Bandfic: Every New Beginning (B/C frat!verse)
For amy13 on the occasion of her birthday. Thanks for being such an awesome friend and beta and squee partner, and for letting me babble and fret at you all the time! And, as you know, this wasn't the story that I was supposed to write you for your birthday, but I hope that you enjoy it anyway. *BIGHUGS*
Title: Every New Beginning (frat!verse)
Author: tigs
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Brendon/Cash
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own.
Summary: And that, for the record, is how Brendon meets Cash. (~6500 words)
Author's Notes: For those who've been following the happy thoughts over at the writing journal, this should look familiar. The beginning, fleshed out. The original happy thought can be found here. Unbeta'd, so any errors are, of course, my own.
The first time Brendon meets Cash, well-
Okay, so, Brendon’s pretty fucking late, is what he is. Because no one told him that Harper had a fucking basement, all right? Which is why he spends five ever-so-precious minutes wandering around the first floor of the building in circles, looking for the elusive Room 016 sign. Which is absolutely nowhere to be found. At all.
Until, finally, he notices the ‘STAIRS’ sign at the end of one of the hallways that he’s already walked down two times before, and lo, when he opens the door, he finds that the stairs *actually go down*. His relief would have been somewhat more significant if he’d found the stairs at any point, you know, before his class had actually started, but still. Another ten steps in the wrong direction once he gets to the bottom of the steps, then another twenty in the right one, and then he’s there.
So, Brendon opens the door, and despite the fact that he’s only 4 minutes and 37 seconds late, the TA has already started going over the syllabus, talking about projects and lab hours and how participation will be 10% of their grade, so please, for the love of TAs everywhere, *talk*.
She doesn’t quite glare at Brendon as he makes his way across the room towards an empty seat, as he tries to convey a ‘Sorry, sorry,’ with a duck of his head, but her look isn’t exactly friendly either. Maybe because in his efforts to be quiet, he manages to bump into one person’s desk, almost trip over another person’s bag, make his shoe squeak extra loudly on the tile floor.
All of which is to say, by the time he reaches the empty seat, he is so ready for it. So, so ready. And yeah, okay, he tries to get settled as quietly as possible, but the sound of his backpack zipper seems extra loud, and his efforts to get his notebook out even louder. And then the TA is sending a syllabus back to him, though somehow it ends up in the hand of the guy next to him, and the guy-blond hair cut short, spiked-hands it over, looking amused.
Brendon sees the number ‘13’ inked onto the back of the guy’s hand in orange ink, possibly with added sparkles. And when Brendon takes the bright green sheet of paper from him, he smiles.
And that, for the record, is how Brendon meets Cash.
*
So, the thing is, Brendon’s not used to having friends outside of the house.
Oh, it’s not like he *doesn’t* have friends outside of the house, but, well. Most of them are connected to the house in some way, and he only sees them while with other members of his house. (See: Haley. Gerard the Crazy Art Major. Greta. Cassie.)
And most of the time, see, Brendon’s totally okay with this. If there’s one thing he’s not lacking in, after all, it’s social interaction. And his guys, his brothers, are pretty much the most awesome guys ever, and yeah, okay, sometimes they drive him up the wall, but Brendon is the youngest of five. He totally knows how to hold his own.
Whatever, though, because while the first week, at least, Cash is just the guy that Brendon sits next to in Biology, the second week, they start grabbing lunch together on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then during week three, Cash tells him that he and his roommate, Shane, are doing a Project Runway marathon that weekend, and would Brendon like to join them?
Brendon brings the popcorn.
Then Shane’s cousin Ian comes to visit for the weekend and Brendon gets invited to taste test his blended beverage concoctions, and then they all take a trip to the local park for an episode of Swinging While Intoxicated. And then the next week, midterm week, Cash talks him into going to the library with him three nights in a row.
Then Brendon gets Ratatouille on DVD-because you can never go wrong with Pixar-and he shows up at Cash’s dorm room without being invited, this time bringing M&Ms to go with the popcorn, and when Shane comes back after his shift at the bagel shop he glares at them for all of 2.5 seconds because yeah, the two of them will totally be finding M&Ms all over their room until they move out, because Brendon and Cash may or may not have ended up having an M&M war. Just a little one. Shane seems to be mostly mollified when Cash tosses him his own bag of candy, though. And then he makes them share the popcorn.
Brendon doesn’t actually realize just how much time he’s been spending with Cash, though, until Pete sits down next to him on the TV room couch one night after Monday Night Dinner, and says, “What’s this I hear about your new bromance?”
Brendon rolls his eyes, because seriously. Cash is just-he’s Cash.
“It’s not a fucking ‘bromance’,” Brendon says, and Pete nods along, totally indulgently, like he doesn’t believe a word that Brendon’s saying, and so Brendon is forced to punch his shoulder, because he has to defend his honor, right?
Right.
*
Also, Haley wants to set Brendon up with Greta.
Brendon’s proud, actually, because he pretty much figured it out *before* Spencer pulled him aside and said, “Beware, my girlfriend’s on the warpath.” It had been sort of obvious, actually, what with the fact that Greta’s been over to their house, like, four times a week, and she and Haley somehow keep ending up in Brendon’s room, only to have Haley flit off to go find Spencer.
And, like, okay. It’s not like Brendon *minds*. He thinks that Greta’s pretty awesome, actually. She has a wicked sense of humor, and she can play the piano and the drums and her voice has this sort of dusky quality to it, and she likes to wear little baby doll dresses, and also, she can shot gun a beer faster than Ryland.
These are all, Brendon thinks, admirable qualities.
Brendon thinks that he could do a lot worse.
He doesn’t ever quite get around to asking her out, though.
*
The first time Brendon realizes that there might be a reason for this, and also that maybe Pete had been, well, not quite so wrong when he’d talked about Brendon and Cash’s bromance, well.
They’re in the study lounge on Cash’s floor. It’s this totally utilitarian room, beige walls and couches covered in fabrics patterned more to hide stains than be any sort of stylish. And they’re studying Biology. If they’d known where he was going when he left the house, Pete probably would have made some sort of comment about how it was only appropriate that they be studying that, and Jon probably would have said that it should have been Chemistry, but.
Well.
So they’re studying, and they’ve got flash cards and three months worth of notes, and Brendon’s been coloring his hand and wrist with a highlighter for the last ten minutes, and Cash has been telling him about this band that Shane’s co-worker at the bagel store, Trace, is putting together, and how they have a demo up on MySpace, and Brendon stops drawing on his own hand and starts drawing lines on Cash’s, and, well.
Well, that’s really all that Brendon can tell you, actually, because the next thing he knows, Cash is leaning forward and brushing their lips together, and then he’s pulling back, his cheeks quickly flushing red.
It’s-
Brendon stares at him for a, well, okay, it feels like a long moment, but it’s probably no more than a second, a blink, before he’s leaning forward, making a small noise at the back of his throat, half whine, half moan, and their lips touch, but then Cash tips his head just a smidge, and Brendon tips his own, and then Cash puts a hand on the back of his neck, and then Brendon stops thinking for awhile. Maybe more than awhile, because he pretty much loses track of time until he hears someone bang their fist against the window in the lounge door, followed by a shouted, “Get a room!”
After that, they’re both red. Cash is grinning at Brendon, lips swollen, wet, and Brendon really wants to kiss him again. But they’ve got a final tomorrow, one which Brendon really needs to do well on so that he can, you know, never have to take another science class ever again, and. Yeah.
So, they study. And maybe kiss a few more times. And possibly giggle even more.
And when Brendon gets back to the FBR house later that night, Jon asks, “Good night?” Brendon’s totally lying when he shrugs, but he’s pretty sure that his smile tells the whole truth.
*
And, see, Brendon’s pretty sure that he should be flipping out. Like, a lot.
Because on the one hand, he never thought he was-
He’s never-
And on the other hand, his parents, his family. He was brought up to-
On the *other* other hand, it’s *Cash*. Who’s *Cash*. With the stupid dollar sign tattooed on his shoulder and the nearly constant ‘13’ inked on the back of his hand, sometimes in glitter gel, sometimes not. And then there’s the way he laughs at Brendon’s very lamest jokes, the ones that get him pelted with dirty socks at his house. And then there’s the way that he can do a perfect Heidi Klum impersonation. Well, as perfect an impersonation as a person can do without actually being Heidi Klum, that is. And the way that he made Brendon look forward to going to Biology two times a week for the last three months, what the fuck.
Basically, it’s *Cash*, and if Brendon’s honest with himself, he *knows* they’ve been building towards whatever this is between them for the last, well. Possibly from the moment they met. And so despite everything else, Brendon pretty much just feels excited. And possibly giddy.
Definitely giddy.
And he stays that way for a whole day, and it’s really awesome, like he has the best secret in the whole world.
On the second day, though, he’s sitting with Spencer and Jon and Haley and Cassie in Spencer and Travis’s room, and Haley’s saying, “B-den, B-den, we need to find you a girlfriend.”
Brendon opens his mouth to say, “I don’t need a girlfriend, I have Cash,” except that then he realizes exactly what he’s about to say and who he’s about to say it to, and he shuts his mouth.
Because no matter that these are four of his favorite people in the world, he also lives in a fraternity, he calls them all brothers and right now he’s closer to the 30-something of them than he is to his own, and frats aren’t exactly known for being the most supportive of lifestyles outside the heterosexual norm, and holy fuck, he’s kissed Cash, more than once, and he wants to kiss Cash even more than more than once, but what if someone in the house isn’t okay with them? What if they kick Brendon out on some other pretense? What if they make life so miserable for him that he wants to leave? Not that he can think of anyone who would do that, but he’s heard tales from other houses, and even if everyone at FBR was okay with it, what about the other houses? Does FBR want to be known as the house with the gay freshman? What if they said they didn’t care but actually did? What if, what if, what if?
So many questions, thoughts, flitting through his brain, and it’s sobering-it *hurts*--for Brendon to realize that he’s not sure that he’s willing to find out the answers to any of them.
“Brendon,” Spencer says, voice sharp, so it’s probably about the eighth time that he’s said Brendon’s name, and Brendon jerks back to himself, probably looking scared, pale. Spencer continues a moment later, voice softer. “You all right?”
Brendon nods. “Yeah,” he says. Then again, more firmly, with an attempt at a smile, in the hopes of making himself believe it. “Yeah.”
Because he will be.
He thinks.
*
Cash calls him twice the next day, but Brendon doesn’t pick up.
Instead he plays Mario Kart with Jon, listens to Marie recite a monologue for her drama class final. He takes a trip with Spencer over to Bob and Gerard’s so that Spencer can steal his drumsticks back from Frankie, and they end up staying for beer and a vampire movie.
The day after, Brendon has his performance recital on piano, and he’s not worried, and he does well enough to get an A, but his teacher asks him if everything’s all right, because he seems to be a little bit less enthusiastic than normal.
The next day, the last day of school before Spring Break, Brendon shows up at Cash’s door, standing awkwardly in the hallway. Shane is there, but he takes one look at Brendon’s face and says, “Yeah, so. I’m just going to go see Reg, okay? I’ll be back sometime, yeah?” So then it’s just Brendon and Cash.
And-it shouldn’t be easy. It really shouldn’t. It doesn’t feel easy, but Cash looks at Brendon, and he obviously knows what’s coming, because when Brendon says, “I-I just,” Cash nods. Like he was expecting it. Like he was already resigned. He doesn’t say, ‘it’s okay,’ because it’s not, they both know it’s not, but this is Brendon’s choice, and it sucks, and he’s already hating himself for it, oh fuck he is, but it’s the choice he needs to make.
After, he doesn’t remember Cash shutting the door behind him. He doesn’t remember making the walk back to the FBR house. He doesn’t remember much of anything, actually, until Ryan knocks on his door and says, “Hey, hey, you okay?” and Brendon forces himself to smile-too wide, too cheerful-and say, “Yeah.”
Ryan knows he’s lying, Brendon can tell, because the next thing Brendon knows, they’re in the TV room watching Moulin Rouge on the big screen, and there are about 15 of the brothers there, and they all sing along with all of the songs, something they’ve been known to pelt Brendon with pillows for doing, and.
And.
And Brendon wishes that he could say for sure that he’d made the right choice, but he can’t.
He *almost* wishes that he could say he’d made the *wrong* one, just so he’d have a reason to feel this crappy, but he can’t say that either.
Either way, though, Brendon has made his choice. Now he just needs to live with it.
*
The good thing about Spring Break is, it gives Brendon a week to mope.
He has one week to do whatever the hell he wants, and so he spends a lot of time in the music building, playing the piano, practicing the cello. He thinks about taking up the trumpet.
Three nights, he lets Spencer and Ryan and Nate drag him out, twice to Bob and Gerard’s house, once to Patrick’s. The other nights, Brendon locks himself in his room and tells people that he got his dinner on the way home from campus, yeah, he sucks, sorry. He reads and watches movies and tries not to think about the fact that Cash could very well be doing the same exact thing half a campus away.
*
Spring term is better. Mainly because it’s really, really fucking busy. For one thing, they’re in the countdown to Sing, which they’ve been practicing for since January. They’re working with Delta Gamma this year-Gabe and Vicky T. are the co-chairs-and they’re doing Peter Pan, and Brendon loves Peter Pan.
And, like, half the houses on campus are doing their philanthropies now that it’s actually nice out again, and Brendon is totally all for participating in as many of them as he can. The soccer tournament? He is so there. Bowling? Even better. Talent show? Pencil him in! Also, there’s the Spring House Dance, which they have to spend days getting the house ready for, and Brendon asks Greta to go with him-as friends, of course, since she’s seeing a DU now-but still. Also, they need someone to write up the Chapter of the Year award application for the Office of Greek Life, and Brendon may not be the best writer ever, but *no one* is as enthusiastic as he is about the house, and also, Ryan offers to proofread it for him.
And then, of course, there are his classes. He has Comm 113 this term, and Statistics 104, and his music classes, and basically, there are not enough hours in the day for everything he wants to do.
And it’s better too, because he doesn’t think about Cash much at all-except every time he walks past Harper, which is, like, five times a day at least, or when he sees Project Runway reruns on Bravo, or when he thinks about going to the library for a marathon study session, or when he sees Cash across the quad or something, walking with Shane, and then he wonders how it could have only been three months that he’d known Cash, because it sure feels like a lot longer than that, like he’s lost a lot more than something that could be built in that span of time.
But anyway, he’s keeping busy, because busy hands are happy hands, as his mother used to tell him-although Brendon never really had a problem with that because he *likes* to be busy, and.
Yeah.
*
The amazing thing-and Brendon doesn’t know whether to be grateful or disgusted by this-is that no one actually calls him on his attitude until the end of April, a week before Sing.
And, okay, see, it hadn’t been a good day to start with, because Brendon had seen Cash on campus, not once but *twice*, and one of those times, he’d definitely seen Brendon, too, and the look he’d given Brendon-and the look *Shane* had given Brendon. It had fucking sucked. And then he’d totally fucked up three of his pieces during his cello lesson, which happened to everyone, just not usually to Brendon. And then he’d tried to take one of his self-paced statistics quizzes and he’d just bombed that.
And then, when he’d finally gotten home, ready to crash in front of the TV for hours and wallow, he’d walked in on Marie and Joe being all lovey-dovey, and he’d maybe stormed out of the TV room just a little bit forcefully, maybe just a little, and so he’s not actually really surprised when Spencer comes into his room without so much as a by your leave.
He glares at Spencer, but Spencer ignores him and instead sits down on William’s couch and says, “What the fuck.” Brendon knows that he’s not asking about Brendon’s little display downstairs, either. Well, not mostly.
“It’s nothing,” Brendon says, because that’s exactly what he’s been saying for two months. Well, that’s the gist of it anyway, if not exactly the words he’s been using. Because it is nothing, it was nothing, it was only a few days of thinking he could have something more with Cash, only three months of friendship, compared to eight months of living with the guys in his house, 18 years of not having any of them, but particularly not Cash.
“Bullshit,” Spencer says. “Tell me, Urie. What the fuck’s been going on? It’s been fucking *months*, dude.”
And, see, Spencer’s a smart guy. If he cares to look beyond months and into a more exact timeframe, he’ll put two and two together and get something less than five. Maybe, Brendon thinks, it would be better just to tell him, because Spencer won’t care-Brendon may not be 100 percent sure about how everyone in the rest of the house would react, but *Spencer* Brendon’s sure about-and the words have been sitting on the tip of Brendon’s tongue for what feels like forever now, and each day it gets harder and harder not to say them. So maybe he could, should, maybe, maybe, and God, his stomach is totally clenching up, and he feels like he’s going to throw up, his throat feels cold and fluttery, and-
And-
“I-I think I’m gay,” Brendon says. The words come quickly, tripping off the end of his tongue. He swallows. “Maybe. Um.”
He looks at his hands, but after a long moment where Spencer doesn’t say anything, he forces himself to look up. Spencer doesn’t look outraged-Brendon *had* been right about that-or even very surprised at all. He looks… sympathetic.
He says, “Cash?”
Brendon nods, miserably. Because. Because.
Because.
Spencer nods again, like it makes sense, or confirms some suspicion he’d had, and then he’s asking, “So what happened?” And so Brendon tells him, the words just tumbling out, bottled up for too long: the studying, the kiss, his choice. The thing is, as he’s talking, Spencer stops looking sympathetic and actually starts to look more than a little pissed.
“You thought we’d care?” he asks. “Jesus, Brendon. We wouldn’t-No one would-“
“*You* wouldn’t, I knew you wouldn’t,” Brendon says, and he’s glad to see Spencer look slightly mollified. “But you aren’t everyone else, Spence. And I couldn’t-I didn’t think I could take the chance.”
Spencer’s still frowning, but he’s starting to look sympathetic again. Before he can say anything, though, there’s a knock on the door, and Ryan and Jon are sticking their heads in through the crack. “So, we heard there were serious discussions going on,” Ryan says, as Jon adds, “Everything okay?”
Brendon can feel Spencer looking at him, probably trying to mentally project what he thinks Brendon should say in this moment straight into Brendon’s head, because Brendon’s instinct is to say, ‘Fine! Fine!’ but what he says is, “I think, um. I think I’m gay.”
It’s not exactly easier to say it the second time, but Ryan and Jon don’t look very surprised either. They do come all the way into the room and shut the door behind them, though.
“So you’ve, what, got a boyfriend?” Ryan asks. The words sound dry, slightly sarcastic, but Brendon knows that Ryan is genuinely interested. He and Keltie are in that honeymoon stage where they want *everyone* to be in love.
“Cash?” Jon asks, and Brendon can’t help but wonder if the whole house had, like, bets going or something, about whether their ‘bromance’ was actually missing the ‘b’.
“Not anymore,” Brendon says, and for a beat he thinks that he’s going to have to replay the whole conversation with Spencer again. Spencer takes pity on him, though, and says, “Brendon was an idiot. He actually thought we’d care.”
Jon looks mildly affronted by that fact, but Ryan shrugs. “I could see how it would be a valid concern. Not our house, obviously, but outside, you know, there.” He waves his hand in a vague way that Brendon takes to mean the Greek System at large, and he- He’s still not sure whether he made the right choice or the wrong one. Or if there had been no right answer at all.
Then, his voice as fierce as he can make it, Ryan continues, “But we wouldn’t have *let* it matter.” Jon and Spencer nod in something like solidarity, and there’s a moment of silence before Jon says, “Hey, Ry, do you remember that guy who works for the paper? The one who was totally into Tom’s photography?”
Ryan nods, suddenly looking almost crafty, and then Brendon places who they’re talking about: the guy whom Jon and Bill had teased Tom about for weeks afterwards, calling him Tom’s boyfriend, which Tom had totally taken in stride. The guy who, Brendon’s suddenly pretty sure, Jon and Ryan are talking about setting him up with, holy fuck.
Because they are, apparently, totally okay with it, everything, and Brendon’s so relieved that he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, or maybe do a little of both, and for the first time since that awful, awful night, he realizes that he really might have had a third choice: that he could have had both, that he might have made it work. That his brothers would have allowed him to make it work.
He wonders, for a brief moment, if he still can.
Except he knows he can’t. It’s two months too late and he brushed Cash aside and Cash shouldn’t forgive him, and.
And.
*
The thing is, Brendon shouldn’t even have time to think about the ‘what might have beens’ that week, because they’re in Hell Week for Sing, which not only means getting ready for the moms to descend the next weekend, but also two hour practices every night and costume fittings and Vicky T glaring and Gabe yelling and Brendon’s pretty sure that the ladies of Delta Gamma and the men of Phi Beta Rho will need at least two weeks-if not the whole rest of the year *and* the summer-to calm down enough to actually be in the same room with each other again.
But still, at the end of every day, he ends up lying in his bed on the sleeping porch, staring at the bottom of Andy’s bunk above him, and then he thinks. And thinks. And twice when he’s on campus, he walks all the way to Cash’s dorm and has someone hold the door open for him to let him in, and.
And he doesn’t go up. He turns back around and heads back to his house, back to his brothers, and every night he lies in his bed and he thinks.
*
So. Sing.
They’re doing the performance in the school’s basketball stadium, and fuck, there’s probably about six thousand people there, all told. Parents and siblings and every member of every house, friends who’ve listened to them bitch about every aspect of the whole production for the last four months.
DG and FBR go fifth-which is a good place in the lineup to be, as far as Brendon’s concerned-and then they go out and they-they fucking rock it, all right? They do these group circle moves that no one’s ever seen before, and these lifts that look all graceful and stuff, rather than just sort of tacked on there, like the ones in the third group’s do. And when they’re done, Brendon can hear the shouts of ‘FBR! FBR!’ and ‘DG! DG!’ echoing all throughout the building. They take their bow, then a second one, and then, for the first time in what feels like months-is months-Brendon feels himself relax.
It’s not over, of course, but while Brendon thinks that it would be awesome if they won-which they so totally should, by the way-what really matters was that they did really fucking awesome, and made their houses proud. The funny thing is, he’s been hating on Sing a lot for the last month, if not longer, but now, in this moment, he’s already starting to want to do it again, next year. Maybe, he thinks, they could do Guys and Dolls? Because really, who could say no to *suspenders*.
Still, they watch the last four groups perform, and yeah, okay, they’re all pretty good, but maybe not as good as Brendon’s house. Then the Alpha Phi’s and DU’s do this whole-Brendon would almost call it a gymnastics segment, with the synchronized flips and everything, and when Vicky T. says, “Yeah, they’re going to win,” Brendon nods. They are.
After the last performance, the judges get together to tally the scores, and that’s when the people from the IFC council and the Panhellenic Council get up to announce the Chapter of the Year Awards. It’s not like Brendon’s forgotten the 20 page application that he turned in, or the hours that he spent working on it, but he’s been so consumed by other things that he, well, totally forgot that that was supposed to happen tonight.
They announce the sorority award first, talking about how they have members in 29 organizations on campus, and others playing varsity sports, and how their GPA is a (disgusting) 3.43, and how they’ve done this and that, etc. And actually, Brendon’s not really surprised when Kappa Delta wins it, because of all the houses he’s met members of, the Kappa Deltas are some of his favorites.
Then it’s the fraternity’s turn, and Brendon’s expecting to know that they haven’t been chosen, well, from the very first sentence, except how they mention the house GPA of a 3.1, which FBR totally has, and that they also have members on the IFC council (which could be Travis), and how they’ve participated in nearly every philanthropy on campus over the last year (also true, thanks to Brendon and his distraction techniques), and how they placed second in Greek Week (true, true, true) and have members of their house working in all sorts of campus organizations, such as the newspaper (Tom, photographer), and-
And Ryan is gripping Brendon’s hand, because Brendon is pretty much frozen right now, staring at the stage, and he’s thinking, holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck. And that’s when Jon and the President of the Office of Greek Life come towards him, and Jon says, “Hey, little, you’re totally going up there to accept this with me,” and then Brendon finds himself up on stage *again*, listening to his guys pretty much scream the rafters down, as he and Jon accept the 2008 award for Fraternity of the Year.
Nick, the IFC President, shakes their hands and then hands over the really fucking big trophy and Brendon is bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, because this is just about the best thing ever. Like, *ever* ever.
And the best thing about it is, not even five minutes later, they *all* get to go back up on the stage again to get the somewhat smaller trophy for placing third in the overall Sing Competition, and that, right there, makes it pretty much one of the best nights of Brendon’s life.
When they finally come down off of the stage again, Brendon finds himself surrounded by his guys, the DGs, a lot of the KDs, parents and siblings and friends, all congratulating him, all so proud, and that feeling doesn’t fade as they make their way back to the fraternity house.
Butcher and Siska are already breaking out the beer by the time Brendon makes it upstairs, and there’s talk of a party: an impromptu celebration in their basement, possibly asking the KDs over to share their win, and of course the DGs are invited, and Brendon’s totally going to be the hero of the hour, or at least one of them, and it sounds good, so good, until Brendon’s standing in his room, changing out of his Peter Pan garb, and there’s really only one thing that he actually wants to do tonight. And it doesn’t involve the FBR basement in any way, shape, or form.
He doesn’t quite sneak out of the house, but he also doesn’t advertise where he’s going. He just slaps Ray’s hand as he passes him in the hallway and lets Bill and Gabe tackle him, and when he sees Spencer and Haley and Ryan, he says, “I’ll, um. I’ll see you later, okay?” Ryan looks confused, but Spencer nods and Haley can’t seem to resist giving him a quick hug.
Which is how he finds himself walking across the too-quiet campus, all the way to Cash’s dorm. He’s lucky in that a kid and his parents are leaving just as Brendon arrives, so he doesn’t have to, like, hang around outside for very long at all. His chest starts tightening as he takes the elevator up to the fourth floor, and he almost turns back three times, once for each ding as the elevator passes a floor.
Then he’s there, standing in the familiar hallway, and he’s turning left, walking to the end of the hall, where Cash’s room is. He takes a deep breath, then another, then finally knocks, knuckles sharp on the wood. He’s pretty sure that Cash isn’t going to answer, that he shouldn’t answer, because Brendon was a dick and doesn’t deserve to have him answer.
But Cash does.
He’s just taken a shower, given that he’s rubbing a towel across his hair, tousling it into unruly spikes, and he’s smiling when he opens the door, but when he sees Brendon, it fades into a tired frown, his eyes narrowing. And see, Brendon’s been planning what he wants to say for a week now, or maybe two months, whatever he can think of to get Cash to forgive him, and he spent the entire walk over running it through, word by word.
What he says, though, is, “Hi.”
Cash looks wary, but he doesn’t slam the door in Brendon’s face. Instead he says, “Hi,” hesitantly in return. Then, “Shane told me you guys won some stuff tonight. Shouldn’t you be out celebrating?”
Brendon shakes his head once, twice. “No, I-“ He could say that he’s right where he wants to be, that he’s been needing to come here for months. He could say lots of things, but his carefully planned out statements start tripping off of his tongue, jumbling together in his rush.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I am so fucking sorry, and I miss you, and I wanted to come tell you that, tell you that I was sorry. Because I was a fucking idiot, and I have no right to be as miserable as I’ve been, because I made a choice-a choice I apparently didn’t even fucking *have* to make-but if I’d known how much it was going to hurt to lose you, I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it in the first place, and I was an idiot, and I know you shouldn’t give me another chance, not even to be friends, but I.” He trails off, aware that he’s babbling, then says, “I just wanted to say that I was sorry.”
Cash stares at him for a long, long moment. Then he says, “What do you mean, ‘a choice you didn’t have to make’?”
“I told my guys,” Brendon says. “Last week, Spencer cornered me, and I told him that I was, you know. Not exactly straight. And then he told me I was an idiot, which I already knew. And then Jon and Ryan told me I was an idiot. And I was an idiot, and I am so fucking sorry. And I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
And there are really only so many times he can say that before the words start to lose their meaning, and Cash is still looking wary, tired, and Brendon’s the reason he looks that way, and it pretty much breaks his heart, and so he says, “I’ll go now, but I just wanted to tell you that, and tell you that, you know, if you ever want to try to be friends again at some point in the future, you know where to find me. But I totally understand if you never want to see me again, too. And I’m sorry.”
He holds his breath, waiting for Cash to tell him to go, leave, never come back, and after what feels like forever, too long, long enough for Brendon to have figured out Cash’s answer without having to hear the words, he starts to turn, to go. Which is when Cash says, “B. Um. I was just getting ready to watch 'Army of Darkness'. If, you know, if you wanted to come in."
Brendon does.
*
It’s not, you know, perfect.
It takes a few days before Cash’s smile is totally real again, another few before he lets Brendon draw on him again with the sparkly gel pens. But he always picks up when Brendon calls him, and he’s the one to suggest they go get dinner three nights in a row, and when, at the end of the second week, Brendon leans over in the middle of The Muppets Take Manhattan to kiss him, well. Cash doesn’t pull away.
*
So, it’s not like Brendon’s guys don’t know Cash. They met him while Cash and Brendon were still just lab partners, and they sure followed Brendon and Cash on their first real date during their third week of trying this whole thing again, to the movie in the quad. Cash had even come over to the house once before, to study, but there’s a difference between bringing your friend and bringing your boyfriend over to be vetted by the rest of the house and deemed worthy for their favorite (only) Brother Urie.
And that is why Brendon ends up spending most of his evenings over at Cash’s dorm nowadays, but then Jon corners him one day and pretty much pouts at Brendon, saying, “Are you ashamed of us, little? Is that why you never bring your boyfriend over to see us?”
So, the next night, after he and Cash grab dinner in the SU, Brendon says, “Do you maybe, um, want to come over?”
Cash looks a little bit nervous at the thought, just for one moment, and then he says, “Sure, yeah, sure.” They talk about random shit all of the way to Brendon’s house, and Brendon sort of holds his breath as he opens the door, anticipating the storm of whatever that could be waiting to greet them on the other side. But for once, amazingly enough, it’s quiet, so they head upstairs, and Brendon can hear Spencer and Haley in Spencer’s room, so he leads the way there and says, “Mind if we join you?”
Haley extracts herself from her place curled up at Spencer’s side so that she can shake Cash’s hand and say, “You must be Cash! I’ve heard so much about you!” Cash is ducking his head a little bit, and then they’re sitting, watching the latest episode of the Bachelorette that Travis taped, and-actually, it’s pretty normal. Until, that is, Jon, Brendon’s *evil* big brother, sticks his head into the room to say hi, then calls out into the hallway, “Hey, guys! Brendon finally brought his boyfriend over!”
Which is how Cash pretty much ends up getting introduced to the whole of FBR in one fell swoop, and it’s actually not that bad. His brothers are mostly on their best behavior, and as they talk, laugh, tell Cash embarrassing Brendon stories, Cash edges closer to Brendon, and Brendon, well. He traces his forefinger along the ’13 inked onto the back of Cash’s hand, and then he covers it with his own palm and squeezes.
Next to him, Cash smiles.
Title: Every New Beginning (frat!verse)
Author: tigs
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Brendon/Cash
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own.
Summary: And that, for the record, is how Brendon meets Cash. (~6500 words)
Author's Notes: For those who've been following the happy thoughts over at the writing journal, this should look familiar. The beginning, fleshed out. The original happy thought can be found here. Unbeta'd, so any errors are, of course, my own.
The first time Brendon meets Cash, well-
Okay, so, Brendon’s pretty fucking late, is what he is. Because no one told him that Harper had a fucking basement, all right? Which is why he spends five ever-so-precious minutes wandering around the first floor of the building in circles, looking for the elusive Room 016 sign. Which is absolutely nowhere to be found. At all.
Until, finally, he notices the ‘STAIRS’ sign at the end of one of the hallways that he’s already walked down two times before, and lo, when he opens the door, he finds that the stairs *actually go down*. His relief would have been somewhat more significant if he’d found the stairs at any point, you know, before his class had actually started, but still. Another ten steps in the wrong direction once he gets to the bottom of the steps, then another twenty in the right one, and then he’s there.
So, Brendon opens the door, and despite the fact that he’s only 4 minutes and 37 seconds late, the TA has already started going over the syllabus, talking about projects and lab hours and how participation will be 10% of their grade, so please, for the love of TAs everywhere, *talk*.
She doesn’t quite glare at Brendon as he makes his way across the room towards an empty seat, as he tries to convey a ‘Sorry, sorry,’ with a duck of his head, but her look isn’t exactly friendly either. Maybe because in his efforts to be quiet, he manages to bump into one person’s desk, almost trip over another person’s bag, make his shoe squeak extra loudly on the tile floor.
All of which is to say, by the time he reaches the empty seat, he is so ready for it. So, so ready. And yeah, okay, he tries to get settled as quietly as possible, but the sound of his backpack zipper seems extra loud, and his efforts to get his notebook out even louder. And then the TA is sending a syllabus back to him, though somehow it ends up in the hand of the guy next to him, and the guy-blond hair cut short, spiked-hands it over, looking amused.
Brendon sees the number ‘13’ inked onto the back of the guy’s hand in orange ink, possibly with added sparkles. And when Brendon takes the bright green sheet of paper from him, he smiles.
And that, for the record, is how Brendon meets Cash.
*
So, the thing is, Brendon’s not used to having friends outside of the house.
Oh, it’s not like he *doesn’t* have friends outside of the house, but, well. Most of them are connected to the house in some way, and he only sees them while with other members of his house. (See: Haley. Gerard the Crazy Art Major. Greta. Cassie.)
And most of the time, see, Brendon’s totally okay with this. If there’s one thing he’s not lacking in, after all, it’s social interaction. And his guys, his brothers, are pretty much the most awesome guys ever, and yeah, okay, sometimes they drive him up the wall, but Brendon is the youngest of five. He totally knows how to hold his own.
Whatever, though, because while the first week, at least, Cash is just the guy that Brendon sits next to in Biology, the second week, they start grabbing lunch together on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then during week three, Cash tells him that he and his roommate, Shane, are doing a Project Runway marathon that weekend, and would Brendon like to join them?
Brendon brings the popcorn.
Then Shane’s cousin Ian comes to visit for the weekend and Brendon gets invited to taste test his blended beverage concoctions, and then they all take a trip to the local park for an episode of Swinging While Intoxicated. And then the next week, midterm week, Cash talks him into going to the library with him three nights in a row.
Then Brendon gets Ratatouille on DVD-because you can never go wrong with Pixar-and he shows up at Cash’s dorm room without being invited, this time bringing M&Ms to go with the popcorn, and when Shane comes back after his shift at the bagel shop he glares at them for all of 2.5 seconds because yeah, the two of them will totally be finding M&Ms all over their room until they move out, because Brendon and Cash may or may not have ended up having an M&M war. Just a little one. Shane seems to be mostly mollified when Cash tosses him his own bag of candy, though. And then he makes them share the popcorn.
Brendon doesn’t actually realize just how much time he’s been spending with Cash, though, until Pete sits down next to him on the TV room couch one night after Monday Night Dinner, and says, “What’s this I hear about your new bromance?”
Brendon rolls his eyes, because seriously. Cash is just-he’s Cash.
“It’s not a fucking ‘bromance’,” Brendon says, and Pete nods along, totally indulgently, like he doesn’t believe a word that Brendon’s saying, and so Brendon is forced to punch his shoulder, because he has to defend his honor, right?
Right.
*
Also, Haley wants to set Brendon up with Greta.
Brendon’s proud, actually, because he pretty much figured it out *before* Spencer pulled him aside and said, “Beware, my girlfriend’s on the warpath.” It had been sort of obvious, actually, what with the fact that Greta’s been over to their house, like, four times a week, and she and Haley somehow keep ending up in Brendon’s room, only to have Haley flit off to go find Spencer.
And, like, okay. It’s not like Brendon *minds*. He thinks that Greta’s pretty awesome, actually. She has a wicked sense of humor, and she can play the piano and the drums and her voice has this sort of dusky quality to it, and she likes to wear little baby doll dresses, and also, she can shot gun a beer faster than Ryland.
These are all, Brendon thinks, admirable qualities.
Brendon thinks that he could do a lot worse.
He doesn’t ever quite get around to asking her out, though.
*
The first time Brendon realizes that there might be a reason for this, and also that maybe Pete had been, well, not quite so wrong when he’d talked about Brendon and Cash’s bromance, well.
They’re in the study lounge on Cash’s floor. It’s this totally utilitarian room, beige walls and couches covered in fabrics patterned more to hide stains than be any sort of stylish. And they’re studying Biology. If they’d known where he was going when he left the house, Pete probably would have made some sort of comment about how it was only appropriate that they be studying that, and Jon probably would have said that it should have been Chemistry, but.
Well.
So they’re studying, and they’ve got flash cards and three months worth of notes, and Brendon’s been coloring his hand and wrist with a highlighter for the last ten minutes, and Cash has been telling him about this band that Shane’s co-worker at the bagel store, Trace, is putting together, and how they have a demo up on MySpace, and Brendon stops drawing on his own hand and starts drawing lines on Cash’s, and, well.
Well, that’s really all that Brendon can tell you, actually, because the next thing he knows, Cash is leaning forward and brushing their lips together, and then he’s pulling back, his cheeks quickly flushing red.
It’s-
Brendon stares at him for a, well, okay, it feels like a long moment, but it’s probably no more than a second, a blink, before he’s leaning forward, making a small noise at the back of his throat, half whine, half moan, and their lips touch, but then Cash tips his head just a smidge, and Brendon tips his own, and then Cash puts a hand on the back of his neck, and then Brendon stops thinking for awhile. Maybe more than awhile, because he pretty much loses track of time until he hears someone bang their fist against the window in the lounge door, followed by a shouted, “Get a room!”
After that, they’re both red. Cash is grinning at Brendon, lips swollen, wet, and Brendon really wants to kiss him again. But they’ve got a final tomorrow, one which Brendon really needs to do well on so that he can, you know, never have to take another science class ever again, and. Yeah.
So, they study. And maybe kiss a few more times. And possibly giggle even more.
And when Brendon gets back to the FBR house later that night, Jon asks, “Good night?” Brendon’s totally lying when he shrugs, but he’s pretty sure that his smile tells the whole truth.
*
And, see, Brendon’s pretty sure that he should be flipping out. Like, a lot.
Because on the one hand, he never thought he was-
He’s never-
And on the other hand, his parents, his family. He was brought up to-
On the *other* other hand, it’s *Cash*. Who’s *Cash*. With the stupid dollar sign tattooed on his shoulder and the nearly constant ‘13’ inked on the back of his hand, sometimes in glitter gel, sometimes not. And then there’s the way he laughs at Brendon’s very lamest jokes, the ones that get him pelted with dirty socks at his house. And then there’s the way that he can do a perfect Heidi Klum impersonation. Well, as perfect an impersonation as a person can do without actually being Heidi Klum, that is. And the way that he made Brendon look forward to going to Biology two times a week for the last three months, what the fuck.
Basically, it’s *Cash*, and if Brendon’s honest with himself, he *knows* they’ve been building towards whatever this is between them for the last, well. Possibly from the moment they met. And so despite everything else, Brendon pretty much just feels excited. And possibly giddy.
Definitely giddy.
And he stays that way for a whole day, and it’s really awesome, like he has the best secret in the whole world.
On the second day, though, he’s sitting with Spencer and Jon and Haley and Cassie in Spencer and Travis’s room, and Haley’s saying, “B-den, B-den, we need to find you a girlfriend.”
Brendon opens his mouth to say, “I don’t need a girlfriend, I have Cash,” except that then he realizes exactly what he’s about to say and who he’s about to say it to, and he shuts his mouth.
Because no matter that these are four of his favorite people in the world, he also lives in a fraternity, he calls them all brothers and right now he’s closer to the 30-something of them than he is to his own, and frats aren’t exactly known for being the most supportive of lifestyles outside the heterosexual norm, and holy fuck, he’s kissed Cash, more than once, and he wants to kiss Cash even more than more than once, but what if someone in the house isn’t okay with them? What if they kick Brendon out on some other pretense? What if they make life so miserable for him that he wants to leave? Not that he can think of anyone who would do that, but he’s heard tales from other houses, and even if everyone at FBR was okay with it, what about the other houses? Does FBR want to be known as the house with the gay freshman? What if they said they didn’t care but actually did? What if, what if, what if?
So many questions, thoughts, flitting through his brain, and it’s sobering-it *hurts*--for Brendon to realize that he’s not sure that he’s willing to find out the answers to any of them.
“Brendon,” Spencer says, voice sharp, so it’s probably about the eighth time that he’s said Brendon’s name, and Brendon jerks back to himself, probably looking scared, pale. Spencer continues a moment later, voice softer. “You all right?”
Brendon nods. “Yeah,” he says. Then again, more firmly, with an attempt at a smile, in the hopes of making himself believe it. “Yeah.”
Because he will be.
He thinks.
*
Cash calls him twice the next day, but Brendon doesn’t pick up.
Instead he plays Mario Kart with Jon, listens to Marie recite a monologue for her drama class final. He takes a trip with Spencer over to Bob and Gerard’s so that Spencer can steal his drumsticks back from Frankie, and they end up staying for beer and a vampire movie.
The day after, Brendon has his performance recital on piano, and he’s not worried, and he does well enough to get an A, but his teacher asks him if everything’s all right, because he seems to be a little bit less enthusiastic than normal.
The next day, the last day of school before Spring Break, Brendon shows up at Cash’s door, standing awkwardly in the hallway. Shane is there, but he takes one look at Brendon’s face and says, “Yeah, so. I’m just going to go see Reg, okay? I’ll be back sometime, yeah?” So then it’s just Brendon and Cash.
And-it shouldn’t be easy. It really shouldn’t. It doesn’t feel easy, but Cash looks at Brendon, and he obviously knows what’s coming, because when Brendon says, “I-I just,” Cash nods. Like he was expecting it. Like he was already resigned. He doesn’t say, ‘it’s okay,’ because it’s not, they both know it’s not, but this is Brendon’s choice, and it sucks, and he’s already hating himself for it, oh fuck he is, but it’s the choice he needs to make.
After, he doesn’t remember Cash shutting the door behind him. He doesn’t remember making the walk back to the FBR house. He doesn’t remember much of anything, actually, until Ryan knocks on his door and says, “Hey, hey, you okay?” and Brendon forces himself to smile-too wide, too cheerful-and say, “Yeah.”
Ryan knows he’s lying, Brendon can tell, because the next thing Brendon knows, they’re in the TV room watching Moulin Rouge on the big screen, and there are about 15 of the brothers there, and they all sing along with all of the songs, something they’ve been known to pelt Brendon with pillows for doing, and.
And.
And Brendon wishes that he could say for sure that he’d made the right choice, but he can’t.
He *almost* wishes that he could say he’d made the *wrong* one, just so he’d have a reason to feel this crappy, but he can’t say that either.
Either way, though, Brendon has made his choice. Now he just needs to live with it.
*
The good thing about Spring Break is, it gives Brendon a week to mope.
He has one week to do whatever the hell he wants, and so he spends a lot of time in the music building, playing the piano, practicing the cello. He thinks about taking up the trumpet.
Three nights, he lets Spencer and Ryan and Nate drag him out, twice to Bob and Gerard’s house, once to Patrick’s. The other nights, Brendon locks himself in his room and tells people that he got his dinner on the way home from campus, yeah, he sucks, sorry. He reads and watches movies and tries not to think about the fact that Cash could very well be doing the same exact thing half a campus away.
*
Spring term is better. Mainly because it’s really, really fucking busy. For one thing, they’re in the countdown to Sing, which they’ve been practicing for since January. They’re working with Delta Gamma this year-Gabe and Vicky T. are the co-chairs-and they’re doing Peter Pan, and Brendon loves Peter Pan.
And, like, half the houses on campus are doing their philanthropies now that it’s actually nice out again, and Brendon is totally all for participating in as many of them as he can. The soccer tournament? He is so there. Bowling? Even better. Talent show? Pencil him in! Also, there’s the Spring House Dance, which they have to spend days getting the house ready for, and Brendon asks Greta to go with him-as friends, of course, since she’s seeing a DU now-but still. Also, they need someone to write up the Chapter of the Year award application for the Office of Greek Life, and Brendon may not be the best writer ever, but *no one* is as enthusiastic as he is about the house, and also, Ryan offers to proofread it for him.
And then, of course, there are his classes. He has Comm 113 this term, and Statistics 104, and his music classes, and basically, there are not enough hours in the day for everything he wants to do.
And it’s better too, because he doesn’t think about Cash much at all-except every time he walks past Harper, which is, like, five times a day at least, or when he sees Project Runway reruns on Bravo, or when he thinks about going to the library for a marathon study session, or when he sees Cash across the quad or something, walking with Shane, and then he wonders how it could have only been three months that he’d known Cash, because it sure feels like a lot longer than that, like he’s lost a lot more than something that could be built in that span of time.
But anyway, he’s keeping busy, because busy hands are happy hands, as his mother used to tell him-although Brendon never really had a problem with that because he *likes* to be busy, and.
Yeah.
*
The amazing thing-and Brendon doesn’t know whether to be grateful or disgusted by this-is that no one actually calls him on his attitude until the end of April, a week before Sing.
And, okay, see, it hadn’t been a good day to start with, because Brendon had seen Cash on campus, not once but *twice*, and one of those times, he’d definitely seen Brendon, too, and the look he’d given Brendon-and the look *Shane* had given Brendon. It had fucking sucked. And then he’d totally fucked up three of his pieces during his cello lesson, which happened to everyone, just not usually to Brendon. And then he’d tried to take one of his self-paced statistics quizzes and he’d just bombed that.
And then, when he’d finally gotten home, ready to crash in front of the TV for hours and wallow, he’d walked in on Marie and Joe being all lovey-dovey, and he’d maybe stormed out of the TV room just a little bit forcefully, maybe just a little, and so he’s not actually really surprised when Spencer comes into his room without so much as a by your leave.
He glares at Spencer, but Spencer ignores him and instead sits down on William’s couch and says, “What the fuck.” Brendon knows that he’s not asking about Brendon’s little display downstairs, either. Well, not mostly.
“It’s nothing,” Brendon says, because that’s exactly what he’s been saying for two months. Well, that’s the gist of it anyway, if not exactly the words he’s been using. Because it is nothing, it was nothing, it was only a few days of thinking he could have something more with Cash, only three months of friendship, compared to eight months of living with the guys in his house, 18 years of not having any of them, but particularly not Cash.
“Bullshit,” Spencer says. “Tell me, Urie. What the fuck’s been going on? It’s been fucking *months*, dude.”
And, see, Spencer’s a smart guy. If he cares to look beyond months and into a more exact timeframe, he’ll put two and two together and get something less than five. Maybe, Brendon thinks, it would be better just to tell him, because Spencer won’t care-Brendon may not be 100 percent sure about how everyone in the rest of the house would react, but *Spencer* Brendon’s sure about-and the words have been sitting on the tip of Brendon’s tongue for what feels like forever now, and each day it gets harder and harder not to say them. So maybe he could, should, maybe, maybe, and God, his stomach is totally clenching up, and he feels like he’s going to throw up, his throat feels cold and fluttery, and-
And-
“I-I think I’m gay,” Brendon says. The words come quickly, tripping off the end of his tongue. He swallows. “Maybe. Um.”
He looks at his hands, but after a long moment where Spencer doesn’t say anything, he forces himself to look up. Spencer doesn’t look outraged-Brendon *had* been right about that-or even very surprised at all. He looks… sympathetic.
He says, “Cash?”
Brendon nods, miserably. Because. Because.
Because.
Spencer nods again, like it makes sense, or confirms some suspicion he’d had, and then he’s asking, “So what happened?” And so Brendon tells him, the words just tumbling out, bottled up for too long: the studying, the kiss, his choice. The thing is, as he’s talking, Spencer stops looking sympathetic and actually starts to look more than a little pissed.
“You thought we’d care?” he asks. “Jesus, Brendon. We wouldn’t-No one would-“
“*You* wouldn’t, I knew you wouldn’t,” Brendon says, and he’s glad to see Spencer look slightly mollified. “But you aren’t everyone else, Spence. And I couldn’t-I didn’t think I could take the chance.”
Spencer’s still frowning, but he’s starting to look sympathetic again. Before he can say anything, though, there’s a knock on the door, and Ryan and Jon are sticking their heads in through the crack. “So, we heard there were serious discussions going on,” Ryan says, as Jon adds, “Everything okay?”
Brendon can feel Spencer looking at him, probably trying to mentally project what he thinks Brendon should say in this moment straight into Brendon’s head, because Brendon’s instinct is to say, ‘Fine! Fine!’ but what he says is, “I think, um. I think I’m gay.”
It’s not exactly easier to say it the second time, but Ryan and Jon don’t look very surprised either. They do come all the way into the room and shut the door behind them, though.
“So you’ve, what, got a boyfriend?” Ryan asks. The words sound dry, slightly sarcastic, but Brendon knows that Ryan is genuinely interested. He and Keltie are in that honeymoon stage where they want *everyone* to be in love.
“Cash?” Jon asks, and Brendon can’t help but wonder if the whole house had, like, bets going or something, about whether their ‘bromance’ was actually missing the ‘b’.
“Not anymore,” Brendon says, and for a beat he thinks that he’s going to have to replay the whole conversation with Spencer again. Spencer takes pity on him, though, and says, “Brendon was an idiot. He actually thought we’d care.”
Jon looks mildly affronted by that fact, but Ryan shrugs. “I could see how it would be a valid concern. Not our house, obviously, but outside, you know, there.” He waves his hand in a vague way that Brendon takes to mean the Greek System at large, and he- He’s still not sure whether he made the right choice or the wrong one. Or if there had been no right answer at all.
Then, his voice as fierce as he can make it, Ryan continues, “But we wouldn’t have *let* it matter.” Jon and Spencer nod in something like solidarity, and there’s a moment of silence before Jon says, “Hey, Ry, do you remember that guy who works for the paper? The one who was totally into Tom’s photography?”
Ryan nods, suddenly looking almost crafty, and then Brendon places who they’re talking about: the guy whom Jon and Bill had teased Tom about for weeks afterwards, calling him Tom’s boyfriend, which Tom had totally taken in stride. The guy who, Brendon’s suddenly pretty sure, Jon and Ryan are talking about setting him up with, holy fuck.
Because they are, apparently, totally okay with it, everything, and Brendon’s so relieved that he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, or maybe do a little of both, and for the first time since that awful, awful night, he realizes that he really might have had a third choice: that he could have had both, that he might have made it work. That his brothers would have allowed him to make it work.
He wonders, for a brief moment, if he still can.
Except he knows he can’t. It’s two months too late and he brushed Cash aside and Cash shouldn’t forgive him, and.
And.
*
The thing is, Brendon shouldn’t even have time to think about the ‘what might have beens’ that week, because they’re in Hell Week for Sing, which not only means getting ready for the moms to descend the next weekend, but also two hour practices every night and costume fittings and Vicky T glaring and Gabe yelling and Brendon’s pretty sure that the ladies of Delta Gamma and the men of Phi Beta Rho will need at least two weeks-if not the whole rest of the year *and* the summer-to calm down enough to actually be in the same room with each other again.
But still, at the end of every day, he ends up lying in his bed on the sleeping porch, staring at the bottom of Andy’s bunk above him, and then he thinks. And thinks. And twice when he’s on campus, he walks all the way to Cash’s dorm and has someone hold the door open for him to let him in, and.
And he doesn’t go up. He turns back around and heads back to his house, back to his brothers, and every night he lies in his bed and he thinks.
*
So. Sing.
They’re doing the performance in the school’s basketball stadium, and fuck, there’s probably about six thousand people there, all told. Parents and siblings and every member of every house, friends who’ve listened to them bitch about every aspect of the whole production for the last four months.
DG and FBR go fifth-which is a good place in the lineup to be, as far as Brendon’s concerned-and then they go out and they-they fucking rock it, all right? They do these group circle moves that no one’s ever seen before, and these lifts that look all graceful and stuff, rather than just sort of tacked on there, like the ones in the third group’s do. And when they’re done, Brendon can hear the shouts of ‘FBR! FBR!’ and ‘DG! DG!’ echoing all throughout the building. They take their bow, then a second one, and then, for the first time in what feels like months-is months-Brendon feels himself relax.
It’s not over, of course, but while Brendon thinks that it would be awesome if they won-which they so totally should, by the way-what really matters was that they did really fucking awesome, and made their houses proud. The funny thing is, he’s been hating on Sing a lot for the last month, if not longer, but now, in this moment, he’s already starting to want to do it again, next year. Maybe, he thinks, they could do Guys and Dolls? Because really, who could say no to *suspenders*.
Still, they watch the last four groups perform, and yeah, okay, they’re all pretty good, but maybe not as good as Brendon’s house. Then the Alpha Phi’s and DU’s do this whole-Brendon would almost call it a gymnastics segment, with the synchronized flips and everything, and when Vicky T. says, “Yeah, they’re going to win,” Brendon nods. They are.
After the last performance, the judges get together to tally the scores, and that’s when the people from the IFC council and the Panhellenic Council get up to announce the Chapter of the Year Awards. It’s not like Brendon’s forgotten the 20 page application that he turned in, or the hours that he spent working on it, but he’s been so consumed by other things that he, well, totally forgot that that was supposed to happen tonight.
They announce the sorority award first, talking about how they have members in 29 organizations on campus, and others playing varsity sports, and how their GPA is a (disgusting) 3.43, and how they’ve done this and that, etc. And actually, Brendon’s not really surprised when Kappa Delta wins it, because of all the houses he’s met members of, the Kappa Deltas are some of his favorites.
Then it’s the fraternity’s turn, and Brendon’s expecting to know that they haven’t been chosen, well, from the very first sentence, except how they mention the house GPA of a 3.1, which FBR totally has, and that they also have members on the IFC council (which could be Travis), and how they’ve participated in nearly every philanthropy on campus over the last year (also true, thanks to Brendon and his distraction techniques), and how they placed second in Greek Week (true, true, true) and have members of their house working in all sorts of campus organizations, such as the newspaper (Tom, photographer), and-
And Ryan is gripping Brendon’s hand, because Brendon is pretty much frozen right now, staring at the stage, and he’s thinking, holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck. And that’s when Jon and the President of the Office of Greek Life come towards him, and Jon says, “Hey, little, you’re totally going up there to accept this with me,” and then Brendon finds himself up on stage *again*, listening to his guys pretty much scream the rafters down, as he and Jon accept the 2008 award for Fraternity of the Year.
Nick, the IFC President, shakes their hands and then hands over the really fucking big trophy and Brendon is bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, because this is just about the best thing ever. Like, *ever* ever.
And the best thing about it is, not even five minutes later, they *all* get to go back up on the stage again to get the somewhat smaller trophy for placing third in the overall Sing Competition, and that, right there, makes it pretty much one of the best nights of Brendon’s life.
When they finally come down off of the stage again, Brendon finds himself surrounded by his guys, the DGs, a lot of the KDs, parents and siblings and friends, all congratulating him, all so proud, and that feeling doesn’t fade as they make their way back to the fraternity house.
Butcher and Siska are already breaking out the beer by the time Brendon makes it upstairs, and there’s talk of a party: an impromptu celebration in their basement, possibly asking the KDs over to share their win, and of course the DGs are invited, and Brendon’s totally going to be the hero of the hour, or at least one of them, and it sounds good, so good, until Brendon’s standing in his room, changing out of his Peter Pan garb, and there’s really only one thing that he actually wants to do tonight. And it doesn’t involve the FBR basement in any way, shape, or form.
He doesn’t quite sneak out of the house, but he also doesn’t advertise where he’s going. He just slaps Ray’s hand as he passes him in the hallway and lets Bill and Gabe tackle him, and when he sees Spencer and Haley and Ryan, he says, “I’ll, um. I’ll see you later, okay?” Ryan looks confused, but Spencer nods and Haley can’t seem to resist giving him a quick hug.
Which is how he finds himself walking across the too-quiet campus, all the way to Cash’s dorm. He’s lucky in that a kid and his parents are leaving just as Brendon arrives, so he doesn’t have to, like, hang around outside for very long at all. His chest starts tightening as he takes the elevator up to the fourth floor, and he almost turns back three times, once for each ding as the elevator passes a floor.
Then he’s there, standing in the familiar hallway, and he’s turning left, walking to the end of the hall, where Cash’s room is. He takes a deep breath, then another, then finally knocks, knuckles sharp on the wood. He’s pretty sure that Cash isn’t going to answer, that he shouldn’t answer, because Brendon was a dick and doesn’t deserve to have him answer.
But Cash does.
He’s just taken a shower, given that he’s rubbing a towel across his hair, tousling it into unruly spikes, and he’s smiling when he opens the door, but when he sees Brendon, it fades into a tired frown, his eyes narrowing. And see, Brendon’s been planning what he wants to say for a week now, or maybe two months, whatever he can think of to get Cash to forgive him, and he spent the entire walk over running it through, word by word.
What he says, though, is, “Hi.”
Cash looks wary, but he doesn’t slam the door in Brendon’s face. Instead he says, “Hi,” hesitantly in return. Then, “Shane told me you guys won some stuff tonight. Shouldn’t you be out celebrating?”
Brendon shakes his head once, twice. “No, I-“ He could say that he’s right where he wants to be, that he’s been needing to come here for months. He could say lots of things, but his carefully planned out statements start tripping off of his tongue, jumbling together in his rush.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I am so fucking sorry, and I miss you, and I wanted to come tell you that, tell you that I was sorry. Because I was a fucking idiot, and I have no right to be as miserable as I’ve been, because I made a choice-a choice I apparently didn’t even fucking *have* to make-but if I’d known how much it was going to hurt to lose you, I probably wouldn’t have been able to make it in the first place, and I was an idiot, and I know you shouldn’t give me another chance, not even to be friends, but I.” He trails off, aware that he’s babbling, then says, “I just wanted to say that I was sorry.”
Cash stares at him for a long, long moment. Then he says, “What do you mean, ‘a choice you didn’t have to make’?”
“I told my guys,” Brendon says. “Last week, Spencer cornered me, and I told him that I was, you know. Not exactly straight. And then he told me I was an idiot, which I already knew. And then Jon and Ryan told me I was an idiot. And I was an idiot, and I am so fucking sorry. And I’ve missed you so fucking much.”
And there are really only so many times he can say that before the words start to lose their meaning, and Cash is still looking wary, tired, and Brendon’s the reason he looks that way, and it pretty much breaks his heart, and so he says, “I’ll go now, but I just wanted to tell you that, and tell you that, you know, if you ever want to try to be friends again at some point in the future, you know where to find me. But I totally understand if you never want to see me again, too. And I’m sorry.”
He holds his breath, waiting for Cash to tell him to go, leave, never come back, and after what feels like forever, too long, long enough for Brendon to have figured out Cash’s answer without having to hear the words, he starts to turn, to go. Which is when Cash says, “B. Um. I was just getting ready to watch 'Army of Darkness'. If, you know, if you wanted to come in."
Brendon does.
*
It’s not, you know, perfect.
It takes a few days before Cash’s smile is totally real again, another few before he lets Brendon draw on him again with the sparkly gel pens. But he always picks up when Brendon calls him, and he’s the one to suggest they go get dinner three nights in a row, and when, at the end of the second week, Brendon leans over in the middle of The Muppets Take Manhattan to kiss him, well. Cash doesn’t pull away.
*
So, it’s not like Brendon’s guys don’t know Cash. They met him while Cash and Brendon were still just lab partners, and they sure followed Brendon and Cash on their first real date during their third week of trying this whole thing again, to the movie in the quad. Cash had even come over to the house once before, to study, but there’s a difference between bringing your friend and bringing your boyfriend over to be vetted by the rest of the house and deemed worthy for their favorite (only) Brother Urie.
And that is why Brendon ends up spending most of his evenings over at Cash’s dorm nowadays, but then Jon corners him one day and pretty much pouts at Brendon, saying, “Are you ashamed of us, little? Is that why you never bring your boyfriend over to see us?”
So, the next night, after he and Cash grab dinner in the SU, Brendon says, “Do you maybe, um, want to come over?”
Cash looks a little bit nervous at the thought, just for one moment, and then he says, “Sure, yeah, sure.” They talk about random shit all of the way to Brendon’s house, and Brendon sort of holds his breath as he opens the door, anticipating the storm of whatever that could be waiting to greet them on the other side. But for once, amazingly enough, it’s quiet, so they head upstairs, and Brendon can hear Spencer and Haley in Spencer’s room, so he leads the way there and says, “Mind if we join you?”
Haley extracts herself from her place curled up at Spencer’s side so that she can shake Cash’s hand and say, “You must be Cash! I’ve heard so much about you!” Cash is ducking his head a little bit, and then they’re sitting, watching the latest episode of the Bachelorette that Travis taped, and-actually, it’s pretty normal. Until, that is, Jon, Brendon’s *evil* big brother, sticks his head into the room to say hi, then calls out into the hallway, “Hey, guys! Brendon finally brought his boyfriend over!”
Which is how Cash pretty much ends up getting introduced to the whole of FBR in one fell swoop, and it’s actually not that bad. His brothers are mostly on their best behavior, and as they talk, laugh, tell Cash embarrassing Brendon stories, Cash edges closer to Brendon, and Brendon, well. He traces his forefinger along the ’13 inked onto the back of Cash’s hand, and then he covers it with his own palm and squeezes.
Next to him, Cash smiles.