fic: Let the Future Come into Each Moment (1/4)
FINALLY. \o/
Title: Let the Future Come into Each Moment
Author: saramir
Band (Pairing): Panic at the Disco (Jon/Spencer, pre-Brendon/Ryan), with cameo appearances from members of Fall Out Boy and Empires.
Rating & Word Count: NC-17; 28,000 words.
Disclaimer: Don't own them, don't know them, don't actually know how to predict the future. If you are or know any of these people then, oh god, please do not read this (completely fictional) story; we do not want me dying of embarrassment, yeah?
Summary: In July 2017, the four of them release The Past's Future Possibilities, their sixth studio album. Rolling Stone has judged it as "a valiant attempt to be historically and politically conscious from a band who obviously is neither," and Alternative Press calls them "geniuses, in that they would have to be a certain type of brilliant in order to so swiftly alienate this many fans with a single album."
Author's Notes: Title snagged from "Be Here Now" by Mason Jennings. Written as a (terribly late) Christmas gift for witheveryspark, and she, nova33, & infinitenights were my amazingly helpful and supportive betas.
Julie darling, we both know that Brendon/Spencer are the pairing of my heart, but I wanted to try writing your OTP as a thank you for prompting me to fall in love with these silly boys last summer, and simply because I love you a lot. Thank you, thank you, thank you for beta-ing your own gift when I ruined the surprise; honestly, I would not have been able to get through this process and post this fic without your support. *hugs*
This fic would have gone absolutely nowhere without the encouragement of nova33. Elena, seriously, you are such a thoughtful beta and a fantastic friend. Plus, you helped to soothe my nerves early on when I had my silly insecure freak-outs about this unexpectedly becoming my first complete Panic fic, and I cannot thank you enough for any of that. ♥, you.
And, finally, a huge thanks to infinitenights because, Bethany, I cannot express how happy I am that you've been falling in love with these ridiculous dorks this year. Sharing in the Panic-love with you makes me enjoy it even more, and I am especially grateful for all of your enthusiastic feedback on your OTP's subplot when I realized they had been flirting behind my back and totally wanted to get into each other's pants eventually. ;-P
For the record: here are all four Panic boys as drunken boyfriends, and here are Jon and Spencer as husbands.
* * * * * * *
Over the years, they've compiled lists on scraps of paper and strands of memory: What would the band call themselves now if they could take back the name Panic at the Disco? They'd never actually pull a Prince or a Puff Daddy and change their name entirely, but what if?
In July 2017, the four of them release The Past's Future Possibilities, their sixth studio album. Rolling Stone has judged it as "a valiant attempt to be historically and politically conscious from a band who obviously is neither," and Alternative Press calls them "geniuses, in that they would have to be a certain type of brilliant in order to so swiftly alienate this many fans with a single album."
On their consequent summer tour, Ryan begins introducing the band by a different name each night they go on stage. Impulsive and pissed off about critics, one night in Louisiana when they step onstage, he surprises the rest of them by announcing, "Good evening, ladies and gents of New Orleans. We are The Magical Fax Machines, and this is a new song we're working on about moss."
Jon laughs so hard he misses playing the entire first verse, which is supposed to be only bass and vocals, so it turns into Brendon singing a cappella while making funny faces at Jon and trying not to laugh.
Spencer bursts out laughing so abruptly that he falls off his stool and can't sit back at his kit and properly play until Brendon has already made it through the second chorus.
*
Spencer's not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the past few weeks of their sparse North American tour, they've started building on material for their next album.
Jon keeps joking that it's going to be a concept album -- about plants, of all things.
Actually, they're already tossing around the title Tripping the Wasted Vine, from a line in one of Ryan's new songs about invasive plant species of Southern Appalachia. He's been filling up entire notebooks with lyrics about the flora in every location they pass through, buying books from the Local Interest sections of every bookshop he can find on the road, books with titles like Remarkable Plants of Texas: Uncommon Accounts of Our Common Natives and Plant Life of Kentucky: An Illustrated Guide to the Vascular Flora.
If Ryan hadn't always been a bit eccentric, Spencer might be questioning his sanity right now. As it is, he just wonders why the hell Ryan's suddenly turned to learning about plants as therapy or whatever.
"Somebody's gotta speak for them," Ryan says, hunched over his laptop in the back lounge of their bus, when Spencer finally asks what's up with the plant obsession. "They're dying, duh."
"Dude. Really? Please tell me we're not going to have an entire album of songs from the point of view of, like, daisies or something." Spencer stares at him, jaw dropped slightly in an incredulous expression.
Ryan just stares back at him. After a long silence, he says, "Well, not daisies," then turns back to his laptop.
Spencer covers his face with his hands and groans into his palms. "Look," he says, dropping his hands. "Just because we tried speaking for--" He flutters a hand about, trying to figure out the phrase he's looking for. "--The People, or whatever, and it didn't really work--"
"No. It didn't," Ryan says curtly, keeping his eyes on the computer screen.
Spencer pauses and just looks at him for a moment, bony shoulders beneath a thread-bare brown sweater, hair cut short and curling a little behind his ears, and face more tired than Spencer's seen in a long time.
"Okay," he concedes slowly. "If that's what you're writing, then that's what we'll try."
Ryan types something into his computer and doesn't respond, but Spencer can see the slight shift in his shoulders, the breath that relaxes them.
*
The next morning, they're driving northeast through Mississippi.
Spencer's been trying to sleep in, but Brendon keeps singing a rough version of a song he and Jon have been writing called "Heliotrope Blues." Spencer's pretty sure it's rooted in Ryan's work-in-progress about seasonal depression and immortal sunflowers, and Brendon's running through it for at least the seventh time today.
After two more verses, Spencer hears Brendon wander past his bunk and into the back lounge, munching on cereal and humming the chorus for, hopefully, the last time today. (If it's already getting on Spencer's nerves, they're really going to have to rework that melody.)
Spencer can't fall back asleep so he slides out of bed and heads to the bus kitchen, where he finds Jon and Ryan, immersed in newspapers at the small table. Grunting a hello to them, he reaches into the refrigerator to start some breakfast but scrunches his nose at what he finds instead.
"Jon, you left crumbs in the butter container again." Spencer holds out the plastic tub as evidence and props a hand on his cocked hip.
"Sorry, Mom," Ryan deadpans from behind his newspaper.
"Just for you, Spence." Jon winks and makes a little salute to Spencer with his buttered slice of toast, before biting into it and grinning around the mouthful.
Spencer feels his face soften, unguarded this soon after waking up, and for a moment forgets what he was annoyed about.
Jon keeps grinning at him, a few crumbs left on his lips. Spencer quickly ducks back behind the refrigerator door, putting the butter back and pretending to look for something else. "Just, you know," he mutters, "try not to-- yeah."
"Sure thing," Jon says and slurps at his coffee.
Ryan coughs into his newspaper.
(This little domestic exchange reminds Spencer too much of whenever he and Haley used to share his house back in Vegas: morning kisses over coffee; spats about rotting apples in the refrigerator and whose turn it was to do the dishes; attempting complex recipes together, laughing and bumping elbows as they kneaded dough or stirred in spices; bickering over what was cooler -- the way cold water from the faucet hisses against a hot pan or the way butter and sugar fluff together with a whisk.
That is, until a couple years ago, when Haley had said gently, "We've had an amazing go of it, Spence," her cool palm cupping his scruffy cheek as she'd clarified, "but that's just it -- we're not going anywhere like this."
She'd always been so blunt; it had been one of the things he'd loved about her, but right then he'd sort of wanted her to shut down and close off from the world just like he'd felt like doing. He hated how goddamn right she'd been and still was: In the long run, Spencer has never been able to put anything else before his band.
He's starting to admit to himself that Jon maybe, sort of, probably has a lot to do with that fact.)
"Uh, Spence? Is the fridge really that fascinating?" Ryan taps the top of Spencer's head with a spoon and raises an eyebrow when Spencer startles, accidentally rattling the bottles in the refrigerator door.
"Um. I'm just." He spirals a hand in front of him. "Spacing out. Half-asleep, you know?"
Ryan glances over at Jon, who's sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and is attempting today's crossword puzzle, and then turns back to Spencer, eyebrow still raised. "Right," he says flatly.
"Leave it, Ry," Spencer says, teeth suddenly clenched, his body set for a fight. He slams shut the refrigerator door.
Ryan just holds up his hands, dropping his eyebrow back to normal and backing away toward the bunks.
"What's a four letter word for 'Like the surface of Mars'?" Jon asks, still focused on the crossword.
Spencer makes himself relax a little by laughing, short and sudden. "Um . . . rock?"
Jon squints his eyes for a moment then pencils it in. "Huh. That might work."
*
It's been almost thirteen years since that day when Jon was nothing more than that hot tech guy Spencer had literally bumped into backstage.
Jon had grinned at Spencer and pointed out, "Your fly's undone," and Spencer had blushed, laughing awkwardly and zipping up his jeans. He'd mumbled an "uh, thanks," but as he hurried off to find the rest of his band, Jon had called, "Hey! I like that shade of purple!" and Spencer had wanted to die a little. This hot guy had just seen his pair of lavender briefs, and Spencer had to be ready to play drums onstage in forty minutes and, okay, performing in front of an audience? Just wasn't feeling any less terrifying yet, no matter how much he enjoyed it and-- what the hell, where the fuck was his band?
It wasn't until three nights later that Spencer had been properly introduced to Jon.
Spencer had been sitting on the bottom step to their tour bus, bundled in his favorite fluffy white winter coat and texting responses to his sisters' questions about "the exciting life of a rock star" (everybody stinks all the time and i miss my own bed and mom's cooking), when he'd been interrupted by Brendon appearing out of nowhere at his side.
"Compadre!" Brendon had his arms wrapped around the neck of none other than the person who Spencer, secretly, had been referring to as Hot Tech Guy.
"Jon Walker, personal chauffeur and magician, meet Spencer Smith, confidante and upstanding gentleman," Brendon announced with the dignified air of someone who is trying to speak like a sophisticated person but is actually about five drinks past stupidly, astoundingly drunk.
And then he vomited onto one of the bus tires.
Jon patted Brendon's sweaty back, while Spencer held his own head in his hands and reminded himself that at least Ryan wasn't awake to witness this. (He and Ryan still weren't drinking back then and were beginning to grow tired of how many nights Brendon was spending on The Academy Is... bus, refusing to learn his body's own limits.)
"Um," Jon had said, one arm supporting Brendon's waist. "Spencer, right?"
Spencer raised his head at the sound of his name spoken in this guy's subtle lisp, and when his gaze met Jon's, he felt something suddenly twist in his stomach. "Yeah?"
(There was nothing particularly special about the moment, nothing unlike how his hormones had reacted to dozens of other people, male and female, since the first time he'd started noticing people in that way years before. Spencer has never believed in love-at-first-sight -- or revisionist history, for that matter -- so he didn't magically know that he and Jon would eventually grow closer than Spencer had ever thought he could be with someone who wasn't Ryan.
The way he remembers it now, Spencer was just homesick and tired from that night's show and wanted to make sure all of his bandmates were safely tucked away on their bus, not dying of alcohol poisoning somewhere. He didn't have time to get a crush on some tech who he was sure wouldn't even be in his life once the tour ended.)
"You wanna help me get this lightweight to bed?" Jon had said, smiling crookedly at Spencer over the knot of his blue scarf, and after a moment Spencer realized he was smiling right back.
Jon smiled sort of goofily at him for a second longer and then ducked under Brendon's arm, holding it firmly in place around his shoulders, and Spencer stood to help keep Brendon upright, too.
"'m fine, what're you-- hey! Not flat! Not flat!" Brendon was protesting as Jon tried to walk them up the stairs. Spencer stood behind them and clenched one hand around Brendon's hip and the other on one shoulder.
"Stairs. Stairs," Jon warned with each step up. "Stairs. St-- whoa." He tipped backward and Spencer quickly shifted his hand from Brendon's shoulder to Jon's back, holding them both up.
"Thanks." Jon laughed a little and dragged himself and Brendon up the last step into the bus, turning around to grin that same sort of lopsided smile at Spencer that made him immediately grin back.
"Blind leading the blind," Spencer teased.
"I hold my liquor just fine," Jon said, bumping into a wall, as Brendon mumbled something about feeling a lot better since he barfed.
"Uh-huh," Spencer said, guiding them by their backs in the direction of the bunks. "C'mon, over here."
In the tiny front lounge, Brent was playing Halo with his headphones on but offered an awkward wave when he saw the three of them; Jon waved back, Brendon drew out the word "duuuuude" for way too long, and Spencer just gave a nod of acknowledgment.
When they reached the bunks, Spencer could hear the tinny sound of Ryan's music leaking from his headphones and hoped it would block any noise Brendon still might make. Fortunately, when Spencer pointed out Brendon's bunk and Jon deposited him there, Brendon seemed content to stay put and relatively quiet.
"Mmph," he told his pillow upon impact, belly-down and swimming his limbs around for a bit. Then he turned his face away from the pillow, pulled his iPod out from beneath a pile of socks and bags of candy in the corner, and flailed his arm out in the vicinity of Jon's crotch, saying, "Hey, Jon, find me my song, 'kay?"
"Sure, buddy." Jon took the iPod and started scrolling through it as if he knew exactly what Brendon meant.
"Check under the artist name Classical," Spencer told him, struggling to pull off Brendon's bright red quilted coat and stuffing it into the bottom corner of the bunk. He crossed his arms against his chest and leaned his head against the frame of his own top bunk. "He just compiled a bunch of orchestral scores into one MP3 called 'Rad Sleeping Jams.'"
Jon nodded, smirking fondly down at Brendon, then turned back to the iPod and burst out laughing. "Dude, Bden, you have so much Cher on here."
"I believe in life after love," Brendon sang, off-key and off-lyric.
Spencer snorted, but when Jon burst into giggles, he had to fight back another damn smile.
He grabbed the iPod from Jon and pushed play on the correct song. "Don't choke yourself with the cord in your sleep, moron," he muttered to Brendon, hooking one of the earbuds into his ear as Brendon mumbled something unintelligible into his own knuckles, fingers curled at his stubbly chin. Rolling his eyes, Spencer tucked the iPod underneath Brendon's pillow.
(And isn't that weird, thinking back on the littlest things like that: after a few years of living with Apple's new gadgets -- their handheld iScreen digital televisions and portable iPhotos with built-in printers and iPods remarketed as iSongs -- Spencer has grown accustomed to music players the size of a quarter that he can just snap onto a shirt collar or bag strap and listen to the music with safe, cordless earbuds.)
"Well, I'm gonna head back to The Academy's bus," Jon said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the opposite direction of the entrance.
Spencer lifted an eyebrow. "You need any help?"
"Nah, I'm good." Jon tugged on his scarf and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "See you around?"
"Well, yeah," Spencer said. "I mean, you're a tech, so."
"Gotta have somebody around to remind you to zip your pants," Jon said, nodding.
Jon didn't seem to realize how that could be misinterpreted as more than an allusion to when they'd met backstage earlier that week, because as Spencer felt his cheeks grow warm and his eyes widen, Jon just reached across a sleeping Brendon to pull up a blanket over him, then straightened up and smiled a "g'night" to Spencer.
(The way Spencer remembers it now, Jon had smelled more like winter than booze as he'd brushed past Spencer, and the way his fading blue jeans stretched tightly across his thighs was more than a little distracting as Spencer turned to watch him leave.
But, really, those final details could have been part of a number of nights on that tour. Spencer doesn't expect his memory to distinguish between Jon walking away from the bunks to find his way to TAI's bus and Jon walking away from the bunks to find his way to some instant hot cocoa in the front of Panic's bus. Either way, already, Spencer was a little bit stupid about him.)
*
August heat in a long Georgia evening, and Spencer's stuck in a tour bus with broken air conditioning and bored bandmates. He wants to stop for sweet tea, but their driver keeps insisting that they won't make it to Asheville in time for soundcheck the next day if they stop for tea again.
Honestly, Spencer just needs to get off the bus for a while. Ryan's in his bunk absorbed in books on lady slipper flowers and fourth-wave feminist theory, and Spencer's trying to watch Friends on Nick at Nite via his iScreen and it's one of the Smelly Cat episodes, seriously, but Jon's sitting right next to him on the couch, texting with someone, and he's been singing this lame, triumphant tune under his breath all evening:
"Five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred, Em-pire!"
Every once in a while, on the last syllable, Jon does little jazz hands at his knees in an attempt to make Brendon smile where he's curled up moping about something on the floor. He's got the new PS6 game console set up, and he's killing alien creatures on the screen with a vengeance, muttering something about stupid fucking plants, really, Ross while he does it.
If Jon sings the goddamn thing one more time, Spencer's going to grab Jon's hands and clap them over his mouth. Or just kiss that stupid mouth already. Catch Jon's lips mid-number, and maybe their teeth would knock together at first and it'd hurt and feel awkward and Brendon would be right there which would be weird, but Jon would stop being obnoxious for one minute and Spencer would, maybe, finally feel Jon's tongue in his mouth, so it would be a win all around, right?
He wants to blame the heat, he really does.
"What is that anyway? Like, some phone number that Luciani came up with for the band's fan club?" Spencer finally blurts out.
Jon cracks up in the middle of the two eights. "No, no, it has nothing to do with Empires. It was a commercial jingle, but oh my god, I'm totally telling Tom you thought that, he'll get a kick out of it." He turns back to his phone and starts typing another message.
Spencer raises an eyebrow. "Well, then what was it a commercial for?"
"Oh, it was for a carpet store."
"You remember the jingle," Spencer says slowly, "for a carpet store. What, was your family big on rug shopping?"
Jon chuckles. "No, seriously, ask any kid who grew up in Chicagoland in the nineties and they'll probably tell you that they knew the number to Empire Carpet better than they knew their own home phone. It was just that catchy and on all the time, you know?"
"Um. Okay." Spencer turns back to Friends for a moment then looks back up at Jon. "Actually, I think that commercial went national eventually. I sort of remember it now that you've repeated it five million times."
Jon nods and hums it again.
Spencer narrows his eyes, but Jon doesn't notice. He's turned to look out the window at all the kudzu vines and wisteria and whatever else Spencer supposes Jon's photo-eye can see in the headlights' fleeting glow.
*
The next morning, while they're driving through North Carolina, Spencer, Jon, and Brendon sit in the back lounge and make a game out of watching dozens more trees pass by their windows, most of their branches suffocated by blankets of green kudzu.
"That one looks like a dinosaur." Spencer points out a kudzu-covered tree they're approaching that has a neck sloped like a brontosaurus.
"That one's a wizard," Brendon announces.
"How does it look like a wizard?" Jon stands up on the couch and presses his nose against the window for a closer look as they drive past it.
"You know, its pointy hat."
"Oh," Jon says, one hand warm on Spencer's shoulder for balance as he crouches and plops back down onto the cushion, practically in Spencer's lap. "I thought that was a unicorn."
"But it's green," Brendon points out.
"Yeah, so?" Spencer quirks an eyebrow. One of Jon's legs has landed on top of his own, knee bent over Spencer's thigh.
"Unicorns aren't green." Brendon states it as hard fact.
"Oh and wizards are?" Spencer says, and Jon begins smoothing sections of Spencer's hair between his fingers, wrist warm against the nape of Spencer's neck.
"Obviously it's a Slytherin." Brendon rolls his eyes.
"Oh, okay." Jon nods.
"Yeah." Brendon nods back.
"Oh hey, look, Bren!" Spencer turns his head out of Jon's grasp and points out the window. "Look what we just drove past!"
"What, where?" Brendon scrambles up to crane his neck ineffectively against the glass.
"Your sanity." Spencer presses his lips into a thin line. He feels Jon comb his fingers into his hair again, trailing lazy mazes across his scalp.
Brendon turns back to Spencer and narrows his eyes. "Funny."
"Not really," Jon says thoughtfully, and then adds, "Panda bear," with a tap of his finger against the windowpane.
"How can you tell it's a panda bear and not, like, a grizzly or something?" Brendon slips off the couch onto the floor and starts fiddling with the fraying ends of Spencer's jeans.
"Trust me. It's a panda bear," Jon says, then drops his forehead against Spencer's ear. His nose feels weirdly cold on Spencer's neck but his breaths are warm and slow.
Spencer hears a sudden squawk from the bunk area, and then Ryan's voice: "Who the fuck stole all of my weed?"
*
"Welcome to our show, Asheville," Ryan's deep voice announces to the crowd. "We're Ma Papa, and this is a song we're working on about carnivorous plants."
Several tours back, they'd stopped making set lists and just started going with what felt right; sometimes that means works-in-progress, sometimes songs they've been playing for years. It makes things more interesting for all of them and has started a small cult following of fans who like that improvisational aspect of the shows.
("Just like The Grateful Dead!" Brendon had said after the first tour they'd tried that way, and Spencer had rolled his eyes and pointed out, "Actually, no, this is nothing like The Dead, shut up and quit hogging the pipe.")
Ryan is wearing his sunglasses, the giant red ones that cover half his face; the ones Keltie gave him, like, nine birthdays ago -- or, rather, one birthday before they split up.
Lately, Spencer's been noticing how his life's been based too much in mathematics: how many years ago did they write that one song that people still ask about in interviews (five); how many hours has he slept out of the hours that have passed since the last hotel stop (seventeen out of seventy-two); how many minutes ago did he last think about wanting to press Jon up against the dressing room mirror and lick the familiar taste of popcorn and weed out of his mouth (eight).
He hears Brendon reach the end of the first verse -- Spencer's cue -- and shakes himself out of his thoughts, back into what he does best: he counts off, and begins to bang the shit out of his kit, holding together the reassuring chorus of the three people he's most certain of in this world.
*
After the show that night, Brendon and Ryan crash in their respective bunks as soon as they board the bus, but Jon and Spencer somehow end up side by side on the couch in the back lounge, watching This Is Spinal Tap for the zillionth time, with their feet propped up on Brendon's battered accordion case. They're sitting so close that whenever Jon laughs, Spencer can feel it vibrate throughout his own body, tingling a little when it reaches his white-socked toes.
"So," Jon prompts, after they've been watching the movie and quoting aloud favorite lines for a while. He wiggles his bare toes against Spencer's foot. "You'll be thirty next week."
"I don't want to talk about it." Spencer knocks Jon's foot back with his heel.
"Aw, Spence, it's not actually as bad as everyone makes it out to be." Jon drops his head to Spencer's shoulder. "At least you'll always be the youngest in the band."
Which, yeah, okay, Spencer thinks, while that's technically a fact, it doesn't really feel true: Spencer has always been an older brother, a protective best friend, and -- ever since they started the band, half a lifetime ago -- he's been a businessman of sorts, the one who takes care of his guys and stays up-to-date with Karl (their no-nonsense security guard who replaced Zack once he married and settled down with a baby girl a couple years back) and helps discover new bands to mentor. Sure, he's still an utterly immature boy sometimes, playing video games all night with Brendon or wrestling in the grass with Ryan. Usually, though, Spencer feels like he's been acting older than his age for most of his life, so a truly illogical part of his brain has been piping up lately with, Thirty? Really? Didn't that already happen?
He shares this last part with Jon, eyes fixed on the screen as the movie band wanders a maze of dim corridors. "I mean," he adds, eyes dropping from the screen to his lap. "I'm not worried about it. I just--" He rubs his palms back and forth against his knees, the denim worn almost all the way through. "Well, I guess it's sort of that existential bullshit that Ryan went through last year but you and Brendon sort of breezed past when you guys turned thirty?"
Jon is silent for a long moment. Spencer can feel him swallow, the muscles at his jaw and temple shifting against Spencer's shoulder.
"Nothing happens all at once," Jon says quietly, and his index finger starts tapping a slow, even rhythm on Spencer's kneecap.
Spencer's hands flex against his own thighs. "Did you smoke up when I wasn't looking?" he jokes, but there's something rough in his voice when he tries it.
Jon pinches his hip, hard. "No, I just mean, like-- nothing really changes that wasn't already changing," Jon goes on, and Spencer can hear a tinge of frustration in his voice as he starts and stalls his sentences, unsure of how to articulate his thoughts. "It's just a number and-- You know, fuck what people expect of your age, that's--"
"Really unlike me," Spencer mumbles.
"Yeah," Jon insists, and stops tapping in favor of squeezing Spencer's kneecap and humming, "Not old enough for history books, just old enough for fishing hooks."
Spencer bursts out laughing and shrugs Jon's head off his shoulder so he can see his face. "Isn't that something Ryan wrote?"
Jon smirks over at him. "Totally the chorus to that weird disco-country song he and Brendon tried writing last summer."
"Man, that song sucked," Spencer says, shaking his head and turns back to the movie.
Jon chuckles and knocks Spencer's foot with his own again.
They watch the rest of the movie, all the familiar scenes, without any more interruptions, apart from their laughter and Jon's poor imitation of a British accent on the occasional line quote.
By the time the credits roll, Spencer is half-asleep against Jon's shoulder, a heavy weight against his side, and Jon has tipped his head to rest against Spencer's. The easy breaths through his nose across Spencer's hair are a ticklish reassurance that he's not asleep yet either; if he were, he'd be snoring, this light little wheeze that Spencer sort of wants to record someday and fit into a song.
(Actually, one time, he discussed this with Ryan, who's all for it, although mostly because he thinks it'd be amusing to add "bodily noises" to the list of musical credits following "J. Walker" in the liner notes.)
Spencer feels that odd combination of post-show exhaustion and exhilaration, the energy still thrumming beneath his skin but his muscles telling him no fucking way whenever he even considers pulling himself and Jon up off the couch and over the several feet to their bunks.
Jon shifts his weight more heavily against Spencer's, balancing them out, and Spencer buries his face in the crook between Jon's neck and collarbone, relaxing even further. It's an awkward angle that he knows will give him a sore neck in the morning, but right now-- well. He's always too comfortable to move away from this; it's not the first time they've slept this way together: dozing off in the back lounge, just the two of them passed out on the couch.
Spencer can feel the history of those nights in the sense memory of his skin, of the way their bodies know exactly how to fit together in this position: the cotton of Jon's shirt soft against Spencer's clean-shaven cheek; Spencer's arm curving between the couch and Jon's lower back and Jon's forearm resting against the seam of their thighs pressed hot against each other; their ribcages expanding and contracting at odd intervals until they both begin to slip into sleep and their breaths begin to keep the same time.
Falling asleep this close together, Spencer has come to learn that Jon smells a little like hotel soaps, a little like sweat, a little like weed. Beneath all that, though, at this angle where Spencer's face is intimate with the soft skin exposed by Jon's white v-neck shirt; Spencer can detect a trace of something that must be purely Jon. Oddly enough, it reminds Spencer of his mom's homemade bread, rising in the warm kitchen: sharp and soft, full and warm.
Which, you know, his mom's baking is not something he wants lingering in the back of his mind while he's also thinking about doing outrageously inappropriate things with Jon's body and his own. Not that he can do those things anyway, but still. There's history and there's want, and those things he feels for Jon always intensify on nights like this, when the world blurs into sleep surrounded by Jon in the closest way he can have him.
*
One time, years ago, they were doing a meet-and-greet in Baltimore, when this girl who worked for her high school newspaper asked them how they felt about Maryland.
Brendon had babbled something about how the state has a special place in their hearts since that's where they wrote most of their first album and, "Well, since we didn't actually end up strangling each other in the process, we can't really hate on it, right?"
The girl had made this funny snort-giggle noise and held out a dryer sheet for him to sign, which made Jon burst out laughing and tip in his chair against Spencer's side.
The thing is, Spencer kind of forgets where they were when they wrote Fever. Of course, logically, he knows, but they'd holed themselves up in an apartment and a studio most of the time, so it really could have been almost anywhere. He doesn't remember thinking that Maryland was all that different from Vegas; he just remembers thinking that recording an album was way different from high school. You know, aside from the deadlines and the arguments and the quiet way Ryan would curl up beside him after a particularly shitty day.
The thing is, Maryland actually makes Spencer think of Jon. Every time they've stopped in or passed through Maryland over the past seven years, Spencer can't help but remember the day it hit him that his crush on Jon had become way more than just a stupid crush and, wow, that feeling for him? Probably wasn't going to just go away.
They'd been on the last leg of a long tour promoting their third album and stopped for breakfast at a Waffle House in Hagerstown one sticky summer morning.
Zack was lounging in an adjacent booth, teasing his girlfriend about something over the phone; Brendon was texting with Shane and announcing random updates about Dylan the dog every few minutes; Jon was chatting with their elderly waitress about their dreams of the perfect cup of coffee; and Ryan and Spencer were absently kicking each other's shins beneath the table, while Ryan made his way through two sides of bacon and Spencer downed his third glass of orange juice while texting back and forth with Haley. Their relationship had been going through a rough patch, but ever since Panic's stop in Chicago when Spencer actually got to be with her, they'd been texting and calling each other at all hours of the day.
the dogs keep sleeping on your side of the bed, she sent, one time zone behind him. it doesn't smell like you anymore.
Spencer's chest clenched, and he felt his face flush as he typed back, i've been using your shampoo brand. i thought it'd make me miss you less but it really doesn't.
do the guys know how stupidly romantic you actually are? Spencer grinned; he knew she must be laughing, face open and affectionate, probably still lying in bed in her pajamas. get your ass back here soon, mister.
three more weeks, he typed, and then added, love you.
more than anything, she replied, but Spencer hadn't responded right away, because at that moment, Jon had started laughing at something their waitress had told him before she walked away, and Spencer had gotten distracted by the sound. He'd lifted his head and it was like one of those stupid slow motion moments in the movies, when the light is bright and perfect and some hit love song starts playing and the guy falls for the girl with only a single look.
Except, aside from the perfect light part, Spencer actually had "Gin and Juice" stuck in his head and this was Jon he was looking at; Jon who had quickly risen from Hot Tech Guy to one of Spencer's best friends to an integral part of Spencer's band to something else entirely over the past few years. Spencer felt something pause inside of him, though, as he watched Jon's lips, the curve of his jaw, the cut of his collarbone across his flimsy red t-shirt, and Spencer (he remembers this more vividly than almost any other moment in his life) thought, I am so crazy in love with this man, and promptly got "Crazy in Love" stuck in his head.
A second later, as Jon's laughter turned into a chuckle, the sound rounded and alive in his throat, Jon caught Spencer's eye and winked at him. It was just his usual, Hi there, you're awesome wink, but suddenly it was the sort of affection that made Spencer tilt his head away, feeling himself smile and blush against his will.
Until Ryan kicked his shin again, and Spencer's face immediately dropped into a scowl.
"What's up with you," Ryan asked, flat and demanding, not even bothering to tilt the last word into a question.
"Nothing's up with me," Spencer said, while fucking Beyoncé sang, Got me looking so crazy in love, inside his head.
"For a minute there, you were all--" Ryan fluttered a hand around and munched on a piece of bacon for a second. "--glowy."
"Ross," Brendon piped up, finally setting down his phone and cutting into his short stack in earnest. "Did you just use the word glowy?"
"Oh my god," Jon was laughing again, "can we please use that word as a lyric somehow?"
Brendon turned to Spencer and tried to keep a straight face while he crooned, "Youuu maaake meee feeeel glo-wy and ali-iiive." He started out trying to imitate Aretha Franklin but somehow broke into a weird Steven Tyler impersonation at the end.
All four of them cracked up -- although Ryan's laughter also was interspersed with a series of "No, no, no, please no"s aimed at Brendon -- and Spencer stole a bite of Brendon's pancakes, thinking: of course the moment he has an epiphany about being in love with two fucking people at the same time, he isn't allowed to actually worry about it.
Well, at least not right that second.
Part Two
Title: Let the Future Come into Each Moment
Author: saramir
Band (Pairing): Panic at the Disco (Jon/Spencer, pre-Brendon/Ryan), with cameo appearances from members of Fall Out Boy and Empires.
Rating & Word Count: NC-17; 28,000 words.
Disclaimer: Don't own them, don't know them, don't actually know how to predict the future. If you are or know any of these people then, oh god, please do not read this (completely fictional) story; we do not want me dying of embarrassment, yeah?
Summary: In July 2017, the four of them release The Past's Future Possibilities, their sixth studio album. Rolling Stone has judged it as "a valiant attempt to be historically and politically conscious from a band who obviously is neither," and Alternative Press calls them "geniuses, in that they would have to be a certain type of brilliant in order to so swiftly alienate this many fans with a single album."
Author's Notes: Title snagged from "Be Here Now" by Mason Jennings. Written as a (terribly late) Christmas gift for witheveryspark, and she, nova33, & infinitenights were my amazingly helpful and supportive betas.
Julie darling, we both know that Brendon/Spencer are the pairing of my heart, but I wanted to try writing your OTP as a thank you for prompting me to fall in love with these silly boys last summer, and simply because I love you a lot. Thank you, thank you, thank you for beta-ing your own gift when I ruined the surprise; honestly, I would not have been able to get through this process and post this fic without your support. *hugs*
This fic would have gone absolutely nowhere without the encouragement of nova33. Elena, seriously, you are such a thoughtful beta and a fantastic friend. Plus, you helped to soothe my nerves early on when I had my silly insecure freak-outs about this unexpectedly becoming my first complete Panic fic, and I cannot thank you enough for any of that. ♥, you.
And, finally, a huge thanks to infinitenights because, Bethany, I cannot express how happy I am that you've been falling in love with these ridiculous dorks this year. Sharing in the Panic-love with you makes me enjoy it even more, and I am especially grateful for all of your enthusiastic feedback on your OTP's subplot when I realized they had been flirting behind my back and totally wanted to get into each other's pants eventually. ;-P
For the record: here are all four Panic boys as drunken boyfriends, and here are Jon and Spencer as husbands.
* * * * * * *
Over the years, they've compiled lists on scraps of paper and strands of memory: What would the band call themselves now if they could take back the name Panic at the Disco? They'd never actually pull a Prince or a Puff Daddy and change their name entirely, but what if?
In July 2017, the four of them release The Past's Future Possibilities, their sixth studio album. Rolling Stone has judged it as "a valiant attempt to be historically and politically conscious from a band who obviously is neither," and Alternative Press calls them "geniuses, in that they would have to be a certain type of brilliant in order to so swiftly alienate this many fans with a single album."
On their consequent summer tour, Ryan begins introducing the band by a different name each night they go on stage. Impulsive and pissed off about critics, one night in Louisiana when they step onstage, he surprises the rest of them by announcing, "Good evening, ladies and gents of New Orleans. We are The Magical Fax Machines, and this is a new song we're working on about moss."
Jon laughs so hard he misses playing the entire first verse, which is supposed to be only bass and vocals, so it turns into Brendon singing a cappella while making funny faces at Jon and trying not to laugh.
Spencer bursts out laughing so abruptly that he falls off his stool and can't sit back at his kit and properly play until Brendon has already made it through the second chorus.
*
Spencer's not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the past few weeks of their sparse North American tour, they've started building on material for their next album.
Jon keeps joking that it's going to be a concept album -- about plants, of all things.
Actually, they're already tossing around the title Tripping the Wasted Vine, from a line in one of Ryan's new songs about invasive plant species of Southern Appalachia. He's been filling up entire notebooks with lyrics about the flora in every location they pass through, buying books from the Local Interest sections of every bookshop he can find on the road, books with titles like Remarkable Plants of Texas: Uncommon Accounts of Our Common Natives and Plant Life of Kentucky: An Illustrated Guide to the Vascular Flora.
If Ryan hadn't always been a bit eccentric, Spencer might be questioning his sanity right now. As it is, he just wonders why the hell Ryan's suddenly turned to learning about plants as therapy or whatever.
"Somebody's gotta speak for them," Ryan says, hunched over his laptop in the back lounge of their bus, when Spencer finally asks what's up with the plant obsession. "They're dying, duh."
"Dude. Really? Please tell me we're not going to have an entire album of songs from the point of view of, like, daisies or something." Spencer stares at him, jaw dropped slightly in an incredulous expression.
Ryan just stares back at him. After a long silence, he says, "Well, not daisies," then turns back to his laptop.
Spencer covers his face with his hands and groans into his palms. "Look," he says, dropping his hands. "Just because we tried speaking for--" He flutters a hand about, trying to figure out the phrase he's looking for. "--The People, or whatever, and it didn't really work--"
"No. It didn't," Ryan says curtly, keeping his eyes on the computer screen.
Spencer pauses and just looks at him for a moment, bony shoulders beneath a thread-bare brown sweater, hair cut short and curling a little behind his ears, and face more tired than Spencer's seen in a long time.
"Okay," he concedes slowly. "If that's what you're writing, then that's what we'll try."
Ryan types something into his computer and doesn't respond, but Spencer can see the slight shift in his shoulders, the breath that relaxes them.
*
The next morning, they're driving northeast through Mississippi.
Spencer's been trying to sleep in, but Brendon keeps singing a rough version of a song he and Jon have been writing called "Heliotrope Blues." Spencer's pretty sure it's rooted in Ryan's work-in-progress about seasonal depression and immortal sunflowers, and Brendon's running through it for at least the seventh time today.
After two more verses, Spencer hears Brendon wander past his bunk and into the back lounge, munching on cereal and humming the chorus for, hopefully, the last time today. (If it's already getting on Spencer's nerves, they're really going to have to rework that melody.)
Spencer can't fall back asleep so he slides out of bed and heads to the bus kitchen, where he finds Jon and Ryan, immersed in newspapers at the small table. Grunting a hello to them, he reaches into the refrigerator to start some breakfast but scrunches his nose at what he finds instead.
"Jon, you left crumbs in the butter container again." Spencer holds out the plastic tub as evidence and props a hand on his cocked hip.
"Sorry, Mom," Ryan deadpans from behind his newspaper.
"Just for you, Spence." Jon winks and makes a little salute to Spencer with his buttered slice of toast, before biting into it and grinning around the mouthful.
Spencer feels his face soften, unguarded this soon after waking up, and for a moment forgets what he was annoyed about.
Jon keeps grinning at him, a few crumbs left on his lips. Spencer quickly ducks back behind the refrigerator door, putting the butter back and pretending to look for something else. "Just, you know," he mutters, "try not to-- yeah."
"Sure thing," Jon says and slurps at his coffee.
Ryan coughs into his newspaper.
(This little domestic exchange reminds Spencer too much of whenever he and Haley used to share his house back in Vegas: morning kisses over coffee; spats about rotting apples in the refrigerator and whose turn it was to do the dishes; attempting complex recipes together, laughing and bumping elbows as they kneaded dough or stirred in spices; bickering over what was cooler -- the way cold water from the faucet hisses against a hot pan or the way butter and sugar fluff together with a whisk.
That is, until a couple years ago, when Haley had said gently, "We've had an amazing go of it, Spence," her cool palm cupping his scruffy cheek as she'd clarified, "but that's just it -- we're not going anywhere like this."
She'd always been so blunt; it had been one of the things he'd loved about her, but right then he'd sort of wanted her to shut down and close off from the world just like he'd felt like doing. He hated how goddamn right she'd been and still was: In the long run, Spencer has never been able to put anything else before his band.
He's starting to admit to himself that Jon maybe, sort of, probably has a lot to do with that fact.)
"Uh, Spence? Is the fridge really that fascinating?" Ryan taps the top of Spencer's head with a spoon and raises an eyebrow when Spencer startles, accidentally rattling the bottles in the refrigerator door.
"Um. I'm just." He spirals a hand in front of him. "Spacing out. Half-asleep, you know?"
Ryan glances over at Jon, who's sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and is attempting today's crossword puzzle, and then turns back to Spencer, eyebrow still raised. "Right," he says flatly.
"Leave it, Ry," Spencer says, teeth suddenly clenched, his body set for a fight. He slams shut the refrigerator door.
Ryan just holds up his hands, dropping his eyebrow back to normal and backing away toward the bunks.
"What's a four letter word for 'Like the surface of Mars'?" Jon asks, still focused on the crossword.
Spencer makes himself relax a little by laughing, short and sudden. "Um . . . rock?"
Jon squints his eyes for a moment then pencils it in. "Huh. That might work."
*
It's been almost thirteen years since that day when Jon was nothing more than that hot tech guy Spencer had literally bumped into backstage.
Jon had grinned at Spencer and pointed out, "Your fly's undone," and Spencer had blushed, laughing awkwardly and zipping up his jeans. He'd mumbled an "uh, thanks," but as he hurried off to find the rest of his band, Jon had called, "Hey! I like that shade of purple!" and Spencer had wanted to die a little. This hot guy had just seen his pair of lavender briefs, and Spencer had to be ready to play drums onstage in forty minutes and, okay, performing in front of an audience? Just wasn't feeling any less terrifying yet, no matter how much he enjoyed it and-- what the hell, where the fuck was his band?
It wasn't until three nights later that Spencer had been properly introduced to Jon.
Spencer had been sitting on the bottom step to their tour bus, bundled in his favorite fluffy white winter coat and texting responses to his sisters' questions about "the exciting life of a rock star" (everybody stinks all the time and i miss my own bed and mom's cooking), when he'd been interrupted by Brendon appearing out of nowhere at his side.
"Compadre!" Brendon had his arms wrapped around the neck of none other than the person who Spencer, secretly, had been referring to as Hot Tech Guy.
"Jon Walker, personal chauffeur and magician, meet Spencer Smith, confidante and upstanding gentleman," Brendon announced with the dignified air of someone who is trying to speak like a sophisticated person but is actually about five drinks past stupidly, astoundingly drunk.
And then he vomited onto one of the bus tires.
Jon patted Brendon's sweaty back, while Spencer held his own head in his hands and reminded himself that at least Ryan wasn't awake to witness this. (He and Ryan still weren't drinking back then and were beginning to grow tired of how many nights Brendon was spending on The Academy Is... bus, refusing to learn his body's own limits.)
"Um," Jon had said, one arm supporting Brendon's waist. "Spencer, right?"
Spencer raised his head at the sound of his name spoken in this guy's subtle lisp, and when his gaze met Jon's, he felt something suddenly twist in his stomach. "Yeah?"
(There was nothing particularly special about the moment, nothing unlike how his hormones had reacted to dozens of other people, male and female, since the first time he'd started noticing people in that way years before. Spencer has never believed in love-at-first-sight -- or revisionist history, for that matter -- so he didn't magically know that he and Jon would eventually grow closer than Spencer had ever thought he could be with someone who wasn't Ryan.
The way he remembers it now, Spencer was just homesick and tired from that night's show and wanted to make sure all of his bandmates were safely tucked away on their bus, not dying of alcohol poisoning somewhere. He didn't have time to get a crush on some tech who he was sure wouldn't even be in his life once the tour ended.)
"You wanna help me get this lightweight to bed?" Jon had said, smiling crookedly at Spencer over the knot of his blue scarf, and after a moment Spencer realized he was smiling right back.
Jon smiled sort of goofily at him for a second longer and then ducked under Brendon's arm, holding it firmly in place around his shoulders, and Spencer stood to help keep Brendon upright, too.
"'m fine, what're you-- hey! Not flat! Not flat!" Brendon was protesting as Jon tried to walk them up the stairs. Spencer stood behind them and clenched one hand around Brendon's hip and the other on one shoulder.
"Stairs. Stairs," Jon warned with each step up. "Stairs. St-- whoa." He tipped backward and Spencer quickly shifted his hand from Brendon's shoulder to Jon's back, holding them both up.
"Thanks." Jon laughed a little and dragged himself and Brendon up the last step into the bus, turning around to grin that same sort of lopsided smile at Spencer that made him immediately grin back.
"Blind leading the blind," Spencer teased.
"I hold my liquor just fine," Jon said, bumping into a wall, as Brendon mumbled something about feeling a lot better since he barfed.
"Uh-huh," Spencer said, guiding them by their backs in the direction of the bunks. "C'mon, over here."
In the tiny front lounge, Brent was playing Halo with his headphones on but offered an awkward wave when he saw the three of them; Jon waved back, Brendon drew out the word "duuuuude" for way too long, and Spencer just gave a nod of acknowledgment.
When they reached the bunks, Spencer could hear the tinny sound of Ryan's music leaking from his headphones and hoped it would block any noise Brendon still might make. Fortunately, when Spencer pointed out Brendon's bunk and Jon deposited him there, Brendon seemed content to stay put and relatively quiet.
"Mmph," he told his pillow upon impact, belly-down and swimming his limbs around for a bit. Then he turned his face away from the pillow, pulled his iPod out from beneath a pile of socks and bags of candy in the corner, and flailed his arm out in the vicinity of Jon's crotch, saying, "Hey, Jon, find me my song, 'kay?"
"Sure, buddy." Jon took the iPod and started scrolling through it as if he knew exactly what Brendon meant.
"Check under the artist name Classical," Spencer told him, struggling to pull off Brendon's bright red quilted coat and stuffing it into the bottom corner of the bunk. He crossed his arms against his chest and leaned his head against the frame of his own top bunk. "He just compiled a bunch of orchestral scores into one MP3 called 'Rad Sleeping Jams.'"
Jon nodded, smirking fondly down at Brendon, then turned back to the iPod and burst out laughing. "Dude, Bden, you have so much Cher on here."
"I believe in life after love," Brendon sang, off-key and off-lyric.
Spencer snorted, but when Jon burst into giggles, he had to fight back another damn smile.
He grabbed the iPod from Jon and pushed play on the correct song. "Don't choke yourself with the cord in your sleep, moron," he muttered to Brendon, hooking one of the earbuds into his ear as Brendon mumbled something unintelligible into his own knuckles, fingers curled at his stubbly chin. Rolling his eyes, Spencer tucked the iPod underneath Brendon's pillow.
(And isn't that weird, thinking back on the littlest things like that: after a few years of living with Apple's new gadgets -- their handheld iScreen digital televisions and portable iPhotos with built-in printers and iPods remarketed as iSongs -- Spencer has grown accustomed to music players the size of a quarter that he can just snap onto a shirt collar or bag strap and listen to the music with safe, cordless earbuds.)
"Well, I'm gonna head back to The Academy's bus," Jon said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder in the opposite direction of the entrance.
Spencer lifted an eyebrow. "You need any help?"
"Nah, I'm good." Jon tugged on his scarf and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "See you around?"
"Well, yeah," Spencer said. "I mean, you're a tech, so."
"Gotta have somebody around to remind you to zip your pants," Jon said, nodding.
Jon didn't seem to realize how that could be misinterpreted as more than an allusion to when they'd met backstage earlier that week, because as Spencer felt his cheeks grow warm and his eyes widen, Jon just reached across a sleeping Brendon to pull up a blanket over him, then straightened up and smiled a "g'night" to Spencer.
(The way Spencer remembers it now, Jon had smelled more like winter than booze as he'd brushed past Spencer, and the way his fading blue jeans stretched tightly across his thighs was more than a little distracting as Spencer turned to watch him leave.
But, really, those final details could have been part of a number of nights on that tour. Spencer doesn't expect his memory to distinguish between Jon walking away from the bunks to find his way to TAI's bus and Jon walking away from the bunks to find his way to some instant hot cocoa in the front of Panic's bus. Either way, already, Spencer was a little bit stupid about him.)
*
August heat in a long Georgia evening, and Spencer's stuck in a tour bus with broken air conditioning and bored bandmates. He wants to stop for sweet tea, but their driver keeps insisting that they won't make it to Asheville in time for soundcheck the next day if they stop for tea again.
Honestly, Spencer just needs to get off the bus for a while. Ryan's in his bunk absorbed in books on lady slipper flowers and fourth-wave feminist theory, and Spencer's trying to watch Friends on Nick at Nite via his iScreen and it's one of the Smelly Cat episodes, seriously, but Jon's sitting right next to him on the couch, texting with someone, and he's been singing this lame, triumphant tune under his breath all evening:
"Five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred, Em-pire!"
Every once in a while, on the last syllable, Jon does little jazz hands at his knees in an attempt to make Brendon smile where he's curled up moping about something on the floor. He's got the new PS6 game console set up, and he's killing alien creatures on the screen with a vengeance, muttering something about stupid fucking plants, really, Ross while he does it.
If Jon sings the goddamn thing one more time, Spencer's going to grab Jon's hands and clap them over his mouth. Or just kiss that stupid mouth already. Catch Jon's lips mid-number, and maybe their teeth would knock together at first and it'd hurt and feel awkward and Brendon would be right there which would be weird, but Jon would stop being obnoxious for one minute and Spencer would, maybe, finally feel Jon's tongue in his mouth, so it would be a win all around, right?
He wants to blame the heat, he really does.
"What is that anyway? Like, some phone number that Luciani came up with for the band's fan club?" Spencer finally blurts out.
Jon cracks up in the middle of the two eights. "No, no, it has nothing to do with Empires. It was a commercial jingle, but oh my god, I'm totally telling Tom you thought that, he'll get a kick out of it." He turns back to his phone and starts typing another message.
Spencer raises an eyebrow. "Well, then what was it a commercial for?"
"Oh, it was for a carpet store."
"You remember the jingle," Spencer says slowly, "for a carpet store. What, was your family big on rug shopping?"
Jon chuckles. "No, seriously, ask any kid who grew up in Chicagoland in the nineties and they'll probably tell you that they knew the number to Empire Carpet better than they knew their own home phone. It was just that catchy and on all the time, you know?"
"Um. Okay." Spencer turns back to Friends for a moment then looks back up at Jon. "Actually, I think that commercial went national eventually. I sort of remember it now that you've repeated it five million times."
Jon nods and hums it again.
Spencer narrows his eyes, but Jon doesn't notice. He's turned to look out the window at all the kudzu vines and wisteria and whatever else Spencer supposes Jon's photo-eye can see in the headlights' fleeting glow.
*
The next morning, while they're driving through North Carolina, Spencer, Jon, and Brendon sit in the back lounge and make a game out of watching dozens more trees pass by their windows, most of their branches suffocated by blankets of green kudzu.
"That one looks like a dinosaur." Spencer points out a kudzu-covered tree they're approaching that has a neck sloped like a brontosaurus.
"That one's a wizard," Brendon announces.
"How does it look like a wizard?" Jon stands up on the couch and presses his nose against the window for a closer look as they drive past it.
"You know, its pointy hat."
"Oh," Jon says, one hand warm on Spencer's shoulder for balance as he crouches and plops back down onto the cushion, practically in Spencer's lap. "I thought that was a unicorn."
"But it's green," Brendon points out.
"Yeah, so?" Spencer quirks an eyebrow. One of Jon's legs has landed on top of his own, knee bent over Spencer's thigh.
"Unicorns aren't green." Brendon states it as hard fact.
"Oh and wizards are?" Spencer says, and Jon begins smoothing sections of Spencer's hair between his fingers, wrist warm against the nape of Spencer's neck.
"Obviously it's a Slytherin." Brendon rolls his eyes.
"Oh, okay." Jon nods.
"Yeah." Brendon nods back.
"Oh hey, look, Bren!" Spencer turns his head out of Jon's grasp and points out the window. "Look what we just drove past!"
"What, where?" Brendon scrambles up to crane his neck ineffectively against the glass.
"Your sanity." Spencer presses his lips into a thin line. He feels Jon comb his fingers into his hair again, trailing lazy mazes across his scalp.
Brendon turns back to Spencer and narrows his eyes. "Funny."
"Not really," Jon says thoughtfully, and then adds, "Panda bear," with a tap of his finger against the windowpane.
"How can you tell it's a panda bear and not, like, a grizzly or something?" Brendon slips off the couch onto the floor and starts fiddling with the fraying ends of Spencer's jeans.
"Trust me. It's a panda bear," Jon says, then drops his forehead against Spencer's ear. His nose feels weirdly cold on Spencer's neck but his breaths are warm and slow.
Spencer hears a sudden squawk from the bunk area, and then Ryan's voice: "Who the fuck stole all of my weed?"
*
"Welcome to our show, Asheville," Ryan's deep voice announces to the crowd. "We're Ma Papa, and this is a song we're working on about carnivorous plants."
Several tours back, they'd stopped making set lists and just started going with what felt right; sometimes that means works-in-progress, sometimes songs they've been playing for years. It makes things more interesting for all of them and has started a small cult following of fans who like that improvisational aspect of the shows.
("Just like The Grateful Dead!" Brendon had said after the first tour they'd tried that way, and Spencer had rolled his eyes and pointed out, "Actually, no, this is nothing like The Dead, shut up and quit hogging the pipe.")
Ryan is wearing his sunglasses, the giant red ones that cover half his face; the ones Keltie gave him, like, nine birthdays ago -- or, rather, one birthday before they split up.
Lately, Spencer's been noticing how his life's been based too much in mathematics: how many years ago did they write that one song that people still ask about in interviews (five); how many hours has he slept out of the hours that have passed since the last hotel stop (seventeen out of seventy-two); how many minutes ago did he last think about wanting to press Jon up against the dressing room mirror and lick the familiar taste of popcorn and weed out of his mouth (eight).
He hears Brendon reach the end of the first verse -- Spencer's cue -- and shakes himself out of his thoughts, back into what he does best: he counts off, and begins to bang the shit out of his kit, holding together the reassuring chorus of the three people he's most certain of in this world.
*
After the show that night, Brendon and Ryan crash in their respective bunks as soon as they board the bus, but Jon and Spencer somehow end up side by side on the couch in the back lounge, watching This Is Spinal Tap for the zillionth time, with their feet propped up on Brendon's battered accordion case. They're sitting so close that whenever Jon laughs, Spencer can feel it vibrate throughout his own body, tingling a little when it reaches his white-socked toes.
"So," Jon prompts, after they've been watching the movie and quoting aloud favorite lines for a while. He wiggles his bare toes against Spencer's foot. "You'll be thirty next week."
"I don't want to talk about it." Spencer knocks Jon's foot back with his heel.
"Aw, Spence, it's not actually as bad as everyone makes it out to be." Jon drops his head to Spencer's shoulder. "At least you'll always be the youngest in the band."
Which, yeah, okay, Spencer thinks, while that's technically a fact, it doesn't really feel true: Spencer has always been an older brother, a protective best friend, and -- ever since they started the band, half a lifetime ago -- he's been a businessman of sorts, the one who takes care of his guys and stays up-to-date with Karl (their no-nonsense security guard who replaced Zack once he married and settled down with a baby girl a couple years back) and helps discover new bands to mentor. Sure, he's still an utterly immature boy sometimes, playing video games all night with Brendon or wrestling in the grass with Ryan. Usually, though, Spencer feels like he's been acting older than his age for most of his life, so a truly illogical part of his brain has been piping up lately with, Thirty? Really? Didn't that already happen?
He shares this last part with Jon, eyes fixed on the screen as the movie band wanders a maze of dim corridors. "I mean," he adds, eyes dropping from the screen to his lap. "I'm not worried about it. I just--" He rubs his palms back and forth against his knees, the denim worn almost all the way through. "Well, I guess it's sort of that existential bullshit that Ryan went through last year but you and Brendon sort of breezed past when you guys turned thirty?"
Jon is silent for a long moment. Spencer can feel him swallow, the muscles at his jaw and temple shifting against Spencer's shoulder.
"Nothing happens all at once," Jon says quietly, and his index finger starts tapping a slow, even rhythm on Spencer's kneecap.
Spencer's hands flex against his own thighs. "Did you smoke up when I wasn't looking?" he jokes, but there's something rough in his voice when he tries it.
Jon pinches his hip, hard. "No, I just mean, like-- nothing really changes that wasn't already changing," Jon goes on, and Spencer can hear a tinge of frustration in his voice as he starts and stalls his sentences, unsure of how to articulate his thoughts. "It's just a number and-- You know, fuck what people expect of your age, that's--"
"Really unlike me," Spencer mumbles.
"Yeah," Jon insists, and stops tapping in favor of squeezing Spencer's kneecap and humming, "Not old enough for history books, just old enough for fishing hooks."
Spencer bursts out laughing and shrugs Jon's head off his shoulder so he can see his face. "Isn't that something Ryan wrote?"
Jon smirks over at him. "Totally the chorus to that weird disco-country song he and Brendon tried writing last summer."
"Man, that song sucked," Spencer says, shaking his head and turns back to the movie.
Jon chuckles and knocks Spencer's foot with his own again.
They watch the rest of the movie, all the familiar scenes, without any more interruptions, apart from their laughter and Jon's poor imitation of a British accent on the occasional line quote.
By the time the credits roll, Spencer is half-asleep against Jon's shoulder, a heavy weight against his side, and Jon has tipped his head to rest against Spencer's. The easy breaths through his nose across Spencer's hair are a ticklish reassurance that he's not asleep yet either; if he were, he'd be snoring, this light little wheeze that Spencer sort of wants to record someday and fit into a song.
(Actually, one time, he discussed this with Ryan, who's all for it, although mostly because he thinks it'd be amusing to add "bodily noises" to the list of musical credits following "J. Walker" in the liner notes.)
Spencer feels that odd combination of post-show exhaustion and exhilaration, the energy still thrumming beneath his skin but his muscles telling him no fucking way whenever he even considers pulling himself and Jon up off the couch and over the several feet to their bunks.
Jon shifts his weight more heavily against Spencer's, balancing them out, and Spencer buries his face in the crook between Jon's neck and collarbone, relaxing even further. It's an awkward angle that he knows will give him a sore neck in the morning, but right now-- well. He's always too comfortable to move away from this; it's not the first time they've slept this way together: dozing off in the back lounge, just the two of them passed out on the couch.
Spencer can feel the history of those nights in the sense memory of his skin, of the way their bodies know exactly how to fit together in this position: the cotton of Jon's shirt soft against Spencer's clean-shaven cheek; Spencer's arm curving between the couch and Jon's lower back and Jon's forearm resting against the seam of their thighs pressed hot against each other; their ribcages expanding and contracting at odd intervals until they both begin to slip into sleep and their breaths begin to keep the same time.
Falling asleep this close together, Spencer has come to learn that Jon smells a little like hotel soaps, a little like sweat, a little like weed. Beneath all that, though, at this angle where Spencer's face is intimate with the soft skin exposed by Jon's white v-neck shirt; Spencer can detect a trace of something that must be purely Jon. Oddly enough, it reminds Spencer of his mom's homemade bread, rising in the warm kitchen: sharp and soft, full and warm.
Which, you know, his mom's baking is not something he wants lingering in the back of his mind while he's also thinking about doing outrageously inappropriate things with Jon's body and his own. Not that he can do those things anyway, but still. There's history and there's want, and those things he feels for Jon always intensify on nights like this, when the world blurs into sleep surrounded by Jon in the closest way he can have him.
*
One time, years ago, they were doing a meet-and-greet in Baltimore, when this girl who worked for her high school newspaper asked them how they felt about Maryland.
Brendon had babbled something about how the state has a special place in their hearts since that's where they wrote most of their first album and, "Well, since we didn't actually end up strangling each other in the process, we can't really hate on it, right?"
The girl had made this funny snort-giggle noise and held out a dryer sheet for him to sign, which made Jon burst out laughing and tip in his chair against Spencer's side.
The thing is, Spencer kind of forgets where they were when they wrote Fever. Of course, logically, he knows, but they'd holed themselves up in an apartment and a studio most of the time, so it really could have been almost anywhere. He doesn't remember thinking that Maryland was all that different from Vegas; he just remembers thinking that recording an album was way different from high school. You know, aside from the deadlines and the arguments and the quiet way Ryan would curl up beside him after a particularly shitty day.
The thing is, Maryland actually makes Spencer think of Jon. Every time they've stopped in or passed through Maryland over the past seven years, Spencer can't help but remember the day it hit him that his crush on Jon had become way more than just a stupid crush and, wow, that feeling for him? Probably wasn't going to just go away.
They'd been on the last leg of a long tour promoting their third album and stopped for breakfast at a Waffle House in Hagerstown one sticky summer morning.
Zack was lounging in an adjacent booth, teasing his girlfriend about something over the phone; Brendon was texting with Shane and announcing random updates about Dylan the dog every few minutes; Jon was chatting with their elderly waitress about their dreams of the perfect cup of coffee; and Ryan and Spencer were absently kicking each other's shins beneath the table, while Ryan made his way through two sides of bacon and Spencer downed his third glass of orange juice while texting back and forth with Haley. Their relationship had been going through a rough patch, but ever since Panic's stop in Chicago when Spencer actually got to be with her, they'd been texting and calling each other at all hours of the day.
the dogs keep sleeping on your side of the bed, she sent, one time zone behind him. it doesn't smell like you anymore.
Spencer's chest clenched, and he felt his face flush as he typed back, i've been using your shampoo brand. i thought it'd make me miss you less but it really doesn't.
do the guys know how stupidly romantic you actually are? Spencer grinned; he knew she must be laughing, face open and affectionate, probably still lying in bed in her pajamas. get your ass back here soon, mister.
three more weeks, he typed, and then added, love you.
more than anything, she replied, but Spencer hadn't responded right away, because at that moment, Jon had started laughing at something their waitress had told him before she walked away, and Spencer had gotten distracted by the sound. He'd lifted his head and it was like one of those stupid slow motion moments in the movies, when the light is bright and perfect and some hit love song starts playing and the guy falls for the girl with only a single look.
Except, aside from the perfect light part, Spencer actually had "Gin and Juice" stuck in his head and this was Jon he was looking at; Jon who had quickly risen from Hot Tech Guy to one of Spencer's best friends to an integral part of Spencer's band to something else entirely over the past few years. Spencer felt something pause inside of him, though, as he watched Jon's lips, the curve of his jaw, the cut of his collarbone across his flimsy red t-shirt, and Spencer (he remembers this more vividly than almost any other moment in his life) thought, I am so crazy in love with this man, and promptly got "Crazy in Love" stuck in his head.
A second later, as Jon's laughter turned into a chuckle, the sound rounded and alive in his throat, Jon caught Spencer's eye and winked at him. It was just his usual, Hi there, you're awesome wink, but suddenly it was the sort of affection that made Spencer tilt his head away, feeling himself smile and blush against his will.
Until Ryan kicked his shin again, and Spencer's face immediately dropped into a scowl.
"What's up with you," Ryan asked, flat and demanding, not even bothering to tilt the last word into a question.
"Nothing's up with me," Spencer said, while fucking Beyoncé sang, Got me looking so crazy in love, inside his head.
"For a minute there, you were all--" Ryan fluttered a hand around and munched on a piece of bacon for a second. "--glowy."
"Ross," Brendon piped up, finally setting down his phone and cutting into his short stack in earnest. "Did you just use the word glowy?"
"Oh my god," Jon was laughing again, "can we please use that word as a lyric somehow?"
Brendon turned to Spencer and tried to keep a straight face while he crooned, "Youuu maaake meee feeeel glo-wy and ali-iiive." He started out trying to imitate Aretha Franklin but somehow broke into a weird Steven Tyler impersonation at the end.
All four of them cracked up -- although Ryan's laughter also was interspersed with a series of "No, no, no, please no"s aimed at Brendon -- and Spencer stole a bite of Brendon's pancakes, thinking: of course the moment he has an epiphany about being in love with two fucking people at the same time, he isn't allowed to actually worry about it.
Well, at least not right that second.
Part Two