Church Boys † Brendon Urie

26✝ Cleanliness is Close to Godliness

What was surprising to me, however, was the piece of paper that fell to the ground as I stood with the book in my hands. I bent down cautiously to pick it up and found that it was, in fact, a page that had been torn out of his book. This realization nearly caused me to grow physically ill. What Brendon had done, although as minuscule as it may seem to some people, was something that had unspokenly been deemed forbidden. He'd torn a page out the Bible; for some reason that just seemed so wrong on more than one level, and it would have to be explained by the very person who had committed such an unholy act. Through the thin page, I could see the indentions of lines pressed through the back of the paper, so I turned it around and spotted a single verse that had been underlined in blue ink. 1 Corinthians 6:12: "'I have the right to do anything,' you say- but not everything is beneficial. 'I have the right to do anything' - but I will not be mastered by anything." But the most unnerving part of all was the fact that Brendon had only underlined the second half of the verse, underlining twice the part that read, "I will not be mastered by anything."

I skimmed through the remaining pages in the book to look for anything else that Brendon possibly deemed worthy of underlining, but the rest of the pages were left spotless, so there was really nothing else worth investigating. My attention went right back to the page in my hand, and I read over the verse six more times in my head to allow the words to soak in fully. "I will not be mastered by anything." This was how Brendon lived his whole life. Unmastered. Uncontrolled. Unsupervised. He wasn't tied down to anyone or anything no matter what that amount of unrestricted freedom would cost him in the end, and it was all because he had conveniently chosen to ignore the most important and critical part of this verse: "But not everything is beneficial."

I had to remind myself that I had a job to do here other than standing here scanning a library of books for absolutely no reason. I wasn't just hired to inspect the things they kept in their living room and read what kind ridiculous nonsense Brendon Urie liked to point out with blue ink.

Cleaning was one of my main tasks, so I scanned the room in an attempt to try and figure what that job would possibly include. The only thing harder than searching for what jobs I could do, was trying to find a speck of dirt in this spotless house. There weren't any signs that people even lived here at all. There were no items left out or strewn about on the coffee table like any other typical house. I quickly came to the conclusion that there wasn't really anything that needed to be done in here, which meant that a majority of my work would revolve around Brendon, and I was unsure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Immediately, that one thought of Brendon opened the floodgate, and my mind suddenly switched back to centering around him, and more specifically, where he was. I clutched tightly to the items in my sweaty hand. The chocolate had surely begun to melt under the heat of my grasp, and I could feel the sweat on my palms sticking the fur of the large plush turtle uncomfortably to my skin.

As I aimlessly began to walk farther into the back of the house, I began to notice the music for the first time. There was an unfamiliar pop song pumping through the walls, which led me to believe that I was gradually growing closer to Brendon's room. I passed a gorgeous dining room and two long hallways before I finally reached the source of the sound; a single closed door at the very end of the hall, which I assumed could only be Brendon's bedroom.

Mainly because there was a sign on the front that said: GO AWAY

I built up what little courage I had saved and knocked briskly against the surface. There was no response, but I wasn't really surprised- his music was so loud that I could barely hear the knock myself. Maybe I should just leave, my brain tried to suggest. I knew I couldn't, though. We had to see each other sooner or later whether it was something we wanted or not, and I'd already come this far, so giving up wasn't an option. Throwing away my concern with politeness, I turned the doorknob before I could change my mind and swung the door open.

There, as I'd expected, was Brendon. He stood in the brightly lit room, his body turned away from me at the side of his bed, carelessly flicking through stacks of torn envelopes and Get Well Cards that were scattered around his comforter. He bent down to pick up a surprisingly large handful of them, and it was only as he stood back up that I fully processed the plain, simple fact before me; he wasn't wearing a shirt. Somehow, I was unable to stop myself from staring at him- something about the way his muscles and bones moved taut against his smooth skin was almost entrancing to my eyes, and it was hard not to watch the way his shoulder blades strained every time he lazily tossed a card across the room.... It took a few seconds for me to regain my ability to think rationally enough to question why in the world he was doing that.

"Fuck you, Principal asshat," he muttered irritably, his voice barely audible over the thudding music blaring against the walls. "Fuck you, lady that teaches calculus," another card flew through the air, landing a few feet away from him as he tore into the next one. "Oh, hey, stupid slut at my school- you can go fuck yourself. I don't want your ass," he laughed sarcastically as he threw four more similar cards up into the air, shaking his head slightly. "I get enough ass. I have enough ass. Fuck y- Oh, hey Dallon, thanks for the gift card, buddy." I noticed that he actually stopped to read the message from Dallon, before returning to throwing the rest of the cards around the room chaotically.

As the song in the background changed quickly to a different one, Brendon immediately began to sing along with the words, although still caught up in his childish little game of discarding cards, which was still largely a big mystery to me. One flew dangerously close to my head, followed by another that almost grazed my arm, and I knew logically that I should move, or at least try to dodge them- but somehow, like the sheltered female I was, I was only capable of staring transfixed at the sight of his bare back, not thinking about the cards or the possible damage they could cause.

Brendon's voice grew louder as he tossed a tacky blue card behind his head with a little too much vigor, "Nice legs! Daisy Dukes! Makes a man go-"

"Ow, frick!" I clapped a hand over my eye, irritated with myself both for not dodging the card before it smacked into my face and because of the fact that I'd just alerted Brendon to my presence.

The impressive sight of Brendon's back was replaced with the potentially even more impressive sight of his bare torso as he snapped around in confusion, wielding a card as if to try and scare off the presumed intruder. I watched his confused expression wash away with a realization of recognition.

"What the fuck? Vanessa? You scared the shit out of me," he stated breathlessly, "How long have you been standing there?"

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