South Carolina is for Lovers [Ryan/Brendon, R]

[formerlydf]

Title: South Carolina is for Lovers
Author: DF
Fandom: Panic and assorted
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon
Summary: Every night Dream stands on stage and tells the audience that Brendon is a virgin. It's true until South Carolina.
Disclaimer: Not true. Probably. What? It's not my fault Ryan makes really suggestive LJ posts, okay.
Notes: This is all the fault of this post and the assorted comments. I love our canon, seriously. This may or may not end up being part of my epic! verse; I'm still trying to decide. Also, lots and lots of love to my savior dimmingdivine for the awesome beta.



Every night Dream stands on stage and tells the audience that Brendon is a virgin. It's true until South Carolina.

*

It starts when Greta says, "I want to go swimming. Does anyone else want to go swimming?"

Dream immediately says yes because she has a crush on Greta, like all the dancers and probably everyone else on the tour, too. Hell, Brendon's got a crush on Greta, and he’s not even sure that he likes - well. That doesn’t matter.

Anyway, maybe it's because they're all a little bit in love with Greta, or maybe it's because it's hot and they've been stuck in a bus all day, only coming out to play on stage like unwinding clockwork toys (Ryan's metaphor), but everyone decides a swim sounds nice. They’re not too far away from Myrtle Beach, close enough to go on foot instead of cars or one of the buses, instead of making a big production of it. It’s just a bunch of people slipping on their shoes and crowding the roads because they don’t all fit on the sidewalk.

The walk to the beach is nothing; a mile passes in minutes when Brendon fills the time by jumping on Jon and laughing with some of the dancers. He doesn't bother Spencer or Ryan, because despite what people say about him, Brendon does know when it isn’t a good time. Tonight is a good example of that; Ryan's been pensive all evening and when Brendon looks over, Spencer is talking to Ryan quietly, one hand gripping his arm.

Brendon drags his attention away like it's a sacred moment (not that he knows what sacred means anymore, but he's not so sure his words mean anything anyway). He looks at everyone else, parading along the street instead, because they're there to see when he forces his head to turn.

They must all look funny, Brendon thinks. Twenty people wandering to the beach at eleven at night, covered in remnants of eyeliner and smelling like sweat and facepaint. They're too loud, but nobody comes out to complain. Maybe everyone who lives here is just used to noisy tourists, groups tramping down the street on their way to the ocean.

When they finally step onto sand, Brendon turns away from his friends and looks off at the stretch of beach rolling out into the horizon. The Atlantic ocean at midnight is so dark that Brendon doesn't think it even really looks like water anymore. If he were Ryan, he would be able to find some metaphor in that, maybe. He's just Brendon, though, so all he does is strip off his shoes and hop to roll his pants up, running down the beach so he can cartwheel in the damp sand.

"Alright!" Dusty yells, her voice surprisingly loud, even above the white noise of the waves crashing. "Who's skinny dipping, and who's lame and going in their underwear?"

Spencer laughs. "I'm not getting naked in front of you guys," he declares, carefully removing his shoes without getting sand on his socks. Jon, standing next to him, slides out of his own shoes much less neatly, but then again he's wearing flip flops. Which isn't a surprise, of course. He owns two pairs of real shoes, and Brendon doesn't think he brought either of them on tour.

"Wimp!" Greta yells, already wiggling out of her clothes and darting into the water, just a flash of pale skin blurring down the beach.

Bob laughs and runs after her. "Shit!" he curses after jumping in. "It's freezing!"

"It's the Atlantic, what did you expect?" Amanda demands. Brendon grins at her, and she asks him, "You stripping, or do you have something to be ashamed of?"

"Lots of things," Brendon jokes, pulling his shirt over his head. He's pretty sure he's joking, at least. "But nothing that's going to stop me from skinny dipping."

"Any opportunity to take your clothes off, right, Brendon?"

Ryan's voice is wry and right behind Brendon; he spins around, heels digging into the sand and only slipping slightly. The ground is surprisingly loose underneath his feet; maybe the desert should have accustomed him to sand, but he lived in the suburbs. The parts of the desert that he went to were full of dust, anyway, dust and dry dirt, not sand.

He laughs at Ryan but doesn't take his pants off yet.

"What about you, Ryan?" Amanda asks, turning to him. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours." She lifts up the hem of her shirt teasingly.

"I don't know yet," Ryan says. He smiles at her, but after a moment his eyes flick towards Jon and Spencer, who are running into the waves. They're still wearing their boxers, Jon's white and Spencer's black and tight.

"Lame," Amanda says disapprovingly, pulling off her shirt in one quick motion and reaching back to unhook her bra. Brendon looks away, pretending that he's just glancing at the sand, the sea, Ryan. Ryan who looks back at him knowingly, the last smudges of color around his eyes glinting mysteriously.

Brendon jerks his eyes towards the sand again, tugging his pants off before he can think better of it. His underwear goes the same way, and before anyone can look for too long he says, "Last one in is a rotten egg!" and runs into the water.

He steps on the jagged edge of a shell but doesn't stop, jumping in with enough of a splash that he re-soaks Spencer and inadvertently starts a water fight. Dusty joins in at the last minute and wins decisively, her veins blue under the pale, almost translucent skin of her chest.

"Ryan!" Jon calls, and Brendon looks up to see Ryan, in boxers like Spencer and Jon, picking his way along the water's edge. His feet are in the surf, but that's it. "You coming in?"

"Yes," Ryan says, in a tone that could be defensive if it was just a little more expressive. "I'm just getting used to it."

"The only way to get used to it is to jump in!" Brian tells him, overhearing them as he drifts closer. Brendon can barely see his face in the dark.

"I'm doing this slowly," Ryan says, and Brendon thinks, Of course Ryan goes his own way. But then Ryan adds, "Right, Brendon?" and Brendon looks up, puzzled.

"What?" he asks, because he jumped right in, but Ryan just laughs.

Doing this slowly, Brendon thinks, and then, did he mean - Brendon cuts himself off, tries to rub the ocean out of his eyes. They sting. He wishes Ryan would just say what he means for once.

"You're weird," he tells Ryan.

"You're just figuring this out now?" Spencer asks wryly. Jon hooks his chin over Spencer's shoulder.

"I'm not being weird," Ryan tells Brendon, still only knee high in the water. He kicks his way through the wave crashing against his legs.

"You totally are," Brendon tells him, "but it's okay, I'm pretty much used to it by now."

"So why did you mention it?" Ryan wonders, still fussily picking out his path, even though he can't see where he's putting his feet. The water around Brendon's legs suddenly becomes cold and he shifts, crossing his arms across his chest because he has no pockets, no belt loops or waist bands to stick his hands in.

"I said pretty much," he explains, swimming backwards for a moment before flipping over to do a handstand. He can do one on land as well, but it's different underwater, his whole body lighter. It's like he doesn't weigh anything at all. There; another opportunity for a metaphor, if he were Ryan, and another in the way he always feels off-kilter, as if his legs are tilting to the side. Maybe if it were one of Ryan's novels it would mean something, but this is real life, so he doesn't think it does.

The ocean floor feels oddly smooth under his hands, the sand drifting over his fingers. His legs are cold from knees to feet, where they're out in the open air. Suddenly something scratches against the bottom of his foot and he jerks, toppling over so his legs crash against the water with a smack. He somersaults to get his feet underneath him, stands up again.

"What the hell?" he demands. Ryan, now in the water up to his chest and close enough to touch, looks innocent, which is how Brendon knows he was the guilty one. Jon and Spencer just laugh, leaning against each other. "Ross, what was that for?"

Ryan shrugs. "Not my fault you're ticklish."

Sometimes Brendon feels off-balance around Ryan; he's the writer, full of deep thoughts and strange words, cynical and mysterious and beautiful. He's the one with the emotion that Brendon sings every night; without him, Brendon would have nothing to say.

He only thinks like that late at night, though, and he laughs at himself in the morning. It's just Ryan, who gets grumpy after waking up and reads all the time and likes to wear makeup. Just Ryan, if it's possible for Ryan to be just anything.

"Yeah?" Brendon demands, pushing his way through the water so he can poke Ryan's sides. Ryan squirms away, laughing quietly. "Really? Really?"

"Yeah," Ryan agrees, and for a moment they just stare at each other. Brendon's hand is still on the side of Ryan's stomach, covered by Ryan's own hands. Maybe he meant to grab Brendon's hand and pull it away, but for the moment they're frozen in place, almost but not quite holding hands.

Ryan's skin moves under Brendon's fingers as he takes a breath. Ryan's thumb rests on the inside of Brendon's wrist; Brendon feels his pulse jump, wonders if Ryan can feel it too.

Then Spencer says, "What?" and Brendon says, "What?" and maybe there wasn't a moment in the first place.

"Fuck, it really is freezing," Jon says. He rubs his hands up and down his arms, trying to get warm. "We're going to get, like, hypothermia."

"Bet the media would have fun with that one. Bands Die Overexposed, In More Ways Than One," Spencer intones dramatically, framing an invisible headline with his hands. "Details at eleven."

Brendon smiles, but he doesn't feel like talking about death. All it does is remind him of what his brother had said, the last time he saw his family. "You know mom - she's just worried she's not going to see you in heaven, or whatever." His brother had laughed, a little. After a second, Brendon had made himself laugh, too.

"You think we'd make the eleven o'clock news?" Jon asks doubtfully, and Spencer snorts.

"Not unless they thought it was some sort of cult suicide that could corrupt minors."

"Hot," Brendon remarks, dragging his toes back and forth in the underwater sand. His big toe scrapes against against something; logically, he knows it's probably a shell or a rock, but he can't help pulling his foot away, worried that it's a crab. A crab, or some other mysterious sea creature; Brendon doesn't know the ocean like he knows the desert. He's barely been to the beach, much less lived near it, close enough to drive out when he's bored or that one time, that other time.

"What're you thinking about?" Ryan asks, and Brendon realises that he's been quiet for too long. He doesn't like silence, most of the time, does his best to fill it up, even if he doesn't always realise he's doing it. He's usually more alert, too, paying attention to everything. It's just sometimes.

"The time we drove out to the desert," he says impulsively, and immediately wants to smack himself. He should have just said that he was zoning out, or something.

Ryan looks curious. "Why?"

"Crabs," Brendon replies, shrugging, which really doesn't clarify anything at all, but Ryan nods as if he understands.

"The day before we left for Maryland, we drove out into the desert," Spencer explains to Jon.

"Did you see a time-traveling cobra?" Jon asks solemnly, and Spencer snorts.

"I don't think anyone but Gabe could be wasted enough for that," he says. "We just talked."

"We saw a regular snake, though," Ryan offers, still looking at Brendon.

"Yeah, and you flipped out," Spencer snorts. "It didn't come within ten feet of us."

Brendon feels uncomfortable with Ryan's eyes focused on him; he shouldn't have brought up the trip into the desert in the first place. He swallows uncomfortably, says, "Hey, we're drifting away from everyone," and feels bizarrely relieved when Ryan turns away so they can attend to the serious business of rejoining the group.

All twenty of them stay in the water for a little while longer, but the waves are rough at night; Bob, trying to get back onto the beach, gets pulled under. Brendon distantly hears Greta shout something about wanting to help, but being naked. He can't fault her for it.

When they stagger back onto dry sand, Brendon is pleasantly surprised to find out that Chris had run off to buy beer. It's waiting for them, stuck into the sand, drops of water beading on the sides. Jon grabs two cans, glancing at Brendon, who glances at Ryan. Ryan shrugs, Brendon nods and Jon tosses one of the cans over, keeping the other for himself.

"We should have a bonfire," someone says dreamily. His voice doesn't sound familiar, so Brendon suspects that it's one of the techs. "That would be awesome."

"We'd probably get arrested," Jon says wryly, "and then we wouldn't make it to Virginia."

"That would be tragic," Greta agrees solemnly. "Virginia is for lovers."

"We could make our very own Virginia," Dream offers, grinning. She's sitting with her back to the ocean, the nearly black sky starting behind her and reaching over her head. A few stars glint, faint light reflecting onto the waves and casting a shimmer.

"Even in a jail cell?" Chris asks, snickering, and Spencer says, "Especially in a jail cell. I mean, Ryan would have three boyfriends in less than a second."

"So would you," Jon informs him.

"Mm," Amanda says, nodding solemnly. "Killer and Butch. They're waiting for you, Spencer."

"I think they would be named Tiny, Scarface and Hulk," Jewel corrects, looking thoughtful, and everyone starts piping in, trying to come up with even worse convict names. Brendon suggests Chains and Humper, but mostly he sits back and laughs, just listening.

Sometimes he forgets, but he loves being where he is. He doesn't think there's any universe where he would want to be anyplace else.

His beer is about half full, half empty; he sets it to the side and leans back on his hands. He's going to be covered in sand when they get back to the bus; he plans to take a shower and not wear these clothes until they've been washed. Which may not happen, of course, seeing as they're on tour and they've worn clothes so gross they probably should have been burned, but it's the thought that counts. Most of the time, at least.

Eventually the raucous conversation dies down; as much fun as they're all having, it's been a long day, a long month, a long tour. For a moment, there's no sound but breathing, waves crashing rhythmically enough that Brendon thinks he could work it into a song, some muted yelling coming from farther down the beach. Brendon lifts up his beer, takes a sip; there's a layer of sand between the can and his hand, rough enough that Brendon remembers sand is just really small rocks, in the end. Maybe that's a metaphor, too.

He glances over at Ryan, unsurprised to see Ryan looking back at him. Ryan had a strange day, he thinks, or maybe every day is strange when you're Ryan Ross, strange in new ways. Brendon didn't have a strange day, not even one that was more tiring than usual. Just a normal day, or what passes for normal, now.

"Ryan Ross," he says slowly, drawing out the sound of it.

"Brendon." Ryan smiles slightly, his hair falling into his face, shadowing his eyes. "Come walk in the water with me."

Brendon knows he would follow the band anywhere, would follow Ryan everywhere, but he can't say it out loud. "But I'm drying off," he says instead, hearing just how weak it sounds.

"Just our feet," Ryan tells him, and Brendon rolls up the cuffs of the damp, sandy jeans he put on as soon as he got back to the beach. They chafe, a little, like wet jeans always do, but he ignores it.

"Yeah, okay," he says, and pulls himself to his feet. They walk off, Ryan waving some sort of goodbye to Spencer that Brendon only catches out of the corner of his eye.

The waves are frothing against their feet when Brendon finally asks, "What did you see today?" Maybe he shouldn't ask, but there was no warning sign in his head telling him not to. He doesn't need a reason why as long as there's no answer when he asks himself why not?

"A lot of things," Ryan answers vaguely, but Brendon hadn't expected anything more, not really. "You brought up the day in the desert."

Brendon suddenly wishes he hadn't. "Yeah."

"Do you remember everything we talked about?"

Brendon remembers that for a lot of the time, they hadn't said anything at all. "We talked about a lot of things," he says, unconsciously echoing Ryan's earlier answer.

"Yeah. We did," Ryan says. He's quiet for a moment; Brendon kicks water at his ankles but he doesn't kick back, doesn't take the mood-breaker Brendon is offering. "Come on," he says eventually, taking Brendon's wrist and leading him onto dry sand, close enough to see their friends but too far away to hear.

"What are you thinking now?" Brendon asks lightly, sitting down and bringing his knees up to his chest.

"There's no good reason not to do anything," Ryan says suddenly, as if he's reading Brendon's mind, responding to what Brendon was thinking just a few seconds ago.

Brendon says, "Maybe," and Ryan lapses back into silence. Brendon can feel his own heart beating, can hear Ryan breathing.

"Tell me something you've never told anyone else," Ryan says eventually. He's lying back, his head pillowed on his hands, hair fanning out behind him. Brendon shifts so he's lying down as well, his mouth just inches from Ryan's ear.

"Can't think of anything," Brendon tells him, staring at Ryan's hair, the corner of Ryan's eye.

"Just something," Ryan says. "It doesn't have to be big."

"And then are we going to play truth or dare?" Brendon asks, but his heart isn't in it. The sand rasps as he shifts his arm, and he thinks of something he's never told anyone before. Eventually he says, "I used to talk to god," and laughs a little. He's a little tipsy, a little dizzy, but it's true.

Ryan blinks up at the sky for a thoughtful moment before asking, "How did that work out for you?"

Brendon laughs again, short and a little bit embarrassed. "I don't know. We just had all these prayers, and everyone told me that he cared and paid attention to everything, so I figured he wouldn't mind if I talked to him. I did for a while. I would lie in bed at night and tell him about my day. I figured he would at least be sympathetic. And then I realised that I was just a kid in the suburbs, and why would he listen to me when he had so much else to worry about? And then I guess I thought that if I had faith I wouldn't doubt his love for me, and I wondered if I really believed in him at all. I don't know."

"I used to think I was too smart to believe in god, but sometimes I wanted to," Ryan says. He rolls over, his eyes staring straight into Brendon's, their noses almost brushing. His breath ghosts over Brendon's lips. "I never could. I wanted to have faith in something. I wanted to be sure that there was more in life."

"Isn't there?" Brendon asks, and he doesn't even know what he's saying until the words roll out of his mouth. "I mean. I don't know if I believe in god, but there's other stuff."

"Like what?" Ryan murmurs, and Brendon swallows, says, "Music. The band. You."

Ryan doesn't reply for a moment, and Brendon worries that he's going to come out with one of those things the sisters and brothers at his parents' prayer meetings said, about "a child's unquestioning faith," things that weren't meant to sound condescending but did anyway. The only reason Brendon hadn't questioned religion when he was ten was because he never thought about it, because nobody ever asked. Eventually he has to start asking himself. He's questioned and he's thought about it late at night, and sometimes he laughs at himself in the morning but in the end it all comes down to music and the band. He doesn't need god, he thinks.

But Ryan doesn't say anything at all, just leans forward slightly and brushes his lips against Brendon's. It's a better answer than any words would have been.

He has no idea what's going through Ryan's head; Ryan is a locked box, sealed shut. He's a corked bottle made of thick, curved glass; you think you should be able to see in, but you can't, and you can't open it. You just have to accept whatever comes out. (This is why Ryan comes up with the metaphors, but even if it's a shitty analogy, it makes sense.)

Brendon shouldn't be as surprised as he is when Ryan asks, "So if you don't believe in religion, why are you still a virgin?" but he can't help it.

"Jesus, Ross," he mutters, and Ryan asks dryly, "Is that why?"

"Shut up." Brendon sighs, leans forward so he can rest his forehead against Ryan's. Looking at Ryan from so close is making his eyes cross; he closes them. "Do you just sit around at night coming up with these?"

Ryan's skin is warm and dry, maybe a little chapped. Brendon shuts his eyes tighter and waits for an answer, but Ryan doesn't give one. He's expecting an answer of his own.

"Fine. Virgin. I mean, I did some stuff with Audrey, but - okay, fine. I don't know." He wants to lean forward, hide his face in something, his hands or Ryan's chest or anything, but he can't. Ryan grabs his neck, pushing their foreheads against each other more forcefully, and Brendon chokes out a short laugh. "I don't know. I spent so much time thinking about how it wasn't fair and they, the church, shouldn't be able to tell me what to do with my life, but I never did it when I lived at home because I was afraid they would know, and then when - when I moved out I just never had time. And then it was easier not to. And that way I could always pretend, you know? If I never did it, then they could still take me back. They still would." He inhales, exhales, laughs again with just as little joy. "And they did, so I guess it worked, right?"

"Was it worth it?" Ryan's voice is almost always quiet and nonjudgmental, but it seems like he really means it this time, means it enough that Brendon feels safe grabbing Ryan's wrist, the one resting on the sand and not Brendon's shoulder.

"I was busy, and there was nobody I really wanted to sleep with anyway," Brendon says. It's not an answer, he knows, but it's the best he can give right now. "And it meant I could always go back. If this -" He gives a stilted wave, trying to show the thought of everything without hitting Ryan in the face. "I could go back and admit that they were right and have a normal Mormon life."

"Would you have?" Ryan asks quietly, and all Brendon can do is shake his head. "So was it worth it?"

It was supposed to connect him to his family, even when they weren't speaking to him. But he isn't - he's not -

He loves them. But they're not his real family, not anymore.

"It was," he finally says. "It used to be."

"So what changed?"

Brendon blinks his eyes open, looks at Ryan, who's been looking back all along. "Me, I think."

"Yeah?" Ryan asks, and instead of saying anything in response Brendon kisses him.

Ryan kisses back, his hand sliding from the nape of Brendon's neck into his hair. It only lasts a second before Brendon pulls back to ask, "Is that why you've been smirking this whole evening? Did you plan this? Because if it was, you kind of suck at seducing people, sorry to say it."

Ryan laughs against Brendon's mouth, his hand still tangled in Brendon's hair. "Hey, you kissed me," he points out.

"Yeah, but still. Talking about god and my parents? Not really what you would call romantic."

"I was just curious," Ryan says, smoothing his thumb over Brendon's throat, stopping where the pulse jumps right underneath his ear. "That wasn't why I kissed you."

"So why did you kiss me?" Brendon asks, and Ryan says simply, "Because I wanted to."

Brendon pauses at that one. "You wanted to kiss me?"

"Past and present tense," Ryan says thoughtfully. "I wanted to kiss you, so I did. And I want to kiss you."

There's no good reason not to do anything, Ryan said, so there's no good reason for Brendon not to ask, "So why don't you?"

"I'm getting to that part," Ryan tells him seriously. "It would help if you stopped talking."

"You know, there's an easy way to deal with that -" and then Ryan kisses Brendon again, pulling Brendon closer with the hand still tangled in his hair and pressing their mouths together. His teeth skim over Brendon's lower lip; Brendon reflexively starts to lick his lips but Ryan intercepts the movement and turns it into something else entirely.

Brendon curls his hand around Ryan's waist, slipping his hand under Ryan's damp shirt. His other hand is still gripping Ryan's wrist; he rubs his thumb over the pulse point, feeling Ryan's heart jump. They're still lying on their sides and it's annoying, all his weight on his arm and the angle all weird, so Brendon leans forward, pushing Ryan onto his back. He lets go of Ryan's wrist, planting his hand on the ground so he can lean over Ryan.

"No," Ryan says, breaking away after a moment, "this isn't going to work."

Before Brendon can say any of the variations of "What the fuck?" that are running through his head, Ryan rolls them over so that it's Brendon who's getting sand in his hair. Brendon thinks about protesting, but by the time they pause for breath, Ryan's thigh has settled between his legs and being on top doesn't seem so important anymore.

At some point, the kisses become more desperate, open-mouthed and wet, Brendon's back arching and his hips jerking up against Ryan's thigh as Ryan lightly bites on the skin just under his ear.

"God," Brendon groans, using one hand to pull Ryan's face back up so they can kiss again as the other hand works it's way farther up Ryan's smooth back. Brendon hadn't bothered to put a shirt on, so the sand is grinding against his back, but he doesn't care.

They stop when they hear the catcalls, looking over to see that everyone they left behind is watching the two of them. Brendon's leg has somehow wrapped around Ryan's waist without him noticing it; he has to force it to move.

Ryan flips everyone off, kissing Brendon quickly before standing up and pulling Brendon with him. "It's okay," he says, "there's too much sand here, anyway."

He twists his arm behind his back, trying to brush off the sand, and Brendon says, "Wait, let me, you won't -" He reaches around to run his hand over Ryan's back before realising how close it puts them.

"Yeah, I should -" Ryan begins, snaking his arm behind Brendon, but he isn't cleaning Brendon off so much as pulling him closer and pushing their hips together. Brendon can't help jerking forward and Ryan groans, his hand sneaking into Brendon's back pocket as his lips press against Brendon's shoulder.

They only stop when a fresh round of catcalling makes them remember they have company, breaking apart and trudging back over the sand to their group. Brendon self-consciously brushes the sand out of his hair, very aware of how many people are staring at them.

"Debauchery looks good on you, Brendon," Amanda calls out and Brendon flushes.

"So I think we're going to head back," he says boldly, with a sidelong glance at Ryan. "Right?"

"Sounds good to me," Ryan agrees casually, bending down to pick up his and Brendon's shoes. "See you guys later."

They walk off to whistles, applause, and Dream's triumphant shout, "Brendon's going to get laid tonight!"

"Oh my god," Brendon mutters once they're back on the road, dusting the sand off his feet so he can put his shoes back on.

Ryan laughs. "They're just jealous that they're not going back early with an amazingly hot singer."

"Oh yeah?" Brendon grins and Ryan reaches out, traces the curve of it with his thumb.

"A hot singer with a really gorgeous smile," Ryan adds. (Two years later, when Ryan writes a song about the sea, it's actually the mention of a smile, of all things, that makes Brendon think, Maybe. He reads the parts about being too small or smart to talk to god later, but it's the smile that hits him first.)

"How about a really hot guitarist who's also an amazing writer?" Brendon wonders.

Ryan smiles. "Yeah, that guy's pretty lucky."

"That's not what I meant," Brendon begins, but Ryan kisses him and he loses his train of thought.

The walk back seems like it takes even less time, even though they stop every once in a while to kiss against convenient light poles. Brendon wonders if they'll get arrested for public indecency and end up in that jail cell after all, but they make it back to the bus without incident. Accidentally ending up making out on the sidewalk, he decides, doesn't count as an incident.

"Spencer and Jon won't be back for a while," Ryan says, and Brendon smiles.

"I wonder what they think we're going to be doing."

"Well, I was planning on just sitting in the lounge and watching TV," Ryan tells him blandly. "Sound good to you?"

The trouble with Ryan Ross is that it's hard to tell when he's joking. Brendon blinks for a second before Ryan growls - really, growls, and it's so much hotter than it should be - and kisses him thoroughly.

"Kidding," he says when he pulls back. "Seriously. You really think I want to watch TV when we were halfway to having sex on the beach?"

"Hey, sex on the beach, that's the name of -" He catches Ryan's look, and says, "I don't know. You might have?"

"No. I would not have," Ryan corrects, stripping off his shirt. Brendon takes a moment to appreciate that before Ryan hold out his arms and says, "Come here, you're ruining the mood."

"Yeah, I guess I am," Brendon says, moving towards Ryan. He lets his hands settle on Ryan's waist. "I should probably stop that."

"Probably should," Ryan agrees, and then he's an inch away and then they're kissing again, Brendon's head tilted up just slightly as his hands press into Ryan's hips.

They make it into a bunk somehow, stumbling to kick off their sandy jeans. Brendon can't stop his hands from mapping out Ryan's body with his palms, moving over arms and thighs and Ryan's pale chest, sliding up into his hair, back down to press against his ass.

Ryan sticks his hand into Brendon's boxers and Brendon groans, his hands pausing as he tries to keep himself from jerking too wildly. "God," he mutters, noticing faintly that Ryan is repeating the exact same litany. "God, god, god -"

"Off," Ryan says after a minute, tugging at the waistband. "C'mon, c'mon."

"You too," Brendon pants, and Jesus, he's been hard since they were at the beach but it slams into him with new urgency. Suddenly he has to get Ryan naked, get them both naked; Ryan seems to be fully on board with this plan, because he pulls his underwear off and helps when Brendon isn't fast enough with his own.

Maybe Brendon should say something, but his brain isn't really working, and fuck, that's Ryan's dick, right against his hip. He's seen all of his bandmates naked before - they're on tour, it's kind of hard to escape - but not like this. Not like -

He reaches down and wraps his hand around Ryan's cock, trying to think of all the things he would do if he were doing it to himself. Slide up, slide down, slide up, thumb flick -

"Fuck," Ryan groans, spitting in his hand and reaching down to jerk Brendon off, and from there it all dissolves into a furious haze of hands, and the only specific Brendon remembers is that he comes embarrassingly quickly. It's okay, though, because Ryan comes not too long after, and anyway, he's been worked up since the beach, since the walk home.

"So," he says once he's a little more coherent, wriggling away from Ryan and stealing the pillow. "That was interesting."

Ryan laughs, kissing Brendon's shoulder before stealing the pillow back. "You know what the best part of being nineteen years old is?" he murmurs, and before Brendon can start to guess Ryan says, "Takes no time at all to get hard again."

"Well, a little," Brendon corrects, pushing Ryan over so they can share the pillow. "I mean -"

"Brendon," Ryan says, rolling his eyes and shoving Brendon back, and of course Brendon has to retaliate. There's practically no choice in the matter.

It's hard to wrestle in such a small space, but what they're doing isn't precisely wrestling, anyway. Ryan takes a moment to wipe both of them off with one of their discarded pairs of underwear and then they get back to rolling over each other, pushing with knees and hands and shoulders and elbows. Ryan keeps a tight grip on Brendon's bicep as he pulls him in for a kiss and rolls both of them over again.

It doesn't take long before Brendon notices that he's getting hard again, feels Ryan press against his hip. "Hey," he murmurs, "you want to try this again?"

"If I say no will you get that I'm kidding?" Ryan wonders dryly, Brendon makes a face, wrapping his legs around Ryan's waist and pulling him in, and Ryan gasps, "Yes! Yes, god, I do, okay, let me go so that I can find stuff."

Brendon unwinds his legs and Ryan rolls out of the bunk, almost falling on the floor. He digs through his bag, grabbing lube and a condom before climbing back in.

He kisses Brendon before he's even all the way back in the bunk yet, and Brendon surges into it, his arms around Ryan's neck and his body trying to press closer. Their mouths are open, moving together rhythmically as their eyes close; only the need to breathe makes Brendon pull away, in the end.

He likes the feeling of Ryan's skin sliding against his, but he thinks he wants more, wants what he never dared to think about before he went on tour and met people who wanted the same things he did. He wants to do what he wants instead of having second thoughts all the time.

"Come on," he groans, and Ryan doesn't sound much more composed when he says, "Yeah."

Brendon closes his eyes, but they fly open again when Ryan presses one slick finger inside him, his legs widening almost reflexively. "Fuck," he says, and it's weird but it's good, too, in the way it wasn't when he tried it in the shower once. It's Ryan, Ryan's fingers, the fingers he's stared at on the neck of a guitar but never dared to think about like this, not like -

Ryan pushes another finger in slowly. "Relax," he says, so Brendon tries. He closes his eyes again, thinks about doing a handstand in the middle of the ocean, about walking a little closer to Ryan than was maybe necessary on the beach and the street. He thinks he hears Ryan whisper, "Better," but he can't be sure.

Two fingers turn into three, stretching Brendon out for a while before disappearing; Brendon maybe whines, a little, but he's distracted by Ryan tearing open the condom packet. Brendon's eyes are still closed.

He manages to keep them closed even when his knees are pushed up and he feels something else entering him, something that's definitely not fingers and so is most likely Ryan's cock, unless he decided to get creative without telling Brendon. Ryan's cock.

At first Brendon thinks hysterically that three fingers wasn't enough, that they should have just stuck to things not involving Brendon's ass, that this wasn't worth it after all, because it doesn't feel good, really.

"Brendon," Ryan says, his voice somewhere between calm and strained, "you need to relax."

He's holding himself still, which Brendon figures is probably pretty difficult. "Okay," he says uncertainly, and Ryan sighs.

"Open your eyes, Bren," he murmurs. Brendon does.

It takes him a moment to readjust to the dark, blink his eyes until he sees Ryan's face. He locks eyes with Ryan and feels his muscles loosen, a little.

"Good," Ryan tells him quietly. "Are you okay?" When Brendon nods, he starts moving.

Brendon can't freak out, not when he's staring into Ryan's eyes; he can't see anything outside of Ryan's face. Ryan's looking back, noticing when Brendon winces and shifting his body, and then. And then he wraps Brendon's legs around his waist and thrusts a little and suddenly Brendon realizes why people like this so much.

He groans wordlessly. Ryan, breathless, asks, "Yeah?" and Brendon's eyes flutter shut as he replies, "Yeah."

When he looks at Ryan again, Brendon maybe stares a little; he looks like he did when Brendon walked over to the keyboard one day at practice and played something he'd been working on. Ryan said, "Jesus Christ, Brendon," and his expression had been the exact same as it is now, his eyes wide and dark and his mouth just slightly open, looking happy and amazed and determined all at the same time.

(Music and sex; maybe that's a metaphor, too. Maybe it doesn't matter.)

He's been thinking about this, feeling like this with Ryan looking at him like that, ever since Ryan asked him in that quiet voice if being a virgin was worth it. It had been, he thinks. Just to get to this moment, maybe it had been.

It's his last coherent thought for a while, but to be fair, he doesn't think Ryan is thinking much more clearly.

*

"Hey," Ryan says, when they've showered and are just waiting for Spencer and Jon to get back to the bus. It shouldn't be long. "You good?"

"Yeah," Brendon says, stretching and grinning sleepily. "I'm really good." It's almost silent for a moment, just the sounds of cars and other people in the background, until Brendon adds, "So..."

"Just friends?" Ryan asks, not looking up so Brendon can't see the expression on his face.

His voice sounds a little wistful under the monotone, but maybe Brendon is just projecting. "Always friends, Ross," he corrects. "Always friends. Besides, you're never just anything."

"Yeah?" Ryan asks, his head lifting just enough for Brendon to see his smile. "Neither are you."

Brendon tries to think of something to say, but all he can do is give Ryan a light kiss on the cheek. Ryan's fingers trace Brendon's smile as he pulls away. "Good night, Ryan."

"Good night."