.part one. They find a rhythm with the passage of time; settling back into the ease of summer, and if things are never quite as good as they were the first couple days, well, no one's going to comment on that.
"About that night," Jon says on the Fourth of July, sitting on Spencer's roof. There's a barbeque going on in the backyard and Spencer got roped into watching the grill while his dad ran to the store; he grabbed Brendon and made him sit on the picnic table to keep him company.
Ryan shakes his head. "Don't know what you're talking about, Jon." There's a look between them, a protracted moment of eyes meeting and Jon ducks his head, nods, and takes a pull off one the beers Jeff brought out on the condition none of them try and drive anywhere.
"Right." Jon says, "Okay."
The worst of it, other than Jon's heart cracked in some small way and Brendon's innocent obliviousness, is Spencer looking at Ryan with something in his eyes that isn't pride or love for the fist time in years. It's not even the same sadness as black eyes earned on the weekend with his dad; it's disappointment and it's a knife between Ryan's ribs.
Summer wears away and it never gets cold in Vegas, it never even really cools down until well into what most would call winter, but Ryan's been living in the desert long enough to read the shifts that others miss.
He catches Brendon's eye one day as the middle of August comes, a lazy Sunday spent in their pajamas, watching reruns of old cartoons on some premium cable channel Spencer begged and pleaded his parents into getting, even though he's only home three months out of the year.
"Hey, Jon Walker," Brendon says, dropping his head onto Jon's stomach. "When do you guys go back to the Great Frozen North?"
Jon chuckles, ruffles Brendon's hair and rolls his head up to look at Spencer sprawled on the floor in front of the couch. "Spence, when is our flight? August twentieth, or something like that?"
"No." Spencer drags his eyes from the TV, from the Transformers rerun where Megatron is doing his transforming bit to the cheesy eighties music that confuses the hell out of Ryan's emotions; it's tangled up with his dad screaming at him and Ginger feeding him and Spencer's waffles on the couch. "August twenty-third."
Ryan can count, even as he fucks up everything else, and he thinks six days, but doesn't say it.
They pass anyway, with or without his acknowledgement, and he ends up standing in the airport at midnight, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie as Spencer and Jon check their bags, juggling tickets, IDs, and backpacks. Brendon's already red rimmed around his eyes and folded in tight on himself.
"You're coming to my house for Christmas," Jon says, folding Ryan up tight in a hug. He brushes a kiss to the corner of his mouth, so the others can't see, and it seems like an apology and a promise in the same moment. Ryan fists his fingers in Jon's shirt and squeezes tight, mouthing I'm sorry to the stubble on his cheek.
They pull apart and Brendon says, "We'd love to," throwing his arms around Jon's neck.
Spencer's standing there in girl's jeans and a zipped hoodie, bangs falling in his eyes and he's not looking at Ryan, he's looking at the floor and his hands and Ryan maybe be an emotionally stunted fucking moron (courtesy of Michael Guy Chislett, fucking patent pending) but he's not going to let this happen.
"Come here," Ryan mumbles and Spencer looks up, closes his eyes for a moment, and does. Spencer smells like his shampoo and his aftershave and the cookies his mother fed them as a farewell treat. "Gonna fucking miss you."
Spencer nods to Ryan's neck, tangles his fingers in Ryan's hair, they're damp on the back of his neck. "Yeah, fuck, me too."
They reach Check-In Ryan mumbles, "I'm sorry," kisses Spencer once and pushes him away.
The four of them say goodbye in discordant unison and Brendon and Ryan go to the car in the garage and sit there for nearly a half hour, fingers laced together tight.
*
It's not what Ryan would call an awesome day, and even despite the awkwardness, despite almost losing Spencer (it's not true, he tells himself that over and over. It was never that bad. Spencer wouldn't have left him, not really. Not ever), the summer was one of the best Ryan's ever had.
It's dark by the time they get home, and he can tell Brendon's exhausted by the slope of his shoulders. He's just reaching out to touch, to comfort, because that's what they do when they're not clawing each other's eyes out, when he catches sight of movement on the front stoop.
His heart stutters once, twice in his chest, and in the end it's Brendon who moves first. "Hey," he says, voice low and quiet, resigned in the way it always is when they've just left Spencer. "Hey, I think that's your boyfriend." The word has an edge to it that Ryan's forgotten Brendon has.
It's buried deep, along with the belief in a God that didn't help him when he needed it, the love for parents who all but abandoned him, and the desire to do something wild and different and daring with the gift of music that poured forth from his voice box whenever he could coax it to.
"We're broken up, Bren," he says the words tightly, but even the conviction in his voice can't quell the fluttering in his stomach.
"Yeah? Why's he at our apartment, then?" Brendon asks as he's climbing out of the car, slamming his door. Ryan has no idea, Ryan didn't ask him over, Ryan honestly didn't remember he was getting in today, although the irony in that does not escape him.
"Ryan," Michael says, accented voice heavy. He's coming towards them with his palms up, face twisted and sad in a way Ryan can't remember ever having seen. "Ryan, I’ve missed you," Brendon rolls his eyes, even as he's touching his palm to Ryan's arm and saying, "See you inside."
"Michael," Ryan says evenly, trying not to shiver, because it's chillier than it has been, but this is Nevada; when it dips under sixty, he'll start to worry. "Michael, what are you doing here?"
"I missed you," he says evenly, and he's close enough that he can touch Ryan's shoulders, close enough so that when he leans forward, their mouths brush.
Ryan kisses him back. He's not sure if it's the familiarity of the impulse or because he's really missed Michael too, but it doesn't feel wrong.
Behind Michael, Ryan can see the lamp in Brendon's room flicking off, his silhouette gone from sight. It sends a chill through him, but not one large enough to get him to move away.
"I want you," Michael pauses himself, leaning forward to tip their foreheads together. "I want us to move in together."
Ryan blinks, once, twice and thinks of Brendon sitting in his room with the light off, thinks of Spencer and Jon, heads tucked together, asleep as they cross over the country, and saying yes to this doesn't feel wrong either.
*
Brendon's already in his room by the time Michael and Ryan get into the apartment, door shut tight, no light peeking out from the crack between the wood and the floor.
"Just as well, babe," Michael says, hand rubbing at the back of his neck, pressing a kiss there, even as Ryan's taking a step toward Brendon's door. "It's quite a big bombshell, and you've already had a day. Better to tell him tomorrow."
Ryan wants to stand his ground and stay, but he's exhausted, and he can feel Spencer missing, even though it took them practically the entire summer to right themselves again.
"Let's just sleep, yeah?" Michael says the words quietly, but with this tone -- this tone that Ryan's leaned to recognize over the past year, gives away his true intentions. His hand is loose around Ryan's wrist, and Ryan wants to dig his heels in, wants to fight it, but he doesn't.
Michael loves him.
"You love me," he says once the door to his (their) room is shut tight and Michael's sucking a dark spot against his neck.
"You know that I do," Michael affirms, and Ryan nods, moans as Michael's teeth sink into his shoulder. His tongue darts out to lap at the pressure marks, tiny little patterns and memories; a map to bring him back. "You know that I do, Ryan," he says again, and that's true, Ryan does know it; but knowing it and hearing it are two different things.
Being naked around each other is simultaneously awkward and familiar, but Ryan leans into Michael's warmth, back braced against the far wall for balance, and parts his lips, parts his legs and opens his heart.
Michael takes his time, which is nice. It's like he's savoring Ryan, like he's missed the taste of Ryan's lips, the sweep of his bangs, the cant of his hips. "Are you ready, then?" His voice is soft but a little rough around the edges when he moves away to roll the condom on and Ryan moans his assent when he’s close again; when Michael spits on his hand and starts to push his fingers in.
Ryan's head bangs against the wall, not loud enough to thump, just enough so that unless Brendon really is sleeping, he'll know exactly what they're doing.
"Do you like that?" Michael asks, voice lower than before, rough around the edges, two fingers inside of Ryan and pushing in a third. Ryan moans again, nodding as vigorously as he can without losing his balance and toppling them both over.
"Yeah," Ryan spits out. "Yes," and then, when Michael's fingers move away, when Ryan is stretched and open, but only just barely, when he's panting and his skin has the lightest sheen of sweat pulsing across it, when Michael is starting to push in, "Jon," breathed out softly, eyes closed against the spinning room, fingers scrabbling for purchase against the wall.
"What," Michael slams all the way in, hard enough to leave bruises, rough enough to move Ryan higher up against the wall.
"What," Ryan asks, eyelashes fluttering, hands finding themselves at Michael's shoulders, pressing his fingers down hard enough to leave his own brand of memories.
Michael's face is swimming in front of his, that's how full Ryan feels, how intense the stretch and the burn are. He looks furious, Michael, eyes wide and lips bitten, but beautiful too, and he hasn't stopped pushing, hasn't stopped fucking Ryan open.
"Nothing," he says when he comes, forearms bracketing Ryan against the wall, his mouth taking possession of Ryan's, keeping him.
.brendon.
Brendon doesn't like Michael Guy fucking Chislett and that's not a secret.
They met, the first time, when Brendon came home from a double shift at the Smoothie Hut he hadn't had to work, done as a favor so that Laurie's two kids, who both had the chicken pox, could have their mom for company instead of some stranger. He was tired that night, wiped the hell out and covered in an extra large Strawberry Mango Passionfruit Dream, and he'd walked in to find Ryan cuddled on the couch with this guy in board shorts and shitty highlights.
"What happened to you, mate?" the guy had asked, arms around Ryan's neck, Ryan wedged between his legs. Brendon bit down so hard he broke skin somewhere in his mouth and tasted copper. "Lose a fight with the blender?"
Ryan had laughed and Brendon had walked to his room without showering, threw a book against the wall and couldn't figure out why he was so angry.
He's lying on his back on his bed and maybe it makes him a shitty person, but he'd been glad when Ryan hadn't gone to Australia. He'd been glad, sitting in the bathroom while Ryan and Michael Guy'd had it out in the living room the last time, screaming loud enough for the landlord to come and bitch them out the next morning. He'd thought they were done for real that time.
There's a bang from the other side of the wall, a door slamming, and low, strangled moan that makes Brendon taste bile in the back of his throat.
It kills Brendon, knifes through his stomach and twists in his gut, that he can catalogue the sound of Ryan and Michael Guy fucking. Thuds of shoes being kicked off and the groan of Ryan's bedsprings. Ryan is quiet, which didn't surprise Brendon the first time he woke up to them in the night, but Michael Guy is not.
"Jesus, Ryan, God." The words are garbled but understandable and Brendon wonders what it says about him that his iPod is laying curled up on the floor beside his backpack, filled with next semester's textbooks and brand new notebooks from the 99-cent bin at Wal-Mart, close enough to reach, but far enough away that he doesn't try.
He could put his headphones in and float away to the sound of Disney, or Journey or fucking anything, but he doesn't and part of him thinks he probably can't.
Brendon gave up on God and hates religion and it's probably not healthy that he spends so much of his time considering self-flagellation, anyway.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and punches in Spencer's number. It clicks straight to voicemail; of course it does, because he and Jon are still on the fucking plane going to wrong direction towards home. "This is Spencer, ouch, Jon, you're an ass, knock if off. Right, this is Spencer, I'm probably somewhere having fun without you, Jesus, I'm going to throw you out the window, leave a message and I'll call you back."
"It's me," Brendon says, "Guess who's back?"
*
Michael Guy's at the kitchen island when Brendon stumbles out of his bedroom in the morning, and the sight shouldn't shock him, he'd known Michael Guy had slept over -- had heard him fall into unconsciousness with low mumbles and the occasional snore, but it still doesn't prepare him for the sight.
"Hi," he says, and Michael Guy barely returns the greeting, but it's not as if Brendon blames him. In the year he and Ryan have been dating, Brendon has said maybe twelve sentences to him, and they haven't been in consecutive order.
"Ryan wanted to be the one to tell you this," Michael Guy says, and Brendon flinches a little, having all that attention on him. They don't really speak, not unless someone is being asked to pass the potatoes. "He had to rush off to work though, and since I don't have to go in until nine, I said I'd stay behind and fill you in on the good news."
Brendon has a half a second to think, at least you can't tell me you're pregnant, before Michael Guy continues with, "We've decided to move in together."
They say that when a person dies, their entire lives pass before their eyes. Brendon is fairly certain he's having aneurysm, so it makes sense that it would happen to him. All he can see though, is Ryan; laughing and screaming, Ryan leaning across Spencer's knees at Christmas and kissing him, light light light until it wasn't light anymore, Ryan stretched out next to him, Ryan at the airport, saying goodbye to Spencer all over again, eyes red, mouth stretched tight.
Brendon doesn't think about what it means, and he closes his eyes, even though that doesn't do much to get the visions to stop.
" ... with us." Brendon blinks as Michael finishes, and he knows the answer to the question he's about to ask before he even asks it.
"With you, what?" Michael Guy smiles, grins at him and Brendon's been staring at the guy for the last year, give or take. He's never seen him smiling like this.
It would be almost sweet, if Brendon didn't want him to get hit by a bus.
"We want you to come with us, Brendon," Michael Guy says slowly, as if speaking to a child. Brendon wants to kick him. "When we go, we'd like you to come."
It's on the tip of Brendon's tongue to say no, but he can't and he doesn't. "I'll talk to Ryan," he says and very valiantly doesn't dump the mug of coffee he's just poured on Michael Guy's head.
Michael Guy nods, and he looks resigned almost, which shouldn't surprise Brendon and doesn't. Ryan, for all that he is and all that he isn't, would never leave him behind.
Brendon's never actually managed to articulate how grateful he is for that.
*
Ryan comes home and Brendon's pacing a line between the living room and refrigerator. He's got white noise in his ears and something hot and furious thrumming underneath his skin; hitting something seems like a good fucking idea, even when Ryan comes through the door, running a hand through his hair and tossing his keys onto the entertainment center.
"Is there a reason," Brendon says as Ryan slams the door shut and his face goes taunt and closed, "You thought it would be a good idea in any fucking universe to let Michael Guy tell me that you two have decided to play house and, oh, that I'm invited to tag along?"
Ryan shucks off his jacket and folds his arms. "Jesus, Brendon, I thought you'd be happy that you wouldn't have to go to live in a shitty apartment with only bugs for company. Michael didn't have to say it was okay for me to want that."
That, more than anything sets low annoyance simmering in Brendon's stomach.
"Fuck you, Ryan, don't do me any favors. You don't have to move in with that asshole, in fact, you really shouldn't. I'm just fine in shitty apartments."
"Please," Ryan snaps, pushing past Brendon down the hallway to the bedrooms. "What the hell would you do? Sing Disney and make friends with the rats?"
Ryan throws open his door and Brendon pauses, for a moment, because there are unspoken lines that were drawn when they'd first moved in; they go in each other’s rooms, more nights than not they end up passed out on one bed or the other, but there's always an invitation issued and Brendon doesn't know why he stops Ryan's door with his foot when he goes to slam it shut.
"Fuck off, Brendon," Ryan says, face visible. Brendon shakes his head and he's breaking something, he thinks, when he shoves his way in, but he has no choice.
There's very little in the world Brendon believes in, less that inspires genuine faith, but Ryan is one of things. He feels it in his gut, every time he looks at Ryan and Michael together. Michael is going to rip Ryan apart piece by piece until there's nothing left. Brendon refuses to stand by and watch that happen.
"No." Brendon slams the door shut and turns, ends up face to face to with Ryan, their chests pressing together. Brendon sucks in a hard breath because he's startled.
"What?" Ryan's looking at him with something in his eyes that flickers on the edge of Brendon's consciousness, like a half forgotten memory, and he can't breathe. He's not honestly sure if it's just anger throbbing through him anymore. "Brendon."
He sees the kiss a split second before it happens and does nothing to stop it. Brendon knows, between him and Ryan, concession is the same as consent.
Ryan kisses him hard, fists his fingers in Brendon's tee shirt. It's enough to bruise, his teeth almost cutting in Brendon's flesh, but his hands come up without conscious thought, fingers tangling in Ryan's hair. A noise slips past his lips, low and guttural, and Ryan bites down on Brendon's mouth. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he chants as Brendon pushes him back onto the bed.
It's inevitable, maybe.
Brendon yanks off his shirt and tosses it aside, pops the button on his jeans and shimmies out of them. Ryan scrabbles at his belt and manages to pull his jeans off, shoes and boxers and Brendon stares at him through eyes with vision whiting out at the corners.
Ryan is lovely, Ryan is beautiful, and Ryan is broken and somehow that makes Brendon want to touch him more.
They fuck, Ryan on his stomach with his face pressed into the pillow.
Brendon spits on his hand, easing two fingers into Ryan, stretching him before he starts to push in with his cock, biting down hard on his bottom lip, arms braced on Ryan's shoulders hard enough to leave faint finger strip shadows of bruises. "Fuck," Brendon groans out, dragging the nails of one hand along Ryan's spine. "Ryan."
He cants his hips up, muscles snapped taunt, and Brendon comes buried in deep.
*
Brendon calls Spencer from the student center during the hour break between classes, foot bouncing against the white and blue tile of the cafeteria. It rings twice and Brendon worries at his lower lip, convinced that Spencer isn't going to answer. "H'lo." Spencer sounds half-asleep, voice thick and rusty rough.
"Hey, Spence." Brendon rakes a hand through his hair and taps his thumb on the stained surface of the table he's sitting at. It's shoved off in a corner, away from the main thoroughfare of students; normally he would hate the disconnect, but today he needs it.
He woke up to the smooth expanse of Ryan's back. He woke up stickysweaty and aching through his muscles and bones, into his joints, with a cut on his lower lip that stung as he brushed his teeth and bruises slammed into his thighs.
"Hey, Bren," Spencer says and there's a lightness to his tone, the shifting of bedsprings and Brendon feels an unreasonable sting at the corner of his eyes. He needs Spencer in Vegas. Really, he needed Spencer last night. "Shouldn't you be learning?"
Brendon huffs out a chuckle and shakes his head, knowing Spencer can't see it.
He hears the low murmur of a voice, the rumble that is Jon half asleep and Brendon's stomach twists again, reminding him in no uncertain terms that he misses them both, strange as the idea would have seemed three months ago. He taps his thumb against his collarbone and hisses, accidentally-on-purpose hitting a bruise sucked into flesh along the ridge of the bone.
"No," Brendon mumbles, "I have a break between class. I just. I don't know. Wanted to talk to you."
"Well," Spencer says, voice broken by a yawn, "I don't have class for ... like, some amount of hours. God, I was up late last night, I just woke up. You have me for a couple hours, at least." There's a beat, an opening for Brendon to blurt it out, but he bites down on the tip of his tongue hard instead. "Bren, you okay?"
No, he's not.
That fact comes clear through Brendon's mind. He fucked Ryan. He fucked Ryan and he knew he shouldn't have, knew it was wrong, and still lost his breath at how lovely fucking Ryan is as he snuck out of the room.
"Ryan's moving in with Michael Guy," Brendon says and takes no comfort from the fact that it's not a lie. It's an omission, just as bad, and Brendon's never even done that to Spencer before. "They, ah, want me to move in with them. So I don't have to live in a shitty apartment all by my lonesome."
There's a longer beat of silence, punctured by the soft sounds of Spencer inhaling and exhaling on the other end, a little rough and a little loud, maybe shocked. Hell, maybe not. Spencer has always read people better than Brendon, seen past Ryan's bullshit Maybe he saw this coming. Maybe fucking Australia was a last hurrah before domesticity to Michael Guy, and not the break Brendon had been praying for.
"Are you going to do it?" Spencer asks and Brendon barks out a startled laugh.
"Yeah." Brendon shakes his head and inhales. "What the hell else am I going to do?"
*
Brendon was fascinated with blood as a kid.
It probably should have been his fist clue, and now twelve years later, against the wishes of his parents (the wishes of his parents had stopped counting for much of anything after the quietness of his realization, after their frozen mouths and shocked eyes and the almost silent, "You are not our son," which had followed), he's in the accelerated learning program at the community college and is studying to be a nurse.
It's actually a lot cooler than people give it credit for, and he gets the strange look now and again, from Ryan, mostly, "Really? All you want to do with your life is be a nurse? Really?" to which it's easy to respond, "At least I stuck with college," it's an effective argument ender, but it makes Ryan's lips tighten, and for two guys who fight as much as the pair of them do, Brendon still hates hurting him.
Brendon really likes his classes though, has actually made friends with people who find the same things interesting, who go out once a week and always invite him; Brendon usually declines respectively -- there's always his nightly phone call from Spencer, and if he's honest, there really isn't anyone he'd rather spend time with than Ryan.
"You want to come out with us tonight, Brendon?" Victoria asks him, because Victoria's always the one that asks. They're partners in Chemistry, and Brendon likes her even though they don't really know each other all that well.
He's about to say no, really, their after-class conversations have become scripted by now, but he stops himself at the last second, surprising the both of them.
"Yeah," he says, voice stronger than he'd thought it would be. "Yeah, I would love to."
*
Victoria flashes the bouncer a wide grin and a little bit of cleavage and sneaks Brendon into the club without anyone wanting to take a look at the peksy little matter of identification he doesn't have. She kisses his cheek and smacks his ass, leaves him at the bar to wander onto the dance floor, grinding to the pounding throb of the bass between pretty Greta with her blonde curls and pretty Chris Faller with his tight ass.
Brendon orders a Coke from the bartender and smiles ruefully at his raised eyebrow. "You suck at partying, kid," he says, sliding Brendon the sweating glass.
He doesn't dance, hasn't since senior prom and even that wasn't actual dancing, that was standing on Spencer's roof spazzing out because he hadn't had the money for prom and Spencer had refused to go without him, saying he had better things to do with three hundred bucks than sway awkwardly around the gym. His dancing lead to black eyes and bruises ribs, Ryan doubled over laughing so hard he nearly fell two stories to his death.
Two Cokes later, Victoria comes running up, sweaty and laughing and just a little giddy. She slings an arm around his shoulders and presses her face into his neck. "Jesus, Bren, I'm glad you came. You should come dance with us, come dance."
"No way," Brendon chuckles. "I've got music to listen to. You go dance."
Vicky tries, but not too hard, and when Greta pulls herself out of the crowd, shirt dress clinging to her 'chest, Vicky kisses Brendon's cheek again and lets herself be swallowed by the pulse of people.
He downs another Coke, feeling vaguely cheated every time he hands over a five, and has to pee. There's no sign of Vicky underneath the flashing lights and he gives up looking after a minute. The bathrooms are down a hallway off the front entrance, narrow and relatively well lit, with graffiti on the walls and God knows what else.
He pees, washes his hands and dries them on the thighs of his jeans, pushing open the door with his shoulder. There's a weird stain on the hem of his shirt and he's looking at that as he moves to start down the hallway. Of course, because karma wants to make Brendon her bitch, he slams directly into someone.
The person lets out a startled oof as Brendon nearly falls on his ass, catches Brendon's elbows and sets him right up. "Jesus, I'm sorry," Brendon says and looks up and stares and nearly swallows his tongue.
The guy's in a v-necked white tee shirt that's clinging tight to his chest, with a tattoo rising out of the fabric up his chest. The ink is rich and dark and lovely and, even knowing all the medical risks involved in getting a tattoo, Brendon thinks it's beautiful. The face smiling down at him, wide and easy, isn't bad either.
"I'm Butcher," he says and Brendon laughs.
"I'm Baker." He blushes at the man's snort. "But you can call me Brendon."
"My mother calls me Andy," he says with that same smile, "But people I like call me Butcher."
*
The club throbs and pulses and the crowd on the dance floor grinds together, but it's not just a place to lose yourself in the music, it's a place to make eyes at someone from across the room and end up fucking in the bathroom, frantic mouths and scrabbling hands pushed up against walls caked in the residue of a hundred other encounters.
Brendon doesn't end up in the bathroom.
He ends up in a recessed alcove in the wall next to the hallway that leads to the bathroom, back pressed up against rough brick with Butcher pressed in close between his legs, hands firm around his neck and the base of his skull. Butch kisses easy, dragging his tongue across the slick ridge of Brendon's teeth, grinding his hips down just enough for Brendon to feel the shocks up and down his spine.
Brendon catches the tips of his fingers on the dipped collar of Butcher's shirt, scraping his nails against the smooth expanse of inked flesh. Butcher tastes like beer and mint gum and it's heady and really fucking nice.
"You," Brendon sighs, pulling back, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth to taste Butcher on his skin and feel the swollen flesh. "You should fucking come home with me."
Butcher huffs out a chuckle, kisses the skin between Brendon's eyebrows and smiles. "Yeah, yeah, okay."
Brendon doesn't have a car, came jammed in the backseat of Vicky's shitty little Volvo, but Butcher hooks his fingers in Brendon's belt loop and pulls. It's easy enough to follow his back through the crowd, hands resting on the ridges of his hips. It's hot, steaming, and Brendon feels dizzy happy and, fucking finally, Ryan's beginning to drift out of his mind.
"Bren?" Vicky's hand lands on his shoulder and he jerks to a stop, pulling Butcher up short. She's sweaty, eyeliner and mascara smeared around her eyes, smiling, with Greta and Chris Faller standing a few inches behind her. She eyes Butcher. "Who are you?"
He smiles, yanking Brendon close and he giggles, a little, shrugging helplessly at Victoria. Butcher's hot against his skin and solid. "I'm Butcher and I'm taking your friend to be debauched."
For a moment, Victoria goggles, eyes open wide and mouth dropped, but she recovers fast enough, grin sliding knowingly across her pretty face. "Sounds good to me. God knows the boy doesn't get laid enough. Go forth, young Bren, and get some."
Butcher whoops and Brendon blushes. "I am not your kept boy."
Victoria smacks his ass and Brendon flips her off, presses his face to the flat of Butcher's chest and follows him out of the club.
*
It's both a blessing and a curse that the club is outside the city limits, that it's twenty minutes in the back of an overpriced cab, because it gives Brendon just enough time to start panicking, but not enough time to do anything about it.
"Hey," Butcher says easily, hand warm and solid where it's resting against Brendon's neck. "Hey, seriously dude, breathe."
Brendon does try, he does. He breathes and breathes and breathes, but in the end, all it does is make him feel a little dizzy.
"I don't even know you," he says breathlessly, wincing at the way the words fall past his lips, sounding far more innocent than they should; than he should. It's not like they're getting married, it's not like they're even going on a date, although Brendon's sure he's felt more of Butcher than he would have if they'd met under normal circumstances.
"My name is Andy," Butcher says, and he grins, because Brendon already knows that. "But you already know that."
"I do."
"See? You know me better than you think." Brendon rolls his eyes, practically vibrating off the stretched plastic covering. "No," Butcher says, "But seriously. My name is Andy and I like starfish." He leans back against the seat, arms crossed. He looks smug.
"You like starfish," Brendon repeats. He's skeptical, a brow raised. Butcher just grins at him, and unconsciously, Brendon finds himself grinning back.
"It's a stream of consciousness thing. It breaks the ice. Just close your eyes and picture something that's really really important to you."
"Starfish are important to you?"
"I wanted to be an ichthyologist as a kid." Brendon rolls his eyes, but Butcher just keeps looking at him. "Just close your eyes, Bren. Focus on something quiet. The important stuff will come to you." He reaches out, thumb sweeping across Brendon's lower lip.
"My name is Brendon, and," he's sneering a little, like he can't help it, but he breathes again, mind going blank and says, "And I slept with Ryan."
*
Butcher is pretty good about it. He's better about it than Brendon would have been -- than Brendon is.
"As long as Ryan's not like," he pauses, waving his hand around. "Your brother, or something, we should be okay."
Brendon chokes on nothing at all. "He's not my brother," he says, closing his eyes and rubbing a palm across them.
"Okay," Butcher seems nonplussed, which leads Brendon assumes is his default setting. "Okay," he says again, nodding, and that's all.
He doesn't say anything else.
Brendon pays the cabbie when they stop in front of his apartment building, even though Butcher tries to pass some money over.
"Unfair, dude," he says, shaking his head sadly at Brendon once they're deposited onto the sidewalk. "If it weren't for me, you'd have gotten a free ride home."
Brendon laughs, even though it doesn't feel like much of anything. "If it weren't for you, I'd have come home alone. At least I have someone to face Ryan with now."
There's something heavy that presses against his chest at the mention Ryan's name, something hard and hot along the edges, ugly.
"You can tell me, Brendon," Butcher says, palm cupping Brendon's elbow. "Is Ryan your turtle?"
*
Brendon's expecting the lights to be off, or at least for Ryan's door to be closed, but it's not, and he's sitting at the kitchen island, bundled into his bathrobe. He's eating a bowl of cereal and reading the paper, even though it's close to three in the morning. His feet are bare and his hair is wet, bangs dripping to his eyes.
"You," Butcher says, smiling and extending his hand out, "Must be Ryan." He peers over his shoulder at Brendon who is busying himself with the door and raises his brows comically.
"What," Ryan says, voice flat, ignoring Butcher completely. "You come home with club pick-ups now? What the hell is wrong with you." Even Butcher flinches, but Brendon's not paying attention to him, not really.
"Club pick-ups, Ryan Ross? Are better than asshole musicians from Australia. At least my club pick-up knows that biscuits are not cookies."
Ryan's nose flairs, and if Brendon didn't know better, he'd think Ryan were smiling.
"You went to a club," Ryan's standing now, moving closer to Brendon with every word. Butcher moves out of the way. "And picked up a guy because he knows what cookies are? You're going to let him fuck you because he knows what cookies are?"
Their faces are inches apart; both their cheeks shined red. "Bren," Butcher says, and his voice, his presence, shatters something between them, something tangible. Ryan visibly shrinks back, and Brendon blinks like he's coming out of a dream. "I should just -- "
Ryan says, "Yeah maybe you -- " just as Brendon says, "No."
Brendon's voice is louder.
*
Brendon's mouth is hungry across Butcher's collarbone, tracing the lines and patterns of ink with the tip of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth. Butcher makes low noises in the back of his throat, appreciative, fingers grasping at the hem of Brendon's shirt, easing up inches along the expanse of his back.
"Jesus," Butcher inhales and Brendon bites down hard enough to leave the faint impression of teeth marks in his skin.
"Nope, just Brendon," he chuckles out, but it sounds angry and forced to his own ears.
You come home with club pick-ups now?
Ryan's words, his fucking judgmental, imperious glare, slither along Brendon's skin like something thick and tangible and Brendon flinches, splaying his fingers across the washboard flat of Butcher's stomach. Butcher is nothing like Ryan, broad and lanky and inked, beautiful and willing.
"Hey, hey." Butcher pushes back his hair and tips two fingers under his chin and, God, for a split second Brendon thinks of Spencer on the roof at Christmas and that's too many fucking people in the bedroom. "What are you thinking, Bren?"
Brendon shakes his head and smiles, easy easy easy, bright enough for it to look real in the blurred light from the streetlamp streaming in through the window. He pulls his shirt off and tosses it aside, pops the fly on his jeans and eases the zipper down. Butcher's eyes slide from questioning to unfocused lust and Brendon smiles.
"I'm fine," he murmurs, fitting his hands to Butcher's hips. "Come on. Come here."
They kiss with a new edge, Brendon dragging his teeth along the full swell of Butcher's lower lip, pulling out a chest deep groan and Butcher's fingers digging tight into the meat of his back on either side of Brendon's spine. "God, Brendon. You," Butcher's exhale has a ripple to it that sounds like a strange imitation of a chuckle. "Are a fucked up little cookie."
Brendon huffs out a laugh as the back of his knees hit the bed and he falls down, pulling Butcher down on top of him. "You have no idea."
*
Brendon hears it when Michael Guy comes in, because it just so happens that Brendon doesn't sleep all that much anymore. It's a new phenomenon, just started. "'at time is it?" Butcher's pressed along Brendon's side, and he'd be shocked into surprise if he'd bothered falling asleep at all.
"Early," Brendon says, turning slightly and pressing an openmouthed kiss against the skin of Butcher's shoulder. "Go back to sleep."
Butcher nods, nuzzling his face against Brendon's side, and it's nice, it's comfortable.
"Sleep," Butcher mumbles, and he rolls over and does just that. Brendon envies him. He doesn't ever sleep well in places that aren't his bed.
It's three hours and 10,800 sheep (if there's a sheep a second, and there are sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour, it makes sense) later, that Brendon hears sounds of life coming from the kitchen and he eases out of bed carefully.
It's not like Butcher notices anyway; he's dead to the world.
Brendon tries to be quiet is he stumbles into the kitchen, even though there are only two people it could possibly be, and he's not particularly fond of either of them right now.
It's just his luck that it's both of them, Ryan, shirtless, leaning against the stool at the island, cradling a mug of coffee in his hands and breathing on it gracefully.
"Morning, mate," Michael Guy says, and he's shirtless too, little marks littering his skin, up and down his chest, a huge, blooming hickey high on his neck.
Brendon wants to punch something. He doesn't.
"Morning," he says, and Ryan barely looks at him. "Coffee?" he asks, and Michael Guy smiles at him with the corners of his mouth.
"It's Hazelnut," he says as he's pouring the dark liquid into Brendon's Grumpy mug. It had been just sitting there, as if waiting for him, and he his stomach is sick for a second, trying to figure out which of the two them must have gotten it out. "I know it's your favorite."
Brendon snorts as he reaches for the mug, breathing in deep before he even drinks. "What," he says around a mouthful of coffee. "Are you trying to loosen me up for something? Fatten up the lamb before the slaughter?" Ryan blinks at him, and Michael Guy forces out a chuckle, but it isn't funny.
"I was thinking, Brendon," he says, and then he launches into the kind of spiel he must have been practicing for days. He looks earnest, his lip is bitten, and the best part is, he keeps looking at Ryan like he's Really In Love, like they never fight, like he hasn't made Ryan cry more times than they can count.
Brendon tunes him out, and tries to look anywhere but at Ryan; Ryan leaning back against Michael Guy's chest, Ryan smiling and nodding in agreement, Ryan in between him and Spencer in the only picture on their refrigerator, head thrown back, laughing.
Brendon spends so much time not looking at Ryan that he doesn't seem to be able to look at anything else. He misses Butcher stumbling in and nearly jumps out of his skin when a pair of arms wrap around his middle.
"Coffee," Butcher says into Brendon's skin, pressing light kisses against his shoulder.
"Coffee," Brendon says, handing over his mug. He's not thirsty anymore.
"Hello," Michael Guy says after a long and quiet minute. The silence hadn't been awkward, but it hadn't been companionable either. Michael Guy looks uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to leave, which is a cue that Brendon's not working hard enough. "My boyfriend seems to have forgotten his manners. I'm Michael, Michael Chislett."
"Like Bond," Butcher says, grinning. "James Bond."
"Except for not," Brendon says, surprising himself. Three pairs of startled eyes dart towards him. He blinks, and Michael Guy grins, sharp at the corners.
"Because James Bond is typically from Britain," he says to Butcher, ignoring Brendon completely. "And I'm Australian."
"No," Brendon says, ignoring all of them. "Because your middle name is Guy."
*
Ryan's shaking and Brendon knows there isn't enough space in the world to keep them far enough apart to stop whatever's coming. Brendon's cold and hot in the same moment, and he doesn't know why apologies are backed up on his tongue any more than why he can't let them out.
The dishes in the sink, more than there should be, shift from the force of gravity and clink quietly. Ryan jerks and his hands are clenched into fists so tight the skin stretched tight across his knuckles has gone waxy, bloodless, yellow tinged white and his nails have carved out half moon gouged in the meat of his palm.
"What the fuck," Ryan says and his voice is low, broken and roughed by the kind of anger Brendon hasn't seen in such a fucking long time.
He shudders and it kills him a little to meet Ryan's eyes, but he does it anyway. He didn't do anything wrong, not a Goddamn thing, but his palms are itching with a need that scares him in the center of his bones, spreads out through his body with something that leaves him awake at night dreaming about the things he shouldn't.
"I didn't do anything," he mumbles, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek.
The taste of copper in his mouth catches him by surprise and he wonders what it means that he and Ryan don't have to lay a hand on each other to hurt. Brendon's mother once told him that a lie was a small death in his soul and he doesn't believe that anymore, not since he turned his back on the brand of faith and the vengeful version of God, but sometimes he has to wonder.
Maybe it would be easier to die at all once instead of in moments of not speaking and saying the wrong thing.
Ryan shakes his head, hair falling across his eyes.
Looking at Ryan has become like seeing his reflection in shards of broken glass, fractured and disjointed. One piece shows his rare smile, those stolen moments of contentment that he only shows when he thinks no one is watching, another shows his sneer, angry at something that he can't give words to, much less explain to the rest of the world.
Ryan is volatile and broken, but with a kind of elegant grace to his pieces that makes Brendon need to touch.
Brendon crosses the living room deliberately, still shaking, and he can feel Ryan's eyes unwillingly slide up and down his chest, cataloging the marks left by Butcher and separating them from the fainter ones that remain from his own ministrations. Ryan knows the difference; of that much Brendon is absolutely certain.
The kitchen tile is cool beneath his fingers and Ryan looks like a trapped animal, hackles raised.
"I -- " Brendon says when they're pressed chest to chest, bare skin flush against one another, "Am going to hell."
Concession and invitation, it's the same old song and dance played louder and faster than it ever has before until it ends up sounding like a different piece entirely.
Ryan moves without warning, fingers threading in Brendon's hair to yank him into a kiss that sends them both flying off balance, hitting their knees with enough force that it's painful. Brendon's not a masochist, at least he doesn't think so, but he revels in the shock of pain that snaps up his thighs, Ryan's teeth rough against his mouth.
He's being eaten alive and he should fight against that, maybe, but he can't.
"Fuck you," Ryan groans, pulling on Brendon's hair to snap his head back to bite at the soft flesh on his neck.
He makes a point of sucking hard on the blue black bruises still fresh from when Butcher left them and Brendon keens at the sharp burst of sensation, presses in and pulls away in the same heartbeat and it seems like a hundred thousand years since they stood in the kitchen, making cereal and pretending to be something just a fraction closer to normal.
Brendon hisses and looks at Ryan through the sweep of his eyelashes; Ryan is a disaster and they are flaying each other alive and Brendon doesn't know how to fix this.
Spencer, he thinks, would and maybe he will, but Spencer is a thousand miles away from the kitchen that really belongs to neither of them and they are all the they have. The instinct to survive runs deeper than friendship, maybe, and Brendon needs.
Ryan pushes Brendon back and he lands on his back, catches himself on his elbows and God, he's sore already, and that shouldn't make him want it more. He shoves off his pajama bottoms and kicks them aside, catches his fingers on Ryan's waistband and yanks down his, tossing them over his shoulder.
They're both hard and Ryan doesn't pause after he slicks himself up, sucking his fingers into his mouth pushing two wet fingers into Brendon quick, barely stretching him enough to make a difference.
That probably makes it better. It's not a question of anything but the two of them, branding each other in the places only they can see.
Hurt, in some instances, is necessary.
Ryan pulls Brendon's legs up and hooks them on his shoulders. He wonders if it's like this through conscious thought on either of their parts, a need to see and be seen, to know for absolutely certain that if they're falling apart, they're dragging each other down at the same time.
"Do it," Brendon hisses, palms pressed flat against the floor.
There's a pause for the span of a heartbeat, Ryan looking at him with blown pupils that seem to see past his flesh and bone to inside, reading the thoughts that flash across Brendon's face like a marquee visible to only a handful of people. He blinks hard and looks down, lines up, and pushes in.
It's like being torn apart with no purchase, no anchor to grasp onto and Brendon's back arches up, head thrown back.
Ryan is still quiet, breath coming in harsh pants in time to the slap of skin. Brendon's nails scrabble against the tile and, the thing is, much as it hurts, he presses his hips back, meeting Ryan's in the quiet of the apartment. "Fucking killing me," Ryan says, voice harsh and bitter, "Fucking. Brendon."
Brendon's cock is caught between their stomachs and he comes first, catching them both by surprise. He lets out a little cry, like the sound of something dying (and he can hear Ryan telling him, a misplaced memory from back in high school, that the word orgasm means little death) and his hips jerk up.
Ryan doesn't pause, just bends down and presses a bruising kiss to Brendon's mouth.
He doesn't last much longer and comes inside, arching in as deep as he can until Brendon's flayed nerves are sparking so much he thinks he's going to die.
"Brendon," Ryan exhales, softening but not pulling out, sitting on his knees with his hands braced on either side of Brendon's hips. "Jesus, Brendon."
"I know," he gasps, closing his eyes. "Fuck. I know."
*
Brendon stands under the shower until the water runs cold and still feels branded. He dries off and pulls on sweats and a tee shirt, ignoring the hitch in his step that's not going to leave for at least a couple of days. Maybe he'll get made fun of and maybe he'll dredge up something within himself that can laugh.
He feels scraped raw and it’s even worse now that he’s standing.
The door to Ryan's bedroom is shut and probably locked. Brendon reaches out to twist the knob out of habit, but brings his hand up short and shuffles down the hallway with bile burning the back of his throat. The apartment feels too close and he ends up on the balcony, sitting cross-legged on the concrete, staring out at the city stretched out in front of him.
His phone presses against his leg, heavy in his pocket and he pulls it out and dials Spencer because there's really nothing else to be done.
Two rings and click and Brendon has no idea how he's going to explain to Spencer that he needs to figure out how to go the hell back in time and keep him and Ryan from assimilating the geeky Mormon kid with bad hair and coke bottle glasses, because in the end he's only going to destroy one of them, if not both.
"Spencer's phone, this is Jon speaking."
There's a moment of disconnect, Brendon stuttered and choking on a slew of words he has no right to burden Jon with. "Hey, Jon. Hi. Is Spencer there?"
Jon sighs theatrically and it's somehow soothing, like warm water over Brendon's bruises. "Spencer is unfortunately studying for a calc test and I had to steal his phone away because he was allowing himself to become distracted."
There's a muffled thump and Jon letting out a squawk, Spencer yelling, "Fuck you, I was doing just fine."
The summer seems a hundred years and million miles away, painted in time and distance as something far better than the real thing ever actually could have been. Brendon loves the desert, much as it encapsulates everything about his life that has made him bitter toward the world, but he wishes in that moment for lakes and cool and Chicago.
Away.
"Hey, Bren, are you okay?" Jon asks and Brendon sighs. "Fuck calc, I can put Spencer on."
"No." Brendon shakes his head. "I, ah, just had kind of shitty day, Jon Walker."
Jon makes a sympathetic noise. "Anything I can do?"
"Talk to me," Brendon says without meaning to.
The funny thing is, Jon does.
*
The semester goes by faster than it has any right to, and despite the move, despite the fact that now Brendon has to see Michael Guy every fucking second of every fucking day of his fucking life, despite everything, he and Ryan seem to find some sort of balance.
They're even speaking again on regular terms, although their patterns are slightly erratic.
It's the last Monday in November when Jon calls. Brendon's just home from six hours of classes plus a night spent at Butcher's, and he's not really expecting the phone to ring. No one ever actually calls the apartment, not unless they're looking for Michael Guy, but the Caller ID woman (Brendon calls her Bertha, even though Ryan insists it's something old time-y and classy like Gertrude) says, "Wall-ker Caw-Ma Jun", he practically scrambles over the kitchen table to grab the phone.
"Hello?" he's practically out of breath, and he can tell Jon knows, because he chuckles, the sound warm and filling Brendon's chest with a sense of calm he's been missing.
"Beating off, or coming in with groceries?"
Brendon laughs, leaning against the refrigerator. It's still weird, sometimes; standing in this kitchen that is completely different than the one he lived in for over a year with Ryan. It's not bad, it's just different, that's what he keeps telling himself, and for the most part it's true. For the most part, he doesn't think about Ryan fucking him on their kitchen floor, or how the grandma of a guy they went to high school with walks over it every morning now.
"Neither," he says after a minute of casual contemplation. "Avoiding Australian relatives."
"Ah," Jon says wisely. "I didn't know the Mormons spread that far west." Brendon laughs, even though he doesn't mean to. "We'll surprise you," and then, "What's up?"
Jon clears his throat, and it surprises Brendon that such a little gesture can turn an entire conversation around. "You're going to kill me for this," he says, and Brendon has a flash of Spencer spread out against the bed in his dorm, smiling and happy and sated, imprints of Jon's teeth red against the white skin. He feels vomit raising in his throat, and doesn't know who he'd be jealous of more. "I just. I had the money coming in, and I know you guys said you would think about it, but that's not a plane ticket, that's not a gate and information and luggage tags."
He lets out a noisy breath and Brendon realizes he hasn't been breathing either. Jesus. He closes his eyes, but he can still see Spencer, spread out and wanton.
He's getting hard in his jeans and he closes his eyes, pressing his wrist against his zip and breathes and breathes and breathes.
"Tickets?" His voice is breathless again and Jon chuckles at him, warm and friendly. Brendon is still hard, standing in his kitchen and he's got the phone clenched so tightly that his fingers are starting to hurt.
"You promised you'd come for Christmas," Jon's voice is a little ragged, a little broken, and Brendon doesn't think he's ever heard him sound like that before. "You promised and I know we haven't talked about it in months, but." He lets out a breath and then another. Brendon can just see him, elbows on his knees, palm pressed against his forehead. "But I bought the tickets."
" -- Jon -- "
" -- no, hey listen," he says at the same time, voice cutting through Brendon's protests. "He needs you guys. His parents are taking the girls to Hawaii, and that's cool, they obviously told him to go with them, they even offered to go in for three extra plane tickets -- " Brendon's heart slams in his chest. Ryan would never go to Hawaii.
" -- Jon -- "
" -- Spencer said no, obviously. Spence said no so fast I thought Ginger's head was going to explode. He said you guys were going to come up here. That he had a cunning plan to convince you and, like. He can't go home. And he can't have Christmas without you -- "
"-- Jon," Brendon says, and he's panting now, not retaining any air at all. "Jon, Jon Walker, stop."
He doesn't though, and Brendon can feel the blood coursing through his veins. " -- He can't have Christmas without you."
There are unspoken words, and Brendon can feel them crawl across his skin.
"Okay," he says, voice low, imperceptible.
"Thank you," Jon's gone in the next second, and Brendon can feel his relief through a thousand miles and telephone wire.
His stomach is still in knots.
.part three.