon is still over at OK Go’s bus playing a dubious game of Scrabble with Damian, who always wins, and Tim, who always cheats. Jon went over there earlier to say a friendly goodbye, but Spencer wasn’t there. Either was Andy.
So Jon waits up, and when Spencer finally comes back he pretends he wasn’t waiting up at all. He’s just been reading his book at the table and drinking decaf from the gas station across the road. He’s wearing his pajama bottoms and a tie-dye t-shirt. It’s a totally normal pastime. Jon sits at the table and tries to look totally normal.
“Hey,” Spencer says, as he comes up the steps. But he gives Jon a funny look, like, don’t you know there’s a game of strip-scrabble going on next door, you antisocial weirdo?
But then he pushes his shoes into a cubby and so Jon says, “Hey” like he didn’t notice the look.
“What are you reading?” Spencer comes over to the table. He looks a little damp and slightly glassy-eyed, like physically the sweat may be dry, but mentally he’s still checked out. Being wherever he was, doing whatever he was doing.
Jon looks at the pink in his cheeks and thinks that Spencer looks exactly like he was making his farewells to some hyper-confidant career rockstar with shaggy hair and soft-tipped pianist’s fingers and a mouth that can do much more than sing back-up harmony.
Jon ducks his head and shrugs. “Just something Mitch passed on. It won some award, I guess.” Jon flips some pages to demonstrate how little he knows about awards and shit.
Mitch is one of the acrobat-slash-dancers, but he’s also a fire-eater. He pegged Jon as one-foot-still-in-the-closet the first day of the tour, and two days later tossed him this massive novel about rich young gays in Thatcherite England. It’s depressing as hell, and Jon is lost on most of the references, but it’s got a little bit of anonymous park sex, and a bathhouse threesome, and some serious unrequited lust, and that keeps him going. He figures he’ll stop if the AIDS stuff gets too depressing.
“Is it good?” Spencer asks. He’s still lingering. He sounds half-absent, but his gaze is still focused on Jon. How come it never feels like Spencer’s just being polite, even when it’s obvious he is?
Jon is grateful, despite himself. Spencer’s blue eyes and half a smile are all it takes to light that little fire in him; a flame of happiness that he wishes he could just quash and be done with.
“Yeah, it’s okay.” Jon says, laying the book’s spine flat on the table, wondering what would happen if he mentioned the bathhouse scene. “I like it.”
“Good,” Spencer says. He lingers some more. Then he sits down at the table, reaches for a half-empty water bottle in the seat cushions. “Didn’t feel like Scrabble?”
Jon shrugs on autopilot, smiles off the question: “I was tired. And definitely not drunk enough to play it by their rules.”
Spencer crinkles his eyes a little and says, “For sure. I walked in and Damian looked like a stripper with a bow tie and Brendon had lost his pants.”
Jon chuckles half-heartedly. He glances down at his book because he can’t really look at Spencer like this, like they’re friends and it’s cool if somewhere else everyone’s naked. Because he doesn’t feel like it’s cool. He feels like it sucks.
And then Spencer drums his fingertips on the tabletop and says, “So, seriously, are you doing okay?”
And Jon wants to laugh because why does Spencer have to sound so fucking earnest when he asks? So he says “Seriously?” and smiles to show that it’s a joke, that question. Not something Spencer needs to worry about, of all things.
But Spencer rolls his eyes and takes a swallow of his tepid water with a critical gaze leveled at Jon’s fake smile. He’s not fooled: “You’re sitting in the dark by yourself while everyone else is partying. That’s the kind of stuff we expect from him” - Spencer tosses a thumb at Ryan’s bunk, where Ryan is either sleeping or posting poetry to the website - “because he’s the tortured artist. But you’re our bassist. You live on this bus, too, so if something’s up, you should say so.”
Spencer’s gaze is level, now, not glassy at all. It’s a little intimidating in its hawkish focus, its directness. Jon hates being direct. He hates saying things flat-out when he could circle the topic forever until he’s worn a groove so comfortable it feels natural to finally hit the center; the messy, gooey middle of whatever emotion he’d rather not face.
But now Spencer’s pinned him down like an owl on a mouse so he says, his voice dragging and awkward, “…I don’t know.” A pause. “Eric and the rest of those guys sleep on the bus with the sound techs. Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“Wouldn’t what be?” Spencer presses, voice pitiless.
“For me to be in with the other backup musicians. I’m not, like-” And there Jon cuts himself off. He wants to say, I’m not Brent, but that name is still a little too sharp to handle in the close confines of this half-lit kitchenette. So rather than cut Spencer open, Jon just drops the rest of his thought to hang in the air.
It doesn’t seem to matter, though. Brent’s name is so venomous these days even a sideways reference to it stings. Spencer hears it whether Jon says it or not. He nods and says, “We thought you’d be happier this way.”
Jon feels terrible, instantly. He shouldn’t have admitted that it makes a difference to him. Especially when that word - temporary - has never made a difference to anyone else, has never meant he’s been treated differently at all.
Well, except for a few of the fans, once or twice. Again, Brent’s name lingering like a ghost, quick to open wounds. But everyone felt bad about that. Not just Jon. Everyone’s always been so quick to reassure him that it has nothing to do with him, he shouldn’t even think about that. Spencer, in fact, was the one to say, quietly, where the mics would never catch them: fuck those kids, they don’t know shit.
“You guys have been really good to me,” Jon says, as sincere as he can manage. Because that’s the truth he’d rather say. Even if it makes him sound like an orphan taken in by a good-hearted family of Victorian aristocrats. Or the gay school friend taken in by the wealthy family of a conservative politician, going by Mitch’s book. Always on the edge of overstaying your welcome, lingering in the gray area between hired help and family.
Spencer is looking at him with that same focus, still. Eyes dark in the yellow light, mouth pointed in a certain kind of anger that seems directed entirely inward. Spencer says, voice tight: “I’m not kidding. You saved our asses. You deserve a place on this bus. You deserve to feel welcome here.”
“I do,” says Jon, almost convincingly.
“I hope so,” says Spencer.
“Really,” says Jon, again. “I’m sorry I said anything.”
Spencer just shakes his head. He doesn’t seem like he wants to hear anything else on the subject, and Jon pretends to read his book some more to avoid the silence that is suddenly swelling up between them. Spencer is pissed, Jon knows that. And he knows he should’ve kept his fucking mouth closed. So, belatedly, that is what Jon does.
Slowly, Jon’s pretending to read turns into actual reading, and eventually Spencer gets up to brush his teeth and climb into his bunk. He says goodnight as he drags the curtain closed and that’s when Jon gives up.
He shoves the book away into his bag, disgusted with the self-deluding protagonist, his hanging on and his leeching and his hopeless infatuation with the family’s beautiful son. It is so stupidly obvious, even this early on, that things aren’t going to go well for him. That what he wants will always be out of his reach.
--
Ryan and Brendon get into a fight during soundcheck at the venue in D.C. It’s not a real fight. It’s more that Ryan gets really pissy and won’t say why and Brendon takes it personally - probably because Ryan is specifically acting pissed at him - and then they don’t talk to each other for an hour while Boink and the techs go about their business around them.
Jon finishes up with his tuning, and then chooses to hang back with Brian, the drummer from the new openers, who is simultaneously terrifying with his height and his white facepaint and black eyeliner, and also totally normal in that he says like too much and can blather for five minutes about not much. Standing beside him, Jon feels embarrassed that they’re all so young, and this kind of teenage hormone thing that Ryan is doing right now - glowering through his sunglasses and speaking in short, snippy half-sentences when Boink presses for an answer, patient as a father - kind of underlines that issue. They’re the headlining act, for chrissakes, and they’re taking the percentages while the openers are scraping by on merch sales and a shitty flat fee, and they shouldn’t be acting like children.
But Brian doesn’t seem interested in judging. He just says mediating things like, “One time I saw Trent Reznor blow a gasket about his guitar tech’s haircut. He kicked an amp offstage. Then he fired the guy.”
Jon agrees that comparatively, Ryan’s attitude doesn’t seem so bad.
And anyway, when Spencer comes back from his phone call with his family, he just walks over and makes them start talking again. Maybe he rolls his eyes before he does it, and maybe Ryan’s voice goes all flat with denial, which makes Brendon look a little wounded, but somehow Spencer just levels his death ray glare around and cracks an inside joke and suddenly everything’s fine, so that by the time Spencer walks away again, Ryan’s sunglasses are tucked in his shirt pocket and Brendon is on his hands and knees with his face in one of Ryan’s monitors, listening for the buzz Ryan’s still complaining about, while Ryan picks up Jon’s Fender and strums out A minor, F, C and G.
“That kid’s eighteen?” Brian says, dark eyebrows up, long arms folded across his chest. His head swivels to watch Spencer cross the dance floor, heading back to the main soundboard. Probably to try to fix Ryan’s buzz problem over there. Assuming it’s not entirely psychosomatic.
“Yeah,” says Jon, feeling slightly depressed that he’s two years older and Spencer’s level of extreme emotional competence is the only thing keeping him sane, too.
“Huh,” says Brian. And that’s it, he just looks at Spencer like he’s either impressed, or intrigued or both.
Jon recognizes the expression. He makes it all the time.
--
They do the show, which is all ages and a lot of fun because Amanda and Brian are even more awesome than previously anticipated and the fans love them in desperate and unholy ways that makes Jon grin to see.
It’s mostly a good show because Spencer doesn’t ruin it by telling them about the text message beforehand.
He does that the next morning. Or afternoon, because they sleep until two - Amanda believes in kicking a tour off right, and when Brian announces no one’s going to bed, no one is about to argue - and so no one’s brain starts functioning until after dinner the day after.
The text came during soundcheck, in the middle of Spencer’s conversation with his sister. It’s from Brent. And it read: hope ur enjoying ur tour.
Jon sits on his piece of the couch while the band digests it. Ryan is glowering like an angry crow and croaks out an announcement that it’s passive aggressive bullshit, and also that Brent is a coward for texting Spencer instead of him.
Spencer doesn’t disagree, but he does huff as Ryan’s voice gets more and more shrill. He glares at Ryan across the aisle and says, “I didn’t tell you just so you could have a temper tantrum about it.”
Ryan points at Spencer’s phone like it’s the devil’s private emissary, “He’s the one having the tantrum. It’s been two months and this is the first thing we hear from him?”
“Did you really want to hear from him?” Brendon asks. He looks miserable, scowling down at his bag of gummy worms.
“Not really. I sure as hell didn’t want to hear this.” Ryan’s voice is acidic. Like he’d just as soon scald the people sitting on this bus, if he can’t reach across the miles to get at Brent.
“It sounds ominous,” Jon puts in. And then regrets it. Accusing Brent of threatening them is so not the classy thing for him to do.
“Yeah, that’s what he wants us to think.” Ryan mutters. “That he has something on us.”
“He does have something on us,” Spencer states. His voice is blunt. “We treated him like shit.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ryan squawks, “We put up with his bullshit for half a goddamn year, we were patient and we were forgiving and we never stopped him from doing whatever the hell he wanted-”
It goes downhill from there. Ryan rants for a long time. Brendon looks upset and irritated in equal turns. And Ryan gets angrier and angrier as Spencer, implacable, keeps poking holes in his logic and reminding him of times when Ryan’s good/evil narrative didn’t sit so tidily. Ryan doesn’t want to hear it - he wants to hear that he’s right, and Brent is wrong, and everyone’s on his side exclusively. But Spencer just sticks to the facts - that they don’t know what Brent means, he could be over it, but he has every right not to be - and so the argument burns on.
Eventually, Jon goes and hides in his bunk. He’ll listen to his ipod until it’s time to go onstage. Or until Spencer talks Ryan down. Whichever comes first. Jon catches a tired, sorry glance from Brendon as he pulls the curtain shut.
And momentarily, as Ryan’s voice goes up an octave one more time, Jon wonders if Spencer is actually capable of holding them all together for the rest of the tour. Or if, more likely, they’re all standing on a landmine, and Spencer throwing his body on it isn’t going to lessen the blast any, it’s just going to mean he’s the one who gets torn apart first.
--
Jon has a pair of basketball shorts in his duffel. He’s always been a pretty shitty basketball player - for obvious reasons - but he thought that maybe Panic might be the kind of band that expects him to hit the gym and work his abs, or something, so he packed the shorts when he left Chicago.
He also digs up a pair of sneakers that have a little bit more support in them than your standard pair of chucks, in that they have some cushioning sewn on top of the rubber sole.
Jon also owns a bright yellow terrycloth wristband. And a matching headband. Gifts from his brother Mike, who still thinks that Jon’s summer gig in eyeliner is hilarious.
Jon also has a theory about Spencer.
So as he’s crawling into his bunk at two a.m. after the Times Square show, he puts these things within easy reach of a groping hand.
And when he wakes up in the very early hours to see Spencer shoveling through his duffel bag and stuffing himself into an inside-out t-shirt in the dark, Jon slips on his shorts and shoes and wristband/headband combo and slides out of his bunk to stand by the bus door.
Spencer looks at Jon like he’s maybe sleepwalking or something. “Why are you up?” he asks, voice low. He looks like he hasn’t slept yet, actually, with dark hollows under his eyes. And that’s not a surprise, because it doesn’t look like Brendon or Ryan are back from the afterparty yet, either.
Jon just shrugs. He wants to ask the same thing but he is tired because it is four fucking a.m. and his brain isn’t quite ready to supply the words to his mouth. Instead, he just kind of stands there, swaying slightly like there’s a breeze.
Spencer looks like he’s not above asking the same question again, until he gets an answer, but he’s staring hard enough - set mouth, furrowed brow, straight shoulders - to knock Jon over and he must see something that answers it for him, because he doesn’t ask again.
He just bends down and pulls on his runners and says, “C’mon.”
Outside, the air is warm with the smell of people and garbage and traffic. Spencer pauses by the side of the bus. Jon waits, too, letting his eyes adjust as Spencer takes a second to crouch and cinch his laces tighter.
Jon is just starting to wonder if he should stretch or something when Spencer pops up, bounces up and down on the balls of his feet a few times, looks west down 44th St, and takes off.
Jon manages a huff of air, and then goes after him.
Did he know that this is what Spencer’s been doing? This is the question he asks himself as they hit the sixth city block and Jon’s lungs start a slow burn in his chest. Even if he suspected the t-shirts were for running, he realizes, then he certainly wasn’t clear on how fucking fast Spencer is.
Spencer runs with his chin up and his chest forward and his arms in easy brackets at his sides. He lifts his heels and his shoes land softly and his hips warble just a bit at the height of each step and Jon focuses on that to keep himself going.
He sure as hell needs something to chase. Because his eyes are watering and he’s hopping garbage on the sidewalk in sodium light shadows and every time they see a Don’t Walk sign flash orange he prays to god they’ll stop at the corner, but Spencer obeys the letter of the law, of course, and doesn’t walk, but sprints across whatever cross-street is in his way. Four a.m. traffic on a Saturday in Manhattan still sucks more than should be legal, but Spencer darts like a rabbit when he has to, and sometimes slows down to a loose-limbed jog that never quite resolves into Jon’s dream of a walking breather.
And then they hit the river.
The wide lanes that run north-south down the Hudson have dark trees and a cool breeze coming off the water, and for a moment Jon thinks, okay, this is going to be okay, this is getting better. Flatter, wider, smoother, straighter, emptier.
And that’s when Spencer speeds up; a locomotive with miles of empty rail ahead.
Jon’s lungs are pulling in air like it’s heavy as water and he has a stitch developing in his gut that he’s trying to tense out, and his shoulders feel tight and strained, and his feet feel numb because his laces are too tight, and all of these feelings are familiar from ancient high school nightmares, but what’s he supposed to do? Lose Spencer in the dark?
Jon sucks in air, and picks up his pace.
And after a while, he even pulls up abreast of Spencer and glances sideways and sees flushed cheeks and streaming eyes and a slack mouth and sweat shining on the back of his neck. His hair is everywhere, plastered against his skin. Jon thinks he really needs a headband. Spencer is breathing a ragged rhythm - out for two paces and then a long harsh suck of air in - but he keeps running flat out, face twisted into something like pain, his hands curled into loose fists at his hips. He just keeps going.
They keep going together. Past huge grey ships and white gazebos and about a billion benches. And at some arbitrary point, a streetlight indistinguishable from the rest, Spencer slows enough to make a wide u-turn. And Jon’s knees buckle and he stops. He bends over double, elbows on his thighs, and coughs for a minute, trying to swallow enough spit to say something like just a second.
Spencer slows to a walk, too, expression slack and unreadable as he pants. He grabs an ankle to stretch his thigh, then pulls the same knee up to his chest. Jon can only barely start to consider straightening up, much less balancing on one foot.
Still, Spencer’s silent waiting pulls him upright. And they start walking back north up the river. Slowly, gingerly. Jon is wiped. He is going to die if they walk any faster. He’ll throw himself into the river, first.
And after fifty yards, Spencer grins, throws his hands over his head in a ballerina stretch, bounces on the balls of his feet, and takes off.
Over his shoulder, he calls, “C’mon. It’s only three miles back.”
--
Jon sleeps straight through the morning. He opted out of braving the awful little trickle of a bus shower that no one’s dared to use yet anyway, and just wiped himself off with a facecloth. So he wakes up disgusting: sweat dried in a crust on his lower back and across his shoulders. He stinks. His headband is a wet mound on the ledge beside his phone. With his curtain closed and his feet pressed against the bottom wall of his bunk, he idly pushes the terrycloth into a semblance of flatness so it can dry out.
He figures he’ll need it again. No point in letting it molder.
He guesses it’s somewhere around three or four in the afternoon, now. The light has softened up, the air conditioner isn’t working itself too hard, and the bus is still moving. They’ll be in Boston soon.
Beyond his curtain, he can hear Spencer and Brendon talking. It can’t be about Brent, because they don’t sound at all stressed. They’re just shooting the shit. Brendon giggles a lot, and Spencer keeps making flat statements that make Brendon laugh harder.
Jon lies quietly for a long time, listening for Spencer’s laugh. But it never happens.
It’s just the sound of Brendon unwinding, and Spencer manning the machinery to do it, keeping the process safe and steady and even.
--
They get a hotel room in Boston between shows. They get like, twenty hotel rooms, actually. Including Amanda and Brian and Greta and her guys and the backup musicians and everyone’s techs and managers and the goddamn acrobats. It’s close to the venue, first choice of most bands, according to the promoter. It’s not really a nice hotel, but it’s easy on Pete’s budget and so it’s the one they pick.
Jon showers for forever before the show. Brendon is on the bed scowling at his phone when Jon comes out, dressed and damp. Jon goes, “Sorry, I kind of hogged it.”
“No problem,” says Brendon. He looks like he didn’t even register that Jon was speaking to him, he’s so focused on texting, stabbing the buttons with his thumbs. However much he was laughing this afternoon, his mood has dropped down to something sullen.
Jon deposits his armful of dirty clothes on the floor and drops onto his own mattress. Starfished across the bed, he feels like he can uncoil his spine an extra three inches. The bunks on the bus aren’t exactly spacious. Jon writhes around until he cracks a vertebra or two.
Brendon looks over at the sound. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I’m not, I’m just - you know - enjoying the room,” Jon rolls over again, limbs following limply.
“Better not forget to jump on the bed, then,” says Brendon to the lit screen of his phone. It is totally unclear as to whether he’s making a joke or not. He’s frowning too hard at whoever he’s texting.
“Or have a pillow fight,” Jon sighs, happily. He may have slept all day, but at this point, on this awful little springy mattress with its questionable comforter and scratchy sheets, he’d like to stay in bed for an additional eight hours. It’s just that great to be able to spread his arms to their full span without hitting plastic walls or a body passing in the aisle.
Brendon tosses his phone on the nightstand and flops back onto his bed. He looks at Jon, who blinks back at him, and it takes all of three seconds for his mood to evaporate. Jon actually watches it disappear.
“I love hotel nights,” Brendon admits, wriggling around and bunching the quilt up irreparably.
“Me too,” Jon agrees.
Brendon plows his head under his pillows, and his voice comes out muffled: “I want to have the entire afterparty right here in this bed. I’m coming straight back here after the show.”
“High five,” says Jon, and lifts his hand in token effort.
Five feet away, face still buried, Brendon does the same.
And so that’s exactly what they do. Eyelinered and be-ruffled, Brendon tempts Amanda and Greta to abandon the party backstage at the venue, and pretty soon everyone who would normally be hanging around there has made it to this ratty hotel, instead. There are people trailing in and out of the rooms on the two floors they’ve booked off, drinking and talking and playing music too loud and generally being obnoxious. Brendon has five people piled into his bed - by virtue of his insistence that everyone see how amazingly comfortable it is, a fact that people somehow agree with once they are curled up in the tentacles of the lovenest - and consequently Brendon looks like the most smug, most squashed, raccoon-eyed prince in the world.
Jon has definitely abandoned all claim to his own bed. For a while it was just him and Greta and Mitch drinking beers on it, but then a bunch of people who said they knew the promoter showed up, and Jon decided to cede his place to some scenesters in shoes that cost more than his car. He takes his beer and goes looking for a better seat and a less pretentious conversation.
In the hall, he sees more people leaning around with drinks in their hands, holding up walls and talking loudly at each other. There are people kissing and it takes Jon more than a few false starts to find Ryan and Spencer’s room. Or maybe it’s not their room. Maybe it’s just the one that Ryan is holed up in while their real one is taken up by Boink macking on some locals.
Jon walks into an empty room littered with glasses and empty bottles, and when he glances in the bathroom on the way out, he finds Ryan.
“Hey,” Jon says, surprised, and Ryan looks up from where he’s crammed into the space between toilet and tub. He’s wedged in there like a broken toy; like he needs something to clamp him down and hold him together.
Jon pauses, just looking. Then he takes a step into the bathroom. “Are you okay?”
Ryan shrugs, nods. “Tired,” he says. His makeup is as blurred as Brendon’s, but streaky in a way that is suspicious. Rubbed off with the heel of a hand in a batwing swoosh.
“Are you sick?” Jon asks, even though he already knows the answer. He wishes Ryan was sick. Sick he can deal with.
“No,” says Ryan, waving off the thought. His gaze has already dropped back to the floor. He’s squinting. His voice is clear and polite when he says, “Could you turn off the light?”
Jon flicks the switch. Ryan’s shape disappears in the black, and Jon knows he should stay, but at the same time he has no idea how to help. And really: this could be Ryan’s regular hotel night ritual, for all Jon knows. It could be his totally normal, rational coping mechanism for being the only sober person on the floor. But Jon knows that of course this isn’t either. Polite as Ryan may be, he is not okay. And Jon is not prepared to deal with that.
So Jon hovers in the doorway and says, casual, “Do you know where Spencer is?”
From the dark, Ryan replies, “I saw him with Brian a while ago. I think they went to buy more alcohol.”
Jon nods. “Okay,” and then he adds, “stay here, I’ll be back in a bit.” Like Ryan wandering off on his own like some Victorian madwoman in a white dress is a major risk.
Then Jon goes to find Spencer, wherever he is. Getting Brian to boot for them or what. Jon is counting on the fact that Spencer will know what’s going on with Ryan, will drop everything to fix it. Jon has only seen him do it a hundred times now. For any of them, for any of their crew, for anyone on the tour. Spencer is always, always there.
But Spencer is plastered.
Jon finds him outside by the buses, talking to a group of guys that Jon’s never seen before. They’re passing a joint around and when Jon shows up Spencer invites him into the circle. “Jon!” he says, happy. “These guys say I should go to law school with them. They say I could totally hack it.”
“Hey guys,” Jon tips his beer bottle - empty, now, but he has yet to put it down - at the group, and waves off the joint when it’s offered. He tries to say it quietly: “Spencer, I need your help with something.”
Spencer grins at him, eyes bright, “With what, Jon?” he asks, and the question is totally drunken, and also totally coy, and Jon feels a heat in his skin that makes Spencer’s hand around his waist seem way less casual.
“Come inside,” Jon says, and glances apologetically at the guys in their ironic ties and tight jeans, like, sorry to smoke and run, but the only one who looks disappointed is the one with the dark eyes and scruffy hair. He has the irritated air of the freshly cockblocked, and it makes Jon pull Spencer along a little faster.
But Spencer is reluctant. He slows down as they thread through the parked buses, his hand insistent at Jon’s waist, tugging on his shirt. “Where are we going?” he asks, and his voice is wicked and charming in a way that it never is when he’s sober, when the weight of the world is riding him. His hair is a mess of sharp pieces and his antique buttons are undone at the throat. He balks entirely and smiles with teeth, “Jon Walker, where are you taking me?”
Jon has to stop, turn back slightly. He reaches for Spencer’s dropped hand, tries to tell him about Ryan in the bathroom. “I don’t know what to do,” he starts.
But Spencer isn’t listening, he’s pulling Jon closer by that same hand, stumbling them both back up against the side of an anonymous bus. “It’s okay,” he promises, as if in reply. Something in the way he says it - a breathless mutter - makes Jon think it’s not, though.
Spencer puts his other hand in Jon’s hair, fingers up the nape of his neck. Spencer kisses him.
He tastes green with weed, sweet with rum, and his hands are warm and his mouth is hot.
It takes Jon forever to react, to open his mouth and let Spencer’s tongue in, let Spencer’s hands pull them both harder against the bus, hip to hip, hands in each other’s shirttails.
Spencer nips the corners of Jon’s mouth, Spencer’s smile curves up into their kisses. His skin, where Jon touches it, is smooth and warm and it heats Jon up in a way that makes him groan.
It takes Jon too long to pull away. Way too long. He’s still holding his beer bottle, he realizes, as he puts the back of his hand to his mouth. He takes an uncertain step back, staring at Spencer, suckerpunched.
“Spencer,” he says, and he hears the question and also the nakedness in his own voice, and he stops himself there.
Spencer just gazes back at him, grinning, eyes smudged and dark as coal.
“Something’s wrong with Ryan,” Jon says then. Because he can’t say, something’s wrong with this when he’s been wanting it for months. When Spencer is looking at him with eyes full of promises.
Spencer’s smile drops. He looks past Jon for a second, then back. And as he takes a step forward he puts wrists around Jon’s neck and bends into Jon’s shoulder and says in a tiny, quiet voice, “Fuck Ryan.”
And Jon feels instantly sorry for coming down here to find him, crying to Spencer with his problems and Ryan’s and everyone’s. He should’ve dealt with it on his own, he realizes. He could have. He just didn’t want to. And now he’s put it on Spencer instead, Spencer who never unloads onto anyone else, because there isn’t anyone.
But that’s it. It all snaps away in a second. Spencer straightens up, smiles a bit like him standing here hanging off of Jon is a funny joke, and then starts toward the bright glass doors of the hotel lobby. “So where is he?”
And the way he leads Jon back to that dark bathroom, clear steps and a steady voice, makes Jon believe that maybe the drunk, maybe the flirting, maybe the kissing was all just a game. Just a ritual. Just a coping mechanism.
It makes Jon’s skin heat up in a different way. It mortifies him.
--
Before they leave Boston, they have breakfast, just the four of them.
It’s a nice place: real maple syrup and rice milk for their coffee and a Fair Trade logo stuck on the espresso machine and a menu that says the bacon comes from the owner’s uncle’s farm in Vermont. The place is full of students living above their means and the kind of hipsters that wear baby slings. It’s totally outside the range of their per diem budget, and it makes Jon feel really young and uncool, but Ryan keeps giving him this look and these questions, like what do you think of the coffee? and how’re those hashbrowns? and try one of these strawberries that makes Jon feel obligated to pretend to like it.
The coffee is really awesome, though.
Halfway through his omelet, the table gets really quiet. And when Jon looks up, Ryan is giving a nonverbal command via his urgent expression and Spencer is silently balking and so it’s Brendon who says, through a mouthful of crepe, totally abrupt: “Jon, we really like you.”
“Yeah,” says Ryan, “We’ve been talking about it a lot.”
“Oh yeah?” says Jon, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He looks back down at his plate. He takes another bite.
Brendon and Ryan look at each other.
Spencer is the one who puts his fork down and says coolly: “We don’t know what your plans are for September, or if you’ve maybe thought about this at all. But we’d like you to keep going with us.”
“Officially,” Ryan clarifies. He digs in his bag and produces a pen. And then a bent sheaf of printed pages. Spencer eyes them and spreads them into two distinct piles.
“We got Richard to draw this up on our end.” Spencer says, still entirely professional. “And this one’s from Pete. It’s not the same one we signed - fewer creative obligations to the label. So you should probably get your agent to look it over.”
Jon sits silently. He doesn’t have an agent. They know that. He signed the napkin contract that got him this summer tour on faith and friendship.
He’s been feeling less of those, these past few weeks. These past few days.
Dutifully, he pushes his plate aside and pulls the contracts closer for inspection. But his eyes glaze over as he tries to read them. He’s just staring at a blurred-out grey page while his thoughts trip in circles. Brent signed a contract, his mind tells him.
He looks up, and Spencer is leaning forward over his plate. Eyes hollow, hair dirty, expression unreadable. It makes Jon wonder which Spencer is the real one: the one who kissed him, so clear and demanding, two nights ago, or the one who is sitting across the table with his face closed off like a police line.
Because Jon knows that only one of them will ever give him what he wants. And under the circumstances, even that is suspect.
Ryan tries to ease the silence a little: “Don’t try to sign them now. We can wait for you to get them looked over.”
“We’re not trying to pressure you,” Brendon puts in, slithering an arm around Jon to squeeze him. “We just want you to know that we want to buy the whole cow.”
“Brendon,” Ryan groans, “Why would you say that?”
“What’s wrong with saying we respect him?” Brendon returns, defensive.
“It’s not any less offensive than when you say it to a girl,” Ryan tells him, eyes rolled up in agony at having to explain. “Gee, Jon,” he mocks, “We may have been sucking milk from your tit for free, but we’re now convinced that our fears of your low quality were unfounded. Congratulations!”
“That’s not what I meant,” Brendon snaps, huddling closer to Jon, putting his chin on Jon’s shoulder.
And Jon goes, “It’s fine. I’m not like, offended or anything. It’s totally fine.”
Brendon says, “See?”
Ryan angles a look at Jon, “You’re being way too polite about it.”
Jon just looks at him and shrugs, “No, it’s cool. I’ve always liked getting my teats sucked.”
And then Brendon brays out a laugh that attracts the attention of the servers at the counter and the toddler in the next booth, and that makes Ryan snort into his tea and then Spencer smiles, too, after a second.
Jon signs the contracts right there.
He pulls the pen out of Ryan’s hand and doesn’t look at anyone when he does it. Just the act of it is draining some of the tension out of them, he can feel it already. Things will settle down. Things will feel better for him, and for all of them. All they need is a little bit of hope.
If he regrets this decision later, he tells himself, at least he won’t regret this moment, when he took what they offered him and gave something back in return.
--
Ryan’s apology is quiet and drawn, delivered shortly before they go onstage two nights later. Him and Jon are sitting in the green room, and he’s fixing one of Jon’s recurring eyeliner snafus with a wet thumb and some blue glitter.
His lips are really close to Jon’s, and they’re both breathing very shallowly, or not at all, as Ryan redraws the line straight and clean.
Ryan murmurs, eyes narrowed and focused: “I’m sorry about the other night.”
And without moving his head a fraction, Jon goes, “For what?” like he doesn’t even remember.
Ryan rolls his eyes: an elaborate and theatrical gesture with his face painted in purple spirals like it is. But his answer sounds like it strains his vocal chords, it's so quiet. “It’s not something I’m good at talking about.”
“It’s fine,” Jon says, and he’d pull away if Ryan didn’t have a sharpened lead poised a quarter inch from his cornea. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“But I am,” Ryan insists. His tone is brittle, in the way it gets when he’s contradicted, and Jon keeps quiet.
Ryan coats his fingertips in glitter and touches them to Jon’s browbone: “Close your eyes,” he says. His fingers brush Jon’s eyelids and tip Jon’s chin up, angling his face like they might kiss.
Blind, Jon thinks that Ryan’s never been honest with him like this before. He wants to return the favor. He wants to show his trust. So he says, in a low murmur, what he’s been thinking for days. “I shouldn’t have ran and got Spencer.”
Ryan exhales a tiny, bitter laugh, like what else could you have done? but he doesn’t respond.
And tortured in that silence and blackness, Jon wishes he had someone else to murmur this too besides Spencer’s oldest and best friend. He says: “It seems like he’s angry with me now. He hasn’t really talked to me since.”
“The only person Spencer is ever angry with is himself,” Ryan says, withdrawing his hands. Jon opens his eyes, and Ryan looks for a second like a funeral guest, a boy in mourning. “Anything else is just you getting caught in the crossfire.”
--
“Brent is suing,” Richard says on the speakerphone over Ryan’s cell. “They served me the summons this morning. He wants his quarter.”
“You mean Jon’s quarter,” Brendon jumps to amend. “That’s Jon’s quarter now.”
“Quarter of what?” Ryan snorts. “The rental buses? Who gave him the impression that we’re making money on this tour?”
“He wants the royalties,” Spencer mutters.
Jon stays silent.
“We have a few options,” says Richard then, firm and unruffled and completely professional. He makes it all seem stark and linear, so that even later, when they’re giving a garbled explanation to an outraged Pete, or sitting around the table in a dark and scowling silence, there is still a step forward in front of them. And another one after that.
--
Spencer hasn’t left the bus at night since New York, as far as Jon knows. He feels weird for keeping track, but it’s just a physical fact that he doesn’t fall asleep until he’s heard Spencer toe his shoes off and rustle into his bunk. And yes, it’s possible that Jon’s slept through a silent exit, because it’s not like Spencer looks exactly well-rested these days, but he’s pretty sure he would’ve woken up. Living so close, you tune in to certain things about people. Their footsteps become as particular as their voices; the smell of their dirty skin; the sound of a shuddered breath over the rumble of the engine. No doubt: Jon is absolutely sure he would know if Spencer had left again.
So in the blackest part of morning after the Columbus show, Jon wakes up to a familiar yellow light.
Spencer’s bare shoulders are visible through the crack of the curtain. He’s pulling on a shirt, he’s bending to tie his shoes.
They’ve been ignoring what happened between the buses in Boston. They’ve spoken plenty since then, and it hasn’t come up. Jon knows it’s because there’s nothing to say. He’s never been one to pick at scabs. He hates the mess.
But if Spencer’s running tonight, he wants to go, too. He wants to see that grin of triumph that comes at the end. Jon would run himself raw and ragged to see that smile again.
Quickly, he fishes out his shorts. He grabs his headband. When he worms out of his bunk, Spencer’s already slipping down the steps up front.
Jon hits the door latch and catches up to him on the ground outside. The door hisses closed behind them.
“Six miles, right?” Jon suggests, bright and cheery, as Spencer turns to look at him.
And even as he says it, Jon sees that Spencer isn’t wearing his runners or that pair of ratty old shorts from last time. He’s wearing the gray jeans from the mall in Norfolk, a vintage t-shirt and a slightly crumpled blazer. His favorite hi-tops.
Jon stops dead. He closes his mouth and tries really hard to not look like a total fucking idiot.
“Brian texted me.” Spencer says, like he’s answering a question. “They’re still up in their bus. They’re playing cards.”
Jon nods eagerly, like of course that’s what’s going on. Of course.
“I couldn’t sleep,” says Spencer, like he only just remembered to come up with an excuse.
“Yeah,” Jon agrees. “Me neither.”
“You’re going for a run?” says Spencer, polite. As if that’s totally normal.
And Jon doesn’t have any kind of way out of it, so he nods. “Yeah. Definitely.”
“Cool,” says Spencer. He gestures vaguely at the fleet of buses lined up in the parking lot. Not a single one of them is lit up from inside.
Jon just turns in a completely arbitrary direction: the opposite of wherever Spencer is headed. Whichever bus. Whoever’s bunk.
He starts running, and he picks up speed as he jumps the curb to the sidewalk, and heads into the dark. His whole body is already overheated, flushed in mortification, but in some ways he’s grateful. Because how often do you actually get to escape from a conversation like that? How often do you get to just turn around and run away?
(part two)
Pairing: Jon/Spencer
Warnings: kissing, drinking, cursing, references to casual sex. A solid PG-13, I'd say.
Words: 23,983
Notes: I started writing this last November. It was supposed to be a 3000 word one-off to please estei, something quick before I had to write my Yuletide story and gave up fic for January. Now it's three and a half months later and I was pretty sure this story would never end, and also I kind of didn't want it to. And I know it's a bad thing when the person who you're writing a story for has to beta it, too, but Meghan was totally game and totally read this bad boy more times than I did. I also managed to shoehorn delighter back into this fandom just to read it for me because she is ever-loving, and thissugarcane took a look at it too and late last night I even got owench to read it over. So thanks go to all of them, because I make a lot of typos and obvs need a lot of coddling. ♥ ♥ ♥
Summary: It's July 2006 and Jon Walker is kind of selfish, and kind of oblivious, and kind of in love with the drummer. None of these things are making this tour easy.
Jon wakes up and the bus is entirely dark except for a yellow smudge of light up near the front. It reflects off the windows and through the crack in his curtain, and if he squints Jon can see Spencer’s back where he’s bent over his duffel, stripping off a t-shirt.
Jon blinks. Wonders what time it is. The bus isn’t moving. He sends a hand fumbling under his pillow for his phone.
Jon watches Spencer wrangle a new shirt over his shoulders and around his elbows. Then Spencer crouches down out of sight, and Jon closes his eyelids in a slow blink. When he opens them again it’s because he can hear the front door squeaking open. A second later a sigh of humid Florida air touches his face.
Spencer’s gone, Jon realizes. He got off the bus. He left.
But he doesn’t find his phone in his sheets, and he doesn’t know the time, and when he closes his eyes again - another slow blink - he’s asleep.
--
Jon wakes up again and it’s bright out and the bus still isn’t moving. He crawls out of bed to find Brendon and Ryan slouched at the table eating a greasy fast food breakfast in a kind of miserable, companionable silence that Jon can’t help but break just by being there.
Brendon, chewing, looks up and says, “Hey.”
“Morning,” Jon sits down on the couch across from them, sliding into a sprawl, and wonders if there’s any other breakfast lying around, and where they got theirs, and if they didn’t get him any because they didn’t remember or because they didn’t care. Which is kind of an unfair thought to have, but Jon is hungry and wishes he had some deep-fried potato to put in his mouth.
But as the silence lengthens - Ryan crumpling up his paper bag and pulling over the copy of Spin that lists Brendon as the seventeenth hottest star under 25 - Jon remembers something.
“Hey,” he says. “Where’s Spencer?”
Brendon shakes his head, mouth full of muffin.
Ryan shrugs without glancing away from his magazine. “Asleep.”
And Jon is about to say, but he left when the curtain to Spencer’s bunk twitches and he slides to the ground looking pale and groggy. His hair is a rat’s nest and half his face is creased to match his pillow case.
“Guys,” he says, “Your food stinks.”
“Sorry,” Brendon says, as Ryan mutters, “Stinks deliciously, you mean.”
Spencer yawns and staggers over to get a bottle of water, and Jon watches him, trying to figure out if the snug grey t-shirt is the same one he saw in the middle of the night, or if he dreamt it.
Jon considers the creepiness and also the dumbness of having a dream about Spencer changing his t-shirt, and then without meaning to finds himself watching Spencer stretch: the shy appearance of a strip of skin under the yawning hem. Spencer’s spine arches and his belly curves and Jon can see the line of his hipbone. It draws the eye down.
Then Spencer shrugs the t-shirt back down, self-conscious in an unconscious way.
He glances at Jon, before Jon can look away and pretend he wasn’t watching.
“Did you eat?” Spencer asks.
“No,” Jon still feels slightly wronged by that fact, even if he tries not to look like it.
“Let’s go find something that at least has a vegetable in it,” Spencer says, even as he grabs the garbage off the table and shoves it in the trash hole under the microwave. Ryan waves his magazine in acknowledgement.
Jon thinks that a vegetable sounds pretty good. He gets up to find his flipflops.
--
Tonight they’re playing Fort Lauderdale: an outdoor concert at this huge nightclub that is all silver lights and red curtains inside, but apparently jungle-themed outside. There are girls in hand-made t-shirts on the other side of the fence during sound check. There is someone who is paid to go get them coffee from the diner down the street.
Jon stands gulping a half-decent medium drip beside the soundboard on stage left, hoping it will banish his bus-induced diesel fume headache. Their sound guy is named Boink, and he is fifty but looks seventy and has this problem where he is constantly hitting on all the girls backstage, be they roadies or acrobats or Greta. The band pays him about a million dollars an hour, and Jon is watching him remix Ryan’s monitors for the sixth time in as many shows. He can hear a buzz, apparently.
To help narrow it down, Ryan keeps playing the same chord progression over and over again. A minor, F, C, G. Over and over, using every instrument they have. Twenty times. Every time, Boink says, “Yup,” And Ryan says, “No, it’s still there.”
Spencer comes over to watch, too, and elbows Jon lightly and says, “Hey.”
Jon tips his cup and says, “Sometimes it looks like Boink’s going to put his hands around Ryan’s neck and squeeze till his head pops off.”
Spencer nods. “Ryan likes to keep his relationships honest that way.”
Jon wants to say, so I could throttle him too, if I wanted? but decides that seeing as he is barely a month into the tour with these guys whereas Ryan and Spencer have known each other since grade school, he’d better keep his mouth shut.
Still, he likes to think Spencer would’ve laughed.
“So how are you doing?” Spencer says, then.
And this is the kind of thing that Jon likes about Spencer. He asks. Jon always feels absurdly grateful whenever Spencer asks. Because he always means it. It makes whatever answer Jon would’ve given thirty seconds ago - miserable, sweaty, tired, irritated to hell by A minor, F, C, G - evaporate.
Instead, Jon smirks and gestures at the fence and says, “That crowd out there is going to be awesome. You can tell because they’ve been having group singalongs by track order for the past hour.”
“I know, right? Tell me about it,” Andy says, slouching into their conversation without having heard a word of it. He is carrying a shot of espresso in a very small white porcelain cup.
Jon would wonder how the hell he swung that, when the rest of them got diner coffee in styrofoam, but it’s kind of obvious. Andy is the keyboardist for OK Go, and he is wearing a three piece suit and a peridot bowtie. Honestly, he probably just had to ask, and someone moved mountains to make sure the bone china was clean.
Andy takes a sip of his coffee and gives Spencer a pleasant look. “Nice suspenders, Smith.”
Spencer plucks at his frilled collar, and returns politely: “Thanks. I like your brooch.”
Jon doesn’t say anything. Andy is kind of intimidating. Jon heard he cooks his whole bus bacon and toast and asparagus for breakfast using nothing but a microwave and a hot plate. That, and OK Go is responsible for probably the most popular music video ever posted to Youtube. They don’t act like it, though. They’ve always been really nice about everything. Super professional. Their bassist Tim is actually really awesome. But Jon just gets this weird feeling from Andy. Not competitive, or aggressive or anything. Just like, something masculine and voiceless and blunt.
Something that is all over Spencer.
Jon shifts, polite smile evaporating as he listens to Spencer and Andy talk in a half-ironic, half-serious way about cummerbunds. He slips away before he’s expected to say anything, and goes to double-check his own monitor.
--
Later, in the very darkest part of the morning, he catches Spencer leaving the bus again.
Again, he doesn’t say anything. Because honestly it’s none of his business. Jon’s just lying there with his entire Brand New collection on randomized repeat in his headphones and he watches Spencer change out of his frilly shirt - suspenders long gone, evidently - and into another cotton t-shirt. He has pointed shoulderblades that cast surprising shadows against the freckles on his back. His arms flex as he drops the shirt over himself, pulls it down. He is wearing shorts, he ties on a pair of runners, he pushes his hair out of his eyes and it falls right back into them.
Spencer goes down the steps, and into the night, and Jon wonders if he should stay awake to make sure that the driver doesn’t accidentally leave without him.
He decides to keep an eye cracked, just in case.
But when he wakes up, they’re in Orlando, and Spencer is sleeping in his bunk with his face buried in his pillow.
--
Two days later they’re in Norfolk, Virginia and Jon’s having this kind of weird lunch with Ryan where they stand together in the line for takeout in the foodcourt and make small talk.
Ryan says, “I guess she’s pretty intense.”
And Jon goes, “Yeah, I bet.”
“They’ve got some really good stuff planned for their act, though. Audience participation, but not lame.” Ryan continues.
“Awesome,” says Jon, scanning the menu.
That’s about all they have to say. Lately Ryan’s been getting morose - or just introspective, it’s hard to tell - at the drop of a hat. And anyway, Jon doesn’t think it’s his place to comment on the opening acts that Pete, or Pete’s guy, or whoever, paired them up with. Jon’s the replacement. It’s his job to play Brent’s parts better than Brent did, and to try to convince the fans not to hate him.
So instead of saying anything else, Jon orders a greek salad and some kababs.
Spencer and Brendon are across the mall getting Spencer a new pair of jeans because his old ones were hanging off his hips like clown pants. Ryan’s words, not his. Jon kind of wishes he’d gone with them, but he was hungry enough to risk some flat conversation. Ryan has got himself a pita with a giant bowl of tzatziki, and so Jon follows him to a plastic table beside a bank of potted plastic plants. Ryan is gazing at the display window of a nearby store. It seems to sell gold lamé hotpants and skin-tight pinstripe trousers exclusively.
“Hey,” Jon says as he manipulates the pits out of the kalamata olives in his dish. “We should get Andy and Tim and those guys a goodbye gift.”
Ryan perks up as he spoons tzatziki into his pita. “Like a ‘thanks for coming on our tour’ present.”
“Exactly,” says Jon.
“That’s so classy,” says Ryan. He takes a chunk out of his pita and chews for a while. “That’s a really good idea.”
Jon smiles at his kabab, because Ryan’s approval never feels easy to come by.
After they eat, Spencer and Brendon come find them in the hotpants store where Ryan is mulling over ironic fishnet elbow gloves versus items that might actually pass OK Go’s stringent fashion requirements. Tweed bowler hats, maybe. He asks the opinion of the middle-aged goth behind the counter, who brings out a tray of silk rosette brooches with rhinestones. Ryan hums, and Spencer makes a face. They all decide to think about it some more.
When they get back to the bus Spencer changes into his new jeans and everyone watches him stand in front of the full-length mirror.
Ryan says, “Those look fucking awesome, Spence.”
“I know, right?” says Brendon, proud. “I found them. I made him try them on.”
“They’re like a corset for my balls,” Spencer tells them, slouching at himself in the mirror. The jeans are grey and tight. Spencer is wearing a dark collared shirt that makes his eyes look crazy blue and he looks just. Really good.
Jon doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t trust himself to hit the right note. He goes back to pretending to read his book.
But he peeks, and so he sees Ryan come over and puts his hands in Spencer’s back pockets and his chin on Spencer’s shoulder as he drawls, “Whatever, you’ll get used to it.”
And then Brendon turns on the xbox, and that’s the end of the conversation.
--
Norfolk is the last show with OK Go, actually. And Tim the bassist is making sure everyone knows it. He spends the afternoon wandering around in his little cap and huge glasses and magenta trousers being loudmouthed and endearing. “You’ll miss us,” he says to Ryan. “Dandyism is a cultivated art, and not a lot of bands are going to live up to your style standards.”
“Of course we’ll miss you,” says Brendon, eyes wide and pretty much shocked Tim would imply otherwise. “You guys are only the best choreographed dancers ever.”
“Brendon Urie, I’m going to miss you the most,” says Tim, sadly.
And later, at the afterparty, when Ryan presents their frontman Damian with the matching set of four lace cravats he found through his underground antique costume ring or whatever, Tim actually tears up and insists on hugging everyone while wearing his new cravat over his old neckerchief.
It could be the booze, but Jon feels a little melancholy, too. For what it’s worth, this first leg of the tour’s been good. Sold out shows, Pete dropping by occasionally to make sure they’re okay, and OK Go around with their years and years of touring experience to lend their philosophical insight whenever a venue fucks up the technical rider or the pyrotechnic trailer breaks down or someone has a fashion emergency like a dropped hem or a busted zipper. It’s sad that they’re not doing the rest of the tour together. It’s been good times.
At least, Jon feels sad until he sees Spencer across the room, standing under a gaudy wall ornament and talking to Andy the keyboardist. Andy is wearing a dove grey vest, and his sleeves are rolled up to show tanned forearms that look casually rugged and capable even from this far away. Spencer’s not wearing the new jeans, but a pair of wool trousers that look both authentically last-century and also sexy as hell. Andy reaches over and plucks one of Spencer’s suspenders. Spencer looks down, smiling.
Jon’s never really seen that smile, before. It’s not coy, or even flirty. It’s a decision already made.
--
Jon goes back to the bus early. Spencer comes back late.
Ryan is asleep and Brendon is still over at OK Go’s bus playing a dubious game of Scrabble with Damian, who always wins, and Tim, who always cheats. Jon went over there earlier to say a friendly goodbye, but Spencer wasn’t there. Either was Andy.
So Jon waits up, and when Spencer finally comes back he pretends he wasn’t waiting up at all. He’s just been reading his book at the table and drinking decaf from the gas station across the road. He’s wearing his pajama bottoms and a tie-dye t-shirt. It’s a totally normal pastime. Jon sits at the table and tries to look totally normal.
“Hey,” Spencer says, as he comes up the steps. But he gives Jon a funny look, like, don’t you know there’s a game of strip-scrabble going on next door, you antisocial weirdo?
But then he pushes his shoes into a cubby and so Jon says, “Hey” like he didn’t notice the look.
“What are you reading?” Spencer comes over to the table. He looks a little damp and slightly glassy-eyed, like physically the sweat may be dry, but mentally he’s still checked out. Being wherever he was, doing whatever he was doing.
Jon looks at the pink in his cheeks and thinks that Spencer looks exactly like he was making his farewells to some hyper-confidant career rockstar with shaggy hair and soft-tipped pianist’s fingers and a mouth that can do much more than sing back-up harmony.
Jon ducks his head and shrugs. “Just something Mitch passed on. It won some award, I guess.” Jon flips some pages to demonstrate how little he knows about awards and shit.
Mitch is one of the acrobat-slash-dancers, but he’s also a fire-eater. He pegged Jon as one-foot-still-in-the-closet the first day of the tour, and two days later tossed him this massive novel about rich young gays in Thatcherite England. It’s depressing as hell, and Jon is lost on most of the references, but it’s got a little bit of anonymous park sex, and a bathhouse threesome, and some serious unrequited lust, and that keeps him going. He figures he’ll stop if the AIDS stuff gets too depressing.
“Is it good?” Spencer asks. He’s still lingering. He sounds half-absent, but his gaze is still focused on Jon. How come it never feels like Spencer’s just being polite, even when it’s obvious he is?
Jon is grateful, despite himself. Spencer’s blue eyes and half a smile are all it takes to light that little fire in him; a flame of happiness that he wishes he could just quash and be done with.
“Yeah, it’s okay.” Jon says, laying the book’s spine flat on the table, wondering what would happen if he mentioned the bathhouse scene. “I like it.”
“Good,” Spencer says. He lingers some more. Then he sits down at the table, reaches for a half-empty water bottle in the seat cushions. “Didn’t feel like Scrabble?”
Jon shrugs on autopilot, smiles off the question: “I was tired. And definitely not drunk enough to play it by their rules.”
Spencer crinkles his eyes a little and says, “For sure. I walked in and Damian looked like a stripper with a bow tie and Brendon had lost his pants.”
Jon chuckles half-heartedly. He glances down at his book because he can’t really look at Spencer like this, like they’re friends and it’s cool if somewhere else everyone’s naked. Because he doesn’t feel like it’s cool. He feels like it sucks.
And then Spencer drums his fingertips on the tabletop and says, “So, seriously, are you doing okay?”
And Jon wants to laugh because why does Spencer have to sound so fucking earnest when he asks? So he says “Seriously?” and smiles to show that it’s a joke, that question. Not something Spencer needs to worry about, of all things.
But Spencer rolls his eyes and takes a swallow of his tepid water with a critical gaze leveled at Jon’s fake smile. He’s not fooled: “You’re sitting in the dark by yourself while everyone else is partying. That’s the kind of stuff we expect from him” - Spencer tosses a thumb at Ryan’s bunk, where Ryan is either sleeping or posting poetry to the website - “because he’s the tortured artist. But you’re our bassist. You live on this bus, too, so if something’s up, you should say so.”
Spencer’s gaze is level, now, not glassy at all. It’s a little intimidating in its hawkish focus, its directness. Jon hates being direct. He hates saying things flat-out when he could circle the topic forever until he’s worn a groove so comfortable it feels natural to finally hit the center; the messy, gooey middle of whatever emotion he’d rather not face.
But now Spencer’s pinned him down like an owl on a mouse so he says, his voice dragging and awkward, “…I don’t know.” A pause. “Eric and the rest of those guys sleep on the bus with the sound techs. Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“Wouldn’t what be?” Spencer presses, voice pitiless.
“For me to be in with the other backup musicians. I’m not, like-” And there Jon cuts himself off. He wants to say, I’m not Brent, but that name is still a little too sharp to handle in the close confines of this half-lit kitchenette. So rather than cut Spencer open, Jon just drops the rest of his thought to hang in the air.
It doesn’t seem to matter, though. Brent’s name is so venomous these days even a sideways reference to it stings. Spencer hears it whether Jon says it or not. He nods and says, “We thought you’d be happier this way.”
Jon feels terrible, instantly. He shouldn’t have admitted that it makes a difference to him. Especially when that word - temporary - has never made a difference to anyone else, has never meant he’s been treated differently at all.
Well, except for a few of the fans, once or twice. Again, Brent’s name lingering like a ghost, quick to open wounds. But everyone felt bad about that. Not just Jon. Everyone’s always been so quick to reassure him that it has nothing to do with him, he shouldn’t even think about that. Spencer, in fact, was the one to say, quietly, where the mics would never catch them: fuck those kids, they don’t know shit.
“You guys have been really good to me,” Jon says, as sincere as he can manage. Because that’s the truth he’d rather say. Even if it makes him sound like an orphan taken in by a good-hearted family of Victorian aristocrats. Or the gay school friend taken in by the wealthy family of a conservative politician, going by Mitch’s book. Always on the edge of overstaying your welcome, lingering in the gray area between hired help and family.
Spencer is looking at him with that same focus, still. Eyes dark in the yellow light, mouth pointed in a certain kind of anger that seems directed entirely inward. Spencer says, voice tight: “I’m not kidding. You saved our asses. You deserve a place on this bus. You deserve to feel welcome here.”
“I do,” says Jon, almost convincingly.
“I hope so,” says Spencer.
“Really,” says Jon, again. “I’m sorry I said anything.”
Spencer just shakes his head. He doesn’t seem like he wants to hear anything else on the subject, and Jon pretends to read his book some more to avoid the silence that is suddenly swelling up between them. Spencer is pissed, Jon knows that. And he knows he should’ve kept his fucking mouth closed. So, belatedly, that is what Jon does.
Slowly, Jon’s pretending to read turns into actual reading, and eventually Spencer gets up to brush his teeth and climb into his bunk. He says goodnight as he drags the curtain closed and that’s when Jon gives up.
He shoves the book away into his bag, disgusted with the self-deluding protagonist, his hanging on and his leeching and his hopeless infatuation with the family’s beautiful son. It is so stupidly obvious, even this early on, that things aren’t going to go well for him. That what he wants will always be out of his reach.
--
Ryan and Brendon get into a fight during soundcheck at the venue in D.C. It’s not a real fight. It’s more that Ryan gets really pissy and won’t say why and Brendon takes it personally - probably because Ryan is specifically acting pissed at him - and then they don’t talk to each other for an hour while Boink and the techs go about their business around them.
Jon finishes up with his tuning, and then chooses to hang back with Brian, the drummer from the new openers, who is simultaneously terrifying with his height and his white facepaint and black eyeliner, and also totally normal in that he says like too much and can blather for five minutes about not much. Standing beside him, Jon feels embarrassed that they’re all so young, and this kind of teenage hormone thing that Ryan is doing right now - glowering through his sunglasses and speaking in short, snippy half-sentences when Boink presses for an answer, patient as a father - kind of underlines that issue. They’re the headlining act, for chrissakes, and they’re taking the percentages while the openers are scraping by on merch sales and a shitty flat fee, and they shouldn’t be acting like children.
But Brian doesn’t seem interested in judging. He just says mediating things like, “One time I saw Trent Reznor blow a gasket about his guitar tech’s haircut. He kicked an amp offstage. Then he fired the guy.”
Jon agrees that comparatively, Ryan’s attitude doesn’t seem so bad.
And anyway, when Spencer comes back from his phone call with his family, he just walks over and makes them start talking again. Maybe he rolls his eyes before he does it, and maybe Ryan’s voice goes all flat with denial, which makes Brendon look a little wounded, but somehow Spencer just levels his death ray glare around and cracks an inside joke and suddenly everything’s fine, so that by the time Spencer walks away again, Ryan’s sunglasses are tucked in his shirt pocket and Brendon is on his hands and knees with his face in one of Ryan’s monitors, listening for the buzz Ryan’s still complaining about, while Ryan picks up Jon’s Fender and strums out A minor, F, C and G.
“That kid’s eighteen?” Brian says, dark eyebrows up, long arms folded across his chest. His head swivels to watch Spencer cross the dance floor, heading back to the main soundboard. Probably to try to fix Ryan’s buzz problem over there. Assuming it’s not entirely psychosomatic.
“Yeah,” says Jon, feeling slightly depressed that he’s two years older and Spencer’s level of extreme emotional competence is the only thing keeping him sane, too.
“Huh,” says Brian. And that’s it, he just looks at Spencer like he’s either impressed, or intrigued or both.
Jon recognizes the expression. He makes it all the time.
--
They do the show, which is all ages and a lot of fun because Amanda and Brian are even more awesome than previously anticipated and the fans love them in desperate and unholy ways that makes Jon grin to see.
It’s mostly a good show because Spencer doesn’t ruin it by telling them about the text message beforehand.
He does that the next morning. Or afternoon, because they sleep until two - Amanda believes in kicking a tour off right, and when Brian announces no one’s going to bed, no one is about to argue - and so no one’s brain starts functioning until after dinner the day after.
The text came during soundcheck, in the middle of Spencer’s conversation with his sister. It’s from Brent. And it read: hope ur enjoying ur tour.
Jon sits on his piece of the couch while the band digests it. Ryan is glowering like an angry crow and croaks out an announcement that it’s passive aggressive bullshit, and also that Brent is a coward for texting Spencer instead of him.
Spencer doesn’t disagree, but he does huff as Ryan’s voice gets more and more shrill. He glares at Ryan across the aisle and says, “I didn’t tell you just so you could have a temper tantrum about it.”
Ryan points at Spencer’s phone like it’s the devil’s private emissary, “He’s the one having the tantrum. It’s been two months and this is the first thing we hear from him?”
“Did you really want to hear from him?” Brendon asks. He looks miserable, scowling down at his bag of gummy worms.
“Not really. I sure as hell didn’t want to hear this.” Ryan’s voice is acidic. Like he’d just as soon scald the people sitting on this bus, if he can’t reach across the miles to get at Brent.
“It sounds ominous,” Jon puts in. And then regrets it. Accusing Brent of threatening them is so not the classy thing for him to do.
“Yeah, that’s what he wants us to think.” Ryan mutters. “That he has something on us.”
“He does have something on us,” Spencer states. His voice is blunt. “We treated him like shit.”
“Are you kidding me?” Ryan squawks, “We put up with his bullshit for half a goddamn year, we were patient and we were forgiving and we never stopped him from doing whatever the hell he wanted-”
It goes downhill from there. Ryan rants for a long time. Brendon looks upset and irritated in equal turns. And Ryan gets angrier and angrier as Spencer, implacable, keeps poking holes in his logic and reminding him of times when Ryan’s good/evil narrative didn’t sit so tidily. Ryan doesn’t want to hear it - he wants to hear that he’s right, and Brent is wrong, and everyone’s on his side exclusively. But Spencer just sticks to the facts - that they don’t know what Brent means, he could be over it, but he has every right not to be - and so the argument burns on.
Eventually, Jon goes and hides in his bunk. He’ll listen to his ipod until it’s time to go onstage. Or until Spencer talks Ryan down. Whichever comes first. Jon catches a tired, sorry glance from Brendon as he pulls the curtain shut.
And momentarily, as Ryan’s voice goes up an octave one more time, Jon wonders if Spencer is actually capable of holding them all together for the rest of the tour. Or if, more likely, they’re all standing on a landmine, and Spencer throwing his body on it isn’t going to lessen the blast any, it’s just going to mean he’s the one who gets torn apart first.
--
Jon has a pair of basketball shorts in his duffel. He’s always been a pretty shitty basketball player - for obvious reasons - but he thought that maybe Panic might be the kind of band that expects him to hit the gym and work his abs, or something, so he packed the shorts when he left Chicago.
He also digs up a pair of sneakers that have a little bit more support in them than your standard pair of chucks, in that they have some cushioning sewn on top of the rubber sole.
Jon also owns a bright yellow terrycloth wristband. And a matching headband. Gifts from his brother Mike, who still thinks that Jon’s summer gig in eyeliner is hilarious.
Jon also has a theory about Spencer.
So as he’s crawling into his bunk at two a.m. after the Times Square show, he puts these things within easy reach of a groping hand.
And when he wakes up in the very early hours to see Spencer shoveling through his duffel bag and stuffing himself into an inside-out t-shirt in the dark, Jon slips on his shorts and shoes and wristband/headband combo and slides out of his bunk to stand by the bus door.
Spencer looks at Jon like he’s maybe sleepwalking or something. “Why are you up?” he asks, voice low. He looks like he hasn’t slept yet, actually, with dark hollows under his eyes. And that’s not a surprise, because it doesn’t look like Brendon or Ryan are back from the afterparty yet, either.
Jon just shrugs. He wants to ask the same thing but he is tired because it is four fucking a.m. and his brain isn’t quite ready to supply the words to his mouth. Instead, he just kind of stands there, swaying slightly like there’s a breeze.
Spencer looks like he’s not above asking the same question again, until he gets an answer, but he’s staring hard enough - set mouth, furrowed brow, straight shoulders - to knock Jon over and he must see something that answers it for him, because he doesn’t ask again.
He just bends down and pulls on his runners and says, “C’mon.”
Outside, the air is warm with the smell of people and garbage and traffic. Spencer pauses by the side of the bus. Jon waits, too, letting his eyes adjust as Spencer takes a second to crouch and cinch his laces tighter.
Jon is just starting to wonder if he should stretch or something when Spencer pops up, bounces up and down on the balls of his feet a few times, looks west down 44th St, and takes off.
Jon manages a huff of air, and then goes after him.
Did he know that this is what Spencer’s been doing? This is the question he asks himself as they hit the sixth city block and Jon’s lungs start a slow burn in his chest. Even if he suspected the t-shirts were for running, he realizes, then he certainly wasn’t clear on how fucking fast Spencer is.
Spencer runs with his chin up and his chest forward and his arms in easy brackets at his sides. He lifts his heels and his shoes land softly and his hips warble just a bit at the height of each step and Jon focuses on that to keep himself going.
He sure as hell needs something to chase. Because his eyes are watering and he’s hopping garbage on the sidewalk in sodium light shadows and every time they see a Don’t Walk sign flash orange he prays to god they’ll stop at the corner, but Spencer obeys the letter of the law, of course, and doesn’t walk, but sprints across whatever cross-street is in his way. Four a.m. traffic on a Saturday in Manhattan still sucks more than should be legal, but Spencer darts like a rabbit when he has to, and sometimes slows down to a loose-limbed jog that never quite resolves into Jon’s dream of a walking breather.
And then they hit the river.
The wide lanes that run north-south down the Hudson have dark trees and a cool breeze coming off the water, and for a moment Jon thinks, okay, this is going to be okay, this is getting better. Flatter, wider, smoother, straighter, emptier.
And that’s when Spencer speeds up; a locomotive with miles of empty rail ahead.
Jon’s lungs are pulling in air like it’s heavy as water and he has a stitch developing in his gut that he’s trying to tense out, and his shoulders feel tight and strained, and his feet feel numb because his laces are too tight, and all of these feelings are familiar from ancient high school nightmares, but what’s he supposed to do? Lose Spencer in the dark?
Jon sucks in air, and picks up his pace.
And after a while, he even pulls up abreast of Spencer and glances sideways and sees flushed cheeks and streaming eyes and a slack mouth and sweat shining on the back of his neck. His hair is everywhere, plastered against his skin. Jon thinks he really needs a headband. Spencer is breathing a ragged rhythm - out for two paces and then a long harsh suck of air in - but he keeps running flat out, face twisted into something like pain, his hands curled into loose fists at his hips. He just keeps going.
They keep going together. Past huge grey ships and white gazebos and about a billion benches. And at some arbitrary point, a streetlight indistinguishable from the rest, Spencer slows enough to make a wide u-turn. And Jon’s knees buckle and he stops. He bends over double, elbows on his thighs, and coughs for a minute, trying to swallow enough spit to say something like just a second.
Spencer slows to a walk, too, expression slack and unreadable as he pants. He grabs an ankle to stretch his thigh, then pulls the same knee up to his chest. Jon can only barely start to consider straightening up, much less balancing on one foot.
Still, Spencer’s silent waiting pulls him upright. And they start walking back north up the river. Slowly, gingerly. Jon is wiped. He is going to die if they walk any faster. He’ll throw himself into the river, first.
And after fifty yards, Spencer grins, throws his hands over his head in a ballerina stretch, bounces on the balls of his feet, and takes off.
Over his shoulder, he calls, “C’mon. It’s only three miles back.”
--
Jon sleeps straight through the morning. He opted out of braving the awful little trickle of a bus shower that no one’s dared to use yet anyway, and just wiped himself off with a facecloth. So he wakes up disgusting: sweat dried in a crust on his lower back and across his shoulders. He stinks. His headband is a wet mound on the ledge beside his phone. With his curtain closed and his feet pressed against the bottom wall of his bunk, he idly pushes the terrycloth into a semblance of flatness so it can dry out.
He figures he’ll need it again. No point in letting it molder.
He guesses it’s somewhere around three or four in the afternoon, now. The light has softened up, the air conditioner isn’t working itself too hard, and the bus is still moving. They’ll be in Boston soon.
Beyond his curtain, he can hear Spencer and Brendon talking. It can’t be about Brent, because they don’t sound at all stressed. They’re just shooting the shit. Brendon giggles a lot, and Spencer keeps making flat statements that make Brendon laugh harder.
Jon lies quietly for a long time, listening for Spencer’s laugh. But it never happens.
It’s just the sound of Brendon unwinding, and Spencer manning the machinery to do it, keeping the process safe and steady and even.
--
They get a hotel room in Boston between shows. They get like, twenty hotel rooms, actually. Including Amanda and Brian and Greta and her guys and the backup musicians and everyone’s techs and managers and the goddamn acrobats. It’s close to the venue, first choice of most bands, according to the promoter. It’s not really a nice hotel, but it’s easy on Pete’s budget and so it’s the one they pick.
Jon showers for forever before the show. Brendon is on the bed scowling at his phone when Jon comes out, dressed and damp. Jon goes, “Sorry, I kind of hogged it.”
“No problem,” says Brendon. He looks like he didn’t even register that Jon was speaking to him, he’s so focused on texting, stabbing the buttons with his thumbs. However much he was laughing this afternoon, his mood has dropped down to something sullen.
Jon deposits his armful of dirty clothes on the floor and drops onto his own mattress. Starfished across the bed, he feels like he can uncoil his spine an extra three inches. The bunks on the bus aren’t exactly spacious. Jon writhes around until he cracks a vertebra or two.
Brendon looks over at the sound. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“I’m not, I’m just - you know - enjoying the room,” Jon rolls over again, limbs following limply.
“Better not forget to jump on the bed, then,” says Brendon to the lit screen of his phone. It is totally unclear as to whether he’s making a joke or not. He’s frowning too hard at whoever he’s texting.
“Or have a pillow fight,” Jon sighs, happily. He may have slept all day, but at this point, on this awful little springy mattress with its questionable comforter and scratchy sheets, he’d like to stay in bed for an additional eight hours. It’s just that great to be able to spread his arms to their full span without hitting plastic walls or a body passing in the aisle.
Brendon tosses his phone on the nightstand and flops back onto his bed. He looks at Jon, who blinks back at him, and it takes all of three seconds for his mood to evaporate. Jon actually watches it disappear.
“I love hotel nights,” Brendon admits, wriggling around and bunching the quilt up irreparably.
“Me too,” Jon agrees.
Brendon plows his head under his pillows, and his voice comes out muffled: “I want to have the entire afterparty right here in this bed. I’m coming straight back here after the show.”
“High five,” says Jon, and lifts his hand in token effort.
Five feet away, face still buried, Brendon does the same.
And so that’s exactly what they do. Eyelinered and be-ruffled, Brendon tempts Amanda and Greta to abandon the party backstage at the venue, and pretty soon everyone who would normally be hanging around there has made it to this ratty hotel, instead. There are people trailing in and out of the rooms on the two floors they’ve booked off, drinking and talking and playing music too loud and generally being obnoxious. Brendon has five people piled into his bed - by virtue of his insistence that everyone see how amazingly comfortable it is, a fact that people somehow agree with once they are curled up in the tentacles of the lovenest - and consequently Brendon looks like the most smug, most squashed, raccoon-eyed prince in the world.
Jon has definitely abandoned all claim to his own bed. For a while it was just him and Greta and Mitch drinking beers on it, but then a bunch of people who said they knew the promoter showed up, and Jon decided to cede his place to some scenesters in shoes that cost more than his car. He takes his beer and goes looking for a better seat and a less pretentious conversation.
In the hall, he sees more people leaning around with drinks in their hands, holding up walls and talking loudly at each other. There are people kissing and it takes Jon more than a few false starts to find Ryan and Spencer’s room. Or maybe it’s not their room. Maybe it’s just the one that Ryan is holed up in while their real one is taken up by Boink macking on some locals.
Jon walks into an empty room littered with glasses and empty bottles, and when he glances in the bathroom on the way out, he finds Ryan.
“Hey,” Jon says, surprised, and Ryan looks up from where he’s crammed into the space between toilet and tub. He’s wedged in there like a broken toy; like he needs something to clamp him down and hold him together.
Jon pauses, just looking. Then he takes a step into the bathroom. “Are you okay?”
Ryan shrugs, nods. “Tired,” he says. His makeup is as blurred as Brendon’s, but streaky in a way that is suspicious. Rubbed off with the heel of a hand in a batwing swoosh.
“Are you sick?” Jon asks, even though he already knows the answer. He wishes Ryan was sick. Sick he can deal with.
“No,” says Ryan, waving off the thought. His gaze has already dropped back to the floor. He’s squinting. His voice is clear and polite when he says, “Could you turn off the light?”
Jon flicks the switch. Ryan’s shape disappears in the black, and Jon knows he should stay, but at the same time he has no idea how to help. And really: this could be Ryan’s regular hotel night ritual, for all Jon knows. It could be his totally normal, rational coping mechanism for being the only sober person on the floor. But Jon knows that of course this isn’t either. Polite as Ryan may be, he is not okay. And Jon is not prepared to deal with that.
So Jon hovers in the doorway and says, casual, “Do you know where Spencer is?”
From the dark, Ryan replies, “I saw him with Brian a while ago. I think they went to buy more alcohol.”
Jon nods. “Okay,” and then he adds, “stay here, I’ll be back in a bit.” Like Ryan wandering off on his own like some Victorian madwoman in a white dress is a major risk.
Then Jon goes to find Spencer, wherever he is. Getting Brian to boot for them or what. Jon is counting on the fact that Spencer will know what’s going on with Ryan, will drop everything to fix it. Jon has only seen him do it a hundred times now. For any of them, for any of their crew, for anyone on the tour. Spencer is always, always there.
But Spencer is plastered.
Jon finds him outside by the buses, talking to a group of guys that Jon’s never seen before. They’re passing a joint around and when Jon shows up Spencer invites him into the circle. “Jon!” he says, happy. “These guys say I should go to law school with them. They say I could totally hack it.”
“Hey guys,” Jon tips his beer bottle - empty, now, but he has yet to put it down - at the group, and waves off the joint when it’s offered. He tries to say it quietly: “Spencer, I need your help with something.”
Spencer grins at him, eyes bright, “With what, Jon?” he asks, and the question is totally drunken, and also totally coy, and Jon feels a heat in his skin that makes Spencer’s hand around his waist seem way less casual.
“Come inside,” Jon says, and glances apologetically at the guys in their ironic ties and tight jeans, like, sorry to smoke and run, but the only one who looks disappointed is the one with the dark eyes and scruffy hair. He has the irritated air of the freshly cockblocked, and it makes Jon pull Spencer along a little faster.
But Spencer is reluctant. He slows down as they thread through the parked buses, his hand insistent at Jon’s waist, tugging on his shirt. “Where are we going?” he asks, and his voice is wicked and charming in a way that it never is when he’s sober, when the weight of the world is riding him. His hair is a mess of sharp pieces and his antique buttons are undone at the throat. He balks entirely and smiles with teeth, “Jon Walker, where are you taking me?”
Jon has to stop, turn back slightly. He reaches for Spencer’s dropped hand, tries to tell him about Ryan in the bathroom. “I don’t know what to do,” he starts.
But Spencer isn’t listening, he’s pulling Jon closer by that same hand, stumbling them both back up against the side of an anonymous bus. “It’s okay,” he promises, as if in reply. Something in the way he says it - a breathless mutter - makes Jon think it’s not, though.
Spencer puts his other hand in Jon’s hair, fingers up the nape of his neck. Spencer kisses him.
He tastes green with weed, sweet with rum, and his hands are warm and his mouth is hot.
It takes Jon forever to react, to open his mouth and let Spencer’s tongue in, let Spencer’s hands pull them both harder against the bus, hip to hip, hands in each other’s shirttails.
Spencer nips the corners of Jon’s mouth, Spencer’s smile curves up into their kisses. His skin, where Jon touches it, is smooth and warm and it heats Jon up in a way that makes him groan.
It takes Jon too long to pull away. Way too long. He’s still holding his beer bottle, he realizes, as he puts the back of his hand to his mouth. He takes an uncertain step back, staring at Spencer, suckerpunched.
“Spencer,” he says, and he hears the question and also the nakedness in his own voice, and he stops himself there.
Spencer just gazes back at him, grinning, eyes smudged and dark as coal.
“Something’s wrong with Ryan,” Jon says then. Because he can’t say, something’s wrong with this when he’s been wanting it for months. When Spencer is looking at him with eyes full of promises.
Spencer’s smile drops. He looks past Jon for a second, then back. And as he takes a step forward he puts wrists around Jon’s neck and bends into Jon’s shoulder and says in a tiny, quiet voice, “Fuck Ryan.”
And Jon feels instantly sorry for coming down here to find him, crying to Spencer with his problems and Ryan’s and everyone’s. He should’ve dealt with it on his own, he realizes. He could have. He just didn’t want to. And now he’s put it on Spencer instead, Spencer who never unloads onto anyone else, because there isn’t anyone.
But that’s it. It all snaps away in a second. Spencer straightens up, smiles a bit like him standing here hanging off of Jon is a funny joke, and then starts toward the bright glass doors of the hotel lobby. “So where is he?”
And the way he leads Jon back to that dark bathroom, clear steps and a steady voice, makes Jon believe that maybe the drunk, maybe the flirting, maybe the kissing was all just a game. Just a ritual. Just a coping mechanism.
It makes Jon’s skin heat up in a different way. It mortifies him.
--
Before they leave Boston, they have breakfast, just the four of them.
It’s a nice place: real maple syrup and rice milk for their coffee and a Fair Trade logo stuck on the espresso machine and a menu that says the bacon comes from the owner’s uncle’s farm in Vermont. The place is full of students living above their means and the kind of hipsters that wear baby slings. It’s totally outside the range of their per diem budget, and it makes Jon feel really young and uncool, but Ryan keeps giving him this look and these questions, like what do you think of the coffee? and how’re those hashbrowns? and try one of these strawberries that makes Jon feel obligated to pretend to like it.
The coffee is really awesome, though.
Halfway through his omelet, the table gets really quiet. And when Jon looks up, Ryan is giving a nonverbal command via his urgent expression and Spencer is silently balking and so it’s Brendon who says, through a mouthful of crepe, totally abrupt: “Jon, we really like you.”
“Yeah,” says Ryan, “We’ve been talking about it a lot.”
“Oh yeah?” says Jon, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He looks back down at his plate. He takes another bite.
Brendon and Ryan look at each other.
Spencer is the one who puts his fork down and says coolly: “We don’t know what your plans are for September, or if you’ve maybe thought about this at all. But we’d like you to keep going with us.”
“Officially,” Ryan clarifies. He digs in his bag and produces a pen. And then a bent sheaf of printed pages. Spencer eyes them and spreads them into two distinct piles.
“We got Richard to draw this up on our end.” Spencer says, still entirely professional. “And this one’s from Pete. It’s not the same one we signed - fewer creative obligations to the label. So you should probably get your agent to look it over.”
Jon sits silently. He doesn’t have an agent. They know that. He signed the napkin contract that got him this summer tour on faith and friendship.
He’s been feeling less of those, these past few weeks. These past few days.
Dutifully, he pushes his plate aside and pulls the contracts closer for inspection. But his eyes glaze over as he tries to read them. He’s just staring at a blurred-out grey page while his thoughts trip in circles. Brent signed a contract, his mind tells him.
He looks up, and Spencer is leaning forward over his plate. Eyes hollow, hair dirty, expression unreadable. It makes Jon wonder which Spencer is the real one: the one who kissed him, so clear and demanding, two nights ago, or the one who is sitting across the table with his face closed off like a police line.
Because Jon knows that only one of them will ever give him what he wants. And under the circumstances, even that is suspect.
Ryan tries to ease the silence a little: “Don’t try to sign them now. We can wait for you to get them looked over.”
“We’re not trying to pressure you,” Brendon puts in, slithering an arm around Jon to squeeze him. “We just want you to know that we want to buy the whole cow.”
“Brendon,” Ryan groans, “Why would you say that?”
“What’s wrong with saying we respect him?” Brendon returns, defensive.
“It’s not any less offensive than when you say it to a girl,” Ryan tells him, eyes rolled up in agony at having to explain. “Gee, Jon,” he mocks, “We may have been sucking milk from your tit for free, but we’re now convinced that our fears of your low quality were unfounded. Congratulations!”
“That’s not what I meant,” Brendon snaps, huddling closer to Jon, putting his chin on Jon’s shoulder.
And Jon goes, “It’s fine. I’m not like, offended or anything. It’s totally fine.”
Brendon says, “See?”
Ryan angles a look at Jon, “You’re being way too polite about it.”
Jon just looks at him and shrugs, “No, it’s cool. I’ve always liked getting my teats sucked.”
And then Brendon brays out a laugh that attracts the attention of the servers at the counter and the toddler in the next booth, and that makes Ryan snort into his tea and then Spencer smiles, too, after a second.
Jon signs the contracts right there.
He pulls the pen out of Ryan’s hand and doesn’t look at anyone when he does it. Just the act of it is draining some of the tension out of them, he can feel it already. Things will settle down. Things will feel better for him, and for all of them. All they need is a little bit of hope.
If he regrets this decision later, he tells himself, at least he won’t regret this moment, when he took what they offered him and gave something back in return.
--
Ryan’s apology is quiet and drawn, delivered shortly before they go onstage two nights later. Him and Jon are sitting in the green room, and he’s fixing one of Jon’s recurring eyeliner snafus with a wet thumb and some blue glitter.
His lips are really close to Jon’s, and they’re both breathing very shallowly, or not at all, as Ryan redraws the line straight and clean.
Ryan murmurs, eyes narrowed and focused: “I’m sorry about the other night.”
And without moving his head a fraction, Jon goes, “For what?” like he doesn’t even remember.
Ryan rolls his eyes: an elaborate and theatrical gesture with his face painted in purple spirals like it is. But his answer sounds like it strains his vocal chords, it's so quiet. “It’s not something I’m good at talking about.”
“It’s fine,” Jon says, and he’d pull away if Ryan didn’t have a sharpened lead poised a quarter inch from his cornea. “You don’t need to apologize.”
“But I am,” Ryan insists. His tone is brittle, in the way it gets when he’s contradicted, and Jon keeps quiet.
Ryan coats his fingertips in glitter and touches them to Jon’s browbone: “Close your eyes,” he says. His fingers brush Jon’s eyelids and tip Jon’s chin up, angling his face like they might kiss.
Blind, Jon thinks that Ryan’s never been honest with him like this before. He wants to return the favor. He wants to show his trust. So he says, in a low murmur, what he’s been thinking for days. “I shouldn’t have ran and got Spencer.”
Ryan exhales a tiny, bitter laugh, like what else could you have done? but he doesn’t respond.
And tortured in that silence and blackness, Jon wishes he had someone else to murmur this too besides Spencer’s oldest and best friend. He says: “It seems like he’s angry with me now. He hasn’t really talked to me since.”
“The only person Spencer is ever angry with is himself,” Ryan says, withdrawing his hands. Jon opens his eyes, and Ryan looks for a second like a funeral guest, a boy in mourning. “Anything else is just you getting caught in the crossfire.”
--
“Brent is suing,” Richard says on the speakerphone over Ryan’s cell. “They served me the summons this morning. He wants his quarter.”
“You mean Jon’s quarter,” Brendon jumps to amend. “That’s Jon’s quarter now.”
“Quarter of what?” Ryan snorts. “The rental buses? Who gave him the impression that we’re making money on this tour?”
“He wants the royalties,” Spencer mutters.
Jon stays silent.
“We have a few options,” says Richard then, firm and unruffled and completely professional. He makes it all seem stark and linear, so that even later, when they’re giving a garbled explanation to an outraged Pete, or sitting around the table in a dark and scowling silence, there is still a step forward in front of them. And another one after that.
--
Spencer hasn’t left the bus at night since New York, as far as Jon knows. He feels weird for keeping track, but it’s just a physical fact that he doesn’t fall asleep until he’s heard Spencer toe his shoes off and rustle into his bunk. And yes, it’s possible that Jon’s slept through a silent exit, because it’s not like Spencer looks exactly well-rested these days, but he’s pretty sure he would’ve woken up. Living so close, you tune in to certain things about people. Their footsteps become as particular as their voices; the smell of their dirty skin; the sound of a shuddered breath over the rumble of the engine. No doubt: Jon is absolutely sure he would know if Spencer had left again.
So in the blackest part of morning after the Columbus show, Jon wakes up to a familiar yellow light.
Spencer’s bare shoulders are visible through the crack of the curtain. He’s pulling on a shirt, he’s bending to tie his shoes.
They’ve been ignoring what happened between the buses in Boston. They’ve spoken plenty since then, and it hasn’t come up. Jon knows it’s because there’s nothing to say. He’s never been one to pick at scabs. He hates the mess.
But if Spencer’s running tonight, he wants to go, too. He wants to see that grin of triumph that comes at the end. Jon would run himself raw and ragged to see that smile again.
Quickly, he fishes out his shorts. He grabs his headband. When he worms out of his bunk, Spencer’s already slipping down the steps up front.
Jon hits the door latch and catches up to him on the ground outside. The door hisses closed behind them.
“Six miles, right?” Jon suggests, bright and cheery, as Spencer turns to look at him.
And even as he says it, Jon sees that Spencer isn’t wearing his runners or that pair of ratty old shorts from last time. He’s wearing the gray jeans from the mall in Norfolk, a vintage t-shirt and a slightly crumpled blazer. His favorite hi-tops.
Jon stops dead. He closes his mouth and tries really hard to not look like a total fucking idiot.
“Brian texted me.” Spencer says, like he’s answering a question. “They’re still up in their bus. They’re playing cards.”
Jon nods eagerly, like of course that’s what’s going on. Of course.
“I couldn’t sleep,” says Spencer, like he only just remembered to come up with an excuse.
“Yeah,” Jon agrees. “Me neither.”
“You’re going for a run?” says Spencer, polite. As if that’s totally normal.
And Jon doesn’t have any kind of way out of it, so he nods. “Yeah. Definitely.”
“Cool,” says Spencer. He gestures vaguely at the fleet of buses lined up in the parking lot. Not a single one of them is lit up from inside.
Jon just turns in a completely arbitrary direction: the opposite of wherever Spencer is headed. Whichever bus. Whoever’s bunk.
He starts running, and he picks up speed as he jumps the curb to the sidewalk, and heads into the dark. His whole body is already overheated, flushed in mortification, but in some ways he’s grateful. Because how often do you actually get to escape from a conversation like that? How often do you get to just turn around and run away?
(part two)