The Spy Who (Kind of, Sort of, Maybe) Loved Me - Part Three
Masterpost
Part Two
Leaning against his headboard, Brendon watches TV uninterestedly, thinking, worrying, frowning. His mind is so full that he doesn’t really care that he is watching that stupid Snuggie commercial for the millionth time, and he barely hears the soft knock at his door.
He sits up even more, tucking his feet under him so he is sitting on his bed Indian style, and says, “Come in,” voice breaking a little.
The door opens slowly, and Ryan walks in while Brendon’s eyes follow every little movement the man makes. “Hi,” Brendon says, giving Ryan a tentative smile that Ryan returns.
“Uh, Brendon, I kind of wanted to talk to you.” If Ryan weren’t currently in front of him, Brendon would have heaved a loud sigh of relief. Talking is good. Things can stop being weird soon.
“Yeah, sure. S-Sit down if you want.” Brendon has no idea why he is stuttering, but he really wants to bang his head on a table for doing so.
There is a pause where the two guys look at each other, and then Ryan mumbles, “Okay.” The bed dips a little at Ryan’s weight when he sits at the foot of it, and Brendon finds himself wishing he’d sat closer.
“I, uh,” Ryan starts, and he looks down at his hands folded in his lap before looking again at Brendon. “I wanted to apologize.”
Brendon doesn’t get it; he’s the one that feels insanely guilty. “For what?”
Ryan frowns, like he can’t believe Brendon doesn’t know why. “For being a jerk to you,” he answers, and the tone has a hint of the Ryan that Brendon missed. “I don’t mean to be like that.”
Then Ryan chuckles a little and shakes his head. “Okay, that’s a lie. Most of the time, I don’t mean to be like that. Usually, people just roll their eyes at me because they know that’s just how I am. But, uh, I’ll admit that I gave you a hard time especially.”
“Why?” Even Spencer had said something like that.
Ryan looks down and bites his lip, smiling a bit. “It was fun, annoying you and pushing your buttons. And maybe I was showing off a little, trying to impress you or something. You’d just get so mad, but I thought you got that I didn’t really mean anything by it.” His smile fades. “I didn’t want you to end up hating me.”
Brendon wants to say that he doesn’t, that he never did, that he is sorry for shaking Ryan up. But he doesn’t know how, and anyway, Ryan goes on. “And so I guess I promise to do my best to stay out your hair until all this is over. I don’t think you’ll have to deal with me much after that.”
Ryan waits for a response from Brendon, and what he gets is a slow, unsure nod. Brendon wants to say something because he has no clue why he is nodding. It’s all just going wrong, and Ryan is on his feet almost right away. “Okay, then,” he says. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Brendon practically croaks back, and the door is closed before he can say any of the things he wanted to.
-----------------
Brendon spends most of the night tossing and turning in the dark. He’d thought that everything would be fine once Ryan started talking to him again, but Brendon has just been feeling worse. He hadn’t noticed before, but there was something behind Ryan’s eyes, a spark or a twinkle or something, whenever he was teasing Brendon. But the absence of it ever since “the incident” makes him all too aware of it now. He hates that he took it away.
And what’s more, he hates that Ryan promised to leave him alone. Brendon doesn’t want that. All he’s ever been was left alone. He admits it; the bickering was fun.
Maybe he admits that there was some truth to what Spencer had said earlier. It has been hard to ignore, especially since it’s just on the other side of his door, sleeping on his couch. Brendon thought Ryan was attractive from the first picture he saw of him. But up close, it’s the little things, and now, whenever Brendon looks at Ryan, he can feel a longing settle in the center of his chest. He felt it when he saw Greta make Ryan smile earlier, just a tad jealous that he didn’t know how to do that himself.
Brendon feels like he should’ve seen it. He catches glimpses of the real Ryan every so often; he should’ve pieced together that Ryan hides behind sarcastic remarks. Brendon gets that now.
For the tenth time that night, Brendon reaches over for the glass of water on his nightstand, but when he brings it to his lips, he only gets a few drops. His first instinct is to get up and go into the kitchen since that water, unlike the one from the tap in his bathroom, is cold. But Ryan is out there, sleeping, and Brendon doesn’t want to disturb him. And then he realizes that Ryan is out there, and before he knows what he is doing, he slides out of bed, pausing to look around in the dark for his sweatpants to pull over his naked body.
When he gets to the bedroom door, he turns the knob slowly and the door opens with a very slight creak at the hinges. Brendon slips out, grasping the glass, and pads out of his room as quietly as he can. Having been up all night, he has little trouble seeing in the dark, his pupils no doubt dilated enough. The moon comes through a crack in the drapes, and Brendon stops where he is because it’s enough light to see the sleeping form on his couch.
Ryan’s body is turned away from the edge of the couch, away from Brendon, and it rises and falls evenly and slowly with the steady breaths Ryan takes in his sleep. Brendon hears Ryan softly snoring, a notch above loud breathing, and finds it incredibly endearing. He can make out in the blue light that Ryan is wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, the blankets having slipped to Ryan’s waist in the warm spring evening, and Brendon traces with his eyes the sharpness of Ryan’s shoulders, the bumps of Ryan’s spine as his head is dipped forward towards the back of the couch, the slimness of Ryan’s waist, the curves of Ryan’s arm muscles.
Brendon clenches his fists because he wants to walk over, reach out, touch, do everything and anything. But he can’t. He has walked too far into the room already, has walked past the kitchen where he’d intended to go, so he turns around because he really shouldn’t creepily stare at Ryan while he’s sleeping.
He had thought that he can see well in the dark, but he was obviously wrong because Brendon, having not realized that Ryan had moved the coffee table away from the couch a little - probably so as not to bump into it himself when he wakes up in the morning - bumps into the corner of it, rattling the items on it and knocking a ton of papers and magazines onto the floor. And on top of it all, Brendon lets out an involuntary “Fuck!” as the pain on the side of his leg catches him completely off guard.
“Who’s there?” Ryan’s voice cuts through the dark, steady and forceful and not sleepy at all. When Brendon looks back, his eyes widen for only a second. There is a gun pointed at him.
Thankfully, Brendon is a professional. He is not about to start crying because of it; he can’t even remember how many times he’s had a gun pulled on him. “Ryan, it’s me,” Brendon hisses.
“Oh, shit,” Ryan says, obviously relieved. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, placing the gun under his pillow.
“Getting some water. I wouldn’t have left my room if I knew I could’ve gotten my head blown off for it. Jesus, you sleep with a gun under your pillow?”
Brendon can just make out Ryan’s shrug. “Necessary precaution. Why? Don’t you?”
Well, Brendon sleeps with a gun in the drawer of his nightstand. It’s right there next to a box of condoms, a bottle of lube, and the comic books Brendon likes to read before bed. But that’s completely different, and Ryan doesn’t need to know that. “No.”
“Don’t think you’re getting away so easily,” Ryan says, and Brendon furrows his eyebrows. “The kitchen is over there, and you were over here. Why?”
Brendon clears his throat. “I, uh…” He sighs. “Okay. I wanted to talk to you.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Ryan deadpans.
“Yeah…” Brendon says, drawing it out. “But you didn’t let me have my say earlier.”
There is a clicking noise, and soon, the room is lit, causing both Ryan and Brendon to squint as their eyes adjust. Ryan sits up, letting the blankets pool at his lap. “I didn’t know you had something to say,” he says softly.
Brendon walks over to the couch and sits down next to Ryan. If both men were being honest, they would’ve admitted that Brendon is sitting far closer to Ryan than is necessary. In any case, neither one of them says anything about it or moves. “I didn’t have the words then,” Brendon says quietly.
He is still not sure whether or not he does, but either way, he has started this conversation and he doesn’t want to leave it feeling unsettled again. Brendon takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
Ryan looks shocked. “For what? You didn’t-”
“I don’t hate you,” Brendon interrupts. “I never hated you. I don’t know why I said that.”
And then he laughs softly because this is starting to go a little like Ryan’s apology. “I mean I do know why. I wanted to get a rise out of you, stun you, something. So I guess I’m guilty of that too.” The corner of his lips quirks up into a half smile, and he looks up at Ryan shyly, causing Ryan’s eyes to soften.
Brendon continues, “I just feel horrible that something I said affected you like it did. I didn’t think anything I could say would affect you. You always seems so confident, I didn’t…” Brendon doesn’t know where he’s going with this. He breathes in and starts again. “You don’t need to leave me alone. I kind of like having you around.”
He smiles, looking up at Ryan, and he does his best to read Ryan’s eyes. Brendon thinks he is getting better at seeing through the hard exterior around Ryan, or maybe Brendon is just feeling really bold at two in the morning.
It starts with his hand, curling over the one Ryan rests on his leg like he has some claim on him. But it seems he might since Ryan’s hand shifts so his thumb can make its way around Brendon’s hand in an attempt to hold Brendon’s hand back. Brendon chances a glance back at Ryan, and upon seeing the smile there, with the corners of his eyes crinkling and everything, he thinks that this is how you make Ryan Ross smile like that.
It gives Brendon enough courage to do what he’s been wanting to. He leans in, only a little bit since they are already sitting close as it is, and Ryan’s lips make it the rest of the way. Brendon shuts his eyes tightly, savoring the soft, almost chaste kiss.
Kissing Ryan turns out to be completely different than Brendon had expected. Ryan had always been (okay, for two days) in Brendon’s mind a force to be reckoned with, and he thought kissing him would be like a battle. They’d struggle for dominance, and things would get heated. But this. What Brendon gets from Ryan almost throws him off.
This is like a dance, where Brendon leads and Ryan follows. It seems like every movement is deliberate, even the ones that just happen and aren’t planned at all, like Brendon slipping his tongue into Ryan’s mouth. It’s gentle, but not painstakingly so. It isn’t so much heated (though Brendon knows for certain that there is definitely some heat) as it is tender, and Brendon is glad they’re sitting down because it is all so overwhelming.
When Brendon pulls back, Ryan’s body follows a little before he comes to his senses. Brendon’s eyes wash over him, and he notices that Ryan’s breaths are coming in heavier than they had been and that Ryan’s lips appear larger and redder than they were just a moment ago. Brendon licks his own lips, trying to calm down just a little and slow down his own breathing, and he sees Ryan’s eyes focus in on them.
“I, uh, should go back to bed,” Brendon says, voice raspy. Ryan just nods in response.
Brendon gets up and feels cold air wash over his right side, already missing the way sitting close to Ryan had warmed up his body. He takes a slight detour to the kitchen to fill up his glass like he’d intended to do, but before going into the hallway where his bedroom door is, he turns around and sees Ryan watching him.
He clears his throat and smiles shyly. “If you don’t want to sleep out here, you’re welcome to sleep in my room. I would, um… I’d like it if you did. You don’t have to though.”
Brendon pauses, waiting to see if Ryan would respond, but he doesn’t so Brendon turns around and goes into his room, leaving the door ajar.
He shouldn’t hope for too much because he doesn’t want to get disappointed. But he keeps his sweatpants on when he climbs into bed, despite the minor discomfort, because if Ryan does choose to come in, he doesn’t want to scare him away or go too fast.
Brendon lies on the side further from the door with his back to it, leaving room just in case. He reminds himself to not get his hopes up and to try to get some sleep because he has to be up and ready for a mission. He has to-
The door to his room creaks, and Brendon hears a foot fall. He smiles to himself when he feels the sheets around him shift and the bed underneath him give. He turns around, and Ryan is there, watching him carefully in the dark. Brendon inches closer, hoping that it’s okay and that he isn’t scaring Ryan away. And then Ryan’s arm finds its way underneath Brendon’s neck to rest around his shoulders and pull him closer so Brendon can curl into Ryan’s side.
Brendon presses tightly to Ryan’s side, and finally, finally, he can feel sleep take over.
---------------
When Brendon wakes up, he is lying on his stomach and is very much alone in his bed. He blearily looks around and shakes his head to himself. He should have known Ryan would be that type. The kind who gets freaked out by intimacy and withdraws when he starts to get close. Brendon just hopes he hasn't gone very far.
Brendon rolls out of bed and brushes his teeth, not bothering to shower or do something about his bedhead just yet. Then he wanders out into the living room, where he's taken by surprise.
Ryan had moved his furniture back to make room so he could do pushups. Mesmerized as Ryan pushes his sweaty, shirtless body up and down, Brendon stands glued to the doorjamb, watching. He eyes the man's arms, shoulders, and back, muscles showing prominently with every movement as they alternately contract and relax, and Brendon has to remind himself to close his mouth because he'd look like an idiot if he just stood there and gaped. The noises aren’t helping him keep calm, since with every push upwards, Ryan lets out a grunt, and Brendon can’t help wondering if he sounds like that during other types of physical activities.
"Ryan..." he says, unsure of what to say afterwards.
"Hold on a sec, Bren. Ten more," Ryan says breathlessly, but Brendon doesn't miss the way he'd addressed him. His feet take him into his living room, only slightly aware that he’s moving but just acting on the fact that Ryan is completely and unknowingly turning him on.
Those ten are up quickly, and when Ryan stands and turns around, he looks a bit surprised that Brendon is so close to him. There is a definite sheen on his body, but he isn’t dripping sweat like Brendon would be (he is only just a tiny bit jealous of Ryan). Ryan’s hair sticks to his forehead, his face flushed, and when Ryan smiles at him, Brendon doesn’t think he could look any hotter.
Brendon steps forward, and before Ryan can do anything about it, Brendon kisses him hard, wrapping an arm tightly around him despite the slickness from the small amount of sweat on him. It only takes a second for Ryan to kiss back just as aggressively, hands reaching out to Brendon’s neck and the back of his head.
Brendon starts walking, pushing Ryan backwards as they kiss until the backs of Ryan’s legs bump into the couch next to him, forcing him to sit. Brendon anticipates it, bending his head down to ensure that he doesn’t stop kissing Ryan, because he so, so does not want to stop ever. He climbs on top, knees on the couch and on either side of Ryan to straddle him. Almost automatically, Ryan’s hands come around to grasp Brendon’s ass, squeezing slightly, and Brendon moans and pushes his tongue deeper into Ryan’s mouth. One of the hands moves up to graze his back, and Brendon takes this opportunity to grind down hard on Ryan, eliciting a definite groan from him.
“Good?” he asks, lips still pressed up against Ryan, this time the skin on his jaw. He doesn’t even really have to ask because he can feel Ryan getting hard beneath him, feeling the delicious pressure against his hardening cock too.
“Fuck, Brendon,” Ryan gasps out just as Brendon’s teeth sink into his neck. “What a way to say ‘Good morning.’”
Brendon chuckles against Ryan’s skin in response while his hand travels down, down, down until they’re at the top of the waistband of Ryan’s shorts. He shifts on Ryan, now a little further back and not completely straddling him, sitting more to Ryan’s side so that when they kiss, Ryan has to crane his neck a little. Brendon’s fingertips run over a few bumps on Ryan’s skin, but he pays barely any mind to them. He lets the tip of his finger drag against the skin right above the waistband teasingly, playing a little with the short, coarse hairs there, before moving further down.
He then opens his hand and kisses Ryan more, just as he presses his palm to Ryan’s clothed cock. He can practically taste the moan coming out of Ryan’s mouth as he rubs and massages Ryan until he is fully hard.
Brendon pulls away from Ryan, their lips making a loud smacking sound, and he grins at the dazed look on Ryan’s face as he now runs his fingers along the top of Ryan’s shorts before pushing his hand underneath. The second he grips Ryan’s cock, he hears a sharp intake of breath in his ear as Ryan’s chin falls onto Brendon’s shoulder.
His other arm is around Ryan’s waist, holding him up as Brendon strokes his cock in a sure rhythm. Brendon loves the noises coming from Ryan, low, soft moans originating from the back of Ryan’s throat, and they seem to get louder when Brendon quickens the pace of his hand. His other hand runs along Ryan’s side softly, soothing him and keeping him in place.
Brendon’s hand starts to cramp, so he says, “Hold on,” and stops his motions.
“What?” Ryan asks, voice wavering a little as his eyes widen.
Brendon laughs at his obvious disappointment and pulls his hand away and out of Ryan’s shorts. “Don’t worry,” he says and kisses Ryan roughly. “You just need to pull these down.”
Ryan jokingly rolls his eyes and lifts his hips, and Brendon helps him pull them down enough to expose his cock, long and thick as it rests against Ryan’s stomach. Brendon is sorely tempted to climb onto Ryan’s lap right there and ride him, but he is back at the task at hand, so to speak. He makes a point of licking his palm under Ryan’s watchful gaze, eyes never looking away until he wraps his fingers around Ryan’s swollen cock, and Brendon kisses him once again. Ryan groans into Brendon’s mouth as his hand moves up and down, stroking faster and more freely than before, aided by the added moisture of Brendon’s spit. When Brendon swipes his thumb over the tip a few times on the upstroke and smears the pre-cum there, he can sense Ryan having trouble kissing back, attention obviously torn.
He pulls his lips away and lets Ryan rest his forehead against his own. Brendon starts to vary the pressure of his hand as Ryan breathes heavily and loudly, hot, moist breath blowing against Brendon’s mouth and cheek. He feels a tug at his sweatpants, and only now does he realize that Ryan’s fist has been clenched around the soft jersey fabric of it at his thigh.
Then Ryan drops his forehead to Brendon’s shoulder and releases, his warm, sticky come spilling onto Brendon’s hand as he strokes him through his orgasm, feeling the subtle shakes of Ryan’s body against his own. The moan that follows is muffled against the skin of Brendon’s neck, and Brendon can feel moisture where Ryan’s lips are pressed softly there.
Ryan breathes heavily as he starts to come down, and Brendon pulls his shorts up and tucks him back into them for him. Brendon hastily wipes his hand off on his sweatpants, not exactly caring about the mess because Ryan is still attached to his side. Then Ryan kisses him softly on the neck, and Brendon turns his head to get one fully on the lips. As they kiss, Ryan’s hands drag along Brendon’s chest, moving downward just like Brendon had done to him, but Brendon stops him and pulls away.
Ryan gives Brendon a confused look, and Brendon shakes his head. “Nope. Can’t.”
“Excuse me?” Ryan responds disbelievingly.
Brendon laughs. “Seriously, I can’t. It’ll throw off my game for later. No sex before missions.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Is this a joke?”
“Come on, you know how some athletes hold off on sex before big games. Same thing.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Brendon. Look at you,” Ryan says, obviously talking about the raging hard-on that Brendon’s sweatpants are doing nothing to hide.
Brendon shrugs and gets up, and Ryan looks half stunned and half annoyed. Brendon can’t help being just slightly amused that, this time, Ryan’s the one looking peeved. “I’m going to get ready. Spencer is coming by in an hour.”
“Have fun getting rid of that,” Ryan says bitchily, crossing his arms and looking away. Brendon kind of hates that Bitchy Ryan is hot as fuck, and he has to force himself to look away because a second longer and he’d be on Ryan, breaking his own rules.
------------------
One cold shower and a crisp, black suit later, Brendon walks out into the kitchen to find that Ryan is miraculously ready, wearing a simple black shirt with black jeans, and pouring himself some cereal. Ryan glances at him briefly and doesn’t say anything. He carries the bowl to the table wordlessly, leaving Brendon confused.
“Why are you mad at me?” Brendon asks when he joins Ryan at the table.
“Who says I’m mad at you? I’m fucking peachy,” Ryan says in that sharp tone of his, and Brendon can feel it starting to get on his nerves.
“I can’t believe you’re seriously pissed off that I wouldn’t let you return the favor. It’s nothing personal. I just need to fucking focus on the mission. See, right here. We’re not focused because of this,” Brendon says, gesturing to the space between them.
Ryan crosses his arms. “I am always focused. I don’t need any idiotic rules to keep my mind on the mission, unlike some people.” He promptly opens up his newspaper and disappears behind it.
Brendon really wants to deck him, just lean right across the table, snatch his newspaper away (and possibly leave a ton of paper cuts), and take a swing. Ryan is saved from such a fate though when there is a knock at the door. Brendon gets up and shoots a dirty look at Ryan, though he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Hey, come in,” Brendon says unenthusiastically when he opens the door and finds Spencer behind it. He leads him to the table, and Spencer plops a large black bag onto it.
Ryan nods hello at him and puts his newspaper down but doesn’t even glance at Brendon.
“O… kay,” Spencer says as he pulls equipment out of the bag, and Brendon already knows he’s going to get bombarded with questions once the two of them are alone. “Jon is at the office today. Has to keep up appearances,” he explains, and Brendon and Ryan both nod uninterestedly.
“So,” he says, obviously choosing to ignore the tension for the time being, “we need to get some surveillance equipment on you.” To Ryan, he says, “We took this from your warehouse. Hope you don’t mind.”
Ryan shrugs and mumbles, “Whatever, fine.”
Brendon steps away from the table when Spencer approaches him with some sort of device. “Alright, Brendon. We need your shirt off.”
He removes his jacket, tie, and button down, and he notices that Ryan is decidedly looking away. Once his chest is bare, Spencer places the black capsule-like electronic against Brendon’s back and tapes it there securely. “This will transmit the signals back to the van where Ryan will be,” he explains. “You can put your shirt back on.”
Brendon does so, choosing to worry about his tie and jacket later, and Spencer hands him a pair of glasses. “The camera is here,” Spencer says, pointing to the right of one of the lenses. “And the mic is here.” Spencer points to the left of the other lens. “The glasses wirelessly communicate to the transmitter on your back. Ryan will be doing surveillance and recording everything that the glasses get. They turn on when you put them on, and the battery lasts for an hour, so don’t put them on until you need to.”
“Right,” Brendon says.
“I’ll have one too, so Ryan will be able to let you know if Ms. Williams is coming back or not.”
Brendon nods, and when he looks into Spencer’s clear blue eyes, he finds that they are scrutinizing him curiously.
“We’ll be going in unarmed. We’d never get ten feet into the building otherwise,” Spencer says.
He then hands Brendon a card with his face on it, though it says “Leopold Chauncey” instead of his real name. “Spencer, what the fuck?”
Ryan sniggers when he reads it as Spencer tries to suppress a laugh. “Can’t I have a little fun?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t exactly appreciate you throwing shit I tell you when I’m drunk back in my face,” Brendon responds with an eye roll.
“Wait,” Ryan says, as if forgetting that he’s annoyed with Brendon, “what does-”
“Nothing,” Brendon cuts in quickly after seeing Spencer open his mouth to respond.
Then there’s silence as Ryan and Brendon look away from each other, and Brendon can feel the tension coming back.
Spencer’s eyes dart between the two of them for a few moments, and then he sighs. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go then.”
------------------
“Passing checkpoint one,” Brendon hears Spencer mutter beside him.
“Yeah, okay, Francois,” he hears Ryan say dully through the earpiece Spencer had given him a few minutes ago. Unlike Brendon, Spencer doesn’t have a name card. Instead, he is placing the visitor’s pass Brendon had just obtained from the security guard onto his suit jacket. It’d been pretty convincing; Spencer’s false accent really helped.
The first checkpoint is the easy one. Several types of government workers are allowed in this area of the building, and the security guards don’t usually give people a hard time.
It’s the second one, up on the floor of Mr. Wentz’s office, that will be tricky. That floor, Jon had explained, is reserved for several of the CIA’s higher-ups, and relatively few agents have access to it.
The two men approach the elevators, and there is already a small crowd huddled around the up button. Soon, there is a ding, and one of the many elevators open. Spencer and Brendon file in along with the rest, the two glancing quickly at each other as the doors close. One elevator ride later, they find themselves in a vestibule with the elevators, and a set of glass doors stand across from them. There is a card reader next to them, and Brendon knows this is checkpoint two.
Spencer had modeled his fake ID card after Jon’s, who does have access to the floor. After playing around with encryption keys, Spencer had programmed it to have a false profile tied to it, allowing for them to breach security undetected. At least, that’s what should happen in theory. The security system, Spencer had explained to Brendon in the van, is highly sensitive, and one small irregularity could deny them access and alert security of an attempted breach. CIA agents would flood the area and cover all exits, leaving no room for escape. Essentially, they’d be fucked. Brendon just has to trust that Spencer hadn’t messed anything up.
Brendon approaches the doors while Spencer hangs back and looks around curiously, playing his part in all this well. He swipes his card through the reader, and Brendon holds his breath, hoping for the green light to signal it’s okay to go ahead. And then he thinks, “Oh, shit,” his heart jumping as he inwardly freaks out, though on the outside, he maintains his cool, casual appearance. A yellow light cannot be good.
“Brendon, it’s okay,” comes Ryan’s voice through the tiny earpiece. His voice is calm and soothing, and Brendon does start to calm down, wondering how Ryan knew he’d been panicking. “It’s only a misread. Swipe the card again.”
He lets out a breath and slides the card in again. Another yellow light.
“Fuck,” Brendon mutters, closing his eyes briefly. It doesn’t work. Someone’s going to notice and get suspicious. He’ll lose his job, he’ll be thrown in prison, he’ll end up like Beckett and get stabbed to death.
“It’s alright, Brendon. Try breathing onto the magnetic strip and wiping it against your pants,” Ryan says, again bringing Brendon back.
Brendon does so, feeling that this is taking far too long and that, surely, someone would be suspicious by now. But he swipes the card, and finally, the door clicks and the reader turns green. He exhales as he pulls the door open wide and rushes through it, knowing Spencer is just behind him, having caught the door before it closed and locked.
“Checkpoint two,” he says under his breath.
Then, they part ways, Brendon pretending he doesn’t even notice Spencer moving off to a desk where a young looking assistant with bright red hair is typing away at a computer. Brendon instead goes into a hallway, hiding in the alcove where an empty meeting room is and where he is out of the line of sight of the hidden security camera across the way (all detailed in the blueprints Jon had brought the day before).
Brendon raises his hand and taps at the side of the glasses, and they change. He can now see what Spencer sees, the scene Spencer’s glasses capture showing on the lenses of Brendon’s glasses. Another tap and he gets audio. The scene is incredibly shaky, enough to make a normal person sick, and is due to the intense amount of swiveling Spencer’s head is doing to help convey the “lost in a foreign environment” look he is trying to achieve.
“Excuse me? Can I help you” Brendon hears a soft feminine voice come through the earpiece.
Then Brendon sees the redheaded woman, looking both curious and cautious, as she steps out from behind her desk and wanders over to Spencer.
And then begins Spencer’s rapid-fire French, Brendon only catching “Je suis perdu” and “Où est la toilette?” He’s not certain, being pretty terrible at French (but he’s very fluent in Spanish and Japanese and isn’t half-bad at Italian, so there), but Brendon thinks Spencer called Ms. Williams a “sexy fox in a pantsuit”. Brendon knows Wentz’s assistant is falling for it.
No longer cautious, she seems pretty torn between wanting to flirt back and trying to figure out where Spencer (or Francois as his visitor’s pass clearly says) is supposed to be. Spencer, on his part, is doing a great job chattering away, showering her with compliments in French, even embodying the more forward approach that seems prevalent in some types of European men.
Brendon knows what’s going on in her mind. She should call security, since he is obviously not on the correct floor and had somehow breached the secure doors by the elevator. But it really isn’t his fault that he’d gotten lost, separated from whoever had signed him in and unable to communicate what he needs. He knows she won’t ask around for someone who knows the language to translate, even though there’s bound to be plenty of people around who can help, because she wouldn’t want Spencer to get in trouble. So, just as they had hoped, she gets up and leads Spencer toward the doors, linking her arm reluctantly around Spencer’s proffered one as she leads him into the elevators.
When the doors close behind them, Brendon taps his glasses again. The scene disappears and the French babbling cuts off, and Brendon moves swiftly to Ms. Williams’s desk, or Hayley’s as a decorative nameplate on it says. He takes a seat in her chair, knowing he has to hurry before someone walks by and notices a shock of dark brown instead of a flash of red behind the desk.
He nudges the mouse and wakes up the computer to reveal a login page, with “HayleyWilliams” typed in as the ID. Brendon looks under the desk and plugs in a device into the USB port of the computer.
“Okay, Ry. You’re up,” Brendon mutters quietly.
“Like I didn’t know,” Ryan cuts in brusquely as Brendon clenches his jaw and watches the computer being taken over. A small window pops up and a program runs briefly, several numbers and letters constantly changing in the brute force attack aided by running a key history search, before exiting itself.
“Alright, got the password,” Ryan says, and Brendon readies himself to type. “M-1-z-” Ryan says, making sure to say which letters are capitalized and which aren’t, “s-3-r-I-3-B-s-1-7-E-5-5.”
Finally, Brendon is logged in, and only after a few clicks, he finds a file called “Wentz Itinerary” and opens it.
“This can’t be right,” Brendon finds himself muttering, his brow furrowed.
“Shit,” he hears Ryan say.
“I don’t…” Brendon starts to say.
“It doesn’t matter, Brendon. Save it.”
“But-”
“Do it,” he says, Ryan’s voice so sharp that Brendon can actually feel the sting. He saves the file onto the hard-drive of the device, all the while wondering when he let Ryan Ross boss him around.
“Brendon, you need to get out of there,” he hears Spencer’s voice cut through in a rushed whisper. Brendon quickly logs out, turns the computer to sleep mode, and pulls the device from the USB port, rushing back into the hallway where he’d hidden, just as the elevator doors open and Hayley steps out.
He lets out a breath, and Spencer says in his ear, “Meet me back in the van. I’m already within sight of it.”
“Copy that,” Brendon whispers, sighing a little as he talks, mostly out of relief.
Brendon takes one last calming breath before stepping out, nodding towards Hayley who smiles in return, and pulls the glass door open and takes the elevator down.
----------------
“How can that be possible?” Jon’s voice comes out of Spencer’s cell phone, the three men gathered around it after having relayed the news. “How can he have been on vacation for two weeks, still be on vacation for another two? He’s been assigning missions, videoconferencing from his office, for God’s sake! And even so, when one of his employees had ended up murdered, you know he’d have cut the trip short.”
Brendon sighs. “Maybe she just didn’t update his schedule yet.” He knew that was unlikely, considering how Mr. Wentz demands efficient, proactive employees. He surely would’ve found the most competent assistant there is who would immediately make changes to his schedule as they happen.
“No, look at the modification history on the file,” Spencer points out. It was last modified three hours before Brendon had obtained it.
“Is it possible he came back and she didn’t know?” Ryan says, and Brendon glances up. He catches Ryan’s gaze, the two eyeing each other for a few seconds before looking back towards the phone.
“No. The feed comes from his office. She would’ve seen him come in to do it,” Jon answers. “Dammit, I just saw him on the screen in the conference room a few hours ago. He’s can’t be on vacation in fucking Bora Bora!”
Jon never swears. Well, that might not be true since Brendon isn’t with him at all times of the day. He probably curses like a sailor in bed, but only Spencer could vouch for it, and Brendon doesn’t really care enough to inquire about it. Point is, in a professional setting, Jon does not swear, and here he is, dropping an F-bomb. Brendon can tell even calm, collected Jon Walker is freaking out.
“Hey, Jon,” Spencer says softly. “It’s okay.”
“You’re right, Spence” Jon mumbles, and Brendon wonders in that moment if he and Ryan should be there. But then, he says, “Listen. Brendon, Spencer, you two need to come in tomorrow. I’ll try to send Mr. Wentz a message, see if we can set up a meeting so he’ll have to videoconference in. I’ll see if Greta can track his location when he does.”
Ryan rolls his eyes. “Then why didn’t we do that in the first place? It seems a lot safer and way more efficient.”
“Because,” Spencer answers for Jon, “now, we have to pretend like we’ve been looking for you all this time. It’s a lot harder to come up with a convincing story of why we haven’t caught you yet.”
Ryan smirks and says in a cocky tone. “Easy. I’m just incredibly good at evading your attempts to trap and capture me. That is, when I’m not virtually impossible to track, which is never.”
Spencer looks as if he’s about to say something, but Jon pipes up, “Gentlemen, I will come up with a cover and brief you tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you guys get some rest.”
“Okay,” Brendon says quickly, hoping that Spencer will have forgotten Ryan’s obnoxiousness for the time being.
“Alright, see you tomorrow Brendon, Ryan. Spencer, see you tonight. Love you.” And then Jon hangs up.
Spencer pockets his phone and rubs his eyes. “This is so annoying. What the fuck is going on?”
Brendon pats Spencer’s shoulders as Ryan exits the room in the direction of the kitchen. “Hey, you heard Jon. You need to get some rest, stop thinking about it for a while.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Spencer says, nodding. “I think I’m going to go home. But not before you lend me that book we were talking about.” The last sentence is a lot louder, and Brendon can’t remember any recent conversation about a book.
“What?”
Spencer looks at him meaningfully, a smile itching to get out. “It’s in your room right? I’ll go with you.”
Still confused, Brendon leads Spencer reluctantly to his bedroom, and after shutting the door behind him, Spencer turns around with a devious smile on his face.
“Spill.”
Brendon groans, finally realizing what this is about. “Spencer…”
“Come on, man. What happened?”
“Look, it’s not… We kind of… Shit, I don’t even know what happened.”
Spencer gives him a disbelieving look, and Brendon proceeds to tell him of the events that’d gone on since the last time they saw each other.
Brendon frowns when he’s left with a chuckling Spencer, shaking his head as he mutters, “Oh God.”
“What?” he whines, feeling embarrassed.
“You two seem like such an unlikely pair,” Spencer says with a shrug. “You’re nice and polite to everyone and kind of goofy, and he is the biggest, most arrogant jerk ever.” Brendon frowns. “But,” Spencer continues, “I can tell there’s something between you guys.”
Brendon’s lip quirks up. “Sometimes, I’m convinced there’s a lot more to him than what he lets everyone see,” he mutters, mostly to himself rather than to Spencer.
Spencer musses Brendon’s hair and chuckles. “You’re probably right, and it’d definitely be you to find that out. You’re great with that kind of stuff.” He gives Brendon and encouraging nod.
And then it occurs to Brendon to ask something that he has been wondering. Spencer is a friend, after all. “How are you and Jon doing?” He hopes that Spencer gets his meaning.
Spencer’s eyes shift downward, and it appears as if he is engulfed in something bittersweet. “We’re good. It’s not the ideal situation, but we get by.”
“Is it tough to keep it secret?”
“It was tough to keep it from you, that’s for sure,” Spencer says with a chuckle. “We’re partners. We’re supposed to tell each other everything.”
His eyes are back to the floor again as he takes on a pensive air. “And then, sometimes, I’d just wish that we could be a normal couple so we wouldn’t have to hide such a big part of our lives. But I love my job, and I love him. The only thing I can do is just hold on and make our situation work.”
“Spence,” Brendon whispers. He can see how much Spencer has been holding in, unable to tell anyone what he has been feeling all this time.
“I should get going,” Spencer says, sighing. “Just hurry up and give me a book in case Ryan notices.”
When they leave Brendon’s room, Spencer uneasily clutching Confessions of a Shopaholic to his side (“What? I saw the movie and got curious!”), they find Ryan lying on the couch and reading Vonnegut. Spencer mumbles a goodbye to both of them, and Ryan holds a hand up to wave without looking away from the page. The door shuts, and the two are left in silence, though Brendon feels uneasy about it while Ryan doesn’t seem to notice that Brendon is even there.
“Ryan,” Brendon says, standing over him.
Ryan grunts, still reading and not even glancing up.
Brendon clenches his jaw. “Will you tell me why you’re mad?” This time, Ryan doesn’t act like he even heard Brendon speak. “That’s it.”
He is fed up with Ryan, so naturally, the first thing he does is yank the book from Ryan’s hands and toss it somewhere over his shoulder.
Ryan sits up, eyes blazing. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Brendon yells.
Ryan scoffs, which Brendon thinks is a sign that he may have stumped him. “What do you even want from me?” Ryan asks, and Brendon thinks he may be seeing things, but below the downturned, angry brow, there may just be insecurity lurking in those eyes. Insecure? Ryan? That’s pretty laughable, but then again…
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Ryan responds with a scowl and rises from his seat. “You can’t just pretend you like me and reject me for your own amusement!”
Brendon stands shocked. “What? I-”
Ryan goes on, completely ignoring Brendon’s attempt to deny Ryan’s absurd accusation. “And I fucking fell for it! I’m so stupid. I should’ve seen it coming. I was a total jerk to you, for Christ’s sake. How can you possibly like me? How could you-”
“Ryan,” Brendon says, but Ryan doesn’t seem to hear him.
“-were a complete asshole, just stringing me along-”
“Ryan.” Brendon is losing his patience.
“-never again letting a pretty face get the best of me-”
And then Brendon slaps him in the face. Hard. Ryan looks shocked for all of two seconds. Then he mutters, “Son of a…” and takes a swing at him. Brendon, however, anticipates it and raises his arm to block the blow from landing on his jaw. He throws a right hook quickly, and Ryan isn’t quick enough to stop Brendon’s fist from hitting him squarely on the cheekbone.
Ryan stumbles backwards, bumping into the side table next to the couch, and the lamp sitting atop it teeters a bit before slipping and falling to the floor. It doesn’t break, but it makes a loud noise and the light in the room changes.
Angered by the punch, Ryan lunges forward and pushes Brendon, tripping up Brendon’s feet so he falls backward onto the coffee table with a loud thud and causing Brendon to groan lowly in pain as he rolls off it and onto the floor. He is quick though, grabbing at Ryan’s ankles and knocking him over so he falls on top of Brendon. Brendon throws his hands out to push at Ryan’s chest, and Ryan tumbles off to the side and falls onto his back next to Brendon. He rolls on top of Ryan, blocking Ryan’s arms from hitting his face.
Before they know it, Brendon has Ryan trapped beneath him, and despite his inability to move, Ryan looks defiant.
“Pinned.”
And then Brendon bends his head down and kisses Ryan, who struggles, but only half-heartedly. It takes just a few seconds before Ryan’s lips kiss back. Brendon pulls away and grins at Ryan, who lays there, eyes wide and unsure of what Brendon will do next.
Brendon lowers his head, resting his forehead against Ryan’s temple and nudging Ryan’s cheek with his nose and lips. “I should be mad at you,” he whispers, lips now against Ryan’s ear, breathing hotly as he nibbles briefly on the lobe. He feels Ryan’s body jump beneath him.
“Yeah,” Ryan says breathily, unable to keep up a nonchalant façade, “well, you punched me in the face so I’m not too thrilled with you either.”
“Shut up, you adore me,” Brendon says, shifting his pelvis down as Ryan had done days before when their positions had been reversed.
“Nuh-uh,” Ryan mumbles, craning his neck to kiss and nip at Brendon’s jaw.
“You think I’m pretty,” Brendon says, remembering the “pretty face” comment in Ryan’s tirade. He reluctantly lets go of one of Ryan’s arms, even though he really shouldn’t since he doesn’t know what Ryan’s going to do next, but he risks it because he really wants to touch the man beneath him.
Their lips join again, and this time, Brendon opens his mouth to let Ryan’s tongue in. His hand pushes Ryan’s shirt up so he can run his hand along the soft skin at his waist, and Ryan shifts beneath him to rub their crotches roughly together. Ryan hums contentedly, and Brendon’s moan is muffled since their mouths are still firmly attached.
Brendon’s hand on Ryan’s wrist loosens its grip as he feels lust taking over and making him more pliable. He pulls back, sucking on Ryan’s bottom lip a bit before moving completely away. The two look at each other, panting heavily, and Brendon sees Ryan’s flushed cheeks, an assurance that Ryan feels the heat between them too. He needs to get Ryan naked, needs to get himself naked, needs Ryan to finally fuck him after all the tension from that morning.
Ryan seems to be reading Brendon’s mind because he glances down once before tugging Brendon’s tie loose. Brendon helps him, removing the tie quickly while Ryan deftly works at the buttons of his shirt. Once the shirt is open, Ryan flattens his hand against Brendon’s chest, running his palm down to Brendon’s stomach before leaning forward and mouthing at Brendon’s collarbone.
“Ryan,” Brendon whispers with a moan to his voice. His fingers have found the hem of Ryan’s shirt so he tugs, and Ryan leans back to let Brendon pull it over his head. Immediately after, Brendon’s hands are at the button of Ryan’s jeans, undoing them and tugging the zipper down. Soon, Ryan’s pants are gone, Brendon moving off him briefly to get them out of the way along with Ryan’s underwear. Ryan finally pushes Brendon’s shirt off him, and it sinks to the floor. Then Brendon works on his own pants, swatting away Ryan’s hands. He kicks off his pants, and they glance over each other’s nude bodies briefly, acknowledging the more-than-lust there in each other’s eyes, before kissing again more fiercely than before.
Ryan pulls Brendon down on top of him, Brendon groaning as their hardening lengths slip together. Ryan’s fingers move along Brendon’s back, tickling the skin at the base of his spine. Then his hands move further down, cupping his ass and pushing Brendon further up so their cocks drag together again. Ryan moans, and Brendon can feel the vibrations from the noise against his own skin.
Brendon’s mouth travels down to Ryan’s neck, tasting his skin and marking it up. “I’m going to ride you so good,” Brendon murmurs by Ryan’s ear.
Ryan chuckles, his palms still pressed onto the cheeks of Brendon’s ass. “Oh, you are? What makes you think I’ll just sit back and let you take control?”
Brendon lifts his hips and waits before grinding back down. “You love it,” he whispers seductively when Ryan moans loudly, mouth falling open. Brendon kisses him, tasting again those delicious looking lips already swollen and red from their previous kissing. Then Ryan has reached between them, holding both of their cocks briefly in his hand, and Brendon groans, legs shaking a little as he tries to hold himself up above Ryan.
Ryan turns his head, and Brendon’s lips slip off, breaking the kiss as Ryan lets go. “My bag, next to you. There’s lube and condoms in there,” Ryan says between deep breaths.
Brendon grins as he leans over and rummages around the bag, finally finding them at the bottom. Ryan rises up to rest his weight on his forearms to watch Brendon open the bottle of lube and drip some onto his fingers. Eyes locked to Ryan’s as he hovers over him, Brendon reaches behind himself and inserts a finger into his ass.
“Fuck,” Ryan mutters, almost as if he can’t quite believe Brendon is fingering himself right there and staring at him the whole time. Brendon pushes a second finger in and groans, eyes half-closing but still intent on watching Ryan watch him. He involuntarily thrusts forward, his cock barely brushing Ryan’s stomach, and he knows that he can’t hold out much longer. He wants Ryan in him. Now.
He feels Ryan’s hand on his wrist. “Wait, I want…” Ryan says, and Brendon stops. Brendon removes his fingers, and Ryan replaces them with his own slicked up fingers. It feels good; Ryan feels different, his pace obviously a lot more unpredictable than Brendon’s. Ryan stretches him, thrusting in at an angle that allows him to, when he curls his fingers, occasionally brush against Brendon’s prostate, shooting electricity through him and making it harder for him to keep himself up on his knees. Brendon moans, eyes falling shut out of pleasure.
“Enough,” Brendon chokes out, forcing his eyes open. Ryan’s fingers stop their motions. “I’m ready. I’m… Yeah, sit back.”
Ryan removes his hand and leans back, allowing Brendon to slip back a little too to give himself room for rolling the condom onto Ryan’s cock. When Brendon rubs lube onto Ryan’s length, he applies the slightest amount of pressure, causing Ryan to tilt his head backwards.
Then Brendon lowers himself onto Ryan’s cock slowly, taking time to let himself get used to the feeling of Ryan in him, filling him up and stretching him. “God, Brendon,” Ryan breathes out. “Fuck.”
Brendon moans loudly in response, having reached behind him to change the angle. The he starts a rhythm, moving up and down Ryan’s cock as his own rests between their stomachs and leaks pre-come. Ryan is doing his best to help Brendon hold himself up as he bounces in his lap, and Brendon leans forward to bite down hard on Ryan’s shoulder. Brendon’s hair is sticking to his forehead, and he can feel the heat emanating from their joined bodies.
And then Ryan captures his lips with his own, kissing him deeply and passionately. Brendon slows his pace a little, as his attention is now divided, but he thinks that this is better, the two of them with their locked lips and their slow, somewhat clumsy sex. He likes the way Ryan is making him feel, definitely having noticed the gentle touches and caresses from Ryan.
Even though Brendon controls the pace of their sex, could stop the whole thing if he wanted to, Ryan still does his part, making Brendon feel safe and attached to something sturdy and strong. Brendon thinks that he should pay more attention from now on to the way Ryan shows him in his own way that he cares. Those looks where it’s not just lust, and the way Ryan’s fingers skim over Brendon’s ribs so softly, and the soft, concerned mutters of “Are you okay?” let him know.
“I’m close,” Brendon chokes out, driving his ass down as Ryan’s hips move up to meet him halfway. Everything he sees when he forces his eyes open has a hazy glow around it, and Ryan is shining beneath him.
“Yeah?” Ryan mutters and moves one of his hands from Brendon’s back to between them. He takes a hold of Brendon’s cock, and Brendon’s movements become shallower while Ryan’s small thrusts upward do more work.
“Ah, fuck, Ryan,” Brendon lets out as Ryan’s hand flies over Brendon’s length. And then Brendon comes, explosions in his brain erupting as his come leaks out between them on Ryan’s hand and stomach.
Ryan’s lips are on top of his, and he does his best to kiss back, though his body has become like jelly in the haze that immediately follows an orgasm. Brendon moves his hips to aid Ryan’s shallow thrusts since Ryan is still hard inside of him. He clenches his muscles as he moves down, hears a soft murmur of “JesusChristBrendon,” and soon, he feels Ryan shudder beneath him, the drawn out moan spilling from Ryan’s lips an indication of his own orgasm. And Brendon gets to see Ryan come again, forces himself out of post-orgasmic laziness to pay attention because he’d be missing the best part. And fuck if Ryan wasn’t the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Ryan doesn’t seem to be able to hold himself up any longer since he lies down on the floor and pulls Brendon down with him so their bodies are pressed together. Neither of them care that they’re smearing Brendon’s come between them, and Ryan reaches down to pull out of him, Brendon frowning only a little at the emptying effect it has. But Ryan’s arms are around him, holding him close, and that frown is gone almost instantly.
“We should maybe clean up,” Ryan mutters, running his fingers through Brendon’s sweaty hair.
“Uh-huh,” Brendon mumbles back into Ryan’s neck, though neither of them do anything.
“And maybe we should move to your bedroom,” Ryan says tiredly.
“We should,” Brendon agrees, and still, no one moves.
It’s true. He’s tired and really wants to sleep on his comfortable bed, and he’s sure that the floor is hard and uncomfortable against Ryan’s back. But at this very moment, he wants to stay in Ryan’s embrace for just a little longer.
Part Four
Part Two
Leaning against his headboard, Brendon watches TV uninterestedly, thinking, worrying, frowning. His mind is so full that he doesn’t really care that he is watching that stupid Snuggie commercial for the millionth time, and he barely hears the soft knock at his door.
He sits up even more, tucking his feet under him so he is sitting on his bed Indian style, and says, “Come in,” voice breaking a little.
The door opens slowly, and Ryan walks in while Brendon’s eyes follow every little movement the man makes. “Hi,” Brendon says, giving Ryan a tentative smile that Ryan returns.
“Uh, Brendon, I kind of wanted to talk to you.” If Ryan weren’t currently in front of him, Brendon would have heaved a loud sigh of relief. Talking is good. Things can stop being weird soon.
“Yeah, sure. S-Sit down if you want.” Brendon has no idea why he is stuttering, but he really wants to bang his head on a table for doing so.
There is a pause where the two guys look at each other, and then Ryan mumbles, “Okay.” The bed dips a little at Ryan’s weight when he sits at the foot of it, and Brendon finds himself wishing he’d sat closer.
“I, uh,” Ryan starts, and he looks down at his hands folded in his lap before looking again at Brendon. “I wanted to apologize.”
Brendon doesn’t get it; he’s the one that feels insanely guilty. “For what?”
Ryan frowns, like he can’t believe Brendon doesn’t know why. “For being a jerk to you,” he answers, and the tone has a hint of the Ryan that Brendon missed. “I don’t mean to be like that.”
Then Ryan chuckles a little and shakes his head. “Okay, that’s a lie. Most of the time, I don’t mean to be like that. Usually, people just roll their eyes at me because they know that’s just how I am. But, uh, I’ll admit that I gave you a hard time especially.”
“Why?” Even Spencer had said something like that.
Ryan looks down and bites his lip, smiling a bit. “It was fun, annoying you and pushing your buttons. And maybe I was showing off a little, trying to impress you or something. You’d just get so mad, but I thought you got that I didn’t really mean anything by it.” His smile fades. “I didn’t want you to end up hating me.”
Brendon wants to say that he doesn’t, that he never did, that he is sorry for shaking Ryan up. But he doesn’t know how, and anyway, Ryan goes on. “And so I guess I promise to do my best to stay out your hair until all this is over. I don’t think you’ll have to deal with me much after that.”
Ryan waits for a response from Brendon, and what he gets is a slow, unsure nod. Brendon wants to say something because he has no clue why he is nodding. It’s all just going wrong, and Ryan is on his feet almost right away. “Okay, then,” he says. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Brendon practically croaks back, and the door is closed before he can say any of the things he wanted to.
-----------------
Brendon spends most of the night tossing and turning in the dark. He’d thought that everything would be fine once Ryan started talking to him again, but Brendon has just been feeling worse. He hadn’t noticed before, but there was something behind Ryan’s eyes, a spark or a twinkle or something, whenever he was teasing Brendon. But the absence of it ever since “the incident” makes him all too aware of it now. He hates that he took it away.
And what’s more, he hates that Ryan promised to leave him alone. Brendon doesn’t want that. All he’s ever been was left alone. He admits it; the bickering was fun.
Maybe he admits that there was some truth to what Spencer had said earlier. It has been hard to ignore, especially since it’s just on the other side of his door, sleeping on his couch. Brendon thought Ryan was attractive from the first picture he saw of him. But up close, it’s the little things, and now, whenever Brendon looks at Ryan, he can feel a longing settle in the center of his chest. He felt it when he saw Greta make Ryan smile earlier, just a tad jealous that he didn’t know how to do that himself.
Brendon feels like he should’ve seen it. He catches glimpses of the real Ryan every so often; he should’ve pieced together that Ryan hides behind sarcastic remarks. Brendon gets that now.
For the tenth time that night, Brendon reaches over for the glass of water on his nightstand, but when he brings it to his lips, he only gets a few drops. His first instinct is to get up and go into the kitchen since that water, unlike the one from the tap in his bathroom, is cold. But Ryan is out there, sleeping, and Brendon doesn’t want to disturb him. And then he realizes that Ryan is out there, and before he knows what he is doing, he slides out of bed, pausing to look around in the dark for his sweatpants to pull over his naked body.
When he gets to the bedroom door, he turns the knob slowly and the door opens with a very slight creak at the hinges. Brendon slips out, grasping the glass, and pads out of his room as quietly as he can. Having been up all night, he has little trouble seeing in the dark, his pupils no doubt dilated enough. The moon comes through a crack in the drapes, and Brendon stops where he is because it’s enough light to see the sleeping form on his couch.
Ryan’s body is turned away from the edge of the couch, away from Brendon, and it rises and falls evenly and slowly with the steady breaths Ryan takes in his sleep. Brendon hears Ryan softly snoring, a notch above loud breathing, and finds it incredibly endearing. He can make out in the blue light that Ryan is wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, the blankets having slipped to Ryan’s waist in the warm spring evening, and Brendon traces with his eyes the sharpness of Ryan’s shoulders, the bumps of Ryan’s spine as his head is dipped forward towards the back of the couch, the slimness of Ryan’s waist, the curves of Ryan’s arm muscles.
Brendon clenches his fists because he wants to walk over, reach out, touch, do everything and anything. But he can’t. He has walked too far into the room already, has walked past the kitchen where he’d intended to go, so he turns around because he really shouldn’t creepily stare at Ryan while he’s sleeping.
He had thought that he can see well in the dark, but he was obviously wrong because Brendon, having not realized that Ryan had moved the coffee table away from the couch a little - probably so as not to bump into it himself when he wakes up in the morning - bumps into the corner of it, rattling the items on it and knocking a ton of papers and magazines onto the floor. And on top of it all, Brendon lets out an involuntary “Fuck!” as the pain on the side of his leg catches him completely off guard.
“Who’s there?” Ryan’s voice cuts through the dark, steady and forceful and not sleepy at all. When Brendon looks back, his eyes widen for only a second. There is a gun pointed at him.
Thankfully, Brendon is a professional. He is not about to start crying because of it; he can’t even remember how many times he’s had a gun pulled on him. “Ryan, it’s me,” Brendon hisses.
“Oh, shit,” Ryan says, obviously relieved. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, placing the gun under his pillow.
“Getting some water. I wouldn’t have left my room if I knew I could’ve gotten my head blown off for it. Jesus, you sleep with a gun under your pillow?”
Brendon can just make out Ryan’s shrug. “Necessary precaution. Why? Don’t you?”
Well, Brendon sleeps with a gun in the drawer of his nightstand. It’s right there next to a box of condoms, a bottle of lube, and the comic books Brendon likes to read before bed. But that’s completely different, and Ryan doesn’t need to know that. “No.”
“Don’t think you’re getting away so easily,” Ryan says, and Brendon furrows his eyebrows. “The kitchen is over there, and you were over here. Why?”
Brendon clears his throat. “I, uh…” He sighs. “Okay. I wanted to talk to you.”
“It’s the middle of the night,” Ryan deadpans.
“Yeah…” Brendon says, drawing it out. “But you didn’t let me have my say earlier.”
There is a clicking noise, and soon, the room is lit, causing both Ryan and Brendon to squint as their eyes adjust. Ryan sits up, letting the blankets pool at his lap. “I didn’t know you had something to say,” he says softly.
Brendon walks over to the couch and sits down next to Ryan. If both men were being honest, they would’ve admitted that Brendon is sitting far closer to Ryan than is necessary. In any case, neither one of them says anything about it or moves. “I didn’t have the words then,” Brendon says quietly.
He is still not sure whether or not he does, but either way, he has started this conversation and he doesn’t want to leave it feeling unsettled again. Brendon takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
Ryan looks shocked. “For what? You didn’t-”
“I don’t hate you,” Brendon interrupts. “I never hated you. I don’t know why I said that.”
And then he laughs softly because this is starting to go a little like Ryan’s apology. “I mean I do know why. I wanted to get a rise out of you, stun you, something. So I guess I’m guilty of that too.” The corner of his lips quirks up into a half smile, and he looks up at Ryan shyly, causing Ryan’s eyes to soften.
Brendon continues, “I just feel horrible that something I said affected you like it did. I didn’t think anything I could say would affect you. You always seems so confident, I didn’t…” Brendon doesn’t know where he’s going with this. He breathes in and starts again. “You don’t need to leave me alone. I kind of like having you around.”
He smiles, looking up at Ryan, and he does his best to read Ryan’s eyes. Brendon thinks he is getting better at seeing through the hard exterior around Ryan, or maybe Brendon is just feeling really bold at two in the morning.
It starts with his hand, curling over the one Ryan rests on his leg like he has some claim on him. But it seems he might since Ryan’s hand shifts so his thumb can make its way around Brendon’s hand in an attempt to hold Brendon’s hand back. Brendon chances a glance back at Ryan, and upon seeing the smile there, with the corners of his eyes crinkling and everything, he thinks that this is how you make Ryan Ross smile like that.
It gives Brendon enough courage to do what he’s been wanting to. He leans in, only a little bit since they are already sitting close as it is, and Ryan’s lips make it the rest of the way. Brendon shuts his eyes tightly, savoring the soft, almost chaste kiss.
Kissing Ryan turns out to be completely different than Brendon had expected. Ryan had always been (okay, for two days) in Brendon’s mind a force to be reckoned with, and he thought kissing him would be like a battle. They’d struggle for dominance, and things would get heated. But this. What Brendon gets from Ryan almost throws him off.
This is like a dance, where Brendon leads and Ryan follows. It seems like every movement is deliberate, even the ones that just happen and aren’t planned at all, like Brendon slipping his tongue into Ryan’s mouth. It’s gentle, but not painstakingly so. It isn’t so much heated (though Brendon knows for certain that there is definitely some heat) as it is tender, and Brendon is glad they’re sitting down because it is all so overwhelming.
When Brendon pulls back, Ryan’s body follows a little before he comes to his senses. Brendon’s eyes wash over him, and he notices that Ryan’s breaths are coming in heavier than they had been and that Ryan’s lips appear larger and redder than they were just a moment ago. Brendon licks his own lips, trying to calm down just a little and slow down his own breathing, and he sees Ryan’s eyes focus in on them.
“I, uh, should go back to bed,” Brendon says, voice raspy. Ryan just nods in response.
Brendon gets up and feels cold air wash over his right side, already missing the way sitting close to Ryan had warmed up his body. He takes a slight detour to the kitchen to fill up his glass like he’d intended to do, but before going into the hallway where his bedroom door is, he turns around and sees Ryan watching him.
He clears his throat and smiles shyly. “If you don’t want to sleep out here, you’re welcome to sleep in my room. I would, um… I’d like it if you did. You don’t have to though.”
Brendon pauses, waiting to see if Ryan would respond, but he doesn’t so Brendon turns around and goes into his room, leaving the door ajar.
He shouldn’t hope for too much because he doesn’t want to get disappointed. But he keeps his sweatpants on when he climbs into bed, despite the minor discomfort, because if Ryan does choose to come in, he doesn’t want to scare him away or go too fast.
Brendon lies on the side further from the door with his back to it, leaving room just in case. He reminds himself to not get his hopes up and to try to get some sleep because he has to be up and ready for a mission. He has to-
The door to his room creaks, and Brendon hears a foot fall. He smiles to himself when he feels the sheets around him shift and the bed underneath him give. He turns around, and Ryan is there, watching him carefully in the dark. Brendon inches closer, hoping that it’s okay and that he isn’t scaring Ryan away. And then Ryan’s arm finds its way underneath Brendon’s neck to rest around his shoulders and pull him closer so Brendon can curl into Ryan’s side.
Brendon presses tightly to Ryan’s side, and finally, finally, he can feel sleep take over.
---------------
When Brendon wakes up, he is lying on his stomach and is very much alone in his bed. He blearily looks around and shakes his head to himself. He should have known Ryan would be that type. The kind who gets freaked out by intimacy and withdraws when he starts to get close. Brendon just hopes he hasn't gone very far.
Brendon rolls out of bed and brushes his teeth, not bothering to shower or do something about his bedhead just yet. Then he wanders out into the living room, where he's taken by surprise.
Ryan had moved his furniture back to make room so he could do pushups. Mesmerized as Ryan pushes his sweaty, shirtless body up and down, Brendon stands glued to the doorjamb, watching. He eyes the man's arms, shoulders, and back, muscles showing prominently with every movement as they alternately contract and relax, and Brendon has to remind himself to close his mouth because he'd look like an idiot if he just stood there and gaped. The noises aren’t helping him keep calm, since with every push upwards, Ryan lets out a grunt, and Brendon can’t help wondering if he sounds like that during other types of physical activities.
"Ryan..." he says, unsure of what to say afterwards.
"Hold on a sec, Bren. Ten more," Ryan says breathlessly, but Brendon doesn't miss the way he'd addressed him. His feet take him into his living room, only slightly aware that he’s moving but just acting on the fact that Ryan is completely and unknowingly turning him on.
Those ten are up quickly, and when Ryan stands and turns around, he looks a bit surprised that Brendon is so close to him. There is a definite sheen on his body, but he isn’t dripping sweat like Brendon would be (he is only just a tiny bit jealous of Ryan). Ryan’s hair sticks to his forehead, his face flushed, and when Ryan smiles at him, Brendon doesn’t think he could look any hotter.
Brendon steps forward, and before Ryan can do anything about it, Brendon kisses him hard, wrapping an arm tightly around him despite the slickness from the small amount of sweat on him. It only takes a second for Ryan to kiss back just as aggressively, hands reaching out to Brendon’s neck and the back of his head.
Brendon starts walking, pushing Ryan backwards as they kiss until the backs of Ryan’s legs bump into the couch next to him, forcing him to sit. Brendon anticipates it, bending his head down to ensure that he doesn’t stop kissing Ryan, because he so, so does not want to stop ever. He climbs on top, knees on the couch and on either side of Ryan to straddle him. Almost automatically, Ryan’s hands come around to grasp Brendon’s ass, squeezing slightly, and Brendon moans and pushes his tongue deeper into Ryan’s mouth. One of the hands moves up to graze his back, and Brendon takes this opportunity to grind down hard on Ryan, eliciting a definite groan from him.
“Good?” he asks, lips still pressed up against Ryan, this time the skin on his jaw. He doesn’t even really have to ask because he can feel Ryan getting hard beneath him, feeling the delicious pressure against his hardening cock too.
“Fuck, Brendon,” Ryan gasps out just as Brendon’s teeth sink into his neck. “What a way to say ‘Good morning.’”
Brendon chuckles against Ryan’s skin in response while his hand travels down, down, down until they’re at the top of the waistband of Ryan’s shorts. He shifts on Ryan, now a little further back and not completely straddling him, sitting more to Ryan’s side so that when they kiss, Ryan has to crane his neck a little. Brendon’s fingertips run over a few bumps on Ryan’s skin, but he pays barely any mind to them. He lets the tip of his finger drag against the skin right above the waistband teasingly, playing a little with the short, coarse hairs there, before moving further down.
He then opens his hand and kisses Ryan more, just as he presses his palm to Ryan’s clothed cock. He can practically taste the moan coming out of Ryan’s mouth as he rubs and massages Ryan until he is fully hard.
Brendon pulls away from Ryan, their lips making a loud smacking sound, and he grins at the dazed look on Ryan’s face as he now runs his fingers along the top of Ryan’s shorts before pushing his hand underneath. The second he grips Ryan’s cock, he hears a sharp intake of breath in his ear as Ryan’s chin falls onto Brendon’s shoulder.
His other arm is around Ryan’s waist, holding him up as Brendon strokes his cock in a sure rhythm. Brendon loves the noises coming from Ryan, low, soft moans originating from the back of Ryan’s throat, and they seem to get louder when Brendon quickens the pace of his hand. His other hand runs along Ryan’s side softly, soothing him and keeping him in place.
Brendon’s hand starts to cramp, so he says, “Hold on,” and stops his motions.
“What?” Ryan asks, voice wavering a little as his eyes widen.
Brendon laughs at his obvious disappointment and pulls his hand away and out of Ryan’s shorts. “Don’t worry,” he says and kisses Ryan roughly. “You just need to pull these down.”
Ryan jokingly rolls his eyes and lifts his hips, and Brendon helps him pull them down enough to expose his cock, long and thick as it rests against Ryan’s stomach. Brendon is sorely tempted to climb onto Ryan’s lap right there and ride him, but he is back at the task at hand, so to speak. He makes a point of licking his palm under Ryan’s watchful gaze, eyes never looking away until he wraps his fingers around Ryan’s swollen cock, and Brendon kisses him once again. Ryan groans into Brendon’s mouth as his hand moves up and down, stroking faster and more freely than before, aided by the added moisture of Brendon’s spit. When Brendon swipes his thumb over the tip a few times on the upstroke and smears the pre-cum there, he can sense Ryan having trouble kissing back, attention obviously torn.
He pulls his lips away and lets Ryan rest his forehead against his own. Brendon starts to vary the pressure of his hand as Ryan breathes heavily and loudly, hot, moist breath blowing against Brendon’s mouth and cheek. He feels a tug at his sweatpants, and only now does he realize that Ryan’s fist has been clenched around the soft jersey fabric of it at his thigh.
Then Ryan drops his forehead to Brendon’s shoulder and releases, his warm, sticky come spilling onto Brendon’s hand as he strokes him through his orgasm, feeling the subtle shakes of Ryan’s body against his own. The moan that follows is muffled against the skin of Brendon’s neck, and Brendon can feel moisture where Ryan’s lips are pressed softly there.
Ryan breathes heavily as he starts to come down, and Brendon pulls his shorts up and tucks him back into them for him. Brendon hastily wipes his hand off on his sweatpants, not exactly caring about the mess because Ryan is still attached to his side. Then Ryan kisses him softly on the neck, and Brendon turns his head to get one fully on the lips. As they kiss, Ryan’s hands drag along Brendon’s chest, moving downward just like Brendon had done to him, but Brendon stops him and pulls away.
Ryan gives Brendon a confused look, and Brendon shakes his head. “Nope. Can’t.”
“Excuse me?” Ryan responds disbelievingly.
Brendon laughs. “Seriously, I can’t. It’ll throw off my game for later. No sex before missions.”
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Is this a joke?”
“Come on, you know how some athletes hold off on sex before big games. Same thing.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Brendon. Look at you,” Ryan says, obviously talking about the raging hard-on that Brendon’s sweatpants are doing nothing to hide.
Brendon shrugs and gets up, and Ryan looks half stunned and half annoyed. Brendon can’t help being just slightly amused that, this time, Ryan’s the one looking peeved. “I’m going to get ready. Spencer is coming by in an hour.”
“Have fun getting rid of that,” Ryan says bitchily, crossing his arms and looking away. Brendon kind of hates that Bitchy Ryan is hot as fuck, and he has to force himself to look away because a second longer and he’d be on Ryan, breaking his own rules.
------------------
One cold shower and a crisp, black suit later, Brendon walks out into the kitchen to find that Ryan is miraculously ready, wearing a simple black shirt with black jeans, and pouring himself some cereal. Ryan glances at him briefly and doesn’t say anything. He carries the bowl to the table wordlessly, leaving Brendon confused.
“Why are you mad at me?” Brendon asks when he joins Ryan at the table.
“Who says I’m mad at you? I’m fucking peachy,” Ryan says in that sharp tone of his, and Brendon can feel it starting to get on his nerves.
“I can’t believe you’re seriously pissed off that I wouldn’t let you return the favor. It’s nothing personal. I just need to fucking focus on the mission. See, right here. We’re not focused because of this,” Brendon says, gesturing to the space between them.
Ryan crosses his arms. “I am always focused. I don’t need any idiotic rules to keep my mind on the mission, unlike some people.” He promptly opens up his newspaper and disappears behind it.
Brendon really wants to deck him, just lean right across the table, snatch his newspaper away (and possibly leave a ton of paper cuts), and take a swing. Ryan is saved from such a fate though when there is a knock at the door. Brendon gets up and shoots a dirty look at Ryan, though he doesn’t seem to notice.
“Hey, come in,” Brendon says unenthusiastically when he opens the door and finds Spencer behind it. He leads him to the table, and Spencer plops a large black bag onto it.
Ryan nods hello at him and puts his newspaper down but doesn’t even glance at Brendon.
“O… kay,” Spencer says as he pulls equipment out of the bag, and Brendon already knows he’s going to get bombarded with questions once the two of them are alone. “Jon is at the office today. Has to keep up appearances,” he explains, and Brendon and Ryan both nod uninterestedly.
“So,” he says, obviously choosing to ignore the tension for the time being, “we need to get some surveillance equipment on you.” To Ryan, he says, “We took this from your warehouse. Hope you don’t mind.”
Ryan shrugs and mumbles, “Whatever, fine.”
Brendon steps away from the table when Spencer approaches him with some sort of device. “Alright, Brendon. We need your shirt off.”
He removes his jacket, tie, and button down, and he notices that Ryan is decidedly looking away. Once his chest is bare, Spencer places the black capsule-like electronic against Brendon’s back and tapes it there securely. “This will transmit the signals back to the van where Ryan will be,” he explains. “You can put your shirt back on.”
Brendon does so, choosing to worry about his tie and jacket later, and Spencer hands him a pair of glasses. “The camera is here,” Spencer says, pointing to the right of one of the lenses. “And the mic is here.” Spencer points to the left of the other lens. “The glasses wirelessly communicate to the transmitter on your back. Ryan will be doing surveillance and recording everything that the glasses get. They turn on when you put them on, and the battery lasts for an hour, so don’t put them on until you need to.”
“Right,” Brendon says.
“I’ll have one too, so Ryan will be able to let you know if Ms. Williams is coming back or not.”
Brendon nods, and when he looks into Spencer’s clear blue eyes, he finds that they are scrutinizing him curiously.
“We’ll be going in unarmed. We’d never get ten feet into the building otherwise,” Spencer says.
He then hands Brendon a card with his face on it, though it says “Leopold Chauncey” instead of his real name. “Spencer, what the fuck?”
Ryan sniggers when he reads it as Spencer tries to suppress a laugh. “Can’t I have a little fun?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t exactly appreciate you throwing shit I tell you when I’m drunk back in my face,” Brendon responds with an eye roll.
“Wait,” Ryan says, as if forgetting that he’s annoyed with Brendon, “what does-”
“Nothing,” Brendon cuts in quickly after seeing Spencer open his mouth to respond.
Then there’s silence as Ryan and Brendon look away from each other, and Brendon can feel the tension coming back.
Spencer’s eyes dart between the two of them for a few moments, and then he sighs. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go then.”
------------------
“Passing checkpoint one,” Brendon hears Spencer mutter beside him.
“Yeah, okay, Francois,” he hears Ryan say dully through the earpiece Spencer had given him a few minutes ago. Unlike Brendon, Spencer doesn’t have a name card. Instead, he is placing the visitor’s pass Brendon had just obtained from the security guard onto his suit jacket. It’d been pretty convincing; Spencer’s false accent really helped.
The first checkpoint is the easy one. Several types of government workers are allowed in this area of the building, and the security guards don’t usually give people a hard time.
It’s the second one, up on the floor of Mr. Wentz’s office, that will be tricky. That floor, Jon had explained, is reserved for several of the CIA’s higher-ups, and relatively few agents have access to it.
The two men approach the elevators, and there is already a small crowd huddled around the up button. Soon, there is a ding, and one of the many elevators open. Spencer and Brendon file in along with the rest, the two glancing quickly at each other as the doors close. One elevator ride later, they find themselves in a vestibule with the elevators, and a set of glass doors stand across from them. There is a card reader next to them, and Brendon knows this is checkpoint two.
Spencer had modeled his fake ID card after Jon’s, who does have access to the floor. After playing around with encryption keys, Spencer had programmed it to have a false profile tied to it, allowing for them to breach security undetected. At least, that’s what should happen in theory. The security system, Spencer had explained to Brendon in the van, is highly sensitive, and one small irregularity could deny them access and alert security of an attempted breach. CIA agents would flood the area and cover all exits, leaving no room for escape. Essentially, they’d be fucked. Brendon just has to trust that Spencer hadn’t messed anything up.
Brendon approaches the doors while Spencer hangs back and looks around curiously, playing his part in all this well. He swipes his card through the reader, and Brendon holds his breath, hoping for the green light to signal it’s okay to go ahead. And then he thinks, “Oh, shit,” his heart jumping as he inwardly freaks out, though on the outside, he maintains his cool, casual appearance. A yellow light cannot be good.
“Brendon, it’s okay,” comes Ryan’s voice through the tiny earpiece. His voice is calm and soothing, and Brendon does start to calm down, wondering how Ryan knew he’d been panicking. “It’s only a misread. Swipe the card again.”
He lets out a breath and slides the card in again. Another yellow light.
“Fuck,” Brendon mutters, closing his eyes briefly. It doesn’t work. Someone’s going to notice and get suspicious. He’ll lose his job, he’ll be thrown in prison, he’ll end up like Beckett and get stabbed to death.
“It’s alright, Brendon. Try breathing onto the magnetic strip and wiping it against your pants,” Ryan says, again bringing Brendon back.
Brendon does so, feeling that this is taking far too long and that, surely, someone would be suspicious by now. But he swipes the card, and finally, the door clicks and the reader turns green. He exhales as he pulls the door open wide and rushes through it, knowing Spencer is just behind him, having caught the door before it closed and locked.
“Checkpoint two,” he says under his breath.
Then, they part ways, Brendon pretending he doesn’t even notice Spencer moving off to a desk where a young looking assistant with bright red hair is typing away at a computer. Brendon instead goes into a hallway, hiding in the alcove where an empty meeting room is and where he is out of the line of sight of the hidden security camera across the way (all detailed in the blueprints Jon had brought the day before).
Brendon raises his hand and taps at the side of the glasses, and they change. He can now see what Spencer sees, the scene Spencer’s glasses capture showing on the lenses of Brendon’s glasses. Another tap and he gets audio. The scene is incredibly shaky, enough to make a normal person sick, and is due to the intense amount of swiveling Spencer’s head is doing to help convey the “lost in a foreign environment” look he is trying to achieve.
“Excuse me? Can I help you” Brendon hears a soft feminine voice come through the earpiece.
Then Brendon sees the redheaded woman, looking both curious and cautious, as she steps out from behind her desk and wanders over to Spencer.
And then begins Spencer’s rapid-fire French, Brendon only catching “Je suis perdu” and “Où est la toilette?” He’s not certain, being pretty terrible at French (but he’s very fluent in Spanish and Japanese and isn’t half-bad at Italian, so there), but Brendon thinks Spencer called Ms. Williams a “sexy fox in a pantsuit”. Brendon knows Wentz’s assistant is falling for it.
No longer cautious, she seems pretty torn between wanting to flirt back and trying to figure out where Spencer (or Francois as his visitor’s pass clearly says) is supposed to be. Spencer, on his part, is doing a great job chattering away, showering her with compliments in French, even embodying the more forward approach that seems prevalent in some types of European men.
Brendon knows what’s going on in her mind. She should call security, since he is obviously not on the correct floor and had somehow breached the secure doors by the elevator. But it really isn’t his fault that he’d gotten lost, separated from whoever had signed him in and unable to communicate what he needs. He knows she won’t ask around for someone who knows the language to translate, even though there’s bound to be plenty of people around who can help, because she wouldn’t want Spencer to get in trouble. So, just as they had hoped, she gets up and leads Spencer toward the doors, linking her arm reluctantly around Spencer’s proffered one as she leads him into the elevators.
When the doors close behind them, Brendon taps his glasses again. The scene disappears and the French babbling cuts off, and Brendon moves swiftly to Ms. Williams’s desk, or Hayley’s as a decorative nameplate on it says. He takes a seat in her chair, knowing he has to hurry before someone walks by and notices a shock of dark brown instead of a flash of red behind the desk.
He nudges the mouse and wakes up the computer to reveal a login page, with “HayleyWilliams” typed in as the ID. Brendon looks under the desk and plugs in a device into the USB port of the computer.
“Okay, Ry. You’re up,” Brendon mutters quietly.
“Like I didn’t know,” Ryan cuts in brusquely as Brendon clenches his jaw and watches the computer being taken over. A small window pops up and a program runs briefly, several numbers and letters constantly changing in the brute force attack aided by running a key history search, before exiting itself.
“Alright, got the password,” Ryan says, and Brendon readies himself to type. “M-1-z-” Ryan says, making sure to say which letters are capitalized and which aren’t, “s-3-r-I-3-B-s-1-7-E-5-5.”
Finally, Brendon is logged in, and only after a few clicks, he finds a file called “Wentz Itinerary” and opens it.
“This can’t be right,” Brendon finds himself muttering, his brow furrowed.
“Shit,” he hears Ryan say.
“I don’t…” Brendon starts to say.
“It doesn’t matter, Brendon. Save it.”
“But-”
“Do it,” he says, Ryan’s voice so sharp that Brendon can actually feel the sting. He saves the file onto the hard-drive of the device, all the while wondering when he let Ryan Ross boss him around.
“Brendon, you need to get out of there,” he hears Spencer’s voice cut through in a rushed whisper. Brendon quickly logs out, turns the computer to sleep mode, and pulls the device from the USB port, rushing back into the hallway where he’d hidden, just as the elevator doors open and Hayley steps out.
He lets out a breath, and Spencer says in his ear, “Meet me back in the van. I’m already within sight of it.”
“Copy that,” Brendon whispers, sighing a little as he talks, mostly out of relief.
Brendon takes one last calming breath before stepping out, nodding towards Hayley who smiles in return, and pulls the glass door open and takes the elevator down.
----------------
“How can that be possible?” Jon’s voice comes out of Spencer’s cell phone, the three men gathered around it after having relayed the news. “How can he have been on vacation for two weeks, still be on vacation for another two? He’s been assigning missions, videoconferencing from his office, for God’s sake! And even so, when one of his employees had ended up murdered, you know he’d have cut the trip short.”
Brendon sighs. “Maybe she just didn’t update his schedule yet.” He knew that was unlikely, considering how Mr. Wentz demands efficient, proactive employees. He surely would’ve found the most competent assistant there is who would immediately make changes to his schedule as they happen.
“No, look at the modification history on the file,” Spencer points out. It was last modified three hours before Brendon had obtained it.
“Is it possible he came back and she didn’t know?” Ryan says, and Brendon glances up. He catches Ryan’s gaze, the two eyeing each other for a few seconds before looking back towards the phone.
“No. The feed comes from his office. She would’ve seen him come in to do it,” Jon answers. “Dammit, I just saw him on the screen in the conference room a few hours ago. He’s can’t be on vacation in fucking Bora Bora!”
Jon never swears. Well, that might not be true since Brendon isn’t with him at all times of the day. He probably curses like a sailor in bed, but only Spencer could vouch for it, and Brendon doesn’t really care enough to inquire about it. Point is, in a professional setting, Jon does not swear, and here he is, dropping an F-bomb. Brendon can tell even calm, collected Jon Walker is freaking out.
“Hey, Jon,” Spencer says softly. “It’s okay.”
“You’re right, Spence” Jon mumbles, and Brendon wonders in that moment if he and Ryan should be there. But then, he says, “Listen. Brendon, Spencer, you two need to come in tomorrow. I’ll try to send Mr. Wentz a message, see if we can set up a meeting so he’ll have to videoconference in. I’ll see if Greta can track his location when he does.”
Ryan rolls his eyes. “Then why didn’t we do that in the first place? It seems a lot safer and way more efficient.”
“Because,” Spencer answers for Jon, “now, we have to pretend like we’ve been looking for you all this time. It’s a lot harder to come up with a convincing story of why we haven’t caught you yet.”
Ryan smirks and says in a cocky tone. “Easy. I’m just incredibly good at evading your attempts to trap and capture me. That is, when I’m not virtually impossible to track, which is never.”
Spencer looks as if he’s about to say something, but Jon pipes up, “Gentlemen, I will come up with a cover and brief you tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you guys get some rest.”
“Okay,” Brendon says quickly, hoping that Spencer will have forgotten Ryan’s obnoxiousness for the time being.
“Alright, see you tomorrow Brendon, Ryan. Spencer, see you tonight. Love you.” And then Jon hangs up.
Spencer pockets his phone and rubs his eyes. “This is so annoying. What the fuck is going on?”
Brendon pats Spencer’s shoulders as Ryan exits the room in the direction of the kitchen. “Hey, you heard Jon. You need to get some rest, stop thinking about it for a while.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Spencer says, nodding. “I think I’m going to go home. But not before you lend me that book we were talking about.” The last sentence is a lot louder, and Brendon can’t remember any recent conversation about a book.
“What?”
Spencer looks at him meaningfully, a smile itching to get out. “It’s in your room right? I’ll go with you.”
Still confused, Brendon leads Spencer reluctantly to his bedroom, and after shutting the door behind him, Spencer turns around with a devious smile on his face.
“Spill.”
Brendon groans, finally realizing what this is about. “Spencer…”
“Come on, man. What happened?”
“Look, it’s not… We kind of… Shit, I don’t even know what happened.”
Spencer gives him a disbelieving look, and Brendon proceeds to tell him of the events that’d gone on since the last time they saw each other.
Brendon frowns when he’s left with a chuckling Spencer, shaking his head as he mutters, “Oh God.”
“What?” he whines, feeling embarrassed.
“You two seem like such an unlikely pair,” Spencer says with a shrug. “You’re nice and polite to everyone and kind of goofy, and he is the biggest, most arrogant jerk ever.” Brendon frowns. “But,” Spencer continues, “I can tell there’s something between you guys.”
Brendon’s lip quirks up. “Sometimes, I’m convinced there’s a lot more to him than what he lets everyone see,” he mutters, mostly to himself rather than to Spencer.
Spencer musses Brendon’s hair and chuckles. “You’re probably right, and it’d definitely be you to find that out. You’re great with that kind of stuff.” He gives Brendon and encouraging nod.
And then it occurs to Brendon to ask something that he has been wondering. Spencer is a friend, after all. “How are you and Jon doing?” He hopes that Spencer gets his meaning.
Spencer’s eyes shift downward, and it appears as if he is engulfed in something bittersweet. “We’re good. It’s not the ideal situation, but we get by.”
“Is it tough to keep it secret?”
“It was tough to keep it from you, that’s for sure,” Spencer says with a chuckle. “We’re partners. We’re supposed to tell each other everything.”
His eyes are back to the floor again as he takes on a pensive air. “And then, sometimes, I’d just wish that we could be a normal couple so we wouldn’t have to hide such a big part of our lives. But I love my job, and I love him. The only thing I can do is just hold on and make our situation work.”
“Spence,” Brendon whispers. He can see how much Spencer has been holding in, unable to tell anyone what he has been feeling all this time.
“I should get going,” Spencer says, sighing. “Just hurry up and give me a book in case Ryan notices.”
When they leave Brendon’s room, Spencer uneasily clutching Confessions of a Shopaholic to his side (“What? I saw the movie and got curious!”), they find Ryan lying on the couch and reading Vonnegut. Spencer mumbles a goodbye to both of them, and Ryan holds a hand up to wave without looking away from the page. The door shuts, and the two are left in silence, though Brendon feels uneasy about it while Ryan doesn’t seem to notice that Brendon is even there.
“Ryan,” Brendon says, standing over him.
Ryan grunts, still reading and not even glancing up.
Brendon clenches his jaw. “Will you tell me why you’re mad?” This time, Ryan doesn’t act like he even heard Brendon speak. “That’s it.”
He is fed up with Ryan, so naturally, the first thing he does is yank the book from Ryan’s hands and toss it somewhere over his shoulder.
Ryan sits up, eyes blazing. “What the fuck is the matter with you?”
“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Brendon yells.
Ryan scoffs, which Brendon thinks is a sign that he may have stumped him. “What do you even want from me?” Ryan asks, and Brendon thinks he may be seeing things, but below the downturned, angry brow, there may just be insecurity lurking in those eyes. Insecure? Ryan? That’s pretty laughable, but then again…
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” Ryan responds with a scowl and rises from his seat. “You can’t just pretend you like me and reject me for your own amusement!”
Brendon stands shocked. “What? I-”
Ryan goes on, completely ignoring Brendon’s attempt to deny Ryan’s absurd accusation. “And I fucking fell for it! I’m so stupid. I should’ve seen it coming. I was a total jerk to you, for Christ’s sake. How can you possibly like me? How could you-”
“Ryan,” Brendon says, but Ryan doesn’t seem to hear him.
“-were a complete asshole, just stringing me along-”
“Ryan.” Brendon is losing his patience.
“-never again letting a pretty face get the best of me-”
And then Brendon slaps him in the face. Hard. Ryan looks shocked for all of two seconds. Then he mutters, “Son of a…” and takes a swing at him. Brendon, however, anticipates it and raises his arm to block the blow from landing on his jaw. He throws a right hook quickly, and Ryan isn’t quick enough to stop Brendon’s fist from hitting him squarely on the cheekbone.
Ryan stumbles backwards, bumping into the side table next to the couch, and the lamp sitting atop it teeters a bit before slipping and falling to the floor. It doesn’t break, but it makes a loud noise and the light in the room changes.
Angered by the punch, Ryan lunges forward and pushes Brendon, tripping up Brendon’s feet so he falls backward onto the coffee table with a loud thud and causing Brendon to groan lowly in pain as he rolls off it and onto the floor. He is quick though, grabbing at Ryan’s ankles and knocking him over so he falls on top of Brendon. Brendon throws his hands out to push at Ryan’s chest, and Ryan tumbles off to the side and falls onto his back next to Brendon. He rolls on top of Ryan, blocking Ryan’s arms from hitting his face.
Before they know it, Brendon has Ryan trapped beneath him, and despite his inability to move, Ryan looks defiant.
“Pinned.”
And then Brendon bends his head down and kisses Ryan, who struggles, but only half-heartedly. It takes just a few seconds before Ryan’s lips kiss back. Brendon pulls away and grins at Ryan, who lays there, eyes wide and unsure of what Brendon will do next.
Brendon lowers his head, resting his forehead against Ryan’s temple and nudging Ryan’s cheek with his nose and lips. “I should be mad at you,” he whispers, lips now against Ryan’s ear, breathing hotly as he nibbles briefly on the lobe. He feels Ryan’s body jump beneath him.
“Yeah,” Ryan says breathily, unable to keep up a nonchalant façade, “well, you punched me in the face so I’m not too thrilled with you either.”
“Shut up, you adore me,” Brendon says, shifting his pelvis down as Ryan had done days before when their positions had been reversed.
“Nuh-uh,” Ryan mumbles, craning his neck to kiss and nip at Brendon’s jaw.
“You think I’m pretty,” Brendon says, remembering the “pretty face” comment in Ryan’s tirade. He reluctantly lets go of one of Ryan’s arms, even though he really shouldn’t since he doesn’t know what Ryan’s going to do next, but he risks it because he really wants to touch the man beneath him.
Their lips join again, and this time, Brendon opens his mouth to let Ryan’s tongue in. His hand pushes Ryan’s shirt up so he can run his hand along the soft skin at his waist, and Ryan shifts beneath him to rub their crotches roughly together. Ryan hums contentedly, and Brendon’s moan is muffled since their mouths are still firmly attached.
Brendon’s hand on Ryan’s wrist loosens its grip as he feels lust taking over and making him more pliable. He pulls back, sucking on Ryan’s bottom lip a bit before moving completely away. The two look at each other, panting heavily, and Brendon sees Ryan’s flushed cheeks, an assurance that Ryan feels the heat between them too. He needs to get Ryan naked, needs to get himself naked, needs Ryan to finally fuck him after all the tension from that morning.
Ryan seems to be reading Brendon’s mind because he glances down once before tugging Brendon’s tie loose. Brendon helps him, removing the tie quickly while Ryan deftly works at the buttons of his shirt. Once the shirt is open, Ryan flattens his hand against Brendon’s chest, running his palm down to Brendon’s stomach before leaning forward and mouthing at Brendon’s collarbone.
“Ryan,” Brendon whispers with a moan to his voice. His fingers have found the hem of Ryan’s shirt so he tugs, and Ryan leans back to let Brendon pull it over his head. Immediately after, Brendon’s hands are at the button of Ryan’s jeans, undoing them and tugging the zipper down. Soon, Ryan’s pants are gone, Brendon moving off him briefly to get them out of the way along with Ryan’s underwear. Ryan finally pushes Brendon’s shirt off him, and it sinks to the floor. Then Brendon works on his own pants, swatting away Ryan’s hands. He kicks off his pants, and they glance over each other’s nude bodies briefly, acknowledging the more-than-lust there in each other’s eyes, before kissing again more fiercely than before.
Ryan pulls Brendon down on top of him, Brendon groaning as their hardening lengths slip together. Ryan’s fingers move along Brendon’s back, tickling the skin at the base of his spine. Then his hands move further down, cupping his ass and pushing Brendon further up so their cocks drag together again. Ryan moans, and Brendon can feel the vibrations from the noise against his own skin.
Brendon’s mouth travels down to Ryan’s neck, tasting his skin and marking it up. “I’m going to ride you so good,” Brendon murmurs by Ryan’s ear.
Ryan chuckles, his palms still pressed onto the cheeks of Brendon’s ass. “Oh, you are? What makes you think I’ll just sit back and let you take control?”
Brendon lifts his hips and waits before grinding back down. “You love it,” he whispers seductively when Ryan moans loudly, mouth falling open. Brendon kisses him, tasting again those delicious looking lips already swollen and red from their previous kissing. Then Ryan has reached between them, holding both of their cocks briefly in his hand, and Brendon groans, legs shaking a little as he tries to hold himself up above Ryan.
Ryan turns his head, and Brendon’s lips slip off, breaking the kiss as Ryan lets go. “My bag, next to you. There’s lube and condoms in there,” Ryan says between deep breaths.
Brendon grins as he leans over and rummages around the bag, finally finding them at the bottom. Ryan rises up to rest his weight on his forearms to watch Brendon open the bottle of lube and drip some onto his fingers. Eyes locked to Ryan’s as he hovers over him, Brendon reaches behind himself and inserts a finger into his ass.
“Fuck,” Ryan mutters, almost as if he can’t quite believe Brendon is fingering himself right there and staring at him the whole time. Brendon pushes a second finger in and groans, eyes half-closing but still intent on watching Ryan watch him. He involuntarily thrusts forward, his cock barely brushing Ryan’s stomach, and he knows that he can’t hold out much longer. He wants Ryan in him. Now.
He feels Ryan’s hand on his wrist. “Wait, I want…” Ryan says, and Brendon stops. Brendon removes his fingers, and Ryan replaces them with his own slicked up fingers. It feels good; Ryan feels different, his pace obviously a lot more unpredictable than Brendon’s. Ryan stretches him, thrusting in at an angle that allows him to, when he curls his fingers, occasionally brush against Brendon’s prostate, shooting electricity through him and making it harder for him to keep himself up on his knees. Brendon moans, eyes falling shut out of pleasure.
“Enough,” Brendon chokes out, forcing his eyes open. Ryan’s fingers stop their motions. “I’m ready. I’m… Yeah, sit back.”
Ryan removes his hand and leans back, allowing Brendon to slip back a little too to give himself room for rolling the condom onto Ryan’s cock. When Brendon rubs lube onto Ryan’s length, he applies the slightest amount of pressure, causing Ryan to tilt his head backwards.
Then Brendon lowers himself onto Ryan’s cock slowly, taking time to let himself get used to the feeling of Ryan in him, filling him up and stretching him. “God, Brendon,” Ryan breathes out. “Fuck.”
Brendon moans loudly in response, having reached behind him to change the angle. The he starts a rhythm, moving up and down Ryan’s cock as his own rests between their stomachs and leaks pre-come. Ryan is doing his best to help Brendon hold himself up as he bounces in his lap, and Brendon leans forward to bite down hard on Ryan’s shoulder. Brendon’s hair is sticking to his forehead, and he can feel the heat emanating from their joined bodies.
And then Ryan captures his lips with his own, kissing him deeply and passionately. Brendon slows his pace a little, as his attention is now divided, but he thinks that this is better, the two of them with their locked lips and their slow, somewhat clumsy sex. He likes the way Ryan is making him feel, definitely having noticed the gentle touches and caresses from Ryan.
Even though Brendon controls the pace of their sex, could stop the whole thing if he wanted to, Ryan still does his part, making Brendon feel safe and attached to something sturdy and strong. Brendon thinks that he should pay more attention from now on to the way Ryan shows him in his own way that he cares. Those looks where it’s not just lust, and the way Ryan’s fingers skim over Brendon’s ribs so softly, and the soft, concerned mutters of “Are you okay?” let him know.
“I’m close,” Brendon chokes out, driving his ass down as Ryan’s hips move up to meet him halfway. Everything he sees when he forces his eyes open has a hazy glow around it, and Ryan is shining beneath him.
“Yeah?” Ryan mutters and moves one of his hands from Brendon’s back to between them. He takes a hold of Brendon’s cock, and Brendon’s movements become shallower while Ryan’s small thrusts upward do more work.
“Ah, fuck, Ryan,” Brendon lets out as Ryan’s hand flies over Brendon’s length. And then Brendon comes, explosions in his brain erupting as his come leaks out between them on Ryan’s hand and stomach.
Ryan’s lips are on top of his, and he does his best to kiss back, though his body has become like jelly in the haze that immediately follows an orgasm. Brendon moves his hips to aid Ryan’s shallow thrusts since Ryan is still hard inside of him. He clenches his muscles as he moves down, hears a soft murmur of “JesusChristBrendon,” and soon, he feels Ryan shudder beneath him, the drawn out moan spilling from Ryan’s lips an indication of his own orgasm. And Brendon gets to see Ryan come again, forces himself out of post-orgasmic laziness to pay attention because he’d be missing the best part. And fuck if Ryan wasn’t the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Ryan doesn’t seem to be able to hold himself up any longer since he lies down on the floor and pulls Brendon down with him so their bodies are pressed together. Neither of them care that they’re smearing Brendon’s come between them, and Ryan reaches down to pull out of him, Brendon frowning only a little at the emptying effect it has. But Ryan’s arms are around him, holding him close, and that frown is gone almost instantly.
“We should maybe clean up,” Ryan mutters, running his fingers through Brendon’s sweaty hair.
“Uh-huh,” Brendon mumbles back into Ryan’s neck, though neither of them do anything.
“And maybe we should move to your bedroom,” Ryan says tiredly.
“We should,” Brendon agrees, and still, no one moves.
It’s true. He’s tired and really wants to sleep on his comfortable bed, and he’s sure that the floor is hard and uncomfortable against Ryan’s back. But at this very moment, he wants to stay in Ryan’s embrace for just a little longer.
Part Four