There's A Good Reason The Victorians Were Fucked Up, Honey, You Just Haven't Realised It Yet.
It’s such a subtle shift of intention at first that Ryan feels he should have a problem pin-pointing the exact moment when it first started. He doesn’t. (The tenth of November, a little after midnight, Brendon’s shirt riding up an inch or two as he leaned forward to grab another handful of M&Ms to throw into the air and catch with his mouth.) Nothing dramatic occurs to make his world turn itself inside-out all of a sudden. There are no surges of jealousy towards a new girlfriend, no drunken revelations in the dead of the night and no near-death experiences to make him suddenly change his way of seeing things.
It’s just Brendon. And for some unfathomable reason, the fact that there isn’t a difference is what suddenly makes it all so clear.
***
They're on stage for yet another show. Brendon’s voice is a caress on each and every note, and no matter how hard he tries, Ryan can’t seem to focus on the audience. His fingers move. They always do. Dancing across the strings in his half-gloves, playing to Brendon, with Brendon, the notes creating a kind of taunting dialogue with his friend’s voice. He wonders how long he’s been delusional, kidding himself that he was writing lyrics about nameless girls (and not-so-nameless ones that he might or mightn’t have fucked against an amplifier in a backstage storage room at the last VMAs) when Brendon is so obviously in every twist of phrase, in every syllable.
How can you write poetry every day and not know you’re completely, overwhelmingly, stupidly in love with someone? It’s fucking ridiculous.
***
Once they both catch on, it’s a gradual process. An old-fashioned courting scheme, simmering in the background, staying just subtle enough to be all either of them are able to think about. It’s all very Victorian, a flash of the slightest suggestion of the beginnings of a vague thought twisted and sharpened, infused with meaning and implications. They don’t touch on stage anymore, enjoying the building energy from a distance, making every glance and accidental brush of skin as they pass each other that much more tantalising.
Ryan is surprised on the verge of mystified at how well Brendon manages it all, how well he plays the little game they have going. Having been rather constantly draped in his touchy-feely lead singer for the past years, he never suspected that Brendon would have the subtlety required to pull this off, or the manipulation skills needed to channel his need for contact into this—this perfect, torturous performance that has Ryan tethering on the edge of his self-control.
He wonders where the actor ends and Brendon begins, wonders how much of this deliberately teasing persona is an integral part of his best friend.
And he wonders what the sex will be like.
Not would. Because there really isn’t any plausible deniably left at this point. Ryan briefly wonders if there ever was any in the first place.
Brendon tilts his head a fraction to the side, and the sliver of exposed neck as his hair brushes away from it softly has Ryan’s pulse racing so hot and ferocious that he feels a little faint. He wonders if it’s actually possible to come just from watching someone.
And then he wonders how the fuck they will live up to the expectations of this.
Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? The flaw in the plan, the reason why the Victorians were so goddamned uptight and miserable. No matter how great the sex when the control finally snaps and they end up inside one another, Ryan can’t imagine how it could possibly match this—this nearly visceral, cerebral desire that has him painfully hard and aching at little more than a thought. Sooner or later, the bubble will burst and the dream will come to an end, and he doesn’t know what comes after that. If there will even be an after. The thought is chillingly terrifying, and Ryan can’t seem to get it out of his head.
The thing they have now is everything: every fantasy, every spark of potential, every perfect moment envisioned by anyone and everyone since the dawn of time. Possible to shift in this direction or that at a moment’s notice; ethereal as fairy dust and gritty-raw like hot sand under your feet, without the limitations of logic or believability. It’s utopia, and he never wants it to end. It can’t end. He can’t deal with harsh disappointment of reality setting in and crushing the misty, beautiful illusions, deceiving as they may be. Not yet.
***
Ryan knows that these thoughts are destructive and will probably be the one thing that ends up wrecking it all in the end. Knowing doesn’t make it any easier to stop, however, and so when he sees Brendon come towards him in the dressing room five nights later, a slight swagger in his step and dark determination in his eyes, he turns and runs.
Runs and hides in a group of chanting fangirls with pens in their hands and worship in their eyes, feeling like a character in a fucking Greek tragedy, hopelessly struggling against his fate, each desperate escape attempt only tightening the noose further around his own neck.
Jesus fucking Christ, he really is every inch the pretentious, selfish bastard Spencer claims he is whenever they fight.
(He can’t help it though. And he honestly likes Kafka so everyone should just shut the fuck up already.)
But, yes, the dream. The perfect fantasy of Brendon, taunting him with what he can’t have just because he actually can. It makes no sense and perfect sense, a faultless synergy of contradictions. He wishes he could write them down, make them into something tangible and alive outside of his own head.
He hasn’t touched a pen to paper since it started.
***
“You’re a fucking moron.”
His hand stiffens on the lock of the door, hesitating before he turns the knob with a soft click.
“I know.”
The room is almost completely dark, Brendon’s voice coming from somewhere to his left, a few paces away maybe, slightly out of reach but still too close for comfort.
“Seriously. Fucking. Stupid.”
With every word, there is an accompanying, softly sweeping thud of feet moving closer on top of plush carpet. Ryan closes his eyes and tries to breathe. If Brendon asks, he will do it—will crush the dream into a cutting rain of broken glass and stand perfectly still as the shards fall to the ground and tear into his skin. If he asks, Ryan will obey, smiling along while the sensitive tissue breaks over his heart.
Brendon stops half in front of him, half-way to his side. Ryan doesn’t need to open his eyes to know that he’s naked.
“Ryan Ross,” Brendon whispers softly, moving into Ryan’s personal space, slowly and with deliberation. “Did you really think I’d let your emo kill this chorus?”
And just like that, the tension snaps, and the black walls inside Ryan’s mind crumble as a choked chuckle of amused disbelief travels up his throat to tumble uncontrollably from his lips. His body soon shakes with laughter, lungs wheezing as he struggles to get enough air. Sometime during his mental breakdown (or reconstruction, he should probably call it ‘reconstruction,’ since that’s what it is) his arms find their way around Brendon’s back, and he wraps himself around the warm, bare skin, muffling his laughter against a naked shoulder.
Brendon hugs him back, stroking little circles at the curve of his spine until Ryan calms down and quiets against him. When he speaks, Ryan can hear the smile in his voice.
“Enough drama. Come to bed.”
Enough drama. The words echo inside Ryan’s head, tilting slightly, threatening to cut through the almost exhausted feeling of released emotional tension and restart the spirals that would build it all up again. Before they can get a good first spin, Brendon kisses him, tilting Ryan’s face to the side with his own and opening his mouth against his. It’s not a kiss meant to dominate, at least not in the traditional sense. It’s a kiss that asks, not demands, that coaxes without manipulating, and that doesn’t allow Ryan to just melt into easy submission in the other boy’s arms. When Brendon pulls away, it only takes about ten seconds for Ryan to realise that the slow withdrawal of lips and tongue is actually an invitation.
It takes him another five to swallow down the fear and reach for his belt with trembling hands. Enough drama. He can do this.
He tries to stop shaking as Brendon pulls the shirt over his head and presses their bare chests together; tries to stop himself from panicking as his jeans hit the floor and Brendon falls to his knees to pull them off his legs together with his underwear, shoes and socks. He threads his fingers through the dark hair, trying to get them to curl and pull, to guide Brendon into what he knows logically comes next. His hands won’t move, and he tries again, because fuck, he knows this part. This particular scenario has been on near-constant repeat in his head over the last few days, ever since he was forced to watch Brendon sip coffee while sitting a little too close on the couch.
His hands still won’t move, and he can’t keep the thoughts away any longer, can’t keep them from starting a terrifying loop of ‘What if he hates it? What if we both do? What if it all goes horribly, horribly wrong?’
He doesn’t notice that his fingers are grabbing convulsively at Brendon’s head, probably tugging at his hair quite a bit, until Brendon removes them and gets to his feet.
“So fucking dense…”
Ryan bristles at that, because, really. Yeah, he might be having the worst freak-out in the history of people hooking up, like, ever, but this is the third time in less than ten minutes that Brendon has insulted his intelligence, and his seduction skills could seriously be a lot better. “Shut the fuck up.”
Brendon replies by pulling him roughly with him to fall onto the bed, kissing Ryan hard and fast, effectively ending the argument.
Before he starts it back up again.
“I’ll shut up when you stop acting like we’re going to completely fuck this up, hate each other forever, break up the band and somehow make the world explode and everybody die,” he says, quite seriously. “Ryan, it’s sex, okay? What part of fucking each other’s brains out until one of us loses consciousness from the overload of orgasms do you see me hating, huh?”
Ryan’s mind comes to a screeching halt. He blinks once, then again, because, sure, when you put it like that is sounds much more reasonable. Brendon pulls him close and rolls with him, pinning him down with his body, and then they’re kissing again, hot and wet and, yes, Ryan wants this. Exactly this. Now would be good.
His hands find the smooth skin of Brendon’s back and this part is a little easier. This part flows without difficulty, without thinking. His brain is still trying to meddle, though, so he closes his eyes, forcing his thoughts to focus on Brendon’s lips wandering down the column of his throat to his chest, replacing the worries with fantasies long-nurtured, letting himself fall into the pleasure of day-dream after day-dream coming alive against his skin. With each kiss and nip and stroke of warm tongue it becomes easier, more natural, and when Brendon reaches the sensitive skin across his hipbone, Ryan is almost mindless enough to feel it—actually feel it.
Brendon takes his time, stroking, teasing, giving Ryan time to adjust, as though he knows somehow that this isn’t how it usually goes, knows that Ryan doesn’t share himself like this, never has. The urge to grab Brendon’s head and just shove it down is overwhelming, every well-honed defence mechanism in him rebelling against the warm sparks of connection that go off inside his chest as he watches Brendon’s lips on his skin in the pale moonlight, the smile in the dark eyes as they rise to meet Ryan’s.
“You’re doing good,” Brendon whispers against his skin, blowing softly on a spot he just grazed with his teeth. “Give me a bit more.”
Ryan lets out a breath he’s been holding in a shuddering rush of air and raises his hips a little, arching into Brendon’s touch. A broken moan makes its way up his throat, and Ryan is shocked at how loud it sounds in the dark bedroom. This is another thing he doesn’t do. He doesn’t make noise during sex. It’s too intimate, somehow. He doesn’t like it.
Except Brendon answers him with a soft moan of his own, and it’s a little like singing, like how they play to each other when they’re on stage, listening and harmonising with one another, playing together rather than just next to one another.
Another embarrassingly loud sound escapes him as he realises this, and he suddenly needs more, needs more from Brendon than his hand or his mouth or some other part of his body that Ryan can rub up against to get off. He wants Brendon to keep playing with him, taking Ryan’s cues and providing his own, each shaping the music between them until it becomes the mindless flow they feel when they’re writing sometimes, when everything just builds and grows like something made out of sparkling magic. He feels Brendon’s lips travel up the length of his cock and wants to be a part of that, a part of the music between them.
It seems that whatever they do, there will always be music.
Brendon parts his lips, taking Ryan inside, and Ryan’s head falls back. He doesn’t register that he’s babbling until he accidentally bites his own hand—which is apparently trying to muffle the sounds he’s making—and even then, he has no clue of what he just said.
It seems to have been something Brendon wanted to hear, however, because his own hums and moans come more frequently, mixing with Ryan’s as though they’re using the same voice. The sounds Brendon makes are low and caressing, soothing and completely arousing and so, so different from the breathless, high-pitched moans and screams of his former girlfriends that he always secretly hated a little bit. He remembers how some of them got offended when he wouldn’t look at them while they fucked, and how he could never explain that he didn’t look at them because he didn’t need to (and didn’t particularly want to, either). Brendon is looking at him now, whispering heated things through his eyes, and Ryan couldn’t break the connection if he tried. He should have known that Brendon would revel in intimacy like this; Brendon is nothing if not intimate, and over the years, he’s snuck his way past far more walls than Ryan would have thought it possible for anyone but Spencer to overcome.
(Spencer never tried to climb this particular wall, however. No one has. Not really. He’s made very sure of that, shooting the intruders down before they even reached the first moat.)
Brendon increases the tempo, sucking harder and deeper, pulling all blood in Ryan’s body to his groin like someone pulling venom from an open wound. Ryan can feel the tension build at the end of his spine, the familiar tingling in his balls, and he gasps out Brendon’s name, because, no, it can’t happen like this; he’s not ready to fall apart this openly, share this much of himself all at once.
Too fast—far too fucking fast.
He tugs at Brendon’s hair, pulling him up, up, until they’re face to face and Brendon’s lips are on his, hard and needy, and their hands are laced together, stroking both of them in the same hold. It’s still too good—he’s still too close—and so he pushes hard at Brendon’s chest, scrambling a little to roll them over, taking more control of their movements, trying desperately to bring Brendon over the edge with him.
He doesn’t know why he does it; he’s never cared about such things before—but somehow, it seems essential for them to do this together. If he’s to share himself as he crumbles, he needs Brendon there, crumbling with him. He tries to listen to the other boy’s breathing as they move together, tries to write the music of them with him rather than for him—not wanting to hold back but seeing no other choice when Brendon is moaning his name into his neck like a mantra.
“Come on, Ryan,” Brendon whispers, and then he’s groaning into Ryan’s mouth, fighting for breath through his nose, and Ryan meets the kiss, meets the touch and the fierce abandon Brendon is giving him, sharing with him—and lets himself fall.
***
“God, I could get so addicted to this.”
They’re curled together, tangled up in each other so intricately that Ryan isn’t sure what limbs are his anymore and which ones belong to Brendon. It’s all a big, messed up unit, like a ball of yarn that has been played with on the floor by one of Jon’s cats, impossible to get completely straightened out again.
“Don’t say that.” The a-word in itself makes something coil painfully within him, an almost Pavlovian response, pushing bile up his throat.
“Hey, not all addictions are bad,” Brendon murmurs into his ear, fingers trailing soothing patterns along Ryan’s throat. “We’ll be a good one, I promise. Like Spencer and his epic love for coffee.”
“Spencer is a total bitch on without his coffee.”
“And you’ll be a total bitch without me, but so what? They can deal. And every incentive for people on tour to toss us in a room together and lock the door to be rid of us has to be good at this point, right?”
Ryan can’t help but smile at that. “Sometimes, I’m seriously scared of your optimism.”
“You love me for my optimism. It brings you good things. Suuuuuch good things.”
Ryan hates it when Brendon is right and even more when he points it out and Ryan can’t argue. Except—in combination with sliding, wet kisses that drag lazily across his lips, he kind of doesn’t anymore.
“I don’t want just the perfect, pretty picture, Ryan,” Brendon continues. “I want more. I want you. The pretty you with gorgeous stage clothes and little spirals and hearts painted on your cheeks—and the rumpled you in the faded, grey Fall Out Boy t-shirt with completely horrible hair first thing in the morning. I want the earth-shattering simultaneous orgasms of porn-perfect sex and the half-drunken groping where we both come too soon and the condom breaks and you get stains on your favourite pants and bitch about it for a week before you can get them to dry-cleaning. Good, bad, anything in between. I want you—I want everything.”
Ryan is stunned for a very long time, because, really, isn’t he supposed to be the eloquent one here?
“Didn’t they teach you in church that greed is a cardinal sin?”
That response is beyond lame, and he actually cringes as he says it. He should be able do so much better than this. Why isn’t he better at this?
“Well, you know, I left the church, so I figure I can be as greedy as I want now. And with you, I want to be very, very greedy.”
Ryan makes a sound that is somewhere between a breath and a laugh and buries his head against Brendon’s chest, arms laced tightly around his friend’s upper body. He tries to hold on to Brendon to hold on to the fragile balance in his mind, because right now, with Brendon’s skin and Brendon’s heat, and Brendon’s fucking words inside his head, everything is kind of reeling. He feels as though he’s drunk, collapsed on a bed while the room spins around him, circles closing in, faster, faster.
“I’m not good at this.” He doesn’t mean for the words to escape from inside his head, but they do, nonetheless. Brendon tightens his arms around him.
“I know, but fuck that,” he replies evenly. “You’re mine now, and I’m fucking keeping you. For better or for worse.”
“For better or for worse?” Ryan echoes, taken aback by the fact that his breathing is actually slowing down at Brendon’s heated declaration rather than scaring him completely shitless (which he seriously would have expected if anyone had asked him how he would react to a situation like this before tonight). “Brendon,” he says, and there’s actually a smile on his lips, a vague sting of happiness in his throat now, because in a way, this is so very Brendon—the over-the-top-Disney-romance-all-logic-be-damned-in-the-face-of-love-ness of him. Brendon will do things one thousand percent or not at all, and to have that passion, that dedication, aimed at him is both terrifying and breathtaking. But it’s Brendon, and Ryan knows him, trusts him, and, yeah, most definitely loves him and has for years. And suddenly it’s not as hard anymore.
“Brendon,” he repeats, happiness building in his chest as he tastes the familiar syllables, lets them roll off his slightly swollen lips. “We’ve been together for less than a day. Don’t you think marriage is a little bit hasty?” Brendon huffs.
“Fuck you, Ryan Ross. It’s more than a fucking day, and you know it. It’s been all about us for almost seven years now. It’s not my fault that you were hideously slow on the uptake.”
Ryan blinks, because seven years? That would put them back to…
“…Ryan, Spence—this is Brendon, they guy from my school I was telling you about.”
Oh.
His mind flashes back to the light blue walls of Spencer’s family’s hallway and the white railing of the stairs against his painted fingernails (He and Spencer had been experimenting with the dark purple stuff they’d got over the weekend. It’d turned out pretty cool.). He remembers looking from Brent to the guy next to him, taking in the slightly dorky, almost preppy look of him: shirt tucked into his jeans, hair parted neatly to one side, eyes dark and excited—oh-so-nervous, but meeting Ryan’s straight on, as though sizing him up the same way Ryan was doing to him.
He remembers the click—the instant connection—how he just knew, right then, that Brendon wouldn’t be like the five or ten or fifteen nameless guys who had tried out after Trevor decided that he probably didn’t want to be in a band anyway. From that first look, he knew that Brendon would stay, that he would want him to stay.
In retrospective, it’s easy to see what it all really meant, he supposes. Still, he was fucking sixteen at the time. How was he supposed to know he’d just met the love of his life?
He repeats this last thought to Brendon, who just smiles.
“I knew,” he says, bringing Ryan’s face closer to kiss him, long and slow and full of promise. “I figured out pretty early on that I’d probably have to wait for you for a long fucking time, but I always knew.” The words sting. He knows that Brendon doesn’t mean for them to, but they do anyway. Seven years.
“I’m sorry.”
Seven years of missed opportunities, of girlfriends who cheated on him, meaningless hook-ups, fucking Pete Wentz, more girlfriends who didn’t last, that blond guy in New York who looked a bit like Ewan McGregor minus twenty years… all when he could have had this, could have had Brendon. It makes him so fucking angry with himself that he kind of wants to punch something.
“Don’t be,” Brendon interrupts his thoughts. “I mean, yeah, it’s not like it hasn’t been rough or painful or completely shitty at times, but it’s been good too, you know. And it’s not like I didn’t know that you loved me, even if I couldn’t kiss you whenever I liked, or press you up against a wall when you did that insane thing with your hand through your hair after a show and made me so hard I thought I’d just explode on the spot, and—”
Ryan cuts him off with a kiss, rolling on top of Brendon and pressing the jumbled, confused thoughts into him through their mouths, trying to make Brendon understand while trying to make sense of everything himself. It’s not easy, and Jesus it hurts so much, but like Brendon said, it’s good too. They are good. Maybe there is still hope for this, he thinks as he slides his hands downward against Brendon’s ribs. Maybe they can start getting it right from now on.
***
“We should write a song,” Brendon says later, when the sheets are a tousled, damp mess around them and the pale morning light has started to filter in through the Venetian blinds that cover the windows.
“Sorry to break it to you, Bren,” Ryan mumbles from his curled-up position against the other boy’s front, “but I’m pretty sure the entire last album is about how stupidly in love we are with one another.”
Brendon smiles against his hair.
“Yeah, I figured,” he says softly. “But I’d like to do something more official. Since you turned down my romantic proposal and all.”
Ryan can feel himself drifting off, and he hears from the slight slur in Brendon’s voice that his friend is on the verge of sleep as well. “I didn’t turn it down,” he murmurs. “I just haven’t given you my final answer yet. There’s a difference.”
“Now, that’s a funny title for a song,” Brendon yawns, and now Ryan knows that he’s falling asleep.
“I can think of a few more, but most of them wouldn’t be marketable,” he replies, a slight touch of innuendo to his voice. Brendon’s hand squeezes his hip a little, just enough to remind Ryan of the earlier touches there. It feels good. Really good.
“How about: Dr Strangelove, or How Ryan Ross Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love Brendon Urie?” Brendon suggests sleepily. Ryan punches him in the ribs with a pointed elbow.
“So that’s a ‘no,’ then?”
“No stupid Kubric rip-offs. I’m declaring a rule.”
“You’re lucky I love you,” Brendon mumbles, pressing his lips briefly to Ryan’s neck, “or I would have been totally offended by that. Think about it, okay?”
The hand on his hip slides a little further around him, coming up under his elbow to rest against the centre of his chest. He feels Brendon’s breathing slow down to a deep, rhythmic inhale-exhale against his shoulder and snuggles into it a bit more. He knows that Brendon can’t hear him any longer, so he doesn’t answer the last question (either of them) out loud. In his head, words are dancing, however, notes playing among them, as though several months worth of syllables and sounds have suddenly been set free and are pouring out of his subconscious, ready for him to sort through and assemble. He drifts off to sleep with a tight, happy feeling inside his chest, half-formed lyrics swaying in his mind, playing a dialogue to the beginnings of a melody.
THE END