Archive of Our Own

The night Brendon joins the band, they pack into a booth at Panda Express and devour sesame chicken like the apocalypse is on the horizon. Brendon presents a five-minute speech detailing his fondness for fortune cookies, complete with verbal bullet points, and reads everyone's aloud, fanning the four little white slips of paper between his fingers and adding "in bed" to the end of each one. His eyes flicker up when he reads Ryan's, A new relationship will soon begin, one eyebrow crawling upward as his eyes darken against Ryan's. He puts the strip of paper down, holding it in place with one finger and sliding it across the table back to its rightful owner, eyes never faltering.

Ryan tries to stab a fat, lumpy piece of chicken with his wimpy plastic fork that bends around the meat rather than actually piercing it. He attributes the rising heat in his cheeks to frustration.

Beside him, he feels Spencer radiating a smirk.

...

Turns out "soon" was closer to six years, but who's counting.

Well, Ryan, apparently.

Three months in, he's ready to Say It. Three weeks in he's ready to say it, but he doesn't, because that's terrifying, and also because Brendon hasn't said it yet, either. Not like That. Not since This.

He takes Brendon out for Chinese on his birthday. Ryan's fortune tells him to overcome his fears and he decides he hates stupid Asian rituals forever. Brendon opens his mouth to read his own aloud, but stops, his cheeks flushing, mouth curling into that involuntary smile, the one that fights to stretch his lips even as Brendon works to hold it back. It's Ryan's favorite Brendon smile of all and suddenly he can't remember why he was afraid to say it. Brendon doesn't meet his eyes, just smiles down at his hands. He slides his little strip of paper across the table to Ryan with one finger, and Ryan leans over to read, You're ready to take the next step.

Brendon says "I love you" to the bit of chipped wood in the table and he can't stop smiling. Ryan takes his first full breath, maybe ever, and the words spill right out with it.

Two years later he sits outside the jeweler's for an hour and twenty minutes. The sun has started to go down, no longer warming his parked car, and the shop employees have shut down and driven off. Ryan has little black specks all over his sweaty palms from cradling the black velvet box, and he still can't decide how to do it.

Ryan is maybe kind of a colossal idiot.

***

"Jesus fuck, you feel good," Brendon breathes into the curve of Ryan's neck, just above his collarbone. It's Brendon's favorite spot to nuzzle, lick, bite, nestle into, and Ryan's never been one to complain, especially not when it's accompanied by Brendon's naked hips circling down against Ryan's, tight and purposeful. "Missed you so much. You're never, ever allowed to visit Jon again."

"I'll -- mmph, I'll be sure to let him know," Ryan huffs, his oxygen short and voice thin as he arches up into Brendon's touch, hands splaying out over Brendon's back, sliding up the muscles in his arms to his shoulders, and back down over his ass, trying to feel as much as possible, all at once.

It's been one week.

Ryan is so, so disgustingly in love.

Alternatively, Brendon is so, so mind-numbingly hot.

"Hey," Ryan whispers as Brendon starts to move down his body, lips pressing wet, pillowy kisses to every bit of Ryan's skin that they touch.

"Mmm," Brendon mumbles, darting his tongue out over a nipple.

"Hey," Ryan repeats, tugging gently at Brendon's hair. "Listen, I. I've been thinking."

"Mmm-hmm." Brendon indulges the tug, moving slowly back up Ryan's body, but not pausing to look up.

"Like. All week, I was thinking. About. How -- fuck, Brendon."

Brendon smiles against Ryan's chest, one hand having slipped down between them to wrap around his dick.

"Bren, listen. Wait."

Brendon finally looks up, eyes intent on Ryan's, but his pupils are shot with arousal and he can't seem to stop grinding down, erection digging very distractingly into Ryan's thigh.

Ryan's timing might suck epically.

"I -- okay," he starts. "Listen, I was thinking... all week... about how. I just. I think we. I mean... um."

Brendon smiles, pressing his hips a little harder, a little more insistently. "Hmm?"

Ryan's eyes flutter, but he forces them open. "I was thinking -- we should maybe. Um. Maybe it's time to... take that next step, with. Us. Y'know. Like. The next level?"

Brendon's hips still, and for a moment his face is blank and even, eyes clouding over, until something behind them snaps and they brighten, full-force, and Brendon's lips curl back into a grin.

"I was kind of thinking that too," he whispers.

Ryan's mouth falls open. "I -- you were?"

"Yeah." Brendon grins wickedly, climbing suddenly off Ryan and starting to dig around beneath the bed.

Ryan as good as freezes, his heart lodging itself in his throat before plummeting back down to his stomach as it hits him, that he'll never get his moment, never have the chance, because Brendon just motherfucking beat him to it, the fucking bastard. But it's maddening only for a second because the point is
they're about to be engaged, and he kind of can't stop smiling.

Brendon emerges with his hands behind his back, eyes gleaming and grin wide and toothy.

Ryan smiles bigger. "Well?"

Waggling an eyebrow for show, might as well be doing this on stage (and, Jesus, why didn't Ryan think of that), Brendon slowly brings one hand into view.

And oh, what a view it is: weaved around his fingers is a pair of shiny metal handcuffs.

***

Ryan tries so, so hard not to let his face fall. It’s that moment of ‘you can’t be serious’—that flicker when the genuine smile, the ridiculous tingle in his fingertips, the smile that’s there because he can’t help it twists strangely into an unidentifiable grimace that isn’t, just isn’t disappointment and sure as hell definitely isn’t hurt. The moment when he’s still too off-guard to be blank, the moment before reality sets in and throws his walls back up and forces him into a semblance of a believable smirk. This isn’t as bad as it feels. He can act like nothing ever happened, and just try another time (or never, ever get married, something glares in the corner of his mind), and Brendon doesn’t even have to know his walls were ever down, even for a moment.

Really, though.

Handcuffs?

Apparently he’s not doing so well with the ‘face not falling’.

“You meant something else.”

Said handcuffs make an awkward clatter on the carpet, and Brendon looks a lot like he did the first time Zack caught him stealing from their own merch stand (after the third time, he’d realized Zack wasn’t going to crush his bones and started running and cackling instead of looking terrified). Ryan knows that’s a cop-out comparison, because he knows it’s worse than that— Brendon looks not so much mortified as just scared, and there’s no way around the reasons for that, because six years was a long time for rejection to settle into his skin. Even after two years of this, of them, not always easy but nearly always good, part of Brendon’s still terrified of being left behind. It makes Ryan want to get on his knees and beg forgiveness for most of the rest of eternity before he thinks about proposing. It makes him want to get on his knees now and swear that nothing Brendon does is going to make him walk away, least of all an idiotic misunderstanding over a stupid sex toy.

At the very least, it makes it really hard to be angry, despite this being probably the most humiliating moment of his entire life. He has to try. Ryan knows his smile is really fucking weak, but it’s not like he has the easiest situation to work with. The silence has already been too long, and what is he supposed to say? “No…um…no, I…” Fuck, how is he supposed to pretend he seriously meant handcuffs?

Fucking Brendon.

“I, uh, I—ah, I just realized…um…” Giving up on this altogether sounds better every second, except that he’s said too much for Brendon to ever let it go. He has to say something, so he aims wildly for vague. “Uh, they just…weren’t what I was expecting.”

Because apparently they aren’t ready for marriage, and who older than seventeen seriously thinks ‘the next level’ means bondage?

Sorry Ryan, I don’t want to marry you, I just want you for the kinky sex.

Really. Fucking Brendon.

Brendon looks unconvinced (surprising, with all Ryan’s consummate eloquence), but at least the terror’s all but seeped away. It doesn’t take a genius to tell Ryan’s not offended enough to walk out when he’s stuttering like a little girl and pretending he had the same idea. Of course, this is only a shade better, because now Brendon just looks disappointed, and Brendon wears disappointment like no one else on earth, which is probably why no one ever disappoints him. He sounds like a little kid who’s just been told he’s not going to Disneyland (really. fucking. Brendon.) “Which means you meant something else.”

He’s not just disappointed either, he’s pouty and sulky and disappointed, chewing the inside of his lip and gazing mournfully through his eyelashes and fuck either-or, Ryan’s disgustingly in love and Brendon’s mind-numbingly hot. In a small puppy, lewd centrefold sort of way.

Ryan swallows, and calls upon every inch of his talent for lies. “No, I—I didn’t. I…I meant that. Or, like…” Think, god, of all the times for his brain to shut down, “Like, other stuff like that. I just…just wasn’t thinking of that specifically.”

Brendon raises an eyebrow—one of those ridiculous facial contortions that always seems to get caught in photos, so always that Ryan asked once, genuinely curious, whether Brendon was deliberately trying to turn off the fangirls. “What did you think was behind my back, then?”

For one moment, Ryan seriously considers just telling him—the horror of proposing like this might not actually be quite as bad as this conversation.

But the hard rush of his own disappointment, the initial nausea in his stomach has drawn back for now, been successfully contained for later, and that makes thinking easier, and that makes this easier than it should be. He doesn’t have to explain—he just has to lie. And Ryan spent six years lying to Brendon every day. He corrects the smile, sculpts a carefully clipped laugh. “I’m thinking of you, Bren. I was expecting pink feathers and leopard print.”

Which makes it sound like he wants fluffy, girly handcuffs.

Brendon seems to think the same thing, if the gape between the top and bottom of his jaw is any indication.

Ryan backtracks. “I mean, that’s not…this is what I want. I just, I didn’t think…I was thinking of a lot of things. And there could have been a few different things you were hiding, you know?”

Brendon’s eyes are taking up at least half his face.

Possibly because Ryan’s just dug himself into a large hole involving ‘a few different’ sex toys and Brendon’s imagination.

And then Brendon’s bending over for the cuffs, bending over a little too slowly from the waist—oh god he’s a ridiculous slut—and as much as it erodes several feet of Ryan’s self-respect to admit it, the things that does to the line between his brain and his cock make it significantly easier not to worry about this whole mess. By the time Brendon straightens, Ryan’s recovered a little of the erection he lost a minute ago, and Brendon’s recovered a little of the smile. “So…you want to try this?”

And isn’t that the question. The look on Brendon’s face is back on gay pin-up (how is Brendon not dating a supermodel?), and they’re sure as hell going to do something, now that all Ryan’s plans for the night have been pitifully crushed, but…this has come kind of out of nowhere. Ryan’s not really even sure what ‘this’ is.

Brendon appears to have no such problem. “We can do whatever you want…” And he’s biting his lip again, and it doesn’t even look like it’s on purpose, which Ryan is fairly sure makes it at least thirty-two million times hotter, and he knows when his linguistic capability has been reduced to artless hyperbole that there’s really not much chance left of him saying no to anything.

Of course, Brendon isn’t finished, and if he’s nervous at all it’s only manifesting the same way almost everything does on Brendon, as a rush of lots and lots of words. “Anything’s good, I think, it’s good to try stuff, isn’t it? So, we could. You can handcuff me, if you want…”

And that’s really, really hot. Because this is Bren, B, the bumbling, excessive, stage-stealing drama queen who sings Ryan’s words and the geeky kid who lay awake with him at three in the morning and prodded him until he’d smile when Ryan was living in their practice space and Brendon kept insisting on staying with him, right up until the day he got kicked out himself and moved in there too. This is the idiot who followed him around and smiled at him and loved him for eight years while Ryan fell harder and harder until he’d lost the ability to fight it and also, coincidentally, probably the most attractive person Ryan’s ever met. And oh, he can totally see it, see Brendon gasping for breath and shaking with the effort of trying to stay still, trying to stay quiet, unable to stop fidgeting even during sex, and desperately aroused, needy and Ryan’s and so beautiful beneath Ryan’s hands, his to taunt and his to love and his to own …but right here, right now, the vision stops there. Ryan doesn’t feel strong and competent tonight. Honestly, he can barely think what he’d do with Brendon handcuffed, other than beat him round the head for being so unforgivably oblivious. Really, he feels kind of useless. And it’s kind of…possible, at least…that he likes the other idea better right now, the scene that works so much better tonight in his head.

He’s so, so not going to ask for it. This was Brendon’s stupid idea. But he shrugs. He doesn’t have to ask. Totally relaxed. Mostly. “Or?”

Brendon glows. No, really. Ryan’s not entirely convinced he’s not actually emitting light.

It’s a whisper through a smirk, deep and totally contrived, but that’s Brendon, and contrived for Brendon only means fake if he wants it to. “Or…” A theatrical quirk of the lips, tongue slipping very deliberately out to make them glisten, “…I could handcuff you. To the bed. Now.”

And it so doesn’t matter how useless Ryan is right now. Because oblivious or not, Brendon’s far from useless, Brendon’s compelling, forceful and powerful and undeniable, and he’s been enough of that for both of them since the day they were signed almost seven and a half years ago—maybe since the day they met.

Ryan nods.

***

It takes roughly a minute for the evening’s rush to wear off. It’s been one hell of a rush—the sickening nerves of proposing swept away by shock, the few precious moments of disabling relief and something like jubilation dropping sickeningly down to disappointment, panic and guilt and annoyance and then arousal in the space of minutes, and the suddenness of this, of whatever ‘next level’ this is, and Brendon, who’s a rush in and of himself, even now, still—but there’s more than enough here to wear it down.

Ryan is apprehensive.

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it—he has, and he’s never wanted sex-shop-plush-pad cuffs, he’s dreamed of metal. The sharp, hard line, the bite of cold and the bruises that stay are part of the fantasy. But he knows that’s bordering on both pathetically emo-clichéd (still not as bad as Pete, he double-checks to himself) and kind of dangerous. So it’s never been a thing. Never been a possibility. And now…

And now, the chill of metal is touching the soft skin below the heel of his right hand.

Brendon traces a finger along the line of the steel before he clicks the loop shut. Warm and cold. Ryan tenses from jaw to pointed toes before he can shiver.

Brendon tilts his head until their eyes could meet, if Ryan looked up. “Hey, relax.” Ryan stares awkwardly at their hands. “Ry….no walls for me, yeah? Remember?” A nervous sort of half-laugh. “No way you’re allowed to close up this much in one week away, dude…”

Ryan rolls his eyes, and pretends Brendon isn’t exactly right about the walls. He’s no good at vulnerable. No wonder he can’t propose. “I am relaxed. It’s cold.”

Brendon leans in until he can bump their noses together, and Ryan’s eye-line raises on its own at the contact.

Brendon grins. “It’s not.”

Ryan tries and fails to think of a premise for looking away again, because Brendon’s too good at reading his eyes, and if he read the secret there now, the secret in an obnoxious little black box in his suitcase, that would be a disaster. The worst possible time. The opposite of perfect.

Of course, there are very few premises for looking away from your partner of two years when you’re about to engage in a new and experimental sexual act. Ryan rolls his eyes again instead. “Well, I’m cold.”

Brendon’s smirk is evil. “No you’re not.”

Ryan huffs half-hearted annoyance and scans the conversation for any childish innuendo Brendon could have worked in. Nothing. He sighs, and knows that whatever the joke is, he’s going to be in the wrong mood to find it funny. “What?”

But Brendon’s leaning forward, the other cuff still in his hand, leaning past Ryan to press a hand into the mattress on either side, and then—oh—and then further, and that pulls the cuff, and that pulls Ryan’s arm, and he’s not pushing Ryan back with his body but pulling him back by the wrist, cold metal more overwhelming than any of Brendon’s familiarity, closing in until Ryan’s almost on his back, pulling the cuffed wrist above his head rather than asking, and it’s much, much harder to breathe than ten seconds ago, and Brendon’s still smirking like sin. “Now you’re not.”

Ryan gasps in half a breath. “That’s the most terrible line you’ve ever—” Breathe. “Ever come up with.”

Brendon shrugs one shoulder, and twists Ryan’s arm up further. “Your job.”

There are a dozen comebacks Ryan could use, because it’s silly, Brendon’s good at everything, and he can be perfectly eloquent and beautifully poetic in his own sappy, impulsive, too open or too closed way when he wants to be, but…breathe. Breathe. Brendon’s holding one of Ryan’s arms over his head, the pull of the cuff a cold certainty that shivers through his hips, and Brendon’s inching closer to there too, closing forward over him until their chests are almost pressed together once more.

Comebacks are not at the forefront of Ryan’s mind.

The chain makes a low, hollow grating sound with its first contact on the bed-head.

“We need a more metal bed-head,” Brendon murmurs.

He pulls the chain the first loop around, and Ryan gives up on saying anything.

The bed-head is rather conveniently shaped for this purpose, though wood might have been quieter. Ryan can feel the cool of the wrought bars on the back of his hand, one curl of iron imprinting itself from the hard of his wrist up to cross one knuckle, and he’s glad it’s metal—Brendon’s noisier than steel on iron anyway.

He jerks the chain to bring the first loop tight, and Ryan’s wrist snaps back, and it’s all he can do not to moan on the breath that gasps in.

Brendon smirks a little, but doesn’t comment.

On that.

He rolls the links in his fingers. “I’m serious, Ryan, It’s not metal sounding enough.” The chain pulls tighter, and Ryan bites the inside of his lip, and Brendon almost keeps his voice innocent. “You expect chains to clink, don’t you think? To make metal sounds? But it just sort of…”

“Grates,” Ryan grits between his teeth, because if Brendon starts listing off possible verbs in the way he is wont to do, Ryan thinks he might well give up waiting for the he-can’t-even-think promised by that look and that hover and the electricity in his one chained hand and just pull Brendon down with his ankles to finish what they’d started earlier.

Brendon ‘hmm’s contentedly at the word, winds the chain once more around its fixing point in the tight centre of a wrought iron spiral and gives Ryan no warning whatsoever before he absently slides his lips over the tip of one trapped digit, tongue pressing against Ryan’s fingerprint as Brendon sucks his long, long middle finger half way down his throat and slides off again, one fluid movement, and laughs quietly, and it no longer matters whether he’s smirking or not because most of Ryan’s ability to think clearly has gone out the window.

This—like all the most wonderful things with Brendon, like Brendon himself—is not about thought or reason so much as the electric junction of sensation and emotion.

This is the godly lower register of Brendon’s voice humming ‘do you want to tie me up, do you want to tie me down…’—fuck he’s lame, and fuck it doesn’t matter—with his throat pressed to Ryan’s forehead so he can feel the vibrations, thank god no lyrics, just the notes an octave below where Bill sings them, and it so doesn’t matter that it’s lame or how hilarious (and hot) Beckett would find this, or how hard the bastard’s going to laugh when Brendon inevitably lets the whole story slip to him while horribly smashed.

None of that matters at all because this is the overheated pads of Brendon’s fingers brushing over Ryan’s throat (and he knows, only he knows how much that turns Ryan on, and the fact that he knows makes it so much more potent), the bump of Ryan’s nose against sweat-slicked muscle as Brendon leans in to get a better grip on the metal he’s still winding tighter. This is the curl of Ryan’s toes in the bed-sheets because he’s already so, so hard for this and nothing’s even happening yet, this is the press of Brendon’s erection into Ryan’s stomach as he forgets—maybe—to hold himself up, this is Ryan’s cock naked and untouched and throbbing in the open air and Ryan’s throat and tongue and lips dry and tight and breathless and Brendon’s strong, wiry musician’s fingers binding him, claiming him, tying him down and pulling the press of warming steel tighter against his wrist and pulling the cool of the wrought iron bed harder against his hand and brushing a thumb across his palm firm enough to make his fingers flex and light enough to make him shiver and this is remembering all the reasons he’s in love as Brendon pulls at the shell of his ear with the barest pressure of teeth and breathes—

“This anything like what you were thinking?”

Luckily, Ryan still has one hand free. He only briefly considers using it to throttle Brendon before the idiot’s drawn back himself to grin, to catch Ryan’s eyes and grin like a maniac, if a maniac with a whole lot of wicked intent, and Ryan rolls his eyes and pulls him down instead and Brendon’s still grinning as Ryan kisses him hard, free hand tight in his hair.

Brendon relinquishes control for exactly ten seconds (and Ryan’s not counting, for once, but Brendon is, to the second, trying not to laugh into the kiss because he has a plan).

When Brendon pulls away, only half an inch because Ryan’s grip won’t let him get any further, his name slips from Ryan’s throat on a breath—“Bren…”—and it feels warm, and maybe a little clingy but mainly just good. And a little like oh-god-want-more. Ryan doesn’t open his eyes, partly because he’s probably going to make some embarrassing sound without meaning to at all if he opens them and sees Brendon there an inch away from him with that over-the-top look in his eyes that would have to be fake on anyone else, but is just genuine and intense and a little terrifying on Brendon. The other part is just terrified of the look itself, all involuntary whimpers and embarrassing reactions aside, because somewhere behind the rather stunning combination of Brendon’s want and Brendon’s superhuman energy and Brendon’s sheer intensity about everything is a shade of something else that Ryan knows is adoration, Brendon’s straightforward, unquestioning love, and he knows he’s never done a thing to deserve that; knows he did everything he could for six years to drive it away. Even after two years of making their way through this, that look still makes Ryan feel the guilt swimming at the back of his brain—that Brendon loves him this much, that Brendon who is so strong and so good-hearted and so, so much better than Ryan can be for him has loved him for so long with such uncompromising fervour. That Brendon can love like that, just like that, and Ryan can’t even manage to ask him the question that matters most.

Then Brendon’s squeezing his free wrist between thumb and forefinger, and the balance is rapidly swinging back in the direction of just want.

It takes a moment of Brendon’s thumb hard on tensed muscle for Ryan to realize he’s still holding onto the back of Brendon’s head. It takes another moment of hard pressure for him to realize his wrist’s still tensed, the muscle still resisting Brendon’s hold, and that that’s not the idea, and he’s probably meant to give in. It takes one more moment for him to forcibly knock that idea into his muscles—giving in isn’t something to which Ryan is all that accustomed, at least in day to day life—and let Brendon take control, let the pressure of that grip forcibly relax every muscle in his hand.

Brendon keeps the pressure up, keeps Ryan’s hand immobilized altogether—how hard it is to accept that level of control—how much that makes his cock ache, even as his head tells him he’s insane—for a few long, tense moments before sliding his hand around the rest of the way, shackling Ryan’s wrist in his fingers.

It’s funny how it takes Ryan that long to remember that his other hand’s already cuffed.

“Open your eyes.”

That shouldn’t be an unreasonable request, because not opening them, not seeing what’s going on is almost killing Ryan, but it’s not nearly so bad as the prospect of how badly he knows he’s going to blush and squirm and act like a virginal teenager if he has to feel this and hear this and see the Brendon that goes with that tone of voice all at the same time.

Apparently Brendon’s not in a mood to compromise. “Open your eyes, Ross.” Low and dark and commanding and 200% put on (can he get any cheesier than last names?), but that so doesn’t matter because there’s maybe nothing sexier in the world than Brendon when he’s strong and confident and undeniable.

It’s a feat of mental weightlifting (a sport considerably outside Ryan’s field of talents) to comply, but he focuses hard on the feeling of metal pressing tight when he tries to move his right arm, on the promise of more in the circling of Brendon’s fingers round his other, on the infuriating lack of anything to thrust against at his hips and breathes in surrender, thinks Brendon, Brendon, my Brendon until all the instincts that buck against submission are quieted, a soft buzz in slightly tensed joints, and his eyes ease open, eyelids creeping up with a dread that Ryan knows full well is all anticipation.

He can see the slow lift of the corners of Brendon’s lips mirroring the lift of his own eyelashes.

Brendon’s eyes meet his, and Ryan can’t breathe.

“I’m done fixing the chain.”

It’s deliberately sexual, loaded and teasing. Ryan’s mouth opens and almost closes again without permission, and then he has to say something because he’s not going to lie here mouthing like a goldfish. It’s hard to deadpan with no breath in your lungs and a lump in your throat the size of a small animal, but Ryan manages, just. “Took you long enough.”

Brendon laughs, lips pressed tightly shut so as not to spoil the act by bursting into the (adorable) hysterics he’s prone to when he’s actually genuinely happy, and it’s obvious but it works nonetheless.

Ryan breathes through his nose while Brendon wills himself back into his persona (nearly always personas, but that’s okay, because Ryan’s the same, and there’s no deceit in it, not anymore), because his breath’s quick and shallow now, and he’s not doing a bad job of relaxing into submission (possibly the most terrifying word in living English) but that doesn’t mean he’s quite ready to lie here gasping and panting and as obviously desperate as he’s rapidly becoming (because why in god’s name must Brendon be perched so high up his body?).

Brendon traces a feather-light, tingling spiral round the palm of Ryan’s left hand with the index finger not helping to trap it, and Ryan shivers, chest and feet and desperately hard erection, and has to fight not to close his eyes as he blushes.

Brendon looks extremely smug. “I’m going to cuff this hand now.”

The gasp this time is unstoppable, and it makes Ryan’s blush even worse, but Brendon only smirks a second before turning back to the bedhead, and then fuck that’s the first touch of cold metal on Ryan’s left hand, on his left wrist, and embarrassment is so not as important as the tickle of Brendon’s fingers on sensitive skin and the click of the last latch pressing shut.

Breathe.

Shoulders rolled back, elbows bowed out by wrists fastened close together, steel edges (one almost warm now, one still new and cool) pulled into tops of wrists and heels of hands by the weight of hanging arms, cuffs fastened just far enough above the level of the mattress for gravity to keep up the pressure without destroying his shoulders.

Breathe.

Brendon kisses Ryan’s palm one more time—Ryan’s teeth audibly click shut—before sliding back down over Ryan’s body, hands and knees holding him up, hips a careful twelve inches above where Ryan wants him to be (where they both want him to be, unless Ryan’s eyes have lost touch with reality, because Brendon looks almost as hard as Ryan is). Clearly, Brendon’s a lot more patient. “Can you move?”

Ryan holds his gaze, raises an eyebrow, and arches up his chest as far as it will go and back again, just for show. Brendon’s better at not bursting out laughing this time. He’s also clearly better at thinking than Ryan is right now, because he raises his eyebrow, grins and completely turns Ryan’s call to his advantage, which is entirely unfair. “Can you move anything else?” As lewd and suggestive as possible, which for Brendon is much more than it is for any normal person (and Spencer and Jon agree with Ryan on that, so he’s not being unreasonable).

Ryan makes sure to roll his eyes as hugely as possible before arching his whole back—arching and rolling his narrow hips—obediently up toward Brendon, even though he knows it’s not going to get him any relief. He only does it because he’ll just look stupid if he pretends not to get it. Not because he’s cuffed to the bed with Brendon kneeling over him and submission coming easier by the minute. That would be silly, and Brendon’s not exactly being all that commanding. Not really.

Then again, the action’s not a total loss, because Brendon’s breath is suddenly coming much quicker, and the smirk’s well and truly gone.

He lowers himself to his elbows, leans down close enough to speak almost against Ryan’s mouth, and Ryan licks his lips involuntarily.

“Can you move your hands?”

Ryan knows he can’t, but he pulls at the binding anyway, because that’s obviously the point and again it’s nothing really, just he’s not going to look like he doesn’t get it.

The chain grates against the bars. The cuffs clink dully where they hit the bed-head as he shifts. The twisting bars are rough on the backs of his hands.

The metal is a hard line on the soft of his wrists.

He breathes in and pulls harder—desire and desire and willpower over the instinct to escape pain—eyes still locked in Brendon’s, and that hurts, magnificently, and now it’s going to bruise.

Brendon’s hands on his forearms still the shaking there, and press until he stops pulling at the chains, and Ryan can feel Brendon’s breath on his lips, even though he can’t see past huge eyes and impossibly long lashes. “Hey, Ry. Enough.” Brendon keeps pressing back until Ryan lets his arms go limp altogether, dull pain blooming up in the absence of pressure.

“Is this okay?” His voice is only a murmur, and Ryan has to smile, as best he can through the overload of feeling, ‘cause it’s so Brendon, to get all this way and then start worrying again. He doesn’t really have the breath to speak, so he nods, repeatedly. Brendon smiles too, uncertainly. “Are you okay?”

And it’s sweet, but mostly it just makes Ryan want to murder him. He manages a breathless sort of whisper through what is not laughing at his stupid retard of a…an almost-fiancé?. “Yes, B.”

Brendon smiles a little more. “Don’t, you know, break anything.”

Fucking Brendon. Ryan exercises enormous restraint not to roll his eyes. “Got it.”

And at last Brendon smiles properly, and Ryan maybe kind of melts just a bit.

Slowly, deliberately, Brendon covers the two inches between their lips and presses their mouths together just a moment, almost too briefly for Ryan to kiss back, and pulls away again. “You look…”

He trails off, but the tone of his voice and the look on his face are clear enough, and Ryan blushes and tries to purse his lips anyway.

Brendon blushes a little too, and covers the moment of sap with what Ryan knows is a nervous grin. “You look like we should have sex.”

“Brendon!” It’s hard to get much energy into his voice what with the way more energy than his body can take is already thrumming in his now almost fifteen-minute strong erection, but he does manage half a glare.

Brendon laughs gleefully, and widens his eyes in mock innocence. “I didn’t say we were going to…”

“Brendon Urie, if—”

But Brendon’s lips are on his again, and Ryan takes the chance to respond, to pull him in with lips and tongue and gently tugging teeth, because if Brendon doesn’t do something soon—

Brendon pulls away again, and grins like a Cheshire cat.

Ryan reigns in the urge to groan, and looks up what he really hopes is imploringly.

Brendon’s grin widens. “What?”

Ryan squeezes his eyes shut. “Brendon, if you don’t do something soon—”

“Do what?” Brendon pokes softly at the lid of Ryan’s right eye. His left flicks open and both hands jerk against their shackles before either instinct can be controlled, and the stab of pain (pleasure) down his arms makes Ryan gasp loudly before he can control that either.

Brendon crawls a little lower, and presses a kiss to Ryan’s throat instead.

Ryan gasps again.

“What was that?” Brendon’s voice is evil.

Then the tip of his tongue is wet at the hollow of Ryan’s collarbone, and Ryan doesn’t care what his voice is.

Brendon trails the wet line down the centre of Ryan’s chest and across, all the way until his tongue is gone and he’s biting down on Ryan’s left nipple, not hard but hard enough, hard enough to be just painful and more painful because it makes Ryan jerk forward and match it in the sharp ache of his wrists, and more pleasure than either pain because it makes his hips jerk up without thought or will or reason and Brendon’s low enough now that finally, finally that’s contact, that’s the skin of Brendon’s stomach, that’s one accidental touch against Ryan’s cock and that’s almost enough to make him come at this point, even though Brendon’s pulled further back by the time Ryan thrusts up again, too far away for contact.

Brendon laughs a little, maybe just a little shakily, and ignores the other aching nipple to lick down across Ryan’s stomach and nip at the edge of his belly button. Ryan’s hips jerk up again, and this time Brendon’s holding them down.

His tongue slides down from the bottom of Ryan’s navel, down over his lower abs, down toward his hips, and Ryan does his absolute best to hold still because almost, almost, and his wrists are tensed hard into the metal, and his thighs are shaking with the effort of holding still, and one side of his chest almost hurts from not being touched, but not nearly as much as his cock does, and Brendon’s almost there…

…and then he’s not.

Ryan’s barely together enough to follow the movement as Brendon shifts again, nips quickly at his aching right nipple, follows it quickly with his tongue, and then he’s kissing him again, and Ryan’s too lost to even respond. By the time Brendon pulls away two seconds later, Ryan’s gathered just enough comprehension to want to kill him. The blood in Ryan’s erection is beating so hard he’s surprised it’s not audible, and he’s not feeling particularly eloquent. “I’m going to kill you.”

Brendon smiles at that, but there’s something else in it, something Ryan can see even through the overwhelming giddiness that is Brendon still not touching his cock.

“Ryan?”

Ryan groans. “What now?”

Brendon laughs again, just a little, but then his eyes darken once more, and the smile shifts into something deeper, something that maybe kind of makes Ryan shake all over. “You’re mine.”

Ryan half wants to roll his eyes because well, fuck, obviously. But he’s still shaking, and he’s still cuffed, and Brendon’s eyes are still on him like spotlights, and he can’t. Instead, he concentrates on not shaking to pieces and tells the truth. “You know that.”

Brendon doesn’t let up. “All mine.”

Intense and dead serious and…is this the point of the mad course of torture Brendon’s been teasing him with for ten whole minutes? Ryan reminds himself forcefully that this is Brendon whom he loves and cares about and wants to be happy, even if the way he’s still not getting Ryan off is almost more infuriating than anything has been in his entire life, and tries to show as much honesty in his eyes as he can. “Of course.”

Brendon’s smile curves a little more and for the first time his eyes flicker just a little, something almost like doubt. Ryan sees his throat tense as he breathes in. “Always.”

And Ryan’s breath catches too. Always. Always. Forever and ever, for better or for worse, ‘til death do us part. Brendon’s not asking that, he knows that, but…“Yes,” he whispers. They’re breathing into each other’s eyes, breathing into each other’s mouths, and Ryan can’t think at all past how much he wants, how much he needs to know that Brendon will never be gone, never be anywhere but right here where he needs him, anywhere but by his side.

And then Brendon’s eyes are gone, Brendon’s whole face is gone, and Ryan is completely bewildered for one whole moment until Brendon’s mouth is around his cock and Brendon’s catching his hips tightly as he falls back into feeling and jerks helplessly off the bed, hard into the heat and warmth and wetness and finally.

Brendon’s always been completely fucking amazing at giving head, because giving head is all about being simultaneously a huge show-off and not selfish at all, and Brendon’s always the former, and really really good at the latter when it comes to Ryan. Also possibly because he had a whole lot of teenage practice on William, who has a slightly strange if very endearing need to perfect things, and then the casual thing he had with Jon (eight months during which Ryan felt very little other than disabling jealousy, anywhere, every day, at all times), who apparently let him try every bizarre sexual experiment he had ever come up with. Of course, all this Ryan comprehends on overlong transits and sleepless nights, but not during the act itself, and certainly not right now, because right now Ryan’s train of thought consists of dear god fuck fuck fuck Brendon yes, and not a lot else.

Brendon is blowing his cheeks and pressing his lips as he goes down, licking spirals as pulls off, flicking the tip of his tongue at the tip and then blowing cold air until Ryan’s fingers reach desperately for a grip on the chain (and he can’t reach, there’s no way he can reach, and he’s going to explode). Brendon’s sucking on the head of Ryan’s cock, soft mouth bobbing half way down and hard suck on the tip and eyes wide open then falling closed like he’s playing piano then wide open again and flicking up to say I know how close you are and you’re going to come right when I mean you to, or maybe that’s just the nonsensical revelations inventing themselves behind Ryan’s eyes. Brendon’s sliding soft, beautiful lips back around Ryan and he’s so close, and Brendon’s pressing his tongue, the tip of his tongue, and it makes Ryan shake, it makes Ryan’s bones shake, and he’s pressing until the tip of his tongue slips inside Ryan’s foreskin, sliding and teasing and dear god, no one’s as good at this as Brendon. Ryan’s hands are straining and clanging and shooting with pain because fuck, if he wasn’t chained up he would so be pulling Brendon down as far as Ryan knows he can go because god he’s ready to come, god he’s fucking on the edge, and if he’s ever needed that trigger and that release this badly before that’s one more thing he so can’t remember right now.

And then Brendon’s sliding off just for a moment, just long enough for it to ache, just long enough for him to breathe, and then at last he’s taking Ryan all the way down, all the way to the base, all the way to the back of Brendon’s throat, and he’s purring around it like the ridiculous (incredible) creature he is, and Ryan is coming hard straight down Brendon’s throat, and the way his muscles move around Ryan as he swallows a little down is enough to keep the waves of pleasure smashing Ryan up and down and up again for longer than he can keep track.

When Ryan opens his eyes and manages thought again, Brendon’s still sprawled lazily between his legs, sucking the last remnants of the mess from Ryan’s very much spent cock. It’s borderline painful and twitchy as anything with Ryan as sensitive as he is—whoever taught Brendon to tease like that needs to die, and also get a medal—and he gets as far as clanging the cuffs embarrassingly on the bed-head before remembering he doesn’t have hands to pull him off. He tries to ignore how furiously he’s blushing, and how much he can’t hide it in his voice. “Bren…”

Brendon sucks softly a moment longer before drawing back, and Ryan whimpers despite himself.

Brendon grins and licks a final trace from the shaft, now well and truly limp, and the impulse of tension that shoots through Ryan fingers down to toes makes Brendon smirk even harder. He stays where he is, comfortably tucked between Ryan’s legs, and traces one fingertip in a circle round Ryan’s navel, red on one side from Brendon’s teeth.

Slightly swollen, tell-tale red lips curl upward. “That didn’t take long.”

Ryan rolls his eyes half-heartedly and deems a proper retort too much effort. “After half an hour of teasing, and a good hour of foreplay before that."  Plus handcuffs, but that doesn't need saying aloud.  "Just hurry up and fuck me, Brendon.”

Brendon laughs quietly, and trails the fingertip still circling Ryan’s abdomen down to make tiny lower-case ‘b’s on his hip. “Is that what you want?”

Ryan sighs a soft ‘mm’ at the touch on his hip, post-orgasm sleepiness tempered by the electric sensitivity that is being constrained and vulnerable, and ignores the flicker of other ideas, too-far ideas that he isn't going to ruin the mood with tonight. It’s not hard to see that even the handcuffs worry Brendon a little—his eyes keep flicking to them, probably checking for blood or missing hands—and there’s no point pushing him and making him feel bad. Ryan’s had his fun, and it’s time for them to have sex and go to sleep. He manages a teasingly raised eyebrow, half a sarcastic smirk. “No, Bren, I want you to chain me up and suck me off then lie down and leave me alone.”

Brendon laughs again, and it’s calculated. “Well, I could do that…”

Ryan shivers as Brendon’s fingers move to the crease between hip and thigh.

“But it might be difficult, what with how hard I am for you right now.”

Usually, Ryan is kind of desensitized to dirty talk. Most Decaydance parties (most nights of most tours, in fact) tend to degenerate in that direction within a few hours, less if Gabe or Pete are present, and there aren’t a lot of things he hasn’t heard purred across a bus lounge by one or another tipsy band boy trying to outdo the rest of the room. Exhibitionists aren’t hard to find on a record label, especially once alcohol enters the equation.

There’s a way Brendon talks, though, a mix of brashness and lingering anxiety in the way he looks at Ryan that can turn Ryan on in a room full of people, to say nothing of him here, naked and wanton and unjustly good-looking, playing on the fact that Ryan is kind of completely under his control. Which is really, really a turn on.

He leans back a little and murmurs “then again, I’ve felt like slowly screwing you nice and deep ever since you left last week.”

And Ryan’s pretty sure he’s no longer quite 100% completely limp.

Brendon’s fingers are curling wavy lines down the top of Ryan’s thigh and making him twitch. “When you called on Wednesday, and I was kind of distracted? I was thinking about how good it’d be to bend you over the kitchen counter and push inside you ‘til you couldn’t breathe.”

It’s probably not true—he was probably just making a sandwich—but that so doesn’t matter, because the whole ‘not breathing’ thing sounds so much better.

Brendon’s fingertip curls lightly under Ryan’s knee to trace along there as well. “And when you—”

“Brendon…”

“When you got back this evening? I wanted to push you up against the wall right next to the flight gate and wrap your legs round my waist and let everyone watch me fill you up.”

Brendon’s watching him, staring raptly as Ryan’s face flushes and fingers twitch and blood starts to trickle back toward his arousal all over again. It makes Ryan nervous without familiar hands on him for security, familiar body wrapped around him, and he gives one honest tug at his chains because if there’s any chance he can pull free and make Brendon stop teasing…but they clang loudly, and hurt enough to tear a gasp and a squeak of pain from his throat, and Brendon covers his flash of concern quickly, shakes his head deliberately, eyes locked on Ryan’s.

Ryan pants a few brightly flushed breaths through the shock of the sting, and tries again. “Bren—Brendon…just…”

Brendon reaches up, eyes careful, reaches one hand up and lowers it slowly, inch by inch, until it’s clamped over Ryan’s mouth—fingers pressed hard against his skin, palm sealing like a vacuum over his lips. He’s watching so hard it makes Ryan breathless, and the intention’s clear enough—he’s watching to see if this is okay.

Brendon’s palm is control and belonging on Ryan’s lips, and Ryan’s pretty sure he’s never been half-hard again this quickly in his life.

Brendon smiles his approval, and returns the other hand to Ryan’s hip. His voice is sharper now, more purposeful. He drums his fingertips on Ryan’s cheek. “I’ve wanted to tie you up and pound into you as hard as you like, hard enough that the chains rattle, hard enough that you come to pieces for me for too many years to wait another day.” Ryan presses his lips together hard because he is not going to beg, especially not through Brendon's hand. “But now…” fingers curving down below the hipbone, just curving round the beginnings of a whole new erection, “now I’ve got you here to myself, and we can do whatever I like…” fingertips stroking down the inside of his right thigh, ticklish and promising and following back up, back up his thigh at half speed, closer and closer to his entrance… “there are just too many options, don’t you think?”

Ryan’s limp and all but trembling and his wrists are aching now anyway, even without the pulling, and he wonders sketchily whether ‘anything will do’ counts as begging.

Fingertips on Ryan’s ass, sketching a curve over all the skin Brendon can reach without lifting Ryan’s legs, out to the hip and back in, over the taint—oh fuck—and out to the other hip—“Bren…”, lips brushing again his palm, voice muffled—and back in again, and that’s so okay, because Brendon’s murmuring low and sharp and wanting, sexy as fuck—“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this, Ry.”

And Ryan thinks that’s maybe a little excessive for a single week away, but god it’s been a long week without Brendon inside him, all over him, covering him and holding him on the earth’s surface, and he's got no complaint if that’s what Brendon wants now because god he’s so, so ready.

…and then Brendon’s sitting up. Not just sitting up, propping himself back up on his knees and crawling right up Ryan’s body, up far enough to reach over his head, to lean up to that point holding every thought that isn’t on his ass and his almost hard again dick. Ryan has one stricken moment of worry—he couldn’t be taking them off? Because there’s no reason to be back at the cuffs, unless he’s freaked out and had enough of this (Now? Really? But it’s possible…) and Ryan’s so, so not ready for this to be over, not when they’re so far short of through, not when Ryan’s still aching to feel the jolt dig edges into his skin and swell his veins and burst the tiny, tiny capillaries near the surface as the bed rocks and he rocks and Brendon thrusts into him, hard and overwhelming and every bit as good as every one of Ryan’s fantasies.

Whatever Brendon’s doing up there, he seems in no hurry to do it, and Ryan’s pretty sure that means he can’t really be freaked out. And if he’s not freaked out, then…Ryan coughs awkwardly through the images taunting his eyelids (ghost sensation trembling his thighs, Brendon’s weight so close to where it should be, a thousand memories imprinted in his skin and stretching for purchase in his muscles…). His voice still sounds pathetically tight and horrifyingly breathy, but right now Brendon’s stroking his fingertips down the visible veins (and they must be visible right now, more than ever), pressing into his radial pulse until Ryan can feel it beating in his head, and he’s harder again, almost fully hard with Brendon just tracing his wrists, and Ryan really couldn’t give a fuck how he sounds. Breathe. “Hey…Bren…what’re you—”

The first contact of Brendon’s tongue effectively puts an end to words.

Breathe. God, Breathe. Firm, wet pressure, the tip of Brendon’s tongue feeling more like a muscle than it ever has and pressing a point into the inside of Ryan’s right arm, halfway down the forearm—Ryan wonders fleetingly whether he’s bleeding and it’s just escaped his notice.

The thought of a little blood trickling a slow trail toward his elbow, staining his tattoos—the thought of Brendon leaning up there to lick it off—makes him gasp in breath and bite down a moan and he can feel Brendon laugh because his tongue’s still pressing that point in Ryan’s arm…except now, god, he’s moving.

Slow. Slow. Too slow, Ryan grits his teeth, but if Brendon’s teasing—and there’s no other reason he’d move this way, an inch down his arm, curling around, taunting, still that tight muscular pressure that isn’t soft or sweet or like anything’s Ryan’s ever associated with the word ‘licking’, then half an inch back up, and back down again, and an inch back up—if Brendon’s teasing, there’s no way Ryan’s going to beg.

Brendon pulls back for a second to press a grin to the marked skin, and Ryan breathes, just a little…before it’s back, tongue pressing a hard, tight circle, and this, Ryan realizes in a sweat-shaded, heady epiphany is dominance. One hand gripping the wrist tight, fingers hard and just a little painful on either side, just enough to tense his whole arm and tense his muscles beneath Brendon’s mouth and swell the tendons into the metal. Brendon’s hips firm against the bottom of his ribcage, thrusting slowly, tightly as he rubs himself off unconsciously, irresistibly against Ryan’s chest, cock hard and swollen and undeniable right in Ryan’s line of sight. One hand pressed down hard, hard at Ryan’s collarbone, just shy of Ryan’s throat, just pressing his lungs, just teasing at a million things Ryan’s dreamed of for years, threat and promise and ownership and rock solid possession. And that tongue, hard as Brendon’s cock, pulling off again and pressing back on the outside edge now, an inch up toward the cuff and then circling again and…

Oh.

Oh god.

The circle’s quicker this time, just formed before Brendon slides higher up toward the tangle of sky blue blood vessels (shoot the sunshine into my veins), toward the metal (anchored), to circle again, but it’s not a circle, it’s clumsy, but fuck it’s an ‘a’, and then a clumsier ‘s’ and oh god oh god oh god oh god Brendon’s not lapping up blood and he’s not lapping up sweat and he’s not just dominating Ryan so hard he could die here and now, he’s tracing Ryan’s tattoos with his tongue, writing those words (chosen and claimed and made his own) into Ryan’s skin with more force than needles and ink. And now Ryan can see it, can see it all shimmering on his retinas because he knows those tattoos crease for crease, curl for curl, every cross of every vein, and he can see the tip of Brendon’s tongue moving over them, and he can see the smirk on his lips and the concentration in his eyes, intense, always too intense (like Ryan, just intense enough to match him), and there is nothing like this. This is everything. This is the words he wrote on his arms to remind himself that they struggled, the words he put there to remember he and Brendon curled on the floor of the practice space on mattresses borrowed from Spencer’s mom half-starving and exhausted and hurt and struggling on for a mad, mad as a hatter dream of the impossible now. This is them here, together, and these words are theirs, and Brendon’s taking them, swallowing them, and Ryan’s wrists are Brendon’s, and his chest is Brendon’s and everything Brendon touches is Brendon’s, and everything he doesn’t as well.

Brendon’s tongue flicks off the outside, off the tip of the ‘r’, and the skin tingles where Ryan knows the ‘T’ begins on his other wrist.  He’s waiting for the touch, waiting for the pressure, the wetness…but it’s Brendon’s lips there, not his tongue, and then they’re moving too.

“Go out to the meadow, The hills are a green…”

Oh.

Ryan is not going to cry.

Brendon’s lips are ghosting over his pulse, over the most sensitive place with every word, with every breath, with every note.

“Sing it with me.” The lowest whisper, more a request than anything, but the hand at Ryan’s collarbone is a command, and the thumb pressing into his palm as fingers curl round the metal is a command, and Ryan gasps and can’t help it rushing out again and thinks he’ll be lucky to keep breathing let alone sing.

Brendon’s not moving. “Come on Ry. Remember? ‘Sing me a…’”

Breathe. Breathe.

The hand on his chest lets off the pressure. Two fingers press—just lightly, too lightly—up the centre of his throat—oh god oh god oh god and he’s thrusting into empty air now, tiny pointless movements—until Brendon’s fingers are under his chin, tilting his head back, back…

And everything falls still.

Brendon’s eyes are burning. Ryan’s body is burning, and Brendon’s eyes are all the liquid heat roiling in his stomach and his hips and his trapped, useless hands, and the sharp, glorious sting of Brendon’s thumbnail has replaced his lips at Ryan’s wrist because Brendon’s whispering into Ryan’s eyes, and now it is a command. “Sing with me.”

Ryan opens his mouth, and tries to remember how to create sound.

Brendon smiles, just a little.

Somehow, so does Ryan.

Brendon begins again. “Mad as a hatter…”

Ryan manages to choke out the last syllable with Brendon, and Brendon shivers from head to toe, the fingers at his wrist and the hand beneath his chin and sharp hips and hot, hard cock shivering into Ryan’s stomach.

“You’re thin as a dime.”

Ryan isn’t singing, not really; he’s choking the words obediently out through closed airways and a head that probably couldn’t remember his own lyrics, couldn’t remember any lyrics but these that owned the air of midnight in the dark months, these that he’s never sung with Spence or Jon or Pete or anyone but Brendon, alone in the dark wanting each other and never making a move because the risk, the risk of breaking this.

“Go out to the meadow, the hills are a green—”

Yeah, Ryan’s not singing, but Brendon’s always singing; Brendon’s singing when he’s sleeping, singing when he’s breathing, singing even in the silence, to Ryan, and Brendon’s singing now, voice low and maybe a little rough but beautiful, so beautiful, and it’s in his eyes, and in his hands, and Ryan belongs to him so hard, so good, and if he could just belong to him forever, maybe nothing else would ever matter again.

“Sing me a rainbow…”

The thrill of pain is fading from his wrist now, the mark left by Brendon’s thumbnail probably already white beneath the softer touch of his fingertips, and the tilt beneath Ryan’s chin is just holding now, not forcing, and the pads of Brendon’s fingers are tickling away the ache over ‘Dime’, and Ryan takes the deepest breath he can, and prays for his vocal chords to still be functioning, because he knows Brendon wants this. It’s turned Brendon on almost from day one, and Ryan’s known it nearly as long, even if he’s spent most of the years since then pretending not to; their voices together, the only way they’ve ever sounded best, even if only Brendon in all his absurdity could really be turned on this much by singing (because Ryan’s turned on by Brendon, not his singing, or that’s mostly it, anyway).

Brendon holds up one finger for pause—Ryan’s wrist feels naked without the touch—and leans in once more to kiss the skin there, red beneath the ink, worn and swollen and throbbing. Then he smiles down at Ryan once more, lips just barely quirked, more types of desire than Ryan’s capable of showing dark and smothering and breathless in his eyes, and Ryan kind of knows somewhere in the back of his mind that this is just about the most ridiculous thing ever but god, isn’t that Brendon? And right now, right here, Brendon owns him. Completely. He’s more than earned that. So when Brendon parts his lips half a beat before he sings to cue him in (fucking Brendon, seriously), Ryan swallows the deadpan silence hanging in his throat and sings it as best he can, as best he knows how, four notes of unison in two breathless voices. “Steal me a dream.”

There is silence—silence but for heavy breaths and the almost audible trickle of sweat, the grind of chain shifting on metal and their heartbeats pulsing in temples and ears and blood-rushed erections—for eight and a half seconds. For that long, Ryan waits—watches—lets Brendon stare like he wants to live in this moment for every day to come and past. Because Brendon’s in charge here, and so Ryan can be…patient…and this is sort of a moment…and Ryan knows he’ll wish he’d drunk it in more later, just the way Brendon’s looking at him, the adoration in his eyes (clear, all walls down, and peaceful, peaceful, and on any other day that would be the most beautiful sight in the world) but right now he’s really, really fucking hard again, and he wants to implode, to bleed, to gasp, to be taken and owned and rocked deeper than life and sin and anything, and eight and a half seconds is about as long as he can wait.

“Brendon?”

“Mmm?” Brendon doesn’t move, but he’s still holding Ryan’s head back and Ryan could swear he sees an eyebrow quirk—the shadow of a smirk that knows, or at least guesses, what’s coming. Then, the chances of Ryan being delusional right now are fairly high.

Breathe. Breathe in, and, “Brendon, if you don’t start fucking me in the next ten seconds, I am going to tell Jon you handcuffed me to the bed and then fucking sang to me.”

This isn’t begging, because begging implies inflection.

Luckily, Brendon doesn’t seem bothered by the deadpan.

Ryan’s wrists do jerk as Brendon slides one hard movement back down to Ryan’s hips, back to the sudden crash of hips and cocks and want as he gets there and it’s the weight back on Ryan’s cock like liquid vein-shot lust in the same moment as the bruising jolt of the cuffs into already aching flesh as the chain pulls and clicks with Brendon’s sudden movement and the way it moves Ryan, jerks Ryan, pulls the heels of his hands hard against the sharp of the cuffs and it’s the way that makes Ryan gasp, deep and needy right as the heels of Brendon’s hands land on Ryan’s chest for balance, compress his lungs and refuse the oxygen and force the breath back out, and it’s pain sharpening pleasure and pleasure heightening pain and breathlessness and head swimming and chest heaving and if there was ever a moment of respite it’s distant memory because now, god, now, now the only things he can feel that make any sense are Brendon grinding two million miles an hour against Ryan’s cock with the kind of simple, unquestioning purpose that makes Ryan’s joints come unstuck and the deep fucking emptiness deeper than that where Brendon had really better fucking be really fucking soon, and he’s so not thinking anymore. “I am seriously going to come, Brendon…”

Brendon doesn’t laugh so much as pant out breath through a lust-drunk half-grin, but he presses three fingers against Ryan’s lips and just into his mouth, gag and distraction and hot as fuck, right as Ryan figures out why he was grinding and not fucking, because oh, oh right, that’s two slick, properly slick, lubed slick fingertips of his other hand pressing, teasing, stroking down and up again against his entrance, and Brendon murmurs “just wait one minute” dark and gravelly and so deliberately full of sex, lips pressed to the last of Ryan’s ribs, before he pushes his fingers all the way back almost into Ryan’s throat with one hand and all the way into Ryan’s ass with the other in the same moment, and Ryan can’t make much sound around the touch pressing his tongue to the bottom of his mouth, but he can’t see or hear much anymore either, and he can’t feel much besides Brendon inside him, two long fingers stretching him, easy and confident and so right, and this is the first time in a long time Brendon hasn’t hit that spot on the first go or soon after—god, they’ve done this enough times for him to know Ryan inside out—but Ryan’s kind of glad, because it doesn’t matter that nothing’s touching his cock, he’s so ready to see white he might not last if Brendon starts on his prostate.

Brendon grins, fingers working fast, and they’ve obviously merged into a two-person hive mind. “I’m not going to touch you there, Ry, you know why?”

Ryan can’t even shake his head, just sucks on those fingers more firmly, and Brendon isn’t really looking for a reply.

“I’m not going to touch you there because you’re so close, you’re so close you could come right now, and so I’m just going to stretch you, stretch you open for me, and I’m going to fuck you hard and fast and it’s going to feel amazing, and I’m not going to hit that spot until I’m ready for you to come, because when I do, you’re going to come for me and it’s going to feel incredible.”

And then he slides in the third finger all the way, and pushes down on Ryan’s tongue so hard Ryan almost gags, and drops his head and slides his lips right down the length of Ryan’s cock and licks right off again with an overdramatic suck at the tip that makes Ryan’s whole body tense and the metal ache against tightened muscles and his hips jerk off the bed and thank god Brendon’s almost choking him because that’s the only thing stopping his body letting go against his will.

Brendon laughs, under his breath, and the fucking bastard, that was obviously the plan.

“I hate you…” Ryan manages as Brendon draws the fingers out of his mouth (but not out where they matter, not out of where they’re stretching and twisting and mercilessly deep and the burn and the stretch is like nirvana), and Brendon’s doing something—the lube, oh, right, yeah, that—and Ryan can’t lift his head far enough to see him fisting his cock, slicking the erection that must be huge now, because it was hot and hard and stunning fifteen minutes ago, and then the fingers are gone—Ryan doesn’t even try not to moan—and then Brendon’s there, heat, heat and that hellish, glorious moment of liminality, hovering on the edge, holding breaths, forcing his eyes open because right now, he really wants to see Brendon sink in…and Brendon doesn’t move.

Heat. Heat. Fuck. Ryan gasps in air, and tries again, and manages to hold it in third time lucky. “Bren…”

“I love you more than life.”

Ryan blinks, and wonders whether ‘fucking Brendon’ is ever going to stop playing loops around his brain.

“I love you more than music.”

Oh god. Heat. Ryan presses his hips up, hard, into the pressure, and Brendon’s hands are there to stop him. It’s a whine, and Ryan doesn’t care. “Fuck, Brendon—”

His lips quirk upward, teasing. “Do you really hate me?”

Oh dear god. Breathe. Breathe. “No.” Breathe. “No, fucking hell, Bren—”

“‘Cause I love you more than everything else in the world put together, yeah?”

But it’s not Brendon’s usual glowing declarations, it’s not the occasional hint of doubt—this is a statement, a statement of ownership, and Ryan feels it as clear as a collar round his neck. Which is possibly the hottest thought ever, and it’s an effort to gather the independent energy to nod.

Brendon nods too. “Okay.”

And he smiles, and he trails hot fingertips tingling down Ryan’s sides, and Ryan tenses once more, entrance closing in around Brendon’s tip, and Brendon chooses that moment to press in, firm and fast, faster than they ever have before, smooth and hard and Ryan’s not as tight as he once was, hell, they have a lot of sex, but right now, tensed around Brendon, pushing in like that, pushing hard, pushing fast, pushing into tensed muscle feels like tearing Ryan in two, like stitching him together, like the first time and every time since together, like bliss and belonging and letting go.

True to his word, Brendon doesn’t hit that spot, and Ryan doesn’t know how in god’s name he has the self control to avoid it…

…and then to sit, because that’s what he’s doing, buried in Ryan, staying buried, just barely rocking his hips.

Purposeful.

Ryan pushes upward, tenses tight, and he sees the flash of pleasure on Brendon’s face, but nothing else. Brendon doesn’t move, still doesn’t pull out to thrust back in. There’s a different look in Brendon’s eyes, more than just pleasure, and he’s still not moving.

Oh fuck. ‘Brendon’s grand scheme to pull handcuffs out from under the bed and completely make Ryan go to pieces’ is clearly not done. There’s something else.

Ryan really shouldn’t be able to think anymore, but it’s impossible not to think it, and it stutters out of his mouth in a pitiful stumble of breath and tone. “How long have you been planning this?”

Brendon’s fingers are creeping their way up across Ryan’s stomach, up over his ribs. “A while.”

Ryan watches the angle of Brendon’s torso lower, watches him lean forward, feels how it moves Brendon’s cock inside him and watches him almost…and stop bending just before he runs into Ryan’s erection. Fuck. Breathe. “How did I not know you were thinking about this?”

Brendon laughs, and traces his index fingers once around Ryan’s nipples—Ryan barely even feels it, and Brendon stubbornly doesn’t thrust as Ryan tries to press him in deeper.

Brendon’s fingers trace in along Ryan’s collarbone. His voice is more controlled than should be possible, just a touch of the theatricality from the beginning of this madness back once more, and his fingers are in the hollow of Ryan’s throat. “Just because your fantasies are eeeeasy to figure out…” and Brendon’s fingers are pressing, and pressing harder into the triangle where the skin is softest, and Ryan would give most of his toes for something in reach of his fingers to grip.

Brendon holds Ryan’s hips down with one hand and pulls out as quickly as he thrust in, and Ryan can’t gasp in past the pressure on his throat. It pushes him an inch up the bed when Brendon re-enters, hard, still deliberately off the mark, and by the time Ryan’s head’s stopped spinning Brendon’s hand’s wrapped around his throat, and his head’s spinning all over again.

Brendon’s eyes are burning into his – desire and desire and desire and need – and Brendon pulls out again – the drag, the pull, the emptiness and need is so inadequate a term – and buries himself again, deep, deep and hard and right, right and full and whole and good and presses down as he does it, presses down hard on Ryan’s throat, and Ryan can’t breathe, can’t breathe at all between the pleasure and the pressure of that hand, and sight and hearing and taste and smell are out the window, and Ryan is in bliss.

One second. Two seconds.

They’ve talked about this, sort of, but Ryan hadn’t really hoped. Or, he’d hoped, but maybe in the future, in the distant future, when Brendon was a bit more confident—a bit less careful.

Three seconds. Four.

Not that Brendon isn’t cocky and arrogant as all fuck and reckless and brilliant in bed but beneath that, deeper, there’s still insecurity, they don’t lie to each other about that. When they’ve talked about this—only four or five times, the first after Ryan listed it off at the top of a (very) drunken discussion of kinks on the couch the night Brendon determined he was not going to go his whole life without watching a single bit of gay porn—Brendon’s probed, questioned, clarified—so curiously, genuinely that Ryan rolls his eyes—and then ‘hmmm’ed, and moved on to the next one (like, say, handcuffs).

Which Ryan kind of took to mean that, you know, he wasn’t up to it, for now. It’s a pretty big ask, after all. Asphyxiating someone and trusting them not to die is a whole lot of trust.

Five seconds. Six seconds. Ryan’s nose is tingling. Things are so silent.

And now, now…now Brendon’s hand’s pressing hard into his throat, heavy and warm and familiar, comforting, firm, and tight as Ryan’s always imagined.

Seven. Eight. Muscles in the neck expand by themselves, resist without direction, and it only makes the grip feel tighter.

There’s a distant awareness that Brendon’s fucking him, fucking him probably as fast as he can while maintaining his grip, shaking him, filling him, burning just a little still with the speed of the stretch and slack, jerking his whole body in ways that should make him gasp and swear and moan, but he can’t breathe.

Nine seconds.

Ten seconds.

It’s funny, how even when your eyes are closed they get specks, dancing across the retinas, glimmering, dark and strange and out of reach and full of some meaning that’s not quite there.

Everything is wonderful.

(11, 12)

Ryan doesn’t realize he’s shaking until he’s shaking quite hard, and he notices because his wrists are clattering madly against the handcuffs, and he can’t really process the sound but the battering his wrists are taking, strung above him and bruised already and shaking so hard limp fingers graze on the bars is maybe another kink he’d never thought could really be as good as he imagined. The shaking makes Brendon feel amazing inside him too, and he thinks it must make him feel amazing around Brendon, and he can’t even think of moving to push up against him but this is magic and honey and warmth and summer, pleasure, building, continuous, unending pleasure, and it’s so easy to feel like this, so easy to do nothing but feel, swim, float and feel and wonderful.

(13, 14)

Ryan’s eyelashes feel like something, and he thinks they’ve sort of fluttered half-open, but he can’t really see anything, just shadows of movements, shades of grey, and it’s beautiful. He should write a song about it. Brendon thrusts in deep, and it doesn’t matter that it’s not on that spot, he feels full, he feels like he’s floating complete and wonderful above the world in a long drag of endless good, how good this feels, and maybe he should write another song about Brendon too.

(15, 16)

Nothing. Nothing at all. Just that feeling. Just filling and unfilling, wanting and getting, wanting Brendon back inside and getting it, again and again, and nothing else.

(17, 18)

His mind is screaming, loudly. It doesn’t agree with his obvious conclusion that this is heaven—it didn’t agree with his feelings about that hand on his throat in the first place, and it agrees less every second. Ryan ignores it, and focuses on Brendon speeding up, close now, pounding him harder, faster, perfect instead of the pain in his throat, the pain in his head. His mind is screaming, but his cock is screaming louder, the need to come, the need to come despite nothing there and nothing on his prostate and nothing but no air, no air to gasp and moan, and Brendon pounding inside him.

Nineteen seconds.

Pain and pleasure. High and flying and fighting and falling. Pain, and pain, and tension, and pain, and perfection. Ryan’s brain is screaming, and he ignores it, because this is Brendon, who he is going to marry and love forever, and there’s nothing to worry about as long as Brendon’s here.

Twenty seconds.

Brendon’s hand collapses off the shaking muscles of Ryan’s throat, and he lifts his hips, thrusts deep, hard against Ryan’s prostate, familiar as everything about Ryan after two years (and six before that for all the things less physical), and Ryan comes hard, mouth stretched wide, flood of oxygen too much of a rush to allow the moan, wrists bruising and clattering and shaking against metal, and tenses hard around Brendon, the orgasm and the rush of air and the tension of everything at once, and Brendon moans loud enough for both of them as he comes deep inside Ryan, one hand bruising fingerprints into his hip, one arm limp and still shaking by Ryan’s shoulder.

***

There’s air coming in and out of Ryan’s lungs—he can feel it passing down his bruised throat—but everything still feels good, and it’s still dark with his eyes just shut, and he’s limp now, quiet and limp, still cuffed, still possessed and claimed and owned and needing nothing and maybe, he thinks, maybe this is bliss as well.

“Ryan?”

Mmm. Ryan half-shifts a little, and doesn’t really have the energy. Brendon’s voice. Good.

“Ryan.”

God, he’s tired. Sleepy. Sleepy and good. He thinks he’s almost asleep, probably. It’s hard to think much right now, really.

“Hey. Ryan Ross.”

There’s something—Brendon’s hand, right—tilting his cheek up off the pillow. Ryan opens his eyes.

“Fucking hell. Good.”

Ryan blinks. Slowly. “Hi.”

Brendon stares. “…hi.”

Ryan yawns, and keeps his lips shut around it because his hands aren’t free to cover his mouth. “I might sleep now. ‘Kay?”

Brendon’s face isn’t in front of his anymore, and he understands why when there are fingers—Brendon’s fingers—fiddling with the left handcuff.

That’s enough to jolt Ryan a little back to awareness.

“Bren…”

A pause in the movement. “You okay?”

Ryan rolls his shoulders as best he can with his arms still above his head. Stiff. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. You?”

Brendon goes back to the handcuffs. He’s kneeling next to Ryan now, and the smell of sex between them is satisfying, right this moment. “All good. Nice of you to wake up.”

Ryan vaguely tries to give Brendon the finger, but his fingers aren’t really responding so well right now. Woken up seems kind of limited to speech centres and a clear comprehension that he needs sleep.

Brendon drops the key. “Shit. Sorry, my hands are shaking…” A quiet laugh, not nervous, just amused.

Ryan can feel him shifting on his knees as he reaches down the gap between the bed-head and the mattress. “Bren?”

Shifting again—the faint brush of knuckles against metal poles. “Mmm?” Muffled—he’s probably got his head twisted into the mattress to look down. Ryan can’t be bothered looking.

“Come here?”

Okay, so maybe this is a little weird, and maybe Ryan feels a little stupid, but…he’s still cuffed. And it feels good. And right now, floating in the afterglow of probably the most amazing orgasm ever experienced by anyone (or at least pretty damn close), it’d feel really good to feel that a little longer. And he hasn’t kissed Brendon since, like, twenty minutes ago.

Brendon’s head pops into view above his again, successfully retrieved key held up for display. “Got it.”

Ryan licks his lips and focuses on the still satisfying—stiff, sore, but still good—feeling of belonging instead of on how actually asking is kind of maybe a little like something he can’t believe he’s going to do. “Uh…can we leave them on a sec?”

Brendon’s lips part, and then he frowns, and then he bites his lip, eyes flickering up to Ryan’s wrists and back and back and forth again. “You’re kind of bruised up, Ry…”

Ryan is so disgustingly in love.

He waits until Brendon looks back to his face, to his eyes, to raise his eyebrows just a little, and try not to laugh at the nervous energy in how Brendon chews his lip, fiddles with the key. He manages to keep it to an acceptably understated smile. And suddenly it’s so obviously not begging, so obviously just them, that it’s easy as everything (well, almost everything – still no luck on the marriage front) is with them now. Brendon waits for an answer, eyes glued to Ryan’s, and Ryan tilts back his head, just a little. “Bren, I want to kiss you. Now. Come here.”

And Brendon’s eyes widen for just a second, but then he’s smiling, bending his neck down, his shoulders. That one overdramatic eyebrow of his is raised high, and he stops to laugh an inch from Ryan’s lips—“When did you get back in charge?”—and that makes Ryan laugh too, just under his breath, and then Brendon’s lips are on his, and they’re kissing, soft and sweet and easy, Brendon’s lips soft beneath Ryan’s tongue and swollen from his own teeth, and Ryan’s licking slowly into Brendon’s mouth, and Brendon hums happily as he sucks on Ryan’s tongue a little before meeting it with his own, and this is bliss. This is perfect.

When Brendon finally pulls away, cricking his neck, Ryan is almost irresistibly tempted, just for one moment, to do it then and there. It would be perfect. It is perfect. They don’t need ceremony, they don’t need the speeches and set ups…he could just sit up now, before Brendon has the chance to move, grab the box and drop to one knee on the floor—or maybe just sit on the bed, he’s not sure his knees aren’t still kind of jelly—and ask. Will you marry me. Because right now, right here, Ryan knows Brendon would say yes.

He starts to sit up.

His hands are still chained to the bed.

Ryan is never, ever getting married.

***

The next morning, Ryan feels like he’s forgotten something.

He also feels sore, exhausted, and deeply satisfied, but…he shakes it off as he leans on the back of Brendon’s computer chair and ignores the way it creaks. He’s probably just feeling strange because he was hoping to be engaged by this morning and, well…that’s all. And that’s fine. He’s got a whole new idea in his head for that now, and Brendon’s going to love it, so it’s a good thing that last night went the way it did. God, not that that was even in question. Fucking Brendon.

The moment the iChat connection clicks into gear on Jon’s lounge room and the other half of their band, he realizes he was so wrong. There’s a reason he feels like he’s forgotten something.

Spencer and Jon are grinning like fucking new parents, eyes shining, and why oh why oh why did Ryan think telling them he was going to do it last night was a good way to make himself go through with it?

“Soooo?” croons Jon, eyebrow raised.

Spencer shoots him an extremely unconvincing glare before grinning back at the webcam. “How was last night?”

It’s at that point, as he feels Brendon’s eyes widen in front of him, that it occurs to Ryan to do something. Of course, given that Brendon’s right there, the number of things he can do is limited. He vaguely registers the last of his self respect draining away into the gutter as he starts wildly shaking his head and flapping his hands—just his hands, Brendon will notice if he moves too much—in front of him, attempting to look as panicked as possible without making a sound.

He watches Spencer’s grin drop into a stern frown. He is not going to blush. “I couldn’t,” he mouths at Spencer through the screen, and Spencer only raises a sceptical eyebrow.

Thank god Brendon seems too busy grinning ear to ear to notice Spencer practically glaring. Ryan has to stop mouthing inadequate explanations when Brendon spins his chair to him as well. “They—what, did you message Spence while I was asleep?”

The only good thing about this situation is that Brendon doesn’t seem at all bothered—on the contrary, he seems intolerably smug and most definitely pleased. Which should really not be surprising, given that he’s maybe the biggest exhibitionist in the entire world, and has probably been recounting everything they do to Jon behind Ryan’s back since the day they got together. Ryan shrugs awkwardly and prays for a hurricane or the apocalypse or something else sufficiently distracting.

Brendon pokes him in the arm. “You never tell people about stuff like this. Oh my god, does this mean I’m allowed to talk about it and you won’t get mad?”

Ryan wants to die. Especially since Spencer’s started grinning again, and Jon’s totally laughing into his shoulder, the fucking assholes, because it’s not exactly hard now to guess some idea of why Ryan didn’t get a chance to propose, is it?

“Oh, I don’t think Ryan’s allowed to get mad about anything today, Brendon,” Spencer smirks, looking straight at Ryan, and Jon looks up just long enough to grin evilly before dissolving back into cackles against Spencer’s t-shirt.

Ryan is going to kill his band. All of them. Every last one.

Also, he is never, EVER going to get married.