Gainsay
Title: Gainsay
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 35,000
Disclaimer: Not real, not mine.
Notes: distractionz referred to this fic as my son, which I found to be a very fitting term. I’ve spent seven months on this thing, throwing ideas out and putting it together to make something. A lot of time and effort and love went into writing this, and I'm so proud of the outcome. Special thanks to indie_chicky for always making a good story better, distractionz for saving my life by stepping in and finishing the beta job when indie_chicky went MIA, and alexalgebra for the title. :)
Summary: Sequel to Guilty Pleasure. For every action, there are consequences.
The next morning, just about everything that could go badly, did.
The first thing Brendon noticed when he woke up was that there were a group of snickering voices in the room.
“What the hell could possibly funny at his ungodly hour? I should throw something or… something,” he thought groggily. When Brendon woke up in the morning, he always found himself in a terrible mood for the first few minutes. The giggling only amplified his crankiness.
The second thing he noticed was that he was feeling a tiny bit sweaty from the body pressed up against his side at an awkward angle. It came back to him that he and Ryan had fallen asleep on the couch. He had half-expected Ryan to get up in the middle of the night and stumble back into his bunk. He really wished that Ryan had.
The thing third was the airy feeling around his belly. When he shifted just slightly to touch there, he froze when he realized his pants were still undone.
“Fucking fabulous.”
The snickers turned into unrestrained laughter when Brendon tried to clumsily zip up his fly and ended up just fumbling around the crotch of his pants like a blind man. He refused to open his eyes because he was still planning on falling back asleep, despite the small audience they had attracted.
“Shut up,” he bellowed in a voice still gravelly from sleep. A quick shot of pain like a syringe went through his neck. He quietly cursed the couch and hoped he didn’t have a crick in his neck all day for sleeping on it wrong.
Ryan stirred next to him, mumbling incoherent morning speech and sitting up a little. Brendon wondered foggily if his pants were still open too. When Ryan nudged him with his elbow, Brendon cracked open his eyes and peered through bleary slits at the people in the room.
There were… a lot of people.
Brendon could feel his chest tighten as he looked around, suddenly feeling like he wanted to bolt. There in the small bus, were Spencer and Jon. And the bus driver. And Zack. And Eric. And two of the tech guys. All of them littered the front half of the bus like the neighbors coming out to see the car accident that happened in front of their houses, some faces excited and others shocked.
“Fuuuuuuck.”
* * *
After the extremely awkward task of detangling on the couch and retreating to an empty cavity of the bus to hide, Brendon was alone and being mauled by his own thoughts.
They weren’t even coherent thoughts; it was just this insane anxiety that he couldn’t shake off. He could feel himself sweating and his hands shaking. The harder he tried to understand why, the more confused he became.
Nothing made sense, in this moment. Why and who and what. It all drove him insane trying to rewind and remember what the fuck made him do everything. What had been going through his head?
They were caught. They were caught, and now he had to explain to someone else why he did it. He was fine with things not making sense in his own head, but that just didn’t fly with other people. His mind started darting around aimlessly, refusing to focus on the why’s, like it was trying to confuse him on purpose. It was only making him dizzy. He had no explanations.
“Spencer,” Brendon kept thinking..
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make sense of it. He started hyperventilating just a little and he barely knew why.
* * *
“No, seriously. What happened?” probed Jon. He didn’t back down when Brendon shot him yet another very venomous glare and Ryan just ignored Jon, stirring sugar into his cup of coffee.
“Nothing,” Brendon said, finally over the embarrassment of being humiliated in front of all those guys. Guys who he was going to have to see a lot of in the near future. Guys who he would have to talk to and look in the eye. The shock of it was wearing off, though. Now he was just irritated that this was the only thing Spencer and Jon had wanted to talk about all day.
“Oh, no, no, no. We know something happened,” Spencer said with an insinuating smile. “We just want to know what the hell it was.”
It was one thing for the towel to accidentally drop when you just got out of the shower, and reveal to everyone your cash and prizes. They were all guys and there were just some things that you learned not to be embarrassed about. And it wasn’t as if Brendon was someone who was easily embarrassed. One would actually say he had the least shame out of everyone-that was clearly no secret.
But this was something different; it was something that he never wanted anyone to find out about because it could change a lot of things. Or not change a lot of things. He couldn’t decide which would be worse. And he was sort of still trying to figure out in his mind why, but people knowing about this was probably a hundred times worse than nudes of him leaking onto the internet.
“It’s really none of your business, now is it?” Ryan said coolly as he took a sip of hot coffee from his steaming mug.
“You guys can’t be up in the middle of the night moaning-oh god, and I must have thrown up in my mouth too many times to count-and not expect us to want an explanation,” replied Spencer. His smile looked harmless instead of mocking with a bit of a wince thrown in.
Jon’s smile was a different story. “Who was the catcher?” he smirked. A mischievous and only half-joking smirk.
Just in the way that Jon said it, just in the way that Jon was Jon, Brendon had to laugh. If it had been anyone else, he would have said something nasty and tried to get out of this conversation for the millionth time. But he couldn’t help but to throw his head back and laugh with his mouth wide open and eyes screwed shut.
“Oh my god!” Brendon exclaimed amidst his laughter. “What kind of question is that? We all know it would have been Ryan.”
“Oh, bullshit!” said Ryan, setting his coffee cup down with a little clunk and letting an offended smile slide across his face.
Everyone laughed and things felt a little less heavy on Brendon’s chest.
* * *
“Are we going to tell them?” Ryan said that night, leaning against the outside of the bus with Brendon beside him. The bus had needed gas and Jon and Spencer had gone to buy snacks at the rest stop.
Brendon looked around nervously, scanning nearby to see if someone was close enough to hear. Maybe if he was lucky, someone would be and he could avoid this conversation altogether. But everyone else was on the other side of the bus. He kicked at a pebble on the concrete, a little deflated. “Can we walk a little bit?”
Ryan nodded and stood up straight before ambling off in the direction of a row of payphones. Zack called to them and Brendon hollered back that he and Ryan were just stretching their legs a little. The boys turned back around to walk further away while Zack kept a wary eye on their retreating figures.
“Should we tell them?” Brendon asked once he assumed they were out of earshot.
“I don’t know.”
“Awesome! Doubt is good!” Brendon thought hopefully.
Then Ryan said, “Maybe telling them would be better. They’re gonna find out eventually so why not make it a little easier for us and just tell them now?”
Brendon tried not to look like he’d just had his hopes dashed.
“How would this make it easier for us?” Brendon said as he rubbed his nose. Telling what happened would definitely be the opposite of easy for Brendon.
“It means their imaginations have less time to exaggerate what might have happened,” said Ryan, wrapping his arms around himself. It was a little chilly outside. “The longer they have to wonder, the worse they’ll assume it was. We have no idea if they heard the whole conversation, so they could have heard certain things and… assumed accordingly.”
“Yeah,” Brendon yielded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
He scratched the back of his head and mussed up his dark hair a little before sighing. Ryan just shifted from leg to leg silently but Brendon could tell he was thinking. Ryan was always thinking.
The nervousness didn’t go away, though, even with the reassurance that this was their best option. Brendon was deathly afraid of admitting something like this to people he cared about, people whose opinions would matter if they were freaked out by it. Those were the opinions that Brendon would never be able to just brush off like the media or fans. He felt like he was seventeen years old again and having to tell his parents that, yes, he was going to pursue his dream with his band.
So maybe Spencer and Jon wouldn’t kick him out like his parents did, but he just felt like this could fuck up so much. Brendon was finally on good terms with his parents, but he still wondered if his parents really accepted Panic! at the Disco. Not that their disapproval would change anything, but it made it a little painful to hear them say that they were proud of him when he didn’t quite believe it all the time. He just didn’t want the other two guys to say it was fine when it really wasn’t. He didn’t want to catch himself always wondering if they were really ok with it. If they were ok with him.
But Ryan had a point about it being better to clarify things than to let them get out of hand by staying silent. They could downplay it when they explained it, he thought. They had to do this whether he liked it or not, and he had to keep telling himself it was for the best. The only thing he could do was mentally prepare himself for it, he supposed.
Brendon broke the silence with, “What are we going to say?”
“What happened. Kissing and touching. Keep it simple. It’s not like they need details,” was Ryan’s solution. He came off so casual, so disconnected. It almost bothered Brendon how level-headed he was being about this. Like it didn’t even matter. Not that it mattered to Brendon or anything, though. He was just. Frustrated.
“Yeah. Yeah. I just. Ok,” Brendon mumbled.
“Why are you so nervous about this? You’ve never been the type to get your feathers ruffled over something like this.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever been in a situation like this before, though,” answered Brendon. Not that it actually answered anything.
When Brendon made eye contact, Ryan’s eyes were silently interrogating him like they were trying to pull the answers from Brendon’s mind instead of his words. He felt like he was naked under a bright light being scrutinized and assessed. As much as it should have made him feel uncomfortable, it only made him annoyed with himself for not knowing how to articulate things. Although, part of him thought it was probably be better that he didn’t know how to make Ryan understand why he was afraid.
“I don’t know, dude,” he finally said after Ryan quirked an eyebrow. “I guess it really doesn’t matter that Jon and Spencer know anymore. I’m more worried about other people finding out.”
“Other people as in…?”
“Audrey, for starters,” Brendon said like it was obvious, which it should have been. Like a moron, Brendon thought,“Oh, shit. Audrey.”
Ryan dropped his eyes.
“Not that I think she’d actually be jealous or mad or anything, but I don’t want to even take the chance of fucking things up with her,” Brendon explained. He couldn’t help but think that his excuse was a little weak so he continued with, “Besides, it’s not like we don’t get enough flak about seeming gay. This would only make things worse and, as much as I don’t give a shit what people say about me, I give a shit what people do because of what people say about me. This could… fuck a lot of things up regardless of how much we don’t care that people know, you know?”
He felt like he was just filling up the silence with talking and still not getting anywhere. Rambling.
“I understand,” said Ryan slowly. “But we still need to let the guys know. We’ll make them swear to keep it secret if we have to, but I have a feeling they wouldn’t go parading around and handing out information like that anyway. They’re assholes sometimes, like this morning, but they’re good enough friends to know where the line is drawn.”
“You really don’t mind telling them?” Brendon inquired. Ryan shook his head.
“We’re caught as it is. We’d never get anywhere trying to hide or deny anything we did. Besides, this is Spencer and Jon. Our best friends. If we were going to tell anyone, it would be them anyway.”
Ryan smiled comfortingly and Brendon returned it.
“Yeah. You’re right,” admitted Brendon.
Somehow, someway, Ryan Ross was always right.
* * *
When everyone had loaded back onto the bus, Brendon felt a lot better about the whole thing. Jon and Spencer would love them both anyway, even if they sort of had a little gay incident (which was totally not just a little gay). They didn’t mean anything by their teasing and Brendon decided he’d just have to learn to appreciate it, not get so bothered by a joke here and there. He felt relieved that they were telling them, really.
Brendon was assigned to getting Jon, and Ryan convinced Spencer into coming to the back lounge of the bus once they were on the road again. They closed the door and tried to create as much privacy as possible, away from Zack and anyone else drifting around their bus.
“Brendon and I think you guys deserve to know what actually happened,” Ryan started. His voice was paced and precise, like he had planned out every word he was going to say.
“Finally,” Spencer interjected with quick glance at Jon. Jon nodded.
“It’s not that big of a deal, you guys,” continued Ryan, crossing his arms like he tended to do when he was about to get into a story. “It was late and we were both sort of not in our right minds. There was kissing and some touching and that was all.”
“Could you be a little more vague, Ryan?” Jon laughed. Brendon let a smile break his otherwise uneasy demeanor.
“Let’s leave it that vague, shall we?” Spencer said, holding up one hand in Ryan’s direction to keep the guitarist from elaborating. Sometimes Brendon liked Spencer just because he always stopped things before they went too far.
“So… are you guys weirded out?” Brendon asked, some of the apprehension still lingering in his voice and tense shoulders.
“Not really,” Jon said with a shrug. Spencer silently agreed with a matching shrug. “This just means we’re obligated to make even more gay jokes now.”
Brendon exhaled for what felt like the first time since they got on the bus. As he did, he let out a small laugh. The world was ok. Crisis averted.
“Dude, I’ll make them with you,” Brendon said as he and Jon launched into a conversation discussing the possibilities this opened up.
Spencer got up from sitting next to Jon and walked closer to Ryan. He softly said, “You good?”
“Yeah.” Ryan’s voice was flat like it always was, but Spencer sensed that this was forced.
“You want to talk about it?” Spencer offered, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. He could feel it vibrating with the engine of the bus and it jostled him a little when they hit a small bump in the road. He watched his friend pull a lock of hair of out his eyes and try to put it behind his ear. It fell back into place once his spindly fingers let go. Ryan still hadn’t spoken.
“Careful, Ryan,” Spencer said, and then he started walking out.
* * *
Ryan liked to take walks around the venues from time to time to try and “appreciate the location,” as he put it reasonably. It didn’t stop Brendon from comparing him to an old man, though.
Brendon almost always volunteered to go with him. If he didn’t volunteer, Spencer and Jon usually made him because Brendon got pre-show jitters like no other. They were the kind that made him bouncy to an extreme and sometimes snippy. No one wanted to deal with Brendon when he was snippy.
This time, however, it was Brendon who suggested he and Ryan take a little stroll around the place. Ryan easily agreed and Brendon felt his stomach shift just a little. Pre-show nerves.
They stepped out of a back door and ambled along the building, darting through a maze of equipment and roadies who were busy dutifully unpacking things. It became like a game-Brendon always making dramatic dashes past a guitar rack coming his way, Ryan staying quick and nimble on his feet, taking hairpin turns and ducking underneath amps carried on strong shoulders.
They stayed in a safe back lot tucked away behind the concert hall, mostly kicking a long-abandoned 7-up can back and forth as they talked. They hardly said a thing of importance, but Brendon’s favorite conversations weren’t the life-altering ones. He liked the witty banter and pointless humor of just talking, for the sake of being funny, for the sake of enjoying the company. The way Ryan always went along with it no matter how pointless it was made Brendon like Ryan the best in times like this. Even better, he liked how Ryan always appreciated his jokes, even without opening his mouth and literally laughing all the time. His eyes would sometimes shine a little brighter or his mouth would purse like he was pretending to be offended by something Brendon said, even though Ryan didn’t really get offended by anything. Ryan was just good at giving people what they wanted.
Then Ryan looked up from under his bangs as he said something Brendon suddenly wasn’t listening to. It wasn’t meant to be coy, but Ryan was giving him this look. Brendon wanted to push Ryan into the chain link fence a few yards away, and that was when Brendon said he needed to piss and that they should probably head back.
* * *
A few nights later, Brendon was looking up at the top of his bunk with his hand down his flannel pajama pants. He tried so hard to think of something besides Ryan. He really did. He didn’t try very long, but a lot of effort went into it! He tried for a full two minutes to conjure up his favorite memory of Audrey. He tried to think of breasts and lacy panties and long hair. Sweet little mouths with bright lipstick wrapped around his dick. He tried to think of Victoria’s Secret, push up bras and hour-glass figures. Every single time, his mind wandered back to long fingers on his hips and late-night stubble scraping against his cheek.
And he couldn’t get those sounds out of his mind. His eyes had been closed for most of that night, and it had been dark anyway so it wasn’t like there was much of a mental picture for him. But those sounds. Brendon was pretty sure he could jerk off to the memory of those sounds until he was old and grey and appendages were falling off.
It felt so bizarre to just shift gears so smoothly. One night, he was jacking off to the memory of a lesbian porno he saw once, and the next, it was the memory of giving his friend a hand job. It shouldn’t have worked the way it did. It shouldn’t have been so easy. This didn’t make sense, damn it. But Brendon didn’t masturbate to make sense of things. When he came and still had no answer to any of his questions, he didn’t mind too much. Through the haze, all he could imagine was Ryan’s soft, satiated smile.
* * *
Brendon had always watched Ryan put on make-up. He liked seeing the arbitrary lines and misshapen blobs turn into art before his eyes. It wasn’t like he pulled up a chair and watched it like a show, but he’d always stolen glances across the room while Ryan flicked brushes and make-up pencils across his face, his canvas. He’d occasionally be as obvious as to do his own make-up next to Ryan and linger on Ryan’s reflection. The other boy virtually never looked over at him; always too focused on this aspect of his art.
Of course, this had to be the one time Ryan not only looked over, but locked eyes with Brendon. His hand still moved under his eye, making wicked-looking swirls and blending the colors, but he held onto Brendon’s gaze for a prolonged moment.
Brendon had to actually try to remember which way was up.
Then Ryan looked away and it was like none of it ever happened.
Impulsively, Brendon said, “Will you do make-up on me, tonight?”
For most of the tour, Brendon’s stage make up met the minimum requirement of eyeliner, but not much else. He just hated looking in the mirror at intermission to see it flowing down his face like he had been crying, distorted and smeared by sweat and carelessness. It was rare for him to willingly offer up his face for Ryan to work on, but he wanted it tonight, wanted to be a piece of art to match Ryan.
Ryan screwed back on the lid to his purple eye shadow and said, “Ok.”
Situating two seats to face each other-because Ryan refused to do it standing, saying that Brendon was sure to get fidgety-Brendon tried to stay perfectly still while Ryan leaned in close and used a sharpened eyeliner pencil to sketch jagged lines and spikes around his eyes, one hand cradling his head to hold him still. He could feel Ryan’s warm breath puffing out over his chin every few seconds, could smell Ryan from this far away. He wanted to open his eyes and watch Ryan’s face, see his lips pucker up in concentration and his eyes widen periodically to look closer at a design, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from surging forward and kissing him. Self-control had never been Brendon’s strong point.
So he kept his eyes closed and relaxed into Ryan’s hands, the fingers sweeping over his eyelids and leaving pigment and shadow in their wake.
“You can open your eyes now. I’m done,” Ryan said, too soon for Brendon.
When he did pry his eyes open again, he realized that his lips were slightly parted and Ryan was practically holding his head up. He gave Ryan a bashful grin and looked into the mirror beside them to admire Ryan’s work. God, it was beautiful.
“Thanks,” he said, leaning closer to get a better look. When he looked back at Ryan in the mirror, he was gone.
* * *
Seven days after “the incident”, as Brendon liked to refer to it in his mind, Ryan and Brendon hadn’t talked about it. No one had even found a chance to slip in a joke. It was almost as if everyone had forgotten it happened and just moved on with their lives. Brendon highly doubted that. He kept expecting someone to mention it or make some remark, but no one did. It almost made him nervous. They couldn’t have forgotten about it, he thought. Things felt too awkward for that.
He certainly hadn’t forgotten. That night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep, he was feeling restless and slunk out of his bed and into the lounge. He left the door between the two areas open just a crack for when he decided to go back and try to sleep (and, if he was being honest with himself, maybe in hopes that Ryan would notice).
The bus was still, for the moment. Most nights they would find a rest stop and wait until morning to continue on the road, and this night was no different. It usually made it easier to sleep on the bus if they weren’t moving, but Brendon was having a difficult time just lying down. He had too much energy to sleep and just wanted to get up and do something. So here he was, sitting on the couch in the lounge with one knee drawn up to his chin as he stared into the near-darkness. A familiar dim light slipped through the slits in the blinds from another unfamiliar street light, and he sighed deeply as he tried to remember what it felt like to be home.
It’d been months since he’d been back in Vegas. He missed his bed. He missed his room. He missed knowing where everything was and knowing that it was going to stay there. Little things like how the bus smelled-rank-compared to his house made him wish he was back in Vegas again. However, whenever he thought about going home, it made him feel the tiniest bit queasy. In some ways, his home town felt foreign already. Almost eighteen years of his life were spent in that house, on those streets. And yet, he felt so much more at home in this tiny tour bus, traveling to a different place just about every day. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little homesick. But it made him mad that he couldn’t keep himself entirely satisfied with either living arrangement.
He liked being able to move around a lot now, though. Some people thrived in their comfort zones but Brendon thrived when things were chaotic, when he didn’t know everything or everyone. As much as he loved having the comfort of familiarity, it was exciting to wake up in a new city every day. In a way, he got both. Brendon had seen a load of new countries, a hundred new cities, and a million new faces. Every show, he was met with something new, but a show was a show, essentially. Everything was new and everything was the same. Consistent despite its inconsistencies.
Brendon fancied himself a profound thinker from time to time. Ryan would normally snort when Brendon said so.
His thoughts were broken when he heard movement coming from the bunks. The door creaked open the tiniest bit and revealed Ryan, surprisingly wide awake. His hair was a little matted and his clothes were wrinkled, but he was far from looking heavy-eyed. Brendon’s heart sputtered then picked up where it left off when Ryan shut the door quietly.
“Hey,” Brendon murmured from the couch.
“Hey.”
They just stayed there for a few moments without talking or moving, just staring at each other. There was no caution or wariness like they were trying to figure out the other’s motives. It was just them, looking across the small space at each other in the weak light of the lounge. Ryan was the first to speak again.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he whispered a little lamely.
“Me either,” replied Brendon, his voice just as soft as Ryan’s.
Shuffling over to the couch, Ryan plopped down next to Brendon but didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes trained on the clock glowing on the DVD player which read 1:38 AM. Brendon didn’t take long to lean over and rest his head on Ryan’s shoulder like he had done a thousand times before, and Ryan tilted his own head to rest on top of Brendon’s. For a few seconds, the silence was comforting, but Brendon was still very awake and wanted something to do. However, he didn’t want to instigate something and have Ryan push him away saying something like, “I thought you understood that was a one-time thing.” But, god, Ryan was sitting right fucking there.
He poked Ryan’s thigh and whispered, “Poke.” Ryan didn’t move or speak so Brendon did it again.
“Poke.”
“Stop that,” commanded Ryan as he batted Brendon’s hand away. “That’s annoying.”
“Poke.”
Ryan retaliated and smacked Brendon on the leg with the back of his hand. Brendon made a yelping noise and giggled. He felt Ryan smile into his hair and then leave an apologetic kiss on the crown of his head. Then Ryan lifted his head and started to shift, so Brendon did the polite thing and moved off of him. Before Brendon had the chance to even face Ryan entirely, a hand grabbed him firmly by the chin and turned his head. Even though he knew what was coming, it still surprised him to feel Ryan’s lips press hard against his own. It was a little weird to think that they went from acting like nothing was going on to kissing. Zero to sixty in two seconds. Brendon was certainly not complaining, though.
“I didn’t think you were gonna come up here,” Brendon mumbled against Ryan’s mouth.
Ryan’s tongue was already sweeping across the seam of Brendon’s lips and it made Brendon’s heart falter again and then speed up. Without hesitation, he parted his lips and felt Ryan immediately rush his tongue inside and glide slickly over his own. The sigh released was Ryan’s and Brendon felt embarrassed that it made his dick twitch just a little. They’d been kissing for maybe ten seconds, for goodness sake.
Ryan’s hand moved from holding Brendon’s chin steady to grip the back of his head, intentionally tangling his fingers in the dark strands of hair. Brendon glanced for a second at the door to reassure himself that it was shut properly. He wasn’t going to do this and risk getting caught again. He wondered if it would really matter if they did get caught, though. For the briefest moment, he pondered how Spencer and Jon would react if they found out this was happening all over again. Would they be disappointed? Would they be disgusted? Or would they be fine with it? More importantly, would they tell Brendon and Ryan the truth about what they thought about it all?
Too much thinking.
Their breathing, harsh and ragged already, filled his ears, and he wanted to drown in it. A long, thin hand slid around Brendon’s hip and gripped hard, anchoring itself there as Ryan pulled himself into Brendon’s lap, kissing him like he’d been waiting for this too. Brendon sighed and didn’t know whether to lean into Ryan’s lips or the fingers massaging through his hair that were driving him crazy. He kissed back harder, feeling tingles from the top of his head to his toes, and Ryan was all too eager to match his intensity.
Brendon sucked on Ryan’s bottom lip a little and snuck his hands around to palm Ryan’s ass, squeezing lightly and enjoying the feeling of weight, of flesh, of another person in his hands. God, he could do this all night. Just stay here and make out with Ryan, who was getting more and more insistent by the second.
Ryan pulled away and let himself breathe for a moment and Brendon kissed his exposed neck, mouthed at his Adam’s apple. He almost groaned when Ryan pressed himself down, not even trying to hide his small erection.
“Fuck, that feels so good,” breathed Ryan. Brendon wasn’t sure if he was referring to his neck or his dick, but it was sort of all the same to him. The guitarist murmured little things under his breath as Brendon dragged the tip of his tongue along the column of his throat. Little nothings that still had Brendon’s hair standing on end as Ryan whispered them low into his ear.
“I’ve thought about this all day,” said Ryan, punctuating it with a gasp when Brendon pulled the collar of his shirt down and bit lightly on his collar bone. The hand on Brendon’s side tensed and Brendon thought he could feel fingernails digging into his skin through the shirt. When Ryan’s hand relaxed, Brendon reached his head up and tried to kiss him but missed and hit his chin sloppily. Ryan chuckled a little and bent down to kiss him properly.
“Tonight, I don’t want to fall asleep on the couch,” Brendon whispered.
“Tonight, I don’t want to fall asleep,” Ryan replied quickly.
* * *
In the morning, no one was out on the couch in a compromising position, but everyone had the feeling that something had happened when they hadn’t been looking.
Jon mentioned that Brendon was smiling even more than usual.
Zack asked why another one of his magazines was missing random pages.
Spencer noticed that Ryan would not look him in the eye.
* * *
Brendon didn’t think about it much. He didn’t like to, anyway. But every once in a while, when his mind was halfway between sleep and consciousness, he felt it creep up to the forefront of his mind.
What did it all mean?
It meant they were males with testosterone and needs, he justified. It meant they trusted each other. It meant that they didn’t find each other completely repulsive. It meant that they happened to be in the right place, at the right time, in the right mood for some shit to go down.
That’s all it meant. And that’s all Brendon wanted it to mean.
Brendon had a friend with benefits once in high school. It was a girl named Casey who had been in his circle of friends since middle school. He’d had a crush on her when they first met but Brendon didn’t stand a chance and he knew it. They just became friends-the unfortunate story of Brendon’s life.
One night at Casey’s house, they were together with a group of friends in the driveway, talking and having a good time. As the night went on, the other friends dwindled away with excuses of curfews and things, leaving Brendon and Casey alone in front of her house. And as they lay on the hood of her parents’ car, huddled close because it was “cold”, Casey looked up at him and he leaned in to kiss her.
They had made out on the car hood until three in the morning. For three weeks afterwards, Casey and Brendon hung out a lot more, kissing and cuddling when they were alone. Brendon soon became obsessed with her again. He wanted to take her out and buy her things and hold her hand like they were a real couple. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. When Casey got a boyfriend a month later, Brendon had been crushed.
“It was just a short little thing, Brendon,”Casey had said. “We were just friends with benefits.”
That was when Brendon realized that he couldn’t handle being a friend with benefits.
This was why Brendon decided not to think about it. He wouldn’t give it a name at all. They weren’t friends with benefits. They sure as hell weren’t boyfriends. It was nothing. The less it was acknowledged, the better things would be. Because, god, he knew this wouldn’t be something lasting. Brendon could live with never really thinking or talking about it. It was just something that happened when it happened, and that was all he needed.
Indifference, he told himself, was the only way to be happy in a situation like this.
He remembered his mom telling him when he was younger that a heart is like a piece of tape. When you fall in love for the first time, you stick the hardest and longest to that person. Then when you get ripped away from that person, the little bits and pieces of the other person still stay with you and it makes it harder for you to stick to the next person. Somewhere down the line, you lose the ability to stick to anyone at all. All you have left is a heart full of the tiny left-overs of old loves.
The less he thought about all of this, of him and Ryan, the better. Maybe then he wouldn’t stick to Ryan.
* * *
The show in Seattle was one of the craziest shows Brendon ever remembered playing. He had half-expected to get up there and have only some of the kids cheer for them. Something about Seattle and the weather made him think that everything was dreary and grey. It was the complete opposite of Nevada.
But when they came out on stage that day in the middle of the afternoon (the overcast made it feel like it was almost nighttime), the audience was fucking insane. The kids in the crowd sang every word and never put their arms down, all of them reaching out to the band like they were desperate to be seen, to be heard, to be known. They seemed to be having the time of their lives in that crowd. There were legions of girls screaming loud enough to challenge his own voice. Everything was just high energy and all the guys were playing surprisingly well. Ryan only missed two chords and Jon didn’t mess up on his keyboard parts. Every once in a while, the sun would peak through the clouds and make things feel a little brighter. It was just awesome. Everything.
So caught up in the pandemonium of a great show, Brendon completely lost himself in what he was doing. He was just singing the words he’d sung a thousand times before and letting himself go. Before he realized it he was flush up against Ryan, hand on his low back, and singing close to Ryan’s ear. He could see Ryan’s mouth moving, singing with him as he leaned into Brendon just a little. Brendon pointed the mic to him and ran his hand down the older boy’s knobby spine, grabbing his ass for just a moment. He hoped he hadn’t imagined Ryan’s shiver.
When he finally had the sense to move away, he realized how much quieter the crowd became. Or, really, how much they had been screaming when he was close to Ryan.
This had serious potential. More than he had originally believed.
* * *
“I want to write gay into the live show,” Brendon said bluntly to everyone in the dressing room promptly after they exited the stage. Ryan looked stunned, Spencer was typing something on his sidekick, and Jon just looked at him like he was saying he wanted more Froot Loops on the bus.
“It’s already there,” Spencer said without looking up from his sidekick.
“No, that’s not gay, that’s like… involving the rest of you guys in the singing. Sharing a mic every once in a while or singing to someone is not the caliber of gay that I have in mind. And I think it’d be fun to actually plan it,” he continued. He was bouncing on his heels as he wiped his neck with a small towel. “Give it a script and everything.”
“Isn’t improvising it enough? Spencer’s right, we have gay in the show as it is,” said Ryan as he unbuttoned his vest. His stage make-up was smearing around the edges. “And you like to throw crazy shit at us on the fly. You’ve been ad-libbing gay into the show for months. I don’t think you’d stick to a script.”
“Yeah, I know, but I want it to be almost official. Make it one of our big gimmicks, just to get a reaction. Like, this is what everyone knows will happen during the show and they’re just waiting for the moment when it does. Oh, look, Brendon’s getting a little too close to Jon Walker. And, oh my god, it looked like he and Ryan Ross totally kissed right then,” Brendon explained. He sounded like a teenage girl in all his giddiness. Part of it was intentional, to match his impression of a reaction, but Brendon just got really excited at the idea of rattling cages. Spencer used to say it was unhealthy.
Jon mumbled something like, “Whatever you want,” and locked himself in the bathroom to shower. Brendon would have called him a bastard for stealing first shower if he hadn’t been so pumped about his idea. He let it go this time.
“Why, though?” Spencer asked, finally giving his full attention.
“Simple-it’s what the fans want. Did you hear them today?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” considered Spencer. He knew just as well as Brendon that one will go to great lengths to make a crowd cheer for them. It’s what every performer lives for.
Ryan stayed silent as he thought about it. From the look on his face, Brendon was pretty sure that Ryan thought it was a good idea.
“I mean, guys like girl-on-girl. Obviously there are girls who like guy-on-guy,” Brendon continued with his hands flying around wildly in his excitement. “It’ll be like the equivalent of soft-core lesbian porn on stage.”
“Minus the real girls with actual tits,” Spencer mourned. Brendon wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Jon yell something ecstatic about lesbians from the bathroom.
“I dunno, Ryan could pass as a really flat dyke, at least.” Brendon got a bundled up towel thrown at his head as he and Spencer laughed noisily.
“Ha ha. Don’t laugh too hard, Spencer Smith,” Ryan said dryly. “Anyway, I do sort of like the idea. I suppose we don’t do enough attention grabbing stuff in our show, and being a little controversial could be fun.” Spencer concurred.
A tiny smirk appeared on Ryan’s face and Brendon grinned widely.
* * *
Part 2
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 35,000
Disclaimer: Not real, not mine.
Notes: distractionz referred to this fic as my son, which I found to be a very fitting term. I’ve spent seven months on this thing, throwing ideas out and putting it together to make something. A lot of time and effort and love went into writing this, and I'm so proud of the outcome. Special thanks to indie_chicky for always making a good story better, distractionz for saving my life by stepping in and finishing the beta job when indie_chicky went MIA, and alexalgebra for the title. :)
Summary: Sequel to Guilty Pleasure. For every action, there are consequences.
The next morning, just about everything that could go badly, did.
The first thing Brendon noticed when he woke up was that there were a group of snickering voices in the room.
“What the hell could possibly funny at his ungodly hour? I should throw something or… something,” he thought groggily. When Brendon woke up in the morning, he always found himself in a terrible mood for the first few minutes. The giggling only amplified his crankiness.
The second thing he noticed was that he was feeling a tiny bit sweaty from the body pressed up against his side at an awkward angle. It came back to him that he and Ryan had fallen asleep on the couch. He had half-expected Ryan to get up in the middle of the night and stumble back into his bunk. He really wished that Ryan had.
The thing third was the airy feeling around his belly. When he shifted just slightly to touch there, he froze when he realized his pants were still undone.
“Fucking fabulous.”
The snickers turned into unrestrained laughter when Brendon tried to clumsily zip up his fly and ended up just fumbling around the crotch of his pants like a blind man. He refused to open his eyes because he was still planning on falling back asleep, despite the small audience they had attracted.
“Shut up,” he bellowed in a voice still gravelly from sleep. A quick shot of pain like a syringe went through his neck. He quietly cursed the couch and hoped he didn’t have a crick in his neck all day for sleeping on it wrong.
Ryan stirred next to him, mumbling incoherent morning speech and sitting up a little. Brendon wondered foggily if his pants were still open too. When Ryan nudged him with his elbow, Brendon cracked open his eyes and peered through bleary slits at the people in the room.
There were… a lot of people.
Brendon could feel his chest tighten as he looked around, suddenly feeling like he wanted to bolt. There in the small bus, were Spencer and Jon. And the bus driver. And Zack. And Eric. And two of the tech guys. All of them littered the front half of the bus like the neighbors coming out to see the car accident that happened in front of their houses, some faces excited and others shocked.
“Fuuuuuuck.”
* * *
After the extremely awkward task of detangling on the couch and retreating to an empty cavity of the bus to hide, Brendon was alone and being mauled by his own thoughts.
They weren’t even coherent thoughts; it was just this insane anxiety that he couldn’t shake off. He could feel himself sweating and his hands shaking. The harder he tried to understand why, the more confused he became.
Nothing made sense, in this moment. Why and who and what. It all drove him insane trying to rewind and remember what the fuck made him do everything. What had been going through his head?
They were caught. They were caught, and now he had to explain to someone else why he did it. He was fine with things not making sense in his own head, but that just didn’t fly with other people. His mind started darting around aimlessly, refusing to focus on the why’s, like it was trying to confuse him on purpose. It was only making him dizzy. He had no explanations.
“Spencer,” Brendon kept thinking..
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make sense of it. He started hyperventilating just a little and he barely knew why.
* * *
“No, seriously. What happened?” probed Jon. He didn’t back down when Brendon shot him yet another very venomous glare and Ryan just ignored Jon, stirring sugar into his cup of coffee.
“Nothing,” Brendon said, finally over the embarrassment of being humiliated in front of all those guys. Guys who he was going to have to see a lot of in the near future. Guys who he would have to talk to and look in the eye. The shock of it was wearing off, though. Now he was just irritated that this was the only thing Spencer and Jon had wanted to talk about all day.
“Oh, no, no, no. We know something happened,” Spencer said with an insinuating smile. “We just want to know what the hell it was.”
It was one thing for the towel to accidentally drop when you just got out of the shower, and reveal to everyone your cash and prizes. They were all guys and there were just some things that you learned not to be embarrassed about. And it wasn’t as if Brendon was someone who was easily embarrassed. One would actually say he had the least shame out of everyone-that was clearly no secret.
But this was something different; it was something that he never wanted anyone to find out about because it could change a lot of things. Or not change a lot of things. He couldn’t decide which would be worse. And he was sort of still trying to figure out in his mind why, but people knowing about this was probably a hundred times worse than nudes of him leaking onto the internet.
“It’s really none of your business, now is it?” Ryan said coolly as he took a sip of hot coffee from his steaming mug.
“You guys can’t be up in the middle of the night moaning-oh god, and I must have thrown up in my mouth too many times to count-and not expect us to want an explanation,” replied Spencer. His smile looked harmless instead of mocking with a bit of a wince thrown in.
Jon’s smile was a different story. “Who was the catcher?” he smirked. A mischievous and only half-joking smirk.
Just in the way that Jon said it, just in the way that Jon was Jon, Brendon had to laugh. If it had been anyone else, he would have said something nasty and tried to get out of this conversation for the millionth time. But he couldn’t help but to throw his head back and laugh with his mouth wide open and eyes screwed shut.
“Oh my god!” Brendon exclaimed amidst his laughter. “What kind of question is that? We all know it would have been Ryan.”
“Oh, bullshit!” said Ryan, setting his coffee cup down with a little clunk and letting an offended smile slide across his face.
Everyone laughed and things felt a little less heavy on Brendon’s chest.
* * *
“Are we going to tell them?” Ryan said that night, leaning against the outside of the bus with Brendon beside him. The bus had needed gas and Jon and Spencer had gone to buy snacks at the rest stop.
Brendon looked around nervously, scanning nearby to see if someone was close enough to hear. Maybe if he was lucky, someone would be and he could avoid this conversation altogether. But everyone else was on the other side of the bus. He kicked at a pebble on the concrete, a little deflated. “Can we walk a little bit?”
Ryan nodded and stood up straight before ambling off in the direction of a row of payphones. Zack called to them and Brendon hollered back that he and Ryan were just stretching their legs a little. The boys turned back around to walk further away while Zack kept a wary eye on their retreating figures.
“Should we tell them?” Brendon asked once he assumed they were out of earshot.
“I don’t know.”
“Awesome! Doubt is good!” Brendon thought hopefully.
Then Ryan said, “Maybe telling them would be better. They’re gonna find out eventually so why not make it a little easier for us and just tell them now?”
Brendon tried not to look like he’d just had his hopes dashed.
“How would this make it easier for us?” Brendon said as he rubbed his nose. Telling what happened would definitely be the opposite of easy for Brendon.
“It means their imaginations have less time to exaggerate what might have happened,” said Ryan, wrapping his arms around himself. It was a little chilly outside. “The longer they have to wonder, the worse they’ll assume it was. We have no idea if they heard the whole conversation, so they could have heard certain things and… assumed accordingly.”
“Yeah,” Brendon yielded. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
He scratched the back of his head and mussed up his dark hair a little before sighing. Ryan just shifted from leg to leg silently but Brendon could tell he was thinking. Ryan was always thinking.
The nervousness didn’t go away, though, even with the reassurance that this was their best option. Brendon was deathly afraid of admitting something like this to people he cared about, people whose opinions would matter if they were freaked out by it. Those were the opinions that Brendon would never be able to just brush off like the media or fans. He felt like he was seventeen years old again and having to tell his parents that, yes, he was going to pursue his dream with his band.
So maybe Spencer and Jon wouldn’t kick him out like his parents did, but he just felt like this could fuck up so much. Brendon was finally on good terms with his parents, but he still wondered if his parents really accepted Panic! at the Disco. Not that their disapproval would change anything, but it made it a little painful to hear them say that they were proud of him when he didn’t quite believe it all the time. He just didn’t want the other two guys to say it was fine when it really wasn’t. He didn’t want to catch himself always wondering if they were really ok with it. If they were ok with him.
But Ryan had a point about it being better to clarify things than to let them get out of hand by staying silent. They could downplay it when they explained it, he thought. They had to do this whether he liked it or not, and he had to keep telling himself it was for the best. The only thing he could do was mentally prepare himself for it, he supposed.
Brendon broke the silence with, “What are we going to say?”
“What happened. Kissing and touching. Keep it simple. It’s not like they need details,” was Ryan’s solution. He came off so casual, so disconnected. It almost bothered Brendon how level-headed he was being about this. Like it didn’t even matter. Not that it mattered to Brendon or anything, though. He was just. Frustrated.
“Yeah. Yeah. I just. Ok,” Brendon mumbled.
“Why are you so nervous about this? You’ve never been the type to get your feathers ruffled over something like this.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever been in a situation like this before, though,” answered Brendon. Not that it actually answered anything.
When Brendon made eye contact, Ryan’s eyes were silently interrogating him like they were trying to pull the answers from Brendon’s mind instead of his words. He felt like he was naked under a bright light being scrutinized and assessed. As much as it should have made him feel uncomfortable, it only made him annoyed with himself for not knowing how to articulate things. Although, part of him thought it was probably be better that he didn’t know how to make Ryan understand why he was afraid.
“I don’t know, dude,” he finally said after Ryan quirked an eyebrow. “I guess it really doesn’t matter that Jon and Spencer know anymore. I’m more worried about other people finding out.”
“Other people as in…?”
“Audrey, for starters,” Brendon said like it was obvious, which it should have been. Like a moron, Brendon thought,“Oh, shit. Audrey.”
Ryan dropped his eyes.
“Not that I think she’d actually be jealous or mad or anything, but I don’t want to even take the chance of fucking things up with her,” Brendon explained. He couldn’t help but think that his excuse was a little weak so he continued with, “Besides, it’s not like we don’t get enough flak about seeming gay. This would only make things worse and, as much as I don’t give a shit what people say about me, I give a shit what people do because of what people say about me. This could… fuck a lot of things up regardless of how much we don’t care that people know, you know?”
He felt like he was just filling up the silence with talking and still not getting anywhere. Rambling.
“I understand,” said Ryan slowly. “But we still need to let the guys know. We’ll make them swear to keep it secret if we have to, but I have a feeling they wouldn’t go parading around and handing out information like that anyway. They’re assholes sometimes, like this morning, but they’re good enough friends to know where the line is drawn.”
“You really don’t mind telling them?” Brendon inquired. Ryan shook his head.
“We’re caught as it is. We’d never get anywhere trying to hide or deny anything we did. Besides, this is Spencer and Jon. Our best friends. If we were going to tell anyone, it would be them anyway.”
Ryan smiled comfortingly and Brendon returned it.
“Yeah. You’re right,” admitted Brendon.
Somehow, someway, Ryan Ross was always right.
* * *
When everyone had loaded back onto the bus, Brendon felt a lot better about the whole thing. Jon and Spencer would love them both anyway, even if they sort of had a little gay incident (which was totally not just a little gay). They didn’t mean anything by their teasing and Brendon decided he’d just have to learn to appreciate it, not get so bothered by a joke here and there. He felt relieved that they were telling them, really.
Brendon was assigned to getting Jon, and Ryan convinced Spencer into coming to the back lounge of the bus once they were on the road again. They closed the door and tried to create as much privacy as possible, away from Zack and anyone else drifting around their bus.
“Brendon and I think you guys deserve to know what actually happened,” Ryan started. His voice was paced and precise, like he had planned out every word he was going to say.
“Finally,” Spencer interjected with quick glance at Jon. Jon nodded.
“It’s not that big of a deal, you guys,” continued Ryan, crossing his arms like he tended to do when he was about to get into a story. “It was late and we were both sort of not in our right minds. There was kissing and some touching and that was all.”
“Could you be a little more vague, Ryan?” Jon laughed. Brendon let a smile break his otherwise uneasy demeanor.
“Let’s leave it that vague, shall we?” Spencer said, holding up one hand in Ryan’s direction to keep the guitarist from elaborating. Sometimes Brendon liked Spencer just because he always stopped things before they went too far.
“So… are you guys weirded out?” Brendon asked, some of the apprehension still lingering in his voice and tense shoulders.
“Not really,” Jon said with a shrug. Spencer silently agreed with a matching shrug. “This just means we’re obligated to make even more gay jokes now.”
Brendon exhaled for what felt like the first time since they got on the bus. As he did, he let out a small laugh. The world was ok. Crisis averted.
“Dude, I’ll make them with you,” Brendon said as he and Jon launched into a conversation discussing the possibilities this opened up.
Spencer got up from sitting next to Jon and walked closer to Ryan. He softly said, “You good?”
“Yeah.” Ryan’s voice was flat like it always was, but Spencer sensed that this was forced.
“You want to talk about it?” Spencer offered, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall. He could feel it vibrating with the engine of the bus and it jostled him a little when they hit a small bump in the road. He watched his friend pull a lock of hair of out his eyes and try to put it behind his ear. It fell back into place once his spindly fingers let go. Ryan still hadn’t spoken.
“Careful, Ryan,” Spencer said, and then he started walking out.
* * *
Ryan liked to take walks around the venues from time to time to try and “appreciate the location,” as he put it reasonably. It didn’t stop Brendon from comparing him to an old man, though.
Brendon almost always volunteered to go with him. If he didn’t volunteer, Spencer and Jon usually made him because Brendon got pre-show jitters like no other. They were the kind that made him bouncy to an extreme and sometimes snippy. No one wanted to deal with Brendon when he was snippy.
This time, however, it was Brendon who suggested he and Ryan take a little stroll around the place. Ryan easily agreed and Brendon felt his stomach shift just a little. Pre-show nerves.
They stepped out of a back door and ambled along the building, darting through a maze of equipment and roadies who were busy dutifully unpacking things. It became like a game-Brendon always making dramatic dashes past a guitar rack coming his way, Ryan staying quick and nimble on his feet, taking hairpin turns and ducking underneath amps carried on strong shoulders.
They stayed in a safe back lot tucked away behind the concert hall, mostly kicking a long-abandoned 7-up can back and forth as they talked. They hardly said a thing of importance, but Brendon’s favorite conversations weren’t the life-altering ones. He liked the witty banter and pointless humor of just talking, for the sake of being funny, for the sake of enjoying the company. The way Ryan always went along with it no matter how pointless it was made Brendon like Ryan the best in times like this. Even better, he liked how Ryan always appreciated his jokes, even without opening his mouth and literally laughing all the time. His eyes would sometimes shine a little brighter or his mouth would purse like he was pretending to be offended by something Brendon said, even though Ryan didn’t really get offended by anything. Ryan was just good at giving people what they wanted.
Then Ryan looked up from under his bangs as he said something Brendon suddenly wasn’t listening to. It wasn’t meant to be coy, but Ryan was giving him this look. Brendon wanted to push Ryan into the chain link fence a few yards away, and that was when Brendon said he needed to piss and that they should probably head back.
* * *
A few nights later, Brendon was looking up at the top of his bunk with his hand down his flannel pajama pants. He tried so hard to think of something besides Ryan. He really did. He didn’t try very long, but a lot of effort went into it! He tried for a full two minutes to conjure up his favorite memory of Audrey. He tried to think of breasts and lacy panties and long hair. Sweet little mouths with bright lipstick wrapped around his dick. He tried to think of Victoria’s Secret, push up bras and hour-glass figures. Every single time, his mind wandered back to long fingers on his hips and late-night stubble scraping against his cheek.
And he couldn’t get those sounds out of his mind. His eyes had been closed for most of that night, and it had been dark anyway so it wasn’t like there was much of a mental picture for him. But those sounds. Brendon was pretty sure he could jerk off to the memory of those sounds until he was old and grey and appendages were falling off.
It felt so bizarre to just shift gears so smoothly. One night, he was jacking off to the memory of a lesbian porno he saw once, and the next, it was the memory of giving his friend a hand job. It shouldn’t have worked the way it did. It shouldn’t have been so easy. This didn’t make sense, damn it. But Brendon didn’t masturbate to make sense of things. When he came and still had no answer to any of his questions, he didn’t mind too much. Through the haze, all he could imagine was Ryan’s soft, satiated smile.
* * *
Brendon had always watched Ryan put on make-up. He liked seeing the arbitrary lines and misshapen blobs turn into art before his eyes. It wasn’t like he pulled up a chair and watched it like a show, but he’d always stolen glances across the room while Ryan flicked brushes and make-up pencils across his face, his canvas. He’d occasionally be as obvious as to do his own make-up next to Ryan and linger on Ryan’s reflection. The other boy virtually never looked over at him; always too focused on this aspect of his art.
Of course, this had to be the one time Ryan not only looked over, but locked eyes with Brendon. His hand still moved under his eye, making wicked-looking swirls and blending the colors, but he held onto Brendon’s gaze for a prolonged moment.
Brendon had to actually try to remember which way was up.
Then Ryan looked away and it was like none of it ever happened.
Impulsively, Brendon said, “Will you do make-up on me, tonight?”
For most of the tour, Brendon’s stage make up met the minimum requirement of eyeliner, but not much else. He just hated looking in the mirror at intermission to see it flowing down his face like he had been crying, distorted and smeared by sweat and carelessness. It was rare for him to willingly offer up his face for Ryan to work on, but he wanted it tonight, wanted to be a piece of art to match Ryan.
Ryan screwed back on the lid to his purple eye shadow and said, “Ok.”
Situating two seats to face each other-because Ryan refused to do it standing, saying that Brendon was sure to get fidgety-Brendon tried to stay perfectly still while Ryan leaned in close and used a sharpened eyeliner pencil to sketch jagged lines and spikes around his eyes, one hand cradling his head to hold him still. He could feel Ryan’s warm breath puffing out over his chin every few seconds, could smell Ryan from this far away. He wanted to open his eyes and watch Ryan’s face, see his lips pucker up in concentration and his eyes widen periodically to look closer at a design, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from surging forward and kissing him. Self-control had never been Brendon’s strong point.
So he kept his eyes closed and relaxed into Ryan’s hands, the fingers sweeping over his eyelids and leaving pigment and shadow in their wake.
“You can open your eyes now. I’m done,” Ryan said, too soon for Brendon.
When he did pry his eyes open again, he realized that his lips were slightly parted and Ryan was practically holding his head up. He gave Ryan a bashful grin and looked into the mirror beside them to admire Ryan’s work. God, it was beautiful.
“Thanks,” he said, leaning closer to get a better look. When he looked back at Ryan in the mirror, he was gone.
* * *
Seven days after “the incident”, as Brendon liked to refer to it in his mind, Ryan and Brendon hadn’t talked about it. No one had even found a chance to slip in a joke. It was almost as if everyone had forgotten it happened and just moved on with their lives. Brendon highly doubted that. He kept expecting someone to mention it or make some remark, but no one did. It almost made him nervous. They couldn’t have forgotten about it, he thought. Things felt too awkward for that.
He certainly hadn’t forgotten. That night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep, he was feeling restless and slunk out of his bed and into the lounge. He left the door between the two areas open just a crack for when he decided to go back and try to sleep (and, if he was being honest with himself, maybe in hopes that Ryan would notice).
The bus was still, for the moment. Most nights they would find a rest stop and wait until morning to continue on the road, and this night was no different. It usually made it easier to sleep on the bus if they weren’t moving, but Brendon was having a difficult time just lying down. He had too much energy to sleep and just wanted to get up and do something. So here he was, sitting on the couch in the lounge with one knee drawn up to his chin as he stared into the near-darkness. A familiar dim light slipped through the slits in the blinds from another unfamiliar street light, and he sighed deeply as he tried to remember what it felt like to be home.
It’d been months since he’d been back in Vegas. He missed his bed. He missed his room. He missed knowing where everything was and knowing that it was going to stay there. Little things like how the bus smelled-rank-compared to his house made him wish he was back in Vegas again. However, whenever he thought about going home, it made him feel the tiniest bit queasy. In some ways, his home town felt foreign already. Almost eighteen years of his life were spent in that house, on those streets. And yet, he felt so much more at home in this tiny tour bus, traveling to a different place just about every day. Still, he couldn’t help feeling a little homesick. But it made him mad that he couldn’t keep himself entirely satisfied with either living arrangement.
He liked being able to move around a lot now, though. Some people thrived in their comfort zones but Brendon thrived when things were chaotic, when he didn’t know everything or everyone. As much as he loved having the comfort of familiarity, it was exciting to wake up in a new city every day. In a way, he got both. Brendon had seen a load of new countries, a hundred new cities, and a million new faces. Every show, he was met with something new, but a show was a show, essentially. Everything was new and everything was the same. Consistent despite its inconsistencies.
Brendon fancied himself a profound thinker from time to time. Ryan would normally snort when Brendon said so.
His thoughts were broken when he heard movement coming from the bunks. The door creaked open the tiniest bit and revealed Ryan, surprisingly wide awake. His hair was a little matted and his clothes were wrinkled, but he was far from looking heavy-eyed. Brendon’s heart sputtered then picked up where it left off when Ryan shut the door quietly.
“Hey,” Brendon murmured from the couch.
“Hey.”
They just stayed there for a few moments without talking or moving, just staring at each other. There was no caution or wariness like they were trying to figure out the other’s motives. It was just them, looking across the small space at each other in the weak light of the lounge. Ryan was the first to speak again.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he whispered a little lamely.
“Me either,” replied Brendon, his voice just as soft as Ryan’s.
Shuffling over to the couch, Ryan plopped down next to Brendon but didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes trained on the clock glowing on the DVD player which read 1:38 AM. Brendon didn’t take long to lean over and rest his head on Ryan’s shoulder like he had done a thousand times before, and Ryan tilted his own head to rest on top of Brendon’s. For a few seconds, the silence was comforting, but Brendon was still very awake and wanted something to do. However, he didn’t want to instigate something and have Ryan push him away saying something like, “I thought you understood that was a one-time thing.” But, god, Ryan was sitting right fucking there.
He poked Ryan’s thigh and whispered, “Poke.” Ryan didn’t move or speak so Brendon did it again.
“Poke.”
“Stop that,” commanded Ryan as he batted Brendon’s hand away. “That’s annoying.”
“Poke.”
Ryan retaliated and smacked Brendon on the leg with the back of his hand. Brendon made a yelping noise and giggled. He felt Ryan smile into his hair and then leave an apologetic kiss on the crown of his head. Then Ryan lifted his head and started to shift, so Brendon did the polite thing and moved off of him. Before Brendon had the chance to even face Ryan entirely, a hand grabbed him firmly by the chin and turned his head. Even though he knew what was coming, it still surprised him to feel Ryan’s lips press hard against his own. It was a little weird to think that they went from acting like nothing was going on to kissing. Zero to sixty in two seconds. Brendon was certainly not complaining, though.
“I didn’t think you were gonna come up here,” Brendon mumbled against Ryan’s mouth.
Ryan’s tongue was already sweeping across the seam of Brendon’s lips and it made Brendon’s heart falter again and then speed up. Without hesitation, he parted his lips and felt Ryan immediately rush his tongue inside and glide slickly over his own. The sigh released was Ryan’s and Brendon felt embarrassed that it made his dick twitch just a little. They’d been kissing for maybe ten seconds, for goodness sake.
Ryan’s hand moved from holding Brendon’s chin steady to grip the back of his head, intentionally tangling his fingers in the dark strands of hair. Brendon glanced for a second at the door to reassure himself that it was shut properly. He wasn’t going to do this and risk getting caught again. He wondered if it would really matter if they did get caught, though. For the briefest moment, he pondered how Spencer and Jon would react if they found out this was happening all over again. Would they be disappointed? Would they be disgusted? Or would they be fine with it? More importantly, would they tell Brendon and Ryan the truth about what they thought about it all?
Too much thinking.
Their breathing, harsh and ragged already, filled his ears, and he wanted to drown in it. A long, thin hand slid around Brendon’s hip and gripped hard, anchoring itself there as Ryan pulled himself into Brendon’s lap, kissing him like he’d been waiting for this too. Brendon sighed and didn’t know whether to lean into Ryan’s lips or the fingers massaging through his hair that were driving him crazy. He kissed back harder, feeling tingles from the top of his head to his toes, and Ryan was all too eager to match his intensity.
Brendon sucked on Ryan’s bottom lip a little and snuck his hands around to palm Ryan’s ass, squeezing lightly and enjoying the feeling of weight, of flesh, of another person in his hands. God, he could do this all night. Just stay here and make out with Ryan, who was getting more and more insistent by the second.
Ryan pulled away and let himself breathe for a moment and Brendon kissed his exposed neck, mouthed at his Adam’s apple. He almost groaned when Ryan pressed himself down, not even trying to hide his small erection.
“Fuck, that feels so good,” breathed Ryan. Brendon wasn’t sure if he was referring to his neck or his dick, but it was sort of all the same to him. The guitarist murmured little things under his breath as Brendon dragged the tip of his tongue along the column of his throat. Little nothings that still had Brendon’s hair standing on end as Ryan whispered them low into his ear.
“I’ve thought about this all day,” said Ryan, punctuating it with a gasp when Brendon pulled the collar of his shirt down and bit lightly on his collar bone. The hand on Brendon’s side tensed and Brendon thought he could feel fingernails digging into his skin through the shirt. When Ryan’s hand relaxed, Brendon reached his head up and tried to kiss him but missed and hit his chin sloppily. Ryan chuckled a little and bent down to kiss him properly.
“Tonight, I don’t want to fall asleep on the couch,” Brendon whispered.
“Tonight, I don’t want to fall asleep,” Ryan replied quickly.
* * *
In the morning, no one was out on the couch in a compromising position, but everyone had the feeling that something had happened when they hadn’t been looking.
Jon mentioned that Brendon was smiling even more than usual.
Zack asked why another one of his magazines was missing random pages.
Spencer noticed that Ryan would not look him in the eye.
* * *
Brendon didn’t think about it much. He didn’t like to, anyway. But every once in a while, when his mind was halfway between sleep and consciousness, he felt it creep up to the forefront of his mind.
What did it all mean?
It meant they were males with testosterone and needs, he justified. It meant they trusted each other. It meant that they didn’t find each other completely repulsive. It meant that they happened to be in the right place, at the right time, in the right mood for some shit to go down.
That’s all it meant. And that’s all Brendon wanted it to mean.
Brendon had a friend with benefits once in high school. It was a girl named Casey who had been in his circle of friends since middle school. He’d had a crush on her when they first met but Brendon didn’t stand a chance and he knew it. They just became friends-the unfortunate story of Brendon’s life.
One night at Casey’s house, they were together with a group of friends in the driveway, talking and having a good time. As the night went on, the other friends dwindled away with excuses of curfews and things, leaving Brendon and Casey alone in front of her house. And as they lay on the hood of her parents’ car, huddled close because it was “cold”, Casey looked up at him and he leaned in to kiss her.
They had made out on the car hood until three in the morning. For three weeks afterwards, Casey and Brendon hung out a lot more, kissing and cuddling when they were alone. Brendon soon became obsessed with her again. He wanted to take her out and buy her things and hold her hand like they were a real couple. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. When Casey got a boyfriend a month later, Brendon had been crushed.
“It was just a short little thing, Brendon,”Casey had said. “We were just friends with benefits.”
That was when Brendon realized that he couldn’t handle being a friend with benefits.
This was why Brendon decided not to think about it. He wouldn’t give it a name at all. They weren’t friends with benefits. They sure as hell weren’t boyfriends. It was nothing. The less it was acknowledged, the better things would be. Because, god, he knew this wouldn’t be something lasting. Brendon could live with never really thinking or talking about it. It was just something that happened when it happened, and that was all he needed.
Indifference, he told himself, was the only way to be happy in a situation like this.
He remembered his mom telling him when he was younger that a heart is like a piece of tape. When you fall in love for the first time, you stick the hardest and longest to that person. Then when you get ripped away from that person, the little bits and pieces of the other person still stay with you and it makes it harder for you to stick to the next person. Somewhere down the line, you lose the ability to stick to anyone at all. All you have left is a heart full of the tiny left-overs of old loves.
The less he thought about all of this, of him and Ryan, the better. Maybe then he wouldn’t stick to Ryan.
* * *
The show in Seattle was one of the craziest shows Brendon ever remembered playing. He had half-expected to get up there and have only some of the kids cheer for them. Something about Seattle and the weather made him think that everything was dreary and grey. It was the complete opposite of Nevada.
But when they came out on stage that day in the middle of the afternoon (the overcast made it feel like it was almost nighttime), the audience was fucking insane. The kids in the crowd sang every word and never put their arms down, all of them reaching out to the band like they were desperate to be seen, to be heard, to be known. They seemed to be having the time of their lives in that crowd. There were legions of girls screaming loud enough to challenge his own voice. Everything was just high energy and all the guys were playing surprisingly well. Ryan only missed two chords and Jon didn’t mess up on his keyboard parts. Every once in a while, the sun would peak through the clouds and make things feel a little brighter. It was just awesome. Everything.
So caught up in the pandemonium of a great show, Brendon completely lost himself in what he was doing. He was just singing the words he’d sung a thousand times before and letting himself go. Before he realized it he was flush up against Ryan, hand on his low back, and singing close to Ryan’s ear. He could see Ryan’s mouth moving, singing with him as he leaned into Brendon just a little. Brendon pointed the mic to him and ran his hand down the older boy’s knobby spine, grabbing his ass for just a moment. He hoped he hadn’t imagined Ryan’s shiver.
When he finally had the sense to move away, he realized how much quieter the crowd became. Or, really, how much they had been screaming when he was close to Ryan.
This had serious potential. More than he had originally believed.
* * *
“I want to write gay into the live show,” Brendon said bluntly to everyone in the dressing room promptly after they exited the stage. Ryan looked stunned, Spencer was typing something on his sidekick, and Jon just looked at him like he was saying he wanted more Froot Loops on the bus.
“It’s already there,” Spencer said without looking up from his sidekick.
“No, that’s not gay, that’s like… involving the rest of you guys in the singing. Sharing a mic every once in a while or singing to someone is not the caliber of gay that I have in mind. And I think it’d be fun to actually plan it,” he continued. He was bouncing on his heels as he wiped his neck with a small towel. “Give it a script and everything.”
“Isn’t improvising it enough? Spencer’s right, we have gay in the show as it is,” said Ryan as he unbuttoned his vest. His stage make-up was smearing around the edges. “And you like to throw crazy shit at us on the fly. You’ve been ad-libbing gay into the show for months. I don’t think you’d stick to a script.”
“Yeah, I know, but I want it to be almost official. Make it one of our big gimmicks, just to get a reaction. Like, this is what everyone knows will happen during the show and they’re just waiting for the moment when it does. Oh, look, Brendon’s getting a little too close to Jon Walker. And, oh my god, it looked like he and Ryan Ross totally kissed right then,” Brendon explained. He sounded like a teenage girl in all his giddiness. Part of it was intentional, to match his impression of a reaction, but Brendon just got really excited at the idea of rattling cages. Spencer used to say it was unhealthy.
Jon mumbled something like, “Whatever you want,” and locked himself in the bathroom to shower. Brendon would have called him a bastard for stealing first shower if he hadn’t been so pumped about his idea. He let it go this time.
“Why, though?” Spencer asked, finally giving his full attention.
“Simple-it’s what the fans want. Did you hear them today?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” considered Spencer. He knew just as well as Brendon that one will go to great lengths to make a crowd cheer for them. It’s what every performer lives for.
Ryan stayed silent as he thought about it. From the look on his face, Brendon was pretty sure that Ryan thought it was a good idea.
“I mean, guys like girl-on-girl. Obviously there are girls who like guy-on-guy,” Brendon continued with his hands flying around wildly in his excitement. “It’ll be like the equivalent of soft-core lesbian porn on stage.”
“Minus the real girls with actual tits,” Spencer mourned. Brendon wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Jon yell something ecstatic about lesbians from the bathroom.
“I dunno, Ryan could pass as a really flat dyke, at least.” Brendon got a bundled up towel thrown at his head as he and Spencer laughed noisily.
“Ha ha. Don’t laugh too hard, Spencer Smith,” Ryan said dryly. “Anyway, I do sort of like the idea. I suppose we don’t do enough attention grabbing stuff in our show, and being a little controversial could be fun.” Spencer concurred.
A tiny smirk appeared on Ryan’s face and Brendon grinned widely.
* * *
Part 2