Bandfic: Dreams From the Other Side [1/5] (Brendon/Spencer. R.)
Title: Dreams From the Other Side
Author: tigs
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own.
Summary: Spencer isn’t there the day that Brendon gets Bogart, but he gets a camera phone picture within the first hour of Bogart actually being Brendon’s. (41,930 words.)
Author’s Notes: I began this the night that Spencer posted that first picture of Bogart, the one where he was curled up on the couch, waiting for Brendon to come home. This was supposed to be a cute, fluffy, short story about two boys and a dog. At some point when I wasn’t looking, though, it turned into a much (much) longer story about the band, The Divorce, picking up the pieces, and moving forward. At its heart, though, I still think it’s about two boys and a dog.
Also, this is as time line accurate as I was able to make it, trying to fit my suppositions in with known dates.
Many, many thanks to amy13, who’s been there with me every step of the way for the last three and a half weeks, listening to me plot and analyze and write and rewrite, letting me send her bits and pieces over IM. Also, she turned out a super fast beta, getting this back to me in under 36 hours. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own. Thanks, also, to everyone who left me encouraging comments as I kept updating my lj with posts that read, basically, o.O… this got so long how?
Dreams From the Other Side
i.
Spencer isn’t there the day that Brendon gets Bogart, but he gets a camera phone picture within the first hour of Bogart actually being Brendon’s. It’s slightly out of focus, Bogart’s nose too close to the viewfinder, his half-stub of a tail a blur in the background.
He waits another half hour and then gives Brendon a call.
“I love my dogs, Spencer,” Brendon says as soon as he picks up, and he sounds a little breathless, his voice edged with laughter, in that way Spencer knows means he’s been giggling for quite awhile.
“They’ve been fucking chasing each other around the house for the last twenty minutes. They think- they think they’re in, like, the fucking Indy 500 or something. Or maybe Dylan’s just embracing her greyhound heritage?”
“Could be,” Spencer says. He’s smiling already, because in the background he can hear yips and quiet whoofs, the sounds of doggy nails on hardwood floors. “It’s about time she embraced her roots.”
“It is,” Brendon says. Then, “Dylan! Bogart! No!” Spencer pulls the phone away from his ear for a moment, but then Brendon’s saying, “Sorry, they’re trying to use the end table as a, like, fucking hurdle or something.” Then, “Bogart! Stop it!” Then, “And now they’re practicing slip-n-slide on Regan’s throw rug.” Then, “Dylan!” Then, “Sorry, they’re-“
Spencer’s laughing too hard by this point to truly hear what Brendon’s telling him. He says, “Dude. You go, I’ll catch you later, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Brendon says. “I should-Bogart! Yeah, um. I’ll talk to you later!” He hangs up, and Spencer spends a few moments grinning at his phone.
Ten minutes later, Brendon sends him another picture. This time, it’s of Bogart out in the yard, Dylan a blur behind him. Again, the picture is mostly nose and mouth, but this time, there’s a nasty ass tennis ball clenched in Bogart’s teeth, already slobbery and dirty and chewed.
Spencer texts back, lovely.
A minute later, his phone beeps. Another picture, Dylan and Bogart together, a tangle of doggy limbs and tails on the grass. Spencer smiles and puts his phone in his pocket.
ii.
The first time Spencer meets Bogart, it’s just a little past o’dark thirty in the morning, closer to dawn than nightfall, and Spencer knows that there are reasons and advantages to doing the redeye flight thing, he really does, but he’s sure as fuck not remembering them right at the moment.
So, he takes a cab from LAX to Brendon and Shane’s, spending 45 minutes staring blurry-eyed out the windows as the highways and streets pass him by. The skyline is just starting to be edged pink-orange-blue when he finally gets to the house and he wonders if he’s going to have to ring the bell, wake everyone up to announce his arrival. He’s lucky, though, because when he opens the car door, he sees a light on in the kitchen, Shane at the table there, and when the cab driver slams the trunk of the taxi closed, Shane looks up, waves. By the time Spencer makes it onto the front stoop, the door is open and Shane’s giving him a hug, saying, “Dude, fuck. It’s been too fucking long.”
“It has,” Spencer says. Because it really fucking has been. Before he can say more, though, he hears the somewhat muted sound of nails on linoleum, click-click-click, the thump of a tail hitting furniture, and when he looks down he sees Dylan and Bogart walking out of the kitchen, tails wagging cautiously, as if unsure whether anyone who arrives this early in the morning is truly welcome.
It only takes a moment for Dylan to recognize him as a familiar person, though, as a friend who can usually be conned into giving out doggy treats when Brendon and Shane have put their respective feet down, and then she yips and bumps her head at Spencer’s knee, tail speed moving up more than a few gears. Spencer laughs and crouches down-so tired he sways just a little with it-and then Dylan is balancing her front paws on his knee, nosing at his chin, and it’s impossible not to laugh, so he does.
Bogart seems to take this as his invitation to do his own greeting, but since he’s never met Spencer before he spends more time at it, sniffing Spencer’s shoes, then hopping up onto Spencer’s thigh, trying to balance all four paws there while nosing at Spencer’s hand and neck, then swiping a tongue up Spencer’s cheek. Both dogs end up on the floor pretty much immediately at that point, as Spencer wipes his face on his t-shirt, but neither seems to care. Indeed, Bogart just rolls over onto his back, tail thumping the ground, and Shane says, “I think he likes you.”
Spencer grins up at Shane, leaning down to rub his fingers over Bogart’s ears.
“He is pretty cute,” Spencer says.
Bogart’s tail thumps more loudly against the floor.
*
Spencer decides that Bogart is somewhat less cute five hours later, when he wakes up to the view of a doggy nose right the fuck there, almost pressed to his own. He’s startled, okay, which is the only reason he scoots as quickly back across the air mattress as he does.
Really.
Because, see, he just wasn’t expecting a Bogart so early (late) in the morning, is all. Especially since he decidedly remembers shutting the door behind him, he does, when he’d finally gone to bed.
This is about the point at which he registers the sounds that Brendon makes when he’s trying really fucking hard not to laugh and is failing somewhat miserably.
“Fuck you,” Spencer says, rolling back towards the center of the bed and burying his face in his pillow for a moment.
“Your face!” Brendon says, and he’s totally giggly, too fucking awake for Spencer to deal with right now.
“Fuck you,” Spencer says again more forcefully, despite the fact that his voice is still muffled by the pillow. He hears a snuffling sound, feels a wet nose against his ear, and Spencer would push Bogart away, he would, but Bogart’s lying down next to him now, curling up against Spencer’s side, and Spencer’s still too fucking exhausted to do more than think about moving.
“Sorry,” Brendon says, not sounding sorry at all. “I just. I was going to run down to the store and thought I’d, you know, say hi before I left. And tell you that I was leaving, so you wouldn’t wake up and think we’d, like, fucking abandoned you already or something?”
“And also try to scare the shit out of me with your dog,” Spencer grumbles.
“That too,” Brendon says. He laughs again, and says, “Come on, Bogart. Come here. We’re going to let Spencer sleep some more. Come on.”
Bogart presses back against Spencer for a brief moment, a flash of resistance, but then he’s hopping off the bed and trotting after Brendon, barking as Brendon closes the door again.
Spencer falls asleep to the sound of the two of them walking down the hall.
*
Spencer doesn’t really have a plan for his time in California. It’s more, Brendon had said, “Yo, you should come stay for awhile,” and Spencer had said, “I could?” and the next week, he’d woken up on Brendon’s floor.
So. He doesn’t have a plan, but it’s not like he’s really a guest either, and it only takes him two or three days to slot himself into Brendon, Shane and (most days) Regan’s routine.
After that first morning, he usually gets up around ten, when Brendon and Shane do. He takes his turn in the kitchen rotation, pulling cereal boxes out of the cupboards, milk out of the fridge, turning on the coffee pot, filling the dogs bowls. Twice a week he actually cooks, making eggs or pancakes or french toast or something.
“You’re spoiling us,” Regan says during the second week, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin, trying to smear the powdered sugar from the french toast away. Spencer ducks his head, not-quite-blushing.
He starts going to the beach with them, too. Not every time they go, but most of them, and it only takes him two days before he rents a surfboard and wet suit and tries his hand at this whole surfing-as-a-lifestyle thing.
The first day he tries it, he comes back to Brendon’s sore as fuck, feeling bruised from head to toe. He takes a hot shower, then collapses on the couch to watch Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare repeats on BBC America, only moving when Dylan hops up next to him and drops a red rubber ball between his face and the TV. It rolls with the dip of the couch, of course, coming to rest against his neck, ugh, and Spencer manages to maneuver his arm so that he’s able to pick it up, toss it lightly across the room. Dylan leaps after it, sliding across the floor, knocking against the coffee table as she passes it by, and then Bogart comes trotting into the room to see what all the fuss is about.
After that, they’re both chasing the ball, tackling each other in an attempt to get to it first. They’re well trained enough now, though, that whichever one of them does get it brings it back to Spencer, dropping it on the floor by his hand.
An hour later, Spencer wakes up to the sound of a camera clicking, and he has to blink twice before Brendon comes into focus. Brendon’s grinning, looking far too pleased with himself, fond, and that’s when Spencer notices the two warm weights on his chest, the twitch of a tail against the skin of his inner elbow.
“Shut up,” Spencer says, raising a hand to flip Brendon off.
Brendon takes another picture before Spencer realizes what he’s doing, and when Spencer waves his raised finger a little more firmly in Brendon’s direction, Brendon laughs.
*
So, Spencer settles into a routine, but during the third week, he’s totally minding his own business, sprawled out on the couch in the living room, reading Good Omens for the 10th time, when he hears the sound of something metal being dragged across the floor, then feels something else entirely being dropped across his foot.
He looks down and sees Bogart sitting at his knee, wagging his tail in his most ingratiating manner, his leash at Spencer’s feet.
It’s not like Spencer hasn’t helped take the dogs for walks before. It’s just that usually he’s been accompanying Brendon (most of the time) or Shane (once or twice). He’s just-he’s more the person who gets asked if they want to come along, who says yes, who makes the very impatient dogs wait five extra minutes while he finds his socks, his shoes, his jacket.
So, Spencer says, “Go ask Brendon.”
Bogart tips his head to the side, ears in full triangle mode, like he’s trying to figure out exactly what Spencer’s saying to him, like he doesn’t totally fucking know. Spencer leans down, cupping Bogart’s face in his palm.
“Bren. Don,” he says slowly.
Bogart barks once, sliding back a step with the force of it, then shifts forward again, paws almost dancing in place. He barks a second time, then bends down to nose at his leash, pushing it closer to Spencer, before looking up at him again, more hopefully than before.
Spencer stares back, but Bogart’s tail just keeps twitching, and Spencer can see the tip of his tongue sticking out, can hear the small whine that he makes, too excited to stand it, and-
And Spencer sighs and marks his place in his book, setting it down on the coffee table.
“Brendon!” he yells, standing up. “I’m taking your dog for a walk!”
“Okay!” Brendon yells back, or at least Spencer thinks he does, because his answer is almost completely drowned out by the sound of Dylan running down the hallway to the living room, skidding around the corner on two paws, barking, Me too! Oh, oh, me too!
“Yes, fine,” Spencer says, laughing now. “You too.”
*
So, that becomes part of the routine, too.
On the third walk he does by himself, Spencer discovers that there’s a dog park not too far from Brendon and Shane’s house, and so Spencer starts taking the dogs there a few evenings a week. Five thirty is their time, and it’s mostly the same people every day. There’s the lady with the dog that looks like a wolf, the three labs, the yorkie, the corgi, the basset, and the labradoodle that sits on the benches with the people and watches all of the other dogs play.
On his third visit, Spencer brings a can of tennis balls to donate to the communal cause. On his fourth, the owner of one of the labs brings an extra frisbee for Spencer to use, since Bogart keeps trying to get in on the game with the labs.
On his sixth visit, one of the ladies says, “Oh, oh, your dogs are so adorable!” and Spencer thinks about saying ‘thanks,’ or ‘yeah, aren’t they?’, but Dylan and Bogart aren’t his, they aren’t, so he just says, “Thanks. They, um. They aren’t actually mine, though. They belong to some friends of mine? I just. I like having an excuse to get outside for awhile, you know?”
The lady nods, and when he asks about her dog, the basset, she smiles widely, and they spend the next half hour trading dog stories. It’s a good way to spend an afternoon.
On Spencer’s eighth visit, Brendon comes, too.
“I need to see where you’re stealing my dogs off to every week,” he says very seriously as they walk the four blocks between his house and the park. “I wouldn’t be a responsible dog parent if I didn’t make sure you weren’t exposing them to unsavory influences, right?”
Spencer flips him off, then bumps their shoulders together, which makes Brendon laugh and elbow him back.
They sit at the far end of the park, on a bench under one of the trees, watching Dylan and Bogart play tag with the yorkie and a new puppy, a springer spaniel. Brendon leans back after awhile, his eyes closed, and he sighs, breathing in. A few minutes later, he turns to look at Spencer, blinks his eyes open, and says, grin wide, “You know, this is nice.”
Spencer nods.
It is.
*
The second week Spencer’s there, they replace the air mattress with a futon. The third week, he stops closing his door at night and starts waking up in the morning with Bogart pressed to the backs of his knees.
During the sixth week, Shane sits down at dinner one night and says, “Regan and I are, um. Her lease is up in July, you know, and we were thinking that the time might be right for us to, well-“
Spencer looks over at Brendon quickly, because he’s lived with Shane for fucking years at this point, he’d fucking followed him out to California, but there’s no trace of regret on Brendon’s face. Instead, he’s grinning and saying, “Dude, fuck, it’s about time.”
When they’re watching Project Runway reruns on Bravo that night, though, Spencer notices that Brendon keeps Dylan in his lap longer than usual, lets her hold onto his arm, lick his hand until it’s as clean as she can get it.
*
A week later, Brendon finds Spencer sitting in the TV room, Bogart curled up next to him, his head on Spencer’s thigh. He’s been dreaming, twitching, his paws kicking out every few minutes, like he’s running. Spencer wonders if he’s chasing a rabbit, or a cat. A ball.
Spencer looks over when Brendon sits down on the couch next to them, carefully, apparently in an attempt not to wake Bogart up. Brendon nods once at Spencer, then relaxes back on the couch.
Spencer’s not even truly sure what he’s watching, but during the next commercial break, Brendon says, “So, um. I guess in July I’ll have a real guestroom, huh? With, like, a bed.”
Bogart twitches against Spencer’s leg, partially rolling over, and Spencer sees that Brendon’s rubbing his belly, tracing the small cowlicks of hair.
“Or, you know, if you wanted to stay,” Brendon says. “For like, you know. A while. You could, um. You could have first dibs?”
“I could,” Spencer says, and he’s not quite sure whether he’s agreeing to stay, or to have first dibs, or- “Yeah,” he says. “I could-that would be. Yeah.”
When he looks over at Brendon, Brendon’s grinning, and he maybe rubs Bogart’s tummy just a little too hard, because Bogart startles, sitting up sleepily, then scratching at his ear. It only takes him a moment longer than that to register that his very favorite person has joined them, and he climbs up into Brendon’s lap, licking at his chin, and Brendon says, “Bogart, Bogart, Bogie, hey.”
Spencer laughs.
iii.
So, it’s not the first fight they have about album number three and Spencer knows that it won’t be the last, not by a long shot, since they’ve barely even gotten started on the whole process.
It is, however, the first fight they’ve had about it while Spencer’s been crashing at Brendon’s house.
It’s also the first time in a long time that Spencer doesn’t have his own space to go back to, mountains to wander through, or a roof to climb and a joint to smoke. He can’t drive to his parents house, sit at the kitchen table and watch his mom cook, or tease his sisters about their boyfriends over dinner until he can replace the memories of Ryan and Brendon’s annoyed glares with their own.
This time, he has to spend an hour in the car with Brendon as they wend their way back to Santa Monica, and it’s not that Brendon’s even mad at him, Spencer knows he’s not, but it’s more the whole situation. Because, see, Ryan and Jon have notebooks full of lyrics, the beginnings of melodies that they’ve been working on for months. They’ve written harmonies for Brendon and Ryan, some for Jon. They’ve been busy, taking the foundations of Pretty. Odd. and continuing down that path, and they’ve spent the last few days laying it all out for Brendon and Spencer and they’re so fucking proud of what they’ve got and Brendon-
It’s not the music that Brendon wants to sing.
Spencer knows this. Brendon hasn’t explicitly told him so, not in so many words, but Spencer can tell.
And it fucking sucks, okay. It sucks a whole fucking lot. Ryan kept looking at Spencer, waiting for Spencer to back him up on this since that’s what Spencer’s always done, and Spencer just-
He wants to play.
He wants to experiment.
He wants to bang the shit out of his drums and make music that slides from jazz to pop to rock and back again, with maybe a little Latin beat thrown in, and he and Brendon have been fucking around with some stuff, too, songs that don’t fit in with Ryan’s overall vision, and-
Spencer fucking hates this part of it.
After over 15 years of friendship with Ryan Ross, though, he also knows how the creative process goes: how Ryan and Brendon push at each other and keep pushing until they’re nearly bleeding with it, and how their music ends up being the better for it.
But, it’s not easy. It’s never been easy.
So, Brendon’s too loud on the drive back to LA, singing along to the Peter Gabriel playlist he brings up on his ipod. He smiles too widely, the corners of his mouth sharp with it, and Spencer’s not surprised when, three minutes after they step through the front door, Brendon shuts himself in his room.
Spencer stands in the front hall for a few seconds longer, long enough for the dogs to come greet him, for them to look hopefully at their leashes, so eager they’re nearly dancing in place.
Instead of succumbing to their obvious wishes, though, he says, “Not now, not now,” and thinks about going to his own room. Before he gets farther than a step or two in that direction, though, Dylan barks and races for the door leading to the backyard. It’s habit by now for Spencer to follow behind, to let the dogs out, and all it takes is one breath of fresh air for him to step outside too. He finds a ball in the corner of the deck and tosses it, watching as Bogart leaps over Dylan in an attempt to get there first.
When Bogart brings it back, dropping it on the toe of Spencer’s shoe, Spencer says, “Good dog,” and leans down to scratch Bogart’s ears. Bogart wags, wags, licks at Spencer’s wrist. He barks once, then nudges at Spencer’s hand until Spencer finally picks the ball up, until he finally tosses it across the yard again.
The dogs take off running again and Spencer watches them go.
*
In the morning, Brendon’s smiling again.
He’s smiling, dancing around the kitchen to one of the little songs he likes to make up on the spot: this one is about the can of Iams that he’s currently using to fill the dogs’ bowls. The dogs are dancing at his feet, so excited, and Spencer just leans against the doorway into the kitchen, watching.
Brendon doesn’t startle when he sees Spencer, but his grin is a little strained for a moment.
He says, “Sorry about-“ and he would probably say ‘yesterday,’ but Spencer shakes his head and cuts him off, because Brendon has nothing to apologize for. It’s part of the process. Spencer knows how the process goes.
And that’s what Spencer says. “It’s part of the process. We’re just getting started. We’ll make it work.” Spencer swallows once, then continues. “Besides, you fucking know I’m going to back you on anything that can never in any way, shape, or form be played with a tambourine, right?”
Brendon laughs, sharp and surprised, and Spencer smiles back.
*
And Spencer’s right: things get better.
Things always get better, this much Spencer’s learned over the years, and they’re going to fucking Africa, right? Which is so fucking awesome Spencer’s not quite sure how to handle it.
Because five years ago, see, if anyone had told Spencer that this is what he’d be doing with his life-that he’d be flying around the world, making this his living-he probably would have said something like, “Dude, I fucking wish, you know?” But somehow he’s really, truly here, and it’s awesome, and just-
It goes too fast.
Because there’s the show, and they take in a safari or two, and see a corner of the world that Spencer’s only ever dreamed about and-
And then they’re back in LA, and they’re feeling so inspired, so ready to do this, to get the next album started and-
And Spencer’s not sure what happens, actually, because one minute he thinks things are progressing better than they have in months and then the next? The next there’s yelling, and then Brendon goes cold and silent beside Spencer and even from across the room Spencer can see that Ryan’s mouth is too tight, his shoulders at awkward angles, and he’s looking at Spencer like he’s betraying him for not agreeing with Ryan’s carefully constructed ideas, and Jon is staring at Spencer helplessly, and Spencer-
And as Spencer sits there, he starts to realize that it might actually be possible for Ryan and Brendon to push each other too far. For them not just to bend with it, but, in fact, break.
And that is a fucking scary revelation that Spencer’s not quite sure what to do with.
He’s even less sure what to do when Brendon stands up and says, “I can’t-I just can’t fucking do this with you right now, Ross. I just-“ And then he’s walking out of his own music room, up the stairs to the main floor, and Ryan’s looking at Spencer like he’s about to go off, and Spencer’s about ready to tell him that he doesn’t want to hear it, because he really fucking doesn’t, when Jon says, “Ry.”
Five years ago, it would have been Spencer saying that.
So, they leave. It takes Spencer another twenty minutes to venture upstairs, to find Brendon sitting on the grass out in the backyard, Dylan in his lap, Bogart curled up at his knees.
Brendon looks at Spencer as Spencer sits down, as he pats his knee and waits for Bogart to take the invitation, which Bogart does, gladly.
“I just- I’m not sure that I can-“ Brendon starts, quietly now, his knee brushing Spencer’s as he shifts his weight. He sounds just as scared as Spencer feels.
Spencer nods, feels Bogart lick at his knuckles. “I know,” he says.
*
Later, he’s not sure if that’s the exact moment that he realizes that this time, things might not actually get better in the end. If it’s not, though, he thinks that it probably should have been.
Jon goes back to Chicago, and Spencer would hate him for that, for escaping like that, but he can’t. Not when it’s been a long planned trip. Not when he wants to do the exact same thing. Go home. Hug his mom. Have her tell him that everything will be okay.
Instead he has Brendon acting like Spencer’s going to bolt at any moment, go back to Ryan’s side; he has Ryan, who’s not calling, not responding to Spencer’s texts, who’s talking about being in the studio with Alex and Mike. He’s just-
It’s easy to lose himself for bits of time. They go bowling; they go out for drinks with Regan and Shane. They carry Shane’s cameras and sound equipment around for him on an afternoon shoot and Shane talks about how he has to get the two of them in front of the camera at some point.
In the evenings, Brendon will challenge Spencer to a game of Mortal Kombat, and they’ll end up pressed shoulder to shoulder, elbowing each other as they attempt to kick each other’s asses. Or maybe they’ll watch a movie, sprawled out at opposite ends of the couch, kicking at each other as they each attempt to take up as much room as they can.
But there are other times: times when Spencer’s phone beeps, telling him he has a new text message, and he wonders if it’s Ryan; times when Brendon goes down to the practice room without Spencer and just plays; times when Spencer goes down to the practice room by himself and does the same.
Those are the times when it’s hard to forget.
So. He begs off of an afternoon surfing session and takes the dogs to the dog park, tosses the ball until they’re too exhausted to run any longer, until they’ve finished one of the bowls of water between them and are collapsed at his feet. He watches the yorkie chase the corgi, the labs chase the frisbee from one end of the fence to the other.
He stays there for an hour, two, longer, then pulls out his phone, dials an always familiar number, and when it’s picked up, he says, “Mom?”
*
The day after Spencer arrives home, Jon sends him a picture from the beach: Brendon and Shane, surfboards under arms, dogs trailing at their heels. He writes, wish you were here.
Spencer thinks, me too, because it’s true, it is. But he can’t be there, not right now. He writes: catch a wave for me.
Half an hour later, Jon sends him a picture of a wave. He writes, caught.
The third day he’s home, Brendon starts sending him pictures of the dogs.
The first is of Dylan asleep on Shane’s chest, a half chewed rawhide caught in the crook of Shane’s elbow.
The second is of Bogart at the dog park, trying to wrestle one of the labs to the ground to get the frisbee first.
The third is of Dylan and Bogart at the ends of their leashes, tails held high, pulling at Brendon’s hand, which is a blur at the edge of the frame.
The eighth day, Jon sends him a picture of Brendon’s practice room, empty, and when Spencer calls him, Jon says, “They’re just- I want-“
Spencer sighs, nods, and says, “I know.”
He wishes he didn’t.
The ninth day, Ryan sends Spencer an email. For Ryan, it’s an apology. He doesn’t say the words, because Spencer knows him, knows that he doesn’t think he’s in the wrong, and maybe he’s not. Maybe none of them are. He explains his vision again, words flowing, painting the picture, and Spencer knows what Ryan’s saying, he does.
He’s just-
He’s not sure that that’s what he wants anymore, and it’s still as fucking scary a thought as it was a week ago.
That night he helps his mom wash the dishes, then sits down with her at the kitchen table and says all of the things he’s barely let himself think. His mom nods, looks sad, places her hand over his and squeezes.
She doesn’t tell him it will all work out, but she says, “Honey, whatever you decide, it will be okay.”
It’s not until midnight that he actually checks his phone and sees the picture that Brendon sent at some point during the day. Bogart, asleep on Spencer’s futon. Spencer stares at it for several long minutes, starts to write several things: :) and I’ll see you in 3 days and good night, but it’s not a good night, and he doesn’t feel like smiling, and Brendon knows that Spencer will see him in three days. So, in the end, he thumbs his phone off, then reboots his laptop and opens up Ryan’s email.
He writes I know. and I think we need to talk when I get back to LA. and Lunch?
He wishes that he didn’t know exactly what he wasn’t saying.
*
For a minute after Spencer lets himself into the house, he thinks that no one’s home, that maybe Brendon and Shane have gone to the beach and that they took the dogs with them. Only for a minute, though, because then Spencer hears Dylan’s familiar yip, Bogart’s bark, and he leaves his bags in the middle of the entryway as he makes his way to the back of the house.
Neither of the dogs are at the back door when he first opens it, but they’re almost halfway there by the time he steps outside. Dylan reaches him first, throwing her head back and scolding him, with a series of yelps, for being gone for so long. Bogart contents himself with standing up on his hind paws and balancing himself on Spencer’s knee, muddy claws leaving tracks on Spencer’s pants as he slides down again.
Brendon’s sitting at the far side of the yard, on a lawn chair that’s been dragged from the deck to a new spot underneath one of the trees. He’s got his guitar balanced on his knees, his eyes closed, but Spencer doesn’t believe for one minute that Brendon doesn’t know that he’s there.
Spencer takes the steps down to the yard slowly, dogs circling his feet, and he says, “Hey,” when he’s halfway to the tree. Brendon does open his eyes then and he smiles at Spencer, but it’s a fragile look, one that Spencer doesn’t know how to fix.
“Good flight?” Brendon asks and he meets Spencer’s gaze as Spencer sits down on the grass beside the chair, but only for a blink, two, before he looks back down at his guitar.
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Yeah, it was fine.”
Brendon nods. He’s resting his fingers on the guitar strings, and he strums a chord, then another, quietly enough that Spencer’s not sure Brendon’s even aware that he’s doing it. As Spencer listens, he thinks that there are things that he should be saying now, things he needs to be saying, but he’s not sure how, still doesn’t have the words.
Finally Brendon says, “Ryan and I had another blowout while you were gone. Um. You should probably be glad you weren’t here.”
“I should have been here,” Spencer says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. And maybe he should have been. It doesn’t seem quite right that in the future, Brendon, Ryan and Jon will probably all view that argument as the final nail in the group’s collective coffin whereas Spencer will get his final moment tomorrow.
He can’t really think of any other way for the next day to go.
Brendon shrugs and plays a line of something that Spencer doesn’t know; he could very well be making it up on the spot.
“I’m going to have lunch with Ryan tomorrow,” Spencer says, and Brendon does look up then. His fingers stop where they are on the strings, melody cutting off abruptly. His eyes are wide, and he’s biting at his bottom lip, and he has to know what they’re going to be talking about at the lunch. He has to.
“We’ll be okay,” Spencer says. “You and I, we’ll be just fine.” He tries to smile, but it’s a weak one and he knows it is.
Still, he keeps looking at Brendon until Brendon nods, ducks his head, and starts playing the melody again.
*
The day of the lunch was never going to be a good day. Spencer knows this.
Spencer fucking hates this.
Brendon’s already gone by the time Spencer finally makes it out of his room in the morning, and Shane’s working in his studio, music turned up loud. Also, there are only so many times that Spencer can flip through all 350 channels on Brendon and Shane’s cable without finding a single thing that he wants to watch before he admits that he probably needs to get out of the house, too.
So, he drives. He drives the half hour to the restaurant that he and Ryan are meeting at, and gets there an hour early, so he feeds the meter and then sits in his car and calls Jon. Jon, who also has to know what the outcome of today is going to be. Jon, who was here when Spencer wasn’t.
Jon picks up on the third ring and he sounds… not wary, but sad, and yes, Spencer thinks, he knows.
Spencer says, “I’m meeting Ryan in about an hour.”
“Yeah,” Jon says. “Yeah.”
Jon won’t be the one to say the words, and he’s not the person that Spencer needs to say them to first, so he just says, “Yeah.”
Jon is Jon, though, and so he only lets the silence last for about 30 seconds before he says, “Did I tell you about what Clover did the other day?” and Spencer wants to tell him that now is not the time for cute cat stories, but then he thinks, if there ever was a time for cute cat stories, this is it.
Twenty minutes of hearing about Dylan, Clover, and Marley shenanigans, though, don’t make it any easier to hang up and actually walk inside the restaurant. He gets seated 15 minutes early. Ryan slides into the chair across the table only five minutes after that.
Spencer’s been imagining this conversation since that night in the kitchen with his mom, maybe even before that, and he thinks it will be short, really fucking painful. Instead, Ryan smiles, like this is any other lunch, any other LA afternoon. He tells Spencer about the things he’s been doing with Alex and Mike, about some of the people he’s met, the parties he’s been going to. Spencer tells Ryan about Jackie’s new boyfriend, a kid who’d tried to engage Spencer in a discussion about cars of all things, and Ryan laughs with him about that in a way that only Ryan can.
And then, an hour and a half later, after they’ve finished their meal, their desert, after the ice cubes have completely melted in their water glasses, Ryan darts his gaze to the side and says, “This isn’t working anymore, is it?”
Spencer says, “No, it’s not.”
They stare at each other for a long moment then, and Spencer thinks that Ryan’s going to tell Spencer he can come with Ryan, that they can still do this, but Ryan doesn’t, so Spencer’s spared having to actually tell him no. They both know that Spencer’s already made his choice.
Instead, Ryan says, “I want-we want to do something different, you know? We want-“
And Spencer says, “Yeah,” nodding. Except he doesn’t know, because he’s really only ever wanted Panic. That’s what he knows.
He takes a deep breath then, and he hadn’t been planning on asking for this, he really hadn’t, because the band had originally been Ryan’s idea, and it was Ryan’s name, but-
“We’re keeping the name,” he says.
Ryan looks like he wants to protest, because he has to know that if they keep the name, they keep the tour, the FBR support, everything that they’ve worked so hard for over these last few years.
But Ryan said it himself. He and Jon want to try something different. So, it only takes a few moments for Ryan to nod and say, “Yeah. Okay.” He’s not looking at Spencer as he says it.
So that, quite simply, is the end. Too easy, too soon, and Spencer knows they’ll be having more (many, many more) discussions in the coming days: about the name, the upcoming tours, the songs that they wrote together. They’ll have to tell Pete, the label, the lawyers.
But for now it’s just the two of them, and it’s an end.
So. They go their separate ways and Spencer thinks that he’s doing okay, thinks he needs to go back to the house and tell Brendon what’s going on, but as soon as he gets behind the wheel of his car and starts driving, he sort of forgets about stopping. He heads towards the 101, heads north up the coast, enjoying the twists and turns, the way that he has to keep the car under control as he goes. He drives until he’s no longer shaking, until his knuckles are no longer quite so white against the black leather of the steering wheel, and then, finally, he heads back to Brendon’s.
The dogs are out in the front yard when he gets there, running up to him and leaping at his knees, barking. He reaches down to scratch at their ears and when he looks up, he sees that Brendon’s sitting on the front stoop, staring at him.
Spencer’s breath catches, just a bit, because-because Brendon’s actually looking a little wary, like he’s not sure what Spencer’s going to say. And Spencer’s not quite sure what to say. He swallows, then sits down on the stoop, too, staring at the Mazda parked across the street.
“Ryan and I talked-” he starts, then closes his eyes, because obviously. He takes a deep breath, then keeps going. “We agreed-The two of us? You and I? We’re keeping the name.” It sounds so weird to be saying that, so wrong, but at the same time, he almost feels relieved. Almost. “I think we should bring the exclamation point back. I think, you know, that that might be a fun thing to do.”
“I-“ Brendon starts, and Spencer can see the emotions flitting across his face: pain, relief, complete and utter fear, relief again. Spencer’s not quite up to smiling yet, but he nods and Brendon nods back, and then he visibly relaxes.
“Fuck,” he says, which pretty much sums up Spencer’s thoughts exactly.
A moment later, Brendon sits up straight again. “What would you say to putting a jazz interlude on the album? And, um, you said you liked the beginnings of that Sinatra song, right? Like, maybe we could work up a demo of that?”
Spencer feels like it should be too soon for them to be talking about this, but he nods. He nods and then says, “Fuck,” too loudly and possibly a little wetly, because Brendon’s wrapping a hand around the back of his neck, squeezing, and Bogart’s suddenly trying to climb into his lap, lick at his cheeks, and Spencer, he can’t help but laugh at that. He can’t.
“Fuck,” he says again, more softly, and Brendon just rests his head against Spencer’s shoulder and says, “Yeah.”
Next
Author: tigs
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Don't know, don't own.
Summary: Spencer isn’t there the day that Brendon gets Bogart, but he gets a camera phone picture within the first hour of Bogart actually being Brendon’s. (41,930 words.)
Author’s Notes: I began this the night that Spencer posted that first picture of Bogart, the one where he was curled up on the couch, waiting for Brendon to come home. This was supposed to be a cute, fluffy, short story about two boys and a dog. At some point when I wasn’t looking, though, it turned into a much (much) longer story about the band, The Divorce, picking up the pieces, and moving forward. At its heart, though, I still think it’s about two boys and a dog.
Also, this is as time line accurate as I was able to make it, trying to fit my suppositions in with known dates.
Many, many thanks to amy13, who’s been there with me every step of the way for the last three and a half weeks, listening to me plot and analyze and write and rewrite, letting me send her bits and pieces over IM. Also, she turned out a super fast beta, getting this back to me in under 36 hours. Any remaining errors are, of course, my own. Thanks, also, to everyone who left me encouraging comments as I kept updating my lj with posts that read, basically, o.O… this got so long how?
Dreams From the Other Side
i.
Spencer isn’t there the day that Brendon gets Bogart, but he gets a camera phone picture within the first hour of Bogart actually being Brendon’s. It’s slightly out of focus, Bogart’s nose too close to the viewfinder, his half-stub of a tail a blur in the background.
He waits another half hour and then gives Brendon a call.
“I love my dogs, Spencer,” Brendon says as soon as he picks up, and he sounds a little breathless, his voice edged with laughter, in that way Spencer knows means he’s been giggling for quite awhile.
“They’ve been fucking chasing each other around the house for the last twenty minutes. They think- they think they’re in, like, the fucking Indy 500 or something. Or maybe Dylan’s just embracing her greyhound heritage?”
“Could be,” Spencer says. He’s smiling already, because in the background he can hear yips and quiet whoofs, the sounds of doggy nails on hardwood floors. “It’s about time she embraced her roots.”
“It is,” Brendon says. Then, “Dylan! Bogart! No!” Spencer pulls the phone away from his ear for a moment, but then Brendon’s saying, “Sorry, they’re trying to use the end table as a, like, fucking hurdle or something.” Then, “Bogart! Stop it!” Then, “And now they’re practicing slip-n-slide on Regan’s throw rug.” Then, “Dylan!” Then, “Sorry, they’re-“
Spencer’s laughing too hard by this point to truly hear what Brendon’s telling him. He says, “Dude. You go, I’ll catch you later, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Brendon says. “I should-Bogart! Yeah, um. I’ll talk to you later!” He hangs up, and Spencer spends a few moments grinning at his phone.
Ten minutes later, Brendon sends him another picture. This time, it’s of Bogart out in the yard, Dylan a blur behind him. Again, the picture is mostly nose and mouth, but this time, there’s a nasty ass tennis ball clenched in Bogart’s teeth, already slobbery and dirty and chewed.
Spencer texts back, lovely.
A minute later, his phone beeps. Another picture, Dylan and Bogart together, a tangle of doggy limbs and tails on the grass. Spencer smiles and puts his phone in his pocket.
ii.
The first time Spencer meets Bogart, it’s just a little past o’dark thirty in the morning, closer to dawn than nightfall, and Spencer knows that there are reasons and advantages to doing the redeye flight thing, he really does, but he’s sure as fuck not remembering them right at the moment.
So, he takes a cab from LAX to Brendon and Shane’s, spending 45 minutes staring blurry-eyed out the windows as the highways and streets pass him by. The skyline is just starting to be edged pink-orange-blue when he finally gets to the house and he wonders if he’s going to have to ring the bell, wake everyone up to announce his arrival. He’s lucky, though, because when he opens the car door, he sees a light on in the kitchen, Shane at the table there, and when the cab driver slams the trunk of the taxi closed, Shane looks up, waves. By the time Spencer makes it onto the front stoop, the door is open and Shane’s giving him a hug, saying, “Dude, fuck. It’s been too fucking long.”
“It has,” Spencer says. Because it really fucking has been. Before he can say more, though, he hears the somewhat muted sound of nails on linoleum, click-click-click, the thump of a tail hitting furniture, and when he looks down he sees Dylan and Bogart walking out of the kitchen, tails wagging cautiously, as if unsure whether anyone who arrives this early in the morning is truly welcome.
It only takes a moment for Dylan to recognize him as a familiar person, though, as a friend who can usually be conned into giving out doggy treats when Brendon and Shane have put their respective feet down, and then she yips and bumps her head at Spencer’s knee, tail speed moving up more than a few gears. Spencer laughs and crouches down-so tired he sways just a little with it-and then Dylan is balancing her front paws on his knee, nosing at his chin, and it’s impossible not to laugh, so he does.
Bogart seems to take this as his invitation to do his own greeting, but since he’s never met Spencer before he spends more time at it, sniffing Spencer’s shoes, then hopping up onto Spencer’s thigh, trying to balance all four paws there while nosing at Spencer’s hand and neck, then swiping a tongue up Spencer’s cheek. Both dogs end up on the floor pretty much immediately at that point, as Spencer wipes his face on his t-shirt, but neither seems to care. Indeed, Bogart just rolls over onto his back, tail thumping the ground, and Shane says, “I think he likes you.”
Spencer grins up at Shane, leaning down to rub his fingers over Bogart’s ears.
“He is pretty cute,” Spencer says.
Bogart’s tail thumps more loudly against the floor.
*
Spencer decides that Bogart is somewhat less cute five hours later, when he wakes up to the view of a doggy nose right the fuck there, almost pressed to his own. He’s startled, okay, which is the only reason he scoots as quickly back across the air mattress as he does.
Really.
Because, see, he just wasn’t expecting a Bogart so early (late) in the morning, is all. Especially since he decidedly remembers shutting the door behind him, he does, when he’d finally gone to bed.
This is about the point at which he registers the sounds that Brendon makes when he’s trying really fucking hard not to laugh and is failing somewhat miserably.
“Fuck you,” Spencer says, rolling back towards the center of the bed and burying his face in his pillow for a moment.
“Your face!” Brendon says, and he’s totally giggly, too fucking awake for Spencer to deal with right now.
“Fuck you,” Spencer says again more forcefully, despite the fact that his voice is still muffled by the pillow. He hears a snuffling sound, feels a wet nose against his ear, and Spencer would push Bogart away, he would, but Bogart’s lying down next to him now, curling up against Spencer’s side, and Spencer’s still too fucking exhausted to do more than think about moving.
“Sorry,” Brendon says, not sounding sorry at all. “I just. I was going to run down to the store and thought I’d, you know, say hi before I left. And tell you that I was leaving, so you wouldn’t wake up and think we’d, like, fucking abandoned you already or something?”
“And also try to scare the shit out of me with your dog,” Spencer grumbles.
“That too,” Brendon says. He laughs again, and says, “Come on, Bogart. Come here. We’re going to let Spencer sleep some more. Come on.”
Bogart presses back against Spencer for a brief moment, a flash of resistance, but then he’s hopping off the bed and trotting after Brendon, barking as Brendon closes the door again.
Spencer falls asleep to the sound of the two of them walking down the hall.
*
Spencer doesn’t really have a plan for his time in California. It’s more, Brendon had said, “Yo, you should come stay for awhile,” and Spencer had said, “I could?” and the next week, he’d woken up on Brendon’s floor.
So. He doesn’t have a plan, but it’s not like he’s really a guest either, and it only takes him two or three days to slot himself into Brendon, Shane and (most days) Regan’s routine.
After that first morning, he usually gets up around ten, when Brendon and Shane do. He takes his turn in the kitchen rotation, pulling cereal boxes out of the cupboards, milk out of the fridge, turning on the coffee pot, filling the dogs bowls. Twice a week he actually cooks, making eggs or pancakes or french toast or something.
“You’re spoiling us,” Regan says during the second week, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin, trying to smear the powdered sugar from the french toast away. Spencer ducks his head, not-quite-blushing.
He starts going to the beach with them, too. Not every time they go, but most of them, and it only takes him two days before he rents a surfboard and wet suit and tries his hand at this whole surfing-as-a-lifestyle thing.
The first day he tries it, he comes back to Brendon’s sore as fuck, feeling bruised from head to toe. He takes a hot shower, then collapses on the couch to watch Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare repeats on BBC America, only moving when Dylan hops up next to him and drops a red rubber ball between his face and the TV. It rolls with the dip of the couch, of course, coming to rest against his neck, ugh, and Spencer manages to maneuver his arm so that he’s able to pick it up, toss it lightly across the room. Dylan leaps after it, sliding across the floor, knocking against the coffee table as she passes it by, and then Bogart comes trotting into the room to see what all the fuss is about.
After that, they’re both chasing the ball, tackling each other in an attempt to get to it first. They’re well trained enough now, though, that whichever one of them does get it brings it back to Spencer, dropping it on the floor by his hand.
An hour later, Spencer wakes up to the sound of a camera clicking, and he has to blink twice before Brendon comes into focus. Brendon’s grinning, looking far too pleased with himself, fond, and that’s when Spencer notices the two warm weights on his chest, the twitch of a tail against the skin of his inner elbow.
“Shut up,” Spencer says, raising a hand to flip Brendon off.
Brendon takes another picture before Spencer realizes what he’s doing, and when Spencer waves his raised finger a little more firmly in Brendon’s direction, Brendon laughs.
*
So, Spencer settles into a routine, but during the third week, he’s totally minding his own business, sprawled out on the couch in the living room, reading Good Omens for the 10th time, when he hears the sound of something metal being dragged across the floor, then feels something else entirely being dropped across his foot.
He looks down and sees Bogart sitting at his knee, wagging his tail in his most ingratiating manner, his leash at Spencer’s feet.
It’s not like Spencer hasn’t helped take the dogs for walks before. It’s just that usually he’s been accompanying Brendon (most of the time) or Shane (once or twice). He’s just-he’s more the person who gets asked if they want to come along, who says yes, who makes the very impatient dogs wait five extra minutes while he finds his socks, his shoes, his jacket.
So, Spencer says, “Go ask Brendon.”
Bogart tips his head to the side, ears in full triangle mode, like he’s trying to figure out exactly what Spencer’s saying to him, like he doesn’t totally fucking know. Spencer leans down, cupping Bogart’s face in his palm.
“Bren. Don,” he says slowly.
Bogart barks once, sliding back a step with the force of it, then shifts forward again, paws almost dancing in place. He barks a second time, then bends down to nose at his leash, pushing it closer to Spencer, before looking up at him again, more hopefully than before.
Spencer stares back, but Bogart’s tail just keeps twitching, and Spencer can see the tip of his tongue sticking out, can hear the small whine that he makes, too excited to stand it, and-
And Spencer sighs and marks his place in his book, setting it down on the coffee table.
“Brendon!” he yells, standing up. “I’m taking your dog for a walk!”
“Okay!” Brendon yells back, or at least Spencer thinks he does, because his answer is almost completely drowned out by the sound of Dylan running down the hallway to the living room, skidding around the corner on two paws, barking, Me too! Oh, oh, me too!
“Yes, fine,” Spencer says, laughing now. “You too.”
*
So, that becomes part of the routine, too.
On the third walk he does by himself, Spencer discovers that there’s a dog park not too far from Brendon and Shane’s house, and so Spencer starts taking the dogs there a few evenings a week. Five thirty is their time, and it’s mostly the same people every day. There’s the lady with the dog that looks like a wolf, the three labs, the yorkie, the corgi, the basset, and the labradoodle that sits on the benches with the people and watches all of the other dogs play.
On his third visit, Spencer brings a can of tennis balls to donate to the communal cause. On his fourth, the owner of one of the labs brings an extra frisbee for Spencer to use, since Bogart keeps trying to get in on the game with the labs.
On his sixth visit, one of the ladies says, “Oh, oh, your dogs are so adorable!” and Spencer thinks about saying ‘thanks,’ or ‘yeah, aren’t they?’, but Dylan and Bogart aren’t his, they aren’t, so he just says, “Thanks. They, um. They aren’t actually mine, though. They belong to some friends of mine? I just. I like having an excuse to get outside for awhile, you know?”
The lady nods, and when he asks about her dog, the basset, she smiles widely, and they spend the next half hour trading dog stories. It’s a good way to spend an afternoon.
On Spencer’s eighth visit, Brendon comes, too.
“I need to see where you’re stealing my dogs off to every week,” he says very seriously as they walk the four blocks between his house and the park. “I wouldn’t be a responsible dog parent if I didn’t make sure you weren’t exposing them to unsavory influences, right?”
Spencer flips him off, then bumps their shoulders together, which makes Brendon laugh and elbow him back.
They sit at the far end of the park, on a bench under one of the trees, watching Dylan and Bogart play tag with the yorkie and a new puppy, a springer spaniel. Brendon leans back after awhile, his eyes closed, and he sighs, breathing in. A few minutes later, he turns to look at Spencer, blinks his eyes open, and says, grin wide, “You know, this is nice.”
Spencer nods.
It is.
*
The second week Spencer’s there, they replace the air mattress with a futon. The third week, he stops closing his door at night and starts waking up in the morning with Bogart pressed to the backs of his knees.
During the sixth week, Shane sits down at dinner one night and says, “Regan and I are, um. Her lease is up in July, you know, and we were thinking that the time might be right for us to, well-“
Spencer looks over at Brendon quickly, because he’s lived with Shane for fucking years at this point, he’d fucking followed him out to California, but there’s no trace of regret on Brendon’s face. Instead, he’s grinning and saying, “Dude, fuck, it’s about time.”
When they’re watching Project Runway reruns on Bravo that night, though, Spencer notices that Brendon keeps Dylan in his lap longer than usual, lets her hold onto his arm, lick his hand until it’s as clean as she can get it.
*
A week later, Brendon finds Spencer sitting in the TV room, Bogart curled up next to him, his head on Spencer’s thigh. He’s been dreaming, twitching, his paws kicking out every few minutes, like he’s running. Spencer wonders if he’s chasing a rabbit, or a cat. A ball.
Spencer looks over when Brendon sits down on the couch next to them, carefully, apparently in an attempt not to wake Bogart up. Brendon nods once at Spencer, then relaxes back on the couch.
Spencer’s not even truly sure what he’s watching, but during the next commercial break, Brendon says, “So, um. I guess in July I’ll have a real guestroom, huh? With, like, a bed.”
Bogart twitches against Spencer’s leg, partially rolling over, and Spencer sees that Brendon’s rubbing his belly, tracing the small cowlicks of hair.
“Or, you know, if you wanted to stay,” Brendon says. “For like, you know. A while. You could, um. You could have first dibs?”
“I could,” Spencer says, and he’s not quite sure whether he’s agreeing to stay, or to have first dibs, or- “Yeah,” he says. “I could-that would be. Yeah.”
When he looks over at Brendon, Brendon’s grinning, and he maybe rubs Bogart’s tummy just a little too hard, because Bogart startles, sitting up sleepily, then scratching at his ear. It only takes him a moment longer than that to register that his very favorite person has joined them, and he climbs up into Brendon’s lap, licking at his chin, and Brendon says, “Bogart, Bogart, Bogie, hey.”
Spencer laughs.
iii.
So, it’s not the first fight they have about album number three and Spencer knows that it won’t be the last, not by a long shot, since they’ve barely even gotten started on the whole process.
It is, however, the first fight they’ve had about it while Spencer’s been crashing at Brendon’s house.
It’s also the first time in a long time that Spencer doesn’t have his own space to go back to, mountains to wander through, or a roof to climb and a joint to smoke. He can’t drive to his parents house, sit at the kitchen table and watch his mom cook, or tease his sisters about their boyfriends over dinner until he can replace the memories of Ryan and Brendon’s annoyed glares with their own.
This time, he has to spend an hour in the car with Brendon as they wend their way back to Santa Monica, and it’s not that Brendon’s even mad at him, Spencer knows he’s not, but it’s more the whole situation. Because, see, Ryan and Jon have notebooks full of lyrics, the beginnings of melodies that they’ve been working on for months. They’ve written harmonies for Brendon and Ryan, some for Jon. They’ve been busy, taking the foundations of Pretty. Odd. and continuing down that path, and they’ve spent the last few days laying it all out for Brendon and Spencer and they’re so fucking proud of what they’ve got and Brendon-
It’s not the music that Brendon wants to sing.
Spencer knows this. Brendon hasn’t explicitly told him so, not in so many words, but Spencer can tell.
And it fucking sucks, okay. It sucks a whole fucking lot. Ryan kept looking at Spencer, waiting for Spencer to back him up on this since that’s what Spencer’s always done, and Spencer just-
He wants to play.
He wants to experiment.
He wants to bang the shit out of his drums and make music that slides from jazz to pop to rock and back again, with maybe a little Latin beat thrown in, and he and Brendon have been fucking around with some stuff, too, songs that don’t fit in with Ryan’s overall vision, and-
Spencer fucking hates this part of it.
After over 15 years of friendship with Ryan Ross, though, he also knows how the creative process goes: how Ryan and Brendon push at each other and keep pushing until they’re nearly bleeding with it, and how their music ends up being the better for it.
But, it’s not easy. It’s never been easy.
So, Brendon’s too loud on the drive back to LA, singing along to the Peter Gabriel playlist he brings up on his ipod. He smiles too widely, the corners of his mouth sharp with it, and Spencer’s not surprised when, three minutes after they step through the front door, Brendon shuts himself in his room.
Spencer stands in the front hall for a few seconds longer, long enough for the dogs to come greet him, for them to look hopefully at their leashes, so eager they’re nearly dancing in place.
Instead of succumbing to their obvious wishes, though, he says, “Not now, not now,” and thinks about going to his own room. Before he gets farther than a step or two in that direction, though, Dylan barks and races for the door leading to the backyard. It’s habit by now for Spencer to follow behind, to let the dogs out, and all it takes is one breath of fresh air for him to step outside too. He finds a ball in the corner of the deck and tosses it, watching as Bogart leaps over Dylan in an attempt to get there first.
When Bogart brings it back, dropping it on the toe of Spencer’s shoe, Spencer says, “Good dog,” and leans down to scratch Bogart’s ears. Bogart wags, wags, licks at Spencer’s wrist. He barks once, then nudges at Spencer’s hand until Spencer finally picks the ball up, until he finally tosses it across the yard again.
The dogs take off running again and Spencer watches them go.
*
In the morning, Brendon’s smiling again.
He’s smiling, dancing around the kitchen to one of the little songs he likes to make up on the spot: this one is about the can of Iams that he’s currently using to fill the dogs’ bowls. The dogs are dancing at his feet, so excited, and Spencer just leans against the doorway into the kitchen, watching.
Brendon doesn’t startle when he sees Spencer, but his grin is a little strained for a moment.
He says, “Sorry about-“ and he would probably say ‘yesterday,’ but Spencer shakes his head and cuts him off, because Brendon has nothing to apologize for. It’s part of the process. Spencer knows how the process goes.
And that’s what Spencer says. “It’s part of the process. We’re just getting started. We’ll make it work.” Spencer swallows once, then continues. “Besides, you fucking know I’m going to back you on anything that can never in any way, shape, or form be played with a tambourine, right?”
Brendon laughs, sharp and surprised, and Spencer smiles back.
*
And Spencer’s right: things get better.
Things always get better, this much Spencer’s learned over the years, and they’re going to fucking Africa, right? Which is so fucking awesome Spencer’s not quite sure how to handle it.
Because five years ago, see, if anyone had told Spencer that this is what he’d be doing with his life-that he’d be flying around the world, making this his living-he probably would have said something like, “Dude, I fucking wish, you know?” But somehow he’s really, truly here, and it’s awesome, and just-
It goes too fast.
Because there’s the show, and they take in a safari or two, and see a corner of the world that Spencer’s only ever dreamed about and-
And then they’re back in LA, and they’re feeling so inspired, so ready to do this, to get the next album started and-
And Spencer’s not sure what happens, actually, because one minute he thinks things are progressing better than they have in months and then the next? The next there’s yelling, and then Brendon goes cold and silent beside Spencer and even from across the room Spencer can see that Ryan’s mouth is too tight, his shoulders at awkward angles, and he’s looking at Spencer like he’s betraying him for not agreeing with Ryan’s carefully constructed ideas, and Jon is staring at Spencer helplessly, and Spencer-
And as Spencer sits there, he starts to realize that it might actually be possible for Ryan and Brendon to push each other too far. For them not just to bend with it, but, in fact, break.
And that is a fucking scary revelation that Spencer’s not quite sure what to do with.
He’s even less sure what to do when Brendon stands up and says, “I can’t-I just can’t fucking do this with you right now, Ross. I just-“ And then he’s walking out of his own music room, up the stairs to the main floor, and Ryan’s looking at Spencer like he’s about to go off, and Spencer’s about ready to tell him that he doesn’t want to hear it, because he really fucking doesn’t, when Jon says, “Ry.”
Five years ago, it would have been Spencer saying that.
So, they leave. It takes Spencer another twenty minutes to venture upstairs, to find Brendon sitting on the grass out in the backyard, Dylan in his lap, Bogart curled up at his knees.
Brendon looks at Spencer as Spencer sits down, as he pats his knee and waits for Bogart to take the invitation, which Bogart does, gladly.
“I just- I’m not sure that I can-“ Brendon starts, quietly now, his knee brushing Spencer’s as he shifts his weight. He sounds just as scared as Spencer feels.
Spencer nods, feels Bogart lick at his knuckles. “I know,” he says.
*
Later, he’s not sure if that’s the exact moment that he realizes that this time, things might not actually get better in the end. If it’s not, though, he thinks that it probably should have been.
Jon goes back to Chicago, and Spencer would hate him for that, for escaping like that, but he can’t. Not when it’s been a long planned trip. Not when he wants to do the exact same thing. Go home. Hug his mom. Have her tell him that everything will be okay.
Instead he has Brendon acting like Spencer’s going to bolt at any moment, go back to Ryan’s side; he has Ryan, who’s not calling, not responding to Spencer’s texts, who’s talking about being in the studio with Alex and Mike. He’s just-
It’s easy to lose himself for bits of time. They go bowling; they go out for drinks with Regan and Shane. They carry Shane’s cameras and sound equipment around for him on an afternoon shoot and Shane talks about how he has to get the two of them in front of the camera at some point.
In the evenings, Brendon will challenge Spencer to a game of Mortal Kombat, and they’ll end up pressed shoulder to shoulder, elbowing each other as they attempt to kick each other’s asses. Or maybe they’ll watch a movie, sprawled out at opposite ends of the couch, kicking at each other as they each attempt to take up as much room as they can.
But there are other times: times when Spencer’s phone beeps, telling him he has a new text message, and he wonders if it’s Ryan; times when Brendon goes down to the practice room without Spencer and just plays; times when Spencer goes down to the practice room by himself and does the same.
Those are the times when it’s hard to forget.
So. He begs off of an afternoon surfing session and takes the dogs to the dog park, tosses the ball until they’re too exhausted to run any longer, until they’ve finished one of the bowls of water between them and are collapsed at his feet. He watches the yorkie chase the corgi, the labs chase the frisbee from one end of the fence to the other.
He stays there for an hour, two, longer, then pulls out his phone, dials an always familiar number, and when it’s picked up, he says, “Mom?”
*
The day after Spencer arrives home, Jon sends him a picture from the beach: Brendon and Shane, surfboards under arms, dogs trailing at their heels. He writes, wish you were here.
Spencer thinks, me too, because it’s true, it is. But he can’t be there, not right now. He writes: catch a wave for me.
Half an hour later, Jon sends him a picture of a wave. He writes, caught.
The third day he’s home, Brendon starts sending him pictures of the dogs.
The first is of Dylan asleep on Shane’s chest, a half chewed rawhide caught in the crook of Shane’s elbow.
The second is of Bogart at the dog park, trying to wrestle one of the labs to the ground to get the frisbee first.
The third is of Dylan and Bogart at the ends of their leashes, tails held high, pulling at Brendon’s hand, which is a blur at the edge of the frame.
The eighth day, Jon sends him a picture of Brendon’s practice room, empty, and when Spencer calls him, Jon says, “They’re just- I want-“
Spencer sighs, nods, and says, “I know.”
He wishes he didn’t.
The ninth day, Ryan sends Spencer an email. For Ryan, it’s an apology. He doesn’t say the words, because Spencer knows him, knows that he doesn’t think he’s in the wrong, and maybe he’s not. Maybe none of them are. He explains his vision again, words flowing, painting the picture, and Spencer knows what Ryan’s saying, he does.
He’s just-
He’s not sure that that’s what he wants anymore, and it’s still as fucking scary a thought as it was a week ago.
That night he helps his mom wash the dishes, then sits down with her at the kitchen table and says all of the things he’s barely let himself think. His mom nods, looks sad, places her hand over his and squeezes.
She doesn’t tell him it will all work out, but she says, “Honey, whatever you decide, it will be okay.”
It’s not until midnight that he actually checks his phone and sees the picture that Brendon sent at some point during the day. Bogart, asleep on Spencer’s futon. Spencer stares at it for several long minutes, starts to write several things: :) and I’ll see you in 3 days and good night, but it’s not a good night, and he doesn’t feel like smiling, and Brendon knows that Spencer will see him in three days. So, in the end, he thumbs his phone off, then reboots his laptop and opens up Ryan’s email.
He writes I know. and I think we need to talk when I get back to LA. and Lunch?
He wishes that he didn’t know exactly what he wasn’t saying.
*
For a minute after Spencer lets himself into the house, he thinks that no one’s home, that maybe Brendon and Shane have gone to the beach and that they took the dogs with them. Only for a minute, though, because then Spencer hears Dylan’s familiar yip, Bogart’s bark, and he leaves his bags in the middle of the entryway as he makes his way to the back of the house.
Neither of the dogs are at the back door when he first opens it, but they’re almost halfway there by the time he steps outside. Dylan reaches him first, throwing her head back and scolding him, with a series of yelps, for being gone for so long. Bogart contents himself with standing up on his hind paws and balancing himself on Spencer’s knee, muddy claws leaving tracks on Spencer’s pants as he slides down again.
Brendon’s sitting at the far side of the yard, on a lawn chair that’s been dragged from the deck to a new spot underneath one of the trees. He’s got his guitar balanced on his knees, his eyes closed, but Spencer doesn’t believe for one minute that Brendon doesn’t know that he’s there.
Spencer takes the steps down to the yard slowly, dogs circling his feet, and he says, “Hey,” when he’s halfway to the tree. Brendon does open his eyes then and he smiles at Spencer, but it’s a fragile look, one that Spencer doesn’t know how to fix.
“Good flight?” Brendon asks and he meets Spencer’s gaze as Spencer sits down on the grass beside the chair, but only for a blink, two, before he looks back down at his guitar.
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Yeah, it was fine.”
Brendon nods. He’s resting his fingers on the guitar strings, and he strums a chord, then another, quietly enough that Spencer’s not sure Brendon’s even aware that he’s doing it. As Spencer listens, he thinks that there are things that he should be saying now, things he needs to be saying, but he’s not sure how, still doesn’t have the words.
Finally Brendon says, “Ryan and I had another blowout while you were gone. Um. You should probably be glad you weren’t here.”
“I should have been here,” Spencer says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. And maybe he should have been. It doesn’t seem quite right that in the future, Brendon, Ryan and Jon will probably all view that argument as the final nail in the group’s collective coffin whereas Spencer will get his final moment tomorrow.
He can’t really think of any other way for the next day to go.
Brendon shrugs and plays a line of something that Spencer doesn’t know; he could very well be making it up on the spot.
“I’m going to have lunch with Ryan tomorrow,” Spencer says, and Brendon does look up then. His fingers stop where they are on the strings, melody cutting off abruptly. His eyes are wide, and he’s biting at his bottom lip, and he has to know what they’re going to be talking about at the lunch. He has to.
“We’ll be okay,” Spencer says. “You and I, we’ll be just fine.” He tries to smile, but it’s a weak one and he knows it is.
Still, he keeps looking at Brendon until Brendon nods, ducks his head, and starts playing the melody again.
*
The day of the lunch was never going to be a good day. Spencer knows this.
Spencer fucking hates this.
Brendon’s already gone by the time Spencer finally makes it out of his room in the morning, and Shane’s working in his studio, music turned up loud. Also, there are only so many times that Spencer can flip through all 350 channels on Brendon and Shane’s cable without finding a single thing that he wants to watch before he admits that he probably needs to get out of the house, too.
So, he drives. He drives the half hour to the restaurant that he and Ryan are meeting at, and gets there an hour early, so he feeds the meter and then sits in his car and calls Jon. Jon, who also has to know what the outcome of today is going to be. Jon, who was here when Spencer wasn’t.
Jon picks up on the third ring and he sounds… not wary, but sad, and yes, Spencer thinks, he knows.
Spencer says, “I’m meeting Ryan in about an hour.”
“Yeah,” Jon says. “Yeah.”
Jon won’t be the one to say the words, and he’s not the person that Spencer needs to say them to first, so he just says, “Yeah.”
Jon is Jon, though, and so he only lets the silence last for about 30 seconds before he says, “Did I tell you about what Clover did the other day?” and Spencer wants to tell him that now is not the time for cute cat stories, but then he thinks, if there ever was a time for cute cat stories, this is it.
Twenty minutes of hearing about Dylan, Clover, and Marley shenanigans, though, don’t make it any easier to hang up and actually walk inside the restaurant. He gets seated 15 minutes early. Ryan slides into the chair across the table only five minutes after that.
Spencer’s been imagining this conversation since that night in the kitchen with his mom, maybe even before that, and he thinks it will be short, really fucking painful. Instead, Ryan smiles, like this is any other lunch, any other LA afternoon. He tells Spencer about the things he’s been doing with Alex and Mike, about some of the people he’s met, the parties he’s been going to. Spencer tells Ryan about Jackie’s new boyfriend, a kid who’d tried to engage Spencer in a discussion about cars of all things, and Ryan laughs with him about that in a way that only Ryan can.
And then, an hour and a half later, after they’ve finished their meal, their desert, after the ice cubes have completely melted in their water glasses, Ryan darts his gaze to the side and says, “This isn’t working anymore, is it?”
Spencer says, “No, it’s not.”
They stare at each other for a long moment then, and Spencer thinks that Ryan’s going to tell Spencer he can come with Ryan, that they can still do this, but Ryan doesn’t, so Spencer’s spared having to actually tell him no. They both know that Spencer’s already made his choice.
Instead, Ryan says, “I want-we want to do something different, you know? We want-“
And Spencer says, “Yeah,” nodding. Except he doesn’t know, because he’s really only ever wanted Panic. That’s what he knows.
He takes a deep breath then, and he hadn’t been planning on asking for this, he really hadn’t, because the band had originally been Ryan’s idea, and it was Ryan’s name, but-
“We’re keeping the name,” he says.
Ryan looks like he wants to protest, because he has to know that if they keep the name, they keep the tour, the FBR support, everything that they’ve worked so hard for over these last few years.
But Ryan said it himself. He and Jon want to try something different. So, it only takes a few moments for Ryan to nod and say, “Yeah. Okay.” He’s not looking at Spencer as he says it.
So that, quite simply, is the end. Too easy, too soon, and Spencer knows they’ll be having more (many, many more) discussions in the coming days: about the name, the upcoming tours, the songs that they wrote together. They’ll have to tell Pete, the label, the lawyers.
But for now it’s just the two of them, and it’s an end.
So. They go their separate ways and Spencer thinks that he’s doing okay, thinks he needs to go back to the house and tell Brendon what’s going on, but as soon as he gets behind the wheel of his car and starts driving, he sort of forgets about stopping. He heads towards the 101, heads north up the coast, enjoying the twists and turns, the way that he has to keep the car under control as he goes. He drives until he’s no longer shaking, until his knuckles are no longer quite so white against the black leather of the steering wheel, and then, finally, he heads back to Brendon’s.
The dogs are out in the front yard when he gets there, running up to him and leaping at his knees, barking. He reaches down to scratch at their ears and when he looks up, he sees that Brendon’s sitting on the front stoop, staring at him.
Spencer’s breath catches, just a bit, because-because Brendon’s actually looking a little wary, like he’s not sure what Spencer’s going to say. And Spencer’s not quite sure what to say. He swallows, then sits down on the stoop, too, staring at the Mazda parked across the street.
“Ryan and I talked-” he starts, then closes his eyes, because obviously. He takes a deep breath, then keeps going. “We agreed-The two of us? You and I? We’re keeping the name.” It sounds so weird to be saying that, so wrong, but at the same time, he almost feels relieved. Almost. “I think we should bring the exclamation point back. I think, you know, that that might be a fun thing to do.”
“I-“ Brendon starts, and Spencer can see the emotions flitting across his face: pain, relief, complete and utter fear, relief again. Spencer’s not quite up to smiling yet, but he nods and Brendon nods back, and then he visibly relaxes.
“Fuck,” he says, which pretty much sums up Spencer’s thoughts exactly.
A moment later, Brendon sits up straight again. “What would you say to putting a jazz interlude on the album? And, um, you said you liked the beginnings of that Sinatra song, right? Like, maybe we could work up a demo of that?”
Spencer feels like it should be too soon for them to be talking about this, but he nods. He nods and then says, “Fuck,” too loudly and possibly a little wetly, because Brendon’s wrapping a hand around the back of his neck, squeezing, and Bogart’s suddenly trying to climb into his lap, lick at his cheeks, and Spencer, he can’t help but laugh at that. He can’t.
“Fuck,” he says again, more softly, and Brendon just rests his head against Spencer’s shoulder and says, “Yeah.”
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