BBB: Like or Like-Like (7/8)

[withoutacure1]

Part 7

Brendon tries not to be too glad that Tom doesn’t have to come to Home Ec class. He just doesn’t think that he’d be able to stand working alone for a whole hour with Tom. He’s even contemplating skipping lunch entirely.

That plan is shot to hell with his first glimpse of Tom Conrad waiting in the hallway outside of the classroom. It’s too late to pretend that he hasn’t seen him, so Brendon stops hesitating in the doorway and begrudgingly crosses the hall to meet Tom. There he waits silently for Tom to say something. He figures since Tom was the one who tracked him down, it falls to him to start talking.

Brendon keeps a few careful feet between them. He can hear Tom perfectly well from where he’s standing. He can’t help but notice that Tom looks really tense for someone who’s just spent the weekend reconnecting with his girlfriend.

“I, uh, I talked to Jon earlier. He said that you knew about the prom and all…” Tom trails off, ducking his head and looking up at Brendon from under his eyelashes. It almost makes him look shy, which is not something Brendon associates with Tom Conrad.

“I guess so,” he answers, feeling kind of like he’s channeling Tom in that moment with his short, noncommittal response. And Tom is looking strangely relieved, relieved that Brendon already knows.

Oh God, why does Tom look relieved?

“Oh, good. Good. I kind of wanted to talk to you about it myself, but this is…” Tom’s words stumble to a stop, and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

There are only so many reasons why Tom would be relieved that he doesn’t have to tell Brendon about what happened the night of the dance. The most glaringly obvious of which would be that somehow Tom knows about Brendon’s whoppingly obvious crush on him. Which, just…fuck.

Brendon watches with a kind of detached fascination as Tom performs the familiar nervous ritual of scratching idly at his beard, and then, further betraying the depth of his agitation, kneads his hand at the base of his neck.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for, um, ditching you this weekend. And… I’m glad we’re friends?” Tom says it as a question, probing.

Brendon hopes for a freak earthquake to hit the exact spot where he’s standing, one that causes a deep chasm to swallow him up and keeps him from having to pretend that he doesn’t know that Tom knows for the rest of what is shaping up to be the most humiliating conversation of his life.

Because that is Tom checking in his own Tom way that Brendon’s okay. And that may well be Tom asking without asking in his own bumbling yet gentle way whether Brendon is going to let his inconvenient crush get in the way of a friendship that is important to both of them.

He’s maybe a little bit in love with the guy, and Brendon doesn’t have it in him to let Tom down like that.

Brendon can’t be sure that his smile isn’t tellingly gloomy, but it’s the best he can do as he answers Tom’s earlier question, “Yeah, friends. I couldn’t have said it better myself, dude.”

Tom makes one of his ridiculous faces at that, his eyes squinting and his lips protruding in a bizarre approximation of happiness, of relief. “Great! So, lunch?”

Brendon nods his agreement, and lets Tom hover close by his side all the way to the cafeteria. He experiences his own burst of relief upon noticing that Danielle is probably out of school and isn’t at their usual table for lunch. He’s just grateful that he doesn’t have to sit through lunch trying not to choke on his bagel while a girl he’d begun to think of as a friend plays footsie under the table with the guy he’d fallen head over heels for.

So, Brendon makes it through lunch. He doesn’t really contribute a whole lot to the heated discussion over the comeback of eighties pop, which he supposes is telling in its own way, and he tries to ignore the worried glances that Cassie and Jon keep casting his way. They are truly mortifying in their lack of subtlety.

He makes it through the rest of his classes, and even manages a B on a history pop quiz. He makes it through Tom giving him a ride home with only one really awkward moment when he begs off hanging out with the flimsy excuse of having too much studying to do.

Brendon makes it through all of that, and then he makes it all the way up the stairs to his bedroom, and almost weeps with the knowledge that he doesn’t have to make it through anything else that day.

He just hast to make it through the rest of the week, a few more classes of Home Ec, a handful of lunches and a couple of band practices after school, and then it’d be summer break. The seniors would be graduating, and soon after Tom and the band would go on tour, and Brendon would be left blessedly alone in Chicago for a while.

Brendon just has to make it through the week, then the next and then graduation. And he can ease into seeing Tom less and less, and then Tom will go on tour with the band and he won’t have to see him at all for a bit. And he’ll have some time to get the fuck over this awful feeling and maybe lose this painful tightness in his chest.

He’s grateful for the sound of his cell phone interrupting his all too maudlin thoughts. He’s been sitting on his bed for hours now, watching the light in his room doing a glacially slow cinematic fade to black. He’s about to take the call and whine to Spencer about how it’s finally happened, he’s turned into as big of a mopey loser as Ryan Ross, when he notices that it isn’t Spencer on the other end of the line at all.

It takes a moment for him to actually register what the words on the display mean. He hasn’t seen them in so long that he almost can’t believe that his finicky phone hasn’t purged the information as obsolete. He thumbs the talk button to accept the call and brings the phone to his ear.

As he waits for a voice on the other end to speak, his mind is still caught on the word that had flashed incomprehensibly across the screen. Home.

-- --

Jon keeps insisting that something is obviously up with Brendon.

“He’s barely spoken to you all week,” Jon says, his voice strangely emphatic as he tries to convince Tom that he knows what he’s talking about.

He totally doesn’t. Jon and Brendon are friends and all, but Tom definitely knows Brendon better, and it’s not like Brendon isn’t talking to him. He’s just busy. Everyone but the seniors have finals. It’s really nothing.

“That’s not even true. We talk all the time. We just haven’t seen each other much. He’s a junior, so he’s still got classes. And we’re working on our project, so I’m busy too.” Tom can do emphatic too. It maybe doesn’t sound as convincing as when Jon does it, but he made his point.

Jon is glaring at him now, which Tom thinks is uncalled for. He’s right about this, he knows it. Sure, Brendon has begged off a few band practices and said he was too swamped to take a ride with Tom. That doesn’t mean anything.

“I will never understand how you’ve managed to survive this long, you are so fucking oblivious,” Jon practically growls the words at him.

It’s rare to see Jon mad, and practically unheard of to see Jon this openly pissed off.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at.” And Tom actually doesn’t.

“I know you don’t! That’s what makes it even worse.” Jon actually, literally, throws his hands up in frustration.

Huh. Tom kind of hates having people mad at him, sometimes especially Jon, but he really doesn’t get it. He and Brendon are fine. They’re like they’ve always been, even if Jon clearly does not agree.

Jon pushes himself up off of Tom’s bed and rounds on him with a determined scowl. “You need to tell Brendon how you feel. You need to stop being such a coward and somehow convince him that dating you would not be the worst decision of his life. You need to not take the easy way out like you always did with Danielle, like you always do.”

When Jon had finally cornered him to make him talk about his whole thing with Brendon, Tom had stood by his decision to just let things stay the way they were. Jon had just given him a look that said that he was being even more of an idiot than usual, and he’d muttered something about it being a good thing that Brendon was smart enough to fix the mess that Tom created.

It has since become plain that Jon has revised his opinion to that of Brendon being an idiot, and Tom being the only moron on the planet capable of ruining lives through his blundering ignorance alone. At least, that’s what he told Tom.

Whatever, Tom knows what he’s doing. He and Brendon are friends, and things are good the way they are. Even if Tom does now realize that when he looks at Brendon he sometimes gets caught up in cataloguing his different types of smiles. But it’s not a thing. Or at least Tom won’t let it be a thing.

Plus, Brendon hasn’t even been smiling around him that much lately anyway, so- But Jon isn’t right or anything. Everything is fine with them.

“We’re friends, Jon. He still has a thing for his ex, and I don’t even think he’s interested. I’m not going to mess up what we have now,” He says. There, that made total sense. Even if he did have to bring Spencer into it. Fucking Spencer.

Jon is having none of it. “And what have you got now? Brendon has been avoiding you all week. You must have really fucked things up when you talked to him after the prom.”

“I didn’t fuck anything up. When I talked to him, he said we were good. Friends and whatever. Everything’ll be fine when school gets out. Not that it’s weird now,” Tom insists.

Jon snorts in derision, “We’re graduating in a week, and then leaving on tour right after that. Do you really think that things’ll magically get better when you’re not here?”

“Maybe?” It’s possible.

“If you don’t tell him what the hell is going on in your head, you won’t even have a relationship to protect from your own stupidity.” Jon’s voice is deadly calm when he speaks, his words utterly serious.

It takes Tom a minute to work out what he means. “You’re saying that I should tell him how I feel because it can’t be worse than it’s going to get,” Tom interprets.

“Yes.”

Maybe it is true that Brendon has been a little distant. Maybe even more than distant, maybe he’s practically pulled a disappearing act. And maybe Jon does have a point. Tom really wouldn’t be able to deal if things got any worse.

“I’m not saying that you should declare your undying love or anything, Conrad. I just think that you should let him know that the friendship thing is great, but you don’t think it’d be the end of the world if you could make out with him sometimes. And maybe got to hold his hand. You know, ease him into it,” Jon says, using his reasonable voice. The one he rarely pulls out, because he says that it grates on him to be the voice of reason.

That doesn’t sound too bad. It even sounds doable. Much better than Brendon slowly phasing Tom out of his life for reasons that still escape him.

Tom nods once decisively and grabs his keys from the top of his desk.

“Where are you going?” Jon calls out to him as Tom heads to the door.

“I’m going to do what you told me to do. I’m going to talk to Brendon.” Maybe not exactly what Jon told him to say, but he’d say something in the same general direction.

He’s already almost to the stairs when he hears Jon’s faintly muffled voice say, “Oh yeah, this is totally going to work out.”

-

Tom presses his weight back against the tree harder, until he can feel the rough texture of the bark digging into his skin through the layers of his clothes. He stubs his cigarette out on the trunk of the tree and drops the remaining filter to the ground to join a trio of others. He digs through his pocket for his pack and lighter and lights another one.

He totally meant well when he got to Brendon’s house. He was going to go right up and ring the doorbell and have it out with Brendon about why he was being so weird all of a sudden. And he’d maybe slip a small love confession in there somewhere.

It’s just… Tom likes Brendon. He like-likes Brendon, and they’ve been kind of like best friends for a while now. That last was the thought that has Tom stationed at the foot of a freaking oak tree, angsting like a preteen and working his way toward lung cancer.

The light in the second floor window comes on, and Tom’s whole body tenses with the sudden pale yellow glow. From his vantage point in the yard, he can see something vaguely person-shaped throwing shadows against the industrial white of the bedroom walls.

The night is surprisingly humid for the middle of June in Chicago. Tom is sweating through his favorite red hoodie and jeans. He’d found the sweatshirt in the back of his car earlier, and had thrown it on in a fit of nostalgia that he was beginning to regret.

He lets out a breath that he hadn’t known he’d been holding when Brendon wanders into view. Brendon passes by the window, moving toward where Tom knows the bed to be, cell phone held to his ear. Probably talking to Spencer.

Tom can’t make out Brendon’s expression from where he stands, and he’s kind of glad of that. He watches as Brendon comes back into view, hangs up the phone and tosses it in the direction of the mattress. He continues to watch even as Brendon pulls his t-shirt up over his head and lets it fall to the floor. Brendon’s skin looks pale and delicate in the harsh light of his bedroom. His hair sticks straight up in some places from where his t-shirt had passed over it, and a pair of thick black-framed glasses obscures his eyes. He has a skinny chest and thin shoulders, and Tom’s cheeks feel hot.

But that’s probably just because of his stupid sweatshirt, which is definitely no longer his favorite.

He really needs to stop this. It’s bad enough that he is currently maybe sort of spying on one of his best friends, but he really doesn’t need to be a creepy pervert on top of it. Jesus, a fucking peeping Tom.

He can’t just skulk around Brendon’s front yard forever. He’s got to do what Jon told him to do, and man up. He can do this. This is a good thing.

Tom shoves his hands into the pocket of the cursed hoodie and pushes away from the tree. His flip-flops make faint smacking noises as they hit the soles of his feet with each step he takes across the yard. He climbs up the steps of the porch and stands poised at the front door. His finger hovers over the glowing button of the doorbell.

Even as his finger jolts forward to press the button, Tom becomes absolutely sure that it is a mistake.

He makes a point to remember funny things that happen throughout his day to tell Brendon later. When he discovers a new band, he texts Brendon incoherent snatches of lyrics until Brendon agrees to drop what he’s doing and listen to them with Tom. He sometimes spends more nights a week at Brendon’s place than his own house.

If he has this conversation with Brendon-if he makes them talk about whatever is going on with them, things might never be the same again. It could ruin everything. Tom doesn’t even know how to use a whisk properly. Brendon always did that part because he loves the sound that it makes when it hits the side of the bowl.

He can’t just tell Brendon that he has feelings for him, and damn the consequences. This isn’t sixth grade, and it’s not just a crush. Maybe it would be better if they just stay friends.

Tom is already halfway down the porch stairs before he even realizes that he’s made a decision. He just doorbell ditched his… Brendon. Maybe it really is sixth grade. Hysterical laughter bubbles up in his chest.

He laughs all the way to his car. As his palms smack against the cool metal of the driver’s side door, the laughter drains out of him, leaving only nausea-inducing hiccups in its wake. His head lolls between his outstretched arms, his chest heaves as he takes two deep breaths.

Tom’s stomach feels hollow with relief. People are always telling him that he needs to watch what he says, check his impulses. Maybe he’s finally learning.

Fuck Jon. He’s not taking the easy way out. This feels pretty fucking hard. But he’s making the right decision for once. He’s sure of it.

And if his throat is a little tight, maybe that’s just how you’re supposed to feel when you do the right thing.

-- --

Brendon calls Tom and asks him to come over.

He’s been keeping up the practice of not really, but still totally, avoiding Tom for almost a week. But in the wake of the phone call from home, there isn’t really much of a point in that anymore.

Tom sounded a unique mix of baffled and elated when he answered the phone, and he’d promised to be by in a few minutes. Brendon drops a stack of school papers in a steadily growing pile of trash by his desk chair. Finals are over, and he doesn’t really need them anymore and he’s working on getting his things organized besides.

He kicks the pile into some semblance of order with his foot, and goes to wait for Tom downstairs in the living room. He’s just switched on his aunt’s ancient TV, tuning into Cartoon Network by default, when the doorbell rings. That’s kind of jarring in and of itself, Tom had long ago begun to just let himself in.

Brendon drops the remote on the couch cushion and gets up to answer the door. He swings open the front door and ushers Tom inside. Tom stands in the entryway looking strangely out of place. It reminds him of the first time Tom was over after following him home. He’ seemed so foreign to Brendon then.

“So, what’s up?” Tom asks, studying the watercolor of daisies tacked on the wall over Brendon’s shoulder.

“Um, not much. We just haven’t seen a lot of each other in a while. I figured you’d probably be missing my face like crazy by now.” Brendon laughs at his own joke, determined to ignore the fact that he is completely to blame for their separation and also to not to notice that Tom hasn’t looked directly at his since he walked through the door.

“Yeah,” Tom replies, bobbing his head a little and shoving his hands a little further in the pockets of his jeans.

“Yeah, so. You want to…?” He gestures Tom away from the entryway and further into the house.

Brendon had not meant that as an invitation for Tom to head up to his room, but that is clearly what Tom takes it as. He is already a third of the way up the stairs before it occurs to Brendon that that is a very bad idea.

He opens his mouth to voice a protest, but he stops short. As he watches Tom’s back disappear at the top of the landing, his jaw snaps shut without a word being spoken. It will be fine this way.

Brendon takes his time making his way up the stairs and meets Tom at the doorway to his room. The other boy lingers uncertainly on the threshold. Brendon feels the knot in his gut twist itself a little tighter. That wouldn’t have happened a week ago. Then Tom would have just entered the room on his own, being almost completely unaware of things like privacy and boundaries.

Brendon reassures himself again that things will be fine. Feeling distressed about Tom is pointless now.

Tom hesitates at the door, finally meeting Brendon’s eyes. “I kind of wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Okay.”

Brendon ‘hmms’ his agreement and pushes past him into the room, stepping around the many obstacles covering the floor to get to his desk. After hopping over the pile of school papers, he takes a seat on the few inches of clear space on the desktop, and proceeds to observe Tom as he takes in the state of the bedroom.

Tom’s eyes scan the room once, twice, and then a third time before his eyes land on Brendon. His face displays his confusion. “What’s going on? What’s up with the boxes?”

Brendon clears his throat, takes a few beats before responding, “I’m sorry that I haven’t been around a lot lately. I’ve been trying to sort a few things out on my own before telling anyone.” It’s almost the truth. He maybe skips over the part where he’d spent a few days pathetically trying to talk himself out of being in love with Tom Conrad.

“Told anyone what?” Tom sounds wary, like he knows he isn’t going to like the answer to that question.

Brendon can sympathize with that.

“I got a call from my parents earlier this week. They said that they’ve missed me. They’ve had some time to think about things.” The pause he takes to let the words sink in is more for his own benefit than for Tom, he’s still mostly in a state of disbelief. “They want me to come home.”

Brendon takes note of the color draining from Tom’s face. He’s slightly gratified by it. If nothing else, at least he knows that he means something to Tom-that he is important.

Tom’s hands clench into fists, and he drops to Brendon’s unmade bed with a quiet ‘oof’. Brendon watches him take a moment to process the words, and then he blurts out, “They can’t just do that. They can’t exile you to another state and then demand that you come home like they didn’t just abandon you here. Like everything is fine.”

His gaze is almost pleading as he looks up at Brendon. And normally Brendon would be right there with him, raging at his parents’ audacity and utter disregard for his feelings, but it hadn’t been like that.

After Brendon had gotten over his initial shock at the fact that it was the first time that he was hearing his mother’s voice since the stilted message he’d received on his birthday, he began to actually listen to what she was saying. Both his mother and father seemed to genuinely miss him, to genuinely regret what they termed their ‘hasty and unchristian rejection of their own flesh and blood’. And then-

“They didn’t demand that I come home. They asked me to. And I said yes.” Brendon squares his shoulder with that confession, readying himself for the onslaught of Tom’s anger and disappointment.

Tom looks dazed by the news, his body slumping further on the bed. “So you’re leaving? Just like that.”

It isn’t just like that, not really. In the beginning, he’d always planned to go home, he’d plotted and schemed various ways to get back to Vegas. After meeting Tom, it had been almost too easy to forget that. But his family has asked him to come home, and they’re trying, which is more than he ever dared hope for. He knows this might be the only chance he has to try and mend things with them. And really, it’s home.

Summerlin is where his family, his brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews live. It’s where Ryan and Spencer and his band are.

It’s thousands of miles away from the heartbreak that is Tom Conrad.

He concentrates on the rug under Tom’s feet and says, “It’s a good thing, Tom. I’m going home.” He even believes it.

He’s not running away, he really isn’t. And even if leaving Chicago keeps him from feeling like a huge coward for not just telling Tom how he feels, it’s not the reason that he’s going. It just has the added benefit of saving him from being left pining over Tom while he and his perfect girlfriend plan a future together in between the regularly scheduled breakups that would inevitably get Brendon’s hopes up all over again.

Tom is all stoic silence where he’s collapsed on the bed.

“I’m sorry to just spring this on you. I thought I’d have more time,” he explains feebly.

Tom raises his eyes from where his hands are resting on his knees. “How long?” he asks.

“I don’t think I’ll make it to your graduation, but maybe I can stop by. I’m leaving that day.” He almost takes a step away from the desk, closer to Tom, but he stops himself. He bites his lip and says, “I’m really going to miss you, Tom.”

God, what an inane thing to say, but it’s the truth. Even if Tom can be a huge pain in the ass, and even if he broke Brendon’s heart without even noticing, Brendon is still going to miss him like crazy.

Tom’s head jerks up from where it had fallen to hang between his shoulders. He focuses in on Brendon, his expression intent in a way that Brendon has never seen it before.

He is up off of the bed and across the room before Brendon can even blink. He walks his way right between Brendon’s knees on the desk. He looms over Brendon in a way that would be menacing were it anyone else, his eyes searching Brendon’s face.

When Tom’s hand reaches up to gently touch his chin, Brendon has a split second to think, Oh God, he’s going to kiss me, before Tom’s mouth is headed on a crash course for his.

Then Tom is tilting his head up for a better angle, is sliding his tongue between Brendon’s lips. He lets Tom take the lead, tugging at his bottom lip with sharp teeth.

“Don’t go,” Tom whispers the words into Brendon’s mouth. And Brendon can’t help but moan in response. He’s wanted this for so long.

And Tom knows that. Tom knows that Brendon has an embarrassingly large crush on him. And Tom doesn’t want Brendon to go. And it is just like Tom to do something stupidly impulsive to fix a problem-as stupidly impulsive as to kiss Brendon to make him not leave.

As Tom finger’s card through the hair at the base of his neck, he begins to wish that sometime in the last six months he had developed some immunity against Tom’s unwitting cruelty.

But he didn’t plan for any of this. He just wants to stop feeling like this.

-- --

Tom had been stupidly excited to receive Brendon’s phone call.

After his tactical retreat of the other night -that he still stands by, thank you very much, Jon Walker- he’d been trying to think up a way to get Brendon to just be normal again. But clearly he shouldn’t have worried, because that problem fixed itself. Brendon had invited him over, and everything was obviously fine.

Tom was right and Jon was wrong.

It had taken Tom about thirty seconds in Brendon’s bedroom to realize that Jon Walker is never wrong. Because something is up with Brendon. Brendon is leaving. Brendon is leaving Tom, and he’s missed his chance.

Which is how Tom finds himself wrapped around Brendon, with his lips fused to the other boy’s.

He maybe should have preceded that action with that dreaded confession of love, but he felt like he was kind of in a time crunch and needed to express himself as succinctly as possible. He’s not much one for words anyway.

He does manage to get out a heartfelt, “Don’t go,” when they briefly part for air. He sounds desperate. He needs Brendon to stay.

That turns out to be a big mistake. Tom stumbles back when Brendon maneuvers his hands between their chests to give him a hard shove.

“No. No, you can’t just do that, Tom.” Brendon huffs out the words between ragged breaths, his chest heaving slightly with the effort.

He lets out a plaintive, “Why not?” his eyes still locked on Brendon’s mouth.

Tom is stopped from his unconscious sway forward when Brendon locks his elbow in place, his hand still pressed to Tom’s chest, keeping a careful distance between them.

“Because even though I’m leaving, I’d still like to be friends with you, Tom.” Brendon’s voice is severe, the and I can’t if you do that sounding as clearly as if it had actually been spoken.

Tom flinches at the words, the tone so unexpected that it snaps him right back to reality. That’s all that it takes for him to realize what he just did.

Fuck. He practically just forced himself on Brendon. But as he takes in Brendon’s reddened cheeks and his hair in disarray, he really just wants to touch him again. But no, Brendon has already made up his mind. He’s going home, going home to where Spencer is. And Brendon wants them to stay friends.

As rejections go, it’s a pretty good one. It’s the one Tom has been using on himself for the past week. It still hurts like a bitch, though.

Tom moves a step back, letting Brendon’s hand fall from his chest. Tom’s own hands drop to his sides. “Okay, yeah.”

He can feel Brendon’s gaze on him as he backs further away, edging toward the door. “I should probably go,” he mumbles, shuffling his flip-flops across the beige carpet.

Something unreadable passes across Brendon’s face and he hops off of the desk. He crosses the room to where Tom has withdrawn. His movements are cautious, like he doesn’t want to spook Tom.

Tom has to bite back a laugh at that. He isn’t the one who should be spooked; he’s the one who can’t even control his own stupid feelings here.

Brendon stands before his, an oddly wounded expression gracing his features. As if Tom doesn’t feel awful enough already.

“Can I-?” he starts, taking a step closer to Tom.

Tom is confused for a second, trying to translate Brendon’s words. As Brendon inches even closer, his arms coming up, Tom finally gets it. Tom doesn’t get a chance to voice his consent before Brendon flings his arms around Tom’s waist, and holds on for dear life.

He doesn’t get it, he honestly doesn’t understand. Brendon shouldn’t be allowed to do this, just reject him one minute and then cling to him the next. But Tom isn’t about to complain, not when this is the most normal things have felt between them in days.

Tom arms come around Brendon, tentative at first, but it’s only moments before he’s clinging right back. And Tom feels better for it. They’ll be okay. This is for the best.

They stand like that for a long time, wrapped around each other like the world will end with the first inch of space that forms  between them.

“This isn’t goodbye or anything, I’m not leaving for, like, a week. I just really needed to hug you right now.” Brendon mumbles the words into the fabric of his t-shirt, his breath warm on Tom’s skin.

“I kind of did, too,” Tom admits.

Brendon leans back away from him, and catches Tom’s eyes. Tom feels his lips quirk as they share a grin. God, this kid.

Eventually Brendon lets go, and Tom immediately feels the loss.

“Do you want to stick around, maybe watch a movie?” Brendon asks, his eyes wide and hopeful.

Tom shakes his head. “Nah, I should probably get going. I’ve got some stuff…” he trails off, not really wanting to say that he needs some time go mope by himself for a while, to try to pull himself together before he reconciles himself to both Brendon leaving and the finality of the whole being friends thing.

Brendon looks pained by his refusal, but pastes on a smile to say, “Sure, I get it.”

Tom certainly hopes not. He hesitates for another moment, still looking down at Brendon’s upturned face. He’s really got nothing to lose at this point -he’s already been rejected. “So, I’ll pick you up for practice tomorrow?”

Brendon’s arms shoot out to grab him up in another enthusiastic hug. “Yeah, sounds good,” he whispers.

Minutes later, Tom is sitting in the front seat of his car. The large oak obscures the view of Brendon’s window from the street, but Tom’s eyes are trained on it like he can will himself to see through it. He turns back to face the street, closing his eyes to rid himself of the image of cheerful green leaves.

When he opens them, the sight of the cracked gray pavement of the road greets him. It feels much more fitting.

He shifts around in his seat, working his hand into his back pocket to retrieve his phone. He hits speed dial two and waits for the beep after the voicemail message.

“Hey, Walker,” he says into the receiver, “The kid just broke my heart. I just thought I’d let you know that I blame this whole thing on you.”

He doesn’t wait to hear the list of options before he hangs up. He just flings the phone at the passenger seat and shifts the car into drive.

He can’t help but look back at the stupid green tree in his rearview mirror. He turns the corner and Brendon’s house drops out of sight.

That hadn’t been goodbye, but it still kind of feels like it.

-- --

It rains the day Brendon leaves. He finds it appropriate for his mood, but really crappy for a graduation.

He makes his parents drop him off a block away from the school in the van that holds everything he’d come to Chicago with, plus one battered acoustic guitar. They don’t even put up much of a fight at his request.

Graduation is usually held on a small sports field a block away from the school, but the rain has driven the event inside. Now five hundred students and their parents will be experiencing the ambiance of the high school gymnasium as they make memories that will last them a lifetime.

Brendon slogs his way through a puddle pooled inconveniently at the front entrance of the school. His socks are soaked through with brownish water, and his thin t-shirt is suctioned to his skin. He probably should have listened when his mother told him to bring an umbrella, but he isn’t really in the mood to listen to anything his parents have to say.

He passes through the double-doors of the entrance and past the front office. He doesn’t know where exactly the seniors will be gathering before they walk out., but he takes a shot in the dark and turns left toward the senior lockers. He’s in luck -it had to happen sometime. The hallway is crammed full of blue robed figures.

Girls are hunched over open makeup bags, checking their mascara in tiny mirrors, while the guys are alternating between looking deliberately indifferent, with their arms crossed over their strategically casual open robes, and whacking each other with their cardboard-topped hats.

It’s strange to think that that’ll be him in a year.

He stands on his tiptoes, feet squelching uncomfortably in his soggy shoes, and tries to spot Jon, Cassie or Tom in the crowd. He finally catches a glimpse of Tom’s bare head over by the trophy case.

He weaves his way through the press of bodies, taking full advantage of his slight stature in his trek across the hall. He may leave a few elbow-shaped bruises in his wake, but can’t bring himself to care, or even apologize. The situation is sort of time sensitive.

He’s out of breath by the time he surfaces somewhere near the display of tiny gold statues frozen in various feats of athleticism. He edges closer to Tom, and now he sees, Jon, Cassie and a few others.

He refuses to feel relief when he notes that Danielle is nowhere to be seen.

Brendon taps lightly on Tom’s shoulder, and is rewarded by a startled jump at his touch.

Tom whirls around, face already set in an expectant frown. The frown stays on his face for a beat, and then, after a brief stop on oddly enigmatic, transforms into a reserved sort of smile.

Tom’s flip-flops squeak on the water-slick floor as he shuffles forward to pat Brendon awkwardly on the shoulder. The move seems strangely rehearsed, like he practiced it in his head a few times in preparation of facing Brendon. Brendon feels ill at the thought.

“I’m really glad you could make it, Bren,” his voice sounds a little deeper and more deliberate than usual. His words, at least, sound genuine.

“Me, too. I’m just sorry that I can’t stay for the whole thing.” He cringes a little inside after he says it. Small talk. Regardless of the sentiment behind it, small talk always comes off as trite, and there really are a million other things he should be saying right now.

Jon glances over his shoulder, stopping mid-sentence in his conversation with Cassie at the sight of Brendon.

Jon’s sad smile could rip out the heart of a lesser man. But Brendon is made of sterner stuff. “Hey, Jon Walker,” he says.

Jon doesn’t say a word in response, just shoulders Tom out of the way-a little more roughly than Brendon would have expected, and opens his arms to Brendon. Brendon steps up to Jon’s chest, and is enveloped in an epic Jon Walker hug.

“I’m going to miss you like crazy, kid,” Jon whispers into his ear.

This is the first time Brendon can ever remember not minding being called that. “The feeling is so very mutual, Jon.”

Jon pulls back to let Cassie into their little lopsided circle. Brendon feels momentarily and melodramatically cut adrift. He wishes, rather unexpectedly, that he were like Ryan and could appreciate the anguish of this moment for what it could do for his art. Then he sends a silent apology Ryan’s way for the unkind, and maybe a little unfair, thought.

Jon gives him another sad smile as he hands Brendon off to Cassie. Brendon feels his heart clench, and thinks that he’s really not made of sterner stuff. Cassie’s hug isn’t as sturdy as Jon’s, but her softly clinging arms have their own merit. “This isn’t goodbye or anything. We shouldn’t be sad,” she says softly as she pulls away, her hand going up to wipe briskly at her eyes.

Brendon gives her a somewhat watery smile. Over Cassie’s shoulder, his eyes accidentally catch on Tom’s. When he speaks, his gaze stays locked on the other boy’s. “Totally. I’ll visit, and you can come see me in the freak show that is Las Vegas.” He tries for humor, but it falls woefully flat.

“I’ve got something for you,” Tom breaks in out of nowhere. At Jon’s look, he corrects, “We’ve got something for you.”

Jon kneels down near the base of the trophy case, and begins riffling through a small duffel bag. He unearths what he’s looking for with a small shout of success Jon hands the package up to Tom, and then springs to his feet.

Tom thrusts the wrapped bundle at Brendon with a curt, “Here.”

It is a good thing that he’s gotten to know Tom so well over the past few months. Otherwise, he might be bawling in the face Tom’s unaffected front. As it is, he’s clinging onto what he does know of Tom, falling back on the memory of Tom’s steady presence at his side for the last few months to stave off his niggling doubts. Brendon mumbles his thanks and rips the wrapping open with undue care. The colorful paper falls away to reveal what looks to be a photo album.

“It’s a copy of our Senior Project,” Jon puts in.

The Senior Project can be on any topic, so long as it’s been covered in some class you’ve taken. Brendon knows that Jon was doing his on photography, and had assumed that Tom, working with Jon, was going to do something along those lines as well.

His hand skims over the cover, lingering on the central picture of Jon and Tom mugging for the camera that is for once in someone else’s hands.

He tears his eyes away for a moment to convey his thanks to Tom and Jon. “This is great guys, thanks.”

“No,” Cassie pipes up, “that’s just the cover. It’s what’s inside that’s awesome.” She leans forward to flip the book open.

At the sight of the first page, Brendon realizes that Tom hadn’t just done the project on photography. He’d used some of his Home Ec acquired skills.

Brendon sputters out a laugh. “Oh my god, Tom. This is amazing,” he says pointing to the first page. Tom smiles in understanding.

In the center of the page is a photo of Tom in all of his rock glory. He’s sweaty and grungy, and gripping his guitar like he means it. A pretty scalloped border of red construction paper outlines the photo. A scattering of incongruously cheery stickers of cartoon guitars and phrases like “Rock on!” fills the blank space of the page.

Brendon recognizes the techniques from a lesson in Home Ec class. Tom and Jon hadn’t just given him a photo album, they’d given him a scrapbook. A gloriously clichéd scrapbook.

“Jesus, you threw in everything from the Scrapbooking Sensation lesson,” he says, gleefully flipping through the pages of the book.

Tom scuffs his toe on the floor, his smile becoming a full-on Tom Conrad grin.
It’s goofy as hell, showing all of Tom’s slightly too-small teeth. And it makes Brendon’s insides feel squishy.

“I even went online and learned a few more tricks,” Tom admits, not looking nearly as self-conscious about that as he should. “Here,” he says, taking the edge of the book and flipping to a page near the middle.

The page is done up in purple and green, with pink and blue letters stitched in the paper. The photo in the middle of the page is deliberately slanted to give it a lopsided look, making the viewer have to tilt their head to the side to meet the smiling faces in the photo directly.

Brendon doesn’t actually notice any of that, all of his attention is focused on the two smiling faces in the photo. He has his arm threaded through Tom’s, his head tipped back to rest on the other boy’s shoulder. Tom is smirking at the camera, his thumb hooked through the neck of an apron, and the lunch tables are an unfocused blur at their backs. The most eye-catching part of the photo is the sparkly letters of their names, shining bright under the harsh florescent lighting of the cafeteria.

Brendon remembers posing for the photo. He remembers how freaking thrilled he was that Tom had liked his awesomely bad present, and he remembers how convinced he’d been that he give up any romantic feelings he had for Tom and they could just be friends. He has a brief pang of longing for the smiling faces in that photo.

“Wow. I can’t believe they let you get away with making a scrapbook for your Senior Project,” Brendon says, latching onto the first thought in his head.

“I can’t believe they let us do a scrapbook as a combined project. Good thing it was a pass/fail deal,” Jon admits.

“It was actually really sweet,” Cassie says, curling her arm around Jon’s waist. She looks delightfully proud of them as she adds, “They wanted you to have something to remember them by.”

Jon and Tom both duck their heads at that, finally looking embarrassed about their sentimental gift.

Tom glances up from under his brow, eyes once again fixing on Brendon’s. “So, do you like it?”

Brendon remembers what Tom said when he got the apron, and remembers how simple everything seemed then. He answers, “It’s the best ever.”

Tom squints at Brendon, his gaze searching. Finally he sighs, “Yeah, it is.”

Before Brendon can even begin to wonder at the tone in his voice, his phone breaks out in his mother’s ringtone. He doesn’t pick up, but he knows what that means. At some point the hallway had started to empty, and now only their group and a few other stragglers remain. It’s time to go.

“Well, that sound means I’ve got to go. It looks like you do, too.” He musters up a bright smile.

“It won’t be the same without you,” Cassie cries, throwing her arms around his neck.

“What?” he asks.

“Anything,” she whispers.

She steps back, and Tom is right there. Funny, and weird, and beautiful Tom.

Brendon reaches out a tentative arm, not sure whether to go for a hug or not. Finally he decides, fuck it. Who knows when he’s going to see Tom again.

Tom apparently has the same idea, spreading his arms a little. Brendon throws his arms around Tom’s neck, planting his face in Tom’s chest. Tom gives Brendon a few faltering pats on the back before really settling into the hug, his arms resting low on Brendon’s back. This is probably the closest he’s ever going to get to Tom again. And he loves him, and that sucks.

They break apart at the sound of Cassie’s delicate sniffling noise. She’s crying her eyes out and watching them like her heart is breaking. He thinks that it’s in sympathy for him, but he can only work up a tiny bit of mortification at the thought.

“Bye, Tom. We’ll talk soon.”

“’Course. And maybe you can find a way to come to one of the shows this summer,” Tom says. He’s got his hands shoved in the pockets of his inappropriate-for-the-occasion jeans, his robe bunched awkwardly around him, and his shoulders up around his ears. There is the misery Brendon had been searching for earlier. It doesn’t make him feel any better.

Jon steps up last, poised for another hug. Brendon launches himself at him.

“And I think I’ll miss you most of all, Jon Walker,” Brendon murmurs into the scratchy blue polyester of Jon’s robe.

There’s a rumble of a laugh in Jon’s chest. “No you won’t,” he contradicts gently.

Brendon snuffles a laugh into Jon’s shoulder, positive that he’s leaving an unsightly wet blotch on the synthetic material. “You suck, JWalk.”

“That’s no way to talk to your friends, Brendon,” Jon shakes his head mildly.

“Not all my friends, Jon. Just you.” Brendon beams him a leaky smile, and feels his phone vibrate in his pocket.

“Well, I’ve got a minivan to catch, and you’ve got to go graduate high school,” he raises his hand in an impotent wave. “I guess I’ll see you…later.”

He takes one last look at his three friends, and turns on his heel.

He’s halfway down the hall when he stops, turns back and calls out, “Hey, Tom.”

Tom looks back at him, his graduation cap shading his eyes.

“Tell Danielle that I said goodbye, okay?” Brendon says, significantly.

“I’ll, uh, tell her, Brendon.” He sounds confused, but nods, then just waits in place.

“I-“ He wants to say good luck, but- “Bye!”

It takes everything he has in him not to run all the way to the van.

-- --

By the time he gets back to Vegas, Tom and the others have already been high school graduates for two days.

It’s late at night, and it feels even later.

He has never been so glad to see anyone in his life as he is to see Spencer perched on the curb in front of the house Brendon grew up in.

He hadn’t called to tell Spencer that he was back, but he supposes the other boy pieced it together from Brendon’s elegantly worded text of: Holy crap, I think I’ve gone blind, in response to his first glimpse of the Strip in six months.

Spencer walks right past Brendon’s parents to pull Brendon bodily against him, seeming to forget that it had only been a few weeks since they’d last seen each other.  Spencer is warm, and safe and the most familiar thing in his life right now. He just breathes him in for a minute.

“How you doing there, big guy?” Spencer is rubbing his back consolingly, and it feels like Heaven. And not the iffy caste system heaven, but the marshmallow cloud one.

Brendon pulls back from Spencer, meets his eyes, says seriously, “I’ve been better.”

Spencer snorts out a laugh, and knocks a knuckle to Brendon’s chin. “I know you have, champ.”

He grabs up the backpack that Brendon had displaced from the van in his haste to meet Spencer. “Let’s grab some of your stuff, and go to your room. I’m spending the night.” The last, Spencer directs at his parents, tone practically daring them to argue with him.

When they don’t even offer up a token protest, Brendon has the crazy thought that maybe he is in the afterlife. Then he remembers Tom, and that nips that thought in the bud.

Brendon trudges along behind Spencer up to his childhood bedroom, balancing a box of recently acquired winter apparel in his arms. The room looks exactly the way he left it. And that is almost the biggest mindfuck of all.

He gasps out a hysterical laugh at the sight of his years-old Tony Hawke poster.

He dumps his box on the floor and flops down on the bead. Another bounce of the mattress announces Spencer’s company. They stare up at the popcorn ceiling in silence.

“So…you wanna talk about it?” Spencer asks, still contemplating the ceiling.

“Nope,” he answers, similarly occupied.

“You wanna talk about being back home?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. You wanna talk about anything?” Spencer asks, his hand finding Brendon’s on the worn comforter.

“No. Yes, actually.” He slants his eyes to look at Spencer. “I wanna know what that mojo was that you pulled on my parents.”

“There was no mojo. They’ve just come to some very profound realizations in you absence,” Spencer says dismissively.

Brendon rolls on the bed, popping an elbow under his head to look down at Spencer. With a sigh, Spencer follows suit.

“I mean, you’re scary, Spencer.” His eyes search his friend’s face. “You’re scary, but you’re not Fear of God scary. And that’s what you’re up against.”

Spencer narrows his icy eyes a Brendon, and Brendon tries his best to look pathetic so that Spencer will just give in. It isn’t very hard.

“Fine,” Spencer concedes. “I had a few talks with your parents while you were gone.”

“Define ‘talks’.” Brendon is already wary of where this conversation is going.

“They were being total dicks. They abandoned their own son over some antiquated hate-mongering belief. They were putting conditions on their love, and they weren’t being very Christian about it. And that’s what I told them. Happy, now?” Spencer says in a rush.

“Uh, no. What the hell, Spencer?”

“Okay, so I didn’t jump into it exactly like that. I worked up to it.”

“Oh my God,” Brendon mutters faintly.

“Well, that was part of the problem, not your God,” Spencer points out. “I didn’t do anything outlandish, give me some credit. I’m not Ryan. I just talked to them a few times and made them realize that if they kept being such dillholes, that they were going to lose you, and not just to Satan.”

“Oh my God,” Brendon repeats.

“It isn’t that bad. They already missed you so much that they were regretting it anyway. I just gave them a push in the right direction. They would have done the right thing eventually. I just didn’t want to wait for that eventually.”

Brendon moaned into the cotton covering of the comforter.

“Hey,” Spencer says, jabbing a surprisingly pointy finger into Brendon’s neck. “This is a good thing. They realized that they were wrong.”

“Yeah, too little too late,” Brendon grunts out.

Spencer gets that look on his face that means he’s grappling with something. His expression settles on soulful. “When I was over here, they were beside themselves. They were a mess. They missed you so much that they were nice to me, just because I reminded them of having you here. And not just polite, they were nice to me.”

“I would almost pay to see that.” Brendon gives a feeble chuckle.

“Yeah, it was almost creepy,” Spencer snorts. Then his face sobers again, “They really love you, Brendon. That doesn’t mean that you need to forgive them or anything, but you need to know that. They love you.”

Brendon doesn’t even realize he’s crying until Spencer’s hand comes out to cup his face, wiping a tear away with his thumb. That’s all it takes for him to start weeping like a child, in great hiccoughing gulps, with tears and snot pouring down his face. It’s a good thing that he never planned on sleeping with Spencer again, because he’s pretty sure this would be a deal-breaker.

But Spencer is just his friend now-not just, but Spencer is his friend and Spencer can disregard his disgusting, blotchy face and just hold him tight until the world recedes a little.

Brendon spent so much of the last six months being furious at his parents. He’d been pissed that the people who raised him turned out to be so bigoted and uncompromising. He was angry that they couldn’t accept him, and he was livid that they couldn’t handle him. He was furious that they saw him as a rejection of everything that they were, and that they rejected him in turn.

But more than anything, he’d been so deeply hurt that it felt like a mortal wound, like he was bleeding pieces of himself all over Chicago. But no matter how much he lost, his hope refused to just fucking die already. And he was left, week after week without word, getting a little more battered and bruised, and building up his anger, because if he didn’t he’d have to admit that the two people on the planet who were supposed to love him no matter what, couldn’t find it in themselves to love him enough.

Spencer’s words were like triage to his wounded soul or something. Because it’s really hard to believe that your parents love you when they act like they want nothing to do with you. He offers his garbled gratitude to Spencer, speaking past loud, wet sniffles.

“Yeah, you should be thanking me right now. You should see yourself, you’re hideous.” Spencer blunts the edge of his words with the gift of a tissue and a luminous smile.

Brendon scowls around the Kleenex, grumbling, “I hope I got snot all over you.”

“No such luck, I’m impervious to stuff like that.” Spencer is a smug little bitch, but his voice is soft when he asks, “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think that this is something that I can just decide to forgive. I don’t even think that I want to, yet,” he says.

“I get that. I say give ‘em hell. Metaphorically, of course. Though they were pretty pathetic…” Spencer lets his sentence hang there.

“Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side.”

“I’m always on your side, Brendon,” Spencer promises.

“I know, you sentimental loser.” If that wasn’t a laugh. Spencer, sentimental.

“…And how are you feeling about the Tom thing?” Spencer asks, cautious.

Brendon sits up on the bed and stares hard at the wall. It’s been plaguing the back of his mind for the past three days. “I guess as well as I can be. I mean, it’s done. It was over before it even started. I like, love the guy, but-“ he shrugs.

“But you realize that it was just something to fill the gaping hole that your parents left?” Spencer asks, all innocence with his AP Psych bull.

“No, you jerk. ‘But-‘ it’s never going to happen. I really love him, Spencer. This isn’t just a coping mechanism.” He’s a little annoyed now. It’s hard to stay grateful for someone’s friendship when they insist on following up a really nice moment by being a giant asshole.

Spencer sighs. “I know you do. You love his eyes, and his stubble, and his freaking soul. That was just blind hope talking, because I don’t really want you to be stuck on a space cadet like Tom.”

“Hey!”

“I know. Sorry, Tom is great.” He says it like he was reciting lines from a script. “But you’re going to be okay?” Spencer gives him an assessing look, propping himself on his elbows to get a closer look.

“I’m not ready to join a nunnery or anything. It should feel like a little thing after the whole deal with my parents,” Brendon says.

“But it doesn’t,” Spencer finishes.

Brendon nods morosely and drops back down on the bed. They both go back to their scrutiny of the ceiling.

“Hey, Spencer.”

“Yeah?”

“You know how you had this calculating scheme to make my parents see the light?”

“…Yeah?”

“When you were in Chicago, and you were talking about how the band thing was going to work itself out soon…”

“Uh-huh.”

“Was that about me coming back home?”

“Yes,” Spencer answers simply.

“Hey, Spencer?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you kind of a lot.”

“Love you too, Bren.”

Brendon can hear the smile in his voice.

Part 8 

Master Post