Bandfic: And I'd Be Your Memory (Brendon/Spencer. drawn_to fic)
Title: And I'd Be Your Memory
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own.
Summary: And somehow, midway through the tour, the postcard collecting becomes known as Brendon’s thing.
Author's Notes: From early days to the present in 8500 words. Written for reni_days in the drawn_to fic exchange. Happy holidays, reni_days! I hope you enjoy! Many, many thanks to amy13 and seimaisin for the betas and hand-holding. Any remaining errors are my own. Title from "Memory," by Sugarcult.
The thing is, Ryan laughs.
And okay, so, it’s maybe not unwarranted laughter given that they’ve been on tour for a whole hour, are barely even outside the Baltimore city limits, and they’re already stopping, but, you know. The van guzzles gas. Brent drinks too much soda. They need to get snacks to shove at Brendon in an effort to get him to stop talking for more than thirty seconds at a time.
So, they stop.
It’s once they’re actually inside the convenience store attached to the gas station that Spencer remembers his mother’s firm instructions to send her a postcard, no ifs, ands, or buts, mister. And if what Pete and all of his guys have told Spencer about touring is true, he’s going to start losing track of days pretty quickly now, so he thinks that he really should be getting on that. His mom will absolutely yell at him for not sending her one, after all. And she's totally the sort of person who will call him out for sending one from the last stop on the tour, if he waits that long. Because his mother will totally pay attention to the postmark.
So while the others use the bathroom and fill up the van and buy enough snacks to get them a few hours further down the road, Spencer browses the rack of postcards. Maryland, Baltimore, pictures of sunrises and sunsets. He picks one that shows scenes from all around the city, with ‘Charm City! Wish You Were Here!’ written in loopy letters across the front.
He’s still slowly turning the rack, though, when he feels someone step up beside him, deliberately invading his personal space bubble. It’s Brendon, of course, standing just a few inches away, already plucking cards out of their slots.
“What?” he asks, after Spencer’s stare stretches out for long enough to be noticeable, and his grin is wide enough that Spencer’s pretty sure he’s already started in on the snacks meant for the next leg of the journey. Red Bull. Or chocolate. Oreos, maybe? Something. “It’s five for two dollars. You can’t tell me that you’re just going to get one.” He actually sounds a little bit horrified at the thought.
Spencer sighs, but Brendon does have a point, so he picks out four more: his aunt and uncle will probably expect a postcard, too. And his sisters will each want one. And he can’t forget his grandmother.
So, in short, an hour into their band’s first tour, Spencer and Brendon collectively buy four dollars worth of postcards, the cashier bags them up, and Ryan laughs.
“We’ve barely even left the city we’ve been living in for two months,” Ryan says.
“Shut up,” Spencer says.
“You couldn’t at least have waited until we hit D.C.? Where there are lots of things worthy of postcards?”
“Shut up,” Spencer says.
“Yeah, shut up, Ross,” Brendon adds. Then, at Ryan’s look, he sticks his tongue out and dashes out the door of the convenience store, running back towards the van, yelling for Brent to save him, please. Please?
“Really?” Ryan asks again and Spencer shrugs. He just says, “My mom,” at which point Ryan nods, like he understands.
*
So, Spencer buys his postcards that first day (and mails them the second), but for Brendon it becomes, well, a thing. Like, every time they stop for food or gas or to stretch their legs, Spencer will find Brendon huddled at the postcard rack, poring over the offerings. He gets four more in D.C., then two in Norfolk, one in each of the three cities they stop in in Florida, and-
“How many postcards are you planning to write?” Ryan asks on the drive between Fort Lauderdale and St. Petersburg, because Brendon’s spent most of the last hour sitting on the floor in the back of the van writing. And also swearing when an unexpected turn in the road screws him up. Or a pothole.
“I’m not-“ Brendon starts, then shrugs. “I- it’s not like we’ve been taking pictures, you know? But I figure that this way I can remember the cities and everything and I can write down things about the shows and-“
Spencer almost expects Ryan or Brent to say something about it-accuse Brendon of, like, keeping a diary or compare it to fucking scrapbooking or something like that-but Ryan is rarely separated from his journals, and Brent. Well. His mom owns a mean pair of scrapbooking scissors.
And, besides, this is their first tour, after all. Spencer wonders if maybe Brendon has the right idea.
*
The Take Cover tour ends three days before their CD comes out, and then the day after it actually does come out--which is just, holy fuck, they have an actual CD out for people to buy--they meet up with Fall Out Boy and the guys in Motion City Soundtrack for the Nintendo Fusion Tour and-
Most days now, Spencer has a hard time believing that this is his life, what with the whole actually playing music for a living thing, but it's starting to feel at least a little bit real. It stops feeling real again about a week into the tour, when Brendon and Ryan notice that people are actually singing the fuck along with their songs, a fact which has Brendon bouncing up and down in his seat in the van for the first hundred miles of their drive after the show that night.
Spencer won’t actually admit to bouncing, but he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t stop smiling for at least another hundred miles after that.
It’s not until they hit the Philadelphia date of the tour that Spencer realizes that Brendon is still buying postcards. Just one this time, which when Spencer looks, he sees is of the Liberty Bell. (Spencer had made Brent drive by the monument on the way to the venue, because Spencer refuses to tell his mom that he went to Philadelphia and didn’t drive by the Liberty Bell.)
And, you know, it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything, and it’s not like Brendon shouldn’t still be doing this whatever it is that he’s doing, it’s just-
Well.
The thing is, it’s not their first tour any longer, the novelty at least partially worn off. Also, Spencer’s seen Brendon begin more projects than he can count, only to let them fall by the wayside when life (school, work, band, tour) got in the way. Music’s about the only thing Spencer can remember that Brendon has never let slip, which Spencer supposes makes sense, since Brendon is Brendon, and music is pretty much his life. Of course, music is pretty much all of their lives right at the moment.
All of which is to say: they’ve hit tour number two and Brendon, apparently, is still buying postcards.
So Spencer asks, “You’re still doing that?”
Brendon nods.
He looks a little unsure, like he thinks Spencer’s making fun of him, which Spencer’s not. He just-
“Are you, like, putting these into albums?” Spencer asks. “You aren’t letting them take over the back of the van, right? We aren’t going to wake up one day and wonder where our equipment is, under a tidal wave of postcards?” He wants to ask if Brendon will ever let any of the rest of them look at the albums, if that’s what he’s doing, but he doesn’t.
“Ha, no,” Brendon says. “No, I’ve got them under control.” He’s grinning again, happier now. He picks up a second postcard, this one of Independence Hall-which they’d driven by too-and Spencer follows Brendon as he heads up to the cash register to pay.
*
The thing about the Nintendo Fusion Tour is that it goes on for-fucking-ever, and when there are twenty plus band guys, plus all of the crew, all living on top of each other for months on end, you pretty much end up learning more about everyone than you ever really wanted to know.
For instance, Spencer learns very early on never to let Pete into your van after midnight. Particularly if he has a video camera in his hand. He learns never to challenge Justin Pierre to a game of Truth or Dare, because that always ends up with someone doing nasty ass shit that Spencer is never going to be able to bleach out of his brain. He learns to always knock on the door of any bus or van before he opens it, since quiet corners are hard to come by; that Motion City’s drummer collects the caps of beer bottles and is using them to make a mosaic on the back wall of their bus; and that one of Fall Out Boy’s techs can balance a drumstick on his nose for three minutes, while carrying on a conversation.
And somehow, midway through the tour, the postcard collecting becomes known as Brendon’s thing.
So now instead of Brendon searching the cards out in every gas station they stop at, it’s Pete and Andy bringing him postcards of naked ladies, Justin bringing him different postcard views of cornfields, other people finding as many quirky and/or random postcards for him as they can. By the time that they’re two-thirds of the way through the tour, Brendon has fucking shoe boxes full of postcards, all helpfully (and mostly jokingly) picked out for him by members of the tour.
Brendon smiles as he takes them, of course, laughing and sometimes looking scandalized at the raunchiest of the set. Those are always the ones he keeps showing to Spencer and Ryan and Brent, though, looking for their reactions. And as far as Spencer knows, he keeps them all.
He doesn’t see Brendon writing as much, though. He can’t count on always finding Brendon at the postcard racks in gas stations any longer.
He’s actually not even sure Brendon really notices. They’re all so tired these days, too many shows in a row, too many hours spent cramped in the not-that-comfortable van seats. They’re all ready to be home, ready to sleep, ready to hibernate for more than a few days, a dream which is starting to feel more than a little hopeless, especially since they have no scheduled breaks on the horizon.
But still, when they stop in Des Moines, Spencer deliberately goes to the postcard rack and says, “Hey, Brendon, help me pick out a card to send to my family for Thanksgiving, okay?”
Brendon doesn’t quite bounce over (they all pretty much lost the ability to bounce three states ago), but he does turn the rack for Spencer, eyeing all of the available offerings. Finally he points to one with trees and hills.
“That one,” he says. “No one outside the Midwest ever believes me when I tell them that Iowa has mountains. We need to show someone photographic proof.”
Spencer laughs and nods. It’s true.
“You should get one too,” Spencer says, and maybe he’s being a little bit obvious, but-but the postcards are Brendon’s thing.
And maybe Brendon’s missed it, too, picking out his own, because the next thing Spencer knows, he’s pulling one from the rack: sky and dark trees, a forest they haven’t driven through.
Then he’s grabbing another, and a third. Spencer looks up at the sign and sees 3/$2.
“Gotta get your money’s worth?” he asks and Brendon nods.
“Of course,” he says.
That evening, after they’re off stage and in the van, on the road to Milwaukee, Spencer looks over his shoulder and sees Brendon scribbling on the back of the card, humming a little as he does it.
Spencer settles his headphones more firmly against his ears and stares at his reflection in the dark window until he falls asleep.
*
Then comes the Truckstops and Statelines tour, which is, of course, where they meet Jon Walker.
The first thing Spencer learns about Jon is that he is apparently Super Tech, or so Ryan tells Spencer after Jon fixes Ryan’s guitar pedal about an hour before they’re supposed to go on stage.
The second thing Spencer learns about Jon is that he shares Brendon’s affinity for Disney musicals. No one has to tell him this one. He figures it out for himself when he finds Jon and Brendon sitting at the back of the shared band bus, watching Aladdin on a borrowed laptop, singing along with ‘Arabian Nights’ not quite at the top of their lungs.
Given these first two introductions, it’s no surprise to Spencer that Brendon and Ryan decide pretty quickly on that Jon is their sort of people. Spencer is pretty quick to agree.
The third thing that Spencer learns about Jon is that he’s a photographer. When he’s not backstage doing magical tech things, or trying to track down a bootleg copy of Mulan, he’s somewhere around the venue, the strap of his camera looped around his neck, taking pictures.
He’s good, too. He gets artistic shots of the stages, of all of the bands prepping. He gets pictures of the crowds, inside and out. There are other pictures of the more traditional sort, too: the horizon, cracks in sidewalks, a house with all of its holiday decorations still up, despite the fact that the days are inching towards March.
They’re in Atlantic City when Spencer sees Brendon come into their dressing room, clutching a handful of Polaroids, saying, “Look what Jon gave me!” And suddenly, just like that, when they stop at gas stations or convenience stores, Brendon doesn’t go inside any longer. Instead, he follows Jon around, pointing out things for Jon to take pictures of. At night, instead of writing his thoughts about the day on the backs of the pictures, he buys a pack of index cards and writes on them, sliding them into the albums too.
Brendon lets Spencer look through the book once, mostly to show him a picture that Jon had taken of Spencer while he was on stage and how Spencer had been embracing his inner Animal, but Spencer looks at some of Brendon’s scrawled notes, too. The day when they noticed the crowds were getting bigger. The day they moved from first opener to second, then another the day they took over the direct support slot. The day Spencer’s parents heard their song on the radio for the first time. The day they heard their song on the radio for the first time.
He looks at the pictures of all four of them in the album-of him, Brendon, Ryan, and Brent-and how their smiles are mostly getting wider, even as they look more strung out and more tired from being on the road for weeks on end.
Basically, it’s every memory that Spencer wants to keep, all packaged away in one photo album.
“This is awesome,” he says when he hands it back to Brendon.
Brendon grins.
*
It’s not until later, much later, that Spencer starts to wonder if Brendon was keeping track of the not-so-good milestones, too. Or if Jon’s accompanying pictures would tell the story of a band falling apart, even if the words Brendon wrote didn’t. He can’t quite bring himself to ask to look, though, to see whether Brent’s smile had truly been as wide as the rest of theirs; to see if Brent had even been in all of the pictures still.
But that’s later.
That’s after they’ve done their first European Tour. After they all join Brendon in buying postcards at every single stop they make on the continent, because Europe, holy crap. After they play Bamboozle, what the fuck, and after they’ve called Jon back to them when Brent doesn’t show up to make the trip to KROQ’s Weenie Roast.
Spencer doesn’t know if Jon picks up where he left off right then, taking a picture from that show for Brendon. He doesn’t know if Brendon buys a postcard in the hotel lobby. He doesn’t know if Brendon writes anything, or if there’s anything he actually wants to remember about that show.
Spencer doesn’t think about any of that then, of course, not until much later. By then, though, he doesn’t really want to know.
*
So.
So, rather than the photo albums just being Brendon’s thing, they become a Brendon-and-Jon thing, with Brendon smiling more widely with every picture that Jon gives to him. It actually becomes something of a game for Jon, because at some point around the third stop of the tour, he starts trying to sneak the pictures into Brendon’s bunk unnoticed, leaving them on Brendon’s pillow for him to find when he goes to bed.
He’s pretty much a ninja at it, Spencer’s decided, because no matter how hard any of them watch Brendon's bunk trying to catch ‘the elusive Jon Walker in the act,’ no one ever sees him do it.
Jon doesn’t just take pictures for Brendon, though, because by the sixth stop of the tour, he’s sliding pictures into Spencer and Ryan’s bunks, too. Pictures of all four of them that Tom or someone else has taken; or of Spencer sitting behind his drums, lost in the music, not even knowing anyone was there; or of Brendon and Spencer collapsed against each other, laughing at some joke Ryan was telling; or of Ryan trying and completely failing to ride a bike in the venue parking lot; or-
Two weeks into the tour, Spencer buys a photo album of his own and joins Brendon one night as he sits, making his usual notes on the backs of the photos before attaching them to the prepared pages. With the postcards, it was one (or maybe three or four) and done, but with the photographs, it takes more time, because Brendon labels each picture that has someone beside the four of them in it, and adds in notes about the city, the venue. He’s started keeping matchbooks and ticket stubs from tourist attractions, Spencer notices, and he steals the book before Brendon can shut it, flipping through.
“This is really fucking cool,” he says, and Brendon shrugs.
Because it is. Because Brendon will have one of these from each of their tours.
“I feel fucking stupid labeling everyone,” Brendon says. “Because in what world will I have forgotten, like, Eric, you know? But then I think, hey, maybe someday I’ll be showing them to someone who doesn’t know Eric, and-“
“Yeah,” Spencer says.
He doesn’t start keeping all of the bits and pieces that Brendon does, but he picks up a few more brochures from places they visit, and gets some of those commemorative postcard packs at museums and things. Because he’s a little jealous.
But he hasn’t spent the last two years doing this--isn't used to the time it takes to do the albums right--so after filling up half of his, he starts keeping Jon’s photographs in a folder in his duffle and thinks that he’ll deal with them when he gets home.
He doesn’t.
Because after that tour they go straight to the cabin and, well, pretty much have other things that they need to do. That doesn’t stop Brendon, though, because not only is Jon supplying him with pictures every day, but Shane comes to stay and takes his own set, too.
Which is how they end up with daily photographic documentation of the beard growing contest, Ryan posing with a burnt guitar, and all of them sitting behind their instruments, playing.
There are also pictures of Brendon alone on a mountain top, from where he’d escaped with Shane for an afternoon; Jon and Ryan smoking up on the veranda; Jon and Spencer on the roof of the cabin; Brendon and Spencer asleep on the couch together, passed out after a night spent watching movies while Ryan and Jon had made the trek down the mountain to the bars.
The days start running together about a week into their stay and Spencer thinks that if he puts the photographs in order, he’d probably be able to notice all of their jaws growing tighter, their eyes more shadowed.
He’s pretty sure that no one takes any pictures on the day they leave and head back to Vegas, their only accomplishment an album that won’t see the light of day.
But once they get home, the music starts flowing in a way that it hadn’t been and soon they’re all grinning for Shane’s camera, the expression coming easily again, and when Brendon sits down on the floor of their suite in the Palms with a stack of photos and a sharpie, Spencer offers to help him label pictures.
They get into an argument over which night the shirtless bowling pictures were from, and Brendon ends up adding marker mustaches to all of the pictures from one of Ryan and Jon’s nights out on the town (payback for going out without the underage, instead of just bringing the alcohol back, you jerks), and it’s a good night.
And then they head to Europe again, with all of the necessary postcards and photographs that that requires, then back home for the Honda Civic Tour and Brendon drags Spencer out to buy photo album number eight.
*
A few weeks into the tour, Brendon finds Spencer sitting in the back lounge, watching an Ace of Cakes marathon, and he drops a rather heavy shoebox onto the cushion by Spencer’s knee. It bounces on the couch, of course, the top coming part of the way off, and inside, Spencer can see way too many photographs. More than it’s possible for Jon or Shane to have taken in the time they’ve been gone.
And it is more, because when Spencer looks, he also sees some of their Abbey Road photographs, then others for dates on the European tour.
“I got a little behind,” Brendon says and he doesn’t sound sheepish, but he does look slightly chagrined. He's sitting on the floor beside Spencer's feet now, his knee brushing against Spencer's ankle. “And, you know, I can’t break my streak now. I figured you could help me remember?”
Brendon has gone through and labeled all of the photographs with the date, which makes it easier to deduce the city, and it’s not too long before the two of them are laughing over Jon’s epic London shopping expedition for a True British Sweater Vest, and the day that Ryan had insisted on talking in a bad English accent, and the time their bus had gotten a flat tire on the edge of a German road and everyone had looked at Spencer and Brendon expectantly, like they’d be able to fix it, just because it had been implied that they were able to do such things in the MTV road trip movie thing. In looking through the pictures, Spencer sees all manner of Brendon’s funny faces, a picture of him and Jon sticking their tongues out at each other, pictures of him and Shane playing Guitar Hero on the bus a few nights ago, Brendon looking on, smiling at their antics.
It takes them an hour just to sort through the photographs, dividing them into ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Europe’ and ‘Honda Civic’ piles, and by the time Spencer actually finishes the labeling (city, anyone who’s not in the band) while Brendon writes out memories of the shows, Ace of Cakes has turned into Food Network Challenge, which has in turn become Good Eats. They're both lying on their stomachs on the floor by this point, elbowing each other when one of them needs help remembering.
Jon and Ryan come back from hanging with the Phantom Planet guys as they’re on the last small pile of photographs, ones taken at shows earlier that week, and Jon sits down on the floor, holding his hands out for the album. Then he and Ryan start looking through, starting in on their own ‘remember when’s, and-
It’s a good night.
Spencer looks over at Brendon and smiles.
*
Later-again with the later--Spencer wonders if Brendon’s books would have shown a different story from the one that he wanted to acknowledge playing out right in front of him. Whether the photographs would have shown a slowly growing divide, whether their smiles would have appeared slightly strained. Whether there might have been more pictures of just him and Brendon, or Ryan and Jon, less of the four of them all together.
He doesn’t want to believe it, and he can think of perfectly good reasons for any divisions that the album might show: Shane was taking quite a few of the photographs, and he tended to be hanging out with Brendon and Spencer if all of them weren’t hanging out together; Jon was taking photographs, thus couldn’t be in as many of them; Spencer remembers plenty of nights when he was hanging out with Jon and Ryan while Brendon and Shane were off doing things, or just Jon, or just Ryan.
All perfectly good explanations, all perfectly true.
It’s just-
No matter how amicable the split has been, no matter how much all four of them truly believe that it’s the best thing for all of them to be doing, it still hurts. How could it not? And in some ways, Spencer thinks that he’d be worried if it didn’t hurt, because it’s the end of an era. It’s the end of something that meant more to all of them than he’s pretty sure any of them could put into words.
But the split is amicable and, in some ways, it’s actually easier for, well, he wants to say all of them, after they make it official. Because suddenly they can have conversations without having to worry about another entire layer of things they aren’t saying. They can actually be friends again, rather than friends and co-workers and creative partners.
It’s-
It’s really okay.
Being okay, though, doesn’t mean that things aren’t still weird. It doesn’t mean that it feels right to be playing music without Ryan and Jon. To be going out on tour. It doesn’t mean that Spencer doesn’t still do a double take the first few practices when he sees Ian or Dallon out of the corner of his eye instead of Ryan or Jon.
It’s just a weird time: the feeling of subtle wrongness that comes after any new change, coupled with the indescribable excitement of going on tour with Blink-182, with a dash of nervousness related to taking new people out on tour, all mixed together with the overwhelmingly positive reaction that his and Brendon’s first creative efforts have garnered, and-
And it’s a lot to take in.
He knows he's not the only one feeling it, too, because four nights before they leave on tour, Brendon comes into Spencer's room and sits on the floor, apparently intent on watching Spencer start to pack, wherein packing means sorting clean clothes from dirty clothes and trying to find all of the stray socks that have migrated under his bed. He grins when Spencer raises an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything, not even when Spencer sits down on the floor next to him. Not even when Spencer elbows him.
They stare at Spencer's wall for awhile, until Brendon manages a shaky grin and says, "We're going to do okay, right?"
Spencer rolls his eyes and says, "Of course we are. Fucking doofus."
"Fucking doofus yourself," Brendon says, and just like that the moment breaks, because he leans over and tries to give Spencer a fucking noogie, what the fuck. Which means that Spencer has no choice but to retaliate, which pretty much means that several minutes later Brendon ends up running out of Spencer's room, yelling for mercy, Bogart barking at his heels, and Spencer has to resort all of his laundry and socks. When he joins Brendon in the TV room later, though, and makes Brendon give him half of the couch to slouch down on, Brendon's looking more relaxed, so Spencer counts it as a win.
Still, moments like that aside, between announcing the split, starting work on the new album, and getting ready for tour, Spencer hardly feels like he’s had a chance to breathe, much less get back on top of life again, so maybe it shouldn’t actually be a surprise that he doesn’t think about Brendon and his photo albums until they’re at the airport in Milwaukee. Until he walks by one of the ever-present newsstand/souvenir places and sees the rack of postcards. And when Dallon stops to buy a pack of gum, well, Spencer… stops too.
He looks around, but Brendon and Ian are at a sandwich place, three store alcoves down, Zack standing in the middle of the concourse, trying to keep track of all of all four of them, and-
Spencer thinks he should go ask: whether Brendon’s going to put together photo album number nine for this tour. Whether he even wants to. Whether the idea is too linked to Jon now, with the photographs.
It’s quite possible, now that they’ve spent a good portion of the last four years on the road, that the photo albums have lost some of their meaning. They’ve been able to spend years doing this, after all, and while Spencer tries to savor each memory, he now has more of them than he ever expected he’d have and it may not be quite so important to keep each and every one. He wonders if Brendon’s feeling the same way.
Brendon has a streak going, though, and, well. They’re taking a car to the venue and after that it’s going to be all about sound checking and catching up with everyone, putting on their show, and then hitting the road. He’s pretty sure they aren’t going to be stopping anywhere else with postcards from Milwaukee.
So, he buys a card. Just one. Just in case. The picture on the front is of the city, a part that he’s pretty sure they’ve driven through before and might even drive through again on the way out of town. He pays, shoves it in his backpack, and then follows Dallon across the concourse to get a sandwich of his own.
That night, after the show, while Pete and Joe are entertaining Brendon, Ian, and Dallon in the lounge, Spencer sits down at the kitchenette table and tries to figure out what to write. There are things to say, of course, about it being the first true show they’ve played since- Well.
He could write about the crowd and what it felt like to once again play for an audience that they had to win over. Or he could write about Ian and Dallon. Or Brendon. Or about actually getting to watch Blink play, because he’d never had a chance to do that before.
He stares at the back of the postcard for a long time before writing: August 4th, 2009: First show opening for Blink. Mark met our car when we got here. (!!!) People were already singing along with the new song. Wow!
The next day, a day off already, he takes pictures of Brendon and Ian playing mini-golf. He posts one to twitter, but saves the others onto his laptop, in a folder labeled ‘BA,’ Brendon’s Album.
They hit Boston around noon the day after that, and when Ian makes noises about going to the gas station two blocks away and getting a Big Gulp, Spencer offers to tag along. There’s a sign on the spinning postcard rack that says 3/$1.00 or $.50 each, so Spencer gets three. One of Harvard, one of the harbor, one of some random monument that he’s only ever seen pictures of. He buys Brendon a Big Gulp, too, which makes Zack glare at him when they get back, but it's worth it when Brendon sits down next to Spencer on the couch, bats his eyelashes and says, "You are totally my hero, Spence. Forever and ever."
"At least for the next ten minutes," Spencer says.
"Well, yeah," Brendon says. "Whichever comes first."
Off to the side of the room, Dallon makes a bit of a gagging sound.
After the show that night, on the back of the picture of the harbor, he writes Don’t stop believing. Because if there’s anything that Brendon’s going to want to remember about that night, he’s sure that it’s going to be going out on stage to sing Journey with Patrick.
From there, they head back to the West Coast, and okay, so, Spencer feels a little silly buying postcards in the airport of his home town, but for completeness sake, he does it. He also takes pictures of Brendon with Gwen Stefani, has Zack take pictures of all of them with all of No Doubt.
New York brings meetings with their management, but Zack’s the one to take the pictures of he and Brendon sitting in the Crush offices. Spencer takes those off of Zack’s Photobucket account, saving them to his hard drive.
So really, during this tour, the postcards become Spencer’s thing, and maybe he sees why Brendon kept with it all of these years. In the beginning, after all, they’d just been four kids putting all of their eggs in one basket, hoping that this would work, because none of them really had back up plans if it didn’t. To have that completely documented…
On the other hand, he can also see why Brendon might have abandoned it this time: too many memories, too many associations. He really can’t decide whether he wants this tour to go on forever or be over already, just so they can say they’ve done it, that they survived.
And then, a week and a half into the tour, after a night where Spencer stayed up too late scribbling notes about Joe introducing them to Marvel vs. DC, and how people were crowd surfing during their set, well, they stop at a gas station most of the way to Pittsburgh-Spencer thinks it’s one they’ve even stopped at before-and he finds Brendon standing by the postcard rack, turning it slowly.
He smiles as Spencer walks over, a little sadly. “I sort of dropped the ball this tour, didn’t I?” Spencer thinks then that maybe he should tell Brendon about the makings of the new book, about everything he’s carefully packed in his bag on the bus, but he doesn’t.
Brendon shrugs, then snorts. “It’s not like there aren’t about 5 million pictures out there on the web already for this tour. I’ll just have to snag some of those when we get home, I guess.”
Spencer nods. “You could do that.”
"You'll help me remember everything, right?" Brendon asks.
"Of course," Spencer says.
Brendon grins.
That day, while they’re out and about in Pittsburgh, he takes more pictures: at lunch, of Brendon posing in front of store windows, of the disaster that Ian and Dallon make of the green room in five minute's time, ones Brendon wouldn’t be able to get from any fans. That evening he stands side stage and takes pictures of Brendon doing Journey. He gives Brendon a thumbs up when he sees him glance over, looking completely and utterly gleeful. Brendon raises his beer in a toast. Spencer takes another picture.
Later that night, just as he's getting ready to make his notes about the day, Brendon comes into the kitchenette, and sits down across the table from Spencer. It's a little unexpected, because usually by this point in their nightly journey, Brendon, Ian, Dallon and Zack will either be bickering over what movie to watch, or Dallon will be trying to scar Brendon with YouTube videos while Ian sits back and laughs, or they'll have visitors in the form of the guys in Fall Out Boy, or--
Basically, Spencer usually has a ten minute window in which to write before he gets pulled back into the nightly activities.
But not tonight, apparently, since Brendon's sitting there across from him, pulling a deck of cards out of his pocket.
"Game?" he asks, and Spencer nods. He can hear Dallon and Ian in the back lounge, the distorted sound of video game battles filtering through the bus, and he thinks about asking Brendon if they should ask the other two to join, but then Brendon's shuffling the cards, dealing out seven. "Fish?"
And this is okay, too, Spencer thinks.
"Fish," Spencer agrees. It's been a long time since he's played cards--they used to, back in the van days, when they didn't have the benefit of TVs and DVDs and wireless internet. Then there had been the poker phase that Jon had gone through. He'd played a game of solitaire once or twice over the last few tours, just to waste time, but it's been awhile.
"Do you have any twos?" he asks after staring at his cards for a long moment.
"Go fish," Brendon says, then laughs at Spencer's grumble as he has to draw a card.
When Spencer sticks his tongue out at Brendon, though, he sees a flash, and then Brendon's lowering his phone.
"I should post this on twitter," he says. "The real face of Spencer Smith."
Spencer kicks at him under the table and Brendon yelps, then giggles and starts kicking at Spencer's feet, poking at Spencer with his toes until Spencer says, "Go, dammit," at which point he triumphantly asks, "Do you have any fours?"
And so it goes.
*
Then comes Chicago, with its visit from Jon.
They do dinner before the show, takeout balanced on knees in the green room, and for a few minutes it feels just like old times, but then Brendon and Spencer have to go get ready to go out on stage and Jon decides to go hang with Pete and company. Brendon warms up his voice, singing along to Sinatra and Justin Timberlake and when he's done, he flops down on the couch next to Spencer, leaning his head on Spencer's shoulder.
Spencer bounces his shoulder a few times, trying dislodge Brendon, but Brendon stubbornly keeps his head in place. "Shh. Resting," he says.
Across the room, Ian rolls his eyes at them, but Spencer understands, just a bit. Jon being here makes it feel like two worlds are colliding--but mostly in a good way, Spencer thinks, especially when Jon greets them when they come off stage, giving them both solid, proud hugs, no matter how sweaty they are.
They go out for drinks after the show, which is awesome, and Jon takes more than a few pictures.
And he's still a ninja, Spencer decides, because when he goes to bed that night, he finds a Polaroid on his pillow, taken during the show, Brendon with his back to the audience, watching Spencer with this wide fucking grin on his face. Spencer is oblivious to the attention, banging the shit out of his drums and--
Spencer doesn't add that one to the pile of postcards for the book. He thinks he'll keep that one for himself.
*
It’s Pete who calls Spencer on it.
Because of course the Fall Out Boy bus follows the Panic! bus into a gas station on the way to Omaha. And of course it’s Pete who notices Spencer standing at the postcard rack, slowly looking at his options.
Pete’s got a bag of Cheetos under one arm, a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew under the other, and when he stops next to Spencer he says, “I thought the postcards were Urie’s thing?”
“They are,” Spencer says.
“And yet you’re the one buying them. And taking picture after picture, not all of which you’ve been posting to Twitter. Don’t think I don’t pay attention to your tweets, Smith.” He wiggles his eyebrows in a distinctly Pete way and then continues: “What I want to know is whether you’re making a scrapbook for him.” Pete sounds almost gleeful as he says that, like that would just be the best thing ever, and would also be fodder for hours, if not days and weeks worth of teasing.
“I’m not,” Spencer says. “I just noticed, you know, that he wasn’t doing one this tour, and I thought I’d give him the option of putting one together later. If he wanted.”
“Because you’re just a good friend like that,” Pete says. He leans in conspiratorially then. “Just a hint, though. Brendon might like a few pictures in that book that aren’t of him. Just a thought.”
Spencer wants to say he hasn’t just been taking pictures of Brendon, but knowing Pete, he would probably translate that into ‘Spencer is protesting too much!’ And it’s maybe true that a lot of his pictures have been of Brendon. But not all of them.
He has plenty of pictures of Ian and Dallon and Zack, too.
“Fuck off,” he says instead, because Pete is Pete, and that’s the sort of answer that will make him laugh and slap your back and drop the subject for at least a few minutes.
But a few minutes is all it turns out to be, because when Joe, Brendon, Ian, and several of the techs start playing tag in the gas station parking lot, Pete joins Spencer in leaning up against the bus, watching them.
“You don’t think he’d actually say no, do you?” Pete says, and Spencer wants to say that he doesn’t know what Pete’s talking about, but he does. He does.
“It’s not the right time,” he says instead, because Pete can’t disagree with that. The middle of tour is never a good time. And it’s not like their lives haven’t seen enough changes in the last three months.
“You won’t be on tour forever,” Pete says, and that, of course, is true.
Before Spencer can think up a reply to that, though, Brendon's dashing towards him, then manhandling him away from the bus, and trying to hide behind him. He peers out from behind Spencer's shoulder, hands wrapped around Spencer's biceps, squeezing as he tries to decide which way to head next, and says, "You'll have to go through Spencer to get me!"
"Not a problem," Ian says, skidding to a halt in front of Spencer. "No problem at all."
Spencer sighs, knowing that he looks put upon. He feels more put upon, though, when he hears the click of Pete's phone, just before Brendon makes a mad dash elsewhere, Ian trailing behind.
"What?" Pete asks. "You're the only one who can take pictures this trip?"
*
Spencer wishes that that was the end of it, but the thing about Pete is, he’s always there. He visits their bus more often than before, using bosses prerogative to claim the right to sprawl out on one of the couches so that everyone else (Brendon and Spencer) has to cram themselves onto the other one.
He continues taking too many pictures of the two of them, Brendon inevitably making stupid faces at the camera. He sends all of them to Spencer, labeled ‘For Your Project.’
He follows Spencer to gas stations and picks out what he’s sure are the perfect postcards.
“You’re wooing him with scrapbooking supplies,” Pete says. “We have to get exactly the right ones.” It only takes two stops for Spencer to realize that Pete’s idea of the perfect postcard usually involves pictures of penguins. Possibly baby penguins. (Spencer learns to say no.)
Spencer starts finding text messages on his phone when he finishes up with sound check: haikus to Brendon and Spencer’s true love, or possibly notes about the day for Spencer to mention in the book.
Spencer gets quite adept at typing ‘Fuck off’ back one-handed, without looking at the keyboard.
And still, every night, Spencer sits in the quiet of the kitchenette or his bunk and writes: best show yet and the crowd was fucking insane and mini golf and two days before they go home, I don’t actually want this tour to be over. He stares at that postcard, one of the ones from New York, for several minutes before adding it to the pile with the rest.
After all, it’s true.
*
But home they go, all of them with too many bags and too much laundry for the amount of time they’ve actually been gone. And Spencer has his 40 postcards and probably twice as many pictures, too.
He thinks about buying a photo album, about putting the pictures and photographs in himself, but instead, in a shout out to the past, he puts everything he’s accumulated into a shoebox and leaves it by Brendon’s place at the dining room table one morning before breakfast.
Brendon’s taken to sleeping in since they got back and when he wakes up the that morning, he’s sleepy enough still that he doesn’t notice the box at first, despite the fact that it’s covering a third of his placemat. It’s not until he’s had his first cup of coffee that he blinks, then looks at Spencer, then looks back at the box. He runs a finger over the bow that Spencer’s tied around it.
Slowly, very slowly, he undoes the ribbon, and then he pulls the lid off of the box.
He smiles.
“Did you--?” Brendon starts, but it’s obvious that Spencer has. The postcard from Milwaukee is at the front. Spencer watches as Brendon flips it over, as he reads what Spencer’s written. It’s not nearly as poetic as what Brendon would have written himself, Spencer’s sure, but. Well.
“I didn’t know if you were, like, deliberately stopping the tradition,” he says, “but I figured, well. It seemed like it would be a shame not to have one from this tour, you know?”
He shrugs, just a little embarrassed, but he laughs when Brendon throws his arms around Spencer’s neck and holds on for longer than he has in quite awhile.
Spencer holds on, too.
The next day, Brendon proudly brings back a new photo album, sits down at the dining room table, and begins sticking pictures and postcards to the pages. He does it while Spencer’s watching something on HGTV, totally vegged out, and it only takes a few minutes before Brendon starts talking. Mostly to himself, yes-“I’d forgotten about that!” and “Oh my god, that was the best night!”-but then he says, “Dude, was Omaha the show with the guy in the chicken costume?” and then, a few minutes later, “Ha! Do you remember Dallon stuttering around Gwen Stefani? And how we totally thought she was going to kidnap Ian from us?”
It takes him a long time, longer than Spencer’s expecting, which is why two hours after Brendon sits down, Spencer joins him at the table. He sees that Brendon’s been making his own notes, too.
The time Spence broke his stick in the middle of Time To Dance and The time I let Spence win at bowling and Exactly.
The last, he sees, is written by the postcard from New York, the one where Spencer had admitted he wasn’t ready to leave yet.
Brendon sees him looking and says, “I didn’t want to leave either.” Brendon’s blushing maybe, just a bit, as Spencer starts flipping through the pages, remembering the whole three week journey that had felt so much longer.
“You put a lot of work into this,” Brendon says finally.
Spencer nods. “I wanted you to-I mean, I thought maybe this was linked too much to the past? But I wanted you to have the option of putting it together, if you wanted to. I wanted you to be able to remember, if you wanted to.”
“I do,” Brendon says. He seems to be closer than Spencer remembers him being, and the air suddenly feels a little charged. He wonders if, if, but then Brendon’s standing up and saying, “Stay there! We’re just missing one picture.”
Which is how, three minutes later, Spencer ends up with a wriggling Bogart in his lap while Brendon says, “Bogart, stay still. No, stay still. Smile for the camera, Bogart. Smile.”
Bogart barks, but he must doggy-grin at the camera, too, because Spencer sees a flash, and then Brendon’s nodding, satisfied. It takes another five minutes for him to print the picture off of the computer, but then he’s coming back to the dining room table and putting it on the next empty page of the album. Below it, he writes, Home.
“Brendon,” Spencer says, but Brendon’s not looking at him.
“Pete told me that he was pretty sure you wouldn’t say no,” Brendon says softly, and Spencer thinks, fucking Pete, but then Brendon’s gaze is darting towards Spencer’s face. “You wouldn’t, right? I mean. I’m not wrong, am I?”
Spencer shakes his head. “Pete told me I was wooing you with scrapbooking supplies. You can blame the baby penguins on him.”
Brendon laughs loudly then, and for a moment, a breath, Spencer thinks that the moment might be lost, but then Brendon’s darting forward, pressing his lips against Spencer’s, and.
Yeah.
The End.
Well, almost. Because two weeks after that, Ryan and Jon come over for a barbecue and Brendon brings the book out to show them, and they flip through, and Jon says, “Crowd surfing chickens in Omaha? Really?” and Brendon nods.
“Pete invited the guy in the green lycra bodysuit on stage.”
And it could have been awkward, Spencer thinks, having Ryan and Jon look at something that they’ve had no part of, that they maybe should have been a part of, but.
But maybe Ryan and Jon are just as determined that it’s not going to be awkward as Brendon and Spencer are, because the next thing Spencer knows, Ryan’s saying, “Walker, I’m totally putting you in charge of making The Young Veins tour book. Just so you know.”
“I’m down with that,” Jon says.
And that’s about the time that Ryan reaches the last page, the impromptu picture of Spencer and Bogart since replaced by one of Spencer, Brendon, and Bogart on the couch, taken by Shane. The ‘Home’ remains, though.
“Fucking saps,” Ryan says.
“Fucking adorable saps,” Jon says.
“You know it,” Brendon says, reaching over to squeeze Spencer’s knee. And Spencer, well. He can’t really say anything to that, because he pretty much agrees.
The End. Again. For real this time.
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own.
Summary: And somehow, midway through the tour, the postcard collecting becomes known as Brendon’s thing.
Author's Notes: From early days to the present in 8500 words. Written for reni_days in the drawn_to fic exchange. Happy holidays, reni_days! I hope you enjoy! Many, many thanks to amy13 and seimaisin for the betas and hand-holding. Any remaining errors are my own. Title from "Memory," by Sugarcult.
The thing is, Ryan laughs.
And okay, so, it’s maybe not unwarranted laughter given that they’ve been on tour for a whole hour, are barely even outside the Baltimore city limits, and they’re already stopping, but, you know. The van guzzles gas. Brent drinks too much soda. They need to get snacks to shove at Brendon in an effort to get him to stop talking for more than thirty seconds at a time.
So, they stop.
It’s once they’re actually inside the convenience store attached to the gas station that Spencer remembers his mother’s firm instructions to send her a postcard, no ifs, ands, or buts, mister. And if what Pete and all of his guys have told Spencer about touring is true, he’s going to start losing track of days pretty quickly now, so he thinks that he really should be getting on that. His mom will absolutely yell at him for not sending her one, after all. And she's totally the sort of person who will call him out for sending one from the last stop on the tour, if he waits that long. Because his mother will totally pay attention to the postmark.
So while the others use the bathroom and fill up the van and buy enough snacks to get them a few hours further down the road, Spencer browses the rack of postcards. Maryland, Baltimore, pictures of sunrises and sunsets. He picks one that shows scenes from all around the city, with ‘Charm City! Wish You Were Here!’ written in loopy letters across the front.
He’s still slowly turning the rack, though, when he feels someone step up beside him, deliberately invading his personal space bubble. It’s Brendon, of course, standing just a few inches away, already plucking cards out of their slots.
“What?” he asks, after Spencer’s stare stretches out for long enough to be noticeable, and his grin is wide enough that Spencer’s pretty sure he’s already started in on the snacks meant for the next leg of the journey. Red Bull. Or chocolate. Oreos, maybe? Something. “It’s five for two dollars. You can’t tell me that you’re just going to get one.” He actually sounds a little bit horrified at the thought.
Spencer sighs, but Brendon does have a point, so he picks out four more: his aunt and uncle will probably expect a postcard, too. And his sisters will each want one. And he can’t forget his grandmother.
So, in short, an hour into their band’s first tour, Spencer and Brendon collectively buy four dollars worth of postcards, the cashier bags them up, and Ryan laughs.
“We’ve barely even left the city we’ve been living in for two months,” Ryan says.
“Shut up,” Spencer says.
“You couldn’t at least have waited until we hit D.C.? Where there are lots of things worthy of postcards?”
“Shut up,” Spencer says.
“Yeah, shut up, Ross,” Brendon adds. Then, at Ryan’s look, he sticks his tongue out and dashes out the door of the convenience store, running back towards the van, yelling for Brent to save him, please. Please?
“Really?” Ryan asks again and Spencer shrugs. He just says, “My mom,” at which point Ryan nods, like he understands.
*
So, Spencer buys his postcards that first day (and mails them the second), but for Brendon it becomes, well, a thing. Like, every time they stop for food or gas or to stretch their legs, Spencer will find Brendon huddled at the postcard rack, poring over the offerings. He gets four more in D.C., then two in Norfolk, one in each of the three cities they stop in in Florida, and-
“How many postcards are you planning to write?” Ryan asks on the drive between Fort Lauderdale and St. Petersburg, because Brendon’s spent most of the last hour sitting on the floor in the back of the van writing. And also swearing when an unexpected turn in the road screws him up. Or a pothole.
“I’m not-“ Brendon starts, then shrugs. “I- it’s not like we’ve been taking pictures, you know? But I figure that this way I can remember the cities and everything and I can write down things about the shows and-“
Spencer almost expects Ryan or Brent to say something about it-accuse Brendon of, like, keeping a diary or compare it to fucking scrapbooking or something like that-but Ryan is rarely separated from his journals, and Brent. Well. His mom owns a mean pair of scrapbooking scissors.
And, besides, this is their first tour, after all. Spencer wonders if maybe Brendon has the right idea.
*
The Take Cover tour ends three days before their CD comes out, and then the day after it actually does come out--which is just, holy fuck, they have an actual CD out for people to buy--they meet up with Fall Out Boy and the guys in Motion City Soundtrack for the Nintendo Fusion Tour and-
Most days now, Spencer has a hard time believing that this is his life, what with the whole actually playing music for a living thing, but it's starting to feel at least a little bit real. It stops feeling real again about a week into the tour, when Brendon and Ryan notice that people are actually singing the fuck along with their songs, a fact which has Brendon bouncing up and down in his seat in the van for the first hundred miles of their drive after the show that night.
Spencer won’t actually admit to bouncing, but he’s pretty sure that he doesn’t stop smiling for at least another hundred miles after that.
It’s not until they hit the Philadelphia date of the tour that Spencer realizes that Brendon is still buying postcards. Just one this time, which when Spencer looks, he sees is of the Liberty Bell. (Spencer had made Brent drive by the monument on the way to the venue, because Spencer refuses to tell his mom that he went to Philadelphia and didn’t drive by the Liberty Bell.)
And, you know, it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything, and it’s not like Brendon shouldn’t still be doing this whatever it is that he’s doing, it’s just-
Well.
The thing is, it’s not their first tour any longer, the novelty at least partially worn off. Also, Spencer’s seen Brendon begin more projects than he can count, only to let them fall by the wayside when life (school, work, band, tour) got in the way. Music’s about the only thing Spencer can remember that Brendon has never let slip, which Spencer supposes makes sense, since Brendon is Brendon, and music is pretty much his life. Of course, music is pretty much all of their lives right at the moment.
All of which is to say: they’ve hit tour number two and Brendon, apparently, is still buying postcards.
So Spencer asks, “You’re still doing that?”
Brendon nods.
He looks a little unsure, like he thinks Spencer’s making fun of him, which Spencer’s not. He just-
“Are you, like, putting these into albums?” Spencer asks. “You aren’t letting them take over the back of the van, right? We aren’t going to wake up one day and wonder where our equipment is, under a tidal wave of postcards?” He wants to ask if Brendon will ever let any of the rest of them look at the albums, if that’s what he’s doing, but he doesn’t.
“Ha, no,” Brendon says. “No, I’ve got them under control.” He’s grinning again, happier now. He picks up a second postcard, this one of Independence Hall-which they’d driven by too-and Spencer follows Brendon as he heads up to the cash register to pay.
*
The thing about the Nintendo Fusion Tour is that it goes on for-fucking-ever, and when there are twenty plus band guys, plus all of the crew, all living on top of each other for months on end, you pretty much end up learning more about everyone than you ever really wanted to know.
For instance, Spencer learns very early on never to let Pete into your van after midnight. Particularly if he has a video camera in his hand. He learns never to challenge Justin Pierre to a game of Truth or Dare, because that always ends up with someone doing nasty ass shit that Spencer is never going to be able to bleach out of his brain. He learns to always knock on the door of any bus or van before he opens it, since quiet corners are hard to come by; that Motion City’s drummer collects the caps of beer bottles and is using them to make a mosaic on the back wall of their bus; and that one of Fall Out Boy’s techs can balance a drumstick on his nose for three minutes, while carrying on a conversation.
And somehow, midway through the tour, the postcard collecting becomes known as Brendon’s thing.
So now instead of Brendon searching the cards out in every gas station they stop at, it’s Pete and Andy bringing him postcards of naked ladies, Justin bringing him different postcard views of cornfields, other people finding as many quirky and/or random postcards for him as they can. By the time that they’re two-thirds of the way through the tour, Brendon has fucking shoe boxes full of postcards, all helpfully (and mostly jokingly) picked out for him by members of the tour.
Brendon smiles as he takes them, of course, laughing and sometimes looking scandalized at the raunchiest of the set. Those are always the ones he keeps showing to Spencer and Ryan and Brent, though, looking for their reactions. And as far as Spencer knows, he keeps them all.
He doesn’t see Brendon writing as much, though. He can’t count on always finding Brendon at the postcard racks in gas stations any longer.
He’s actually not even sure Brendon really notices. They’re all so tired these days, too many shows in a row, too many hours spent cramped in the not-that-comfortable van seats. They’re all ready to be home, ready to sleep, ready to hibernate for more than a few days, a dream which is starting to feel more than a little hopeless, especially since they have no scheduled breaks on the horizon.
But still, when they stop in Des Moines, Spencer deliberately goes to the postcard rack and says, “Hey, Brendon, help me pick out a card to send to my family for Thanksgiving, okay?”
Brendon doesn’t quite bounce over (they all pretty much lost the ability to bounce three states ago), but he does turn the rack for Spencer, eyeing all of the available offerings. Finally he points to one with trees and hills.
“That one,” he says. “No one outside the Midwest ever believes me when I tell them that Iowa has mountains. We need to show someone photographic proof.”
Spencer laughs and nods. It’s true.
“You should get one too,” Spencer says, and maybe he’s being a little bit obvious, but-but the postcards are Brendon’s thing.
And maybe Brendon’s missed it, too, picking out his own, because the next thing Spencer knows, he’s pulling one from the rack: sky and dark trees, a forest they haven’t driven through.
Then he’s grabbing another, and a third. Spencer looks up at the sign and sees 3/$2.
“Gotta get your money’s worth?” he asks and Brendon nods.
“Of course,” he says.
That evening, after they’re off stage and in the van, on the road to Milwaukee, Spencer looks over his shoulder and sees Brendon scribbling on the back of the card, humming a little as he does it.
Spencer settles his headphones more firmly against his ears and stares at his reflection in the dark window until he falls asleep.
*
Then comes the Truckstops and Statelines tour, which is, of course, where they meet Jon Walker.
The first thing Spencer learns about Jon is that he is apparently Super Tech, or so Ryan tells Spencer after Jon fixes Ryan’s guitar pedal about an hour before they’re supposed to go on stage.
The second thing Spencer learns about Jon is that he shares Brendon’s affinity for Disney musicals. No one has to tell him this one. He figures it out for himself when he finds Jon and Brendon sitting at the back of the shared band bus, watching Aladdin on a borrowed laptop, singing along with ‘Arabian Nights’ not quite at the top of their lungs.
Given these first two introductions, it’s no surprise to Spencer that Brendon and Ryan decide pretty quickly on that Jon is their sort of people. Spencer is pretty quick to agree.
The third thing that Spencer learns about Jon is that he’s a photographer. When he’s not backstage doing magical tech things, or trying to track down a bootleg copy of Mulan, he’s somewhere around the venue, the strap of his camera looped around his neck, taking pictures.
He’s good, too. He gets artistic shots of the stages, of all of the bands prepping. He gets pictures of the crowds, inside and out. There are other pictures of the more traditional sort, too: the horizon, cracks in sidewalks, a house with all of its holiday decorations still up, despite the fact that the days are inching towards March.
They’re in Atlantic City when Spencer sees Brendon come into their dressing room, clutching a handful of Polaroids, saying, “Look what Jon gave me!” And suddenly, just like that, when they stop at gas stations or convenience stores, Brendon doesn’t go inside any longer. Instead, he follows Jon around, pointing out things for Jon to take pictures of. At night, instead of writing his thoughts about the day on the backs of the pictures, he buys a pack of index cards and writes on them, sliding them into the albums too.
Brendon lets Spencer look through the book once, mostly to show him a picture that Jon had taken of Spencer while he was on stage and how Spencer had been embracing his inner Animal, but Spencer looks at some of Brendon’s scrawled notes, too. The day when they noticed the crowds were getting bigger. The day they moved from first opener to second, then another the day they took over the direct support slot. The day Spencer’s parents heard their song on the radio for the first time. The day they heard their song on the radio for the first time.
He looks at the pictures of all four of them in the album-of him, Brendon, Ryan, and Brent-and how their smiles are mostly getting wider, even as they look more strung out and more tired from being on the road for weeks on end.
Basically, it’s every memory that Spencer wants to keep, all packaged away in one photo album.
“This is awesome,” he says when he hands it back to Brendon.
Brendon grins.
*
It’s not until later, much later, that Spencer starts to wonder if Brendon was keeping track of the not-so-good milestones, too. Or if Jon’s accompanying pictures would tell the story of a band falling apart, even if the words Brendon wrote didn’t. He can’t quite bring himself to ask to look, though, to see whether Brent’s smile had truly been as wide as the rest of theirs; to see if Brent had even been in all of the pictures still.
But that’s later.
That’s after they’ve done their first European Tour. After they all join Brendon in buying postcards at every single stop they make on the continent, because Europe, holy crap. After they play Bamboozle, what the fuck, and after they’ve called Jon back to them when Brent doesn’t show up to make the trip to KROQ’s Weenie Roast.
Spencer doesn’t know if Jon picks up where he left off right then, taking a picture from that show for Brendon. He doesn’t know if Brendon buys a postcard in the hotel lobby. He doesn’t know if Brendon writes anything, or if there’s anything he actually wants to remember about that show.
Spencer doesn’t think about any of that then, of course, not until much later. By then, though, he doesn’t really want to know.
*
So.
So, rather than the photo albums just being Brendon’s thing, they become a Brendon-and-Jon thing, with Brendon smiling more widely with every picture that Jon gives to him. It actually becomes something of a game for Jon, because at some point around the third stop of the tour, he starts trying to sneak the pictures into Brendon’s bunk unnoticed, leaving them on Brendon’s pillow for him to find when he goes to bed.
He’s pretty much a ninja at it, Spencer’s decided, because no matter how hard any of them watch Brendon's bunk trying to catch ‘the elusive Jon Walker in the act,’ no one ever sees him do it.
Jon doesn’t just take pictures for Brendon, though, because by the sixth stop of the tour, he’s sliding pictures into Spencer and Ryan’s bunks, too. Pictures of all four of them that Tom or someone else has taken; or of Spencer sitting behind his drums, lost in the music, not even knowing anyone was there; or of Brendon and Spencer collapsed against each other, laughing at some joke Ryan was telling; or of Ryan trying and completely failing to ride a bike in the venue parking lot; or-
Two weeks into the tour, Spencer buys a photo album of his own and joins Brendon one night as he sits, making his usual notes on the backs of the photos before attaching them to the prepared pages. With the postcards, it was one (or maybe three or four) and done, but with the photographs, it takes more time, because Brendon labels each picture that has someone beside the four of them in it, and adds in notes about the city, the venue. He’s started keeping matchbooks and ticket stubs from tourist attractions, Spencer notices, and he steals the book before Brendon can shut it, flipping through.
“This is really fucking cool,” he says, and Brendon shrugs.
Because it is. Because Brendon will have one of these from each of their tours.
“I feel fucking stupid labeling everyone,” Brendon says. “Because in what world will I have forgotten, like, Eric, you know? But then I think, hey, maybe someday I’ll be showing them to someone who doesn’t know Eric, and-“
“Yeah,” Spencer says.
He doesn’t start keeping all of the bits and pieces that Brendon does, but he picks up a few more brochures from places they visit, and gets some of those commemorative postcard packs at museums and things. Because he’s a little jealous.
But he hasn’t spent the last two years doing this--isn't used to the time it takes to do the albums right--so after filling up half of his, he starts keeping Jon’s photographs in a folder in his duffle and thinks that he’ll deal with them when he gets home.
He doesn’t.
Because after that tour they go straight to the cabin and, well, pretty much have other things that they need to do. That doesn’t stop Brendon, though, because not only is Jon supplying him with pictures every day, but Shane comes to stay and takes his own set, too.
Which is how they end up with daily photographic documentation of the beard growing contest, Ryan posing with a burnt guitar, and all of them sitting behind their instruments, playing.
There are also pictures of Brendon alone on a mountain top, from where he’d escaped with Shane for an afternoon; Jon and Ryan smoking up on the veranda; Jon and Spencer on the roof of the cabin; Brendon and Spencer asleep on the couch together, passed out after a night spent watching movies while Ryan and Jon had made the trek down the mountain to the bars.
The days start running together about a week into their stay and Spencer thinks that if he puts the photographs in order, he’d probably be able to notice all of their jaws growing tighter, their eyes more shadowed.
He’s pretty sure that no one takes any pictures on the day they leave and head back to Vegas, their only accomplishment an album that won’t see the light of day.
But once they get home, the music starts flowing in a way that it hadn’t been and soon they’re all grinning for Shane’s camera, the expression coming easily again, and when Brendon sits down on the floor of their suite in the Palms with a stack of photos and a sharpie, Spencer offers to help him label pictures.
They get into an argument over which night the shirtless bowling pictures were from, and Brendon ends up adding marker mustaches to all of the pictures from one of Ryan and Jon’s nights out on the town (payback for going out without the underage, instead of just bringing the alcohol back, you jerks), and it’s a good night.
And then they head to Europe again, with all of the necessary postcards and photographs that that requires, then back home for the Honda Civic Tour and Brendon drags Spencer out to buy photo album number eight.
*
A few weeks into the tour, Brendon finds Spencer sitting in the back lounge, watching an Ace of Cakes marathon, and he drops a rather heavy shoebox onto the cushion by Spencer’s knee. It bounces on the couch, of course, the top coming part of the way off, and inside, Spencer can see way too many photographs. More than it’s possible for Jon or Shane to have taken in the time they’ve been gone.
And it is more, because when Spencer looks, he also sees some of their Abbey Road photographs, then others for dates on the European tour.
“I got a little behind,” Brendon says and he doesn’t sound sheepish, but he does look slightly chagrined. He's sitting on the floor beside Spencer's feet now, his knee brushing against Spencer's ankle. “And, you know, I can’t break my streak now. I figured you could help me remember?”
Brendon has gone through and labeled all of the photographs with the date, which makes it easier to deduce the city, and it’s not too long before the two of them are laughing over Jon’s epic London shopping expedition for a True British Sweater Vest, and the day that Ryan had insisted on talking in a bad English accent, and the time their bus had gotten a flat tire on the edge of a German road and everyone had looked at Spencer and Brendon expectantly, like they’d be able to fix it, just because it had been implied that they were able to do such things in the MTV road trip movie thing. In looking through the pictures, Spencer sees all manner of Brendon’s funny faces, a picture of him and Jon sticking their tongues out at each other, pictures of him and Shane playing Guitar Hero on the bus a few nights ago, Brendon looking on, smiling at their antics.
It takes them an hour just to sort through the photographs, dividing them into ‘Abbey Road’ and ‘Europe’ and ‘Honda Civic’ piles, and by the time Spencer actually finishes the labeling (city, anyone who’s not in the band) while Brendon writes out memories of the shows, Ace of Cakes has turned into Food Network Challenge, which has in turn become Good Eats. They're both lying on their stomachs on the floor by this point, elbowing each other when one of them needs help remembering.
Jon and Ryan come back from hanging with the Phantom Planet guys as they’re on the last small pile of photographs, ones taken at shows earlier that week, and Jon sits down on the floor, holding his hands out for the album. Then he and Ryan start looking through, starting in on their own ‘remember when’s, and-
It’s a good night.
Spencer looks over at Brendon and smiles.
*
Later-again with the later--Spencer wonders if Brendon’s books would have shown a different story from the one that he wanted to acknowledge playing out right in front of him. Whether the photographs would have shown a slowly growing divide, whether their smiles would have appeared slightly strained. Whether there might have been more pictures of just him and Brendon, or Ryan and Jon, less of the four of them all together.
He doesn’t want to believe it, and he can think of perfectly good reasons for any divisions that the album might show: Shane was taking quite a few of the photographs, and he tended to be hanging out with Brendon and Spencer if all of them weren’t hanging out together; Jon was taking photographs, thus couldn’t be in as many of them; Spencer remembers plenty of nights when he was hanging out with Jon and Ryan while Brendon and Shane were off doing things, or just Jon, or just Ryan.
All perfectly good explanations, all perfectly true.
It’s just-
No matter how amicable the split has been, no matter how much all four of them truly believe that it’s the best thing for all of them to be doing, it still hurts. How could it not? And in some ways, Spencer thinks that he’d be worried if it didn’t hurt, because it’s the end of an era. It’s the end of something that meant more to all of them than he’s pretty sure any of them could put into words.
But the split is amicable and, in some ways, it’s actually easier for, well, he wants to say all of them, after they make it official. Because suddenly they can have conversations without having to worry about another entire layer of things they aren’t saying. They can actually be friends again, rather than friends and co-workers and creative partners.
It’s-
It’s really okay.
Being okay, though, doesn’t mean that things aren’t still weird. It doesn’t mean that it feels right to be playing music without Ryan and Jon. To be going out on tour. It doesn’t mean that Spencer doesn’t still do a double take the first few practices when he sees Ian or Dallon out of the corner of his eye instead of Ryan or Jon.
It’s just a weird time: the feeling of subtle wrongness that comes after any new change, coupled with the indescribable excitement of going on tour with Blink-182, with a dash of nervousness related to taking new people out on tour, all mixed together with the overwhelmingly positive reaction that his and Brendon’s first creative efforts have garnered, and-
And it’s a lot to take in.
He knows he's not the only one feeling it, too, because four nights before they leave on tour, Brendon comes into Spencer's room and sits on the floor, apparently intent on watching Spencer start to pack, wherein packing means sorting clean clothes from dirty clothes and trying to find all of the stray socks that have migrated under his bed. He grins when Spencer raises an eyebrow, but doesn't say anything, not even when Spencer sits down on the floor next to him. Not even when Spencer elbows him.
They stare at Spencer's wall for awhile, until Brendon manages a shaky grin and says, "We're going to do okay, right?"
Spencer rolls his eyes and says, "Of course we are. Fucking doofus."
"Fucking doofus yourself," Brendon says, and just like that the moment breaks, because he leans over and tries to give Spencer a fucking noogie, what the fuck. Which means that Spencer has no choice but to retaliate, which pretty much means that several minutes later Brendon ends up running out of Spencer's room, yelling for mercy, Bogart barking at his heels, and Spencer has to resort all of his laundry and socks. When he joins Brendon in the TV room later, though, and makes Brendon give him half of the couch to slouch down on, Brendon's looking more relaxed, so Spencer counts it as a win.
Still, moments like that aside, between announcing the split, starting work on the new album, and getting ready for tour, Spencer hardly feels like he’s had a chance to breathe, much less get back on top of life again, so maybe it shouldn’t actually be a surprise that he doesn’t think about Brendon and his photo albums until they’re at the airport in Milwaukee. Until he walks by one of the ever-present newsstand/souvenir places and sees the rack of postcards. And when Dallon stops to buy a pack of gum, well, Spencer… stops too.
He looks around, but Brendon and Ian are at a sandwich place, three store alcoves down, Zack standing in the middle of the concourse, trying to keep track of all of all four of them, and-
Spencer thinks he should go ask: whether Brendon’s going to put together photo album number nine for this tour. Whether he even wants to. Whether the idea is too linked to Jon now, with the photographs.
It’s quite possible, now that they’ve spent a good portion of the last four years on the road, that the photo albums have lost some of their meaning. They’ve been able to spend years doing this, after all, and while Spencer tries to savor each memory, he now has more of them than he ever expected he’d have and it may not be quite so important to keep each and every one. He wonders if Brendon’s feeling the same way.
Brendon has a streak going, though, and, well. They’re taking a car to the venue and after that it’s going to be all about sound checking and catching up with everyone, putting on their show, and then hitting the road. He’s pretty sure they aren’t going to be stopping anywhere else with postcards from Milwaukee.
So, he buys a card. Just one. Just in case. The picture on the front is of the city, a part that he’s pretty sure they’ve driven through before and might even drive through again on the way out of town. He pays, shoves it in his backpack, and then follows Dallon across the concourse to get a sandwich of his own.
That night, after the show, while Pete and Joe are entertaining Brendon, Ian, and Dallon in the lounge, Spencer sits down at the kitchenette table and tries to figure out what to write. There are things to say, of course, about it being the first true show they’ve played since- Well.
He could write about the crowd and what it felt like to once again play for an audience that they had to win over. Or he could write about Ian and Dallon. Or Brendon. Or about actually getting to watch Blink play, because he’d never had a chance to do that before.
He stares at the back of the postcard for a long time before writing: August 4th, 2009: First show opening for Blink. Mark met our car when we got here. (!!!) People were already singing along with the new song. Wow!
The next day, a day off already, he takes pictures of Brendon and Ian playing mini-golf. He posts one to twitter, but saves the others onto his laptop, in a folder labeled ‘BA,’ Brendon’s Album.
They hit Boston around noon the day after that, and when Ian makes noises about going to the gas station two blocks away and getting a Big Gulp, Spencer offers to tag along. There’s a sign on the spinning postcard rack that says 3/$1.00 or $.50 each, so Spencer gets three. One of Harvard, one of the harbor, one of some random monument that he’s only ever seen pictures of. He buys Brendon a Big Gulp, too, which makes Zack glare at him when they get back, but it's worth it when Brendon sits down next to Spencer on the couch, bats his eyelashes and says, "You are totally my hero, Spence. Forever and ever."
"At least for the next ten minutes," Spencer says.
"Well, yeah," Brendon says. "Whichever comes first."
Off to the side of the room, Dallon makes a bit of a gagging sound.
After the show that night, on the back of the picture of the harbor, he writes Don’t stop believing. Because if there’s anything that Brendon’s going to want to remember about that night, he’s sure that it’s going to be going out on stage to sing Journey with Patrick.
From there, they head back to the West Coast, and okay, so, Spencer feels a little silly buying postcards in the airport of his home town, but for completeness sake, he does it. He also takes pictures of Brendon with Gwen Stefani, has Zack take pictures of all of them with all of No Doubt.
New York brings meetings with their management, but Zack’s the one to take the pictures of he and Brendon sitting in the Crush offices. Spencer takes those off of Zack’s Photobucket account, saving them to his hard drive.
So really, during this tour, the postcards become Spencer’s thing, and maybe he sees why Brendon kept with it all of these years. In the beginning, after all, they’d just been four kids putting all of their eggs in one basket, hoping that this would work, because none of them really had back up plans if it didn’t. To have that completely documented…
On the other hand, he can also see why Brendon might have abandoned it this time: too many memories, too many associations. He really can’t decide whether he wants this tour to go on forever or be over already, just so they can say they’ve done it, that they survived.
And then, a week and a half into the tour, after a night where Spencer stayed up too late scribbling notes about Joe introducing them to Marvel vs. DC, and how people were crowd surfing during their set, well, they stop at a gas station most of the way to Pittsburgh-Spencer thinks it’s one they’ve even stopped at before-and he finds Brendon standing by the postcard rack, turning it slowly.
He smiles as Spencer walks over, a little sadly. “I sort of dropped the ball this tour, didn’t I?” Spencer thinks then that maybe he should tell Brendon about the makings of the new book, about everything he’s carefully packed in his bag on the bus, but he doesn’t.
Brendon shrugs, then snorts. “It’s not like there aren’t about 5 million pictures out there on the web already for this tour. I’ll just have to snag some of those when we get home, I guess.”
Spencer nods. “You could do that.”
"You'll help me remember everything, right?" Brendon asks.
"Of course," Spencer says.
Brendon grins.
That day, while they’re out and about in Pittsburgh, he takes more pictures: at lunch, of Brendon posing in front of store windows, of the disaster that Ian and Dallon make of the green room in five minute's time, ones Brendon wouldn’t be able to get from any fans. That evening he stands side stage and takes pictures of Brendon doing Journey. He gives Brendon a thumbs up when he sees him glance over, looking completely and utterly gleeful. Brendon raises his beer in a toast. Spencer takes another picture.
Later that night, just as he's getting ready to make his notes about the day, Brendon comes into the kitchenette, and sits down across the table from Spencer. It's a little unexpected, because usually by this point in their nightly journey, Brendon, Ian, Dallon and Zack will either be bickering over what movie to watch, or Dallon will be trying to scar Brendon with YouTube videos while Ian sits back and laughs, or they'll have visitors in the form of the guys in Fall Out Boy, or--
Basically, Spencer usually has a ten minute window in which to write before he gets pulled back into the nightly activities.
But not tonight, apparently, since Brendon's sitting there across from him, pulling a deck of cards out of his pocket.
"Game?" he asks, and Spencer nods. He can hear Dallon and Ian in the back lounge, the distorted sound of video game battles filtering through the bus, and he thinks about asking Brendon if they should ask the other two to join, but then Brendon's shuffling the cards, dealing out seven. "Fish?"
And this is okay, too, Spencer thinks.
"Fish," Spencer agrees. It's been a long time since he's played cards--they used to, back in the van days, when they didn't have the benefit of TVs and DVDs and wireless internet. Then there had been the poker phase that Jon had gone through. He'd played a game of solitaire once or twice over the last few tours, just to waste time, but it's been awhile.
"Do you have any twos?" he asks after staring at his cards for a long moment.
"Go fish," Brendon says, then laughs at Spencer's grumble as he has to draw a card.
When Spencer sticks his tongue out at Brendon, though, he sees a flash, and then Brendon's lowering his phone.
"I should post this on twitter," he says. "The real face of Spencer Smith."
Spencer kicks at him under the table and Brendon yelps, then giggles and starts kicking at Spencer's feet, poking at Spencer with his toes until Spencer says, "Go, dammit," at which point he triumphantly asks, "Do you have any fours?"
And so it goes.
*
Then comes Chicago, with its visit from Jon.
They do dinner before the show, takeout balanced on knees in the green room, and for a few minutes it feels just like old times, but then Brendon and Spencer have to go get ready to go out on stage and Jon decides to go hang with Pete and company. Brendon warms up his voice, singing along to Sinatra and Justin Timberlake and when he's done, he flops down on the couch next to Spencer, leaning his head on Spencer's shoulder.
Spencer bounces his shoulder a few times, trying dislodge Brendon, but Brendon stubbornly keeps his head in place. "Shh. Resting," he says.
Across the room, Ian rolls his eyes at them, but Spencer understands, just a bit. Jon being here makes it feel like two worlds are colliding--but mostly in a good way, Spencer thinks, especially when Jon greets them when they come off stage, giving them both solid, proud hugs, no matter how sweaty they are.
They go out for drinks after the show, which is awesome, and Jon takes more than a few pictures.
And he's still a ninja, Spencer decides, because when he goes to bed that night, he finds a Polaroid on his pillow, taken during the show, Brendon with his back to the audience, watching Spencer with this wide fucking grin on his face. Spencer is oblivious to the attention, banging the shit out of his drums and--
Spencer doesn't add that one to the pile of postcards for the book. He thinks he'll keep that one for himself.
*
It’s Pete who calls Spencer on it.
Because of course the Fall Out Boy bus follows the Panic! bus into a gas station on the way to Omaha. And of course it’s Pete who notices Spencer standing at the postcard rack, slowly looking at his options.
Pete’s got a bag of Cheetos under one arm, a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew under the other, and when he stops next to Spencer he says, “I thought the postcards were Urie’s thing?”
“They are,” Spencer says.
“And yet you’re the one buying them. And taking picture after picture, not all of which you’ve been posting to Twitter. Don’t think I don’t pay attention to your tweets, Smith.” He wiggles his eyebrows in a distinctly Pete way and then continues: “What I want to know is whether you’re making a scrapbook for him.” Pete sounds almost gleeful as he says that, like that would just be the best thing ever, and would also be fodder for hours, if not days and weeks worth of teasing.
“I’m not,” Spencer says. “I just noticed, you know, that he wasn’t doing one this tour, and I thought I’d give him the option of putting one together later. If he wanted.”
“Because you’re just a good friend like that,” Pete says. He leans in conspiratorially then. “Just a hint, though. Brendon might like a few pictures in that book that aren’t of him. Just a thought.”
Spencer wants to say he hasn’t just been taking pictures of Brendon, but knowing Pete, he would probably translate that into ‘Spencer is protesting too much!’ And it’s maybe true that a lot of his pictures have been of Brendon. But not all of them.
He has plenty of pictures of Ian and Dallon and Zack, too.
“Fuck off,” he says instead, because Pete is Pete, and that’s the sort of answer that will make him laugh and slap your back and drop the subject for at least a few minutes.
But a few minutes is all it turns out to be, because when Joe, Brendon, Ian, and several of the techs start playing tag in the gas station parking lot, Pete joins Spencer in leaning up against the bus, watching them.
“You don’t think he’d actually say no, do you?” Pete says, and Spencer wants to say that he doesn’t know what Pete’s talking about, but he does. He does.
“It’s not the right time,” he says instead, because Pete can’t disagree with that. The middle of tour is never a good time. And it’s not like their lives haven’t seen enough changes in the last three months.
“You won’t be on tour forever,” Pete says, and that, of course, is true.
Before Spencer can think up a reply to that, though, Brendon's dashing towards him, then manhandling him away from the bus, and trying to hide behind him. He peers out from behind Spencer's shoulder, hands wrapped around Spencer's biceps, squeezing as he tries to decide which way to head next, and says, "You'll have to go through Spencer to get me!"
"Not a problem," Ian says, skidding to a halt in front of Spencer. "No problem at all."
Spencer sighs, knowing that he looks put upon. He feels more put upon, though, when he hears the click of Pete's phone, just before Brendon makes a mad dash elsewhere, Ian trailing behind.
"What?" Pete asks. "You're the only one who can take pictures this trip?"
*
Spencer wishes that that was the end of it, but the thing about Pete is, he’s always there. He visits their bus more often than before, using bosses prerogative to claim the right to sprawl out on one of the couches so that everyone else (Brendon and Spencer) has to cram themselves onto the other one.
He continues taking too many pictures of the two of them, Brendon inevitably making stupid faces at the camera. He sends all of them to Spencer, labeled ‘For Your Project.’
He follows Spencer to gas stations and picks out what he’s sure are the perfect postcards.
“You’re wooing him with scrapbooking supplies,” Pete says. “We have to get exactly the right ones.” It only takes two stops for Spencer to realize that Pete’s idea of the perfect postcard usually involves pictures of penguins. Possibly baby penguins. (Spencer learns to say no.)
Spencer starts finding text messages on his phone when he finishes up with sound check: haikus to Brendon and Spencer’s true love, or possibly notes about the day for Spencer to mention in the book.
Spencer gets quite adept at typing ‘Fuck off’ back one-handed, without looking at the keyboard.
And still, every night, Spencer sits in the quiet of the kitchenette or his bunk and writes: best show yet and the crowd was fucking insane and mini golf and two days before they go home, I don’t actually want this tour to be over. He stares at that postcard, one of the ones from New York, for several minutes before adding it to the pile with the rest.
After all, it’s true.
*
But home they go, all of them with too many bags and too much laundry for the amount of time they’ve actually been gone. And Spencer has his 40 postcards and probably twice as many pictures, too.
He thinks about buying a photo album, about putting the pictures and photographs in himself, but instead, in a shout out to the past, he puts everything he’s accumulated into a shoebox and leaves it by Brendon’s place at the dining room table one morning before breakfast.
Brendon’s taken to sleeping in since they got back and when he wakes up the that morning, he’s sleepy enough still that he doesn’t notice the box at first, despite the fact that it’s covering a third of his placemat. It’s not until he’s had his first cup of coffee that he blinks, then looks at Spencer, then looks back at the box. He runs a finger over the bow that Spencer’s tied around it.
Slowly, very slowly, he undoes the ribbon, and then he pulls the lid off of the box.
He smiles.
“Did you--?” Brendon starts, but it’s obvious that Spencer has. The postcard from Milwaukee is at the front. Spencer watches as Brendon flips it over, as he reads what Spencer’s written. It’s not nearly as poetic as what Brendon would have written himself, Spencer’s sure, but. Well.
“I didn’t know if you were, like, deliberately stopping the tradition,” he says, “but I figured, well. It seemed like it would be a shame not to have one from this tour, you know?”
He shrugs, just a little embarrassed, but he laughs when Brendon throws his arms around Spencer’s neck and holds on for longer than he has in quite awhile.
Spencer holds on, too.
The next day, Brendon proudly brings back a new photo album, sits down at the dining room table, and begins sticking pictures and postcards to the pages. He does it while Spencer’s watching something on HGTV, totally vegged out, and it only takes a few minutes before Brendon starts talking. Mostly to himself, yes-“I’d forgotten about that!” and “Oh my god, that was the best night!”-but then he says, “Dude, was Omaha the show with the guy in the chicken costume?” and then, a few minutes later, “Ha! Do you remember Dallon stuttering around Gwen Stefani? And how we totally thought she was going to kidnap Ian from us?”
It takes him a long time, longer than Spencer’s expecting, which is why two hours after Brendon sits down, Spencer joins him at the table. He sees that Brendon’s been making his own notes, too.
The time Spence broke his stick in the middle of Time To Dance and The time I let Spence win at bowling and Exactly.
The last, he sees, is written by the postcard from New York, the one where Spencer had admitted he wasn’t ready to leave yet.
Brendon sees him looking and says, “I didn’t want to leave either.” Brendon’s blushing maybe, just a bit, as Spencer starts flipping through the pages, remembering the whole three week journey that had felt so much longer.
“You put a lot of work into this,” Brendon says finally.
Spencer nods. “I wanted you to-I mean, I thought maybe this was linked too much to the past? But I wanted you to have the option of putting it together, if you wanted to. I wanted you to be able to remember, if you wanted to.”
“I do,” Brendon says. He seems to be closer than Spencer remembers him being, and the air suddenly feels a little charged. He wonders if, if, but then Brendon’s standing up and saying, “Stay there! We’re just missing one picture.”
Which is how, three minutes later, Spencer ends up with a wriggling Bogart in his lap while Brendon says, “Bogart, stay still. No, stay still. Smile for the camera, Bogart. Smile.”
Bogart barks, but he must doggy-grin at the camera, too, because Spencer sees a flash, and then Brendon’s nodding, satisfied. It takes another five minutes for him to print the picture off of the computer, but then he’s coming back to the dining room table and putting it on the next empty page of the album. Below it, he writes, Home.
“Brendon,” Spencer says, but Brendon’s not looking at him.
“Pete told me that he was pretty sure you wouldn’t say no,” Brendon says softly, and Spencer thinks, fucking Pete, but then Brendon’s gaze is darting towards Spencer’s face. “You wouldn’t, right? I mean. I’m not wrong, am I?”
Spencer shakes his head. “Pete told me I was wooing you with scrapbooking supplies. You can blame the baby penguins on him.”
Brendon laughs loudly then, and for a moment, a breath, Spencer thinks that the moment might be lost, but then Brendon’s darting forward, pressing his lips against Spencer’s, and.
Yeah.
The End.
Well, almost. Because two weeks after that, Ryan and Jon come over for a barbecue and Brendon brings the book out to show them, and they flip through, and Jon says, “Crowd surfing chickens in Omaha? Really?” and Brendon nods.
“Pete invited the guy in the green lycra bodysuit on stage.”
And it could have been awkward, Spencer thinks, having Ryan and Jon look at something that they’ve had no part of, that they maybe should have been a part of, but.
But maybe Ryan and Jon are just as determined that it’s not going to be awkward as Brendon and Spencer are, because the next thing Spencer knows, Ryan’s saying, “Walker, I’m totally putting you in charge of making The Young Veins tour book. Just so you know.”
“I’m down with that,” Jon says.
And that’s about the time that Ryan reaches the last page, the impromptu picture of Spencer and Bogart since replaced by one of Spencer, Brendon, and Bogart on the couch, taken by Shane. The ‘Home’ remains, though.
“Fucking saps,” Ryan says.
“Fucking adorable saps,” Jon says.
“You know it,” Brendon says, reaching over to squeeze Spencer’s knee. And Spencer, well. He can’t really say anything to that, because he pretty much agrees.
The End. Again. For real this time.