(no subject)

[maleyka]

CONTINUED FROM HERE

21 days until showtime.

William isn't a great actor. His propensity for pouting at the camera borders on criminal and he spends so long eye-fucking his costars that his scenes progress like a snail. Like a snail doing a strip tease, maybe.

The last straw for Gerard is when William shows up ten minutes after they're supposed to start his scenes for the day; his hair is rumpled, his makeup smudged, and he's got mismatched pom-poms clenched in his fists.

"Sorry," he says thickly. "I was in the prop room. Travis thought I needed a little something." He waves the pom-poms at the group, but nobody actually believes that's what Travis thought he needed.

Gerard stands very deliberately and spends a long minute smoothing the wrinkles out of his shirt and tugging his sleeves down past the balls of his wrists.

"Fuck this shit," he says, clearly and with admirable enunciation, then walks away.

***

There are exactly two occasions on which Ryan will allow Brendon to do someone's make-up: when the make-up is being applied to Brendon himself, or when it's being applied to an extra with questionable skin care habits. Ryan points this out, followed with, "You may notice that this particular circumstance meets neither of those requirements, as I am neither you nor in possession of unfortunate skin. So the answer, Brendon, is no."

"What if I say please?" Brendon asks reasonably, the eyeliner pencil twitching between his fingers.

"No."

Brendon frowns. "I almost went to beauty school, you know. You should trust me more."

"I almost went to brain surgery school," Ryan snaps back. "Why don't you let me cut your head open?"

"God, Ryan." Brendon is whining again. Ryan kind of hates it when Brendon whines, and when he says "kind of hates it" he really means "hates it with the same fiery sensation that Pete must feel every time he pees." "It's not the same, okay? There's a difference between brain surgery and eyeliner."

"Not when you're applying it, there isn't." Ryan knows. He's seen more than one person jabbed when they find themselves at the wrong end of Brendon's makeup applicators. Worst of all, Brendon just laughs about it, like red eyes and smeared mascara and potential pinkeye are funny. Ryan would pay good money for someone to come switch out Brendon's regular coffee for decaf.

Actually, on second thought, he'd pay good money for someone to come switch out their regular Brendon with something else. Something less annoying. A jackhammer, maybe.

"Ryan."

"No," Ryan says calmly. "Go find a Cabbage Patch doll, if you want to practice your smoky eye, but you are definitely not doing it on me."

20 days until showtime.

Brendon's been reading and rereading the script. This is good for no one. He's about worn out his welcome at Casa de Wentz, having knocked on Pete's door with a "Hey, don't you think maybe," about twelve too many times. He makes notes in the margins, color coded by type. Purple is for lapses in characterization, green is for bits he thinks require too much suspension of disbelief, and blue is for places where he thinks the film could benefit from a little more Brendon. There's a lot of blue. Pete swears that he's going to create an unholy Sidekick/TiVo blend that will auto-reject Brendon's calls.

Patrick runs interference for Pete; Frank and Gerard just stab at Brendon with a Sharpie every time he comes near them with paper in his hand, but one day Brendon catches Spencer alone. And worse, in full costume; the bodysuit is freshly touched up, he's got flecks of gold ringing his eyes, Ryan has airbrushed the scales onto every visible bit of skin, and he's poring over his lines. "Gwrwar," Spencer mumbles, trying to get the intonation right. ("Wet," Gerard had urged. "Like you've been drinking from the toilet," Mikey had added helpfully. Frank's direction had been more along the lines of: "Imagine being hungry for blood. Fresh, warm, mortal blood. And then, like, gargle.")

Spencer is pretty sure that nothing Brendon says can be worse than the mental image of gargling with fresh human blood.

"I think you need to gain some weight," Brendon says, poking at Spencer's be-bodysuited tummy. "For the movie."

Spencer ruefully admits that he was wrong.

"I think you need to fuck off before I kick you in the balls," he says.

Brendon takes an automatic step backward, but stops almost immediately. "I think," he drawls, "that you totally can't kick me in the anything when you've got your flippers on."

Spencer ruefully admits that Brendon has a valid point.

"There's always later though," he says. "And I'm not gaining any weight. So if this is your way of calling me fat, you can seriously fuck off before I punch you in the face."

Not even Brendon is that stupid, and he hastens to reassure Spencer of his honest, noble intentions. "No, no, you're hot. Skinny. Svelte. Slinky. I'd totally do you."

None of this seems to be making Spencer any happier, so Brendon has to hasten a little more.

"It's just," he starts, making a vague, yet somehow purposeful gesture. "Co-eds. You eat, like, eight of them. Do you have any idea how many calories that is? I mean, you've got to figure a pound of steak is, what, like, six hundred calories? So if we assume that human flesh is comparable to cow flesh…"

Brendon pauses to do the math.

Spencer turns vibrantly green. Greener.

"Your average co-ed - for horror movie purposes, anyway - is about one hundred and fifteen pounds, right? So, times six hundred, we get… something, like, seventy-thousand calories, right?"

It's sixty-nine-thousand, actually, and you'd think that number would pop right into Brendon's head, but surprisingly, no. Spencer glares, but it's somehow less threatening when he's shimmering and wearing fake, pointed teeth. "I don't care," he says shortly, stubbornly.

But Brendon on a roll can't be stopped by mere disinterest, so he takes an earnest step forward and braces his hands on Spencer's knees, his hips angling between, making his very best eye contact. "You've eaten, like, eight co-eds. Spence, that's, like, seventy-thousand times eight? That's five-hundred-sixty-thousand calories. No way you don't put on a bit of pudge, right?"

Spencer is going to punch Brendon, he really is. "Bob," he shouts in the direction of the camera. "Bob, can we please, please re-do Brendon's death scene? Because I don't think I was convincing enough the first time. I'm really sure I can do better."

"Quiet on the set," Bob shouts back, even though they're just doing lighting checks. Bastard traitor.

"I'm not human," he points out. It's surreal, having an argument with Brendon about the metabolic processes of the amphibian menace, but it's got to be better than being force-fed protein shakes, and Spencer is pretty sure that he can see raw eggs and a blender reflected in the glint of Brendon's eyes. "So, um. No."

Brendon steps forward again, forcing Spencer's knees apart, and that is seriously, like… Spencer can feel Brendon's breath brushing his own and it tastes vaguely like ChapStick and Ray's hummus, and this is really, seriously, just, no.

"C'mon, Spence," Brendon wheedles.

"No. Seriously, no. We'll have Pete write some backstory or something. I can be the, like, bulimic amphibian menace. We'll turn the whole thing into social commentary or, fuck, I can just store up the calories for the rest of the year, but I am not - get the fuck off of me, by the way - but I am not gaining weight, fatty co-eds or no."

It's totally unfair that Brendon is, like, groping him when he's in a thin bodysuit; even though Spencer is totally not attracted to Brendon Urie, there's still the warmth of his palms on Spencer's thighs, thumbs grazing the dents above Spencer's knees and no one, literally no one, to save him.

"Spence!"

"Brendon." Spencer is searching desperately for something to say that will get Brendon to leave him the fuck alone, but in the end all he can come up with is, "I heard Pete was cutting your lines in the last scene. Like, he's bringing in his newest girlfriend or something, and she needs at least thirteen lines or she won't do anal."

Brendon flushes in outrage, shoulders spiking, hair bristling. He reminds Spencer of a cat, possibly of the psychotic feral cat that skulks around location that Bob's been trying to coax tame with little slices of beef and dishes of tuna. "What?" He hisses, and, oh yeah, just like the cat.

Spencer makes a mental note to talk to Bob about naming the thing Brendon, then nods solemnly. "I think you should talk to him about it. Here," he fishes around in his bag and emerges with his Sidekick. "You can use my phone. I think maybe Pete's not getting your calls or something. It's really weird."

***

"I don't think he even notices me," Greta says and glumly picks at the top of her muffin. "I bet I'm just, like, the girl with the hair to him. He said he liked my hair. But he said it while he was talking to Ryan, so maybe it was just about, I don't know, how he likes my hair because it's easy to style? It's just so weird. I mean, he never even tries to look down my shirt or at my ass or something. Not that I want that," she adds hurriedly, "I'm just saying, with the other guys on the set... Aren't guys that age supposed to be thinking of groping everything that moves, all the time? And be total pervs? But he never does any of that. I thought maybe he was gay, but he never checks the boys out, either, and, just, it's so weird." Greta looks up from her plate expectantly.

"Dude," Gabe says happily. "These muffins are the sex."

Yeah, Greta doesn't even know why she went to Gabe in the first place. Maybe it was just because she thought that he, of all people, would know about guys and their desire to have lots of sex. Or apparent lack thereof. Whichever.

The point is, Greta sort of likes Jon Walker. She likes his voice, and his eyes, and his hands. She spends a lot of her time watching Ryan's hands as he does her make-up, and his are slender, almost dainty, with impossibly long fingers. Jon's palms are square, compact, and he has thick fingers that felt really warm on her back when he carefully pushed past her the other day. She likes that he wears flip flops in Chicago in the spring, and that he always smiles at everyone when he catches their eye. It's like Jon never has a bad day.

She's tried all the usual stuff that magazines tell you to do: hung around the sound board, made lots of eye contact, touched his arm when they were talking. Once she even talked her mom into letting her borrow the car and asked Jon if he needed a ride home that night, fingers sweaty and too tight around the keys. He said no thank you, a friend was picking him up, but he smiled at her again and he touched her arm, and Greta's neck felt hot and prickly all the way home.

All right. Maybe she sort of likes Jon Walker a lot.

She whines to Spencer about it on their morning bike rides to set. He listens, and even makes all the appropriate noises, but he doesn't really know anything about propositioning boys. After four more days of awkward standing around and watching Jon flick switches, Greta goes to find Vicky. She doesn't even know her that well, but Vicky seems really sweet and has beautiful legs and probably gets hit on by a dozen guys every day.

Vicky laughs, but not in a mean way, and blows cigarette smoke out the side of her mouth. "Who is it?" is the first thing she asks, and Greta does her best impression of a goldfish before answering, "Jon Walker."

As it turns out, Vicky very much approves of people liking Jon Walker.

"Jon's great," she says, and her thumb is stroking the side of the cigarette like she knows something Greta doesn't.

She probably does. There's lots of stuff Greta doesn't know. Like, "How do I get him to notice me?"

Vicky's advice turns out to be a lot of knowing glances and thinly veiled references to blowjobs, which is great, except for how Greta's not really sure how to get to that part in the first place. Gabe, who pops up next to them and scares the crap out of Greta, suggests fellating all sorts of things near Jon, just to put him in the mindset. Which - you know, no, Greta's not going to walk around deep-throating a popsicle on set, no matter how much she likes Jon.

He doesn't seem the sort to go for that anyway. If he did, someone would have walked in on him and William by now.

"Maybe I could take him camping or something," she says, a little desperately. "Or just hiking, if that's too forward. Maybe a walk?" Greta tries to illustrate with her hands, and manages to snag her bracelet on her t-shirt in the process.

Vicky just looks at her with thinly veiled pity, like she doesn't quite understand how any one person can be such a disaster. And it's not - she's not, but Greta's already tried all the things that used to get her books carried in high school, and none of it is working.

(If she's honest with herself, though, she maybe has to admit that she likes Jon even better for paying absolutely no mind to... well, all of that, with the cleavage and the ass-wiggling and things.)

In the end, they settle on stepping it up a little anyway - "Just try to wear something that was made for girls," Gabe says, "borrow from Smith if you have to," right before Vicky shoves him and coolly says, "This is girl time, Saporta, get lost."

Fine. Greta can do that.

She goes through Spencer's entire collection of t-shirts over the next two weeks, but even though they seem to get smaller and sparklier with each passing day, she may as well be wearing a giant rain poncho for all the effect it seems to have on Jon. Maybe he's just honestly not interested, she thinks with a sinking heart, after he fails to check out her boobs even once over the course of a five-minute conversation. And they had a koala on them. A yellow, glittery koala, and fine, maybe Spencer's clothes are a little bit feminine.

She even finds the secret stash of shirts that Ryan bought for Spencer, the ones with frills that she can't quite button over her chest, and lacey bits that should make a man think of bedrooms and candlelight. (Greta wouldn't mind skipping the candlelight and getting right down to licking the sweat off of Jon's hip, but she'll take what she can get.) She wears one to set the day after she finds them. Jon doesn't notice, but Ryan gives her the evil eye no less than ten times. Spencer "accidentally" spills a tub of marinara sauce on her. "Whoops," he says, not looking even a little sorry. "I don't think that's coming out."

It's not. Greta spends all of her lunch break in the bathroom trying anyway, freezing in her bra and furiously wiping at her eyes. She is not going to cry because some stupid boy doesn't like her. She returns Spencer's shirts that night. "Thanks," he says, fingering the glittery belly of the Care Bear on top of the pile. "Sorry it didn't work. With Jon."

Greta's answering smile feels like it's going to wobble right off her face. "It's not a big deal," she says and stuffs both hands into her jeans pockets. "He's just Jon Walker, right? I mean, what would we even do on a date? He'd just make me sit on some park bench and tell me all about sound mixing and then take me home to meet his cat, and he'd make tea and we'd probably fall asleep on the couch before eleven and maybe he'd pet my hair."

Silently, Spencer wraps his hand around her wrist. Greta laughs weakly and can't quite make herself look up from the carpet. "Not that I've thought about it or anything."

17 days until showtime.

"Nice," Patrick says.

There's an annoying window sitting in the middle of his screen, blocking his view of most of the paragraph he's just written. It proclaims "IM HUNGRY," followed by a smiley face that prompted a whole herd of smiley faces to jump up and down in the background just now. Creepy.

Patrick takes off his glasses and rubs his tired face. "Nice, Pete" he repeats, slightly muffled through his hands. "I respect your awesome grasp on modern technology, but, you know, I'm sitting right here."

Silence. Silence with Pete seldom means that good things are about to happen. Right enough, the IM window flickers to life again and Patrick is told "WE SHOULD GET TAKEOUT."

"Oops, sorry, forgot to turn off the capslock," Pete says cheerfully, which Patrick can totally hear, because he's right there.

"I am not talking with you on IM," he informs Pete. "You are sitting five feet away. I can see the hole in your sock. This is stupid."

"come on trick" his screen flashes, and just to add insult to injury, there's another rain of smilies. Patrick hits the little "x" to close the window maybe a little harder than strictly necessary. "No," he snaps. "Quit it."

He tries to go back to the scene, but... look, he knows Pete is out there, all right, just biding his time.

Patrick's left foot twitches. Pete is a study in disinterest slumped on the carpet.

Finally, Patrick returns his fingers to the keys and taps out the next word. Still nothing.

He takes a deep breath and feels slightly guilty for going off on Pete like he did. "What kind of take-out do you want?" Patrick asks placably, and doesn't even get to the end of his sentence before: "CHINESE."

"Dude," Patrick hollers, and Pete busts out laughing his big, nerdy laugh, which is made twice as annoying by the fact that Patrick just absolutely can't stay angry with that directed at him.

Pete is still wheezing when Patrick flips his laptop shut in defeat and drops it on a stack of printouts on the coffee table. "Fine," he says grudgingly. "Fine, I give up. Get the fucking phone, we'll order take-out and watch TV."

Pete's on his feet faster than Patrick would have thought possible, exhaling a triumphant, "Yes!" and grabbing his cell from the counter as he makes his way over to the couch.

"Admit it," Pete says as he draws his legs up on the cushions. "You're grateful because I saved you from the thirty-fourth rewrite of the night." He smells like laundry detergent and hot sauce; so he did eat Patrick's last spare rib at lunch while he was distracted. Fucker.

"Yes," Patrick says dryly, but doesn't resist while Pete tugs and shoves him into whatever position that he thinks is ideal for couch-sharing purposes. "I am so glad I get to sit here with you and watch Friends re-runs."

Pete looks vaguely scandalized as he curls into Patrick's side, head butting his shoulder until Patrick slumps down even further. "Dude, come on," he says into the fabric of his hoodie. "Like there's any way you'd rather want to spend your Saturday night." His hair tickles Patrick's cheek.

And actually, no. There isn't.

15 days until showtime.

There's this twitch thing happening above Frank's eye. It's not exactly an eyebrow quirk, it's more like his eye is spasming so hard it's taking half of his face with it. Despite this, his voice is calm. "You're just not the villain of the piece," he's saying. "Spencer is. The amphibian menace."

"No, I get that," The Butcher says. "But, I mean, I don't think my character really seems like a pacifist or anything. His name is Thrash."

Well, no. You'd hardly cast The Butcher as the romantic lead. He's not really the type you look at and want to snuggle, not unless you've got some sort of weird kink for brass knuckles and being belted to a bed and fucked sideways.

Not that Gerard's ever considered it.

He colors slightly and ducks his head, barely catching it when Frank finally relents and presses his fingertips to the pulsing spot above his left eye. ""But that's the point. That the scary guy is scared of... Just, stop cracking your knuckles at the camera, please. It's messing up the sound. And try, please try to look like you're afraid of Spencer instead of looking like you're going to rip off his head and fry him up like a catfish."

"Okay," The Butcher says, looking dubious. "I'll try. But Frank, man, Smith is tiny. I'm pretty sure I could take him."

***

Spencer doesn't understand why Ryan is putting, like, make-up on him. "I'm a sea monster," he says.

"I think I know what you are," Ryan mumbles, using his teeth to wiggle his lower lip to and fro in time with the pumping of the mascara wand. "I did help design the character concept."

Spencer's not allowed to move, otherwise he'd just get up and leave. But the last time he so much as scratched his ear, Ryan made him sit in the chair an extra hour for "repairs" that had mostly just looked like going back over the same lines over and over. "Sea monsters," he says patiently, very still, "do not wear eye makeup."

Ryan pauses in his ministrations to give him a blank look. "It's waterproof, Spencer."

11 days until showtime.

Gerard is really fucking cranky. There's no real reason for it, other than it's ass o'clock in the morning, and he hasn't had any coffee, and he's standing in the school parking lot waiting for everyone else to get a fucking move on.

Actually, now that he thinks of it, that's three pretty good reasons.

A couple dozen feet away, Bob is patiently fiddling with his camera while Andy tries to coach William through a line delivery that doesn't suck. Gerard retreats as far into his hoodie as he can, shivering with chill and too early. It's grey and dreary and someone stole his chair, those fuckers, and oh yeah, apparently he's been standing in a puddle for the last five minutes without noticing. Today can blow him.

He's so distracted by his own misery he hardly notices when Frank shows up, holding two styrofoam cups and the car keys between his teeth. "For you," he mumbles and thrusts one of the cups at Gerard, coffee sloshing over the rim and dripping on the wet pavement.

There are a lot of things Gerard could ask, like why is Frank here even though they agreed he could have the morning off, and did he notice he only shaved one half of his face, and oh God, is that vanilla Gerard can smell in his coffee?

Instead, he informs Frank, "I'm standing in a puddle and my feet are wet," and tries to drink without scalding his mouth.

Frank pockets his keys and grins, a little fuzzy through the steam rising out of his cup. "Then move, dumbass."

"It's too late anyway," Gerard mutters, but follows Frank's tugging hands until he's safe on dry land, if a little awkwardly close to Frank. He can smell his toothpaste and the last remnants of campfire smoke clinging to yesterday's jacket. There are pillow creases on his cheek. Gerard swallows and focuses on his drink instead.

"Hey, how did you even get these?" he asks a little belatedly. "Starbucks is ten minutes in the wrong direction."

Frank doesn't answer, just clears his throat and pulls the hem of his sweater down lower. "This weather's nasty, man," he says eventually, not looking at Gerard, instead squinting at Andy who seems to have achieved a breakthrough if the excited whooping is anything to go by. "It's fucking cold. May should not be this cold."

Gerard doesn't contradict him. He hums his agreement, even though his entire left side feels warm and cozy where he's pressed against Frank.

10 days until showtime.

"We don't have any cookies in here," Spencer yells, spraying bits of cookie everywhere.

"I can smell them," Brendon wails, and the doorknob twists rapidly through the small range of movement the lock allows. "They smell like love."

"They smell like cinnamon," Ryan corrects him loudly, breaking his in half, and Spencer stops eating long enough to holler, "Go away!"

The door stops its plaintive rattling and there's the soft slither and heavy thump of Brendon hitting the floor, holding his position outside. They've got serious matters to discuss though. Special Ryan and Spencer matters that nobody else is allowed to hear.

Ryan flicks on the radio, even though the only station they get reception for in the make up room is Spanish news. "We should talk about your love life," he says.

"We should talk about yours," Spencer corrects. "Pete wants to go out with you."

"Well, I don't want to go out with him. You, on the other hand, totally want to go out with Bob Bryar."

Color rises high in Spencer's cheeks and he fumbles the cookie in his hand, accidentally snapping it in two. "That's stupid," he says. "Bob's straight. And he has a girlfriend."

"Well, you're stupid. And Bob only sort of has a girlfriend. And he looks at you all the time. And he carries you to the set and did I mention you're stupid?" Ryan feels like he's really presenting a cohesive argument here.

"I'm not," Spencer counters. "I mean, fine, I like him or whatever, but Ryan, he's straight. I mean, he said so. He talks to me about his girlfriend all the time just, like, randomly."

Ryan sighs and hops up on the counter, mouth full of cookie. Spencer is an idiot. In all his life, he's never known Spencer to be so fucking stupid. "God. You're so stupid."

He watches interestedly while Spencer fidgets out of the chair and over to the cookie tin. He wraps up a cookie in a napkin and goes to shove it under the door for Brendon. Yep. Idiot.

"Not," Spencer says again.

Ryan is unmoved. "Are too."

He's also unmoved by the hand gesture Spencer makes to try to wipe the conversation of the topic of Bob Bryar, but he's pretty sure that if Spencer went and made it in front of him, it would be as good as wearing a button that said: "I am here for gay sex with you now, thanks."

"You should go out with Pete," Spencer says abruptly, though maybe not completely out of the blue, considering he's grabbed his copy of the script on the way back from his pity-cookie'ing.

"No, I really shouldn't."

"He's cute."

"Not cute enough."

"Um. He's funny?"

"Looking."

Finally, Spencer begs. "Ryan, please. Please go out on a date with Pete. He keeps giving me script rewrites, Ryan. I can't say these things. He's punishing me. Punishing me for being friends with you, Ryan, please."

"I am not sleeping with Pete Wentz," Ryan says serenely.

"I didn't-" Spencer tilts his head at Ryan, which looks a little funny when he's in full make-up and a hoodie, still brandishing the rewrites - filled with such treasures as "I shall polish my amphibian teeth with your bones; your pain will make them shine like gemstones," since Pete's revenge rhymes an awful lot - and making pleasepleaseohmygodplease eyes at Ryan all at once. "Wait, you put out on the first date?"

7 days until showtime.

Professor Conrad is supposed to drop by on the second to last day of shooting to see if they're really done. There's an air of nervous anticipation about the set that morning; Patrick drops his binder on someone's foot no fewer than three times, Vicky forgets all her lines and Gerard accidentally draws on himself with Sharpie even more than usual.

They get through the whole morning without anyone in sight. Eleven o'clock comes and goes, so does noon, and then one, and finally Frank gives up and calls lunch break. If Professor Conrad shows up this late, he'll just have to watch them eat.

They gather around the back steps to the main building out of habit, leaning against sun-warm bricks and balancing paper plates on their knees. There's less talk than normal, though; everyone keeps glancing in the direction of the parking lot, expecting to see Conrad's beat-up Pontiac creeping around the corner. (It's been suggested - by Pete mostly - that the Pontiac doesn't actually have an engine, it's just Conrad pushing a pedal powering the whole thing. This theory was formed halfway through their second semester when they first saw an angry line of honking Professor-cars waiting behind Conrad, who pulled out of the parking lot at what looked to be about three miles an hour. The Dean of Admissions nearly rear-ended him.)

"Maybe he got lost," Brendon offers and comes close to plunging his knife into Ryan's sleeve. Jon looks like he's about to say something sage and reassuring, except at that moment everybody's head whips around at the sound of screeching tires.

It's not Professor Conrad. Professor Conrad doesn't drive a silver sports car, especially not at that speed. Professor Conrad doesn't leave rubber tracks halfway across the parking lot. Professor Conrad also - the last time they checked - wasn't small and blonde and female.

They watch, transfixed, as their mystery woman locks the car behind her and clacks across the pavement, wearing heels that make Greta wince in sympathy. "Hello," she calls as she's getting closer, faint traces of some sort of accent clinging to her words. "Hello, are you the students shooting the movie?"

As it turns out, Professor Conrad is at home with a sprained ankle. Professor Ivarsson will be "just as good, though," she assures them and crushes the cigarette she hastily sucked down under the sole of her boot. She stretches to her full height - which is not very impressive at all; Frank seems to tower over her - and sharply claps her hands once. "So, who wants to show me around?"

The dubious honor falls to Gerard, who looks mildly terrified and, almost as an afterthought, grabs a hold of Greta's sleeve to tug her along. Greta manages to stuff most of the rest of her sandwich into her mouth before being forcibly parted from her plate, which very nearly ends up in Travis's lap. She doesn't get to apologize, since Professor Ivarsson is marching along at a pretty strident pace that even Gerard has to rush a little to keep up with. Greta's busy chewing and swallowing and trying not to lose her breath at the same time, so she's just listening for the first few minutes while Gerard nervously explains that, yes, they shoot most of their scenes at school, but they've also done some stuff out here in the park -

"You know, the, uh, amphibian menace, that is Spencer, Spencer Smith, and he's the amphibian... he's the menace, um, he needs a lake, obviously, to crawl out of," Gerard explains, and he's getting twitchier with every word while Professor Ivarsson 'hmm's and surveys the mess of cable rolls, unused equipment and discarded costumes that litters the ground near where they filmed the last scene.

Greta feels so bad for Gerard. This is like the time Amanda Palmer - whom Gerard had ineptly and fruitlessly pursued for most of freshman year - winked at him in line for registration, and Gerard went really pale and backed right into Bob, and then fled ("He's gonna lock himself in his room and draw vampires for, like, three hours now to calm down," Mikey had said, sounding halfway between bored and exasperated).

"It's coming along really great," she jumps in, just because it feels like Gerard could use the back-up. "I mean, we're doing great with our shooting schedule, and the atmosphere is great, and..." And maybe she could just say "great" a few more times. Greta shuts her mouth again. To her left, Gerard is nodding so fervently she wouldn't be surprised if his head popped off his neck any second.

Professor Ivarsson stares at them both silently. Greta has no idea what it is - she's not even unfriendly or anything, just inscrutable - but she's making her really fucking nervous. Greta's starting to sweat a little.

At long last, Professor Ivarsson says, "I am happy to hear that," and starts walking further towards the lake. It's a nice day, and the water glitters between the trees. Greta smiles and nudges Gerard's arm with her own as she starts to follow.

5 days until showtime.

It must be going on five in the morning, and the McDonald's is almost completely deserted. There's just them, the girl behind the counter (snapping her gum and drumming her fingernails against the plastic counter, tick tick tick) and the occasional rumble of a car engine going through the drive-through, loudspeaker crackling to life in the back.

They're done. Done, done done. They pulled an all-nighter to do it, but the last take was an hour ago, and they locked everything away and went home. Done. Gerard isn't quite sure how he feels about that yet.

He rests his head in his hands against the glaring fluorescent light; his fingers are cold and smell like cheap candy from the bathroom soap. When he resurfaces, feeling slightly nauseous on top of the exhaustion making his head swim, Frank is bounding toward the table with a full tray, looking disgustingly chipper for the hour.

He must have really dozed off for a while. It's much lighter out than it was last time Gerard looked, a feeble sort of blue-grey that makes Frank look a little bit sickly as he drops into his chair. "Breakfast of champions," he announces, dropping a box in front of Gerard. It lands with an unappetizing thump.

Gerard pulls a face and sinks lower in his chair. He thinks he can see the sun come up between two buildings on the other side of the street, faint pink creeping along the horizon. His fingers itch for a pen or a brush to hold, even though he never really was a sunrise-and-puffy-clouds kinda guy. More like a zombies-and-bloodbath kinda guy. It's not until Frank swallows and says, "Stop rambling and eat your fucking, your McMuffin thing," that Gerard realizes he's been talking out loud. He really needs to stop doing that.

There's a few minutes of silence while Frank noisily eats his breakfast and Gerard tries to ignore his own. "So," Gerard says finally, stirring the melting ice in his Coke with his straw, "remember that time we had sex?"

And, uh, actually that's not what he meant to say. Gerard's pretty sure what he meant to say had something to do with the last day of shooting, or maybe the ketchup stain near Frank's elbow. It definitely wasn't about... the thing they don't talk about. Except he just totally talked about it. Gerard should maybe go to the mall this weekend and invest in a good ball gag.

Frank doesn't say anything at first, but Gerard's pretty sure he can see his chewing slow and his hand grip the napkin a little tighter. "Yes, let's," Frank says eventually, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Gerard tries to not notice the way his fingertips are glistening with grease and fails. "Let's please talk about that, right here in this shitty McDonald's."

"Sorry," Gerard mumbles down at the sticky crumble of his breakfast. It looks about as appealing as the conversation he's just dropped onto them out of nowhere. Maybe more. "I just," he starts, snagging the jelly and slathering it on top of his food. Oh, hey, now it looks like it's bleeding. Delicious. "Look, it was a mistake. I just wanted to say that it was a mistake, okay? Like, a really huge one." There's a little tickle at the back of his throat that insists that's not what he wanted to say at all, but he forges on. "Huge. Really huge. Mistake."

Silence. Gerard chokes down a bite of food and finally makes himself look at Frank. There's something he thinks he sees on his face right then, something that kind of makes his stomach feel funny in a not so good way. Maybe that's just the jelly though.

He opens his mouth, but then Frank is grinning and saying, "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. C'mon, let's go, I'm beat," and he grabs the tray and shuffles out of their booth, and if he doesn't quite meet Gerard's eyes through any of it, it doesn't mean anything, right.

Gerard looks down at his soggy, bloody, cooling breakfast and feels even queasier than before.

Friday. 3 days until showtime.

It feels like the worst sort of narcissism, the editing process. Spencer is the best at it; they'd no more give the reels to someone else for post production than they would trust the camera to someone other than Bob or the script to anyone but Pete and Patrick, but this is the first time he's had to edit a feature length amount of footage of himself. And there's the agonizing decisions, places where he thinks the delivery was better in the take where his ass looks a bit flat; balancing vanity with artistic integrity isn't something he'd really wish upon his very worst enemy, thanks.

He's been at it for twenty-eight hours straight, curled up in Bob's giant beanbag chair because they can access the school's wireless from Bob and Ray's apartment and all of the footage is stored on the college server, just in case. Ryan drops by a few times and tries to lure him away with promises of food or a shower, but Spencer's been ignoring Ryan off and on since the days when ladies bent over them in the sandbox and said, "Oh, what gorgeous little girls," so that's pretty ineffective.

Pete's technique is more along the lines of tugging at Spencer's zipper while murmuring dirty promises and suggestions that the proof is in the pudding into the curve of Spencer's neck. Spencer vaguely remembers biting Pete.

Bob just brings fresh bottles of water and the occasional designer pastry from Ray's Tasting Menu project. There'd been steak tartar in there somewhere too; Spencer can sort of still taste it in the ridges of his molars.

He just doesn't know how to edit other than in one long stretch. That isn't going to do him any good in the job market, he knows, but he just can't step away from it. Can't sleep when he's sure that he's jumped the splice at 4:52 or that the audio goes wonky at 17:46, or was it 47:16? Theoretically, he can stop to shower, but every time he means to get up and go do it he gets distracted by a flaw in the synch or a mislabeled clip or realizes that someone's sleeves are all wrong in the footage he's using, or one of Pete's skanky "extras" calls Brendon "Brendon" instead of "Paul" and then he obviously has to stay and fix it because otherwise, he might forget to do it altogether. It's like having everyone's final grade in his hands. No matter how much work they'd put in, if the final product is shit, then the whole project fails.

Still, he's sure - pretty sure - that he has a final cut. A rough final cut. A cut that is good enough, maybe, to show the rest of the group. Spencer stretches his arms above his head, yawning, his wrists tight, the ache in his ass suddenly insistent, the stiffness through his heels unbearable for the first time in a good ten hours.

Bob stirs from where he's been dozing, sprawled across his bed with his face pressed into V for Vendetta. He mumbles Spencer's name and it does a little something, makes Spencer's stomach curl up like Brendon the cat napping on Bob's back. "Time it is?" Bob asks, a little more clearly than the unconscious string of lisping that had been Spencer's name.

"Two." The clock on the computer claims that it's a.m., which makes a certain amount of sense, since he started at ten o'clock Wednesday night. "Morning. I'm starving. Where's everyone?"

There'd been a constant stream through the apartment, and God knows nobody in this group keeps rational hours anyway, so Spencer kind of thought there'd at least be a few of them around when he finished, not just him and Bob in the dim, too-cool back bedroom. He struggles to his feet, staggering and falling onto the bed. Brendon yowls and scrambles away; Spencer claims his spot, curling up and nestling his head into the faint curve of Bob's back. Very faint. Bob seems to be made of muscle, long, smooth planks of it without a whole lot of definition. More for use than show, Spencer muses deliriously, traipsing his fingers across the stretch of Bob's shirt.

If he notices when Bob freezes, he chalks it up to sleep deprivation and the stop-motion process of the last day or so. Spencer has been working in pauses for too long to find them surprising. He just mentally tacks the next scene on and waits patiently for it to start: Spencer asks. Bob answers. Pan across the empty bed when Bob and Spencer leave. Establishing exterior shot of their destination. Extreme close up of interior details. Zoom out. Rack focus. Audio cue. Fade into dialogue.

***

Bob reaches gingerly for his phone, careful, careful not to dislodge the pile of sleepy Spencer. "Denny's, last I heard. They said they'd text me when they were leaving, but I got nothing… Pete's got his DVD player. Do you have a rough cut?"

"I do," Spencer confirms, a bit dreamily. "And I've got a powerful need for pancakes, but you will probably have to carry me, Bob Bryar. It will be worth it, I promise, your name is very prominent in the credits, and I will let you feed me pancakes. Really, there's no way for you to lose."

"Oh, well, in that case." Bob smiles over his shoulder, chances a roll so that Spencer's head is on his stomach and his fingers are threading into the fall of Spencer's hair. It's a little cold under Bob's hand, lank and oily. He doesn't mind. "Do you want to shower first?" And can I join you?

It has to be the fact that they don't exactly snuggle often, Bob and Spencer. That has to be why, when Spencer shifts and climbs upward to check the computer screen, Bob's heart flutters through a beat or two, stops entirely for another three, races a bit to make up the lost time. Because it's not snuggling, just a means to an end, right? That's why Spencer's collarbone is hovering just above Bob's mouth, shadowed and if he just shifts forward a bit, if he can just lift his head he can lick -

"Half an hour," Spencer mutters.

Bob freezes, head halfway lifted. "What?"

"Burning. The DVD is burning, but I set it a bit slow for quality purposes, so I figure I've got about half an hour to shower and stuff, then it'll be done and we can take off. I'll call - no," he shakes his head, "no, Ryan gives me a headache on the phone. You'll call -"

Probably Bob shouldn't be so fucking pleased that Spencer is just, like, relying on him.

"- you'll call, right? Tell them we'll be there in forty?"

Spencer scowls, and it's a much more familiar expression than the dreamy snuggling. Bob kinda wonders what it looks like when Spencer scowls naked. Except for how he totally doesn't, since he's straight and sort of has a girlfriend. Sort of. "And tell them," Spencer is saying, "if they don't have my goddamn pancakes on the table when I get there that I'll stab them with a spork. Or just recut the movie so they all look really fat. And like hacks. Fat hacks."

Bob kind of really likes Spencer's unbalanced sense of revenge.

He calls Ryan while Spencer is in the shower. "He's done," he says, stacking empty water bottles high in his arms and using his toes to fish out a plate that's somehow crammed itself under his bed. "And he wants pancakes. We'll be there in twenty, so have them on the table, yeah?"

There's silence at the other end, and if Bob were more observant he might feel the phone warming from the heat of Ryan's outrage. "I think," Ryan snaps, "that I might have some idea how to take care of my best friend, but thanks so very much for your input, Bob."

And he does. The pancakes are on the table when they get to Denny's, exactly the way Spencer likes them: one chocolate-chip sandwiched between two buttermilk and Ryan's even made a smiley face out of Spencer's sausage. The hash browns are on a separate plate; the root beer float is frosty and just a little melty. "Oooh," Spencer moans, sliding out from under Bob's arm and into his seat. It's next to Ryan, and it doesn't escape Bob's notice that the only other empty chair is across and somewhat further down the table.

Spencer has taken the time to blow dry his hair, but not particularly well, so it flops a bit aimlessly around his ears. Ryan tucks it back, his fingers gentle. "I love you all," Spencer declares around the first bite. "Really. Please don't take my food away if you hate the cut, you guys, I might cry."

Zack, who Ryan has apparently deemed appropriate to sit on Spencer's other side, seizes his fork and brandishes it at the table. "That'll never happen, Smith. They'll have to climb over my cold, dead body first."

"Well that won't work," Mikey says thoughtfully. "Where will we find a ladder at this time of night?"

Bob slips Pete the DVD in the ensuing chaos of napkin-throwing. Pete tugs his portable DVD player out of his bag and gets it set up. At the first strains of the intro, everyone reshuffles madly until they're all gathered around Spencer's side of the table, watching the DVD play from atop its makeshift pedestal of water glasses and a serving tray. Bob ends up two people behind Spencer and Ryan, watching Ryan cut Spencer's pancakes into pieces when Spencer gets too absorbed in the cut to remember eating. It's easy to forget, what with both of them being so fucking bitchy all the time, but they can be so sweet too.

The movie's really good.

Beyond that, it feels kind of intimate, watching it. Spencer has read Bob's mind in a lot of places, selecting the takes he would have selected, butting them together so that scene flows into scene like a caress. They'd made this.

We'll, they'd all made this, but Bob can see now that he's framed every shot like a love letter to Spencer Smith, and Spencer's put it together like he understands, like he's answering back. He's put in the throw-aways, the panoramas Bob did because the sunset was too beautiful to resist, the shot he took of Spencer silhouetted against the dawn because Spencer was too beautiful to resist.

And fuck, but he feels exposed. He watches silently, ears burning, and doesn't even notice that Zack is beside him until he feels the tap on his shoulder.

"Switch with me," Zack whispers. "I'm too tall to be in front. And Spencer wants to sit with you anyway."

Zack prods him out of his seat, mouth in its customary straight line, but his eyes are smirking like Pete's. Now Bob really feels exposed, but it doesn't stop him from hunching his way to the front and sliding in next to Spencer.

Spencer cuddles in, leaning on Bob the way he usually does on Ryan. "Do you like it?" He whispers, and if he really means "Do you like me?", well, that's a question for another day. When he's had, you know, sleep.

"I more than like it," Bob answers, and he's maybe answering the other question too. (Ryan rolls his eyes because seriously, there have never been two denser people on the face of the planet. Not even Pete and Patrick, because at least Pete tries to hit that.)

"Why don't you offer Bob your sausage?" Ryan suggests sweetly, and on-screen Brendon says, "You have to learn to read between the lines, Emily."

***

"The movie's really good," Patrick says to his ceiling.

From somewhere in the general vicinity of his pillow, Pete's voice agrees.

"Like," Patrick says, though he's talking to the wall above Pete this time, "it's really good. I mean, I'm kind of impressed."

Pete's arm, tanned and smooth and peppered with tattoos, emerges from under Patrick's covers. Patrick watches it, bemused, while it gropes for and finds him, then fists its hand in his shirt. "Patrick," Pete mumbles, muffled by sleep and God only knows how many layers of bedding and pillows. "Shut the fuck up."

Patrick's room is dark. There's just the red glow of the electronics: Patrick's VCR, the battery lights on their laptops, the glow of their charging phones, the thin slices of neon from the pizza parlor across the street. Patrick rolls toward Pete, onto his side; the hand fisted in his shirt clenches, loosens, settles flat and light on his chest.

"I'm still not having sex with you?" Patrick says, immediately cursing the lilt at the end that makes it sound like a question.

The mound of blankets shakes and wiggles until Pete's eyes appear above the top of it. He looks all pupils in the night, dark and liquid and the blankets drop further until there's the flash of white against his skin, his amusement tangibly bright. "I'm still not asking you to."

Instead of an answer he wouldn't know how to phrase, Patrick drops his head on the pillow next to Pete's. It's not disappointment stirring in his belly. It's not.

He goes to sleep with Pete's warm breath in his ear.

***

Bob kind of admires Greta's can-do spirit. She's been after Jon for so long that he's pretty sure everyone else has forgotten that she didn't always swing by the sound board first thing in the morning with coffee, that there was a time when she didn't stop and lecture every mirror she saw with hope in her eyes.

Or hell, maybe they're just used to it, maybe he's doing it too. God knows he raced Zack for the chance to give Spencer his piggy back ride to set every day.

At least half a dozen times he's had to resist the urge to pull Greta aside and try to sympathize with her. "His hands," he wants to say. "God, his hands. And his little shirts and the way he smiles at you like you've just given him a basket full of puppies or something." Bob needs girlfriends at this point. Someone he can go tell, "I think he kissed me today. Or maybe I just jostled him and his mouth hit my neck, but the floor was really smooth and I'm really careful so I think maybe it was that he kissed me for a second and not just that I'm a clumsy oaf."

It's humiliating.

He tries saying this to Ray Tuesday night, but Ray just laughs at him. "You're not clumsy," he says. "You're an idiot."

Duh.

Bob twirls some of Ray's delicious lemony pasta around his fork, but his heart isn't in it and the pile collapses into a sad little twist on his plate. "It's stupid to like him, I know. You're right. I'm an idiot."

"Man," Ray says pityingly. "You're really an idiot." He smacks Bob across the back of his head and plops down backward on the chair across from him. Ray has his hair combed back into a tight ponytail and a joke apron from last Christmas that makes him look like he's wearing Mrs. Claus's dress, and yet he somehow pulls off haughty. Fucking chefs. "Bryar. Bob, you told him you were straight."

Did he? No, he totally didn't. Why would he have said that? "Did not."

"Yes. At the diner? You said 'I'm straight' and then 'I have a girlfriend' and then you bolted for the door. What the hell do you expect to happen? You think the scrawny, sexually ambiguous teenager is going to ask the big, scary straight guy out on a date?"

Which is. Well. Huh. "Huh."

"Man." If Bob didn't loved Ray so much right then, he'd punch him in the arm for the way he is looking at him. "Eat your pasta. Ask the boy out. Quit being such a pussy."

Words to live by. But Ray has never tried to ask out Spencer Smith, who's always surrounded by either a group of his fey little friends or some weird invisible force field that turns Bob into a stuttering idiot.

"I like your shirt," he says Friday, after they've all gotten some sleep and met back at set for the first day of clean-up, instead of saying "I like you," the way he'd planned.

Spencer looks down at his shirt, which is white and features such impressive design details as: sleeves and a pocket. "Um. Thanks?"

Saturday he strides right up to Spencer and says, "Do you go to the movies?" But before Spencer can answer one way or another, Bob's talking again and ruining it all. "I don't. I mean, I do, but I shouldn't. I used to, but I think I'm allergic to popcorn since I kept breaking out in hives."

It's never, ever going to happen. He's almost resigned himself to giving up when he arrives on Sunday and runs into... Whoa. Greta and her really big, really ugly sweater.

"Nice sweater," Ryan deadpans, but Bob knows him well enough by now to know that he's really saying "Are you aware that a llama has up and died on your chest?"

"Shut up," Greta says. She looks weird and bruised around the eyes. "This is our last day together, and I'll never see him again, and he doesn't like me, okay? Stupid Jon Walker doesn't like me, but this sweater does. It feels like the fabric is hugging me."

Ryan's nobody's fool, so he backs off quickly, almost stepping into Jon who's on his way in with what looks like another container of cookies. He's quickly accosted and relieved of most of his burden by Brendon, who immediately scampers off somewhere, presumably to consume at least half of them while hiding under a table. Someday, someone needs to hold an intervention. It just won't be Bob.

"Hey man," he greets Jon distractedly. Greta hunches her shoulders and turns half away from them, hair falling forward to shield her face like a curly blonde curtain. Bob feels an acute stab of sympathy.

Jon smiles and drops the boxes Brendon left him. "Raisins in the bottom one," he tells Bob and starts spreading them out when his attention seems to be caught by Greta's purple monstrosity to the left. Oh God, it's almost like it's moving on its own.

"Nice sweater," Jon says, and Bob wants to jump in and defend poor Greta, because that could be him in the purple sweater... well, maybe not in that sweater, because the color is really fucking ugly and actually it sort of looks like it's got shoulder pads or something - whatever, the point is, Bob and Greta are united in misery, and Bob's got a sharp retort all ready to go, except. Except Jon's tone is sort of shockingly earnest. And, fuck, he's blushing. Just a little, at the top of his cheeks, but definitely blushing.

"The color," Jon says, and then clears his throat and tugs on his bangs and shuffles his feet in rapid succession, "that color is really nice on you. It makes your skin look all... lovely. Like, pink. And yellow. Not like real yellow, more like, uh, golden. Peach."

Bob can't help but look on in slack-jawed fascination.

Greta is staring at Jon, and her skin's maybe less pink and peach than glowing brick red right then. "Uh," she says, but Jon, cookies forgotten on the table, will obviously not be deterred. "And it's fuzzy," he adds, forging ahead even though the color in his cheeks is starting to rival Greta's. His tiny lisp crops up on the "z" sound, and Bob can see Greta mimic it soundlessly, one of her hands coming up to tuck loose curls behind her ear. The over-large cuff slips down over her wrist, and Jon's eyes linger there in a way that's...

"I have to go," Bob blurts out, but he could just as well be doing the Macarena. Nobody's listening to him. "I'll just, yeah." He waves his hands and tries to get the hell out in a way that doesn't involve mowing down Joe and Travis who are passing outside the door with equipment boxes.

So, there's that. And then there's the fact that Greta's right, they're done, and then there's the break and what if they don't both get into Film III and isn't Bob Bryar a man? Didn't he start growing a beard when he was 14 and take more masculinity-proving soccer balls to the crotch than he can count? Yes. Yes he did.

And he knows exactly where Spencer is, he's been listening to him giggle with Pete and Ryan while they break down the last sets for almost an hour now, so he resolutely steels his nerve and goes right over. No time to hesitate now - he's become a man of action.

"Spencer," he says, pressing his knuckles to the hard wood of the table that used to hold William's shrine so he can see the flecks of gold in Spencer's eyes. "I am definitely not straight and I would like you to go out with me. On a date." He wants to leave no question that this is a date, that's for sure.

And there's that smile, the one that plumps Spencer's cheeks and makes all the lights flicker like a power surge. It's an answer of sorts, but he'd like everything on the table. Erm, so to speak. Pete titters. Ryan just sighs and knocks his shoulder into Spencer's. "Spence," he says. "Please tell the nice boy you've had a crush on for two months that you will go out with him so that he will stop looming over us."

"Yes," Spencer says. He reaches up and smoothes the collar of Bob's shirt down. "Yes. Whenever. Wherever. Tonight?"

"Tonight. Tonight is good. Tonight is great. I will definitely come pick you up tonight." He wants to invite himself to drive Spencer home, wants to sit in his living room while he gets dressed just to be sure he doesn't change his mind, but that's probably a little intense for a first date. Plus, he has to go home and die first, because he's going out with Spencer Smith. "Seven?" He can die and resurrect by seven, no problem.

Spencer glances sideways at Ryan. Ryan takes a quick, critical look at Spencer's hair and shakes his head. "Seven-fifteen?" Spencer asks. Ryan nods and Bob's stomach rolls over like one of Pete's conquests. Seven-fifteen is officially the best time ever.

"Seven-fifteen," he confirms. "I will definitely be there. And I will feed you and entertain you somehow." And then he will put his arms around him and kiss him until he can feel that smile lighting him up from the inside, but he thinks it might be smarter not to say that part in front of Spencer's mom. Who is otherwise known as Ryan Ross.

***

They do kiss. They kiss when Spencer leans against Bob's car and tilts his face up; the streetlights catch the specks of glitter that always wind up in Spencer's eyelashes from his t-shirts and Ryan's helping hands, gilding little spots into the corners of his vision. There's a breeze that lifts the cricket's drone to their ears and they're far enough from the El that the roar and rattle fades to a dull throb.

He can't hear much past the whoosh of blood through his ears and the rapid beat of his heart anyway, because Bob steps in and folds his hands over Spencer's shoulders. He has these huge, warm hands. They're like paws, practically, wide and calloused from something or other. Manliness, maybe. Spencer feels the rough scrape of Bob's thumb on his pulse and he flattens his palms on Bob's stomach, slides them up with his fingers splayed until he's curving the tips over the rough slash of Bob's collarbones.

"Hey, you," he breathes, but he's been waiting months to do this and that's all the foreplay he needs. His hands are moving of their own accord anyway, over Bob's neck, threading through the glinty gold of Bob's hair. It matches the swimming spots in his vision, lit up as it is by the streetlight.

And he's romanticizing the moment, he knows, but it feels kinda big and he thinks it deserves a bit of grandeur. Plus, he's the kind of boy who wears girls' clothes, so he's allowed.

The romance holds strong through the first press of their lips, but it pretty much falls by the wayside when Bob rubs his hands down Spencer's sides and catches Spencer's lip between his teeth, the cold nub of his lip-ring jutting into Spencer's chin.

So they kiss. ("Oh my God, did we kiss," Spencer tells Ryan later.) They kiss bent over the car. They kiss until Spencer fumbles to open the door behind him and as he fists his hands in Bob's shirt to tug him down into the back seat and while Bob pretends that Spencer's tugging has any effect whatsoever on his equilibrium. They kiss, folded and tangled up across the ridges of Bob's backseat until the moon is low in the sky and every high school curfew they used to have is long past and Ryan calls and leaves a bitchy voicemail because he wants details.

They keep kissing until Spencer feels like he's lined his mouth with cotton and taken a scouring pad to his lips. He feels amazing.

"I was very entertained," he says when they kiss again, on his doorstep this time. "You did a good job."

He can't seem to convince his hands to let go of Bob's shirt, but Bob can't seem to get his fingers out of Spencer's belt loops, so he figures they're about even. "You should do a good job again sometime."

"Sometime soon," Bob says, and his stubble tickles Spencer's neck when he nods, "Very soon."

Guh.

"Very, very soon."

CONTINUES HERE