Bleed Right Again

Sequel to Floating Our Way Out (the ghost!Brendon fic), which can be found here: http://frankie-ann.livejournal.com/10304.html . Ensemble fic. Gerard wants his own musical project (and also to man up and kiss Frank), Brendon wants to be on stage with his band (and also to have actual sex), Kevin wants Mike to stop being a stubborn ass (and to also sex him up), Greta wants to find a boy that isn’t already in love with another boy, Ryan wants to feel like he fits in with his own band, and Butch just wants to play the banjolin (and to maybe get Chiz naked).
Note that all my parentheticals contain sex in some form. My fic? Also has sex. Kind of a lot. Shameless porn thrown in here, guys. Oops. Other warnings include: ghost porn (as per usual, apparently), self-harm (one really small instance, and not for angsty reasons), hetero sex (seriously, for real), drunken debauchery, really mild D/s themes, some vague kinkiness, public sex, banjos (and banjo-related instruments), chickens, ridiculousness .
Featuring Butch Walker, Ghost Whisperer(!) and guest starring Boniface the rooster.

Notes:

I didn’t mean for this fic to get this big. There are like nine plot lines running at once. Again, oops.
Title comes from Mumford and Sons’ Banjolin Song. You can’t have a fic that features banjolins this prominently and not use a song that has them in the title, okay. It just can’t happen.
Also, I shamelessly stole skoosiepants’ chicken. I have no regrets! Boniface deserves to be known.
Also, I stole Cobra Jenga from somewhere—I don’t remember where, but I’m pretty sure I read it in a Skippy fic. My friends and I started playing it in real life, and it’s too hilariously awesome not to add to this.
ALSO. For those who somehow don’t know, Butch DOES end up writing songs with Pink. It happens. In real life. I’m not making this up. I blame my roommate for my extraneous knowledge of Butch Walker’s general activities.
Other concerns—the song Gerard sings with the band (you’ll know it when you see it) is Bon Jovi’s Livin on a Prayer, because apparently all of MCR has some sort of fondness for it. Because of Jersey. My family’s from Jersey, but none of us like Bon Jovi especially, so I’m just… letting that one sit out there.
Ryan’s fancy cereal is imaginary. But I believe in it. I have a very firm belief that Ryan Ross secretly has very fancy cereals and that he is very, very anal about them. I hold this to be true.
Also, thanks, always thanks, to my marvelous betas, who on LJ are sweetnovicane and skinofreality. I would be nothing without your epic abilities to kick my fic until it's shiny.

Work Text:

"I dunno how long I can keep doing this," Gerard confides, bumping his shoulder against Mikey’s and putting his head in his hands. They’re sitting together on the stoop outside their house, taking a few minutes in the chill of the night before they go inside. Gerard’s sweat-damp from the show he’s just finished, and Mikey’s still half on a sugar high from eating some of Ryan’s secret, fancy cereal while he hung out with Brendon.

Mikey kicks Gerard's ankle and wraps an arm around his shoulders. "Why, what's up?" He squeezes a little, and Gerard leans against him, sighing. He’s vibrating a little, under his skin, like he’s had too much coffee and maybe hasn’t slept for a day or two.

"It's-- I mean, I get it, I get that Brendon can't do it, and that Ryan's voice can't do it, and I said I would. I know. And I'm not backing out, I won't." Gerard pinches the bridge of his nose, like he has a headache. "But at the same time, I've got my own music in my head, you know? And the more I sing things that aren't that, the more I'm afraid that I'm gonna lose it. Like, by the time I'm done with this, if I'm done with this, when I go to look for my own stuff again, it's going to be gone."

"And that freaks you out," Mikey says, and it's not a question, just confirmation.

Gerard nods miserably. "Terrifies me. And I feel horrible about it."

Mikey just hugs him closer, tucks his chin over Gerard's head and shushes him until he unwinds, until he stops fidgeting and twitching with frustration.

"If you were doing your own music stuff," Mikey says the next morning while they make toaster waffles, "who would you want to do it with?"

Gerard doesn't even look up from his breakfast. "You," he says immediately, dumping syrup over his waffle, "definitely you. And Frank," he adds, considering. "Also definitely Frank."

Mikey squints at him, because it's entirely possible that Gerard has gone insane. "Gee. Frank’s already in another band. And I don't even play an instrument. At all."

Gerard shrugs. "Frank’s always in one band or another. And you’d pick something up."
"That's... Gee, that's. That's dumb." Mikey's pouring way too much syrup over his waffles.

"It's not," Gerard says through a bite of waffle. "It's totally sensible. I wouldn't do it without you. That would be dumb." Gerard slings his fork around, slinging syrup all over the table.

"What if I didn't want to do a music thing?" Mikey asks, mostly just to be a pain in the ass. Brotherly instincts die hard.

Gerard looks at him like Mikey's just asked him if the world is maybe actually completely flat and if there are actually anthropomorphic penguins living in their attic. "Why wouldn't you?" he asks, voice a little faint.

Mikey rolls his eyes. "Oh, I don't know, maybe because I don't play a musical instrument?"

"That's not--" Gerard stops, frustrated. "Stop being retarded. You're good at everything, you'd pick something up. If it's just that you don't want to do it, you-- I mean, you can just say it, Mikey, fuck."

Mikey mostly knows, he does, that Gerard isn't actually the hero that Mikey thought he was when they were kids. But there's still maybe a tiny part of his brain that says that Gerard is pretty much the coolest person on the planet. That part of him feels warm and stupidly proud that Gerard actually thinks that much of him, wants him around that much. "No," he says, shoving his glasses higher up on his nose, "No, Gee, I'd want to."

Gerard grins at him, just fucking beams, and it's disgusting, because his mouth is full of half-chewed waffle and his cheeks are packed with food like a squirrel, but Mikey's pleased, anyways.

The thing is, Mikey knows that this is going to happen, that somehow, all the music in Gerard is going to force its way out, and it's going to carry Mikey and probably Frank and maybe everyone else along with it. There's no stopping it, so he can either get ready to move with it or get the fuck out of the way. Gerard is his brother, and Mikey isn't sure what he thinks about God or the universe or whatever, but he knows, all the way to his bones, that family is the most important thing, that he’s going to stick with Gerard through pretty much everything, even if it fucking kills him.

Which means that he's going to have to get ready to get on board of whatever ridiculous, metaphorical boat Gerard's going to put together. Which will probably involve more than just fucking around on Xbox with Brendon and sleeping all day. Shit. Stupid Gerard and his stupid big ideas and all that stupid fucking faith shining in his eyes when he looks at Mikey, like he knows, knows that Mikey will do whatever, will do anything it takes not to let him down.

Mikey hates him a little, sometimes, for that trust, but mostly he just tries not to do anything that will make it go away.

"I kinda wish I could play, you know?" Mikey says, watching from the couch as Brendon picks out the chords for the chorus of Nine in the Afternoon. His fingertips are like actual fingertips for the most part these days, and he's not sure why it's happening like this, why he's getting so much more real as the days pass-- he'd kind of thought he would hit a plateau or something, especially with Spencer spending one or two or even three nights away each month for the farther-away shows, but he hasn't hit it yet.

"Play what?" Brendon asks, not looking up. He still has to concentrate, a little, to be able to hold the guitar up, but not so much on the strings anymore. He hasn't told Spencer or Ryan or Jon-- he kind of doesn't want to jinx it, wants to see how far it'll go before he stops waking up a little more solid every day.

Mikey's quiet for a minute, like he's thinking about it. "I dunno, anything. Guitar, I guess? Maybe bass or something."

Brendon looks at him, cocking his head a little. Mikey's staring at his lap, twisting his hands awkwardly, like he's not actually sure what to do with them. "You want me to show you some stuff?" Brendon asks, not sure if that's what Mikey's getting at or not.

"I mean." Mikey still doesn't look up from his lap, just hides behind his hair. "If you wanted, it's not like-- I mean, I don't think I'd be very good at it, but, like. I mean, they're not coming back for a couple of days, and--"

Brendon sets the guitar aside and gets up, walking over and crouching down in front of Mikey. "Hey," he says, smiling his best stop-freaking-out smile at him. "I'd love to. Let's go steal Ryan's bass, he never plays it."

A slow smile spreads over Mikey's face, creeping over his cheeks until he's beaming. "You're sure?" he asks, still a little hesitant. "I don't usually pick things up really fast, but--"

Brendon swats at his hands. "Shut up, let's go." He stands up, thrilling at the fact that straightening out makes his knees hurt, like actual knees. He kicks at Mikey's shin. "Music room, bitch, let's get to it."

Mikey follows him down the hall, still grinning like a five year old in a candy store.

"Hey, hey, okay, so, I think I found one," Chiz says from behind his laptop, tapping out something on the keyboard.

"Yeah?" Butch pops open his beer and kicks back onto the couch, sitting unabashedly on Chiz's feet. "What we looking at?"

Chiz shoots him a look and yanks his feet back, but doesn't say anything about it otherwise. Butch likes that about him-- Chiz takes shit like a man. That's something Butch can always appreciate. "Reports of a haunting in a house outside of Chicago." He chews on a lock of his hair, which, yes, Butch will admit is theoretically disgusting, but Chiz manages to make it look not nearly as gross as it should be. "Some kid died there or something."

"Awesome. I love Chicago. We will absolutely get right on that." Butch's jaw cracks on a yawn. "After we watch Pretty Woman and I take a nap on your legs."

Chiz groans and smacks his head into his keyboard a few times, but Butch is sure that by now he knows better than to argue.
These are the moments Butch lives for.

Mikey isn't bad at the bass at all. He's got the right hands for it, with long fingers and wide palms. He can't read music or anything, which Brendon guesses is normal for people who weren't forced to play ten million church hymns over and over, but he can follow Brendon's basic lessons by ear and by eye without much trouble at all.

"So," Mikey says, ducking his head, the morning of the day that the band is due back home. "Could you maybe-- I mean, could you not mention this to Gee? Or, like, anyone else we know?"

Brendon shrugs, says, "Sure," and, "But why? I mean, it's not like he’s not into music."

Mikey just shrugs back. "I just-- I don't have a lot of things that are, like, mine, you know? Mine, that I don't share with him? If that makes sense."

It does-- Brendon had siblings, once. Sharing isn't always easy, and it's not like he begrudged them much, but he knows what it's like, wanting things to sometimes be just yours. "I won't say a word."

Mikey's shy, grateful half-smile makes Brendon more than mean it.

Mikey is legitimately surprised when the doorbell rings. He arches an eyebrow at Brendon and pauses their game of Mario Kart. Which, okay, how awesome is it that Brendon can work video game controllers now? Mikey's pretty solidly of the side of it's totally awesome. "What the fuck, who even is that," he says, not really even a question, and gets up to answer the door. Also, "So, I know you're mostly, like, regular now, but you should maybe be out of sight in case, anyway?"

Brendon shrugs. "Cool. I'll be mixing Ryan’s fancy cereals together in the kitchen."

Mikey shuffles over to the door and peers out the peephole. He doesn't recognize the guys at the door-- one's a blonde with shaggy hair and a square jaw, the other is a guy with a bunch of tattoos and a truly ludicrous mustache. "Uh, hey," he says, opening the door. "Can I, like, help you?" He blinks a little into the light-- Mikey sometimes forgets that daytime is so bright.

The mustachioed one grins sort of disconcertingly and says in what Mikey picks out as an honest-to-god Southern drawl, "Do you have a ghost problem?"

Mikey blinks at him for a minute. "Well, he has been forcing me to watch Glee."

The blonde one elbows the mustachioed one and mutters out of the corner of his mouth, "Butch, mate, I'm pretty sure that doesn't count."

The-- Butch shrugs, muttering back, "Yeah, but it sounds way less likely to kill us than that bleeding-wall report from Newark." Butch looks at Mikey again. "Can we come in?"

Mikey shrugs-- they might be insane serial killers or something, but he's pretty sure the blonde one is Australian, and Mikey's been trapped in the house with Brendon for two days. He's bored. "Yeah, go for it."

Butch introduces himself as, "Butch Walker, ghost whisperer," extending his hand and ignoring Chiz sniggering into his sleeve. He's a ghost whisperer, he can see ghosts, that's all there is to it. Chiz can shut up or suck his dick. Whichever. Butch would actually be down with either.

Mikey, the spindly kid who let them in, looks askance at Butch's hand, shaking it limply after a moment of hesitation. "Yeah," he says, drawing the syllable out slowly, "I don't really know that I actually, uh, require your services." He gives a half shrug, sort of apologetic.

Butch shrugs back. "Maybe just let us look around, see what we can see?" He elbows Chiz hard in the gut, because he's still sniggering. Asshole.

"Yeah," Mikey says, palming the back of his neck, "Yeah, uh. Okay. I'll show you the house."

Butch is totally down with the whole looking-for-and-whispering-to ghosts thing, he is, but he maybe gets slightly derailed by the holy fucking glorious music room. There are instruments everywhere. Chiz can mock him for it later, but he's maybe got half a boner just looking at them.

Also. "Man! You have a banjolin! Who plays the banjolin here!?"

And Mikey, rolling his eyes, says, "Uh, Ryan, but only when he's really, really stoned."

Butch just stares at it, mouth going a little slack. He has kind of a fucked up weakness for banjos. Or anything resembling them. Banjolins, banjoleles, mandolins, things that are small and twangy with strings. Butch loves them with his entire being. "Can I touch it?"

Mikey's eyebrows go up, but he says, "Sure?" like it's maybe a question.

Butch suppresses the urge to giggle like a little girl and picks up the banjolin, cradling it between his palms. "Oh baby," he breathes, running a thumb over the strings, "We are gonna make such beautiful music together."

Brendon is summoned into the music room by the sounds of the most epic banjolin solo in the history of man. It's like if you made a musical fantasy football team and combined Queen and the Beatles and Radiohead and Johnny Cash and handed them all banjolins and told them to fuck the ears of the universe in the most delicious way possible.

"Dude, dude," Brendon says to the guy who is pulling sweet, sweet sounds from the body of Ryan's much-neglected banjolin, "My ears are orgasming right now, this is beautimous. "

The dude looks up, and man, he has the most awesome mustache. "Thank you, little man," he says, and claps Brendon on the shoulder in thanks.

His hand hits Brendon's skin-- his skin!-- and it doesn't fall through, but he jumps back like he touched a live wire. "Shit, you're the ghost!"

Butch's hand is on fire, it is buzzing like he just licked an electrical socket, which means, "Shit, you're the ghost!" And then Butch remembers he's a ghost whisperer, and he corrects himself in a whisper, "I mean... shit, man, you're the ghost."

And the little dude with glasses leans in conspiratorially and whispers back, "Yeah, just a little. Why are we whispering? "

And Butch is like, "Cause I'm totally a ghost whisperer, man. " He's totally a professional and doesn't stick his stinging fingers in his mouth like he wants to. It's not easy, fuck.

And Brendon nods like that statement is totally sensible-- he's way better at this than Chiz-- and is like, "Cool. Your music skills are magnificent. We should get high and have a banjo duel. "

Chiz and Mikey sort of look kinda like they want to cry. Butch loves it when he makes Chiz cry. "Alright, man, " he whispers, "I'm totally in. "

Brendon doesn't realize just how solid he's become until one day, when the doorbell rings, and he answers it without thinking. On the other side is Gabe, blinking at him.

"I do not know your face, small man," Gabe says, cocking his head. "And yet, somehow, you're familiar."

Brendon feels his eyebrows climb his forehead. "You can see me," he says, dumbfounded.

"Brendon?" Gabe gnaws his lip a little, squinting. "Yeah, okay, I believe it. Your hair is ridiculous, man, you're like a little brown cockatoo."

Brendon doesn't even get offended, because Gabe can see him. "You can fucking see my hair. "

"Yeah," Gabe says, reaching out to ruffle it a little, "And let me tell you, it's really fucking-- oh." He stops, hand on Brendon's head. "Shit, little dude, you're visible to my eyeballs and not just my ears, how the fuck is that going on?"

Brendon swallows, tries to still the dizziness spinning behind his eyes. "Uh. I dunno. That is—that’s a really great question. Just, um, come in? I'll... go get Mikey."

Gabe flips him a salute and follows him inside.

Mikey and Gabe sit at the kitchen table. Brendon sits on the counter, a little disconcerted by the fact that he is, in fact, sitting on the counter, not above it.

“So Gabe can see you,” Mikey says slowly. “So… what does that actually mean?”

Gabe waggles his eyebrows. “I get to see the legendary apple-bottom for myself, for one thing,” he says, leering.

Brendon ignores it—Gabe leers at things more often than he looks at them, and everyone knows he’s stupid in love with the paper-thin guy he has pictures of in his wallet, Beckett. “I guess,” Brendon says, turning the words over in his mouth, “I guess maybe this is just the next step? Like, if a bunch of people are hearing me, on the album, maybe—“

“Maybe them not questioning that you’re real is making you more real,” Mikey finishes, chewing his lip.

The kitchen is silent for a minute while Brendon lets the idea settle in. He’s not sure he’s assimilated the concept of being an actual person into his brain yet.

“So,” Gabe says abruptly, rubbing his hands together, “I did actually come over for a reason.”

“Yes?” Mikey asks impatiently, making a go on gesture with his hand.

“I came…” Gabe says, pausing dramatically, “to tell you that Wentz is coming back into town from LA next month and wants to surprise you with a visit.”

“Shouldn’t you have let him, you know, surprise us, then?” Brendon asks, raising an eyebrow. Pete lives in Chicago half the time, LA—with his wife, Ashlee—the other half, and Brendon has yet to actually meet him.

Gabe shrugs. “Well, mostly I wanted an excuse to come over and steal some of Ross’s fancy cereal. I was bored, and I’m out of food.”

Mikey makes a face at him. “Gabe. You’re independently wealthy.”

Gabe shrugs again. “I’m not too poor to stock my kitchen, Way,” he says, sniffing haughtily, “I’m too lazy. There’s an important distinction there.” He gets up, wandering over to the cabinets and rifling through them.

“You know, if we feed him, we’ll never get him to leave,” Brendon says, mock-morosely.

Mikey snickers, and Gabe calls from the pantry, “As long as we’re not getting me neutered, I’m totally down.”

Butch wakes up with the itch under his skin. It's the itch he gets when he knows he's supposed to be doing something, is supposed to be somewhere that he isn't yet. He's learned to listen to the itch-- it's how he keeps ending up in the desert, getting drunk with Pink and writing songs about things that don't make sense except for all the ways that they do.

He grabs his cell from the nightstand and calls Chiz before he can really think about it. His brain wakes up enough by the third ring that he almost feels bad about waking him up at-- he checks the clock-- one thirty in the morning.

"Oh, for the love of god, Butch, what, " Chiz says when the connection picks up. "What the fuck."

"Man, get your guitar, I'll be there in fifteen." Butch drags himself out of bed, stepping into the first pair of probably-clean jeans he finds on the floor.

Chiz just groans and hangs up. Butch doesn't bother to call back-- he knows Chiz'll be ready when he shows up. Or, well, at least conscious and waiting by the door. He knows Butch well enough by now, he’s sure.
When he gets to Chiz’s apartment, he’s not disappointed.

"We should jam," Butch says, showing up at the house at two in the morning on Saturday, guitar case tucked under his arm. Chiz is right behind him, wrapped in bathrobe over sweatpants, looking like he's been dragged forcibly from his bed.

Brendon blinks at them blearily, looking over his shoulder as Mikey stumbles down the stairs in his Wonder Woman pajamas. He wants to say what the fuck, it's two am, or maybe, is there something deeply wrong with you? Instead, he shrugs and steps aside, opening the door wider, and says, "Mikeyway plays a mean bass."

Mikey doesn't even look at him, already heading for the music room. "He's lying," he yells over his shoulder. “He’s full of lies.”

Butch grins. "Chizzy here is the best guitarist in Narnia."

Chiz smacks him in the head, muttering, "I am not, and it's Australia, what the fuck," but Butch just rolls with it, rocking back on his heels and grinning wider.

"I don't believe in Austraaaaaaaaliaaaaaaaa," Butch says in a singsong, shaking his head. "It's an imaginary land of wonder. We've been over this."

"I hate you," Chiz grouses. "Can we just play music now?"

"Awesome," Brendon says, and leads the way back to the music room, hitching his sweats higher on his hips.

When Spencer, Ryan, Jon, and Gerard get in the next morning, looking as gross and exhausted as people are supposed to look after actual shows, they unload the van and go to look for Brendon and Mikey.

Spencer finds them first, draped over the couch in the music room, looking like they haven't slept all night. There are two other guys, too, asleep in chairs, with instruments still in their laps.

"Do I even want to know?" Spencer asks warily, picking his way across the floor, which is littered with empty beer cans and half-eaten bags of potato chips. "It smells like a bar in here."

Brendon beams at him sleepily. "I taught Mikeyway to play the bass," he says fuzzily, making grabby hands at Spencer as he stands up. "He is so awesome, Spencer Smith, I want to be awarded points for giving birth to this epic bassist."

Spencer takes the hands, pulling Brendon close, still thrilling a little inside at the feel of consistently mostly-normal skin. There's still a thin electrical hum that comes from touching Brendon, but it's not necessarily bad. "You get points," he says into Brendon's hair, yawning. "So many points, and even more when I hear actual evidence of his prodigal bass playing.” He smiles at Mikey, then tucks his face against Brendon's neck, smothering a second yawn. "Also, you get extra points if you’re somehow a time traveler with a uterus, and you actually gave birth to him.” He pushes those deeply disturbing thoughts away. “And the two strapping strangers?" he asks, cocking his head at the snoring guys. "Should I be worried for your virtue?" He tries not to sound like a paranoid, jealous asshole or anything, but he’s not going to deny that he’s curious.

Brendon giggles softly. "Only the virtue of Ryan's banjolin," he says seriously, and oh, hey, yeah, that is Ryan's banjolin in the lap of the dude with the fierce mustache. "She and Butch made beautiful music together."

"Sweet Caroline here is my one true love," the guy with the mustache, presumably Butch, mumbles around a huge yawn. "Chiz, wake the fuck up," he adds, kicking the blonde guy in the knee. The blonde guy snorts and sits up, blinking rapidly.

Spencer loops his finger through Brendon's belt loops and tugs him close. "Not to be rude to you gentlemen or anything," he says, nodding to them, "But I'm dead on my feet and need to go get this man naked."

Butch salutes him with his pick. "I commend you, my man. Go forth and be nude."

Brendon gives the room an all-encompassing wave and lets Spencer tow him to the bedroom.

The second thing that makes Brendon realize that he's not really a ghost anymore happens three days after the show the band plays in Rhode Island, where Spencer says the merch table sold literally thousands of CDs. Thousands. Brendon excitedly tries to float up into the ceiling, maybe do a loop or something, and it doesn't work. He gets about two inches off the hardwood floors and slams back down, knees jerking violently at the unexpected drop.

“The fuck?” Mikey asks, squinting at him. “You okay, man?”

Brendon blinks at him, rubbing absently at his knees. “I—I mean, I think so. Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

He doesn’t let himself think about it too hard, doesn’t want to jinx it.

Butch and Chiz start showing up more and more after the first late-night jam session of insanity. At first, it’s once every couple of weeks, and then it’s once a week, sometimes more. Sometimes, they end up crashing on the couch or the floor or wherever they’re sitting, and they don’t leave for two or three days at a time.

Spencer and Chiz form a solid bond of friendship based solely on their mutual hatred of Oklahoma, which Brendon and Butch sing songs from at every opportunity, just to irk them.

Ryan and Jon get along with them in a quiet sort of way—Jon talks to Butch with his bass, the way he talks to Ryan, but it’s somehow less intimate, less revealing, just. Comfortable, close. Ryan resents the appropriation of his much-neglected banjolin, but eventually comes to terms with the fact that Butch gives it more love than he ever intended to, anyways. Mostly, he’d bought it because he likes to collect things; it was just his inner hipster getting the better of him. Slowly, he starts to trade guitar riffs with both Butch and Chiz, playing out whole new songs without worrying about writing them down, about catching the idea before it’s gone.

Gerard doesn’t not get along with them. There’s just a thin line of distance between him and the two of them, a sliver of distinction. He’ll sometimes sit and have quiet conversations with Chiz, heads bent low together, but he doesn’t really talk to Butch if it isn’t necessary. Gerard doesn’t usually stick around for the jam sessions, either—if he’s over when Butch and Chiz show up, he waves a polite goodbye and is out the door, dragging Mikey in his wake when he can.

Ryan wonders about it, a little, but he’s kind of preoccupied by the weird way the six of them are fitting together, edges of their music blurring into each other. Brendon’s started humming new tunes under his breath, singing words Ryan hasn’t heard before, and Ryan finds himself humming harmonies without thinking about it. Brendon catches him sometimes, flashes him a grin, but they don’t talk about it—there’s nothing to talk about, because it doesn’t matter. Butch and Chiz are Brendon’s friends first, everyone else’s second, and there’s enough of a gap between how much they belong to Brendon and how much they belong to Ryan that nothing is going to change without Brendon.

Ryan leaves it alone, lets things be how they are, because he’s already taken the band mostly away from Brendon; he’s not going to take away the music Brendon gets to play without them, too. There’s only so cruel Ryan is willing to be.

The third thing that makes Brendon realize how real he is happens when Brendon wakes up on a Tuesday with an odd feeling in his stomach. There’s a gurgling sensation, half remembered, fluttering in his gut.

“Dude, your stomach’s growling,” Spencer complains blearily, still half asleep, his arm holding Brendon close.

“Spence,” Brendon hisses, poking urgently at his belly. “Spence, my stomach is growling. My stomach doesn’t growl, I don’t actually have to eat, I’m not alive.”

Spencer, because Spencer is a dick, refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of this situation, and instead, gives a very loud, most likely entirely fake, snore.

Brendon, seriousness of the situation aside, is fucking hungry. So Brendon does his best to impersonate a black woman and sing-yells, right in Spencer’s face, “Feed me, Seymour! ”

Spencer slits his eyes open a crack. “I despise you in every conceivable way.”

Brendon’s only response is to wiggle his ass and burst into the rest of the song.

Half an hour later, he’s sitting at the kitchen table with a massive stack of banana nut pancakes and a sleepy, batter-smeared Spencer.

The fourth, and probably the most important, thing that convinces Brendon that he’s not a ghost anymore is when Spencer (well, the whole band, technically) gets snowed into his hotel in Vermont and can't get back to Brendon for a few days.

Mikey looks at him, and he says, sheepish as all hell, "It's kind of me and Bob's two year anniversary. And, like… He maybe kind of rented us a place. There may or may not be a jacuzzi and manly backrubs involved."

Brendon bites his lip, forces a smile, and says with as much conviction as he can muster, "Go. I'll call you if I feel like I'm-- I'll call you if I need you."

Mikey ducks his head, running an awkward hand through his hair. "If you need me to stay-- I mean, it's not a big deal, I can just call him and cancel--"

"Mikey." Brendon shoves his shoulder, proof that he's solid, proof that he'll be okay. "Mikey, fucking go. Let your big, manly, romantic boyfriend be big and manly and romantic, okay? I'll be fine, you haven’t even needed to touch me lately, and. And if I'm not, I'll call you."

Mikey chews his lip for a minute and looks Brendon over, examining him and thinking about it. "Yeah," he says, after a long time, "Yeah, I think you'll be okay. But call me. I'll keep my phone on."

Brendon waggles his eyebrows. "Even during the sex?"

Mikey makes a face, punching Brendon in the arm. "Even during the sex, dumbass."

Brendon sits on the couch in the quiet for hours, sits there with his hands clenched, balled into fists on his knees, and waits. He watches the clock tick by, keeps an eye on his phone in case Spencer calls with news, but mostly he just waits, tentatively absorbing the sensation of existing wholly inside himself, of feeling his skin actually containing him.

When dawn comes, Brendon gets off the couch and goes to the front door. He doesn’t let himself really think about it, just reaches out and twists the knob. The door swings inward, totally lacking the sort of momentous creaking that Brendon could really use for a moment this important. Shaking a little, Brendon braces himself for the unpleasant internal rubber band-snap that comes with trying to leave the house, and puts one trembling foot over the threshold, into the outside world.

The snap never comes. Brendon’s other foot follows the first, and then he’s standing on the stoop, early morning sunlight spilling over his skin, not through it. He swallows the lump in his throat, but there’s a wave of dizziness that he just can’t blink away, so he sits down on the steps. It’s cold out; the sun isn’t high enough to be warm yet.

Brendon sits there, shivering, until the sun is high in the sky, anyways.

When he moves again, it’s to stumble, blinking, into the darkness of the kitchen. It takes a minute of fumbling in the drawers by the sink, but he comes up with a knife that isn't serrated. Slowly, not very hard, he drags the blade over his hand. He watches, transfixed, as blood wells up, dripping over his skin in a thick, slow stream.

It hurts like fuck. Brendon kind of doesn't mind.

In realizing that he's somehow alive, Brendon spends about two weeks freaking out to Mikey about how he can die, how it might stick this time, how he can't tell anyone or leave the house or anything, because he could die, and then he'd lose everything. He makes Mikey swear up, down, and sideways not to tell any of the others, and Mikey reluctantly agrees, because Brendon isn’t telling Gerard about the bass lessons, and fair’s fair.

When he can't stop freaking out about it, Mikey calls Bob. "Can you come over?"

He can practically hear Bob shrug. "Yeah. Need me to bring anything?"

Mikey breathes a sigh of relief, because Bob is amazing, Bob doesn't even ask what's wrong, just comes when Mikey needs him. Mikey would have his babies, if that were a thing that two men could do. He wants babies with Bob’s genes and his genes, because Bob is awesome, and Mikey’s genes deserve that kind of awesome. "Just your magical ability to fix everything."

"I can't fix everything," Bob says, but Mikey can hear the slam of a door, then another, and then the rev of an engine from the other line.

"You do well enough," Mikey tells him, not bothering to hide the relief in his voice.

Mikey's imagination can hear Bob's smile a lot more clearly than he could hear the shrug.

“No,” Bob says, two hours later, waving a twizzler and making a very clear thinking-face, “No, I think it would be apocalypses—like ellipses.” He elongates the last e, making it apocolypsees.

Brendon makes a face. “No, man, no,” he argues, gesticulating with his own twizzler. “No, it’s gotta be like—like octopus or pegasus. Like. Like apocoli.”

Bob shakes his head. “No,” he says, entirely without inflection, “no, it’s not that, because that sounds stupid.”

Mikey tries very hard not to giggle loudly enough to distract them from their discussions of the proper way to pluralize words that shouldn’t have to be pluralized.

The effort leaves him with a mouth-shaped bruise on his arm from biting it, but he’s firmly of the belief that keeping Brendon from hyperventilating and panicking about his potential re-death is worth a few small war wounds.

Also, he likes watching when Bob fixes things. It’s soothing, knowing that if Mikey fell to pieces for whatever reason, Bob would be there, calm and competent, to pick him back up and put him together again.

Brendon doesn’t tell anyone but Mikey about this whole thing where he’s really real. Partly, it’s because he wants it to be just his for a little while longer, wants to savor the knowledge that it’s not just Spencer making him real, it’s thousands of other people, and if, god forbid, something were to happen and Spencer didn’t want him anymore—which, okay, Brendon doesn’t even want to fucking think about, but the thought still hovers, sometimes—Brendon wouldn’t just fade away. He’s real, now, irrevocably, and that’s something he wants to treasure alone for a little bit longer.

The other part of it is Gerard. Gerard took what Brendon handed him and made it even better. He sings Brendon’s words when Ryan can’t, brings Brendon to life in a way that people who have never met him can see. Brendon gave his music to Gerard, and he can’t just ask for it back. Brendon knows how much he wants to be in Gerard’s place—and if Gerard is half as happy in that place as Brendon would be, Brendon can’t, can’t take that from him.

“Surprise!” a very, very short, tattooed man—Pete, from his very strong resemblance to pictures of him that Brendon has seen—yells when Mikey opens the door.

Gabe, slouching behind him and still managing to be obscenely tall, drawls, “Yeah, surprise. ”

Brendon stands on his tippy-toes and peers at them over Mikey’s shoulder. “You’re Pete,” he says, liking him instantly—Pete, aside from having given Brendon a record deal despite him being dead, is very small and already very clearly strange, based on his slanted flop of hair, girl jeans, and hot pink hoodie with the words My Little Ponyboy. Brendon finds himself wanting to ask him really inappropriate questions to ask your boss, things like, What size are your pants? and Could I maybe try them on? and Could you maybe hold Mikey down while I paint his nails? Cause you look like the sort of person who would be cool with that and your nails are already a really cool sparkly blue.

Pete sticks out his hand, not wincing at the spark when Brendon leans over Mikey to shake it, and says, “Brendon, I’m assuming,” followed immediately by, “Dude. Are your pants solid enough for me to try them on?”

Brendon doesn’t hold back any of his weird questions after that, and a half hour later, Pete is sitting on Mikey’s chest—wearing Brendon’s pants—while Brendon—wearing Pete’s pants—paints his nails lime green and watermelon pink. Gabe follows after with Ryan’s bedazzling gun, dutifully gluing little pink rhinestones to each nail while Mikey glowers at them all.

Brendon has the best boss ever.

Pete and Gabe leave after making a wreck of the kitchen in an attempt to make dinner—a disaster that ends with them playing mouth-catch with all of Ryan’s various varieties of fancy cereals, Brendon and Mikey doubled over with laughter, trying to distract Pete enough that he moves his head and the cereal bits smack him in the face. (It works more often than it should.)

It’s too short a visit, really, and it ends with Pete clasping Mikey’s, then Brendon’s hand, in the doorway and saying, too low for Gabe to hear, “You’d make a fucking kick-ass front man, Urie.”

It’s Pete’s comment, and the wistful look on Brendon’s face, that makes Mikey say something. He doesn’t bother to be especially sneaky about it, just throws out a casual comment about when Gerard is done with Panic.

Brendon gawks at him for a moment before saying, strangled, “What? ”

Mikey swallows, hoping this doesn’t go down ass-backwards and end with Gerard furious and fucked over, Brendon freaking out and lost. Feigning nonchalance, he says, “Gee kind of wants his own band, you know? And he doesn’t want to leave you guys, but he’s kind of. He’s restless, you know.”

Brendon knows. Brendon’s been itching under his skin for weeks, ever since the day Gabe showed up at the door and saw him, a thousand times more since Pete’s comment yesterday. So he says, hearing himself like he’s a football field away, “Mikeyway, get your fanciest ladyjeans, we are going to a show.”

Mikey ducks his head, hiding a grin, and says, “This is a terrible idea.”

“Yeah,” Brendon agrees, still tingling and faint, still distant and detached and possibly giddy, “it really probably is.”

Gerard sees them after he sings, “I wasn’t born to be a skeleton,” and his voice dies in his throat for a second, but that’s okay, because there’s a short guitar piece there to cover for him. He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t let himself freeze up, he can think later. Now, now, he reaches down a hand and wraps it around Brendon’s reaching arm, hauling him up, up, onto the stage.

Brendon beams at him, fucking beams, dusting off his hands on his jeans and throwing a tiny, dorky wave at the band before turning to face the crowd, and Gerard feels, rather than hears, the drums stutter, once, twice, before they pick back up. Ryan stops playing completely for a second or two, but then Gerard yanks Brendon to his side, to the mic, and picks the chorus up, sings, “Go on, grab your hat and fetch a camera,” and by, “go on, film the world before it happens,” Brendon’s voice is curling around his, soaring over it, and the crowd roars.

Ryan apparently remembers that they’re playing a song, and the guitar parts weave themselves back in, around Gerard and Brendon, and the drumming is maybe a little hollow, a little unsteady, but Jon’s smoothing it over, like Jon always does, with the heavy, dark pulse of his bass, and Brendon’s voice is all anyone’s paying attention to, anyways.

Gerard finishes the song with him, lets their voices mingle for the last iteration of the chorus, but when the music falls silent and the crowd applauds, Gerard steps up, into the mic, and says, “Brendon Urie, bitches, I leave you in excellent hands,” and before anyone can say anything, before Ryan can get a word in over the screams of the crowd, Gerard tips them all a salute, hip-checks Brendon, and gets the fuck out of the way.

“So, hi,” he hears Brendon say nervously as Gerard makes his way backstage, “I’m, uh, I’m Brendon, and this is—“ he turns and looks past the band, at Gerard, who mouths Folkin’ Around, because it’s Brendon’s favorite, it’s the one Brendon wrote all on his own and gave to Gerard whole, and this should be his moment, just his. Brendon grins, looks back at the crowd, and says, voice a little less shaky, “Allow me to exaggerate a memory or two,” and the guys get it after only a moment of hesitation, they pick the melody up in his wake, and Gerard watches, satisfies, from the wings.

“So,” Mikey says from his elbow, grinning with half his mouth, “I should call Frank now, right?”

“What the fuck, ” Ryan says, when they’ve played four more songs and the set is over. “What the even actual fuck. ”

Brendon grins unrepentantly, leaning into Spencer’s side. “Hello to you, too, Ryan,” he says, and he’s still high, completely flying from the adrenaline, his entire body is buzzing in a whole new way, and he’s not sure if he wants to go sing some more, until his voice breaks, or maybe get Spencer naked and sweaty. Possibly both at once. He doesn’t think their core audience would complain.

“So, Brendon,” Jon says, in a way more reasonable voice than Ryan has ever used in his entire life, “You’re here. On stage. There could maybe be some backstory happening now, so Ryan doesn’t have an aneurism?”

Ryan is clenching and unclenching his hands, breathing hard through his nose. Spencer doesn’t look much more stable, either—he kind of looks like he just saw a ghost, ridiculous as that is in this instance.

“So, I can leave the house now,” Brendon says cheerfully, “and also, everyone can see me.” He grins, he can’t help it, even if everyone is mad at him, this is still the best night of his entire life.

“And… that happened when?” Spencer asks, sounding a little pained.

Brendon shrugs, waving a hand around vaguely. “You know. Recently.” He doesn’t want to say, like a month ago, but he’ll tell Spencer later, if he presses about it. “But then Mikey said something about Gerard and stuff, and I just.” He splays his hands, shrugging again. “I just. Now was the right time.” He turns around, looks up at Spencer, because even if Ryan and Jon are mad at him—or more likely, Ryan is mad and Jon is mildly perturbed, at worst—Spencer is what’s important, Spencer is pretty much everything. He looks into Spencer’s blue, blue eyes for a minute, and says, in a much smaller voice, “I needed to wait, okay? I needed this to be me, mine, something I knew completely, before it was anyone else’s.”

Spencer’s hard expression softens a bit, and he rubs a thumb down the curve of Brendon’s jaw. Brendon leans into it, letting himself relax, just a little. “You could have waited, and then told us,” Spencer says, but it’s not angry anymore, just questioning. “You could have—we could have practiced, announced it, you know. Gotten ready.”

Brendon shrugs. “I knew the songs. I—I don’t think I could have gotten up there,” he admits, looking over his shoulder at Ryan and Jon. “I don’t think I could have gotten up there and done it if I’d let myself think about it first. I—it’s like getting a shot or jumping off a diving board or getting your first kiss, you know? I would’ve psyched myself out, and this would never have been able to happen, I would never have been able to—“ he stops, huffing a little, because that’s not exactly what he means, the words aren’t all of it.

“It made you feel real,” Spencer says, still quiet, and yes, that’s totally it, that’s it exactly. “Because you were doing it without us, making the decision alone, you were real.”

Ryan bumps Brendon’s shoulder, says, “That’s stupid, you’re a moron, I hate you,” but he wraps an arm around Brendon in a semblance of a hug, and from Ryan, that’s as close to verbal forgiveness as Brendon’s going to get.

“I don’t hate you,” Jon says, wrapping an arm around his other side, “Just for the record. Although,” he adds, “you still totally could have told me, I’m the cool one.”

Brendon laughs a little, can’t help it, he’s fucking giddy. “I know. But don’t lie, Spencer breaking his drumstick was awesome.”

Spencer frowns and says, “I didn’t break my drumst—oh, shit.” He blinks down at the drumsticks in his hands, one of which is lacking the upper half. “When the fuck did that happen?”

Ryan winces and rubs at his temple. “About two seconds before it hit me in the head.”

Brendon buries his face in Jon’s shoulder and laughs until his ribs can’t take it anymore.

Ryan stands up an hour or so later, saying, “I seriously need a drink. Who’s in?”

Jon whistles and stands up, too. “Fuck yes.”

Brendon looks at Spencer, because Spencer’s stayed kind of tense against him this whole time. They’re leaning together against the wall, because Brendon’s still too jittery to sit, but Spencer’s all tight muscles and stress.

Spencer takes a breath and says, without looking away from Brendon’s face, “Give us a minute, guys? We’ll catch up.”

Ryan snorts and drags Jon from the room, saying over his shoulder, “Whatever, fuckers.”

Spencer’s fingers are tight around Brendon’s wrists, almost bruisingly so. “Brendon,” he hisses when the door shuts, squeezing a little. “I get it, okay, I get it, but I swear to god, if you ever do something that fucking huge without telling me again, I’m—“ He cuts off, sighing sharply, and his hands clench again.

Brendon relishes the feeling of Spencer’s thumb digging into the tendons of his wrist, lets it anchor him. “Spence,” he breathes, not even really meaning to, involuntarily leaning towards him.

Spencer’s eyes go dark in an instant, and he crowds Brendon back against the wall of the venue’s dressing room, watching Brendon’s face. “This—that? You like that?” he asks in clear disbelief, fingers tightening around Brendon’s wrists again, testing.

Brendon whimpers and arches up against him before he can even form a thought. “Fuck. ”

“Seriously?” Spencer’s eyes are wide, incredulous, and his hands are shaking when he draws Brendon’s hands up, over his head, and pins them to the wall with one of his own.

Brendon is lost in the thrum of the blood in his veins, the frantic beat of his heart, and his entire world is narrowed to the feel of Spencer’s hand, trapping him there. He’s shocked by the clarity of can’t get away even if I wanted to, the way that single thought makes all the blood rush to his dick so fast that he gets dizzy.

“Is it cause it hurts?” Spencer’s asking, sounding kind of concerned, but he doesn’t let go of Brendon, either. His free hand trails down Brendon’s chest, slides up under the hem of his shirt. “Because I hate to tell you, I’m not really super into that whole bondage thing.”

Brendon swallows, shakes his head. It’s not, and he has no idea if he’s into bondage, okay, he died when he was seventeen and had barely even started having sex at all. But it’s not the pain, it’s got nothing to do with pain. It’s the fact that Brendon is real now, and Spencer’s grip is unyielding, undeniable, and there’s no way for Brendon to fade through it. Something about that knowledge, the surety that Spencer has him, can hold him and mark him and keep him, is such a rush that Brendon can barely breathe. “No,” he says, and he has no idea where to begin to explain the rest of it.

He doesn’t have to, though, because this is Spencer, and Spencer can just look at Brendon andknow. Spencer’s told him it’s because Brendon’s an open book, but Brendon thinks it’s just that Spencer’s really good at reading Brendon-ese. “No,” he agrees, and tightens his grip, leaning in to suck deep bruises into the skin below Brendon’s jaw, the side of his neck, the juncture of his shoulder, until Brendon is a whimpering mess.

“Please,” Brendon says, low and rough and just totally fucking gone. His hips keep jerking off the wall with every suck, every bite, but Spencer is just far enough back that there’s no answering contact, no blissful, relieving friction.

Spencer’s hand squeezes his wrists again, and he says, “No,” again, just as calmly, moving Brendon’s shirt out of the way so he can bite at the skin of Brendon’s collarbones.

Brendon’s entire torso is speckled with plum-colored bruises before Spencer finally touches him. When he does, he just presses a hip against the front of Brendon’s jeans, rocking a little, and strokes over the deepest bruise, tucked below Brendon’s left ear. His thumb digs in, just a little, just solid proof that he’s there, and Brendon comes with a bitten-off groan into the skin of Spencer’s throat.

“So, are you going to call him?” Mikey asks, sitting down on the couch beside Gerard, who is staring at his cell like it contains all the mysteries of the universe and might secretly also want to eat him.

Gerard’s eyes flick up, just for an instant, and then back down, and he says, voice small, “Will you do it?”

Mikey is totally the older brother, they were just born in the wrong order. He’s sure about this. “What, no, Gee. If you want him, you get to call him.”

“I don’t want him, what are you even talking about,” Gerard says immediately, and then flushes bright red. “I mean. Mikey, please?” He turns big, liquid eyes on Mikey, and fuck, that’s just cheating. “Pleeeaaaase?”

Mikey needs to stand firm in the face of puppy eyes, though, or else Gerard will think he can get away with anything he wants. “No. You call him.”

“But it’s hard, ” Gerard whines, and Mikey resists the urge to smack him in the head.

“Suck it up,” he says, rolling his eyes. When Gerard continues to look at him plaintively, Mikey snorts. “Why the fuck can’t you call him, Gee? Seriously.”

Gerard bites his lip, looks firmly at the floor, and lies through his teeth, “I don’t know.” Mikey knows he’s lying, because if he weren’t, he would be looking Mikey in the eye and not twitching.

“Shut the fuck up, why won’t you call him, for real?”

Gerard mutters something, shifting awkwardly. “Totally no reason,” he says, a little louder, and Mikey groans and presses a hand to his forehead.

“Gee, no. You cannot start a band already wanting to sleep with your guitarist.” He gives in to the urge to slap his brother in the head this time—it’s totally necessary.

Gerard pouts, lips sticking out comically as he swats Mikey’s hand away from his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says petulantly, face beet red.

“We do not need a Behind the Music special before we even get a gig, ” Mikey informs him. “That is not okay. ”

“Mikey,” Gerard says, in that voice, that voice that says that no matter how reasonable Mikey is, no matter how sensible a point he’s making, there’s not going to be a damn thing he can do to sway Gerard on this. “Mikeeeeey.”

Mikey rolls his eyes and grabs the phone out of Gerard’s hands, dialing Frank. “I hate you,” he tells his brother sternly. “Hate.”

Gerard grins at him, a wide, face-eating grin with too much teeth and says, “You are so full of shit.”

Mikey doesn’t bother to argue.

Brendon barely closes the door to the bedroom before Spencer’s got him pressed up against it, mouth hungry and demanding over his own. The bruises on Brendon’s throat from earlier are throbbing, and the ones on his chest are singing under Spencer’s hands.

Brendon fists his hands in Spencer’s hair, rubbing up against him, long and graceless and not enough. “Please, please,” he chants against Spencer’s mouth, eyes clenched tight, “Spence, please. ”

Spencer pulls back enough that he can look at Brendon with blue, blue eyes. His fingers brush over Brendon’s mouth, and there’s something in his eyes that’s new and bright and giddy. The way he’s staring makes Brendon’s heart hammer in his ears, makes his breath catch. “Anything,” Spencer says, grinding his hips against Brendon’s, slow and dirty.

Brendon takes a breath, takes another, and says, “We can, now. Anything, I mean—I mean, I’m all the way real, there’s no reason we couldn’t—“

And then Spencer’s picking him up, carrying him, and Brendon automatically wraps his legs around Spencer’s waist for balance. “Fuck yes,” Spencer rumbles into the side of Brendon’s throat. “Clothes. Clothes need to be gone now.”

Brendon laughs a little breathlessly as Spencer dumps him on the bed, fumbling at the button of Brendon’s jeans. “Slow down, Spence,” he teases, lifting his hips so Spencer can tug his jeans and underwear off, anyways.

Spencer looks up at him then, licking his lips a little, and says, hoarse and serious, “I don’t actually think I can.”

Brendon closes his eyes against the fierce tug of want that floods him. “I—“

Spencer yanks Brendon’s shirt over his head, trying to kiss him at the same time, and they end up in a tangle of fabric and skin. “Clothes,” Spencer says breathlessly, frantically.

“Clothes,” Brendon agrees, and tugs at Spencer’s jeans a little helplessly. “Come on, come on, just—“

Spencer is naked ridiculously fast, and Brendon can’t help the breathless laugh that bubbles up.
Spencer cuts it off with his mouth over Brendon’s, his hand wrapped around Brendon’s cock. “Fuck, ” Brendon hisses, hips arching up at the sudden contact.

Spencer’s sliding down the bed, then, taking Brendon into his mouth.

They’ve done this a hundred times now, a thousand, but the awareness that this isn’t all, that there gets to be more, has Brendon close embarrassingly quickly, and he’s pushing Spencer back, shaking his head.

Spencer blinks up at him, mouth slick and red, hair a mess, and says, voice gravelly and deep, “Wait there.” He presses Brendon’s knees up, apart, and kisses one knee.

Brendon doesn’t move an inch while Spencer slips out of bed, hunting through the bedside table, because Brendon is good, Brendon is so good at listening. When he comes back, Spencer doesn’t bother with preamble, just slicks up two fingers and slides them deep into Brendon with one fluid motion.

Brendon’s breath escapes him in a rush. “Spence,” he rasps, “god. ” And then Spencer’s fingers are twisting, stretching him open, and it’s really probably too much, too fast, but Brendon’s heart is racing and none of it seems like enough. “Come on, come on, more. ” He squeezes a bunch of lube into his hand, arches his hips up so he can press two fingers into himself beside Spencer’s.

Spencer’s eyes widen and he swallows, slowing down for the first time. “Bren—“

Brendon doesn’t wait, just leans up, tugs Spencer back onto the bed, scrambles up to straddle him.
Spencer is grinning, smile obscenely wide, eyes glittering like he maybe wants to laugh but knows better, and then the smile morphs into an open-mouthed groan as Brendon lines him up with lube-slick fingers and sinks down.

All of a sudden, everything just slows down. The air is molasses-thick in Brendon’s lungs. Every blink is loud in his ears. Every heartbeat thunders. The slide-stretch of Spencer inside of him is the only thing he can feel for a long, long moment.

And then the world snaps back into focus, into real time.

Brendon whines and throws his head back, thighs shaking. Spencer’s hands are tight over his skin, pressing bruises into the curve of his hipbones.

“Brendon,” Spencer says, something between lost and reverent.

Brendon swallows and looks down at him, panting and trying to remember how he’s supposed to move. “Fuck,” he says, voice totally wrecked, instead of responding properly.

Spencer’s fingers flex, and he thrusts sharply up, deeper, and Brendon can’t help the noise that rips itself out of his throat as he comes.

Spencer gives a bone-deep shudder as he stills himself inside Brendon and follows.

Frank shows up at Gerard and Mikey’s apartment the next day two hours later than he said he would, and says, as soon as Gerard answers the door, “So, I’m kind of hoping you called me over here to ask me to join your band, because I basically just told Pencey I was leaving.”

Gerard blinks at him for a minute. “You’re insane,” he says, finally, when he remembers how to form words.

Frank shrugs. “I guess.”

Gerard stares at him for another minute or two. “You just left a marginally successful band on its way up, on the off chance that I was inviting you to join the band I haven’t even started yet?”

“Yes?” Frank says, like Gerard’s the one being retarded. “I thought I just said that.”

Gerard is in love. Gerard is in love with a psychotic idiot, and it’s awesome. “You’re an idiot,” he says, because it’s important that Frank knows this. Gerard’s keeping the “in love” part to himself, though.

Frank nods solemnly. “So they tell me.” He shifts on his feet a little, then, “Seriously, though, you want me for your band, right? Cause if not, I might have to cry a little.”

“Seriously, an idiot,” Gerard says again, rolling his eyes and stepping aside so Frank can come in. “What kind of question even is that?”

Frank grins and bounces a little on the balls of his feet. “Awesome,” he says, jamming his hands into his pockets and following Gerard into the house. “Fucking awesome. ”

Gerard’s pretty fucking sure it’s going to be.

Brendon twitches all the way through the day of the first show he’s ever officially singing for, the first stop in the tour Pete’s set up for Brendon’s debut.

“Seriously, sit still,” Spencer says, pinning Brendon’s jiggling leg to the couch with one hand.

“Can’t,” Brendon says, and he means it, he’s never been this nervous. “Fuck, Spence, I can’t.” He pushes himself off the couch, pacing the room.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Spencer says. “You already sang half a show and it was fine. ”

And he’s right, he is, except. “I don’t want it to be fine, ” Brendon says, because fine isn’t anything like enough. This is his, this is all of the best, the worst, the most important parts of him, and it was, in so many ways, way less terrifying to let Gerard and Ryan show them to the world. Doing it himself, with everyone watching him knowing that they’re from his insides? “It has to be so much more than fine, Spencer Smith.”

Spencer smiles wryly, fingers tapping out the beat for She’s a Handsome Woman on the leg of his jeans. Brendon can recognize that, can feel it thrumming through every single capillary, it’s that branded in his memory. “It will be awesome,” Spencer tells him firmly. “It will be a thousand miles past awesome, okay? You know it will.”

Brendon knows, mostly. He can feel the songs bubbling up in his throat already. But he’s got four more hours to kill before he can let them spill out, and he’s pretty sure that it’s going to kill him. “I’m going to die before I get on stage, oh my god.”

“Brendon.” Spencer raises an eyebrow at him. “Brendon, you’re a ghost. You aren’t going to die. ”

Brendon’s actually pretty sure he’s not a ghost anymore. He’s not sure what he is now, he’s not sure if he’s aging like a normal person, like maybe he’s just picked back up where he left off, or if he’s just a more solid perpetually-seventeen-year-old dead guy. There’s also still the question of the body that his parents burned, the ashes they doused in holy water, but Brendon sort of wants to throw up when he thinks about that too hard. “That is so not the point of this,” he says, instead of trying to explain the weird loops of logic his brain is going through. “The point of this is that there are four hours, and I think I hate those four hours more than anything ever.”

Spencer looks him over for a minute, considering. “I could blow you,” he offers.

Brendon blinks at him, and like, half the nerves twitching in his skin settle a little at the thought. “Yeah,” he says, licking his lips a little, nervously. “Yeah, okay.”

Spencer laughs and herds him to the bed. “Awesome.”

“Yeah,” Brendon agrees, and he’s already babbling. “I was going to go with that, too. You have the best ideas, Spencer Smith, you are my favorite. ”

Spencer grins against his mouth. “I know.”

They open with Northern Downpour, and when the audience recognizes Brendon’s voice, their screams almost drown him out entirely.

He spends the entire first song clinging to the mic, eyes closed, swaying, trying to breathe and sing at the same time.

After that, he gets his shit together and remembers why he’s here, what he’s supposed to be doing. The audience screams when he starts to pace the stage, leaning down to sing in their faces, and when their hands reach up to try to touch him, he lets them, because he can.

“We need a drummer,” Gerard muses around a cigarette.

“Bob drums,” Mikey says.

“Seriously, we need a drummer,” Gerard says, taking a deep drag. “And I’m spoiled now, okay, because Spencer Smith drums like magic.”

“Bob drums, ” Mikey says again, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.

“Frank, do you know any drummers?” Gerard asks, leaning forward.

Gerard is kind of oblivious when within five feet of Frank, so Mikey doesn’t try again, just pulls out his phone and sends a text to Bob.

u wanna drum for my brothers band? he asks.

Bob writes back almost immediately, sure, why not

cool, just show up with ur kit. he'll notice ur playing eventually. Mikey glances up at Gerard, who is still leaning towards Frank like a total creeper, listening intently as Frank rattles off the reasons none of the drummers he knows would be available.

Bob knows Gerard well, and just says, oh, so frank said yes

Mikey sniggers. practice is at seven bring me some pringles. Gerard always forgets that they’re guys and they need to eat food.

fuck you get your own pringles you chip whore, Bob replies, but when he shows up at seven, he has two cans of them tucked into the crook of his arm.

“Oh, hey,” Gerard says when Bob shows up and starts setting up his kit, “I didn’t know you could play drums!” He gives Mikey an accusatory look. “Mikey, you should have said something.”

Mikey just groans and buries his head in his hands. “You’re right, that was totally remiss of me,” he deadpans, and Bob smothers a laugh into his sleeve. “I am such an inconsiderate dick.”

“You totally are,” Gerard says, sniffing haughtily. “I’m glad we agree on this.”

Bob just punches Gerard in the arm, and Mikey revels in the way Gerard yelps and rubs at the spot for like ten minutes afterwards. Mikey has the best boyfriend.

They’re not exactly sure how to practice. Gerard stands at the front of the room, Bob sits behind his kit, Mikey and Frank sort of clutch at their instruments like they’re new to having hands and aren’t sure what to do with them.

“So,” Gerard says nervously, trying to fill the awkward silence. “We should probably play something.” He looks at Mikey, because Mikey is magical and usually capable of fixing everything. Gerard is good at the big plans, but Mikey, Mikey does the detail-things, and Gerard is pretty sure that getting his band to actually make something resembling musical noise for the first time is probably one of those detail-things.

Mikey shrugs at him and doesn’t move. He’s got a death grip around the neck of his bass, and he and Bob are having some sort of weird, alien conversation made up of blinking and eyebrow arches. “Probably,” he agrees, eventually, but that’s not really helpful.

Gerard swallows and squeezes his eyes shut. There is no fucking way he’s just stepped away from an amazing band to stand, silent, in a room with a bunch of potentially awesome musicians and not play music. He sucks a deep breath in through his nose, squinches his eyes shut even tighter, and half-says, half-sings, “Tommy used to work on the docks. Union’s been on strike, he’s down on his luck—it’s tough, so tough.”

Frank laughs a little, kind of hysterical, but starts to pick out the guitar part, and after a second or maybe three, Mikey and Bob step in behind it.

When Gerard gets to the chorus, he feels something tight unwind in his chest, and he opens his eyes and turns to look at his band, fuck, he has a band. Mikey’s watching his own hands on his bass, like he can’t believe they’re actually playing music, and Bob’s hair is flopping over his face, but Frank meets Gerard’s eyes and fucking beams up into them.

Gerard replies with high notes. Frank laughs all the way through them, and Gerard thinks it might be the best sound he’s ever heard.

It’s Brendon who brings up the idea, because he knows Ryan won’t, because Ryan has some sort of weird idea that Butch and Chiz belong to Brendon.

So, one morning on the bus, over coffee (for Ryan) and orange juice (for Brendon), Brendon says, maybe a little more hesitantly than he’d meant to, “I was kind of thinking that our sound could be a little rounder.”

Ryan looks up at him through sleep-mussed hair and says, also a little hesitant, “I don’t think you’re wrong.” His face is blank, the way it gets when he’s thinking hard and doesn’t want Brendon to know what about.

“Maybe, like, two people’s worth of rounder,” Brendon presses.

Ryan knocks his knee against Brendon’s under the table and smiles into his coffee. “Unless Jon or Spence have a problem with it, we can pick them up when we go through Atlanta next week.”

“So,” Jon says, being awesome and competent and manly in his Jon-way.

Ryan reminds himself to focus on the matter at hand, takes a deep breath. “We were thinking.”

Brendon grins at Butch and Chiz. “We were thinking that since you’re over all the time when we’re home, anyways, and half the music we play is already with you—“

“That maybe,” Spencer says, bumping his shoulder against Brendon’s, “maybe we should talk about you guys playing on stage with us, too.”

Butch’s entire face lights up, and Chiz blushes pink. “Seriously?” Butch asks, leaning forward a little in earnestness, fingers smoothing his ridiculous mustache down. Ryan recognizes it as a nervous habit by now, which is a little strange to realize.

Ryan laces his fingers with Jon’s, takes another breath, says, “Seriously.” This is a huge step, a huge change, but there are things that Butch and Chiz could bring to the band—have been bringing for months, now, really, unofficially—that could take them so many new places. It’s worth Ryan setting aside his insecurities, his nerves, if they can be a better band.

To Ryan’s surprise, it’s Chiz who leans forward, takes Ryan’s hand, shakes on it and says, “We’re in.”

It’s kind of a tight fit, six guys on one bus, but there are enough bunks, and it’s not really much tighter than the four of them. It’s better, too, in some ways, because they can all break away, a little, from their significant others and their best friends and their already-clearly-drawn relationships to talk to Butch or Chiz, get new opinions that don’t have strings attached. When Ryan wants to choke Brendon for being so enthusiastic, when Spencer wants to kick Jon for being so zen, when Brendon wants to crawl out of his skin from being stuck on a bus for so long, when Jon wants to have some quiet, they can each go sit with Butch or Chiz and do something new that helps, somehow—Ryan can have a talk with another guitarist who isn’t a ten-year-old on crack; Spencer can rant to someone who hasn’t heard it a thousand times before; Brendon can have a fierce banjo-off or a showtune-off or whatever-off with Butch, who never gets tired of it; Jon can get high with Chiz and sit in companionable silence that doesn’t have anything underneath it to worry about at all.

They get a lot done, adding new things to old songs, working old ideas into entirely new songs. Butch and Chiz have fresh ears, novel concepts, and it’s like starting over, in a way, except that this time, everyone has at least a tiny idea of where they’re going, what they’re doing, where they want to be.

And if sometimes, Ryan can’t keep up with the guitar riffs as fast as Chiz can, can’t work out subtle, clever lyrics as quickly as Butch does, well, he ignores the twinge in favor of having a fucking amazing band.

Gerard’s band—My Chemical Romance, Mikey’s calling them, and Gerard thinks it’s cool enough that they’re going to let it stick—plays a few shows around Illinois, a few that are a day or two away in Jersey (and going back there when he’s not going home is bizarre), New York, Vermont, Massachusetts. They’re not huge shows, nothing like Gerard played with Ryan and Jon and Spencer, but they’re his, they’re theirs, and Gerard has never, ever, in his life, been happier, been more viscerally, vibrantly alive, than when he steps out onto the middle of the stage—no matter how small it is—and steps out of his shyness, his fears, opening up for a sea of strangers who drink him in like they’re trying to drown in the words he’s giving them.

And having Mikey beside him, Frank spinning like a maniac around him, Bob behind him, keeping them all steady—well, that’s just icing on the cake, just more glitter on the disco ball, more fucking cowbell in the gorgeous song that is Gerard’s new life.

And yes, he knows his metaphors aren’t Ryan’s sort of dignified, they’re not subtle and precise, but Gerard likes them better, all the same. They’re his.

It’s after the show in Jersey City that Brendon meets Mike.

He’s slouched in the corner of the green room, scowling at the world at large. He’s more translucent than Brendon was when he met Ryan, and his edges have started to blur a little, like maybe he’s fading away entirely. No one else in the band seems to see him, and out of courtesy, Brendon waits until they’ve all left before he turns and looks the ghost in the eye.

“What’s your name?” Brendon asks him, finally.

He doesn’t startle, just glares up at Brendon. “Mike. Carden.”

Brendon eyes him for a long minute, eyes still catching on the blurred edges, the way Mike’s eyes are dull, blank.

“Quit fucking staring, kid,” he snaps, shaking lank, dark hair out of his face. “I’m not a fucking sideshow.”

Brendon ignores him and looks him over for another minute before he says softly, “I was like you.”

Mike’s scowl deepens. “I’m not looking for some knight in shining armor to fucking save me, okay, I’m dead, mind your own god damn business.”

“I couldn’t save you, anyways,” Brendon says, shrugging and splaying his hands helplessly. “You’re fading out.”

Mike is silent, mouth a hard line.

“You know that can change, right?” Spencer changed it for Brendon—Spencer, and Ryan, and Jon, and now, the thousands of fans just a few dozen yards past the door, they’ve changed it, too.

“I’m not looking for someone to believe in me,” Mike sneers, rolling his eyes. “I just want to be left the fuck alone so I can fade in peace.”

Brendon feels a frown tugging at his mouth. “You don’t mean that,” he says, less sure than he wants to be.

Mike shrugs and turns to face the wall.

Brendon says Mike’s name in his prayers every night, whispers it to himself and imagines those blurred edges getting just a little sharper.

He doesn’t overanalyze it, doesn’t feel like he wants to save him, just.

Just, Brendon has this unshakable faith that everyone deserves a second chance, and he doesn’t think Mike has had his, yet.

“I’m thinking,” Gerard says, tapping fingers against the denim over his knee.

“That’s never good,” Mikey stage-whispers to Bob, who grins.

Gerard pouts at both of them, then at Frank, too, for good measure. “I’m thinking, ” he repeats, not dignifying Mikey’s slander with an actual response, “that maybe we need another musician. Like, another sound.” He looks at Frank when he says it, smiling at him a little awkwardly.

Frank smiles back, and his eyes light up a little when he says, “It would be wicked to have another guitarist to play off of.”

“Cool,” Gerard says, letting the grin take over his face. “Cool.”

Gerard doesn’t actually like any of the guitarists who audition—he wants to like a couple of them, but the ones he likes as people are crap with the instrument, and the ones who are any good at it are absolute assholes. When he calls in the last person on his list, he isn’t really optimistic.

“Greta Sal—uh. Salpeter?” he asks, not sure if he’s supposed to make it Sawlpeter or Sahlpeter.

“Hey,” she says, voice smooth and warm like sunshine, and something warm curls in his stomach. “Just Greta’s fine,” she adds, sitting down across from him at the table. Her face is round and soft-edged, surrounded by clouds of blonde hair. She doesn’t shift, doesn’t shy away when she says, “I’m not actually a guitarist,” and Gerard has to admire her for that.

Her fingers dance a little over the tabletop keyboard she takes out, plucking out a couple random notes while she waits for him to speak.

He chews his lip for a minute and then decides that it couldn’t hurt. “Shoot,” he says, leaning back in his chair.

It does hurt. She plays something bluesy and punky at the same time, fast and a little reckless, and when she starts to sing along, her voice wraps around Gerard’s guts and nearly jerks them out of him in one smooth, beautiful motion.

When she stops, he’s slack jawed and breathing a little erratically. She looks up at him through her hair, says, “I know it’s not a guitar, but—“

Gerard reaches out a shaking hand and she clasps it with both of hers, small and dainty and neat, and he says, as nonchalant as he can, “So, I’m going to need your hands and your voice for basically ever.”

Greta laughs, laughs like bells and music and angels, and says, “I think I can handle that.”

One day, somewhere on the eastern seaboard, Brendon and Jon get really high and braid Chiz's hair, and Butch wanders by, talking to Ryan really seriously about the depth of W.B. Yeat's poetry versus Shakira, and tugs on one of the braids as he passes.

"Oooh," Jon says wisely, "I get it now."

Chiz squints at him. "Get... what, now?" There's nothing to get, except the fact that Butch is a giant ass.

Brendon nods sagely. "You know what it means when a boy pulls on a girl's pigtails."

Chiz scowls. "I am not a girl," he snaps, hugging himself defensively. They're assholes, too. Everyone is assholes. Also, pot maybe makes him paranoid, a little.

"Not the point," Jon says, steepling his fingers and looking at Chiz over them. "You know it."

"Know what? " Chiz asks, a little hysterically. There’s really nothing to know.

Brendon leans over, hooking his chin onto Chiz's shoulder, and singsongs, "He liiiiiiiikes youuuu."

Chiz feels his eye twitch. Everyone is not just assholes, they are insane.

"He tried to get married once," Butch tells Brendon, jerking his head in Chiz’s direction and sniggering. They’re in the dressing room at a venue somewhere in the southeast—Brendon doesn’t even really remember where (just that it’s not Atlanta, because Butch gets ridiculous when he’s that close to home.)

Brendon looks from Butch to Chiz and laughs so hard he almost throws up. "Oh my god, are you serious?"

Butch nods, smile wide, fingers smoothing over his mustache. "She left him and tried to climb into bed with me three weeks before the wedding because she thought I was her secret soulmate or some shit. He decided then and there that I was out to ruin his life." His eyes are twinkling, like that's the best thing Chiz could possibly have decided.

"And that's why he...didn't punch you in the face and never talk to you again?"

"I tried," Chiz says miserably, dropping heavily onto the couch and rolling his eyes when Butch snakes an arm around him and drags him closer, hooking his chin over Chiz’s shoulder. "As you can see, that sort of thing doesn't actually work on him. Because he's psychotic."

"You like it," Butch says, grinning.

"I hate you and everything you stand for," Chiz says mildly, resting his head on Butch’s shoulder, and Brendon is pretty sure this is the cutest sort of love since Ryan and Jon's weird talking-with-chords thing.
He doesn’t tell them that, though—Chiz might deck him. Or possibly Butch would. Maybe both. So he just giggles to himself.

Greta is maybe, just a little bit, smitten. She might very possibly be deeply, stupidly smitten with Gerard Way. Since he first smiled at her, disinterested and polite; since he first smiled at her for real, messy and beautiful and totally open; since he first shook her hand and looked at her like there was something about her worth wanting.

It’s not about needing boys to love her. Everyone always loves her; Greta is loveable. But not many people have wanted Greta, through her life. Her friends have always been the thin, leggy glamorous girls that have her hold their clothes while they try things on in the mall—or, when she grew out of letting them walk all over her, her friends have been boys. And not boys like Gerard, not boys like Bob and Mikey—boys like Chris and Darren and her Bob, boys who burp and fart and shove each other and who have beer-chugging contests and talk about girls’ racks and stems and whatnot. With them, Greta has never been wanted. Accepted, yes, unconditionally loved, and they’ll be her best friends until she’s old and wrinkly and faded, but they see her as one of them, another one of the guys, and while she loves that, needs that, they don’t want a single part of her.

And Gerard. Maybe Gerard doesn’t want her —she’s not blind, she can’t miss the looks he gives Frank when he doesn’t think anyone is looking—but he wants parts of her, wants her voice wrapped around his, her fingers playing notes to chase his words, leading them down into the dirty, gorgeous climaxes of his songs.

Greta is a sucker for being wanted in any sort of way at all. Maybe it’s the novelty.

She doesn’t really think it is.

“It’s your fault, isn’t it?” Mike grouses when Brendon steps into the green room of the venue in Jersey City almost half a year after the first time—one of the last stops on their tour before they finally, finally go home. “You did this.”

Mike’s edges are clear, sharp lines, and Brendon can see the blue-gray-green of his eyes. “Maybe,” Brendon says, unable to stop the grin spreading over his face.

Mike doesn’t look like he’s going to be thanking Brendon for it anytime soon, though. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he snaps, crossing his arms. “I wanted to fade out. Now I’m going to be stuck in this piece of shit, hole in the wall venue for fucking ever.”

Brendon shrugs. “Maybe. But I don’t think you have to be.”

Greta doesn’t wear pants.

Partly, it’s because her grandmother was very insistent that girls don’t wear pants, but mostly, mostly it’s how she sets herself apart from her boys. Slipping into skirts, dresses, feeling the way they shift around her thighs and fall in ripples over her skin—it reminds her that no matter how much she feels like one of the guys, she isn’t one, she’s something else, something different, something special.

She likes floral print sundresses the most, likes the way they swish and remind her of decades she wasn’t even actually alive for. They make her feel like a heroine in a movie, like she should be throwing her head back and laughing up into the sun, all the time. She likes to pair them with sun hats and big, big sunglasses, and strings of pearls—real or fake, it doesn’t really make a difference to her. Something about the whole combination makes her feel elegant, classy, ladylike.

Even if she isn’t, sometimes it’s nice to pretend.

Kevin works as a barista in the Starbucks down the street from the venue in Jersey. He’s tall, compared to Brendon, with smiling eyes and poodle hair. He’s wearing tight white jeans, a purple button down, and a lavender scarf that Ryan eyes with obvious envy when the four of them shuffle in to get their requisite dose of caffeine before the show. (Butch and Chiz are at a bar, getting their requisite pre-show dose of beer.) He’s got a green apron with a little white name tag that spells his name out in neat, black lettering.

“Good afternoon,” Kevin says, smiling at them. “What can I get you today?”

Jon, who hasn’t slept in a day and a half, looks at him with pleading eyes. “How much espresso are you legally allowed to sell me at once?”

Totally straight-faced, Kevin replies, “Six shots, and after that I have to make you sign a waiver.” He pauses, looking Jon over. “Although I think I could probably sneak you an extra one, you look like you need it.”

Jon beams. “You are a gift from god, sir.”

Kevin’s mouth quirks up at the corners. “Tell that to my parents.” The smile is maybe as wry as Brendon’s is when he talks about his parents. Perking up again as he turns to Ryan—presumably because he sets eyes on Ryan’s obnoxiously lurid rosette vest and chiffon scarf—he says, “And for you?”

Ryan squints at him for a moment and says, “I will pay you thirty dollars for your scarf.”

Brendon can’t help it, he bursts into a fit of hysterical giggling that just can’t be muffled, even by Spencer’s broad and manly shoulders. Admittedly, said shoulders are quaking with barely-suppressed laughter.

Kevin blinks at Ryan. “Are you serious?” he asks, eyebrows scrunching together.

“Scarves are serious business,” Ryan informs him with a sniff.

Kevin fingers the fringed ends of his scarf thoughtfully. There are little golden giraffes embroidered around the edges. “They are,” he agrees, slowly. “But if I sell this to you, I will be scarfless for the day, and my neck will be cold.”

“Like a delicate flower,” Spencer whispers into Brendon’s ear like a voice over guy from National Geographic, “the majestic scarfed barista will wither and die.”

Brendon bites his own arm to keep from laughing any louder—he doesn’t want to distract them.

Ryan meets Kevin’s eyes squarely. “Thirty dollars, and I will give you this scarf as a replacement.”

Brendon can’t help it, he gasps. Ryan’s crimson chiffon scarf is one of his favorite scarves—he wears it every time he wears his obnoxious rosette vest, because he has nothing else that matches it. The idea that Ryan is willing to give it up and shop for something new to match his hideous vest, well. That says something. Brendon isn’t actually sure what that says, but.

Kevin reaches across the counter and shakes Ryan’s hand firmly. “Deal.”

When Ryan is wearing Kevin’s scarf (which clashes hideously with his rosettes) and Kevin is wearing Ryan’s scarf (which clashes equally hideously with his shirt and his Starbucks apron), Spencer steps forward and says, “Can I get a vanilla latte?”

Kevin blinks at him for a minute before apparently remembering that he’s manning the counter at a coffee shop. “Right,” he says, blushing a little, “Sorry. What size?”

“Large,” Spencer says, and Brendon immediately likes Kevin better for not correcting him about the weird Starbucks size system.

“Cool. And for you?” Kevin asks, turning to Brendon.

Brendon would like to order a coffee—the novelty of caffeine in that high a dose hasn’t worn off in the short time he’s been solid enough to drink it—but Spencer and Ryan will kill him if he drinks it before he gets onstage. The last time he did, he got all hyper and psychotic during the show and maybe licked Ryan’s face a little. No one was happy about that, least of all Ryan. “Um,” he says, and, “I’m not allowed to have coffee.”

Kevin, to his credit, doesn’t make fun of him or ask if Brendon is secretly a six year old. “It’s cool,” he says, nodding wisely, “We don’t let Joe have coffee, either. He starts bouncing.”

Brendon bobs his head, even though he has no idea who Joe is. “Awesome,” he says, looking over the menu for things that aren’t coffee and also won’t clog up his throat for when he has to sing later. He’d meant to look at the menu while everyone else was ordering, but Ryan’s scarf shenanigans kind of distracted him. “Um, I don’t know what I want, hang on.”

“If you’ve got a show tonight, you could maybe do tea,” Kevin suggests, cheeks coloring a little.

Brendon blinks at him. “You know who I am?” he says, and he maybe can’t quite keep the incredulity out of his voice.

Kevin shrugs, biting his lip a little. “I’m kind of a fan.”

Brendon can’t help it, he fucking beams. “Seriously? You’re a real person, in real life, and you know who I am.”

Ryan, waiting at the end of the counter, snickers.

“Shut up, Ryan Ross, I am talking to a fan,” Brendon says, sticking his tongue out. He turns back to Kevin. “You should wash his scarf, man, it’ll have asshole cooties.”

Kevin giggles while Ryan squawks and protests that washing the scarf will ruin it, that it has to be dry cleaned and pressed and what the fuck ever.

“Hey,” Brendon says, grinning at him, “If you give my bassist two extra shot of espresso, we’ll totally sign something for you.”

Kevin doesn’t hesitate, just hands Brendon his apron and turns to pour eight shots of espresso into a coffee cup. When he turns back around, Brendon trades him the coffee for the signed apron, and their hands touch.

It doesn’t happen much anymore, Brendon’s been normal-person solid for like a year and a half now, but it happens now and again—and it happens now. A little fizzle of electricity jumps from Brendon’s hand to Kevin’s, and Kevin yanks his hand back like it’s been burned.

Brendon means to laugh it off, means to say it’s static, but Kevin is looking at him seriously, with these big, dark Bambi eyes, like he knows.

“How’d you die?” Kevin breathes, not blinking.

Spencer’s head whips around from where he’d been talking to Jon, and he looks at Kevin with hard eyes and says, “Let’s go, Bren.”

Brendon just flashes him a quick smile and shakes his head. Turning back to Kevin, he says, voice low, “Pneumonia. How’d you know?”

Kevin shrugs one shoulder. “My youngest brother, Frankie—he died, and stuck around for a few years afterwards.”

“Only a few years?” Brendon asks, brow furrowing. “Did he fade out, even though you knew about him?”

Kevin shakes his head. “No, he—he kind of just decided to move on, that he wanted to know what happened next.” His face warms, like the memory isn’t actually a bad one. “He flipped us all off and said, Suck it, bitches, I’m going to heaven. ”

Brendon’s entire band is staring at them now. “How old was he?” Jon asks, voice soft.

Kevin smiles, not even really sadly, says, “Ten.”

Brendon swallows back his own sadness so he can speak. “Hey, so, what time do you get done here?”

Kevin looks at the clock. “Like an hour.”

Brendon reaches over the counter, squeezes his hand. “Come to the show? I’ll put you on the list. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

It’s after their first show all together, at a hole-in-the-wall venue not too far from home, when it happens. Gerard is soaked with post-show sweat, and he’s freaking out a little, because Pete Wentz—Pete Wentz —was in the audience, sitting with Gabe and some tall willowy dude and Brendon, and they were all cheering. And yes, Pete had signed him when Gerard was singing someone else’s music, but he’d come up to Gerard at the end of the show, come up to him and held out his hand, had said, You’re twice the musician you ever were with them, are you interested in a deal?

And somehow, now, somehow, Frank is in front of him, sweaty and disgusting and trembling with adrenaline, beaming up into his eyes like Gerard is his own personal hero, and then he’s close, closer, and then.

Then, all of Gerard’s bones are singing, because Frank's mouth is on his, hard and wet and messy and glorious. Gerard lets himself melt into it, into the hammer of his heart, the rush of blood in his ears, the way his skin tightens until he can't remember how it ever felt like it fit before.

"Gee, fuck," Frank pants into his mouth, pulling him closer, almost climbing him. Gerard can feel every inch of his skin thrumming with this, with the reality of this single moment and everything it means for them, for him. Panic wells up in his throat.

The thing is. The thing is, around Greta, Gerard turns into music and metaphor. But Frank—Frank turns him into skin and bones and a heartbeat. And if Gerard's going to do this, if he's going to push this music thing forward and really do this, he can't be just skin and bones and a heartbeat. He can't fumble and stammer and hum from the inside out. He can't take Frank and lose all of this. And as much as Gerard wants Frank, wants him until his stomach aches and his eyes sting, he needs the music, needs it like he needs to breathe.

So he pushes Frank back, hands on his shoulders, and shakes his head. He feels numb when he says, "I can't." It's ashy and gray in his mouth. He can't remember two words ever tasting so disgusting. He says them again, though, because he has to. "I fucking can't, Frank."

He bolts before he can see anything but shock in Frank's eyes.

"What're you doing?" Greta asks, settling down on the venue’s couch beside him with her legs tucked up under her.

Gerard looks at her very seriously, says, "Looking for my soul in a tray of brownies." There's one tucked in his cheek, another in his hand. They're delicious, okay, and his soul would totally hide in a brownie if it got to pick a hiding place.

She doesn't laugh, but the smile that spreads across her face is almost audible. "I see."

"I'm not comfort-eating."

She nods solemnly. "I won't tell Mikey," she says, and that's more the issue here, anyways. Gerard is comfort eating. He's got love handles and doesn't give a flying fuck who knows it. Greta, because she's a freaky mind reader, reaches out and pokes one, but it's not mean, just a touch, gentle but not hesitant. It's somehow a comfort.

Gerard leans into it. "You're really awesome at that."

She furrows her brow daintily. "At what? Poking people?"

"At being a person," Gerard says, shrugging. "I don't think I’ve figured it out."

Greta laughs into his shoulder until there are tears shining on her cheeks. "I am not. I so absolutely fail at life," she says, finally, hiccupping and wiping at her eyes.

Gerard is pretty sure she's either wrong or lying, but he doesn't say so, just nudges her shoulder with his. "Whatever," he says, and as the laughter fades from the room, he remembers why he's so fucking depressed.

"What's got you communing with the mystical spirit of brownies, Gerard Way?" she asks, propping her chin on his shoulder and looking up at him through blonde lashes and a fringe of gold curls.

He thinks about it, about all the ways to say what he means. He's spent too much time around Ryan, of course, so metaphors and lyrics run through his head before anything resembling solid truth does. Finally, he splays his hands helplessly on his thighs and says, "I don't know." A face flashes under his eyelids as he blinks back frustration, a face with liquid gold eyes and a wicked grin and a sheen of silver on one corner of its lower lip. He does his best to ignore it.

One of Greta's small hands slips into his, and she uses her other hand to fold his palm over hers. She's so soft and shining, so ridiculously angelic and surreal. Gerard still doesn't know what this is, how she ended up here, next to something as fucked up as he is. "Music helps, sometimes," she says, lips near his neck. Her breath raises goosebumps on his skin.

Gerard licks his lips. "Yeah?" he says, mostly to stall for time.

"Also," she says, mouth grazing the curve of his jaw, fuck, "I'm pretty sure sex helps a little, too."

Gerard swallows against the sudden lump in his throat. He pulls back a little, looks at her plump cheeks and shining eyes, her soft, full mouth, her gold curls, until the other face behind his lids is burned away. When he blinks, once, twice, just to check, there's only a faint, dazzling outline of her smile and a pang of bitterness on the back of his tongue. And maybe, maybe, if he leans in, presses his mouth to hers, the taste of regret and gasoline will fade, too.

He tries it, and mostly, mostly, the taste of strawberries and music washes the bitterness away.

Greta has never had an orgasm during sex. She’s not actually sure how people manage it, and mostly it doesn’t really bother her. Mostly, she fakes it, and gets herself off afterwards. Or doesn’t—sex isn’t really about getting off, for her. It’s about being what someone else needs, about being able to be a comfort, a help. It’s not about her at all, not really.

For Greta, very little of her life is actually ever about her. She’s never minded, really, until now.

"I'm not going to break," Greta murmurs into his ear, raking her nails down his back. Fire follows them in rivulets, seeping into Gerard's skin.

"Fuck, " Gerard agrees, letting his teeth more than graze the skin of her neck this time. He kind of wants her to break—he sees all that smooth skin, the soft, curving lines of her, and he itches to make them jagged, bent, hard, broken. Not because he wants to hurt her, she’s Greta, he adores her, but because the thing he wants, loves, under everything—that thing is a broken thing, and if he breaks Greta, just a little, maybe he’ll be able to love her like that, too.

She folds up around him, arching into him like a cat, and Gerard focuses on the curvature of her hips, her waist, and doesn't, doesn't, imagine the smooth play of muscle and sinew, the stretch of skin taut over bone, the rasp of stubble over his face. It was one kiss, one, and it's never going to happen again. He tries to fall into this kiss, into this moment, and mostly, mostly he succeeds.

Mostly, he doesn't feel Frank's mouth echoing under his own.

"Vaginas taste weird." Gerard flops down on the steps next to Mikey and Bob.

Mikey chokes on his coffee, hacking and coughing until he can barely breathe. "The fuck."

Gerard makes a face, the same face he used to make when Elena would try to get him to eat brussel sprouts or asparagus. "They taste weird. And they're all, like, slippery and shit."

Mikey tries to suppress the immediate urge to gag. "Why are you telling me this?" Gerard is his brother, yes, and he loves him, but there are certain levels of brotherly intimacy that are wholly unnecessary. Mikey doesn't talk about what Bob's dick tastes like, okay.

"Also. Are boobs supposed to be so... squishy?"

Mikey groans and buries his head in his hands. "I hate you."

Gerard pouts and pokes at him. "Seriously! I need to discuss these things."

"Not with me, oh my god." Mikey pinches the bridge of his nose and thinks. "Shit, okay, go talk to Brendon." Brendon will listen to anything.

"Come on."

Mikey glares him down. "Why the fuck would I even know about boobs?" He points at Bob, who exaggeratedly gropes at his own flat man-chest for emphasis of Mikey's point. Cause Bob's awesome like that.

Gerard huffs out a sigh and clambers to his feet, not-so-accidentally knocking Mikey with his elbow as he goes. "Fine. Assface."

Mikey lets the elbow thing slide. He’s just grateful not to have to hear about boobs anymore. Boobs are weird as fuck.

Mike hates Kevin.

Kevin comes by the venue every day with a cup of coffee and sits on the couch. The owner lets him hang around as long as he tidies up some, and is out before the bands arrive on the days when there are shows. Sometimes he brings books, or magazines, and reads the really stupid parts out loud so Mike can hear them. Sometimes, he brings his iPod and some crappy little speakers and plays things he thinks Mike might like. Mostly, he plays things he likes, just to see the sour faces Mike will make. Mike especially dislikes showtunes and Disney songs and all 80’s pop.

Eventually, Mike says, “Why the fuck do you keep coming here?”

Kevin looks at him for a long moment. Finally, he reaches forward, fingertips tracing the edges of the space around the curve of Mike’s jaw. “I have this dream, like once a week, where I wake up on this couch, here, with you behind me, and you’ve got your arm around me, like. Like I guess we fell asleep together?” Mike’s eyes are wide, staring, but he doesn’t say anything, so Kevin goes on. “And I wake up, and you say, Go back to sleep, kid. And you tighten your arm and pull me closer to you, and I go back to sleep.”

Mike’s voice is husky when he says, “You have stupid dreams, kid.”

Kevin grins. “I know.”

When the tour hits LA, Gabe and Pete and Bill Beckett are already in town on some sort of weird business thing, so it’s decided that the band will get rooms in the same hotel. Gabe and Bill invite themselves over to Brendon and Spencer’s for dinner (where the rest of the band has also invited themselves, since Spencer is the only one of them with any cooking skills whatsoever, and Butch has offered up Chiz—whether Chiz likes it or not—as Spencer’s kitchen-bitch/soux chef), and Pete promises to meet them in Gabe and Bill’s room to hang out later.

Gabe has already promised, via ominous text message, to introduce them to something called Cobra Jenga. Butch is appropriately anticipatory, because from Gabe’s vague descriptions, it promises to end with him drunk and doing things that will make Chiz uncomfortable.

“Butch motherfucking Walker, in front of my very own eyes,” Gabe says when Butch opens the door, clapping a hand to his chest. “I don’t believe it.”

Butch yanks him into a bro-hug, clapping him on the back. “Gabe, my man.” Butch looks behind him, to the willowy brunette with sharp hips and big eyes. “And, presumably, the infamous Beckett.”

The brunette slants him a grin and extends a hand. “Butch Walker, my fine man,” he says, tipping an imaginary hat with his other hand. “Excellent to make your acquaintance, good sir.”

Butch enjoys people who can give a firm handshake and be utterly ridiculous at the same time. “And yours,” he says, tipping his own imaginary hat. “Come on in, Smith and Chiz are being women in the kitchenette thing.”

“I smell lasagna,” Gabe says, leaning over Butch’s shoulder to sniff the air. “Lasagna and… Brendon,” he adds as Brendon comes up to the door. “I hear you kicked Gerard off stage,” he says, but it’s light, like he’s not trying to actively be a dick about it. Butch narrows his eyes, anyways—Brendon doesn’t need to be picked on.

“And into the studio,” Brendon says, snorting. “With a bunch of craft glitter and too much coffee. Mikey keeps texting me SOS messages and pleas for snack food.” On the other hand, Brendon can usually hold his own.

“Can we go inside now?” Beckett asks plaintively before Gabe can reply with something—if Butch knows Gabe at all—snarky. “I want food. In my mouth, not just in my nose.”

Gabe waggles his eyebrows at Beckett, smirking, but they follow Butch when he leads the way into the kitchen nonetheless.

“So, what you’re saying,” Bill says, tapping his fingers on the knee of his jeans, “is that you’re dead.”
Brendon shrugs. “Comparatively, yeah.”

“Oh.” Bill hums for a moment or two, apparently mulling it over. Then he leans in and says conspiratorially, “Does that make Smith a necrophiliac?”

Spencer raps him hard on the head as he walks by the back of the couch. “It makes Smith the one who’s gonna kick your ass if you don’t shut the fuck up,” he says, relatively pleasantly, as he joins Brendon on the couch.

Bill doesn’t ruffle. “Necrophilia!” he insists. “You like to sex up dead gentlemen.”

“Actually,” Ryan says, scooting onto the couch next to Spencer, “It would only be necrophilia if he was sexing Brendon up because he’s a dead gentleman.”

Bill looks at Ryan like Ryan is secretly brilliant. “Your words are truth, little Rossy,” Bill says sagely, leaning over to pat Ryan firmly on the knee. “I acknowledge your wisdom in this matter.”

Ryan just blinks at him—which, Brendon will admit, is fair, since it’s rare that people bring a higher level of ridiculous posturing to the table than Ryan himself. “Uh, thanks,” he says, slowly, like he’s afraid Bill might spook and accidentally kill everyone in the room with his obscenely long limbs.

Bill nods again, a gentlemanly incline of his head, and taps the invisible brim of his imaginary hat in salute. “You’re quite welcome, good sir.”

“Okay,” Gabe says grandly, making a sweeping gesture with his arms, “Cobra Jenga, bitches. Get ready.”

Everyone is already in a circle on the floor, so they just blink expectantly up at Gabe.

“Get the fuck on with it, Saporta,” says Butch, rubbing his hands together. “I’m not drunk enough yet.”

Gabe sticks his tongue out at him, but smacks the Jenga box down on the floor in the middle of the circle. “So the rules are this,” he says, pulling a handful of sharpies out of his back pocket. “Rule one—No bodily fluids that are not spit may be involved in the dares, due to some… past issues involving a straw and places where the sun doesn’t shine. Rule two—personal targeting is totally allowed. Rule three—if you don’t want your dare, you can do a shot and pass it to anyone of your choosing. If they don’t want to do it, they have to do two shots, and so on. Clear?” He doesn’t actually wait for an answer, just starts handing the markers around. “Okay. Everyone gets—let’s see, there’s how many of us—okay. Everyone gets like three blocks, four if you’re feeling squirrely.” He doesn’t actually explain what feeling squirrely means, but he waggles his eyebrows at Brendon. “On each block, you write a dare. All necessities—jello shots, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, limes, salt, etc, are on the counter, and you can include their use in dares. Anything is game that doesn’t violate rules number one and two. Does anyone need to be reminded of rules one and two?”

“No, Gabe,” they chorus, like an obedient kindergarten classroom.
Gabe claps his hands. “Then get to it, bitches.”

Twenty minutes later, Gabe takes all their finished blocks and loads them into the Jenga box, setting up the tower. “Alright,” he says, sitting down in between Bill and Pete, “Now, the rest is pretty fucking self-explanatory. Take a block. Do the dare. Stick it back on top. You can’t take from the top, obviously. If you knock down the tower, you have to do one dare for every person here. Objects of the dares have no say in anything because we aren’t pussies. Suck it up, take it like a man. Got it?”

Half of the dares seem to be geared solely towards making Chiz turn unsightly shades of red. Butch, of course, made all of his specifically for the purpose of turning Chiz unsightly shades of red, but apparently other people got in on the action, too, because ten minutes into the game, Butch pulls out a block he definitely didn’t write on, which he reads out loud, trying desperately not to laugh, “Give any Australians present a hickey.”

“Aw,” Brendon says, patting a red-faced Chiz consolingly on the knee, “that’s really not so bad.”

“Below the waist, ” Butch finishes triumphantly.

“Oh,” Brendon amends, giggling, “oops.”

“Take a shot,” Chiz says, but he sounds defeated, like he knows Butch isn’t going to take a fucking shot. “Don’t do it, you bastard.”

Butch grins at Chiz, crawling forward on hands and knees. “C’mon, Chizzy. Take your pants off.”

Chiz narrows his eyes at him, staring him down. “Butch Walker, I swear to god, if you give me a hickey anywhere other than my fucking shin, I will—“

Butch pounces. The hickey he leaves is not on Chiz’s shin. At all.

After watching Chiz try really hard not to whimper and moan while Butch sucked on the arch of his hipbone, Bill weeping with laughter while Gabe did a naked version of the Hammer Dance, and Spencer growling like an angry dog while Pete did a tequila shot off Brendon’s stomach, Ryan is possibly slightly terrified to pull a block from the tower. His first three weren’t so bad—he’d had to grab Gabe’s ass, lick Chiz’s ear, and tickle Brendon until he cried, but none of those were especially traumatizing.

When he reads it, though, he sighs in relief. “Oh thank god,” he says, and reads it aloud. “Lick chocolate sauce off the chest of anyone in the room. That’s not bad. Jon, c’mere—“

“Uh uh,” Gabe says, wagging a finger, “Keep reading, Ross.” His smile is sharp-edged.

Ryan blinks at him, then back down at the block in his hand. Feeling nauseous, he turns it over, and surely enough, “Other than your significant other.” He glares at Gabe. “Oh, come on.” He looks at Jon. “I’ll do a shot,” he offers softly, ignoring the rest of the circle for a minute.

Jon shrugs, smiles a little. “If you want.”

Ryan doesn’t discuss it any more, just downs a vodka shot and points to Bill. “It’s all you, Beckett,” he says, smirking at Gabe.

Gabe smirks back when Bill stands up, and then Ryan realizes that he’s made a terrible, terrible miscalculation. He keeps forgetting that Gabe and Bill are evil, evil men first, monogamous second.

“Jonny Walker,” Bill says, grinning with all his teeth. “Take your shirt off, sexy man.”

Jon blanches. “Uh,” he says, scrambling back as Bill advances. “Don’t I have a say in this? Can’t I do a shot or something?”

“No,” Chiz says, scowling, still bright red. “Objects of the dares have no say in anything. ” He bangs his head into Pete’s shoulder. Pete pats him awkwardly on the head. “I hate you all,” he adds miserably. “Hate.”

Ryan sort of wants to kill things as he watches Bill drizzle an obscene amount of chocolate over Jon’s nipples. “I am getting you back for this, Beckett,” he warns, eyes narrow.

Bill purrs at him. “Oh, I sincerely hope so,” he says, winking lasciviously and licking a broad stripe over Jon’s chest.

Ryan barely—barely—restrains the urge to punch him in the dick.

Spencer is incredibly drunk from all the dares he’s passed on—most of them to Gabe or Pete or Butch, because they’ll do nearly anything, and they mostly seem to be trying to make Chiz uncomfortable—he’s had to do seven different body shots, five of which were off of Butch—rather than Spencer or Brendon, which is pretty much Spencer’s main concern. He feels kind of bad for Ryan, though, who’s got his hand clenched over the knee of Jon’s jeans.

“You okay?” he asks—slurs, really—Ryan while Gabe and Bill are distracted with some sort of weird lap dance thing.

“Fine,” Ryan says through gritted teeth. “I am awesome.” He downs another shot of vodka.

“Don’t kill Gabe,” he says. “Pete takes away our record deal if we kill his best friend.”

Ryan growls a little. “Fine.”

Ryan doesn’t kill Gabe. Instead, Ryan gets even. Sort of. In a way that wouldn’t happen if both he and Jon weren’t hilariously drunk and past the point of shame.

It’s entirely possible that Spencer will never be able to burn from his mind the image of Ryan blowing Jon on the carpet of the hotel room. It is entirely possible.

“Uh—bodily fluids that aren’t…uh…” Gabe trails off, swallowing.

“It technically fulfills the dare,” Brendon puts in helpfully, grinning at Gabe. “All the block said was that he had to get someone in the circle hard. And all you said is that bodily fluids other than spit can’t be part of the dare, not that they can’t be involved at all.”

“Yes,” Bill says, eye twitching a little, “That’s true, isn’t it.” His hand tightens on Gabe’s arm. “If you make him stop,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, not actually quietly at all, “I will kick your ass. ”

Gabe’s cheeks are pink, and he downs the rest of his rum and coke without saying anything at all. Spencer doesn’t think it’s the effect Ryan was going for—probably, Ryan was trying to make him uncomfortable, but Gabe mostly just looks uncomfortably turned on. Which technically is sort of what Ryan was going for, but.

Jon lets out a strangled moan, fingers tightening in Ryan’s hair, hips arching off the floor.

“Alright,” Gabe says hoarsely, “Ross, okay, you win.”

Ryan hums a little, but doesn’t stop making obscene sucking noises around Jon’s cock.

“Seriously,” Gabe says, voice way higher than normal, “seriously, alright, no more picking on you. You can stop now.”

“Mmm,” Ryan agrees, pulling his mouth off Jon with a filthy pop. “I suppose I can, yes.”

Jon blinks up at him from the carpet, looking bereft and a little lost and extraordinarily drunk.

Ryan grins wickedly at Gabe, mouth too red and lips too shiny, and says, “But that takes all the fun out of it.”

Spencer covers his eyes, this time, when Ryan’s head moves back down. There are just some things best friends aren’t meant to see.

Unfortunately for Spencer, Jon is loud enough that Spencer can pretty much imagine most of it, anyways.

“There is something wrong with you,” Chiz snaps the second they leave Gabe’s hotel room. “Deeply, intrinsically wrong with you, you are mental.”

Butch hums a little, but doesn’t dignify that with an answer. He’s probably right, for one thing. For another, Butch isn’t sure he’s ever seen Chiz this drunk, and there’s no point arguing with people who’ve had six beers, eight shots, and several more chugs of girly pink drinks.

“Seriously,” Chiz slurs, shoving at his shoulder. “Seriously, you’re an asshole. ”

Butch catches his hand, turning around and backing him up against the wall of the hallway. “Yeah,” he breathes, way too close to Chiz’s face, “yeah, I pretty much am.” He licks his lips, watches Chiz’s eyes track the movement almost unwillingly. He leans in closer, pressing his leg between Chiz’s, pushing up, just a little. Chiz’s eyes slip shut and his mouth falls open on something suspiciously similar to a whimper, and Butch thinks, To hell with it.

Chiz sucks in a breath, hands clutching at Butch’s shirt, when Butch licks into his mouth. Butch tugs Chiz’s lower lip between his teeth. “Yeah,” he murmurs, pressing closer, pinning Chiz to the wall, trailing open-mouthed kisses over his jaw, below his ear, “yeah, come on.”

Chiz’s hips jerk, and he pulls Butch in like he wants to drown in him. If Butch weren’t drunk as fuck already, his head would be spinning just from the noise Chiz makes when Butch manages to get his jeans open, manages to get his hand around him.

“Fuck,” Chiz pants, head lolling back against the wall. “Fucking hell.”

Butch tightens his hand, jerks him roughly, and Chiz’s hand clenches around his arm so hard when he comes, not even ten strokes later, that Butch is sure he’ll have bruises in the morning.

“Mate,” Chiz says over coffee the next morning, “What the hell happened to your arm?”

Butch smiles tightly at him. “Oh, you know. Just Smith being pissy that I grabbed Urie’s crotch on that dare. You know how he gets.”

Chiz’s face softens on a smile. “Want I should punch him or something?”

“Nah,” Butch says, swallowing the bitterness back. It’s just the shitty hotel coffee, anyway. “It’s all good.”

Chiz bumps his shoulder companionably, and they drink the rest of their coffee in silence.

Kevin falls asleep at the venue one afternoon, and when he wakes up, it’s to an insistent buzzing on his arm. He gropes at it, thinking that it’s his phone, but his hand only hits more buzzing.

“Wha—oh.” He blinks at Mike, who is staring defiantly back, hand on Kevin’s arm. “You’re touching me.”
“I can touch things, now, I guess, kind of.” He doesn’t look happy about it.

“Yeah,” Kevin says, smile spreading over his face, “But you’re touching me. ”

They don’t mean to lose Chiz in a Waffle House in South Carolina. It’s an accident.

Well, it’s sort of an accident. Brendon’s not gonna lie, he can’t tell what goes through Butch’s head half the time—unless it’s musical—and it’s entirely possible that he just decided to leave him behind because they were having another bitchfight. They have those a lot.

But no one else means to lose Chiz in a Waffle House in South Carolina.

“Why didn’t you call me?” Butch asks when they finally get him back, looking wounded. “I know your phone is dead, but there’s a goddamn payphone, and I know you know my number.”

Chiz glowers at him. “Why yes, Butch, I do know your number.” He pulls Butch’s cell out of his own pocket and waves it under Butch’s nose. “But I had your phone, which, as you may recall, is new, because you dropped the last one in a toilet in Miami while you were drunk. Which means it didn’t have anyone else’s numbers in it, and I don’t have theirs memorized yet.”

Butch winks at Brendon—he’s not very surreptitious about it, though—and says, baiting him, “And whose fault is that?”

Chiz huffs and crosses his arms. “Yours, ” he says definitively, reaching around—in the practiced sort of way that tells Brendon that things like this have already happened more than once—and yanking his own wallet out of Butch’s back pocket. “It is your fault, because I had their numbers on a backup slip of paper in my wallet, which would have fixed everything, had you not stolen my wallet without telling me so you could buy beer. ”

“Look,” Butch says, in a very reasonable tone, “it’s really not my fault you don’t keep a better eye on your wallet, Chiz.”

Brendon sniggers into his arm while Chiz puffs up and turns several different shades of red.
He stops sniggering in sheer awe when Butch wraps his arm over Chiz’s shoulder and presses a kiss to his temple. Chiz immediately deflates, losing all the red except for two pink flags on the tops of his cheeks.

“You could’ve at least noticed sooner,” Chiz complains, sounding defeated.

“Sorry,” Butch croons, leaning his head against Chiz’s shoulder. “I was jerking off.”

Chiz just rolls his eyes and sighs, doing an excellent job of looking fondly put-upon and long-suffering.

When Gerard pushes Greta's knees up to her shoulders and presses in deep, he takes in the soft, sweet noise she makes and imagines that it's something else. He imagines the noises Frank would make, raw and organic and visceral, and they ring out in his veins like chords when he comes, collapsing.

Greta swallows loudly, blinks up at him, a sweep of gold lashes over peaches and cream cheeks, and says, "Oh."

The syllable tears Gerard's chest open and rips out his lungs, replaces them with something wild and broken and afraid, hammering against his ribs for all it's worth. "Greta," he says, and he knows his voice is wrong, knows that all of this is wrong, so, so wrong, and he doesn't know how to make it feel less horrible. He scrambles back, off the bed, yanking his jeans up and fumbling the buttons.

She gently scoots back, away from him, pulling her dress back down over her legs as she crosses them neatly, like a lady. The demure flower print is dampened at one spot on the hem, and Gerard's eyes fixate on the dark patch while the bile rises in his throat. "Gee," she says, and her voice is all the music Gerard wishes he is, all the soft, sweet notes that he can't ever bring himself to sing like he means them. She takes his hands in hers, pulling him down onto the bed beside her. "Gerard," she says, voice firm but not angry, "I get it." Gerard's voice is made for dirtier, broken things that glitter in the sun and cut you if you try to hold them too tightly. "It's not like-- I can't hold it against you," she adds, a smile that's less sad than it could be playing at one corner of your mouth, "Not that, Gee, never that." Gerard's voice is made for Frank, and he’s stupid, completely stupid, for trying to pretend otherwise.

All the air sweeps itself out of Gerard's lungs, echoing in the too-quiet bedroom. He wants to say, I don't know what you're talking about, or maybe, No, Greta, it's not like that, but all that comes out is, "I didn't want it to be like this."

She bumps his shoulder with hers, presses a kiss to his temple. "I know, baby," she says, and there's no bitterness there.

He feels the frustration, the panic, welling up in the face of her ridiculously heartfelt forgiveness. "Greta," he says, hearing the hysteria bubbling up in his voice, "Greta, I don't--"

She wraps an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close, until his head is resting on her shoulder. "Gee," she says, serious and angelic and so fucking sincere, fuck, "Gee, you're the most amazing human being I have ever laid eyes on, and if Frank can't see it, I will kick him in the balls myself."

Gerard laughs wetly into her shoulder. He believes her; Greta is fucking fierce.

Brendon finds a couple of very beaten-up plastic dinosaurs in a parking lot in Nashville.

Ryan just blinks at him when he sets them on the little table in the bus kitchenette and says, “Yes… yes. This is a fertile land, and we will thrive! We will rule over all this land, and we will call it… this land.” He stops, clearly waiting for Ryan to respond, but Ryan seriously has no idea what he’s talking about, so he just continues to sit there, watching Brendon’s face fall.

And then Butch claps Ryan on the shoulder in a very manly sort of way—it’s slightly painful, actually—and says, in a fake-dinosaur voice, “I think we should call it your grave!”

Brendon’s face lights up like a fucking Christmas tree, and he gleefully responds, “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” Something clenches in Ryan’s stomach.

Butch snatches the T-Rex and makes it attack the other dinosaur, whatever the fuck it is, while making growling noises and laughing. “Haha! Mine is an evil laugh! Now die!”

Brendon says, “Oh, god no!” in a very nonchalantly cheerful sort of way, letting his dinosaur topple.

Ryan stands up and goes to find Jon and his bunk, fighting a sudden wave of dizziness.

He must be getting sick.

“Mikey—“

Mikey scowls at him. “If you’re here to bitch to me about how hard your life is and how you love Frank but can’t have him because of whatever metaphors you want to shove in for the fact that you’re being a complete pussy, I don’t want to fucking hear it, okay?”

Gerard gapes at him for a second. “Uh,” he says, and that’s really about as articulate as he can make himself be.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Mikey says, more derisive than he’s been to Gerard in a long time. “Could you maybe quit whining like a total pansy and just man the fuck up? Because you’ve fucked Greta over, and she’s awesome, and she just left here crying. And I don’t want to have to see that woman cry ever again.”

Gerard swallows. “She was—“

Mikey shoves at his shoulder a little. “Gee,” he says, and his voice isn’t mean anymore, just serious. “Your music doesn’t fucking come from you being miserable. Stop screwing everything up because you’re scared. You’re better than that.”

“I’m not,” Gerard says, because that’s sort of the whole root of the issue here. If Gerard thought he could do this, have the music and Frank at the same time, he’d do it. “I can’t—Mikey, I don’t know what I’ll have, if I fuck this up.”

Mikey shrugs. “Well, if you don’t get your shit together soon, you won’t have a fucking bassist, because Frank’s my best fucking friend and I’m sick and fucking tired of seeing you hurt him.”

Gerard rubs a little at his chest, trying to loosen the tightness there. “What if I hurt him worse?” he finally says, and it comes out broken, barely more than a whisper.

“I don’t think there’s actually a scale of hurt for this kind of thing,” Mikey says, “I think a broken heart is just a broken heart, whether you do it by accident, in the process of loving someone, or deliberately, because you’re too scared to try.”

And Gerard would love to say that Mikey is full of it, that Mikey is talking out his ass, except. Except that Mikey doesn’t talk enough to waste words on being full of shit, and if he’s saying this, he’s probably pretty sure that he’s right.

So Gerard swallows down the fear and nods. “Okay.”

Mikey gives him a little shove, smiling. “Go.”

Gerard steels himself—he has two hours before practice starts, and he’s already spent twenty minutes freaking out—and crosses the kitchen, pressing himself up against Frank’s back before he can let himself run away.

“Gee?” Frank says, freezing against the counter, a question he’s not actually asking woven into the syllable.

Gerard slides his hands down Frank’s sides, tucks them under the waistband of his jeans, gripping his hips tightly and tugging Frank close. Gerard’s heart is in his throat, jumping from fear as he braces himself. His lips graze the shell of Frank’s ear when he says, “Yeah, yes, yeah, okay.”

Frank doesn’t hesitate.

Frank’s hands are rough and callused, and they fit against Gerard’s skin in a way that Greta’s smooth skin never did.

Gerard sinks down, reveling in the slight burn and the awe in Frank’s eyes.

“Gee,” Frank groans, “Gerard, shit, shit, holy fuck.” His hands are clenching and unclenching in the sheets, his hips jerking erratically up as Gerard keeps to his slow, steady pace. He braces himself with one hand on Frank’s chest, nails biting a little into the skin there. Frank lets out a low whine and his hips strain up, but Gerard’s got him pinned.

“Frankie, shit, breathe, ” he says, laughing a little.

Frank’s hands come up to grip helplessly at Gerard’s thighs instead of the sheets. “Oh, fuck you,” he gasps, less fierce than he probably meant for it to be.

Gerard sniggers and clenches tight around him, relishing the sound that rips itself out of Frank’s mouth, agonized and blissful. “That was the idea, yeah,” he breathes, ignoring the catch in his own voice.

Frank only responds with a low whimper, jerking his hips up again. His hands are tight on Gerard’s legs; he’ll have bruises in the morning. Gerard threads his fingers through Franks and makes him squeeze harder.

“Why don’t you leave here?” Kevin asks one day, leafing through Vanity Fair. “You’re not stuck here, this isn’t your house. You could go wherever.”

Mike shrugs. “Where would I go?” he asks, and it sounds mostly rhetorical.

Kevin bites his lip a little before he can get up the nerve to say, “You could come home with me.”

Mike scowls. “I’m not a fucking stray.”

“No,” Kevin says slowly, because it’s important that Mike understands this. “No, you’re my best friend, and it’s stupid that you live in a gross venue where you can still see the exact stain on the floor where you died. ”

“I’ve never tried to leave,” Mike says shortly, gruff like he gets when he’s uncomfortable. Kevin thinks that he’s maybe afraid.

Kevin stands up, holds out his hand. “Well, there’s a first time for everything,” he says, taking Mike’s hand when he doesn’t reach for Kevin’s. He threads their fingers together as well as he can, though Mike’s middle finger keeps sliding through his. “Come on. If you hate it, you can always come back.”

“I hate you, ” Mike grouses, scowling.

Kevin opens the door, towing him out into the sunny afternoon. In the sunlight, Mike’s hair is a little less lank, his eyes a little brighter, and Kevin thinks his shirt might have a tinge of red to it. “No you don’t,” he says, beaming.

Mike rolls his eyes, but follows Kevin down the street and doesn’t argue any further.

Mike sleeps on Kevin’s bed, because Kevin doesn’t have a couch, and, “No fucking way you dragged me here to make me sleep on your fucking floor.”

Kevin spends the first week that Mike stays with him on the floor, because he wants to be a gentleman. When he wakes up in the middle of the night that Saturday and it takes him literally fifteen minutes to make his back straighten out so he can sit up, he decides that being a gentleman isn’t worth it, and crawls into bed beside Mike.

Mike just grumbles sleepily and flings a tingling arm over him, spooning up against Kevin’s back.

Ryan is walking into the music room a week or two after their tour ends—he doesn’t know how long it’s been; it’s blissful not to keep track of days and cities for a little while—to get the cup of coffee he’d left in there an hour or so before, when he hears something that makes him stop in his tracks.

While Ryan has never had any problem believing that Brendon, as a ghost, could exist, there are a couple of things that he is literally incapable of believing due to their total, complete impossibility.

One of those things is leprechauns.

The other is the idea that Tiny Dancer can sound anything other than humiliating, emasculating, traumatizing, and permanently scarring.

And yet, filtering into his disbelieving ears is the sound of a banjo and a guitar dancing around each other, with each other, to the tune of Tiny Dancer while two stupidly perfect voices harmonize on the words.

Peering into the music room, because he truly cannot believe this is happening, Ryan see’s Butch on the loveseat, Brendon on the couch, and they’re playing to each other, singing to each other, and yes, it is Tiny Dancer, and yes, it does sound inexplicably gorgeous.

Swallowing down a wave of bile and nausea, Ryan abandons his coffee and flees.

Greta isn’t broken-hearted. Greta is a professional. Really, she is.

Just, there’s maybe this very, very small problem where, no matter how happy she is for Gerard—and she is happy for him, she can’t not be happy when someone she loves is happy—she can’t look Frank in the eyes.

It’s not his fault at all, really. He hasn’t said a word to her about what happened between her and Gerard, hasn’t been any different towards her at all. Not that they were ever that close—Greta is a part of the band, yes, and she hangs out before and after practice, before and after shows, but she has her own life, too, her own friends to go home to, and there’s always been the divide of Gerard between her and Frank.

And the thing is, what happened with Greta or not, she’s known, from the minute she saw Gerard look at him, that it was always going to be Gerard and Frank. And even knowing that, she tried. And she looks at Frank and can’t feel anything other than guilty, guilty for stealing moments that should have been his, touches and smiles and sounds that should have belonged to him, and even if he doesn’t hold them against her, well.

Greta was raised better than to take things that aren’t hers, and the part of her that speaks with her grandmother’s voice says, over and over, You should be ashamed of yourself, young lady.

So she avoids Frank’s eyes, because no matter how much she needs this, no matter how much the music means to her, she is ashamed of herself, young lady.

Kevin has never had sex. Kevin has kissed two girls, both in high school, and one boy, who tried to get handsy on their first date, so Kevin didn’t talk to him again. Kevin also doesn’t touch himself often. His parents were pretty firm about it being wrong, and he maybe doesn’t actually believe them anymore, but he just never really got into the habit.

However, he’s been sharing a bed with Mike for like a month now, and there are levels of frustration that no man is meant to experience.

Kevin decides to take matters into his own hands in the shower, because there’s no reason Mike would come into the bathroom, since he’s not nearly solid enough yet that bathroom things are necessary. Mike, however, is a regular flouter of logical behavior, and after Kevin has been in the shower for nearly twice the normal amount of time, he drifts through the door.

Kevin freezes, hand still around his dick, and says, voice kind of stupidly high, “What are you doing in here?”

Mike shrugs. “You were taking longer than usual.” Kevin can’t even pretend that Mike is looking at his face.

He can’t really make himself move, though, and Mike’s not freaking out, not covering his eyes and leaving the room yelling about how gross Kevin is. So Kevin bites his lip, leans back against the tiled shower wall, and tightens his fist around himself, sliding his hand down and up again.

Mike’s eyes flick up to his face, and Kevin meets them, dead-on, as he jerks himself again. The feeling of Mike watching, of him seeing Kevin like this—Kevin whimpers, just a little, and thrusts involuntarily up into his fist.

Mike’s eyes darken, and his tongue flickers out over his lower lip. He leans back on the sink, floating a half inch above the countertop, and settles back on his hands. Kevin’s hand has stilled while he watches Mike move, but Mike looks at him, eyes hooded, and says, “Don’t stop on my account.”

Kevin doesn’t.

The silence rings in the room.

“What?” Mikey finally asks, hand tight around the neck of his bass.

Greta ducks her head, hunches her shoulders, and mumbles again, “I think I maybe need to leave the band for a little while.”

Gerard is looking at her with wounded eyes, and Mikey’s hands are white knuckled. Even Bob is frowning, hands jammed into the pockets of his hoodie.

It’s Frank, though, that says into the very, very loud silence, “You can’t.”

She bites her lip, tastes iron on her tongue, and says, numb, “I have to.”

“Greta.” He yanks his guitar strap over his head, hands the instrument to Gerard, who takes it without blinking. He kneels down in front of where she’s sitting on the couch, gets down on his knees and puts his hands on her knees, tattoos garish over the floral print, and says, “Greta, look at me.“

She shakes her head, squinching her eyes shut and clenching her hands into fists. “I can’t—I can’t do this,” she chokes out, mortified by the way her voice cracks. “I can’t be here.”

He tips her chin up with one hand and says, so gently, like he knows, knows exactly everything she’s thinking, “Greta. We all want you here.”

Her breath catches a little, tripping over the word want. “No, no, Frank. I took—“ and then it’s all pouring out of her, all spilling out over her tongue, leaden and broken and miserably sorry.

“No,” he says, interrupting her, voice firm. “No, Greta.” His hand tightens on her jaw, and when she opens her eyes, he’s biting at his lip ring, eyes glinting amber and determined and maybe a little sad. “No,” he says again, and then he’s wrapped around her, arms squeezing tight in the most ridiculous, awkward, sincere hug Greta has ever been given in her life, and he murmurs into her hair, “I want you here.”

Greta gives in, gives in and hugs back. When Frank finally lets go, he’s smiling a very small smile, and Greta lets herself, cautiously, feel forgiven.

"So," Ryan says quietly, head on Jon's chest, two days after the Tiny Dancer incident, "I'm thinking that maybe I kind of need to get away for a while."

Jon doesn't freak out, but his arm tightens around Ryan just a little, barely enough to notice. "Away-- from me?"

"What? No." Ryan shakes his head, burrowing into Jon's side. Jon always smells like clean things, like laundry detergent and sunshine and soft mornings. "No, like, from myself."

Jon smoothes a hand down Ryan's back, tucking his thumb into the waistband of Ryan's boxers. "I think I get that."

Ryan relaxes a little, lets out the breath he'd been holding. "I thought, you know, like. Maybe I'd take my car and just... get away for a week or two."

"Is this because of Butch and Chiz?" Jon asks softly.

"No," Ryan says automatically, except that of course, of course it's about Butch and Chiz. He sighs windily, tracing a finger in nonsense patterns over Jon's stomach. "But kind of yes."

"Ryan," Jon says, in that tone that means, I'm here if you want to tell me, but you don't actually have to tell me.

"Just," Ryan says, gnawing his lip a little, "I feel like. Like I started this band, you know? But everyone in it is so much better at everything than I am."

"Ry--" Jon starts, trying to be reassuring, but Ryan isn't really done yet.

"Wait, okay? I just-- I don't feel like there's room for me, you know? Like, I'm this decent guitarist, and I write okay lyrics, but I'm not." He feels his eyes stinging, and tries not to cry, because this is ridiculous, he shouldn't be crying, that's moronic, but. "I don't have Brendon's voice, and Butch and Chiz are both so much better than I am at guitar, and now Brendon can actually, you know, touch things, and he can play every instrument known to man a hundred times better than I can even play one, and--"

"Ryan, " Jon says, cutting him off with a hand over his mouth. "Enough." He's rubbing small circles into the small of Ryan's back, and it's soothing, kind of, except that Ryan is so full of frustration and annoyance at everything and himself that he wants to crawl out of his skin. "You're more than a decent guitarist, you write lyrics that have intrigued literally thousands of people." He presses a kiss to Ryan's temple and continues, "But I understand that you don't get that, that it isn't—I don’t know, integrated into the way you see yourself, and that's okay. If you need to get away from things for a little while so you can see yourself better, I'm totally behind you." Another kiss, like punctuation. "But don't try to convince me that you're not a completely awesome musician, because it's not going to fucking happen." His arm tightens around Ryan so much that it almost hurts, and Ryan takes more than a little comfort in the pressure.

"I love you, you know," he murmurs into Jon's chest, feeling himself go a little red from just saying it like that.

Jon's tight grip goes even tighter, and he wraps his other arm around Ryan, too. "You had better, Ryan Ross," he whispers fiercely into Ryan's hair, "Because I am so in love with you it hurts sometimes, and if that was just me, I'd feel a little bit stupid."

Ryan laughs wetly against Jon's skin. "If you're stupid, Jon Walker, that will never be why."

“Hi,” the guy says when Greta opens the door of Gerard and Mikey’s (and really, basically the band-in-general’s) house. He’s tall, with muscled arms and very, very large hair.

“Hi,” she says back, biting her lip and trying not to laugh at the way the Chicago wind tugs at his not-quite-afro. “I’m Greta. Can I help you?”

He smiles at her, this wide, open curve of lips, and he’s offering her a very large hand to shake. She takes it, feeling thick calluses not unlike those on Frank and Mikey’s hands. “I’m Ray,” he says slowly, smile growing as he looks intently at her face. “Ray Toro.”

“Um,” she says, feeling her face heat up inexplicably, and, releasing his hand, she adds, “What can I do for you, Ray Toro?”

His smile breaks out into a full-blown grin, and Greta feels strangely unbalanced, like she’s suddenly trying to run in six-inch stiletto heels without any warning at all. Greta has never been very good at even walking in heels like that. “I was looking for Gerard, actually,” he says, suddenly looking almost apologetic. “He was my roommate in college, and—“

And, as if on cue, Gerard bounces up behind Greta and says, “Torosaurus, get your ass inside and stop harassing my little lady.”

Greta’s heart maybe clenches at the phrase, but it’s sort of true, in a weird way, anyways. Ray’s smile evaporates, though, as soon as Gerard says my, and Greta’s heart folds the rest of the way in on itself when she realizes, Oh, he wants Gerard.

It’s stupid, totally idiotic, because Greta’s known him less than five minutes, and doesn’t know a thing about him at all, but. But of course he wants Gerard—Greta can’t blame him, Greta wanted, sometimes still wants, Gerard. Gerard is the most brilliant, awe-inspiring man she’s ever met in her life, she can’t blame anyone for wanting him.

She has to swallow back a strange sense of disappointment, anyway.

Ryan comes back two months after he leaves, returning with an entirely different-- but still a total piece of shit-- car, a banjo, a patchy beard, and a chicken.

"Butch Walker," he says, kicking open the door to the music room, Boniface the rooster tucked under his arm, "I challenge you to a banjo battle."

Brendon and Chiz blink up at him from the floor, where they're playing UNO, completely alone. "Well, that's awesome," Chiz says, "But it would kind of help if he was here."

Ryan deflates a little. "Why isn't he here?" He's driven like ten million miles across deserts and forests and farms and battled like three dozen old men with banjos and he's totally ready, he's going to win back his honor and his band, and Butch Walker isn't even here. “Dick.”

"He's not a dick," Brendon says, frowning, "He's awesome, you've just, like, decided that he's your imaginary arch nemesis or whatever, I don't even know."

Chiz sniggers. "No, man, he’s totally a dick, you don’t even—oh, hey, you're holding a chicken," he says, flicking his hair out of his eyes like his hair being in front of them would somehow have made him imagine the chicken in Ryan's arms.

"Yeah," Brendon says, cocking an eyebrow, "I was gonna ask about that. Is it a metaphor?"

Ryan scowls at them both, because he's here for a reason, and they're both totally unhelpful and douches. "If you tell the band about my chicken, I will kill you both with my hands," he threatens. “Even if one of you is already technically dead.”

They both completely ignore him, of course.

"Would it be a metaphor for being a chicken, or for liking cock?" Chiz muses as Ryan stomps out of the room.

“Well, maybe both,” Brendon says, humming a little.

Ryan firmly believes that everyone sucks.

The thing is, Greta knows that Ray is hanging around for Gerard. She knows this, but as she watches him talk, watches him play when he sits in on practices—“Ray was the best guitarist I knew in college, but then he moved to the Midwest like a jackass, ” Gerard tells everyone, practically vibrating with enthusiasm—watches him smile and bend over his guitar and pull sounds out of it that she’s never seen even Frank manage, well.

She knows he’s here for Gerard, but she’s kind of stupid for his big hair and big hands and big smile. So whenever he plays, she sits beside him to play, too, and sings like she wants him to hear it, smiles at him like she always wished Gerard would smile at her—smiles like Ray is the only one in the room. She tries, tries with every bit of her that’s left, and savors every smile, every glance, every laugh she gets in return, however small.

This, she promises herself, will be her last foolish try at throwing herself at a boy who wants another boy more than he wants her, but. But she can’t not try, because, well, maybe Gerard was smart enough to go for what he really wanted, but if Gerard is what Ray wants, Ray is out of luck, because Gerard has what he wants, so maybe, maybe somehow, Greta has a very, very small chance.

“No,” Ryan says plaintively into the phone, “no, okay, it’s terrible.”

Gerard hmmms and Ryan can hear him nodding. “And…how is it terrible again?”

Ryan didn’t actually know who else to call, but Gerard was possibly a very bad choice, considering his total inability to pay attention to anything other than music or his tiny Italian guitarist for longer than five seconds. “Because I journeyed through wind and snow and Southern people, Way, and I battled every single banjo-playing old man I came across, alright, just so I could win back—“

“Wait. Wait, if it was Southern people, that means you went South, and it’s like, April, there’s no way there was snow—“

Ryan huffs. “That is really not the point. The point is, I went through hell, alright, I got a chicken, so I could win back—“

“Wait,” Gerard says again, and Ryan kind of wants to choke him, “wait, what the hell does a chicken have to do with—“

“Boniface is my truest friend,” Ryan snaps, at the end of his rope. “Boniface listens to me when I am trying to tell him how I experienced horrible, horrible things so I could win back—“

“Wait—“

“So I could win back the honor of my band, ” Ryan steamrollers over Gerard, because if he hears wait one more time, he might just snap and kill everyone.

“Wait,” Gerard says again.

Ryan snaps his phone shut and screams into his hands.

It’s not actually as cathartic as he feels like it should be, so he flops onto his stomach on the floor and complains to Boniface about how completely useless all of his friends are.

It’s after practice on a Tuesday, and Frank and Bob have already left, and Gerard and Mikey have wandered into the kitchen to scrape together something resembling dinner. It’s just Ray and Greta left, sitting on the beaten-up couch in the garage, and Greta gathers up what courage she has.

He’s studying her face, like he’s waiting for her to say something, like he knows what she’s about to do.

She does it, anyways.

She slips her hand into his, squeezes gently. “I know I’m not him,” she starts, and her voice is small, is sad, she can hear it even as it leaves her mouth. She’d regret that, but she’s not going to deny that playing second fiddle to boys—no matter how amazing they are—is kind of depressing.

Ray’s big palm is warm against hers when he tangles his fingers through hers and squeezes back. His smile is broad and honest when he looks at her and says, “I wouldn’t want you to be.”

She swallows past the lump in her throat. “Look, no, okay, I get it, he’s—he’s really something, and I can’t—I can’t blame you, he’s very—very inspiring and, and amazing, and. And he’s—I understand.”

He tucks a curl behind her ear and leans in, pressing his forehead to hers. “I really don’t think you do,” he says gently. He smoothes his thumb over her lower lip, back and forth, and the skin tingles in its wake. His eyes are staring into Greta’s seriously enough that she’s uncomfortable, enough that she feels a blush start up in her cheeks.

“Ray,” she starts, tongue darting out to wet her lip before she remembers that his finger is there.

His breath hitches for a second, eyes flicking from her eyes to her mouth and back again in an instant. She does it again, drags her tongue over the pad of his thumb, reveling in the reaction, the immediate, undeniable tremor of actual want. “I really don’t think you do,” he breathes again, an inch away from her mouth. Greta can taste the words, sweet and solid against the tip of her tongue.

She sucks in a breath, steels herself, makes herself say, “Maybe you can explain it to me.”

He closes the gap, capturing her lower lip between his teeth, running his tongue over it until Greta whimpers. His hands gently cage her jaw, tilting her face up to his, and Ray parts his lips, angles his head a little more, and does his best to explain.

Greta melts against him, tries her hardest to let herself listen.

The day after Ryan comes home, Butch comes over for what Brendon calls him up and says, laughing hysterically, “is a totally important emergency band meeting, guys, seriously.”

Butch is, admittedly, a little suspicious, because they haven’t been writing a lot while Ryan’s been gone, and the next tour doesn’t start for another month and a half, so there’s really very little that an emergency band meeting could be about, unless Jon has finally cracked from the strain of being Ryan-less. Which, okay, is possible, yes.

When Butch pushes open the door to the house—technically, Ryan and Brendon’s house, yes, but it’s become just the house at this point, because Spencer and Jon live there, now, too, and Butch and Chiz are there more days than they aren’t—he’s met with the strains of the most well-tuned banjo he’s ever heard.

Furrowing his brow, he follows the sound to the music room, where he finds Ryan, back to the door, strumming a very shiny red banjo. Brendon, Spencer, Jon, and Chiz are all huddled together on one couch, looking like they’re torn between laughter and tears.

“Butch Walker,” Ryan says, very seriously, still plucking random, elegant notes out of the gorgeous, mouth-wateringly beautiful banjo, “I challenge you to a banjo battle.”

Butch feels the grin creep over his face, curling his mouth until his mustache twists up at the corners. He doesn’t hesitate, just plucks his favorite banjo, Rosie, from her stand and tugs the strap over his shoulders. Strumming once, he tips his head to Ryan’s back and says, “Your move, Ross.”

Ryan turns around, looks him in the eyes with the most absurdly fierce expression Butch has ever seen him wear. Licking his lips, he starts to play—violent and fast, but so, so very well. He picks out the most stupidly beautiful challenge Butch has ever heard.

It’s so achingly awesome that Butch can’t fight back.

Instead, he plays along.

About five minutes into Butch and Ryan’s Epic Banjo Battle, Brendon has the sense to yank out his phone and start recording it, because it’s not actually a battle at all.

It’s Ryan throwing out increasingly more complex challenges, and Butch answering them with echoing harmonies. It’s Ryan screaming out his total frustration the same way he tells Jon he loves him, and Butch answering back with a refusal to give into the challenge, a refusal to do anything but back Ryan up, to do anything but support him while he takes the lead.

When Butch finally responds to Ryan’s latest vicious riff, it’s with a flourish and then silence.

He takes off the strap of his banjo and sets it back down on its stand. Straightening, he claps a stunned-looking Ryan on the shoulder and says, “You did good, Ross. You do your band and your banjo proud.”
And then Butch smacks him on the ass.

Ryan squawks, hands white-knuckled on his cherry red banjo. “What the fuck?”

Brendon quickly saves the entire sound file on his phone as The Battle Hymn of Butch Walker and then turns and buries his face in Jon’s shoulder and laughs so hard tears run down his face.

Several hours after the banjo battle, after they’ve all had way, way too many beers and smoked far, far too much pot, Jon takes Ryan’s hand firmly, says, “Goodnight, guys,” without looking away from Ryan’s face.

Ryan swallows, feels Jon watching the movement of his throat, and says hoarsely, “Yeah, night, guys.”

Ryan’s bedroom is foreign to him, a half-remembered thing, and at the same time, his bones chime with an echo of home the second Jon closes the door.

“The last time we were in that bed,” Jon murmurs against the sensitive skin below Ryan’s ear, sending pleasant chills all the way down Ryan’s spine “you were more afraid than I’ve ever seen you.” He pulls back, hands caging Ryan’s face, and looks him in the eyes, searching.

Ryan meets his gaze, and, without a trace of untruth, says, “I’m not afraid now.”

Jon’s eyes crinkle with the force of his smile. He slides his hands into the back pockets of Ryan’s jeans, tugs him in close. Against Ryan’s lips, he whispers, “Don’t leave me again, yeah?”

Ryan nudges Jon’s nose with his. “I didn’t feel like I belonged, then,” he says softly, apologetically.
Jon’s hands squeeze, fierce and possessive, and his voice is rough when he says, “You always belong with me.”

“I know.” Ryan laughs a little, a broken, giddy sound, and presses a kiss into the side of Jon’s throat. “I know that, now.”

Jon leads him to the bed, pulls Ryan down beside him, and shows him, slowly and thoroughly and repeatedly, exactly how much he belongs.

Ryan, arching, gasping, trembling in the wake of every touch, every kiss, can’t remember why he ever thought he needed anything more than this.

Greta curls into Ray’s side in the cracked vinyl booth, their fingers tangled together. “What movie are we seeing?” she asks, taking a small sip of their strawberry milkshake. It’s just one afternoon like a dozen others, spent with fries and a milkshake between them at Sally’s Diner while they decide what they’re going to do with their evening. She feels strangely, blissfully, at home.

He grins down at her, feeds her a French fry, and for a second, just a second, Greta feels like her life is a movie. “I was torn,” he says, laughing a little when it takes her two bites to finish the fry, “between Zombie Attack Seven and My Little Pony: Adventure into Dreamland. ”

“Ooh,” Greta says, swiping a fry through the milkshake and feeding it to him in turn, “both. Absolutely both.”

He presses a kiss to her temple, lips cool from the shake, and says, “You’re a woman after my own heart, Salpeter.”

Dimpling at him, she says mock-sternly, “I had better be, if I’m letting you do nefarious things like feed me fattening fried foods.”

He wraps an arm around her and pulls her tight to his side. Into her hair, he says, “You could use the fattening up.”

Greta really couldn’t, she knows what her thighs look like, but with Ray’s arm around her, she feels small, dainty, impossibly elegant. “Well then,” she says, gesturing at the fries, “feed me, mister, before you subject me to pastel horses and gore.”

Laughing, eyes crinkled and bright, he does exactly that.

"So, I'm thinking we should have, like, a bus pet," Ryan says randomly at breakfast the first morning after the banjo battle, while Jon is still asleep.

Spencer is instantly suspicious. Ryan likes animals, loves them, even, but he hates having to take care of them. Hates it with a fiery, burning passion. Mostly because he forgot to feed his fish when he was twelve, and it died, and he's been really bitter about it ever since. "Why the hell would we need a bus pet? Jon already has, like, four thousand cats. We could just bring one of them."

Ryan fidgets a little, curled up in the corner of the couch with his bowl of fancy cereal balanced precariously on his knees. "I wasn't thinking a cat. I was thinking more like... a chicken."

"A chicken." Spencer squints at him. "Have you lost your mind? Did you go to the desert and do peyote with Gabe and go completely insane?"

Ryan fidgets a little more, hiding a little behind Jon. "Really, it wouldn't be a bad idea," he insists. "Chickens are, like, symbols of, uh--"

"Cock," Butch interjects, sitting on the floor at Spencer's feet. "Chickens are symbols of cock, which I am totally down with, because this is possibly the least heterosexual band I have ever seen."

Ryan pouts. "I don't see why you would say that."

Butch raises an eyebrow. "We're all wearing makeup, girl pants, and we all like to fuck other dudes. So, yeah, a little bit gay, there, Ross." He doesn’t look at Chiz, who is bright red and not saying anything at all.

Ryan huffs. "Not the point here. The point is, chicken."

Spencer shakes his head. Chickens are disgusting. He totally visited a farm once, he has seen the horror. "No way, Ry."

Ryan winces. "See, okay, that's where you should have said, Sure, Ry, that's an excellent idea, because I kind of already got us one."

Spencer rubs his temples and breathes, counting to ten, because otherwise his head might just implode out of his sheer desire to beat Ryan to death with his own guitar.

They’re tangled together on the couch in Greta’s apartment after their most recent date—to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Alice in Wonderland in the same tiny hipster theater—and Ray’s breath is hot against her ear, hands tight on her hips, when he murmurs, “Fuck, Greta, I want—“

He grinds up, and she can feel him, hard against her. “God, fuck, please,” and it’s babbling, it’s just make-out babbling, she knows it, but there’s a rough undercurrent, a thrum of what the imaginative part of Greta’s brain paints as want. Maybe, maybe, if she lets that part of her brain run wild, maybe it’s want for her, for all of her, not just the musical parts or the comforting parts or the sweet parts, but all of the pieces nobody’s ever really wanted before.

Because it’s Ray, because Ray has done nothing but surprise her with his sincerity, his honesty, she lets that part of her brain run wild, lets herself trust.

When she stands up, climbing off his lap, he’s immediately blushing, apologizing, “Greta, I didn’t—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push, seriously, I was just—it just came ou—holy shit.”

Greta steps the rest of the way out of her underwear, leaving them pooled on the floor. She bites her lip, looking up at him through her hair and absorbing the reaction. He’s wide eyed and breathless, pupils completely blown.

When she reaches out, thumbs his button open, drags his zipper down, he bites off a groan and arches up, eyes slipping shut. He lifts his hips to help her get his jeans and boxers down his thighs, hands actually shaking when he helps her straddle his lap.

He sobs when she guides him into her, and his hands clench desperately in the fabric of her dress, holding her to him. “Greta,” he breathes, “fuck, Greta. ” There’s something in his voice, something gorgeously close to actual awe, and she feels her skin spangle under his hands.

She keeps her eyes locked with his when she rises up, sinks back down, again, again. His breathing is harsh, shallow, and Greta’s not sure she’s breathing at all anymore.

When his hand slips under her dress, dragging fingertips through the bronze curls and rubbing a thumb over her clit, she doesn’t care if she’s breathing. Lightning glitters in her legs, her spine, and when she comes, trembling and fucking babbling his name, Ray is only moments behind. He groans, pressing deep and clutching her tightly against him, panting roughly into her neck.

She blinks at him, eyes wet and wide, and he blinks back. He circles her clit again, and her whole body jerks against him, a sparkling aftershock thundering through her nerves.

“Yeah?” he asks, grin stupidly huge.

She presses her mouth to his, just to taste it. “Yeah.” She’s pretty sure he can taste her smile, too.

"So, guys, this is Boniface."

"What," Spencer cracks, a little hysterical, "We don't even get to name our unwanted bus chicken?"

Brendon pats him consolingly on the shoulder. "It's okay," he whispers to Spencer, "When Ryan's not around, we'll just call him The Colonel."

Butch sniggers. "Finger-lickin' good."

Spencer eyes the scraggly rooster nestled in Ryan's arms. "So, I'm putting on the record that this is a terrible idea."

Ryan scowls. "Shut the fuck up, you're totally making Boni feel unwelcome."

Butch cracks up at that, burying his face in Chiz's shoulder and laughing until he cries. It's only because Spencer is strong, okay, totally stoic and a man, that he doesn't join in.

Kevin wakes up to a low groan and blinks blearily at Mike, whose cock is out of the slit in his boxers and in his hand.

Mike meets his eyes and doesn’t slow the pace of his hand, just licks his lips and watches Kevin watch him.

Kevin’s hand darts out of its own volition, tracing the cords of muscle standing out on Mike’s arm. He can feel them, now, actually feel them raised up from the rest of Mike’s skin. He traces them down to where they wrap around the bones of his wrist, and he lightly skims his fingers over Mike’s fist, down onto the taut skin of his hip. “Could you maybe work on getting solid a little faster, so I can lose my virginity already?” Kevin murmurs, and he’s mostly teasing, just being a pain in the neck, but Mike’s eyes widen just a little, and then he just stills completely. Kevin opens his mouth to ask what’s wrong, but then Mike’s hand slides off his dick to cover Kevin’s where it’s resting on his hip.

“Seriously?” Mike hisses, fingers tightening over Kevin’s, and the fact that they don’t just fizzle through is almost a shock. “You can’t just—fuck, you can’t just say things like that.”

It takes Kevin a second to realize that it turned Mike on. “You didn’t know?” He nods his head towards the ring finger on the hand Mike is holding, towards the narrow silver band.

“I thought you’d been married,” Mike snaps, jerking back like Kevin’s skin is burning him. He starts to tuck himself back into his boxers, but stills when Kevin puts a hand on his arm to stop him.

Kevin shakes his head numbly, says, “I’ve been kissed exactly three times,” and, “I’ve never actually wanted—that, before,” and, “Can you not run away, please?”

Mike huffs, but doesn’t scoot any further away. He says, “Kid, I—“ but cuts himself off with a startled hiss through his teeth when Kevin’s hand wraps around him.

Kevin does his best to remember what Spencer and Brendon told him, about focusing on Mike being real, but it’s hard when all he can focus on is Mike, all his hard lines and sharp edges. Kevin licks his lip, clears his throat a little before he can make it work enough to say, “If I do it wrong, you have to tell me.”

He does it like he does it to himself, but maybe a little slower, a little harder, making sure Mike can feel it. Based on the way Mike is panting and jerking forward into Kevin’s fist, he’s pretty sure Mike can feel it just fine.

Mike doesn’t make a sound when Kevin leans forward to lick a shining drop of precome off the tip of Mike’s dick, he just goes absolutely still. Kevin kind of likes the taste, so he ignores Mike’s stillness entirely and licks at him again.

“Kid,” Mike says, voice tight, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Kevin rubs his thumb over the big vein on the underside of Mike’s dick and then follows his finger with his tongue. “I’m trying things,” Kevin says, trailing a light finger through the dark curls at the base of Mike’s dick, over the soft skin of his balls. “I can stop if you want.” He curls his tongue over the head of Mike’s dick, then sucks it into his mouth.

A groan slips out of Mike’s mouth, and he says, “No, fuck, stopping is bad.”

Kevin hums around him in agreement and takes note of the accompanying whimper.

The tour creeps up on them faster than they expect, and before he knows it, Ryan is stepping out onto a stage in front of an ocean of people, screaming for him, for them.

He listens to Brendon greet the crowd, watches as he taunts them with shakes of his hips and tosses of his head and flutters of his lashes.

He watches Spencer keep his eyes on Brendon, watches him smile at the taunts, watches him glow with the knowledge that no matter how much Brendon teases the crowd, Spencer is the only one who gets to have him.

He watches Butch waggle his eyebrows at Brendon, smirking out over the crowd when Brendon says something particularly leading, watches his eyes dart, now and again, to where Chiz is hiding behind his guitar.

He watches Chiz’s eyes flick up, each time, just a beat behind when Butch looks away, watches the way he shuffles closer when he gets lost in the song, when he forgets that that isn’t what he means to do, really, at all.

Last, he turns and watches Jon. Jon’s hands stroke over his bass, the muscle over the bones of the song, hands moving surely, steadily, while his eyes never leave Ryan’s face, not once.

Ryan feels himself fall away, blissfully, into that soft, focused intent, the thrum of the bass as Jon plays to him. He doesn’t feel afraid at all when he slips the guitar off and pulls the banjo strap around his shoulders, starts to play the intro to Folkin’ Around.

When Brendon’s voice pauses between verses, Ryan strums out a friendly challenge, and without missing a beat, Butch’s banjolin—not his banjo, he doesn’t take that out until later, but the banjolin is good enough—answers the challenge, playful and in perfect harmony.

There’s no hesitancy in Ryan’s fingers while they improvise, throwing new things back and forth until they naturally segue back into the normal rhythm of the song and let Brendon’s voice slide back in.
When Ryan turns back to Jon, he’s still watching, and there’s something shining in his eyes that might be laughter, might just be pride.

It warms all the once-scared parts of Ryan, gives him the courage to open his mouth and twine his voice with Brendon’s for the closing lines of the song.

When the song cuts off, the crowd roars, and for the first time in a long, long time, Ryan feels like he can own some of that joy, some of that sheer tide of praise, as his.

Looking around at his band, all sweaty, grinning faces, Ryan doesn’t even once feel like they’re begrudging him that right.

After the show, Chiz is still high on adrenaline, skin still buzzing with the strains of the last chords of the last song. He wants to savor it, wants to bask in the glow of a show where everyone is actually doing everything amazingly, he really, truly does, but.

But Butch is still bouncing around the otherwise-empty green room, strumming tunelessly on his banjo—Rosie, Cracklin’ Rosie, and Chiz wishes he didn’t know that—and it’s irritating the hell out of him.

He just wants quiet, just wants to enjoy something going right, just for five minutes, and all Butch can do is strum, over and over, pointless and endless and maddening.

Chiz maybe snaps a little.

“Butch, put down the fucking banjo for five seconds and—“

“Stop telling me what to do, asshole.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“You’re retarded.” Butch yanks the banjo off, striding forward to poke Chiz in the chest. Butch is a dick.

“Your mother is retarded.”

“Your mother is retarded and has syphilis. ”

“Your mother’s syphilis is retarded. And so is the horse she rode in on.”

“Well,” Butch says, glaring into Chiz’s eyes like a challenge, “your mother’s horse had syphilis. Because she fucked it. Because it was better looking than your father, who had fucking gonorrhea and the plague. ”

Chiz can’t help it—he slams Butch back, hard, against the wall, and when he bounces back, Chiz kisses him as violently as he can.

Butch doesn’t even do him the kindness of being startled; he just grabs the collar of Chiz’s shirt, hauls him closer, and gives back as good as he gets.

Chiz doesn’t really mind; it’s basically the same thing they’ve been doing for years.

Kevin is fairly certain that Mike is only still incorporeal out of stubbornness, so he decides to taunt him until he stops being stupid.

This is how Kevin ends up naked, laying on his back on his bed, with a pillow under his hips and a bottle of lube beside him. He doesn’t really let himself think about it, just pours some of the lube out over his hand and lays back, trailing his fingers over his balls and back, circling the tight ring of muscle. He presses a finger in, lifting his hips up so he can reach better. It doesn’t feel bad, exactly—it doesn’t feel good, but Kevin thinks he can probably handle it. He slides his finger out, then back in, twisting it a little to stretch himself. One knuckle brushes something inside of him, and he has to blink fiercely to see past the sudden sparks in his eyes.

Slowly, he rubs his finger over that spot again.

When he can see through the white spots dancing in his vision, Mike is standing in the doorway, looking like he’s just been hit by a train.

“What the fuck?” he asks, eyes wide.

Kevin tilts his chin defiantly and adds another finger. His hips arch off the bed when both fingertips brush that spot, and maybe some of his defiant gesture gets lost in the desperate sound he makes, but he’s not sure. “I’m, uh,” he pants, twisting his fingers until it happens again, god, “I’m waiting for you.”

Mike makes a strangled sound. “I’m not—fuck, I can’t do anything, I can barely even touch things—“

Kevin whines, low in his throat, and scissors his fingers, stretching himself wide enough that he can add a third. “You—god, Mike —you could if you wanted, if you—if you tried.” He clenches his eyes shut and presses against that spot inside of him, and this time, the white that floods his eyes makes him moan. His legs are shaking.

“You don’t know that,” Mike says, and he’s a lot closer—Kevin opens his eyes to find him standing by the bed, hands clenched into fists. “Fuck, you can’t know that.”

Kevin shakes his head. “I do know,” he says, and it’s soft, it’s not an argument, just true. “If you don’t—Mike, if you don’t want me, okay, that’s different, but you can, I can feel it.” He doesn’t wait for Mike to answer, just closes his eyes and pushes his fingers deeper, stretches them wider, curls them until stars blink through the blackness under his lids.

A rough, callused finger runs over Kevin’s knee. It trails down his thigh, between his legs, and presses in beside Kevin’s own, twisting up to run familiarly over that spot.

Kevin arches off the bed and comes right then, gasping.

Mike climbs onto the bed, settling between Kevin’s legs and stretching out over him. His jeans are rough where they press against Kevin’s thighs, and his t-shirt sticks to the pool of come on Kevin’s stomach. “I didn’t even have to touch your dick,” he says wonderingly, hand skimming over the mess between them. “You just—“ He swipes a finger through it and brings it to his mouth, tongue darting out to taste it.

“You—“ Kevin starts to say, and he means to say you touching me at all was kind of more than enough, but then Mike’s mouth is on his, tongue sweeping over his lips, inside, and Kevin has to fight to breathe through the rush of yesthiswantyes. He presses close, dragging his hands over Mike’s sides—completely solid, firm under his hands—and down, over his hips. Kevin tucks his hands into the back pockets of Mike’s jeans and squeezes, swallowing the noise Mike makes in response.

“Want you,” Kevin murmurs against the skin below Mike’s ear.

A tremor runs through Mike’s entire body, and he angles his hips to Kevin’s, grinding against him.

“Yeah?” he asks, voice almost a growl. His dick rubs against Kevin’s, the fabric of Mike’s boxers sliding between them.

“Yeah,” Kevin says, hooking his fingers through the elastic of the boxers and dragging it down. “What, you thought I was just stretching myself open for some other guy?”

Mike’s teeth sink into the meat of Kevin’s shoulder. “Don’t even fucking joke, kid,” he says, but there’s a vein of laughter in his voice, and his tongue soothes over the bite. Kevin reaches down to try to guide Mike into him, but Mike bats his hand away. “Let me,” he chides, shaking his head.

Kevin obligingly raises his hands to where Mike can see them. “All yours.”

Mike’s eyes darken, and he nudges at Kevin’s neck with his nose, hiding what Kevin thinks might be a smile. He reaches one hand down between them, between Kevin’s legs, and slides two fingers into Kevin without preamble, scissoring them and stretching him wide. “Are you?” he asks, and there’s maybe something of a real question in it, so Kevin presses a kiss to Mike’s temple even as flashes go off behind his eyes, and says,

“For as long as you want me.”

Mike doesn’t answer immediately, just slides his hands up the backs of Kevin’s legs, pressing back gently, so they’re bent to Kevin’s chest. He squeezes them once, a reminder to keep them there, and then reaches for the lube, slicking himself up. He leans over Kevin, bracing himself with one arm, using the other hand to guide himself to Kevin’s entrance. He murmurs, low and barely audible, into the curve of Kevin’s collarbone, “So pretty much always, then.”

Kevin smoothes a lock of Mike’s hair away from his face, tucks it behind his ear. Mike’s eyes are bright, now—brighter than Kevin had thought they would be. The skin of his jaw is raspy with stubble under Kevin’s fingertips, and the skin of his lips is just a little bit chapped. Kevin is sort of surprised by how ridiculously in love he is. “Always,” Kevin confirms, hooking his legs around Mike’s back and using them to tug him closer.

Mike slides into him, pressing deep. The stretch is more than Kevin expected, but it doesn’t hurt, really, it’s just, yknow, big. Mike slips out and pushes back in, harder this time, and he’s at just the right angle that he hits that spot, and Kevin lets out a noise that’s almost inhuman. “That’s it,” Mike whispers, breathing harshly against the sweat-damp skin of Kevin’s throat. “Come on.” He thrusts again, sharp and fast, angling himself so he hits that place with each press inward. It feels so good that Kevin could cry.

Kevin’s orgasm happens unexpectedly—there’s no slow build up, Mike just suddenly hits that spot harder than before, and then there’s a rush of white and a dull roaring noise, and when Kevin can see again, he has to blink away the sparks.

“Fuck,” Mike says, looking down at him. “You—“ He starts to pull out.

Kevin tightens his legs around him, not letting him move. “You didn’t finish,” he says softly, sounding far away to his own ears. He feels raw and open and fantastic, and he’s pretty sure that if Mike goes anywhere, that’s going to be ruined.

Mike swallows loudly and presses back in. The motion makes Kevin’s nerves jangle, but not in a bad way, really. He just feels it more acutely, more clearly, and the pressure of Mike against that place inside of him forces a harsh noise out of Kevin’s throat. “I can finish another way,” Mike offers gently, trying to pull away again.

Kevin shakes his head, locking his ankles together. “Please, ” he says, low and urgent—he doesn’t know how to explain the need for Mike to stay, but Mike seems to get it anyways, because he picks up a shallow, fast rhythm that threatens to turn Kevin inside out, and it’s amazing. “Please,” he gasps again.

Mike kisses him, messy and open-mouthed. He’s panting into Kevin’s mouth, harsh and fast, and Kevin tugs on his lower lip with his teeth, biting down just a little. Mike’s hips jerk erratically and then he’s pressing deep and holding himself there as he comes. It’s warm and thick and Kevin can feel it distinctly, filling him up. When Mike moves to slide out this time, Kevin lets him, but doesn’t let him get far.

“You okay?” Kevin asks him as his eyes drift shut. He’s suddenly exhausted. He nestles himself against Mike’s chest, disregarding their general stickiness and deciding to leave it for the morning.

Mike barks out a laugh. “Why are you asking me? You’re the one who hadn’t done it.”

Kevin shrugs, pressing a kiss to Mike’s sternum. “You haven’t been real in like ten years.”

Mike circles Kevin’s shoulders and pulls him in close. “I’ve felt real for months.”

Kevin can’t help his smile, but he hides it in Mike’s chest.

“Yo,” Gerard yells, banging on the door with his fist, beaming from ear to ear. “Ross, Urie! Get your tiny asses out here! I brought you a present!”

Moments later, the door flies open, followed by Brendon launching himself through the doorway and onto Gerard. Gerard stands his ground and manages to only grunt at Brendon’s full, actual, human weight. He’s gotten used to Frank climbing him, maybe. Maybe someday he’ll get man muscles.

Nah.

“What did you bring me?” Brendon asks giggling, legs wrapped around Gerard’s waist. “It has been so long Gerard Way why have you been away so long? ” It’s all one breath, no pause, just intermittent squirming and waves of glee.

Ryan’s hovering in the shadow of the doorway, looking amused and long-suffering. He arches an eyebrow of hello for Gerard, a twitch of his mouth for Gerard’s company. From Ryan, it’s a lot—Gerard hasn’t forgotten how to read him, even if it has been a while.

Gerard carefully—there may be one accidental elbow to Brendon’s sternum, whatever—extricates himself and hooks a thumb behind him, to where Frank and Mikey and Bob and Greta and Ray are standing. “I brought you my band.”

“That’s not a present, ” Brendon scoffs, pouting. “I don’t get to keep them.”

Gerard knocks their hips together. “Fine, I’ve brought something for us to share,” he allows, and fuck, he can’t keep the smile off his face. He’s getting to give something back to Brendon, to Ryan, even—even if it’s just the friends he has in his bandmates, he actually has something, now, something that’s his that he has the ability to share.

Brendon’s pout vanishes, and he bounces up to Ray. “Can I braid your hair?”

Ray grins down at him and leans a little into Greta. “If Miss Salpeter says you’re allowed, you can totally braid my hair.” He sounds like a kindergarten teacher talking to a six year old, but it’s not condescending. For Brendon, especially, Gerard kind of feels like it’s sweet.

Brendon looks hopefully at Greta. “Can I?”

She dimples at him, and Gerard loves her a thousand times over when she says, “Only if you promise to braid mine, too.”

Brendon full-on beams at her. “You’re awesome. ” He rocks back on his heels, looking around at the rest of Gerard’s band. He hugs Mikey—well, tackles, really—and when Bob peels him off, smiling a little indulgently, it turns into a real smile as Brendon wraps himself around Bob, too. “Oh man,” he says from the tangle of MikeyBrendonBob, “oh man, Geeway, your band is soft.” Mikey tries to swat at him, but it’s more of a flail, anyways, and he misses by a mile.

When Brendon is free, he cocks his head and looks at Frank. “Oh,” he says, a less silly look in his eyes, a less childish smile playing around the corner of his mouth. “Oh,” he says again, and, “you have got to be a Frank.”

Frank bites his lip over a grin and tips his head onto Gerard’s shoulder. Gerard wraps an arm around his shoulder, squeezes, feeling the hysterical smile on his face widen a little further. He has a Frank.
“I am, in fact, a Frank,” Frank agrees, nodding. “What gave me away?”

Brendon grins impishly. “The pants. Your paints are painted on and there are shiny things in your face and you’re pretty. ”

Gerard sniggers into Frank’s hair. His Frank is pretty.

Frank bobs his head again. “You do make a good case,” he says.

Brendon nods, extending his hand to shake. Frank squints at it for a second before he launches himself at Brendon, monkey-like.

It’s good, Gerard reflects, as the two of them tumble into the bulwark of Bob, for Brendon to get a taste of his own cuddly menace medicine.

“I like them,” Ryan says quietly from the doorway, smiling a secret sort of smile at Gerard.

Gerard’s smile hasn’t left his face, but he makes it into one just for Ryan. “Yeah,” he says, leaning back on the doorframe to watch Ray and Greta rescue Bob. “Yeah, I do, too.”

“You did good,” Ryan adds, and his smile gets a little wider. “Seriously.”

Gerard thinks his smile might split his face. “We’re nearly done with the album. For the next one, I’m thinking ray guns.”

Ryan laughs, leans over to bump his shoulder against Gerard’s. “Ray guns sound like an excellent plan.”

Brendon and Greta and Frank and Butch immediately start singing show tunes together, and Bob and Mikey and Spencer and Chiz go hide god knows where, and Gerard and Ryan and Ray and Jon all fuck around on their instruments, sort of with the show tunes, sort of competing with them for volume supremacy. Everyone laughs like they’re drunk before anyone’s opened alcohol at all.

Ryan takes a breath and realizes, with the sort of quiet that comes from having done everything you have to do and doing it as well as you can, that everything is right in his world, and he wouldn’t change a fucking thing.

It’s a sort of surprising thing to realize. But he likes it.

Leaning over, he takes Jon’s hand—interrupting his bass playing—and tangles their fingers together.
Jon looks at him, Jon knows, because he’s Jon, he’s Ryan’s Jon, and he grins into Ryan’s eyes, squeezes his hand, says, “I know exactly what you mean.”

“I have a Frank,” Gerard says, a little giddily, as they stumble their way, giggling and tired, to his bedroom late that night. A shiny, pretty Frank. He has one. His.

“More importantly,” Frank says, beaming at him as they cross the threshold, “I have a Gerard.”

Gerard snorts. “That’s definitely not the important part.” Gerard isn’t anything special; he’s a mess, broken in a hundred hidden ways.

Frank pauses, leaning up against the closed door and eyeing Gerard for a long string of moments. A crooked, wry grin works its way over his mouth, gleaming in his eyes like liquid gold. “C’mere,” he says, voice an octave lower than it usually is.

The tone hooks a finger through Gerard’s ribs, and he’s moving forward, into Frank’s arms, before he really even thinks about it. Frank loops his arms around Gerard’s waist, nipping at his lip, licking roughly into his mouth. Gerard feels champagne bubbles working their way up and down his spine, feels like he’s going to be washed away in the tremors of sensation.

“The thing is, I don’t actually think there’s anything,” Frank says, digging his teeth into Gerard’s lip again, “that’s more important to me than that.” His hands tighten over Gerard’s love handles, pulling him close and then flipping him around so his back is to the door. Gerard’s head knocks back against it with a thud, and by the time he blinks the stars out of his eyes, Frank is on his knees on the carpet, pressing hard kisses to Gerard’s thighs through his jeans.

Gerard stops breathing.

Frank licks his lips, looks up at him. “I don’t get why you’re so sure you’re fucked up.” A rueful grimace twists the corner of his mouth. “You and Greta both.”

Gerard winces. This situation is the last situation in which he wants to be reminded of the Greta fiasco. “Jesus, Frank—“

Frank shakes his head. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty, Gee.” He undoes the buckle of Gerard’s belt, sliding the leather out of the loops, letting it fall to the floor. He slips his hand halfway under Gerard’s waistband to thumb open the button of his jeans, knuckles pressing into the soft flesh of Gerard’s stomach. “Her, I can’t do anything about. Though I kind of think Ray has that covered.” He tugs Gerard’s zipper down, peeling the denim away from his hips, working it down over his thighs. “You, though,” he says, smiling a little, pressing a soft kiss to Gerard’s belly, “you I kind of like to think will let me at least try to convince you.”

Gerard can’t hear anything but the rasp of his own breath, in and out of his lungs, the soft rustle as Frank pulls his jeans the rest of the way off. “I don’t know what you’re trying to convince me of,” he says, finally, just to break the silence.

Frank hooks his fingers through the elastic of Gerard’s underwear and stops. Resting his forehead against Gerard's thigh, he says, a little hopeful, a little defeated, “Just—just that you’re something worth wanting. Worth keeping.”

Gerard’s stomach clenches, but before he can argue, Frank is tugging his underwear down his thighs and Gerard is surrounded by slick, wet heat. His head lolls back against the door, hitting the same spot as before, sending a spark of pain behind his eyes that he ignores in favor of Frank.

Frank pulls back, keeping Gerard’s hips pinned to the door with his hands splayed wide over them. “No, Gee,” he says, scraping gentle nails over the tops of Gerard’s thighs. “Watch.” He doesn’t wait for a response, just licks a long stripe down the underside, wraps his mouth around Gerard again.

Gerard stares down, mesmerized, as his cock disappears over and over into Frank’s mouth. He has no idea how he got here, how he ended up with—with a Frank, a shiny, gorgeous, blisteringly beautiful thing—wanting him, wanting him to belong to him. “Frank, I—“

Frank looks up through lowered lashes and sinks his mouth down all the way, nose pressed to Gerard’s skin, throat clenching tight as he swallows around him. Gerard’s hips jerk helplessly forward, but Frank doesn’t back off, just smoothes his thumbs over Gerard’s thighs, over and over, while Gerard loses himself in him.

Two weeks after Gerard brings the band to meet Brendon’s band, Mikey squints at the herd of cats milling around Jon’s feet. “How do you always have more cats?” Gerard leans over Mikey’s shoulder to peer at them, and Frank leans over his shoulder, and Mikey is forcibly reminded of people’s faces peering around a door in a perfect stack, like in Scooby Doo.

Jon shrugs.

“His smile births them,” Brendon explains cheerfully from the couch, not looking up from where he’s aimlessly mashing buttons on the Xbox controller. “They roll through the springtime grass.”

Mikey moves his squint from the cats to Brendon. “It’s September.”

“Exactly, Mikeyway,” Brendon says triumphantly, looking up long enough to flash Mikey a grin, like they’re sharing a joke. Which would be great, except that Mikey has no idea what it is. “Exactly.”

Mikey looks at Jon, hoping for some sort of helpful explanation, but Jon just shrugs again, waving his hand at the room like that’s the explanation. It maybe kind of is—Ryan is sitting on the floor behind him, letting Boniface eat some of his fancy cereal, and Spencer is leaning over the back of the couch, playing with Brendon’s hair. Gabe and Bill are tangled up together in one armchair, wrestling for control of a bowl of popcorn—or maybe just engaging in some sort of weird, deviant foreplay, Mikey doesn’t like to hazard a guess. Mike is on the floor beside Bill and Gabe’s chair, holding hands with Kevin and looking deeply uncomfortable about it—Mikey has no idea how Brendon convinced them to come all the way in from Jersey just to play videogames, but whatever. Butch is dueling Brendon on the Xbox, and Chiz is sitting on the floor, leaning against Butch’s legs. Greta is sitting next to Chiz, braiding pieces of his hair, and Ray is sitting behind her, doing the same to her hair. Bob is hunched in an armchair in the corner, eying their hair-braiding shenanigans warily.

Sighing, Mikey goes inside and joins in the Epic, Multi-band Xbox Tournament Of The Millennium—Gerard and Brendon’s words, not Mikey’s. Mikey loses spectacularly, but then, once everyone is drunk and playing Cobra Jenga and the banjos and banjo-variants come out of their cases, Mikey isn’t sure anyone actually wins.

EPILOGUE

The doorbell rings at half past four in the afternoon, and Brendon is lying on his stomach on the bed, scribbling new lyric ideas into a notebook.

“Hang on,” he yells, scrambling off the bed. He yanks on a shirt—he hopes it’s clean—over his sweats and ambles to the door, scrubbing a hand through his hair in the hopes that it’ll lay flat. Not that it matters—it’s probably just Gabe or Bill; they’re the only ones who bother to knock or ring instead of just barging in whenever, because, as Bill puts it, they like to be cordial.

When Brendon opens the door, though, it’s not Gabe, not Bill.

It’s not like Brendon hadn’t wondered what would happen if his face was all over the internet, TV, magazines—he had. But he kind of hadn’t thought about his family—they’ve been out of his life, if being a ghost could have been called a life before Ryan and Spencer and Jon came around, for nearly a decade now. He thinks about them occasionally; he says their names under his breath at night when he prays to whatever semblance of God he believes in these days. He’s not sure he loves them anymore; he doesn’t really even think of them as his family. They were the family of the seventeen year old boy who died—Brendon’s family, Brendon’s real family, that’s Spencer, it’s Ryan and Jon, Butch and Chiz, it’s Mikey and Gerard and Gabe and the rest of them.

“Hi,” Kara says softly, smiling. Her hair is longer than Brendon remembers, hanging past her shoulders now, and she’s older, obviously, with a sharper edge to her jaw.

It takes Brendon a minute to find his voice. He means to be polite, but what comes out is, “What are you doing here?”

Her smile falters a little. “Brendon, we’re family —“

He stops her with a shake of his head before she can say anything else. “No. No, okay, look, I died. I died, and you guys burnt my things and sprinkled my ashes with holy water and—“ he stops himself before the rest of the bile in his throat comes out. “That kid, the one you did that to? That was your family.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” she says, and it doesn’t sound like a protest, not really, just a fact.

Brendon shrugs. “That’s kind of not the important part.”

“No,” she agrees, ducking her head, “I guess it isn’t.”

He sighs and opens the door a little wider. “Do you want to come inside?”

She doesn’t answer, just slips past him, into the cool darkness of the house.

When Spencer gets home, he finds Brendon curled up on the couch, asleep, with tear tracks on his cheeks.

He wakes up when Spencer sits down on the arm of the couch. “Spence,” he says, sounding torn between miserable and relieved.

“What happened?”

Brendon sits up, drawing his knees up to his chest and leaning his head on Spencer’s thigh. “Kara came by today.”

Spencer tries to fit a face to the name, but comes up blank. “Kara?”

“My sister.”

Oh. Spencer cards his fingers through Brendon’s hair, strokes a thumb soothingly over the side of his neck. When he can find the words, he says, “What’d she want?”

Brendon shrugs. “I don’t—I don’t know why she came, really, but. We ended up having coffee while she told me about what my brothers and sisters are doing.” He pauses, lets out a little sigh. “She mostly really loudly didn’t ask how the hell I’m alive. She kept insisting that she was here because I’m family.”

Spencer’s fingers tighten in Brendon’s hair a little, an involuntary twitch of his hand. “What’d you say?”

“The truth.” Brendon looks up at him with reddened, tired eyes, and says, a small smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, “That I already have a family, and it has nothing to do with the people who left me behind.”

When Spencer kisses him, Brendon’s hands curl tight into the front of Spencer’s shirt, holding onto him for dear life. Spencer pulls him closer and lets him.

When they break apart, Brendon whispers, grinning, “You’ll never get rid of me now, Spencer Smith.”

“Oh,” Spencer says, laughing, “Damn.”

END

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