Merely to Touch (Brendon/Spencer)
Title: Merely to Touch
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Word Count: 11k
Rating: Very G
Disclaimer: Very much not true.
Summary: It’s not that Spencer doesn’t want things to change; it’s just that he doesn’t want to risk losing what he already has.
Author's Notes: College AU! Written for tigs, for drawn_to
Thanks so much to airgiodslv and novembersmith for betaing, and, of course, to foxxcub, for organizing this whole lovely exchange.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy;
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.
Really, thinks Spencer, it’s Ryan’s fault for bullying him into taking this stupid poetry class. To be fair, it was his advisor who told him that he needed an English credit and that it would be strongly in his interest (her words) to take it this semester (or, preferably, last semester, her words again). But it had been Ryan who had convinced him that Introduction to Poetry was the best of his options.
So it’s Ryan’s fault that Spencer has to drag himself up at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock on a Monday morning. Spencer hasn’t gotten up this early in about two years - more, maybe, since he stopped going to first period sometime in May of senior year of high school. He glares at the bed where Ryan is still sleeping peacefully (and will be for at least another three hours, all afternoon classes indeed, it’s not fair), and considers leaving something cold and wet on the floor for him to step on whenever he finally gets up. That, however, would be vindictive, and Spencer’s trying not to be so vindictive. So he settles for leaving his dirty cereal bowl squarely in the middle of the kitchen table, instead. (It’s an empty gesture, he knows. Ryan won’t even notice, and it will be Spencer who has to come home to clean up both of their bowls. If he decides he cares, which he probably won’t.)
It’s raining, and it’s too early, and Spencer’s really not ready to be back at school; he’s not in a good mood to start out with, and that’s when someone turns a corner and runs into him at full speed.
“Ouch,” says Spencer, from the ground, grumpily.
“Fuck, fuck, I’m so sorry,” says the person who bowled him over. “Fuck, let me help, oh, Spencer! Wow, this is great, running into you - haha, literally - what are the chances?”
“Pretty good, actually,” says Spencer, getting to his feet. “Hi, Brendon.”
Brendon beams at him eagerly, and Spencer, muddy and annoyed, tries very hard not to scowl back. He doesn’t know Brendon all that well - they had been in the same house last year, but Brendon’s doing Music Performance while Spencer’s doing Business, so they hadn’t hung out much, apart from the continual encounters that inevitably happen when someone lives two doors down from you. Brendon had been something of an inescapable force, always hanging out in the lounge or serenading people in the elevators, but Spencer hasn’t really thought of him since they made their perfunctory goodbyes at the end of last year.
There is mud all down Spencer’s pants. He grimaces and tries to wipe it off. Brendon doesn’t seem to notice, since he’s chattering away like he has to catch up for the entire summer of absence. Spencer surreptitiously checks his watch. He doesn’t have time to go home and change his clothes. This whole day sucks, all forty-five minutes of it, including the ten that he spent pressing the snooze button.
A sudden pause in the chatter forces him to pay attention. Brendon is looking at him expectantly. Spencer tries to think back to what Brendon had been saying; he’s pretty sure he had been talking about his summer, and there had definitely been some inexplicable reference to penguins, and, oh, they’re doing the usual exchange of pleasantries, he can totally catch up to this conversation.
“My summer was pretty boring,” he says. “Mostly just hung out with friends,” (by which he means Ryan), “watched TV, you know, the usual.”
“Right!” Brendon is nodding along enthusiastically. “Yeah, me too, mostly. I’m really excited to be back, though, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” says Spencer, unconvincingly. He wants nothing more than to be standing in the rain making small talk at eight in the morning while on his way to a ridiculous and unnecessary poetry class. It’s what he lives for. (It’s what he’s going to be living for, for the next three months. Dragging himself out of bed to study poetry, and Statistics to look forward to after that. Last week his life involved sleeping until noon, debating over the relative merits of breakfast and lunch, and texting Ryan pretty much every fifteen minutes. It had seemed boring at the time, but he misses it already.)
Brendon’s said something and he missed it, again. He searches for something to fill the empty pause. “So are you still living in Chamberlain?” he asks, at last. He thinks he’s had this exact same conversation - how’s your summer, where are you living, next they’ll move on to classes - at least three times now. He’s pretty sure he can predict the entire conversation, down to what Brendon’s going to say next; Brendon loves Chamberlain house, the dorm system, the dining hall, pretty much everything.
“Yeah, um,” says Brendon awkwardly. “No. I actually moved off campus?” He says it like it’s a question, nervous, uncertain.
“Wait, really? Aren’t you the poster boy for house spirit?” It was something of an understatement - Brendon had been the fucking king of house spirit, making posters and representing them for the house council and stopping by twice a day for three months to try and get Spencer to sign up for intramural sports.
“Right, yeah, I don’t know, I thought I’d go for something different. I’m subletting from this senior engineering major, I don’t really know him yet but he was looking for a roommate and I needed a place, and he seems really cool, so, yeah.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, it’s awesome! He has cats!” He grins. “Hey, didn’t you say you were going to get an apartment with Ryan? How’s that going?”
Brendon, Spencer thinks, is one of those annoying people who remember every conversation they have with you, which would be nice except that it makes him feel bad because he can’t even remember telling Brendon that, much less whatever things Brendon has told him that he ought to remember. “It’s going well,” he says. “I guess. It’s not all that different from last year, really.” He shifts uncomfortably. “You know, I really ought to be getting to class.”
“Oh, yeah, me too. Where are you headed?”
“Intro to Poetry,” Spencer says, with a disclaiming roll of his eyes.
“Awesome!” Brendon exclaims happily. “Me too! What are the chances?”
“Pretty good, actually,” Spencer replies, wearily. It’s going to be a long semester.
*****
“How many freshmen did you terrify today?” Ryan asks, when Spencer gets back.
“What?” Spencer has no clue what Ryan is talking about.
“Your face. You look like you’re about to erupt. I’d be scared, if I didn’t know better.”
“You should probably learn better,” Spencer grouses, kicking off his wet boots. “Poetry was the worst idea ever, I don’t even know what I was thinking, listening to you. The professor is a pretentious douche, and I got to set next to Brendon Urie, who spent the entire class fucking wiggling.”
“Ha,” says Ryan, and then, “Brendon Urie? Frisbee and Pancakes Brendon? From Chamberlain?” Spencer nods. “Ha,” Ryan says again, for no discernable reason.
“Whatever. Do you want to watch TV with me?” He has, after all, until tomorrow night to get his homework done.
“Can’t, I’m meeting some people. Sorry.” Ryan does not, to Spencer’s opinion, look appropriately apologetic.
“What people?”
“English majors,” Ryan answers, grinning. “We’re probably going to talk about poetry. You could come, if you want. Since you’re well on your way to being an expert, I’m sure.”
“I hate my life,” says Spencer.
*****
This is what the first week of school is like: Statistics is boring and Global Management is boring and Econ is just hard, and all Spencer really wants is to go back to his apartment and make fun of stupid movies with Ryan. But Ryan seems inexplicably busy these days, so Spencer goes to Organizational Behavior, which is boring, and Intro to Poetry, which is everything horrible Spencer expected.
On the second day of class, Spencer sneaks in just as the TA is taking attendance, but as he tries to slip surreptitiously into the back, Brendon turns around and waves.
It’s not that Spencer doesn’t like Brendon. Brendon is funny and kind and enthusiastic and isn’t bad at all when he’s not knocking on Spencer’s door at nine on Saturday mornings to try and get him to help beat the seventh floor at Ultimate Frisbee. Spencer likes him fine, when he thinks about it, which he mostly doesn’t.
It’s just that he doesn’t particularly want to sit with him. Spencer had been hoping for the anonymity of a class filled with English majors he didn’t know, so he could sit near the back and sleep. Brendon is exactly the kind of guy who spends his classes fidgeting and participating and doing all sorts of annoying things that attract unwanted professorial attention. However, the rest of the class is made up of extremely eager freshman all embarking on the beginning of their (extremely lucrative, Spencer’s sure) poetry careers, and two seniors who, although they look like they don’t want to be here any more than Spencer does, don’t look particularly inviting. Brendon, on the other hand, is turned all the way around in his seat. Spencer shrugs and goes to sit next to him.
As he’s sitting, the professor announces that they’ll be pairing up for their major project of the semester, for which they will be assigned to pick a poet, collect an anthology, write a foreword, and annotate their chosen poems. It sounds awful.
“Dude, we should be partners,” says Brendon.
“Sure,” agrees Spencer, shrugging, because there’s no reason not to. Brendon’s face nearly splits, his smile is so big.
“We should pick someone American,” Brendon whispers as the sign-up sheet goes around. “It will probably be easier to understand. Also, shorter.”
Spencer definitely respects that approach. “I like the way you think,” he says, and Brendon just gives him another one of those jaw-breaking smiles. (It must be exhausting, Spencer thinks, being that enthusiastic all the time.)
By the time the list gets to them, most of the immediately recognizable poets are already taken. Hazard of sitting in the back, Spencer supposes. “Who do you want?” he asks Brendon.
Brendon looks at him with wide eyes. “I have never heard of any of these people.”
Spencer hasn’t heard of most of them either. He scans the list somewhat desperately. “Whitman,” he says at last. “I am about eighty percent sure he’s American, and don’t ask how I know, it’s Ryan’s fault.”
“How do you feel about taking advantage of your best friend?” Brendon asks. “Can we use him for his literary skills?”
“Why do you think I keep him around?” says Spencer. “Of course we can use him. He’ll probably make us work for it, though. How are your bribery skills?”
“Not very good, I’m afraid,” says Brendon ruefully. “You’ll have to give me pointers, I’m really bad at figuring out what people like.”
“Fortunately, I am an expert in Ryan Ross,” Spencer says cheerfully.
“Fortunately,” says Brendon, leaning down to rummage for something in his bag. It makes his voice come out all muffled and flat. He emerges, rumpled, and grins. "We’re totally going to ace this project,” he says. “Just you wait and see. Maybe one of us will turn out to be a secret poet genius.” He pauses. “Poetical genius? Okay, maybe it had better be you.”
So maybe poetry isn’t as boring as everything else, but it’s mostly because Brendon makes stupid faces and jots down humorous commentary on the lesson instead of writing notes.
*****
“Hey,” says Brendon after class, “so, I’m kind of having a party tonight? Or, actually, my roommate’s having a party, and he said I could invite people, so, I thought, maybe?”
“Hmm?” Spencer is kind of distracted trying to figure out where he left his cell - he usually keeps it in his pocket, but for some reason today it’s tucked in his backpack under a binder.
“So do you want to come?”
“Dude,” says Spencer, without really thinking about it, “it sounds great, but I have to get home, I really have a lot of work - already, can you believe? - and Ryan and I have plans for after. Maybe next time, though?”
“Right,” agrees Brendon, “Next time. Definitely. Tell Ryan hi for me, okay?”
“Sure thing,” says Spencer. He’s always thought it’s a weird tradition, asking people to say hi for you. It’s not like anyone ever actually does it.
*****
Spencer gets halfway through taking notes on the first chapter of his Global Management assignment when he abruptly loses all interest. He figures that the shine of the new year and the empty notebook has worn off, and joins Ryan on the couch.
Unfortunately for him, Ryan is reading studiously.
“Aren’t you bored yet?” Spencer asks.
“Unlike some people, I actually like my major,” says Ryan without looking up.
“Unlike some people, my major is going to actually be useful after college,” says Spencer, but it’s a lame response, and he knows it. Ryan is not, at the moment, particularly interested in life outside of college, and he doesn’t even look up, just turns another page.
Spencer sighs and buries his face into the cushions.
*****
“What do you know about Walt Whitman?” Brendon demands at the beginning of their first library study session.
“Other than ‘O Captain! My Captain?’” Spencer asks.
“That was him?”
“I think?” Spencer is almost certain that he remembers this from high school. Like, seventy percent certain. He’s going to be really upset if he’s accidentally picked the wrong guy and they’re stuck with some obscure dude no one’s ever heard of. He figures that at least if the poem was used in Dead Poets’ Society, there has to be a reasonable amount of information out there. He hopes.
“I love that movie,” says Brendon appreciatively. “Do you think we can refer to it in our anthology?”
“Oh my god,” says Spencer, “we’re going to fail.”
Brendon puts his head in his hands. “I was kind of hoping this would be easier than a Lit class. You know, less reading.”
“Great minds and all that,” and oh, they are so very, very screwed.
“Behold the wonders of Wikipedia,” Brendon announces, typing into Google. He hits enter with a flourish, and then bursts out laughing. “Dude. Look at this picture. Dude. We’re writing about Gandalf!”
He bursts into laughter, and Spencer has to shush him and remind him that they are in the library. Brendon’s right, though - the guy totally looks like Gandalf.
*****
Ryan, because he’s an asshole, thinks the whole project is hilarious.
“We have to do all this biographical research,” Spencer complains, “and use it to annotate the poems, and I’m working with Brendon, who knows even less about poetry than I do!”
“Who’d have thought it was possible?” Ryan asks wryly. He is enjoying this whole thing far too much.
“I should have gone for one of the pretentious English major freshmen. At least I’d have known how to handle them. From all my previous experience.” This last is said very pointedly.
Ryan ignores his insult. “I like Brendon.”
“Really?” Spencer asks, surprised. “Last year you said he was annoying.”
“Last year I was a dick,” Ryan says. “Also he used to sing in the lounge while I was cramming for Bio. That was annoying.” He pauses and reflects. “But mostly I was a dick.”
“What else is new?” Spencer asks, by force of habit, but he’s not really paying attention anymore, he’s thinking about Brendon serenading Ryan in the lounge at four in the morning. It actually had been pretty funny. Mostly for the look on Ryan’s face.
Maybe he can use their poetry partnership to sneak Brendon into the apartment for a repeat performance next time Ryan has a test.
*****
One of the things Spencer likes best about living out of the dorms is how quiet it is. Not all the time, of course - the people in the next apartment occasionally like to blast their music, and there’s someone upstairs with a very dedicated exercise regimen - but compared to the dorms, it’s a fucking graveyard.
He’s always liked his privacy; it used to make him uncomfortable when people randomly knocked on his door and invited themselves in to ask homework questions and have awkward conversations. Mostly people had stopped doing it by second semester, with the exception of Brendon, who could be kind of oblivious about things. Now that they have an apartment, they usually have much more warning before visitors, and that’s the way Spencer likes it.
He also likes the fact that he and Ryan have a refrigerator all to themselves, and that they don’t have to share their couch with the entire floor.
Except when he comes home and finds about half a dozen people crammed into the kitchen, eating Spencer’s Oreos and talking excitedly about people and things Spencer has never heard of.
“These are my friends,” Ryan introduces, and Spencer recognizes some of them from last year, but most of them are new - Alex and Z and Michael and Rory and Nick and Tennessee, all English and History and Philosophy majors.
They seem nice. They laugh a lot, and they make a concentrated effort to include Spencer in the conversation.
He’s just not used to Ryan having friends other than him.
He looks at them all squished together on the couch, all bright colors and scarves and ironic t-shirts. They look comfortable together - Ryan looks comfortable, relaxed and easy, leaning back against Z with his legs up on Alex’s lap, comfortable and strangely unfamiliar.
Spencer doesn’t know what to make of it, but Ryan seems to have gotten taller since the semester started; there’s a curious lankiness to him that makes him look different, older. He can’t have grown, not really, not in the space of a few weeks - it’s probably just that he’s been wearing different clothes lately, Spencer tells himself, but it’s more than that. He stands differently, moves differently around people, and Spencer knows the way Ryan moves like he knows his own breathing - it’s disjointing, unnerving to see it change.
Ryan wears this new shape like an unfamiliar skin, and it makes Spencer uncomfortable, and then guilty for being uncomfortable. He likes things he can be sure of. He likes being sure of Ryan.
It’s not that he doesn’t want things to change; it’s just that he doesn’t want to risk losing what he already has.
*****
“I think my best friend is abandoning me for a bunch of English majors,” Spencer complains while their TA makes vain excuses about the professor’s tardiness (he studies poetry for a living, Spencer thinks, tardiness is to be expected). Ryan’s new friends have been over four out of the past five days, and Spencer is getting kind of lonely.
It’s funny, because if you had asked him last year, Spencer would have said that he had a lot of friends. People from his dormitory, from his Calculus class, from his O-Week group. Now he’s beginning to realize the difference between friends with whom you stop and exchange pleasantries and maybe set up a coffee date, and the friends who you can call in the middle of the night, who send you stupid texts about ridiculous things and drop by uninvited just because. He has plenty of the first. All he has of the second is Ryan.
Brendon just snorts. “Like anyone could get between you and Ryan.”
“That was last year,” Spencer says dourly. He’s being melodramatic; he’s been friends with Ryan for more than a decade, he doubts he’s about to be thrown over. It doesn’t mean he’s not unhappy about it, though.
“You guys are next thing to attached at the hip.” Brendon sounds as grumpy as Spencer feels. “I wouldn’t worry. At least your roommate is your best friend. I’m pretty sure mine thinks I’m an idiot.”
“Oh, Ryan definitely thinks I’m an idiot,” Spencer replies, and then, when Brendon fails to look cheered, “I’m sure your roommate doesn’t think anything of the sort.”
“No, really, he does.” Brendon looks down for a moment, and when he looks back up, his face is carefully cheerful. “It’s okay, most people do, I don’t care.”
“Well, who cares what he thinks, right?” Spencer says lamely. “If someone doesn’t like you, screw them, it’s their loss.”
“No, Jon’s awesome.” Brendon looks sad again, and Spencer feels kind of bad. “You know, people tell me not to care all the time, I guess I’m just not very good at it.”
“Um,” says Spencer, trying to think of something comforting to say. He’s not very good at comforting, especially since he thinks Brendon might be right. He thinks back to last year, how Brendon was always going out of his way to get people to like him, leaving his door open all the time and attending all the house activities and decorating the lounge for everyone’s birthdays. It seems like an exhausting way to live. Spencer can’t imagine spending all his time trying to pay attention to everyone, so he has no idea how to comfort someone who does.
Fortunately for both their sakes he’s spared from what was bound to be a miserable attempt at placation by the arrival of their professor, who stumbles in, looking frazzled, and immediately drops papers everywhere.
“Now that,” Spencer says instead, “is a warning sign to poetry enthusiasts everywhere; this is how you’re going to end up, late and reduced to physically dropping poems on your students’ heads.”
Brendon snickers. “You can imagine this as the probable fate of Ryan’s new friends, then,” says Brendon.
“More like the probable fate of Ryan,” suggests Spencer, which sets them both off; Spencer has to stuff his sleeve in his mouth to avoid looking like he’s laughing at their professor. They spend the rest of the class drawing little pictures of Ryan in various professorial mishaps. It’s the most fun Spencer’s had in class in pretty much ever.
*****
This is how Ryan and Spencer met: in the sandbox at the park, Spencer was six and Ryan seven, and neither of them had particularly wanted to be there. Spencer was bored, listlessly carting buckets of sand out of the sandbox and pouring them into the grass; Ryan had a vision, a castle with turrets and banners, like something out of a book. They ended up with a giant sand heap that resembled an ant hill more than it did a castle, but they also ended up friends.
Looking back, Spencer is never sure exactly how it happened, the easiness with which they slid into friendship. Maybe it’s because they were so young; maybe there was just something inevitable about him and Ryan. In any case, he’s never quite been able to get the hang of it, since. He’s never particularly minded, though, because Ryan is more than enough best friend for anyone.
*****
They meet at the library to try and work on their annotations, but Brendon’s stomach growls three times in the space of fifteen minutes, and every time he looks up so piteously that at last Spencer can’t take it anymore.
“Do you want to finish this over lunch?” he asks, and Brendon’s out of his seat before Spencer’s even finished asking.
When Spencer turns down the path for the cafeteria, though, Brendon pauses. “You know, I’m not that hungry,” he says, which is obviously a lie, and also blatantly ridiculous.
“That is ridiculous,” Spencer says. “Everyone in the library could hear your stomach growling, I’m pretty sure the guy at the table next to us thought it was thundering outside.”
“No, really, I changed my mind.” Brendon looks shifty and uncomfortable, and he’s not meeting Spencer’s eyes.
“Seriously, what’s the matter?”
Brendon’s actually blushing, which is kind of hilarious to watch, if totally inexplicable. “I don’t have a meal plan,” he says at last, “and it’s kind of ridiculously expensive to pay for a meal, I’d rather just wait. You can get something, though, I’ll just grab something from the café and meet you back in the library.”
“Dumbass, why didn’t you say so?” Spencer asks. “I’ll swipe you in.” It’s possible that Spencer can be kind of insensitive, sometimes. It hadn’t even occurred to him to ask if Brendon had a meal plan; if he’s living off campus, he doesn’t have to have one, although both Spencer and Ryan do, mostly because Spencer’s mother doesn’t trust them not to try and survive on ramen and poptarts.
“No, don’t worry about it, I don’t really like the cafeteria food,” says Brendon.
“Yeah, I can tell, that’s why you always stockpiled it last year. Seriously, let me swipe you in, I don’t care.”
Brendon’s face is still red, and he looks oddly defensive. “I don’t need you to do that,” he says. “I’m fine, I’ll just go to the café. I don’t need you to give me anything.”
Spencer has the feeling that he’s missing something, but he has no idea what’s going on, so he just says, “Brendon. My mom thinks I’m going to starve, she got me like a hundred extra meals or something, it’s absolutely ridiculous, they’re just going to get thrown away at the end of the semester. Also, I can smell the pizza from here, and it’s like torture. Please, Brendon Urie, let me swipe you in.”
It’s like all the defiance goes out of Brendon at once; he drops his head for a moment, and then shakes out his shoulders. “Fine,” he says. “Thank you. That would be very nice.”
“The siren call of pizza,” says Spencer wisely. “Absolutely irresistible. I knew it.”
“Actually, I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Brendon replies, grinning, his moodiness gone. “You were begging, and I couldn’t bring myself to dash your hopes.”
“I was most certainly not begging.”
“Think what you like, I know what I heard.” Brendon’s smugness is infuriating. “I am clearly the irresistible one here. You want the pleasure of my company.”
“Ha. Go on, see if I ask you to dinner.”
Brendon’s grin only gets larger. “I,” he says importantly, “already have dinner plans. My roommate and I are having a Roommate Bonding Night.”
“Your roommate who thinks you’re an idiot?” Spencer asks.
“I guess he doesn’t!” says Brendon, delightedly. “It was his idea! He even named it! We’re watching Disney! And drinking beer, because my roommate, Spencer Smith, unlike yours, is over twenty-one. What do you think of that?”
Spencer is surprised to find himself thinking a little wistfully that it sounds very nice indeed.
*****
“Oh god,” groans Spencer. “More nature imagery, please kill me now.” They have to hand in a rough draft set of annotations tomorrow, and Spencer is finding Whitman very hard to take in large doses. If the guy compares himself to another waterfall, Spencer is going to throw the fucking book out the window.
Brendon’s bent over his own volume, biting his lip. When Spencer speaks, he looks up, contemplative. “You know, this isn’t all that bad.”
“Please don’t defect on me, I have enough friends who spout poetry all day.” Well, really he has Ryan, but Ryan spouts enough pretentious poetry to count multiple times.
“No spouting, I promise,” says Brendon, but he pushes the book across the table, almost shyly, tapping his finger next to a stanza.
Spencer reads dutifully:
The one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
in the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me,
and his arm lay lightly around my breast - and that night I was happy.
“This is why he couldn’t get his stuff published, you know,” says Brendon. “The ‘homosexual tendencies’. He wouldn’t change it, though, you have to admire him for that.”
“I think we should switch volumes,” Spencer complains. “You have all the good stuff.” It’s not fair, Brendon’s over there getting forbidden love, and all Spencer has is waterfalls. He pauses a moment to reflect on the general unfairness of his life, adding in for good measure the fact that Ryan is having a party right now, and he’s stuck here reading poetry. Not that he really wants to be at Ryan’s party, which is historically themed and full of people Spencer doesn’t know, but it’s the principle of the thing.
“My parents didn’t want me to come back here,” Brendon says abruptly. “They told me I needed to transfer somewhere closer or they wouldn’t pay for it anymore.”
“What? Why?” Spencer is totally taken aback, both by the sudden shift and the revelation.
“It’s too far away,” says Brendon, shrugging. “It’s too irreligious, it’s too full of temptation, they don’t think music is a healthy calling in my case, they just want me closer to home - take your pick.”
Spencer doesn’t know what to say. He’d met Brendon’s parents, last spring, when they had driven out to pick him up. He’d liked them. “But they changed their minds, right?” he asks. Obviously, since Brendon’s here.
“Not really.” Spencer must look some combination of shocked and confused, because Brendon says quickly, “No, don’t, it’s not that bad. I have a full scholarship, I just have to pay for living expenses, I have it all under control.”
Spencer thinks of Brendon’s kind, laughing parents, tries to picture them refusing to let him come back. He doesn’t understand.
“They didn’t kick me out or anything,” Brendon says, half-defensive, even though Spencer hasn’t said anything. “It wasn’t like that. They just - they said that they didn’t feel comfortable paying to help me experiment halfway across the country. They wanted me to transfer to BYU, and I didn’t want that.”
“I -” begins Spencer, and then stops. He feels guilty, although he doesn’t know why. He feels bad for having supportive parents, and bad for not having known, and just kind of generally uneasy.
“Don’t look like that,” says Brendon. “Please, don’t. I’m fine, I’m doing great. I just… I wanted you to know.”
“Thank you,” says Spencer, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He feels like Brendon has given him something very important, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. He kind of wants to give him something in return, but he can’t think of anything, so he just looks up lamely and says, “Have you seen the ‘Hymen, Hymenee’ poem yet? Weirdest fucking thing I have ever read.”
“Yeah,” says Brendon, just a little hoarsely. “Yeah, it really is.”
*****
Ryan and his friends are laughing very hard over something that has to do with Sartre, the void, and an uncooked tuna casserole. Spencer doesn’t get it. He’s in his own apartment; that’s the couch where he passes out watching TV, and he’s the one who bought the chips that everyone is eating, but he feels strangely out of place amidst all of Ryan’s friends.
His phone buzzes, and he sighs in relief. “I have to take this,” he says, feeling like he needs the excuse to leave, although the only recognition he gets is a brief nod from Alex.
The text is from Brendon. It says, @ Javas u shd come.
He waves to catch Ryan’s attention, then points to the door. Ryan shakes his head, why are you even telling me, and Spencer has to swallow down his resentment. Last year, Ryan would have asked where he was going. Last year, he wouldn’t have gone, because Ryan would have suggested something else instead.
He had always known the his friendship with Ryan was something like a closed circle, no room left, tight and condensed and facing towards each other. He had known, and he had thought that they did it for Ryan, because Ryan needed to have someone that was all his. Now that Ryan’s drawing back - not leaving, really, just enlargening - he realizes that maybe he was the one who depended on it, after all.
He maybe slams the door behind him harder than is strictly necessary.
When he enters the coffee shop the first thing he hears is Brendon’s loud and unmistakable laughter. It takes him a minute to actually find him; he’s sitting at the counter chatting with a guy on the other side.
“Hey,” says Spencer.
Brendon nearly falls off his stool. “You came!” he exclaims, looking delighted. “I didn’t think you’d come!”
Spencer shrugs. “Well, here I am.”
Brendon turns to the guy behind the counter. “Jon, this is Spencer, you know, we were in Chamberlain together. Spencer, this is my roommate, Jon.”
Brendon talks about Jon a lot - Brendon is one of those people who makes sure that all his friends know each other, if only by word of mouth - but he’s not quite what Spencer had expected. He’s shorter, for one thing, and he looks - kind, Spencer thinks, although the look he’s leveling at Spencer right now is assessing and almost critical.
“So you’re the famous Spencer,” he says.
“Um,” says Spencer. “I guess?”
“Jon!” says Brendon, looking slightly pink.
“I’m going to go get you a coffee,” says Jon to Spencer, still not smiling, and moves away.
“Did you tell him bad things about me?” Spencer whispers to Brendon. “Because he doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Only good things,” Brendon answers, not bothering to lower his voice. Spencer sighs. “The very best of things! Spencer Smith is a poetry genius! Spencer Smith loves kittens!”
Jon plunks the coffee down in front of Spencer. “Brendon firmly believes in trying to win me over with mention of kittens. He brings them up at least twice a day.”
Somehow, Spencer is not surprised. “Does it work?” he asks.
“No,” says Jon, at the same time as Brendon says, “Yes.” They grin at each other.
It feels strange, looking into a friendship from the outside. “So what do I have to do to get in Jon’s good books?” Spencer asks Brendon. “Will praising kittens work, then?”
“I can definitely give you the opportunity,” Jon says, smiling.
“Oh, you asked the wrong question!” exclaims Brendon gleefully, as Jon pulls out his cellphone and starts showing him pictures of his cats.
“Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats,” chants Brendon softly in the background, until Jon threatens him with caffeine deprivation.
All in all, it turns out not to be the worst way to spend an evening. And there’s free coffee.
*****
“I just don’t get what’s so funny about tuna,” says Spencer, later, when his couch has been reclaimed from Ryan’s friends.
“It’s not tuna,” Ryan says, exasperated. “It’s tuna representing the Void.”
Spencer is always impressed by Ryan’s tendency to place great faith in his own ability to communicate the incomprehensible. He sighs. “No, I mean, I got that.” He did (almost). “I just didn’t think it was particularly funny.”
“It really only works in context,” Ryan explains.
“That part,” says Spencer, “I figured out on my own.”
*****
Brendon starts texting Spencer at odd hours, with stupid jokes or random questions. In the evening: Jon singing to the cats, such a strange guy. During the middle of Econ: why buy a cow when milk is free? While they’re supposed to be working on poetry: Bert or Ernie, plz explain. At three in the morning, when Spencer’s still up writing a last minute paper: had weirdest dream abt penguins.
Spencer sends back texts like, y still awake? or wtf penguins? He always answers, though.
*****
Part Two
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Word Count: 11k
Rating: Very G
Disclaimer: Very much not true.
Summary: It’s not that Spencer doesn’t want things to change; it’s just that he doesn’t want to risk losing what he already has.
Author's Notes: College AU! Written for tigs, for drawn_to
Thanks so much to airgiodslv and novembersmith for betaing, and, of course, to foxxcub, for organizing this whole lovely exchange.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy;
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.
Really, thinks Spencer, it’s Ryan’s fault for bullying him into taking this stupid poetry class. To be fair, it was his advisor who told him that he needed an English credit and that it would be strongly in his interest (her words) to take it this semester (or, preferably, last semester, her words again). But it had been Ryan who had convinced him that Introduction to Poetry was the best of his options.
So it’s Ryan’s fault that Spencer has to drag himself up at the ungodly hour of seven o’clock on a Monday morning. Spencer hasn’t gotten up this early in about two years - more, maybe, since he stopped going to first period sometime in May of senior year of high school. He glares at the bed where Ryan is still sleeping peacefully (and will be for at least another three hours, all afternoon classes indeed, it’s not fair), and considers leaving something cold and wet on the floor for him to step on whenever he finally gets up. That, however, would be vindictive, and Spencer’s trying not to be so vindictive. So he settles for leaving his dirty cereal bowl squarely in the middle of the kitchen table, instead. (It’s an empty gesture, he knows. Ryan won’t even notice, and it will be Spencer who has to come home to clean up both of their bowls. If he decides he cares, which he probably won’t.)
It’s raining, and it’s too early, and Spencer’s really not ready to be back at school; he’s not in a good mood to start out with, and that’s when someone turns a corner and runs into him at full speed.
“Ouch,” says Spencer, from the ground, grumpily.
“Fuck, fuck, I’m so sorry,” says the person who bowled him over. “Fuck, let me help, oh, Spencer! Wow, this is great, running into you - haha, literally - what are the chances?”
“Pretty good, actually,” says Spencer, getting to his feet. “Hi, Brendon.”
Brendon beams at him eagerly, and Spencer, muddy and annoyed, tries very hard not to scowl back. He doesn’t know Brendon all that well - they had been in the same house last year, but Brendon’s doing Music Performance while Spencer’s doing Business, so they hadn’t hung out much, apart from the continual encounters that inevitably happen when someone lives two doors down from you. Brendon had been something of an inescapable force, always hanging out in the lounge or serenading people in the elevators, but Spencer hasn’t really thought of him since they made their perfunctory goodbyes at the end of last year.
There is mud all down Spencer’s pants. He grimaces and tries to wipe it off. Brendon doesn’t seem to notice, since he’s chattering away like he has to catch up for the entire summer of absence. Spencer surreptitiously checks his watch. He doesn’t have time to go home and change his clothes. This whole day sucks, all forty-five minutes of it, including the ten that he spent pressing the snooze button.
A sudden pause in the chatter forces him to pay attention. Brendon is looking at him expectantly. Spencer tries to think back to what Brendon had been saying; he’s pretty sure he had been talking about his summer, and there had definitely been some inexplicable reference to penguins, and, oh, they’re doing the usual exchange of pleasantries, he can totally catch up to this conversation.
“My summer was pretty boring,” he says. “Mostly just hung out with friends,” (by which he means Ryan), “watched TV, you know, the usual.”
“Right!” Brendon is nodding along enthusiastically. “Yeah, me too, mostly. I’m really excited to be back, though, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” says Spencer, unconvincingly. He wants nothing more than to be standing in the rain making small talk at eight in the morning while on his way to a ridiculous and unnecessary poetry class. It’s what he lives for. (It’s what he’s going to be living for, for the next three months. Dragging himself out of bed to study poetry, and Statistics to look forward to after that. Last week his life involved sleeping until noon, debating over the relative merits of breakfast and lunch, and texting Ryan pretty much every fifteen minutes. It had seemed boring at the time, but he misses it already.)
Brendon’s said something and he missed it, again. He searches for something to fill the empty pause. “So are you still living in Chamberlain?” he asks, at last. He thinks he’s had this exact same conversation - how’s your summer, where are you living, next they’ll move on to classes - at least three times now. He’s pretty sure he can predict the entire conversation, down to what Brendon’s going to say next; Brendon loves Chamberlain house, the dorm system, the dining hall, pretty much everything.
“Yeah, um,” says Brendon awkwardly. “No. I actually moved off campus?” He says it like it’s a question, nervous, uncertain.
“Wait, really? Aren’t you the poster boy for house spirit?” It was something of an understatement - Brendon had been the fucking king of house spirit, making posters and representing them for the house council and stopping by twice a day for three months to try and get Spencer to sign up for intramural sports.
“Right, yeah, I don’t know, I thought I’d go for something different. I’m subletting from this senior engineering major, I don’t really know him yet but he was looking for a roommate and I needed a place, and he seems really cool, so, yeah.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah, it’s awesome! He has cats!” He grins. “Hey, didn’t you say you were going to get an apartment with Ryan? How’s that going?”
Brendon, Spencer thinks, is one of those annoying people who remember every conversation they have with you, which would be nice except that it makes him feel bad because he can’t even remember telling Brendon that, much less whatever things Brendon has told him that he ought to remember. “It’s going well,” he says. “I guess. It’s not all that different from last year, really.” He shifts uncomfortably. “You know, I really ought to be getting to class.”
“Oh, yeah, me too. Where are you headed?”
“Intro to Poetry,” Spencer says, with a disclaiming roll of his eyes.
“Awesome!” Brendon exclaims happily. “Me too! What are the chances?”
“Pretty good, actually,” Spencer replies, wearily. It’s going to be a long semester.
*****
“How many freshmen did you terrify today?” Ryan asks, when Spencer gets back.
“What?” Spencer has no clue what Ryan is talking about.
“Your face. You look like you’re about to erupt. I’d be scared, if I didn’t know better.”
“You should probably learn better,” Spencer grouses, kicking off his wet boots. “Poetry was the worst idea ever, I don’t even know what I was thinking, listening to you. The professor is a pretentious douche, and I got to set next to Brendon Urie, who spent the entire class fucking wiggling.”
“Ha,” says Ryan, and then, “Brendon Urie? Frisbee and Pancakes Brendon? From Chamberlain?” Spencer nods. “Ha,” Ryan says again, for no discernable reason.
“Whatever. Do you want to watch TV with me?” He has, after all, until tomorrow night to get his homework done.
“Can’t, I’m meeting some people. Sorry.” Ryan does not, to Spencer’s opinion, look appropriately apologetic.
“What people?”
“English majors,” Ryan answers, grinning. “We’re probably going to talk about poetry. You could come, if you want. Since you’re well on your way to being an expert, I’m sure.”
“I hate my life,” says Spencer.
*****
This is what the first week of school is like: Statistics is boring and Global Management is boring and Econ is just hard, and all Spencer really wants is to go back to his apartment and make fun of stupid movies with Ryan. But Ryan seems inexplicably busy these days, so Spencer goes to Organizational Behavior, which is boring, and Intro to Poetry, which is everything horrible Spencer expected.
On the second day of class, Spencer sneaks in just as the TA is taking attendance, but as he tries to slip surreptitiously into the back, Brendon turns around and waves.
It’s not that Spencer doesn’t like Brendon. Brendon is funny and kind and enthusiastic and isn’t bad at all when he’s not knocking on Spencer’s door at nine on Saturday mornings to try and get him to help beat the seventh floor at Ultimate Frisbee. Spencer likes him fine, when he thinks about it, which he mostly doesn’t.
It’s just that he doesn’t particularly want to sit with him. Spencer had been hoping for the anonymity of a class filled with English majors he didn’t know, so he could sit near the back and sleep. Brendon is exactly the kind of guy who spends his classes fidgeting and participating and doing all sorts of annoying things that attract unwanted professorial attention. However, the rest of the class is made up of extremely eager freshman all embarking on the beginning of their (extremely lucrative, Spencer’s sure) poetry careers, and two seniors who, although they look like they don’t want to be here any more than Spencer does, don’t look particularly inviting. Brendon, on the other hand, is turned all the way around in his seat. Spencer shrugs and goes to sit next to him.
As he’s sitting, the professor announces that they’ll be pairing up for their major project of the semester, for which they will be assigned to pick a poet, collect an anthology, write a foreword, and annotate their chosen poems. It sounds awful.
“Dude, we should be partners,” says Brendon.
“Sure,” agrees Spencer, shrugging, because there’s no reason not to. Brendon’s face nearly splits, his smile is so big.
“We should pick someone American,” Brendon whispers as the sign-up sheet goes around. “It will probably be easier to understand. Also, shorter.”
Spencer definitely respects that approach. “I like the way you think,” he says, and Brendon just gives him another one of those jaw-breaking smiles. (It must be exhausting, Spencer thinks, being that enthusiastic all the time.)
By the time the list gets to them, most of the immediately recognizable poets are already taken. Hazard of sitting in the back, Spencer supposes. “Who do you want?” he asks Brendon.
Brendon looks at him with wide eyes. “I have never heard of any of these people.”
Spencer hasn’t heard of most of them either. He scans the list somewhat desperately. “Whitman,” he says at last. “I am about eighty percent sure he’s American, and don’t ask how I know, it’s Ryan’s fault.”
“How do you feel about taking advantage of your best friend?” Brendon asks. “Can we use him for his literary skills?”
“Why do you think I keep him around?” says Spencer. “Of course we can use him. He’ll probably make us work for it, though. How are your bribery skills?”
“Not very good, I’m afraid,” says Brendon ruefully. “You’ll have to give me pointers, I’m really bad at figuring out what people like.”
“Fortunately, I am an expert in Ryan Ross,” Spencer says cheerfully.
“Fortunately,” says Brendon, leaning down to rummage for something in his bag. It makes his voice come out all muffled and flat. He emerges, rumpled, and grins. "We’re totally going to ace this project,” he says. “Just you wait and see. Maybe one of us will turn out to be a secret poet genius.” He pauses. “Poetical genius? Okay, maybe it had better be you.”
So maybe poetry isn’t as boring as everything else, but it’s mostly because Brendon makes stupid faces and jots down humorous commentary on the lesson instead of writing notes.
*****
“Hey,” says Brendon after class, “so, I’m kind of having a party tonight? Or, actually, my roommate’s having a party, and he said I could invite people, so, I thought, maybe?”
“Hmm?” Spencer is kind of distracted trying to figure out where he left his cell - he usually keeps it in his pocket, but for some reason today it’s tucked in his backpack under a binder.
“So do you want to come?”
“Dude,” says Spencer, without really thinking about it, “it sounds great, but I have to get home, I really have a lot of work - already, can you believe? - and Ryan and I have plans for after. Maybe next time, though?”
“Right,” agrees Brendon, “Next time. Definitely. Tell Ryan hi for me, okay?”
“Sure thing,” says Spencer. He’s always thought it’s a weird tradition, asking people to say hi for you. It’s not like anyone ever actually does it.
*****
Spencer gets halfway through taking notes on the first chapter of his Global Management assignment when he abruptly loses all interest. He figures that the shine of the new year and the empty notebook has worn off, and joins Ryan on the couch.
Unfortunately for him, Ryan is reading studiously.
“Aren’t you bored yet?” Spencer asks.
“Unlike some people, I actually like my major,” says Ryan without looking up.
“Unlike some people, my major is going to actually be useful after college,” says Spencer, but it’s a lame response, and he knows it. Ryan is not, at the moment, particularly interested in life outside of college, and he doesn’t even look up, just turns another page.
Spencer sighs and buries his face into the cushions.
*****
“What do you know about Walt Whitman?” Brendon demands at the beginning of their first library study session.
“Other than ‘O Captain! My Captain?’” Spencer asks.
“That was him?”
“I think?” Spencer is almost certain that he remembers this from high school. Like, seventy percent certain. He’s going to be really upset if he’s accidentally picked the wrong guy and they’re stuck with some obscure dude no one’s ever heard of. He figures that at least if the poem was used in Dead Poets’ Society, there has to be a reasonable amount of information out there. He hopes.
“I love that movie,” says Brendon appreciatively. “Do you think we can refer to it in our anthology?”
“Oh my god,” says Spencer, “we’re going to fail.”
Brendon puts his head in his hands. “I was kind of hoping this would be easier than a Lit class. You know, less reading.”
“Great minds and all that,” and oh, they are so very, very screwed.
“Behold the wonders of Wikipedia,” Brendon announces, typing into Google. He hits enter with a flourish, and then bursts out laughing. “Dude. Look at this picture. Dude. We’re writing about Gandalf!”
He bursts into laughter, and Spencer has to shush him and remind him that they are in the library. Brendon’s right, though - the guy totally looks like Gandalf.
*****
Ryan, because he’s an asshole, thinks the whole project is hilarious.
“We have to do all this biographical research,” Spencer complains, “and use it to annotate the poems, and I’m working with Brendon, who knows even less about poetry than I do!”
“Who’d have thought it was possible?” Ryan asks wryly. He is enjoying this whole thing far too much.
“I should have gone for one of the pretentious English major freshmen. At least I’d have known how to handle them. From all my previous experience.” This last is said very pointedly.
Ryan ignores his insult. “I like Brendon.”
“Really?” Spencer asks, surprised. “Last year you said he was annoying.”
“Last year I was a dick,” Ryan says. “Also he used to sing in the lounge while I was cramming for Bio. That was annoying.” He pauses and reflects. “But mostly I was a dick.”
“What else is new?” Spencer asks, by force of habit, but he’s not really paying attention anymore, he’s thinking about Brendon serenading Ryan in the lounge at four in the morning. It actually had been pretty funny. Mostly for the look on Ryan’s face.
Maybe he can use their poetry partnership to sneak Brendon into the apartment for a repeat performance next time Ryan has a test.
*****
One of the things Spencer likes best about living out of the dorms is how quiet it is. Not all the time, of course - the people in the next apartment occasionally like to blast their music, and there’s someone upstairs with a very dedicated exercise regimen - but compared to the dorms, it’s a fucking graveyard.
He’s always liked his privacy; it used to make him uncomfortable when people randomly knocked on his door and invited themselves in to ask homework questions and have awkward conversations. Mostly people had stopped doing it by second semester, with the exception of Brendon, who could be kind of oblivious about things. Now that they have an apartment, they usually have much more warning before visitors, and that’s the way Spencer likes it.
He also likes the fact that he and Ryan have a refrigerator all to themselves, and that they don’t have to share their couch with the entire floor.
Except when he comes home and finds about half a dozen people crammed into the kitchen, eating Spencer’s Oreos and talking excitedly about people and things Spencer has never heard of.
“These are my friends,” Ryan introduces, and Spencer recognizes some of them from last year, but most of them are new - Alex and Z and Michael and Rory and Nick and Tennessee, all English and History and Philosophy majors.
They seem nice. They laugh a lot, and they make a concentrated effort to include Spencer in the conversation.
He’s just not used to Ryan having friends other than him.
He looks at them all squished together on the couch, all bright colors and scarves and ironic t-shirts. They look comfortable together - Ryan looks comfortable, relaxed and easy, leaning back against Z with his legs up on Alex’s lap, comfortable and strangely unfamiliar.
Spencer doesn’t know what to make of it, but Ryan seems to have gotten taller since the semester started; there’s a curious lankiness to him that makes him look different, older. He can’t have grown, not really, not in the space of a few weeks - it’s probably just that he’s been wearing different clothes lately, Spencer tells himself, but it’s more than that. He stands differently, moves differently around people, and Spencer knows the way Ryan moves like he knows his own breathing - it’s disjointing, unnerving to see it change.
Ryan wears this new shape like an unfamiliar skin, and it makes Spencer uncomfortable, and then guilty for being uncomfortable. He likes things he can be sure of. He likes being sure of Ryan.
It’s not that he doesn’t want things to change; it’s just that he doesn’t want to risk losing what he already has.
*****
“I think my best friend is abandoning me for a bunch of English majors,” Spencer complains while their TA makes vain excuses about the professor’s tardiness (he studies poetry for a living, Spencer thinks, tardiness is to be expected). Ryan’s new friends have been over four out of the past five days, and Spencer is getting kind of lonely.
It’s funny, because if you had asked him last year, Spencer would have said that he had a lot of friends. People from his dormitory, from his Calculus class, from his O-Week group. Now he’s beginning to realize the difference between friends with whom you stop and exchange pleasantries and maybe set up a coffee date, and the friends who you can call in the middle of the night, who send you stupid texts about ridiculous things and drop by uninvited just because. He has plenty of the first. All he has of the second is Ryan.
Brendon just snorts. “Like anyone could get between you and Ryan.”
“That was last year,” Spencer says dourly. He’s being melodramatic; he’s been friends with Ryan for more than a decade, he doubts he’s about to be thrown over. It doesn’t mean he’s not unhappy about it, though.
“You guys are next thing to attached at the hip.” Brendon sounds as grumpy as Spencer feels. “I wouldn’t worry. At least your roommate is your best friend. I’m pretty sure mine thinks I’m an idiot.”
“Oh, Ryan definitely thinks I’m an idiot,” Spencer replies, and then, when Brendon fails to look cheered, “I’m sure your roommate doesn’t think anything of the sort.”
“No, really, he does.” Brendon looks down for a moment, and when he looks back up, his face is carefully cheerful. “It’s okay, most people do, I don’t care.”
“Well, who cares what he thinks, right?” Spencer says lamely. “If someone doesn’t like you, screw them, it’s their loss.”
“No, Jon’s awesome.” Brendon looks sad again, and Spencer feels kind of bad. “You know, people tell me not to care all the time, I guess I’m just not very good at it.”
“Um,” says Spencer, trying to think of something comforting to say. He’s not very good at comforting, especially since he thinks Brendon might be right. He thinks back to last year, how Brendon was always going out of his way to get people to like him, leaving his door open all the time and attending all the house activities and decorating the lounge for everyone’s birthdays. It seems like an exhausting way to live. Spencer can’t imagine spending all his time trying to pay attention to everyone, so he has no idea how to comfort someone who does.
Fortunately for both their sakes he’s spared from what was bound to be a miserable attempt at placation by the arrival of their professor, who stumbles in, looking frazzled, and immediately drops papers everywhere.
“Now that,” Spencer says instead, “is a warning sign to poetry enthusiasts everywhere; this is how you’re going to end up, late and reduced to physically dropping poems on your students’ heads.”
Brendon snickers. “You can imagine this as the probable fate of Ryan’s new friends, then,” says Brendon.
“More like the probable fate of Ryan,” suggests Spencer, which sets them both off; Spencer has to stuff his sleeve in his mouth to avoid looking like he’s laughing at their professor. They spend the rest of the class drawing little pictures of Ryan in various professorial mishaps. It’s the most fun Spencer’s had in class in pretty much ever.
*****
This is how Ryan and Spencer met: in the sandbox at the park, Spencer was six and Ryan seven, and neither of them had particularly wanted to be there. Spencer was bored, listlessly carting buckets of sand out of the sandbox and pouring them into the grass; Ryan had a vision, a castle with turrets and banners, like something out of a book. They ended up with a giant sand heap that resembled an ant hill more than it did a castle, but they also ended up friends.
Looking back, Spencer is never sure exactly how it happened, the easiness with which they slid into friendship. Maybe it’s because they were so young; maybe there was just something inevitable about him and Ryan. In any case, he’s never quite been able to get the hang of it, since. He’s never particularly minded, though, because Ryan is more than enough best friend for anyone.
*****
They meet at the library to try and work on their annotations, but Brendon’s stomach growls three times in the space of fifteen minutes, and every time he looks up so piteously that at last Spencer can’t take it anymore.
“Do you want to finish this over lunch?” he asks, and Brendon’s out of his seat before Spencer’s even finished asking.
When Spencer turns down the path for the cafeteria, though, Brendon pauses. “You know, I’m not that hungry,” he says, which is obviously a lie, and also blatantly ridiculous.
“That is ridiculous,” Spencer says. “Everyone in the library could hear your stomach growling, I’m pretty sure the guy at the table next to us thought it was thundering outside.”
“No, really, I changed my mind.” Brendon looks shifty and uncomfortable, and he’s not meeting Spencer’s eyes.
“Seriously, what’s the matter?”
Brendon’s actually blushing, which is kind of hilarious to watch, if totally inexplicable. “I don’t have a meal plan,” he says at last, “and it’s kind of ridiculously expensive to pay for a meal, I’d rather just wait. You can get something, though, I’ll just grab something from the café and meet you back in the library.”
“Dumbass, why didn’t you say so?” Spencer asks. “I’ll swipe you in.” It’s possible that Spencer can be kind of insensitive, sometimes. It hadn’t even occurred to him to ask if Brendon had a meal plan; if he’s living off campus, he doesn’t have to have one, although both Spencer and Ryan do, mostly because Spencer’s mother doesn’t trust them not to try and survive on ramen and poptarts.
“No, don’t worry about it, I don’t really like the cafeteria food,” says Brendon.
“Yeah, I can tell, that’s why you always stockpiled it last year. Seriously, let me swipe you in, I don’t care.”
Brendon’s face is still red, and he looks oddly defensive. “I don’t need you to do that,” he says. “I’m fine, I’ll just go to the café. I don’t need you to give me anything.”
Spencer has the feeling that he’s missing something, but he has no idea what’s going on, so he just says, “Brendon. My mom thinks I’m going to starve, she got me like a hundred extra meals or something, it’s absolutely ridiculous, they’re just going to get thrown away at the end of the semester. Also, I can smell the pizza from here, and it’s like torture. Please, Brendon Urie, let me swipe you in.”
It’s like all the defiance goes out of Brendon at once; he drops his head for a moment, and then shakes out his shoulders. “Fine,” he says. “Thank you. That would be very nice.”
“The siren call of pizza,” says Spencer wisely. “Absolutely irresistible. I knew it.”
“Actually, I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Brendon replies, grinning, his moodiness gone. “You were begging, and I couldn’t bring myself to dash your hopes.”
“I was most certainly not begging.”
“Think what you like, I know what I heard.” Brendon’s smugness is infuriating. “I am clearly the irresistible one here. You want the pleasure of my company.”
“Ha. Go on, see if I ask you to dinner.”
Brendon’s grin only gets larger. “I,” he says importantly, “already have dinner plans. My roommate and I are having a Roommate Bonding Night.”
“Your roommate who thinks you’re an idiot?” Spencer asks.
“I guess he doesn’t!” says Brendon, delightedly. “It was his idea! He even named it! We’re watching Disney! And drinking beer, because my roommate, Spencer Smith, unlike yours, is over twenty-one. What do you think of that?”
Spencer is surprised to find himself thinking a little wistfully that it sounds very nice indeed.
*****
“Oh god,” groans Spencer. “More nature imagery, please kill me now.” They have to hand in a rough draft set of annotations tomorrow, and Spencer is finding Whitman very hard to take in large doses. If the guy compares himself to another waterfall, Spencer is going to throw the fucking book out the window.
Brendon’s bent over his own volume, biting his lip. When Spencer speaks, he looks up, contemplative. “You know, this isn’t all that bad.”
“Please don’t defect on me, I have enough friends who spout poetry all day.” Well, really he has Ryan, but Ryan spouts enough pretentious poetry to count multiple times.
“No spouting, I promise,” says Brendon, but he pushes the book across the table, almost shyly, tapping his finger next to a stanza.
Spencer reads dutifully:
The one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same cover in the cool night,
in the stillness, in the autumn moonbeams, his face was inclined toward me,
and his arm lay lightly around my breast - and that night I was happy.
“This is why he couldn’t get his stuff published, you know,” says Brendon. “The ‘homosexual tendencies’. He wouldn’t change it, though, you have to admire him for that.”
“I think we should switch volumes,” Spencer complains. “You have all the good stuff.” It’s not fair, Brendon’s over there getting forbidden love, and all Spencer has is waterfalls. He pauses a moment to reflect on the general unfairness of his life, adding in for good measure the fact that Ryan is having a party right now, and he’s stuck here reading poetry. Not that he really wants to be at Ryan’s party, which is historically themed and full of people Spencer doesn’t know, but it’s the principle of the thing.
“My parents didn’t want me to come back here,” Brendon says abruptly. “They told me I needed to transfer somewhere closer or they wouldn’t pay for it anymore.”
“What? Why?” Spencer is totally taken aback, both by the sudden shift and the revelation.
“It’s too far away,” says Brendon, shrugging. “It’s too irreligious, it’s too full of temptation, they don’t think music is a healthy calling in my case, they just want me closer to home - take your pick.”
Spencer doesn’t know what to say. He’d met Brendon’s parents, last spring, when they had driven out to pick him up. He’d liked them. “But they changed their minds, right?” he asks. Obviously, since Brendon’s here.
“Not really.” Spencer must look some combination of shocked and confused, because Brendon says quickly, “No, don’t, it’s not that bad. I have a full scholarship, I just have to pay for living expenses, I have it all under control.”
Spencer thinks of Brendon’s kind, laughing parents, tries to picture them refusing to let him come back. He doesn’t understand.
“They didn’t kick me out or anything,” Brendon says, half-defensive, even though Spencer hasn’t said anything. “It wasn’t like that. They just - they said that they didn’t feel comfortable paying to help me experiment halfway across the country. They wanted me to transfer to BYU, and I didn’t want that.”
“I -” begins Spencer, and then stops. He feels guilty, although he doesn’t know why. He feels bad for having supportive parents, and bad for not having known, and just kind of generally uneasy.
“Don’t look like that,” says Brendon. “Please, don’t. I’m fine, I’m doing great. I just… I wanted you to know.”
“Thank you,” says Spencer, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He feels like Brendon has given him something very important, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. He kind of wants to give him something in return, but he can’t think of anything, so he just looks up lamely and says, “Have you seen the ‘Hymen, Hymenee’ poem yet? Weirdest fucking thing I have ever read.”
“Yeah,” says Brendon, just a little hoarsely. “Yeah, it really is.”
*****
Ryan and his friends are laughing very hard over something that has to do with Sartre, the void, and an uncooked tuna casserole. Spencer doesn’t get it. He’s in his own apartment; that’s the couch where he passes out watching TV, and he’s the one who bought the chips that everyone is eating, but he feels strangely out of place amidst all of Ryan’s friends.
His phone buzzes, and he sighs in relief. “I have to take this,” he says, feeling like he needs the excuse to leave, although the only recognition he gets is a brief nod from Alex.
The text is from Brendon. It says, @ Javas u shd come.
He waves to catch Ryan’s attention, then points to the door. Ryan shakes his head, why are you even telling me, and Spencer has to swallow down his resentment. Last year, Ryan would have asked where he was going. Last year, he wouldn’t have gone, because Ryan would have suggested something else instead.
He had always known the his friendship with Ryan was something like a closed circle, no room left, tight and condensed and facing towards each other. He had known, and he had thought that they did it for Ryan, because Ryan needed to have someone that was all his. Now that Ryan’s drawing back - not leaving, really, just enlargening - he realizes that maybe he was the one who depended on it, after all.
He maybe slams the door behind him harder than is strictly necessary.
When he enters the coffee shop the first thing he hears is Brendon’s loud and unmistakable laughter. It takes him a minute to actually find him; he’s sitting at the counter chatting with a guy on the other side.
“Hey,” says Spencer.
Brendon nearly falls off his stool. “You came!” he exclaims, looking delighted. “I didn’t think you’d come!”
Spencer shrugs. “Well, here I am.”
Brendon turns to the guy behind the counter. “Jon, this is Spencer, you know, we were in Chamberlain together. Spencer, this is my roommate, Jon.”
Brendon talks about Jon a lot - Brendon is one of those people who makes sure that all his friends know each other, if only by word of mouth - but he’s not quite what Spencer had expected. He’s shorter, for one thing, and he looks - kind, Spencer thinks, although the look he’s leveling at Spencer right now is assessing and almost critical.
“So you’re the famous Spencer,” he says.
“Um,” says Spencer. “I guess?”
“Jon!” says Brendon, looking slightly pink.
“I’m going to go get you a coffee,” says Jon to Spencer, still not smiling, and moves away.
“Did you tell him bad things about me?” Spencer whispers to Brendon. “Because he doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Only good things,” Brendon answers, not bothering to lower his voice. Spencer sighs. “The very best of things! Spencer Smith is a poetry genius! Spencer Smith loves kittens!”
Jon plunks the coffee down in front of Spencer. “Brendon firmly believes in trying to win me over with mention of kittens. He brings them up at least twice a day.”
Somehow, Spencer is not surprised. “Does it work?” he asks.
“No,” says Jon, at the same time as Brendon says, “Yes.” They grin at each other.
It feels strange, looking into a friendship from the outside. “So what do I have to do to get in Jon’s good books?” Spencer asks Brendon. “Will praising kittens work, then?”
“I can definitely give you the opportunity,” Jon says, smiling.
“Oh, you asked the wrong question!” exclaims Brendon gleefully, as Jon pulls out his cellphone and starts showing him pictures of his cats.
“Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats,” chants Brendon softly in the background, until Jon threatens him with caffeine deprivation.
All in all, it turns out not to be the worst way to spend an evening. And there’s free coffee.
*****
“I just don’t get what’s so funny about tuna,” says Spencer, later, when his couch has been reclaimed from Ryan’s friends.
“It’s not tuna,” Ryan says, exasperated. “It’s tuna representing the Void.”
Spencer is always impressed by Ryan’s tendency to place great faith in his own ability to communicate the incomprehensible. He sighs. “No, I mean, I got that.” He did (almost). “I just didn’t think it was particularly funny.”
“It really only works in context,” Ryan explains.
“That part,” says Spencer, “I figured out on my own.”
*****
Brendon starts texting Spencer at odd hours, with stupid jokes or random questions. In the evening: Jon singing to the cats, such a strange guy. During the middle of Econ: why buy a cow when milk is free? While they’re supposed to be working on poetry: Bert or Ernie, plz explain. At three in the morning, when Spencer’s still up writing a last minute paper: had weirdest dream abt penguins.
Spencer sends back texts like, y still awake? or wtf penguins? He always answers, though.
*****
Part Two