Excerpt: Who are a Little Wise, the Best Fools Be
Who are a Little Wise, The Best Fools Be (Excerpt II)
Rating: PG? Maybe?
Warnings: girl!Jon
Pairing: Past Boy!Cassie/Girl!Jon, Past Spencer/Haley, implied Spencer/girl!Jon
Summary: Jon comes downstairs for morning coffee and finds suprise Brent Wilson. I wish I was kidding.
AN: Being the epic!fail fan that I am, I just watched the "Theatre of Imagination" youtube thing, and I wanted someone to give Brent Wilson a hug. This does not happen, but he does get coffee.
This is part of a massive girl!Jon universe that I wish to someday write. This part directly correlates to something found here. (There is more here and here, but those are more about shipping.)
There are things that Jon expected from buying a house in Vegas with Spencer Smith. She expected him to take her CDs and her records and put them into his weird system of organizing (by genre and then by album title and not by band and then year like Jon's collection was at home). She knew that he'd probably want to be the one to talk to the interior designer, who looked at her like she was nuts when she spent most of their meetings shrugging and saying whatever Spencer wanted would be fine, except in the second floor bathroom because it had a gorgeous bathtub that dropped into the floor and Jon wanted navy tile and silver accents instead of black and silver like Spencer wanted. (The decorator smiled and agreed with Jon, if for no other reason than a man can never come between a woman and her bathroom.) Spencer got to pick the deck furniture in compromise, which was just the same stuff he had from the house with Haley refinished.
What she hadn't expected, though, comes on their third Tuesday on break to walking downstairs in an old t-shirt that belonged to Zack and hits her mid-thigh (she doesn't care that sometimes it rides up; Vegas fall nights are too fucking warm and Spencer's walked in on her showering before) and grabbing a mug of coffee, with the Cubs mug that has a crack in the handle, before she's really awake enough to notice her surroundings, not awake enough to realize that, oh hey, there's some guy sitting at their kitchenette. At least not until she's turned around and jumps.
"Hey," she says and squints at the clock. It's hard to focus before she's had her required caffeine. "I didn't know we were having company." She doesn't pull on the hem of her shirt to make it seem longer. Jon's been touring since she was seventeen, and she's shared a tour bus with Brendon Urie, who will walk in while she's showering and stand there and talk whereas Spencer and Ryan stammer apologies and flee. She likes to think it's gotten her over her body issues.
It's almost nine, earliest she's been up in days. Apparently Spencer has strange guys stop in the kitchen when she's sleeping, which makes her stomach twist up a little in ways she can't really think about right now because she's worked really hard in making sure that won't happen.
"Hi, um, Jon?" The guy's voice is unsure, like he's not sure that he should be calling her that, and--
Jon squints at him, looks at his soft features and unsteady smile and the redness of his cheeks, and she tries hard not to remember watching him from sidestage when his hair was still long and clung to his sweaty neck. "Hi, Brent," she whispers. The twisting in her stomach turns into a full out cramp.
Brent ducks his head, and she crosses her arms across her stomach. "We usually do breakfast one day a week when he's home, and he's doing something upstairs. He said he'd be right down." He's not apologizing outright, but it's there in his tone.
"Right," Jon says weakly. She knew that Spencer and Brent hung out still, that Spencer still considers him a friend even if he was the one to actually make the phonecall, but somewhere along the way, Jon missed how that would actually mean she'd have to consider Brent being in their kitchen when she's not wearing pants. "I'm usually still asleep until ten." She gives him a smile and sips her coffee again, twice before Brent starts tapping his foot.
"You want any coffee?" Jon's not used to being awkward. She hung out with Adam after she joined 5o4, but it was never just her and Adam, and she definitely wasn't still blurry from sleep when she talked to him.
Brent has a mug in front of him, but he holds it out with a bit of a smile. "A little more I guess."
"He can take forever," she says, and even that feels flat because Brent would know that, too. He probably has his own horror stories about Spencer just needing five more minutes and coming out a half-hour later.
But Brent's smile just gets a little bigger, a little less frozen, as Jon tops off his coffee. "Yeah. I'm giving him another ten minutes, and then we may need a search party."
Jon smiles back at him. Teasing Spencer is fair territory. "He didn't go upstairs to, like, change his shirt or anything? Because you should see his closet. I think it's bigger than my entire first apartment was." It's only a little smaller than Jon's own closet, but she has most of her photography stuff in there, and a few basses that she never plays but can't part with, and the box of men's sweats and flannel pants that she really wishes she'd opened and put out, if only so she wasn't walking around the kitchen and possibly flashing Brent Wilson with every step.
"He said he wanted to go and clean up." Brent shrugs and looks at the chair across from him. "You can sit down, if you want."
Jon's sort of torn between running out of the kitchen and sitting, then. On the one hand, she could feign that she needed a shower and leave Brent there, but on the other hand, Spencer could seriously be another fifteen minutes and it's sort of rude, like insanely.
"Okay," she says, almost shyly, before she sits down. She looks at Brent the entire time."Sorry about my pants and lack-there-of."
"It's cool. Your kitchen." Brent stirs a little cane sugar--they have two pots of sugar on the table, his and hers, and she nods unconsciously at Brent's obviously superior sugar taste--and sits back. "Spencer mentioned that you were living here too, I just didn't think..."
She shrugs and tries her best "I'm-not-threatening-at-all" smile. It's not as good as Brendon's or Spencer's, but she works what she has. "It's all right. I didn't really think about the fact that you and Spencer are still close would mean..." She shrugs and ducks her head a little.
"Yeah, I just... it's weird."
"For real." She smiles again and stirs in sugar to her coffee, too. Jon wants to ask how he's been, since he came back to Vegas. He's lost weight, and he's grown up a lot, broad shoulders and soft looking hair. Brent always made her think of gentle things, soft cotton and bunnies, maybe. "You look good," she says instead. It's true and doesn't feel forced when she rolls it off her tongue.
Brent gives her another shy smile. "Thanks. You do, too."
Jon just rolls her eyes at him. Her hair's longer than she's had it in years, over her shoulders, and it hasn't been trimmed since their third-to-last photoshoot before break. She hasn't conditioned it or straightened it, and it's probably been a good three days since she actually broke down and washed it. The in-floor tub is perfect for just sinking down and melting away, not so much for washing your hair. She always gets water in her ears.
"Thanks," she says, though, because she doesn't want to seem rude.
They sit with their coffees, and it doesn't feel as strained. Coffee has that effect, when it's brewed well (Spencer's getting better with her French press and Ryan has them all going for the fair trade coffee that costs at least twelve bucks a bag) and she likes to think that they could have been friends, maybe, at least the sort of friends that can hang around and just be quiet together.
Brent puts his coffee down when it's empty, and Jon gets up to refill it. "You don't have to," he says as she stands.
Jon grins at him. "My mad barista skills, Wilson, refuse to let a guest in my home have an empty cup. It will cause me stress, and stress makes me snappish. I can't keep my laid-back cred if I'm snappish." She gives him the last of the coffee and starts prepping for another pot. Ryan usually stops over after eleven, and she's only had one cup so far. There will definitely be need for more coffee.
"Yeah. It's a hard cross to bear, but someone has to do it. It certainly can't be them," Brent says, and Jon's hands still on the coffee bag.
She licks her lips and looks at him over her shoulder, tone careful as she says, "Oh, I don't know. Sometimes when Ryan's stoned enough, he could pass for laidback."
Brent snorts. "Ryan Ross wouldn't know laidback if it came and bit him on the ass." His voice is fond, a little wistful maybe, but there isn't bitterness there.
"Oh, like Spencer's any better." She waves her hand at the coffee mugs. They're blue and grey and match the kitchen. Jon's mugs are in the back of the cabinet, except for her Cubs one. Coffee just tastes better out of that one, okay?
Brent laughs, nodding. "I remember, like, on our third gig? Brendon got ketchup on Spencer's last clean shirt, and it was right in the middle of his chest, and I thought he was going to start screaming or something." He shrugs. "I traded him."
Jon laughs. "I've done things like that, like taken the blame for who accidentally snagged one of his headbands or something because Brendon just gives you that--"
"Oh, shit, Spence's going to kill me look," Brent cuts in, and his smile seems bigger, almost to his eyes. "I thought he did it on purpose."
"Probably." Jon finishes prepping and flicks the on-switch. She wants to make a crack about the band picking bassists who are suckers for too-big brown eyes, but Brent's actually smiling. She doesn't want to risk making a misstep there. "He has that effect on people."
"Yeah." Brent looks at the kitchen door, and Jon checks the clock. "I think he's doing his hair or something."
"Or Ryan's having a crisis of the paisley variety." She keeps her tone gentle, but she can feel her grin getting a little wicked. "He'll call him at like all hours when we're home, for the stupidest shit. Yesterday, he couldn't remember what kind of dog food he usually buys Hobo, the 12 pack or the 24, and 'do you think they taste different?'" Brent's still grinning, shaking his head in the way only people who are used to Ryan's particular brand of codependency can. It would piss her off on anyone else, used to piss her off to see Haley do it. "And Spencer's trying to tell him that it doesn't matter, because it was like two in the morning?"
"He's always been that way. We met in high school, and I seriously thought he had a thing for Spencer, the way he would bring him up into every single conversation." Brent shakes his head again.
Jon slides back into her chair. "We, the Academy guys and the techs, had a fucking betting pool on it, dude. It's totally understandable."
Brent taps his spoon off the table, smile fading slowly. He turns his mug around on the table, making the handle face left and then right. "Can I ask you something?" he asks, without meeting her eyes.
Jon takes a deep breath before she nods. "Yeah, sure." She doesn't promise to answer it.
"How are they? I mean, Spencer tells me a little, but I can't like..." Brent shrugs one shoulder. "It's weird, to talk to him about them because they're still, and we were..." He won't look away from the table.
Jon nods. "I know." She doesn't mention the way the Butcher always goes quiet for two seconds before he asks about Tom, even though she thinks it might help. She doesn't really know Brent. "They're good, happy mostly. Brendon has a dog that he dresses up, and he's living in an apartment building like five minutes away with his roommate. Ryan's just being very Ryan. He's redecorating his house in a sort of twenties aesthetic because he got tired of the sixties. This does not bode well for me and the next album."
Brent shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling. "I miss them more than I miss all the other shit. I could do it again, if I had to, but I like going to school and I'm going to be a vet with my dad. It's cool. I just..."
"I know, a little." She doesn't know exactly, and she doesn't know what to say to make that sort of ache feel better. If there was a way to make Ryan and Brendon talk to Brent--if there was a way to make at least Siska and the Butcher be able to talk to Tom, if not William and Mike--she'd do her best to make it happen, but they're adults. They have to figure it out (or not figure it out) on their own. "I'm sorry." She doesn't know why she's apologizing, if it's for the other half of her band or if it's because they have to have this conversation now. She's not sorry, not really, that she's in the band instead of him, just that he has the lost look in his eye when he talks about it.
"It's not your fault." Brent gives her the nervous little smile and stirs his coffee again.
Jon nods as she hears Spencer coming down the stairs. He walks heavily, always has, and she can hear him on the stairs anywhere in the house. "Sorry about that. I had to deal with something," Spencer says, just before he comes into the kitchen and stops in the doorway. "Jon," he says, tone even and his eyes darting back and forth between them.
"Hey," she says, waving a little as she stands and puts her mug in the sink. "I woke up early and didn't know we had company."
Brent bows his head a little. "It's all right."
Spencer stands there for a minute before he nods and looks at Jon. "We're going out for breakfast, if you want to come with us..." He lets his voice trail off.
Jon glances at Brent, at the way he still has his head bowed a little, and frowns. "Nah. I think I'm going to do some laundry and maybe enjoy the fact that I don't have a roommate for a while, at least until Ryan shows up." She brushes past Spencer before chewing on her lip a little. "But if you want to come over for dinner on Thursday sometime, that'd be cool. I usually make Spencer cook for me, and it's like the best Velveeta ever. Sometimes he puts canned chicken in it."
Spencer's a way better cook than that, which is actually a meal Jon made for her and Cass a few times back in Chicago, but she likes the way he rolls his eyes and tries not to sputter indignantly.
"That'd be cool," Brent says, tone cautious, and Jon gives him a smile.
"Whenever you're free, dude. It was good seeing you again." Jon isn't lying as she goes upstairs to grab her bathrobe and go into the guest bathroom with its stupid shower. It's really time that she manned up and washed her damn hair.
Rating: PG? Maybe?
Warnings: girl!Jon
Pairing: Past Boy!Cassie/Girl!Jon, Past Spencer/Haley, implied Spencer/girl!Jon
Summary: Jon comes downstairs for morning coffee and finds suprise Brent Wilson. I wish I was kidding.
AN: Being the epic!fail fan that I am, I just watched the "Theatre of Imagination" youtube thing, and I wanted someone to give Brent Wilson a hug. This does not happen, but he does get coffee.
This is part of a massive girl!Jon universe that I wish to someday write. This part directly correlates to something found here. (There is more here and here, but those are more about shipping.)
There are things that Jon expected from buying a house in Vegas with Spencer Smith. She expected him to take her CDs and her records and put them into his weird system of organizing (by genre and then by album title and not by band and then year like Jon's collection was at home). She knew that he'd probably want to be the one to talk to the interior designer, who looked at her like she was nuts when she spent most of their meetings shrugging and saying whatever Spencer wanted would be fine, except in the second floor bathroom because it had a gorgeous bathtub that dropped into the floor and Jon wanted navy tile and silver accents instead of black and silver like Spencer wanted. (The decorator smiled and agreed with Jon, if for no other reason than a man can never come between a woman and her bathroom.) Spencer got to pick the deck furniture in compromise, which was just the same stuff he had from the house with Haley refinished.
What she hadn't expected, though, comes on their third Tuesday on break to walking downstairs in an old t-shirt that belonged to Zack and hits her mid-thigh (she doesn't care that sometimes it rides up; Vegas fall nights are too fucking warm and Spencer's walked in on her showering before) and grabbing a mug of coffee, with the Cubs mug that has a crack in the handle, before she's really awake enough to notice her surroundings, not awake enough to realize that, oh hey, there's some guy sitting at their kitchenette. At least not until she's turned around and jumps.
"Hey," she says and squints at the clock. It's hard to focus before she's had her required caffeine. "I didn't know we were having company." She doesn't pull on the hem of her shirt to make it seem longer. Jon's been touring since she was seventeen, and she's shared a tour bus with Brendon Urie, who will walk in while she's showering and stand there and talk whereas Spencer and Ryan stammer apologies and flee. She likes to think it's gotten her over her body issues.
It's almost nine, earliest she's been up in days. Apparently Spencer has strange guys stop in the kitchen when she's sleeping, which makes her stomach twist up a little in ways she can't really think about right now because she's worked really hard in making sure that won't happen.
"Hi, um, Jon?" The guy's voice is unsure, like he's not sure that he should be calling her that, and--
Jon squints at him, looks at his soft features and unsteady smile and the redness of his cheeks, and she tries hard not to remember watching him from sidestage when his hair was still long and clung to his sweaty neck. "Hi, Brent," she whispers. The twisting in her stomach turns into a full out cramp.
Brent ducks his head, and she crosses her arms across her stomach. "We usually do breakfast one day a week when he's home, and he's doing something upstairs. He said he'd be right down." He's not apologizing outright, but it's there in his tone.
"Right," Jon says weakly. She knew that Spencer and Brent hung out still, that Spencer still considers him a friend even if he was the one to actually make the phonecall, but somewhere along the way, Jon missed how that would actually mean she'd have to consider Brent being in their kitchen when she's not wearing pants. "I'm usually still asleep until ten." She gives him a smile and sips her coffee again, twice before Brent starts tapping his foot.
"You want any coffee?" Jon's not used to being awkward. She hung out with Adam after she joined 5o4, but it was never just her and Adam, and she definitely wasn't still blurry from sleep when she talked to him.
Brent has a mug in front of him, but he holds it out with a bit of a smile. "A little more I guess."
"He can take forever," she says, and even that feels flat because Brent would know that, too. He probably has his own horror stories about Spencer just needing five more minutes and coming out a half-hour later.
But Brent's smile just gets a little bigger, a little less frozen, as Jon tops off his coffee. "Yeah. I'm giving him another ten minutes, and then we may need a search party."
Jon smiles back at him. Teasing Spencer is fair territory. "He didn't go upstairs to, like, change his shirt or anything? Because you should see his closet. I think it's bigger than my entire first apartment was." It's only a little smaller than Jon's own closet, but she has most of her photography stuff in there, and a few basses that she never plays but can't part with, and the box of men's sweats and flannel pants that she really wishes she'd opened and put out, if only so she wasn't walking around the kitchen and possibly flashing Brent Wilson with every step.
"He said he wanted to go and clean up." Brent shrugs and looks at the chair across from him. "You can sit down, if you want."
Jon's sort of torn between running out of the kitchen and sitting, then. On the one hand, she could feign that she needed a shower and leave Brent there, but on the other hand, Spencer could seriously be another fifteen minutes and it's sort of rude, like insanely.
"Okay," she says, almost shyly, before she sits down. She looks at Brent the entire time."Sorry about my pants and lack-there-of."
"It's cool. Your kitchen." Brent stirs a little cane sugar--they have two pots of sugar on the table, his and hers, and she nods unconsciously at Brent's obviously superior sugar taste--and sits back. "Spencer mentioned that you were living here too, I just didn't think..."
She shrugs and tries her best "I'm-not-threatening-at-all" smile. It's not as good as Brendon's or Spencer's, but she works what she has. "It's all right. I didn't really think about the fact that you and Spencer are still close would mean..." She shrugs and ducks her head a little.
"Yeah, I just... it's weird."
"For real." She smiles again and stirs in sugar to her coffee, too. Jon wants to ask how he's been, since he came back to Vegas. He's lost weight, and he's grown up a lot, broad shoulders and soft looking hair. Brent always made her think of gentle things, soft cotton and bunnies, maybe. "You look good," she says instead. It's true and doesn't feel forced when she rolls it off her tongue.
Brent gives her another shy smile. "Thanks. You do, too."
Jon just rolls her eyes at him. Her hair's longer than she's had it in years, over her shoulders, and it hasn't been trimmed since their third-to-last photoshoot before break. She hasn't conditioned it or straightened it, and it's probably been a good three days since she actually broke down and washed it. The in-floor tub is perfect for just sinking down and melting away, not so much for washing your hair. She always gets water in her ears.
"Thanks," she says, though, because she doesn't want to seem rude.
They sit with their coffees, and it doesn't feel as strained. Coffee has that effect, when it's brewed well (Spencer's getting better with her French press and Ryan has them all going for the fair trade coffee that costs at least twelve bucks a bag) and she likes to think that they could have been friends, maybe, at least the sort of friends that can hang around and just be quiet together.
Brent puts his coffee down when it's empty, and Jon gets up to refill it. "You don't have to," he says as she stands.
Jon grins at him. "My mad barista skills, Wilson, refuse to let a guest in my home have an empty cup. It will cause me stress, and stress makes me snappish. I can't keep my laid-back cred if I'm snappish." She gives him the last of the coffee and starts prepping for another pot. Ryan usually stops over after eleven, and she's only had one cup so far. There will definitely be need for more coffee.
"Yeah. It's a hard cross to bear, but someone has to do it. It certainly can't be them," Brent says, and Jon's hands still on the coffee bag.
She licks her lips and looks at him over her shoulder, tone careful as she says, "Oh, I don't know. Sometimes when Ryan's stoned enough, he could pass for laidback."
Brent snorts. "Ryan Ross wouldn't know laidback if it came and bit him on the ass." His voice is fond, a little wistful maybe, but there isn't bitterness there.
"Oh, like Spencer's any better." She waves her hand at the coffee mugs. They're blue and grey and match the kitchen. Jon's mugs are in the back of the cabinet, except for her Cubs one. Coffee just tastes better out of that one, okay?
Brent laughs, nodding. "I remember, like, on our third gig? Brendon got ketchup on Spencer's last clean shirt, and it was right in the middle of his chest, and I thought he was going to start screaming or something." He shrugs. "I traded him."
Jon laughs. "I've done things like that, like taken the blame for who accidentally snagged one of his headbands or something because Brendon just gives you that--"
"Oh, shit, Spence's going to kill me look," Brent cuts in, and his smile seems bigger, almost to his eyes. "I thought he did it on purpose."
"Probably." Jon finishes prepping and flicks the on-switch. She wants to make a crack about the band picking bassists who are suckers for too-big brown eyes, but Brent's actually smiling. She doesn't want to risk making a misstep there. "He has that effect on people."
"Yeah." Brent looks at the kitchen door, and Jon checks the clock. "I think he's doing his hair or something."
"Or Ryan's having a crisis of the paisley variety." She keeps her tone gentle, but she can feel her grin getting a little wicked. "He'll call him at like all hours when we're home, for the stupidest shit. Yesterday, he couldn't remember what kind of dog food he usually buys Hobo, the 12 pack or the 24, and 'do you think they taste different?'" Brent's still grinning, shaking his head in the way only people who are used to Ryan's particular brand of codependency can. It would piss her off on anyone else, used to piss her off to see Haley do it. "And Spencer's trying to tell him that it doesn't matter, because it was like two in the morning?"
"He's always been that way. We met in high school, and I seriously thought he had a thing for Spencer, the way he would bring him up into every single conversation." Brent shakes his head again.
Jon slides back into her chair. "We, the Academy guys and the techs, had a fucking betting pool on it, dude. It's totally understandable."
Brent taps his spoon off the table, smile fading slowly. He turns his mug around on the table, making the handle face left and then right. "Can I ask you something?" he asks, without meeting her eyes.
Jon takes a deep breath before she nods. "Yeah, sure." She doesn't promise to answer it.
"How are they? I mean, Spencer tells me a little, but I can't like..." Brent shrugs one shoulder. "It's weird, to talk to him about them because they're still, and we were..." He won't look away from the table.
Jon nods. "I know." She doesn't mention the way the Butcher always goes quiet for two seconds before he asks about Tom, even though she thinks it might help. She doesn't really know Brent. "They're good, happy mostly. Brendon has a dog that he dresses up, and he's living in an apartment building like five minutes away with his roommate. Ryan's just being very Ryan. He's redecorating his house in a sort of twenties aesthetic because he got tired of the sixties. This does not bode well for me and the next album."
Brent shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling. "I miss them more than I miss all the other shit. I could do it again, if I had to, but I like going to school and I'm going to be a vet with my dad. It's cool. I just..."
"I know, a little." She doesn't know exactly, and she doesn't know what to say to make that sort of ache feel better. If there was a way to make Ryan and Brendon talk to Brent--if there was a way to make at least Siska and the Butcher be able to talk to Tom, if not William and Mike--she'd do her best to make it happen, but they're adults. They have to figure it out (or not figure it out) on their own. "I'm sorry." She doesn't know why she's apologizing, if it's for the other half of her band or if it's because they have to have this conversation now. She's not sorry, not really, that she's in the band instead of him, just that he has the lost look in his eye when he talks about it.
"It's not your fault." Brent gives her the nervous little smile and stirs his coffee again.
Jon nods as she hears Spencer coming down the stairs. He walks heavily, always has, and she can hear him on the stairs anywhere in the house. "Sorry about that. I had to deal with something," Spencer says, just before he comes into the kitchen and stops in the doorway. "Jon," he says, tone even and his eyes darting back and forth between them.
"Hey," she says, waving a little as she stands and puts her mug in the sink. "I woke up early and didn't know we had company."
Brent bows his head a little. "It's all right."
Spencer stands there for a minute before he nods and looks at Jon. "We're going out for breakfast, if you want to come with us..." He lets his voice trail off.
Jon glances at Brent, at the way he still has his head bowed a little, and frowns. "Nah. I think I'm going to do some laundry and maybe enjoy the fact that I don't have a roommate for a while, at least until Ryan shows up." She brushes past Spencer before chewing on her lip a little. "But if you want to come over for dinner on Thursday sometime, that'd be cool. I usually make Spencer cook for me, and it's like the best Velveeta ever. Sometimes he puts canned chicken in it."
Spencer's a way better cook than that, which is actually a meal Jon made for her and Cass a few times back in Chicago, but she likes the way he rolls his eyes and tries not to sputter indignantly.
"That'd be cool," Brent says, tone cautious, and Jon gives him a smile.
"Whenever you're free, dude. It was good seeing you again." Jon isn't lying as she goes upstairs to grab her bathrobe and go into the guest bathroom with its stupid shower. It's really time that she manned up and washed her damn hair.