Miss Too Much if You Stop to Think

Finally importing from LJ, six and a half years later.
Huge thanks to insipid_paragon for telling me to finish the story and fixing it as I wrote it, frausorge for giving me fabulous notes and discussion, and bexone and clumsygyrl for last minute readthroughs. Thanks also to wishfulclicking for the wonderful fanmix and brille for the great art. Title paraphrased from a U2 lyric.
Fanmix | Fanart

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Jon gets a call from Spencer when he's packing to go back to LA. Clover is curled up in his suitcase and she refuses to move, in a potentially claws-out kind of way, and he knows they're all upset that he's leaving again, no matter how many conversations he has about pet vacations with grandma and grandpa. The phone call is a welcome distraction from trying to detach her from his t-shirts.

"Can you take this phone interview?" Spencer says, before he even says 'hi'. One of these days, Jon is going to train his entire band to use phone manners. "I think it's a college newspaper, they probably don't care who they talk to. And if they did care, they wouldn't want to talk to you or me, so it doesn't really matter in the end, you know? So, please?" Spencer's been using this wheedling tone more often when he wants things lately. Jon's still not used to hearing it in this context.

Spencer shushes someone sharply and Jon realizes he can hear muffled giggling in the background. It's high-pitched, so it might be Regan or it might be Shane. Jon makes a mental note to remind Brendon of that fact, because he knows it'll get passed along and mocked righteously.

"Where are you right now that you can't take an interview?" Jon asks.

"In-N-Out. It's really loud in here; I think school just got out." Spencer sounds genuinely puzzled. "Goddamn kids." The laughter in the background gets louder, and now Jon is sure it's both of them.

"You sure that newspaper wouldn't love to hear about how you order your burger? No one says 'double double' quite like you do, Spence." He cradles the phone against his shoulder and tries to remember if he packed the SD card with the pictures he was going to show Shane. It'll take forever to go through all of his cards now.

Spencer makes a protesting sound. "I appreciate you avoiding the easy 'animal style' joke there. But really, I'm with Shane and Regan. Shane's trying to see if he can film in here, but I don't think they're going to let him so we're trying to stay under the radar so we don't get kicked out." He lets a silence fall between them, like he's waiting for Jon to pick it up. "So…" he starts, when Jon pointedly doesn't say anything.

Jon knows he's not going to ask for the favor again, but he still won't budge on it. Spencer never does.

"Fine, call and give them my number," Jon says. He probably shouldn't agree to these things when his mind's on something else. Dylan is… somewhere. Hopefully near the carrier. If he's under the bed that means it'll be about ten more minutes trying to coax him out.

"You're the best. No, really, I love you," Spencer says and then promptly hangs up.

When Jon gets the call from the journalist (from a relatively small regional music magazine, not actually from a college newspaper, and Jon's kind of happy Spencer didn't take the call this time) he ends up having a fairly interesting conversation. They talk about The Byrds, Motown, scene queens, and only a little about Pete's baby as Jon wanders around his apartment, wishing he could find his Bluetooth. They're getting more of the good interviews these days than the painfully inane ones, and Jon's kind of happy that Spencer's passing more of them on to him.

Clover finally gets out of his suitcase when he hangs up, and curls up on top of one of his flip-flops, chewing at it lazily and looking at him with betrayal in her eyes. He can just tell these things. The interview took forty-five minutes and he now has two hours to drop off the pets and make it to the airport. He wrestles the other flip-flop from Marley and calls Ryan to wake him up for a ride from the airport in six hours.

After four tries, Ryan finally picks up the phone when Jon tries him while driving to his parents' place. Jon possibly should have realized that no one was going to answer before four o' clock, Pacific Time.

"Dude, dude. Jorge Luis Borges is trippy as hell. Have you ever realized that?" Ryan is the worst offender with the bad habit of starting conversations mid-stream. There was a memorable time when Jon was home with his parents and Ryan launched into a discussion about a disturbing sex dream on speakerphone.

"Seriously, there was this one story, right? There was this garden and there were these paths, like with mazes and puzzles. And then there were soldiers. And this guy got shot. At least I think he did. Dude," Ryan concludes. Jon is sure this makes sense somehow. "I think I understood like, the plot, but maybe I missed the meaning, because maybe I just got what he seemed to want me to get, you know, and I missed the true meaning that you only get if you're really looking for it. So I didn't really understand it at all." Ryan sounds completely awed by this possibility.

"What time did you read this story?" Jon still has to drop off two cats and a dog at his parents' house and make it to the airport in time. And he's pretty sure he forgot to pack socks. If they're not going to be necessary when he gets where he's going, he has a tendency to forget he needs them for the trip there.

"Like, six in the morning, maybe?"

"And how high were you?"

Ryan pulls back slightly from the phone to yell a question back into the room. "Kinda high," he says when he comes back to Jon.

Jon's pretty sure Eric hates Ryan at this point. Either that or they're having really awesome conversations about magical realism. Jon's excited to be there for either possibility. "You're probably right about how much you understood."

Ryan hums in agreement. "Oh hey, Eric and I are building something in the backyard. It's going to be amazing."

"Whose idea was this? How could you build something without me?" He's pretty sure he's more jealous than worried, which is reassuring.

"It's for you. Brendon said we couldn't move anything without you here to do the heavy lifting, but we're proving him wrong. He tried to carry some of the heavier stuff on his own, just to show us that he could, but then Spencer made him stop before he pulled something vital."

"That makes sense." Brendon tends to jump in and get hurt if you let him. There was an unfortunate incident in a hotel with what started as a pillow fort, ended up involving the ice machine, and had Zack calling around to see where the hotel purchased their furniture and then apologizing to the management before the evening was through. Although Zack would probably have had more of a leg to stand on if he hadn't been participating.

Which reminds Jon, "Hey, don't let anything fall on you. We need your brain in one piece."

"Okay," Ryan says, and happily hangs up on him.

Jon starts to call his name but Ryan's already gone. At the next red light, Jon texts him with the flight information. There's a 50/50 chance he'll get the message, and a twenty-five percent chance he'll remember to act on it. Jon doesn't even stop to think of calling anyone else.

There was never an official end, when Jon thinks back on it, but the last night was right before the first night of Honda Civic. They had found themselves in the hotel, wandering around the halls and trying to see how much trouble they could get into without incurring anyone's wrath. It was a pretty lenient hotel, so there was a lot of leeway to be had. Jon had ended up pressed up against Spencer in a little alcove off a conference room, hiding from Ryan and Brendon. They had dropped down on to the floor, backs against the wall next to each other, talking about the tour, where they were going to go, and how to convince Shane to cut any embarrassing footage before they released it.

They couldn't see Ryan and Brendon anywhere, but it still didn't seem safe to get up and make their way back to their rooms, so Spencer leaned forwards, his arms on his knees. His hair fell into his eyes as he closed them, looking exhausted. He smiled kind of sadly at Jon, with his head resting on his arms.

"Dude, you can't be tired already. We haven't even started the tour yet." He reached up to push Spencer's hair away and Spencer leaned into it before he pulled back slightly. Jon's hand dropped.

"Hey, so, I think I'm going to room with Brendon tonight, okay?" Spencer said as he closed his eyes. "Is that okay with you?" There was a tiny line of tension between Spencer's eyes and Jon moved his hand up to rub at it with his thumb, before thinking better of it and pulling his hand back and away.

"That's okay," Jon replied. "Any reason why?"

"Nah, not really," Spencer said, and Jon could recognize the 'I'll maybe talk about it later, if I really have no choice' in his tone by now, so he just sat back and watched Spencer.

Zack found them and rounded them up for dinner before Jon could ask any more about it.

There's no one waiting at the airport. When Jon checks his phone, he finds that Ryan and Eric are out somewhere (something about Ladies' Night at a night club, a scavenger hunt, and Alex Greenwald) so Jon rethinks his options. He lets the cab take him to the house, makes the driver wait until he drops his bags off, and then goes to Brendon and Shane's. They're less likely to be in than Ryan would be, but it's worth a shot.

He doesn't even get to knock on the door before it's flung open and he's being hauled against Spencer's chest in a hug that's a lot warmer than he's expecting.

"Thank God you're back," Spencer says. He drags him through the house, dogs jumping around his ankles excitedly.

It's a mess, the utter chaos that three guys, a bunch of pets, and the occasional visiting girlfriend leave when unattended. Jon may be a slob, but at least when he's living with Ryan he's the only slob in the house.

They settle in the kitchen, Jon with his back against the cabinets, stopping to take it in. They look at each other for a minute, before Jon looks down and away, turning his back on Spencer to find something to do.

"So, hey, I missed you guys, too. I'm bored as hell at home." He grabs a beer out of Brendon's fridge, which Spencer promptly steals from him. After a few moments of deliberation, he just opens the door again and grabs another. Spencer smiles at him and hops up to sit on the kitchen counter.

"Well, we needed you back. Ryan needs to get some new hobbies. I'm always afraid he's going to fall and break his neck when he's on his own."

"You could go and hang out with him sometime, maybe? Invite him over to drink your shitty beer?" He tries a smile to soften the comment.

Spencer throws the bottle cap at his head. "Dude, we do." Spencer looks down at his bottle and rolls it back and forth between his hands. "It's not like he's a puppy we left locked in the car."

Jon rushes to backpedal. "No, it's just like, I think he got used to — people taking care of things for him sometimes? So maybe you could, you know, take that into account."

Spencer looks down and Jon can see the joint of his jaw tighten. He hasn't seen that in a while, and it generally wasn't in anger when he did.

"Hey, thanks for the insight into someone I've known since I was five. Now I remember why we miss you so much when you're gone," Spencer says, the sarcasm just bright enough that it can be taken as a joke.

Anyone else would leave the room just to make sure they got the last word. But Spencer never really seems to worry about that, and he looks back up at Jon, taking a swig from his beer like he's waiting for Jon to say something.

Jon keeps his mouth shut. They stay there, Spencer waiting for a response and Jon looking past him, out at the backyard through the window behind his shoulder. Spencer swings his legs back and forth, letting them knock against the cabinet doors. Jon lets the repeated thunk-thunk grate at him until a change of subject seems like a necessary idea. Jon looks around the room, like a new topic is going to pop out and make this all okay.

"Hey, so you guys working on anything lately? Ryan said every time he calls over here you guys are listening to something interesting." He hopes they're writing more by now. They've all been just fucking around with the demos they already have for long enough; it's getting easier to push the album back further and further.

Spencer's feet come to rest heavily back against the cabinets. "Yes, we're writing, Jon. We even sometimes write with Ryan. Ryan has a car, so sometimes he can come over on his own and hang out if he's not too busy with whatever else he's up to." Spencer sets his beer down on the counter less gently than he probably intended to.

There are just a million minefields here, and Jon realizes that things weren't even this awkward between them back when they were first deciding if they wanted to get naked together.

"Hey, I'm just worried about him, you know. He's been taking things hard lately," Jon says.

"I know. I'm actually here full time, watching it happen," Spencer replies.

And Jon doesn't really want to say his honest response to that, so he lets it go.

He can hear the dogs go crazy barking a moment before the door opens and Brendon's loud laughter pours into the house. Before he can really process it, he's lost under the crush of Brendon and Shane crashing into the room and dropping on top of him. Spencer quickly hops down off the counter to grab the beer from his hand, laughing at them as they collapse to the floor.

Brendon sits up and grabs the bottle from Spencer. "Dude, we can actually get shit started now." He grabs Jon by the chin and looks seriously into his eyes. "Never leave us again." He smacks a loud kiss on Jon's forehead and then burrows into his chest, narrowly managing to avoid spilling Jon's beer. Jon steals it back from him and Brendon flops onto the floor.

After they had skipped out on the Grammys, it still took Ryan and Brendon a good three hours before they gracefully exited the hotel room they had all piled into, headed towards an after party.

Jon had closed the door after them and rested his back against it, watching Spencer lounge on one of the beds. "I'm surprised you didn't go with them. I thought you loved after parties."

"I love orgasms, and I know I can get one here without working for it." Spencer smiled winningly, and ducked the 'Do Not Disturb' sign that Jon threw at his head.

"I don't know why we keep coming to these things," Spencer said, sitting up to take off his jacket and throwing it behind him onto the second bed in the room.

"Because we're part of the industry and we need to participate and be seen," Jon said, quoting Bob McLynn. "And so we have an excuse to get Ryan someplace where he's actually dressed appropriately for the occasion."

Spencer laughed and kept taking clothes off, throwing things across the room as he went. One of the good things about hooking up with this particular dude in his band as opposed to the others was the relative lack of care when it came to the unimportant stuff.

Spencer got up and stalked across the room in what Jon assumed he meant to be a sexy manner, and stopped in front of Jon.

"You're trying out seductive these days?" he asked. He didn't want to judge. Spencer could be so sensitive.

Spencer pulled back and frowned at him. "Dude, it's been a long night and we didn't win anything. Again. Please, just take off your pants."

Jon laughed and complied as quickly as he could, letting Spencer pull him across the room as he went.

Spencer settled back onto the pillows on the hotel bed, dragging Jon's leg over his lap. He arched up, pushing Jon's hips against his and making Jon brace his hands on the headboard. He had been doing this more often as time went on, finding new ways to take advantage of those extra few inches of height and pounds of muscle to move Jon the way he wanted to. Jon hadn't decided if he would admit to liking it yet. Spencer tended to use that kind of thing against him in the long run.

"Are you really going to keep on the shirt?"

"The pink's a turn off?" Spencer asked, smiling and reaching into the slit of Jon's boxers.

"I'm not saying it's the worst thing you've ever worn, but even you must not like it that much if you're keeping it on right now."

Spencer smiled as he palmed Jon's cock, jerking roughly and laughing as Jon pitched forward into him, bracing his hands on Spencer's chest. He scratched his blunt nails against Spencer's chest in retaliation, and rocked down against his cock when he heard the hiss Spencer gave.

"Hey, we didn't exactly plan this, so —" Jon said, and Spencer looked confused for a moment before his eyes narrowed in frustration.

"Goddammit." He moved Jon's body off of his and stalked over to his bag, rifling through it madly for a minute before pulling back and tossing a condom and a packet of lube on the bed, taking his shirt off before coming back. "You'd think I'd have that down to a routine by now," he said, laying back down and pulling Jon back towards him.

"Hey, I have never made the mistake of thinking you're smooth." Jon smiled at him and backed up and away from his hips, tearing the condom open and rolling it down on Spencer, before passing him the lube.

"Maybe I should take my skills somewhere they're appreciated," Spencer said, running a hand down Jon's back. The first finger went in smoothly, but Jon never really got used to this. He clutched at the sheets on either side of Spencer's body and leaned into him, nearly toppling over when Spencer moved unexpectedly. His hips canted up against Spencer's hand as he added another finger, pushing back on his own and setting a rhythm.

Wen he looked down at Spencer's face, Jon could see the tension there, and he settled his hips more firmly against Spencer's hand, grinding back against the fingers inside him. His breath hitched as he told Spencer, "I'm ready when you are."

Spencer smiled tightly, jaw clenching, and flipped him over onto his back unexpectedly. Jon lost his breath momentarily and then found himself laughing before Spencer slid in.

It was slow at first, like it always was, until Spencer grabbed Jon's hips and pulled him back into him. Jon reached up and grabbed for the headboard, trying to keep his hands out of the way. Spencer leaned in farther, letting Jon's legs curl around his waist more tightly as he bit at the join of Jon's shoulder and neck, holding on with his teeth until Jon clenched and shuddered around him. He pulled back slightly and unwound one of Jon's legs from around his waist, pulling it up along his chest.

Jon could feel the little hitching breaths that Spencer made with his mouth pressed against the back of Jon's thigh, twisted up as he was, curving his leg up too far towards his body. They had been doing this for months and Spencer still tended to get to a certain point where he forgot that Jon's body just was not meant to bend like that. Jon had kind of come to like it, watching Spencer completely lose any sense of control and just start positioning Jon where he wanted him.

He could see the strain on Spencer's face, and ran his nails down Spencer's back as far as he could reach one more time, feeling the muscles bunch against his hands until Spencer held completely still for a moment and then slumped against him.

Jon let his legs fall around Spencer's waist as he settled down into him, still moving in small thrusts, hoping Spencer would get the hint. It never ended well for him when he actually gave in and asked for something.

"Oh, did you want something?" Spencer said into Jon's ear, while he stayed motionless and pinned Jon's hips to the bed, not letting Jon rock up against him. "You're not done yet?" He smiled at Jon and leaned down to nip at his bottom lip, and Jon arched as far as he could and came against him unexpectedly.

Spencer rested on his body for a moment, just breathing, before he pulled out and leaned over to throw the condom away while Jon recovered.

"That was awesome. Seriously, I'm expecting you to write a song about my skills."

Jon lifted a hand weakly and tried to smack Spencer somewhere in the vicinity of his face. Spencer dodged it easily and Jon didn't have the heart to try again.

After Spencer rolled Jon under the covers, Jon's brain caught up to the fact that Spencer had apparently packed for this occasion.

"Dude, you actually prepared? We're in town for one night, how did you know you were going to need any of that? Maybe I wanted to spend my evening talking to movie stars."

"If I had any doubts about you being a sure thing, don't you think I would have made the effort with someone else?" Spencer pulled Jon to him and started snoring almost immediately. Jon struggled slightly out of his grasp and reached over to hit the light. Spencer could never stay awake long enough to do that.

In the morning, they had met up with a surprisingly not hung over Ryan and Brendon for a late breakfast and then left LA for Vegas.

When Jon makes it back to Eric and Ryan's he realizes that Ryan has, in fact, found a hobby, and thinks that maybe he should have taken a moment to look in the backyard when he was dropping his bags off. Ryan had dragged him into the backyard and thrown his arms wide when they stepped outside, smiling broadly and making the least excited-sounding "Ta-Da!" in the world.

"What the hell is this?" Jon says.

Ryan circles the pile of junk, and looks a little hurt at Jon's tone. He's going to move into pouting any moment now, but really, Jon has no fucking idea what they've done to the backyard.

There are a few dozen large pieces of wood lying in the grass in no order whatsoever, a huge wooden pyramid-looking thing lying next to them, and a bunch of little wood pieces strewn through the backyard. It looks like something his dad would lay out before putting it all together. Somehow, Jon doesn't think this is going to end as well. Also, most of his dad's project's looked smaller.

"It's a Gazebo In A Box. We ordered it off the internet." Ryan stops smiling and turns to look at Jon seriously. "And you'd think that with that name there would be everything you need in the box, but we actually had to buy all the lumber separately." Ryan sounds extremely put out by this. "The guy at the Home Depot kept looking at me funny when I went alone, so I made Eric come with me in one of his sleeveless shirts."

Jon's kind of sad he missed the opportunity to make Gun Show jokes. He doesn't care what anyone says, they never get old.

"What are you going to do with the Gazebo In A Box?"

"Build a gazebo." Ryan enunciates slowly and then stops to look at him like he's an idiot.

Jon looks back skeptically until Ryan breaks.

"Eventually. We'll get around to it. There was an instructional DVD in the box. We've watched it about five times and I am now utterly confident in our ability to build a gazebo."

Ryan says this as if watching the DVD is a vital part of the build. In fairness, it is about the only part of the construction process that Jon can believe they've accomplished.

"Just how long have you been attempting to build this thing?"

"We bought it a day after you left the last time, so maybe a month or so?" He looks up into the air like the sky will tell him the answer.

"And how long did it take you to realize they didn't include the lumber and you had to get around to actually buying it?"

"About two weeks." Ryan looks down and kicks at the ground. "I don't know, for sure. The days started to run together."

Jon smirks at him, satisfied that they couldn't do it without him.

"Whatever. Like you're any more skilled with this stuff. If you had been here you probably would have lost a finger by now."

Jon feels a little bit like his masculinity is being questioned, but it's not worth the argument. When they make it back inside, they smoke a bowl and watch the instructional DVD, which really is fascinating in its own way. He doesn't feel any more assured of anyone's ability to build outdoor recreational structures, but it's kind of satisfying to watch anyway.

They had had a few days in the studio, soaking in the last moments with Rob and getting more nervous about where they were going. Rob had endless optimism, more genuine than anyone they had ever worked with, which Jon was really grateful for as they wound down.

Jon watched him and Ryan sitting across from each other, each with a guitar. Ryan was gesturing expansively, the guitar strap the only thing keeping the body of the acoustic on his lap. This late at night Ryan tended to forget that other people needed rest, and Jon was always amazed when Rob could talk Ryan in giving up for the evening.

"Good work today, men!" Rob exclaimed when Brendon grabbed Ryan for his own conversation. "Tomorrow we conquer the last of the arrangements." He smiled broadly at each of them in turn, before turning back to the sound board to say something to Claudius.

Spencer ambled over away from his kit and laid out on a couch next to Jon. He leaned in close and twirled a drumstick in his fingers. He was doing it fast enough that Jon stayed back. Spencer had a bad track record with hitting himself in the face in innocuous situations.

"So, I'll blow you in the bathroom if you get me out of here without Ryan and Brendon noticing and making me talk to them about anything else tonight," Spencer said, not looking up from where Ryan and Brendon were still in intense conversation on the other side of the room. It looked like one of the conversations that might actually end in compromise, so Jon felt pretty safe in leaving. Not that he would tell Spencer that until he had to.

"What if Ryan decides that Brendon really doesn't need to play the guitar and it should be all accordion, all the time? What if they kill each other? I suppose I could switch to guitar and we could go on the road, but you'd have to sing backup, and I know how you hate that, man. We'd never survive," he turned earnest eyes on Spencer who poked him with the drumstick.

"Blowjob, dude. Bathroom." Spencer smiled widely at him and they managed to sneak out with only a wave from Rob and no comments from either Ryan or Brendon.

Spencer turned out to be a horrible liar, and they ended up skipping the bathroom and heading straight out of the studio.

They found themselves in a pub halfway between their hotel and the studio, settling into a quiet booth. Three drinks into the evening, Spencer vowed that from that day forward, he would only order things in neon colors that came with little umbrellas. Preferably with pieces of fruit floating in them. Maybe in tall, plastic glasses, like the kind they had at casinos and ball parks. Spencer had a lot of requirements.

"It's just that I think Guinness tastes like ass. Is that so wrong? I think I'm secure enough in my manhood to admit that, Jon. And as someone who is intimately familiar with my penis, you know how much of a man I am," Spencer said, skeptically eyeing the bottom of the empty glass in front of him.

Jon laughed. "I just didn't start you drinking early enough. Look at Ryan. It's an effort to keep him from ordering a white wine spritzer every time we go out."

Spencer actually giggled. "He did that a couple months ago! We were with Pete. Pete had a Cosmo. And Ashlee had nothing but Scotch the whole night." Spencer laughed so hard he listed to the left in his seat, and Jon reached out quickly to pull on his sleeve and right him in the booth, which then made Spencer overcompensate and lean into the wall.

"Jon!" he said into the wood paneling. "What if the album doesn't work, and we're just deluding ourselves, and then we have to tour in a van again?" He turned forward again, looking Jon in the eye. "I can't live in a van with Brendon again, Jon. I can't live in a van with Ryan." Spencer's eyes unfocused, like he was remembering some distant horror.

Jon laughed at him. "You can live in a van with anyone if you want it badly enough. Stop worrying so much about it. We'll be fine. Rob has our backs, and we trust ourselves, and if people don't like it, then fuck them. We're here, right? We're in London and we're recording at fucking Abbey Road, and anyone who has a problem with it is wrong." He grinned at Spencer, trying to get a reciprocal smile out of him, but that didn't seem to be working.

Spencer leaned across the table at poked at Jon's nose. "You're always sure of this stuff. It sucks. One day you're going to have no clue what you're doing and none of us are going to be able to tell because you're just going to say, 'Hey guys, everything will work out fine! Let's smoke a bowl and talk it out.' And then two days later we'll find out we're all bankrupt."

Spencer leaned down to rest his head against the table before Jon could stop him and then quickly jerked back up as he seemed to realize that it was a bar table, and he should possibly not be putting his face there.

"Spencer," Jon said, trying his best not to laugh too hard at him. Spencer had a bad habit of remembering people who wronged him while he was inebriated.

Spencer looked up from where he had been contemplating the table's surface.

"There's a long way between selling millions of records and going bankrupt. We'll figure it out as we go along, okay?"

Spencer didn't seem particularly convinced, mumbling, "That's not what 'Behind the Music' says," into his empty glass, but he let it go. He gestured a waitress over to them and proudly asked for their weakest beer, whatever it happened to be, which caused the girl to break into laughter and pat him on the head. Spencer smiled back at her and she just smiled wider, before walking away, turning back to look at him as she went. Spencer turned back to Jon.

"See? Someone appreciates me. I could be getting laid anywhere,” Spencer said, like he had just gained a point in an argument they hadn’t actually been having.

"Yeah, but I'm easier," Jon said, playing along and smiling into his real, actually strong beer. He made it through three more real beers before they started to catch up to him, finding himself laughing too loud as Spencer finally broke down and ordered something pink and frothy.

When they finally made it out of the bar, Spencer stumbled against Jon towards a taxi, but Jon knew it would be better if they both walked it off some before trying to go into the studio in the morning.

The streets were slick enough that Jon clutched a little at Spencer's arm as they went, less sober than he'd realized. They made it back to the hotel in one piece, though, stopping to check in on Brendon and Ryan (still at the studio) and then stumbling into their room.

Spencer left his clothes on the floor as he stripped, walking towards the bed. Jon stood behind him, watching.

He turned off the light, took his pants off and climbed into the bed behind Spencer, pushing him over far enough to make room. He nearly misjudged and pitched Spencer over the other side, but yanked him back by the back of his shirt in time. Spencer would hopefully forget that part in the morning.

"I'm going to remember that you still owe me a blowjob, you know," Jon said, quietly into Spencer's ear.

Spencer reached back and slapped at Jon's head before letting his hand drop to the bed and falling asleep.

They've been convening more often at the Brendon/Shane/Spencer residence, playing with Brendon's cache of truly obscure instruments and letting the dogs crawl all over them. Jon being there seems to have made Ryan more likely to remember that he has band-related things to do. Or maybe it's just that if he has someone to sit in the car and honk at him to get him going, it’s easier to remember that there are some people in the world who shouldn't have to make the effort to always come to him and that he should go and see them. Sometimes Jon will wake up and wander the house looking for Ryan and find him asleep in the house's studio or out in the backyard, staring at nothing. If he's going to do the oblivious artiste thing, he should at least be doing that with some productive company.

It's starting to feel like they're moving towards something with the album now, even though Jon can sense an undercurrent of tension from Spencer, the one that's been there since they came off of touring and slowed down enough to actually have a conversation. He can't be the one to bring it up, he doesn't think. He's bound to fumble it again.

One night, after staying up for hours, just smoking and talking in the backyard, Jon finds himself on Spencer's air mattress without really knowing how he got there, wondering when they're going to get up and go buy Spencer a real bed. It's surprisingly comfy, though. Jon makes a mental note to mention this to him, the next time he and Spencer have one of their conversations about absolutely nothing of importance. Perhaps he broached the Ryan subject incorrectly that first day when he got back. Maybe he'll do it over dinner next time. Spencer's never really appreciated those kind of gestures, but it's worth a try.

Spencer ambles in and lounges in the doorway. "What are you thinking about?"

"Taking you to dinner. Maybe to apologize." Maybe it should be a surprise. He should probably not have told Spencer about it in that case.

"Oh," Spencer says brightly, "are we dating again? Will you bring me flowers?" Spencer drops to the floor and crawls over to where Jon is lying on the mattress. When he reaches Jon they're at a slightly different eye level and so Spencer adjusts down some until they can see each other. Spencer's eyes are really blue and his pupils are really big.

"Yeah, I was thinking that I'd bring you flowers. Not because we're dating or anything. Because we're not. I kind of figured that out a year ago." Jon pouts at him.

Spencer frowns back at him. "So why would you take me to dinner?"

"I'm sorry for usurping your best friend."

Spencer laughs and pats him on the head. "Brendon says that if I'm not using him, you should be free to play with him any time and in any way you want to. I don't know if I agree with that, but you could convince me."

Jon rolls over so that he's looking at Spencer upside down. Everything seems a little clearer that way. "I'll still take you out." He reaches up and tugs on Spencer’s hair. It’s really shiny.

Spencer rolls him back over so he's right side up. "Agreed." Spencer leans in and kisses him on the nose and then continues down to his lips. It's been months, but Jon can remember what Spencer likes, so he relaxes into it, letting Spencer lean forward and bite at his lip. He moans when Spencer reaches up to pull his hair until his head is angled the way he wants it, and then pulls back and puts a hand on Spencer's chest.

"Hey, I'm pretty sure this is a bad decision to make right now," Jon says as Spencer pitches forward to rest his head against Jon's collarbone.

"We're apologizing to each other," Spencer says, perfectly calmly, and Jon laughs, but continues to hold him back.

"If you still want to apologize in the morning we'll do that then. When we're less high."

Spencer's suggestible enough at the moment that he complies without a word, pushing Jon over on the mattress and flopping down with his head turned toward the wall. The mattress rocks for a moment, letting Jon fall into Spencer before he tries and fails to grab onto the wall. He lets himself find some balance and then makes his mind drift to other things until he can fall asleep.

They don't talk about it the next morning. They also don't talk about for half of the day after that, and manage to spend about an hour in each other's company that night in the music room before it comes up.

"Are we going to talk about this?" Jon finally asks, making Spencer look up from his kit, where he's been fiddling with his hi-hat for about four minutes.

Spencer looks a little shocked, and then looks around like he's checking for anyone listening in. Jon doesn't blame him: if he'd had any idea that was going to come out of his mouth, he probably would have checked for an audience first.

"Do you want to?" Spencer asks him, and he sounds strangely uncertain, like it's Jon's decision.

"It just, you know, it doesn't have to be a thing, if you don't want it to be. It can just be, like, whatever." And wow, that was stunningly eloquent, Jon thinks. Fuck the fragile group dynamic, he's totally going to start taking over all the lyricist duties.

Spencer looks down at his watch. "Brendon and Shane won't be back for hours. Come on."

He steps from behind his kit and grabs Jon by the hand, taking down the hall towards his room.

"So, why now? I thought we weren't doing this anymore," Jon says. He means it to come out as an actual question, but it hangs like a lingering bitterness in the back of his throat and he knows Spencer can probably hear it.

"Are we really talking about this now?" Spencer says, pulling Jon into his room and backing up against the bed with him. "We'll figure it out later, okay?"

He wishes that he could have taken Spencer up the night before and just written this off as a drunk fuck, but they're both appallingly sober for once, and Jon's shocked to realize that may be why this is happening now.

It's painfully familiar, Spencer leaning down into him and hovering, but he's not as hesitant as he used to be, more careless. He grabs at Jon's hair with both hands, angling Jon's head the way he wants it, and bites at his lip before actually kissing him. Jon runs his hands down Spencer's shirt, dragging it up on the way back and scratching at his sides, just to feel Spencer's hips arch against his stomach.

"Lie down." Spencer sounds urgent, not at all controlled, and Jon is surprised by how much he likes that, this new version of Spencer who really doesn't seem to give a fuck about how eager he comes off or what he sounds like.

Spencer strips off his shirt and then drags Jon's up and off, pulling quickly while trying to hold Jon down against the bed. Jon laughs.

"We have time, dude."

Spencer pops the button on Jon's jeans. "It's been a year, and it's not like I have to convince you to have sex with me. Why wait?"

Spencer has a point. Jon lets Spencer drag him down against the bed, not bothering to pull back when Spencer yanks his jeans off and settles on top of him.

"You remember the time in Brendon's bedroom at the cabin?" Spencer asks, leaning down and mouthing at the point of Jon's jaw. He shudders up against Spencer's body.

"I think even Brendon remembers the time in Brendon's bedroom. Why is it that he didn't talk to me for a week, but he was fine with you?" Jon asks when Spencer gives him a moment of rest to breathe.

Spencer pulls back, laughing. "I told him I was tripping balls and didn't remember it at all."

Jon frowns. "I will eventually get you back for that, you know."

Spencer ignores him and drags his beard down Jon's chest, rubbing against one of Jon's nipples just to get a gasp out of him.

It's easier now, once they've gotten into it, and Jon can remember why they were doing this all of a sudden: the shared jokes, and the low levels of drama, and just being with someone who didn't seem to expect much from him except that he'd have fun.

Spencer stands up at the end of the bed and takes his pants off, before leaning down towards Jon's feet and yanking at the ankles of his jeans.

"Unbutton your pants," Spencer practically whines.

"Are you going to make that an order?" Jon smiles at him, but does as he asks, and Spencer pulls his jeans off before crawling back onto him, the air mattress wobbling dangerously as he does.

"So, I'm thinking you brought up Brendon's room because we should really not do this on an air mattress," Jon says, smiling. "Do we need to move somewhere else?"

"You're just going to bitch about every little thing, aren't you?" Spencer smiles at him and pushes his underwear and Jon's off, wriggling until Jon gets the message and helps with the process. "We're fine here," he says, pulling back to smile at Jon. When they're finally naked, Spencer grinds into the cradle of Jon's hips, leaning into to suck at his earlobe.

"What do you want to do?" he asks, and Jon shudders, kind of embarrassed that this is all it takes to get him to this point after this long.

"You could fuck me."

Spencer grins at him. "I totally could."

He gets off of the mattress and goes searching through a pile of clothes on the floor in the corner of the room until he comes up with a condom and a bottle of lube. He holds them up triumphantly.

"Dude, I'm surprised I could actually find this stuff this easily," he says as he settles back down on top of Jon.

"You haven't been using them much?" Jon hadn't realized just how little he's talked to Spencer about his sex life recently. He should probably do that sometime soon if they're going to continue the swapping bodily fluids part of their friendship.

"Not so much, no. Spread your legs."

Jon lifts a leg up around Spencer's waist, bracing his foot near Spencer's hips. It's awkward and a little uncomfortable because he hasn't bent that way in a while.

The first finger goes in smoothly enough, but at the second one, Jon clenches down around Spencer and puts a hand to his shoulder.

"Dude, just go slowly, it's been awhile."

"It has?" Spencer asks, genuinely surprised. Jon guesses he should be. It's been a year.

"What, you expected that I'd be fucking a whole lot of guys other than you? Don't you think you would have noticed at some point in time?"

Spencer stops to consider this, which, seriously, not the best of ideas with fingers in his ass.

Jon kicks against his leg. "Spencer, move."

Spencer blushes and says, "Oh, dude, sorry," and really, Jon hasn't seen that in so long that it's almost novel. He remembers how charmed he was the first few times, how it seemed like they were kind of figuring everything out together.

Spencer leans in and kisses him more hesitantly than he did before, some of the urgency apparently gone now that they're talking about it.

"Why haven't you, with anyone else?" he asks, and manages to twist his fingers right as he's saying it, making Jon arch against him and need a moment to stop and consider the answer.

"I didn't say I haven't been with anyone, just that I haven't done this in a while."

Spencer's eyes narrow, and Jon feels momentarily bad for hedging his answer the way he is. He really hasn't been with many people since Spencer, but some stubborn part of him is not ready to own up to that.

Spencer leans down and trails a kiss along Jon's jaw, ending in biting at his chin as he adds another finger. "Just tell me if I'm moving too fast for you," he says, indulgent, and when he pulls back, he's smiling mockingly.

Jon's reassured that the tension's been broken, pulling Spencer's face up to his for a kiss. He lifts his hips against Spencer's as much as he can, letting him move more easily.

"You can go ahead," he pants out against Spencer's mouth, "any time now."

Any other time, Jon remembers, in the past, Spencer would have taken that as an invitation to not do anything, to lay back until Jon made a move and set the pace, goading Spencer into taking over again. Now Spencer just pulls his fingers out and grabs Jon's hips, sliding inside him with a muffled fuck said against his throat.

Jon tries to move against him, but Spencer holds him steady, clenching his fingers against Jon's hips to keep him immobile. The grip is familiar enough that Jon almost bucks against it, wanting what he's sure will happen next.

"Just — stay still for a second, okay?" He sounds almost like he's pleading, and Jon gives in to the sudden urge to pet his hair and pull it back away from his face. Spencer's jaw is clenched the way it used to be, like he can keep everything held together if he just doesn't unclamp his teeth, and Jon gives him a minute to relax into it.

Spencer's hips finally move against him, and Jon moves in counterpoint. It's almost unfamiliar now, just because Spencer is so different, letting Jon nudge him into the rhythm he wants, gasping sharply and moaning obviously and letting everything show. He's so open and Jon can't remember the last time he saw him like that in any context, let alone this one.

Spencer runs an arm underneath Jon's hips and moves him higher and closer up against him, and Jon feels himself coming almost before he's ready, just watching Spencer's glazed eyes trying to focus on him, hair swinging in his way. He pulls his hands up above him and out of the way, letting go and letting Spencer move him the way he wants to. Spencer comes almost immediately.

He rolls off of Jon and takes off the condom, tying it off, and they're both quiet for the moment. Jon is sure there's something he needs to say, something that would make the moment settle, but nothing will come.

They're not practicing as much now. If anything, they should have more of a sense of urgency now than they did with the last album, if only because they need the sales more these days. But there's a kind of lull between them, Brendon and Spencer having their fun, Jon and Ryan going on their adventures. It's easy to sit back and not take care of what needs to be done.

Ryan and Spencer have taken the afternoon off to do something in Pasadena that they refuse to tell anyone else about, leaving Brendon and Jon to play video games and work on the bottle of expensive limoncello Shane has been saving for some sort of special occasion.

Brendon has a special talent for getting better at video games the drunker he is, like the slowed response time takes him down to normal human level or something, so Jon resolves to just sit back and try not to get killed. It never really works well.

"We never hang anymore. You know, just the two of us," Brendon says, taking out a disturbing amount of targets. He's always better at first person shooters when he has someone to talk to. "Like in the good old days, you carrying me back to my bus, me trying not to puke on your feet." He smiles brightly.

"Yeah, drunken 18-year-olds, nothing's more fun than that. It was the highlight of my youth," Jon says.

"I don't know, dude, you had a thing for drunken 19-year-olds for a while there."

Jon remembers that Brendon had found the situation hilarious then, too.

"And I'm not getting special BFF time or assfucking from you, so you can see how I'd feel a little neglected."

In these situations with Brendon, it's best to just roll with it. "I'm happy to pencil you in for either one, man, just tell me when."

Brendon picks up an empty Coke can from the floor and throws it at him, getting back to his game without missing a beat.

"And we hadn't really been doing that anymore. Spencer and me, I mean," he adds unnecessarily.

"I know, dude. I live with him. I know who he's been sleeping with better than you do."

Jon feels himself flinch a little at that.

"Oh, dude, is this, like, a thing with you two now? You were fuck buddies for a few months a year ago. It's not like either of you wanted to exchange rings, right?"

That probably seems really true from Brendon’s perspective, and it’s not like it’s an entirely false picture of what went down. And it's not like Jon can make the unilateral decision to correct him even if he wanted to.

"So, you're not, right? Exchanging rings? Getting gay married? I'd need some lead time to prepare for that."

"Hey, we're apparently good friends again, and somehow that means we can have sex. That's the most I can tell you." He gets up to change games and hopes Brendon lets it drop.

The weather at Reading was always mild enough to surprise Jon. He had been in the UK quite a few times by then, but there was a lingering sense that it should always be cold and rainy, and the sun came as a shock.

Spencer and Ryan stumbled in from an interview with someone, NME or Kerrang! or some other outlet that Jon should probably be paying more attention to, and fell on to a convenient couch that already held Brendon and Jon. It was just warm enough to make all the body heat uncomfortable, but Jon let Spencer scooch in under his arm, barely protesting when he stole Jon's beer. Jon sat back and watched the long line of his throat as he drank, possibly too interested in such a simple thing.

He cleared his throat and looked away. "So, what lie did you tell them about the album this time?"

"That we wanted to make a concept album about Pete and fame but the label wouldn't let us so we're just writing about weed instead."

Jon turned sharply to him in disbelief. He took his beer back when Spencer laughed.

"Hey, how was I supposed to know? Either one of you is likely to say that."

Ryan reached around and smacked him on his shoulder before he could move out of the way.

When they finally got on stage, the set went much better than any of them expected. There were days when playing I Write Sins for the thousandth time made Jon want to punch Ryan in the back of the head for ever writing it, and days when he found himself thinking, "this is catchy as fuck. I'm so happy it pays my rent." Luckily, it was one of the latter days. The new songs seemed to go over okay with the people in the audience who were actually familiar enough with the band to care, and everyone was playing tightly.

They were all watching Brendon, though, waiting for him to drop like he did before, which was probably why Jon didn't see the bottle that hit him.

Brendon turned to look at him sharply, and he shook his head. He was fine. He kept playing. Possibly the beer he was nursing was a bad idea, though.

Later that evening, with Spencer looming over him, Jon thought he might have been the one who was the least bothered by the whole bottling thing. Spencer got like that sometimes when he was baked, utterly fascinated by the fact that he was taller than all of them, especially Jon, but this seemed to have intent.

"I could totally pick you up right now. Seriously, just pick you up and carry you away to safety." He sounded really earnest.

"You're delusional. And blazed," Jon said. He sprawled out against Spencer, backing him into the wall.

Spencer leaned down and nuzzled into his neck. "You got hit by a bottle." He pulled back and looked seriously into Jon's eyes. "We're not doing that again next year."

"The bottle or the festival?"

Spencer stopped and looked seriously at Jon's forehead, where a slight bruise was starting to form. He seemed to consider it, and then reached up to poke at it. Jon winced and reached up to move Spencer's hand away. "I don't know. Both? One can't happen without the other, so we shouldn't do them both. Two bottlings is enough. If we do it again, Ryan might die."

Jon laughed too loud in the quiet hotel room. Spencer pushed him away from the wall, moved him backwards across the floor and lifted him onto the desk.

"You always laugh at me when I smoke and you don't. Why are you sober?" He poked Jon in the chest.

"Because Zack said that if I didn't already have a concussion, he'd give me one if I did anything mind-altering. And I already had a few beers more than he would like."

Spencer seemed to accept this, leaning down to push Jon onto his back on the desk. There was a notepad and pen prodding him in the back, but Jon didn't really feel the need to mention it.

"How about I blow you and then you let me fuck you?"

Jon really didn't see a problem with this plan, letting Spencer unbutton his jeans as he knelt on the floor between his legs.

He pulled Jon's cock out, licking at the head for a minute, seemingly fascinated by it. Jon loved when Spencer got like this, completely focused on one thing, the sensation of sucking on Jon's skin apparently enough to keep him interested for long minutes without complaint.

He grabbed at Spencer's hair. "I should get hit in the head by a bottle every day."

Spencer pulled back suddenly and loomed over him, ignoring the way Jon protested.

"That's a horrible idea," Spencer said, pushing Jon all the way back down onto the desk and grinding against him.

Jon laughed. "Will you reward me like this even if I don't?"

Spencer leaned into his ear and bit at it, before breathing out, "Probably not."

Spencer cut off his laughter by kissing him, stopping to pull Jon's bottom lip between his teeth, feeling Jon's hips jerk against his in response. Jon clutched at the bottom of Spencer's shirt, pulling it up as he went and pushing Spencer back just far enough to get it over his head. He lifted up, resting his hands behind him on the desk and caught one of Spencer's nipples between his teeth, listening to Spencer moan.

Unfortunately, the position made it really clear how uncomfortable the desk was. Jon was pretty sure he still had a pen stuck in his back.

He leaned up to Spencer's ear and suggested they move to the bed, which was apparently not the clearest way he could have put it, because Spencer grabbed him by the hips, hitched Jon's legs up around his waist, and picked him up.

"This is a bad idea and you're going to drop me," Jon said, winding his arms around Spencer's neck and holding on tightly.

"I’m only walking three feet. And you love it," Spencer said, moving quickly across the room. "I could just pick you up and put you anywhere I wanted to, couldn't I?" Spencer said in to Jon’s ear as he laid Jon down on his back in the middle of the bed and settled on top of him.

Jon felt his hips lift back up to meet Spencer's without really asking his brain if that was okay. Spencer laughed.

"Hey, we're learning new things about each other, Jon! This is good," he said as he reached back into Jon's pants and wrapped his hand around his cock. "I don't want you to get bored with me."

Jon shifted up towards him, wrapping one of his legs back around Spencer's waist. "I really doubt I'm going to get bored."

Spencer pulled back far enough to pull Jon's jeans completely off, stepping off of the bed for a moment to take off his own. He sat back on his heels as he watched Jon pull his shirt off, too.

He sat back for a moment and just watched Jon, not saying anything. Jon looked back at him, waiting for Spencer to work out whatever he was thinking. Spencer suddenly leaned back in against Jon, close enough that they were breathing against each other.

"I'm totally serious about next year, you know. I'm completely not okay with you getting hit in the head." He smiled at Jon and Jon couldn't help but smile back.
|

After a day during which no music gets written, Spencer and Ryan nearly come to blows over the drum parts for a new song, and Brendon stops talking to everybody, including Shane for some reason, Jon declares that they're all getting up early in the morning the next day and spending the entire day at the beach.

Everyone is finally ready to go by two in the afternoon.

Ryan has a grand announcement to make once they're all at the beach.

"We have electricity for another month, because I remembered to pay the bill." He sounds about as excited as he ever does.

Spencer and Brendon give a golf clap.

"This is an important moment in a young man's life. Maybe you can work on the running water next," Brendon says.

"Eric paid the water," Ryan mumbles, digging around his backpack for sunglasses. "I just have to remember the garbage." He lays back on one of the rickety lawn chairs they had brought down with them. Brendon, Shane, and Spencer take the opportunity to get up and run towards the water, surfboards in tow.

Jon sits on the beach towel, taking pictures of everything around him. A family passes by, the little girl screeching in delight as her father chases after her. A woman in too much spandex for the relatively hot weather jogs by. Jon focuses back on his friends just as the three of them are coming out of the water, with Brendon standing in the middle and looking tiny and silhouetted with the sun at his back. His head is thrown back in laughter and he's turning away from Shane to look at Spencer. Jon knows he'll end up using the picture for something.

"Are you going to start taking pictures of Spencer again now?" Ryan asks, startling him, and Jon jumps and nearly drops his camera.

"I didn't stop taking pictures of him. I take pictures of everything."

"Yeah, you really don't, though." Ryan frowns at him before tilting his head and considering Jon. "But whatever, you guys aren't hanging out so much, but you're fucking again, right?" he asks.

Jon nods tightly in response. Only among his friends would that seem like a neutral question.

"Well, that's something at least. Gotta work that tension out somehow." Ryan picks up a book from his backpack and settles back into his chair, curling his legs under him.

"This is why I always go home after a while. It's like living in a sorority house with you people." Jon shuts up as Spencer comes back and drops down onto the towel next to Ryan, stretching out his arms and legs and then curling back up like a cat.

The probably say less to each other now than they have at any point in the few years they've known each other, Jon thinks. They're fumbling back towards each other, yeah, but Spencer still dodges his calls sometimes and Jon's still stuck awkwardly dragging Ryan over to their house more often than he would like. Jon doesn't even wear shoes, a voice in the back of his head reminds him, there is no way a dynamic in which he's the caretaker can work.

With Eric around the bills get paid and things get done, so he's a little bit lower down on the responsibility hierarchy, which is a relief. But looking over at Spencer and watching him smile up at Ryan while they throw sand at each other, he can't shake that feeling that Spencer handed off the primary care and feeding of Ryan Ross to him, and then spent the next year blaming him for it.

He rarely stayed over at Spencer's, probably because it was easier to never leave Ryan's place, moving from the kitchen to the backyard to the living room and leaving a trail of instruments and papers everywhere they went. If Spencer was there, he would usually be the first to give in around five in the morning and kick Jon until he and Ryan disengaged from whatever they were talking about, dragging Jon by the hand behind him and crawling on top of him until he stopped moving enough to fall asleep.

"Are you staying here tonight?" he asked Spencer, who followed Jon in to his room and maneuvered him down onto the bed in front of him. Jon turned over on to his back and watched as Spencer kicked the door closed behind him, letting it slam closed. Jon knew for a fact that Ryan was going to freak out about that. For someone who couldn't remember to lock his front door half the time, Ryan could be stupidly fastidious about his house.

Spencer unbuckled his belt and dropped his pants unceremoniously. They were going to have to work on the romance aspect of this. As soon as Jon stopped finding the whole lack of finesse thing hot. There was possibly something wrong with him.

Spencer looked at Jon expectantly and Jon undressed, rolling his eyes. Spencer laughed and took off his shirt before he pulled Jon towards him and kissed him.

"I'm trying to get you to the point where you're Pavlovian with it. I should be able to unbuckle my belt and have you drop your pants without thinking about it," Spencer said, grinning.

"I'm happy you have your dreams, but yeah, no, that's not ever going to happen."

Spencer narrowed his eyes at him before he pulled at the hair at the nape of Jon's neck and Jon arched and moaned involuntarily. Spencer laughed, delighted, and kissed his way down Jon's chest, stopping to bite at a nipple just to hear Jon hiss.

They had started doing this lazy blowjob thing recently, when it was late and they were high and exhausted and the aim seemed to be mostly to get off as easily as possible so they could talk about producers and instruments and studios. It made sense, considering the situation: Ryan’s most egregious intrusion had been the time he had knocked on the door just to ask Jon the name of a blues guitarist from the 40s. Jon will take Things I Never Thought I'd Be Focusing On With A Dick In My Mouth for $1000. But it was comfortable, and Jon was kind of worried that being too comfortable to care about getting fancy with the sex was as high on his relationship fantasy list as Spencer's issues with the Pavlovian nudity.

"Hey, I'm not sucking your dick for my health, Jon," Spencer said, and Jon's attention snapped back to him. Spencer's eyes were wide and tired, but happy. It seemed kind of ridiculous to worry about the state of things at the moment, when they certainly had a bunch of other issues to deal with. He'd think about it later.

Spencer had this down to a routine by now, and Jon came probably far more quickly and easily than he should have been comfortable with. Spencer crawled back up his body, sprawled on top of him and started to thrust against his hip.

Jon reached up and ran a hand through Spencer’s hair, pulling his head up slightly from where Spencer had fastened his teeth onto Jon’s shoulder.

“You need me to do anything for you there?” he asked, smiling.

Spencer leaned up and nipped at his chin. “Just don’t fall asleep on me, I’ll take care of the rest of it.”

Jon brought his other hand up and scratched his nails lightly across Spencer’s shoulders, watching him go completely still as he sighed and came. He let Spencer come down for a few moments before rolling him over to the other side of the bed and grabbing a t-shirt to clean them both up.

He walked on his knees across the bed after tossing the t-shirt over into the corner of the room and turning off the light and dropped down on top of Spencer, who grunted in protest. Jon’s eyes had just started to close when Spencer spoke.

"Hey,” he paused and cleared his throat, “so there's this question I always wanted to ask you. But I didn't know if I should. And I kept thinking about it, like, all of the last week."

"I think we've passed the embarrassing questions stage, man."

"No, not like that." Spencer rolled over and looked at the dark ceiling. "What would you have done if we hadn't been there? Or if it hadn't worked out with us?" It was quiet, and Jon realized that Spencer had probably asked himself the question before, freaked himself out over the possibilities.

"I would have run away and joined the circus, Spencer." Jon turned onto his side to avoid the punch that Spencer aimed at his ribs. "I would have kept on teching. And then I would have gone home and maybe back to school, and started another band, and seen all the Elks Halls and community centers in Illinois again. I think they missed me."

"You would seriously just pick up and completely start over? No looking back, no hard feelings," Spencer said, incredulous.

He had never really consciously thought about it, but somewhere in Jon's head there was always that knowledge that not only did none of the rest of them know how to do anything but this, they didn't know how to do anything but be successful at this.

"People do it all the time. We can't all count on those multiplatinum royalties." It had taken about a year, but he'd learned to sound nonchalant about that. "I would have made it work."

"You're just lucky we wanted your ass." Spencer turned Jon over onto his side and threw an arm over him.

The gazebo is still sitting placidly in its constituent parts when Jon makes it out to the backyard. Ryan has been talking about replacing the finials with something fancier, maybe brass, but Eric has convinced him that perhaps they should assemble the thing before they start discussing bells and whistles.

It's not actually going to be that difficult a job, Jon thinks, once they get started. The lumber's going to be the hardest part, because, Eric's arms included, they're all kind of ill-equipped for this shit. If they can manage to lift any of it, they're going to need everyone they know to come over and hold things in place so they can hammer them together.

Ryan ambles out into the backyard behind him and plops down onto the ground next to him, looking at the gazebo carnage.

"It was a really great idea, Jon. I had high hopes for it." Ryan makes it sound like they're holding a wake for the gazebo.

"We'll put it together eventually," Jon assures him. He just sounds so sad, and Jon's uncomfortably reminded of Clover mewing sadly about not being fed and cuddled every hour on the hour. The pain that Ryan is going through is just about as serious, Jon thinks.

"No, it's just, you know how you think you're going to start something and it's going to be awesome, it'll be the best thing ever, and you set up everything in your life around it? And you rearrange your hobbies and cancel appointments and ditch your friends because it's such a great thing, and it will mean so much to you once you get into it? And then you just keep finding new and interesting ways to fuck it up.

"And it's not that you don't want that great thing that you've brought into your life, you've never wanted anything as much as you want this! It's just that you weren't really ready to build it. So it just sits there, in pieces, waiting for someone to come along and make sure that it gets put together properly and paid attention to and appreciated for the important role it plays in your life."

Ryan nods to himself and then smiles at Jon encouragingly.

Jon gapes for a moment, before his brain catches up.

He leans over and puts his head in his hands. "Dude, please stop talking to Spencer about me."

"How do you know I'm talking about you and Spencer? I could be talking about me!" Ryan protests.

Jon picks his head back up and stares at Ryan. "You've never been that self-aware in your life! You only know that could apply to you because people have told you."

"Fine, whatever," Ryan huffs. "And I didn't talk to Spencer. Brendon and I were talking about it." Ryan looks up at him. "We had a really good conversation about it actually. It was kind of cathartic." Ryan lies down on the ground and smiles up at the night sky.

Jon can't help but be amused. "The gazebo is a shitty metaphor and I'm ashamed of you for using it for my thing that's not a relationship. And if you do it again I'll beat you to death with one of the finials."

Ryan sighs. "That sounds fair. Just promise me you'll take care of the gazebo."

Jon smirks. "If there's one thing I can promise you, it's that I will do everything in my power to ensure proper treatment of the wood."

Ryan smiles back and hits Jon in the leg.

It's furtive, for the first time. They had given up pretty quickly on hiding anything the last time, especially since the longer it went on, the more it seemed like there was nothing to hide. But now, with Spencer alternating between being his nonchalant buddy and pinning him against walls, Jon has no idea what he would tell anyone if they asked.

Living fairly separate lives from each other is helping. Not stumbling across the person you're having "dirty, secret sex" with (as Brendon has taken to calling it these days) makes it a lot easier to pretend you're not having the dirty, secret sex.

"But my question," Brendon says over dinner out one night, "is why you're still having the dirty, secret sex." Which is a really good question that Jon does not feel especially inclined to ponder at the moment.

"I know what you guys are up to. So does Ryan. And Eric and Shane, and Regan, and I think Spencer mumbled something about Ginger calling all excited and asking if you two had patched things up. So the whole secret thing where you only kind of talk to each other as friends, and then have a lot of sex? I don't see exactly what purpose that's serving. Unless you're into that, like as a thing. Which is fine, and I could totally see why you would be." He spears a piece of broccoli on his plate in a manner that's kind of disturbing in context.

It's mortifying in that particularly Brendon way where he'll just start prattling on as if he has nothing of importance to say until you realize you're pinned.

"We just don't have any reason to be hanging all over each other. It was different before; we were together all the time. But you guys are doing your thing and me and Ryan are doing ours, and it's not like we need dates to hold hands or something." Jon looks carefully at his drink as he takes a sip.

"Yeah, you and Ryan are awfully busy," Brendon says, sounding like he's seriously considering the topic. "That's understandable." Brendon turns to look at him. "And I'm sure that has nothing to do with you and Spencer at all."

"It doesn't. We dealt with that, and we're fine now," Jon says.

Brendon raises his eyebrows almost comically and reaches to take a carrot off Jon's plate.

It would always start off in the most innocuous of ways, with Ryan and Jon working on something, late into the night. By the time they had gotten deep into the writing for Pretty Odd, they had developed their own language, not stopping to figure out if a song would work or if someone should try and go in a different direction with it.

Invariably, Spencer would wander by and flop down in Ryan's backyard, dissecting whatever they had come up with and pointing out the flaws in it. Jon came to enjoy it after a few stumbles, torn between protecting his own ideas and liking that sense of approval from someone wanting to work on something he had come up with.

They had never really discussed what they were going to tell anyone before coming back from the cabin, but the first time Spencer spent the evening in Ryan's backyard with them, blazed and brainstorming ideas, the whole relationship thing was kind of hard to deny.

Spencer was never particularly tactile until he was smoking, crawling on top of Jon and leaning in to his face to explain things.

"Jon, this is amazing. What you and Ryan are doing is going to change everything, okay?" Spencer eyes widened. "It's like, you're saying everything that people want to say, but don't ever get to. I'm so happy I'm in this band, dude."

Spencer bounced happily on his lap and looked like he might cry from joy.

"That's what I've been trying to tell Jon, man. It's important shit, okay?" Ryan said from somewhere behind them.

Jon couldn't really look at him because Spencer was busy nuzzling his neck. Spencer was a lot bigger than he was, and Jon was afraid that if he kept moving like that, he might break something. Spencer never believed him when he tried to explain that he was too big for that to really work that well without some sort of support beneath them.

Spencer pushed him flat against the ground. "I'm going to tell Brendon all about it tomorrow, okay? He needs to know." Then Jon was too busy attempting to get Spencer off of him and into the house to really figure out how their new game of songwriting telephone was going to work exactly.

It was hilarious in theory, but it developed into a strangely circular way of communicating. Ryan and Jon passed ideas to Spencer who worked things out with Brendon who came back around to lay songs down with Ryan. Sometimes, when the four of them were working together from the beginning and it all seemed to come so easily, Jon wondered if a lot of problems would have been solved if he could have nipped that particular chain in the bud before they got used to it.

The more work they get done, the more Jon realizes that they're much more aligned now, letting things get worked out in the group, and feeling a lot more free to have ideas traded back and forth. Before, Ryan and Brendon hadn't really gelled together until they were in the studio, practically on top of each other, but there's an ease there now where there wasn't before. Ryan and Jon are still working in different ways and places than Brendon and Spencer are, but it doesn't feel as separate.

Maybe it's the freedom of feeling like he can work any way he wants to, but Jon finds himself a lot more open to going wherever he and Ryan decide is best at the moment. It's not that their process is complicated. They tend to lay around the house, surfing the internet, or wander out on strange hiking paths they find, making up whatever melodies come to them along the way. They make their way out onto unpaved roads with guitars on their backs and have conversations with the aging hippies who live in the houses around them. There's a woman in her sixties, with a house about a ten minute walk away, who Jon thinks is about two weeks away from proposing to Ryan.

But Jon likes the ease of it all, that he can turn to Ryan and throw out a comment about Saturn or mountains or optimism and then they'll have a song.

Sometimes Ryan will flip through his pictures, finding the little images he likes, the everyday things that become more important when you record them. Jon feels like Ryan gets it, how it's not about what things look like when you first start with them, it's how you make people pay attention to them in the end.

They go driving one day, east into the suburbs, taking pictures of the little towns piled on top of each other. They ride past the office parks and auto rows, stopping to buzz through college towns and little, deserted bedroom communities.

In Pomona, Jon makes Ryan stop in front of a strip club that is actually named "Strip Joint" so he can take a picture.

"We have to bring Spencer back here, just for the name. You know he loves this shit," Jon says, turning to look at Ryan who is sitting on the hood of the car.

"You do realize we're sitting here loitering in a strip club parking lot. I'm pretty sure a bouncer is going to come out at some point and ask us what we're doing here."

"They're closed, man. We can hang out and be creepy all we want to until," Jon looks up at the sign, "three o' clock. And then we could come back and see the fine Miss Capri dance, if you were into that sort of thing."

"I've been trying to cut back. I have enough trouble paying my bills," Ryan says, deadpan.

Jon comes back to the car and sits on the hood next to Ryan. "We should go into the studio for real soon," he urges, trying not to rush him. Ryan will invariably clam up if you push too hard.

"Maybe if my band could work together we could get into the studio." He takes Jon's camera gently out of his hands and flips back through the shots. "Is my band working together these days?"

"Everything's fine, man. I'm still taking pictures of stupid shit just because he'd enjoy it, so everything must be fine, right?"

Ryan smiles at him. "Well, you just interpreted 'band' as 'Spencer', so I don't know." He rushes on when Jon opens his mouth to speak. "No, man, it's fine, I'm not sure I even want to know the details."

They lay out on the hood, making references to Wayne's World and talking about how they should stop and bring back souvenirs from the picturesque Inland Empire until the parking lot actually starts to fill with cars. Jon worries that they might actually get arrested and hustles them back into the car.

Passing by West Covina, Jon speaks up. "So, the me and Spencer thing. Just to be clear, you know we're not writing about this, right?" Jon says.

"Okay," Ryan says mildly. He looks out the window and Jon can hear the suppressed laughter in his voice. "But you're hampering my creative process."

Jon was never sure why they chose his room to crash in at the cabin the first time, but he ended up being happy about it in the long run, since it meant he hadn't had to move when they ended up staying there.

They had stumbled into the room, after coming down off the roof, half-assedly dodging questions from Brendon and Shane. Jon kicked the door closed behind him as they came in.

"Is this —" Jon had no idea how to broach the topic: it was kind of a minefield no matter how he phrased it.

"What, my first gay experience? Dude, have you met the guys on this label? I'm lucky no one's teabagged me while I was passed out so they could take a picture and post it to MySpace." He pushed Jon down on the bed and sprawled on top of him, pinning him to the bed. Sometimes the size difference between them was a bitch and a half. "You're going to play guru in this too? How many guys have you fucked, Jon?"

"One." This was a discussion that could end badly.

Spencer smiled delightedly and settled his ass more firmly onto Jon's crotch. He took his shirt off and dropped it somewhere off the side of the bed. "Please tell me it was Tom. I have money riding on it."

He shuddered. "It really wasn't Tom. There's no way it would ever be Tom. I don't think we'd know what to do with each other."

"I can't tell you how sad that makes me. So, Pete? Tony? Carden?" Spencer ground down again, and Jon took a moment to consider how to break the news.

He slapped Spencer's ass. "Butcher."

Spencer's eyes glazed a little. "Dude, that's just not fair. You should at least have to have Sisky fight you for that."

"There's actually a story there."

Spencer's eyes lit up and he leaned forward, bracing his hands on either side of Jon's head. "One day, you're telling me. The whole story, every detail."

They grinned stupidly at each other and before Jon could say anything, Spencer had attacked his jeans, reaching inside.

It wasn't the smoothest of experiences and Jon had definitely been with people with better technique, and he spared a fleeting thought for that two year age difference. Which was kind of uncharitable, he knew, but it cropped up at the weirdest times, talking about TV shows and remembering songs played at junior high dances and apparently skill in giving a handjob, of all things.

"Is this—?" Spencer trailed off, and Jon struggled to catch up to reassure him.

"No, it's good." He pulled Spencer's head down towards his, their noses bumping and teeth clacking against each other at first, and Jon spared a moment to think that he was usually smoother than this, some sort of bleedover from Spencer's hesitation making him halting and hesitant, almost like he was waiting for Spencer to do what he usually did and take over, even though that was clearly not happening here.

Spencer choked out a moan against his lips and Jon could feel him hard against his thigh. He reached down, his hands bumping into Spencer's on the way, taking a moment to tangle and realign, clumsy until they got everything worked out.

He palmed Spencer's cock gently, letting Spencer roll his hips against him, the full-body shudder almost too much with Spencer's weight on top of him. Spencer's hand went lax around him as he thrust against Jon's hand. He let it go for a while, watching Spencer's mouth fall open and a flush rise up into nearly to his hairline.

Spencer seemed to realize what he was doing after a moment, burying his face into Jon's neck, and mumbling a "Sorry," before tightening his fist around Jon's cock again.

"It's fine, just don't stop," Jon said, trying to sound as encouraging as possible without getting demanding.

Spencer looked down again, seeming to concentrate more on what he was doing, his eyes focused almost uncomfortably on Jon's cock, and Jon found himself oddly turned on by the sight. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been with someone who seemed that genuinely interested in him having as good a time as they were.

"Hey, Spence," he pulled Spencer's face up to meet his, kissing him lightly. Spencer surged against him, pushing him back onto the bed, and Jon found himself pinned under the weight, Spencer's hips lazily jerking against his.

Spencer moved back from the kiss, running his tongue along Jon's collarbone before biting him. Jon tightened his hand around him and jerked him off faster, watching as Spencer stiffened above him and then came against his stomach.

Jon brought his other hand up to pull Spencer into a kiss, gasping when Spencer ground down against him. He let go of Jon's cock and urged up to ride the ridge of his hip. Jon broke away from the kiss, hissing as he came.

He patted Spencer's hair gently as he came down, watching Spencer settle on top of him with his arms folded across Jon's chest.

"So, hey, that went pretty well," Spencer said, slightly hesitant still catching his breath.

Jon kept carding his fingers through Spencer's hair, trying to reassure him without seeming to do so. "Yeah, it did."

Later, nearly asleep with Spencer tucked in close to him, Jon broached the subject.

"Hey, so you never told me who your first big gay experience was."

Spencer laughed. "No, I didn't."

"You're not gonna tell me, are you?"

"Nope." Spencer leaned in closer and rested his mouth against Jon's chest.

"Jon Walker! We're going instrument shopping," Brendon says grandly as he enters the room.

Jon's got his phone out, flipping through recent pictures (Ryan sleeping; Eric at a keyboard; Ryan's disapproving look down, with his hands on his hips, at the gazebo's roof still on the ground; Spencer's kit with Spencer nowhere to be found behind it; Ryan grinning and grabbing for the camera) when Brendon drops down next to him on the couch.

"We buying anything in particular? And don't you already own everything?" Jon asks.

"Dude, of course not. So, Ryan and I were listening to Pet Sounds and we had the 'needs more theremin' conversation again, and then it was all Mellotron this and Moog that, and by the end of it I thought, dude, I really want a suitcase piano. So I found a guy who's going to sell me a vintage Fender Rhodes."

Jon snorts, and looks up to find that Brendon is looking down at Jon's phone.

"I always wondered why you stopped taking pictures of Spencer," Brendon says out of nowhere. "You did it all the time when you were first with us, but it was like the minute you started sucking his dick, no more pictures." Brendon turns perfectly fake earnest eyes on him, and Jon can only respond in kind.

"Maybe they're just a seduction tool and I didn't need them anymore."

"Maybe you didn't want keepsakes of your boyfriend." Brendon's eyes go comically wide. "Unless you're serious with the seduction. Does Ryan know? What do you think his first clue will be? Probably the dick sucking. He tends to catch on after that. Not that I speak from personal experience."

"It's not like that," Jon says.

"Oh, I know. I'm pretty sure Ryan knows what a blowjob means."

Jon punches him in the side. "We've never been like that. Spence and me. No matter what I think, we won't ever be like that. If he wanted to, he would have let me know and we would have been, like, a year ago."

"Yeah, that's true. Because if there's one thing you are, it's clear and forceful about what you want." Jon opens his mouth to respond and Brendon speaks over him. "Come obscure instrument shopping with me. Maybe we can pick up a Chapman Stick for you while we're there!" He makes inept jazz hands in Jon's face. "The possibilities are endless."

Everyone's pretty much aware that meeting up in the studio isn't as fraught as it was on the last album. Jon is pretty sure that sense of teams aligning is keeping it from being so, when by rights it should increase the problem. Jon thinks that there's something to be said for the way they're doing it now. Brendon seems happier, writing with Spencer in a way that reminds Jon of himself and Ryan the last time. It works.

They're deep into one of Brendon and Spencer's songs, today, something closer to chamber-pop than things they've done before and a million miles away from the old school blues vibe Ryan and Jon have been feeling lately. He has no idea how they're going to work it, but it's good, the blend of them all together, trying out something new and seeing what works.

He's busy looking at Eric and talking about how they're going to incorporate the keyboards on another of the songs when he notices that the conversation that Brendon and Ryan have been having about arrangement has moved from friendly to heated, in that way that only they can get, where Ryan's voice gets progressively flatter and Brendon sounds more and more accommodating until one of them is stalking out of the room and slamming the door behind him. He and Spencer used to place bets on who would snap first.

"I just think that if you're going to commit to going this route then you might as well do it as accurately as you can. You're just shooting yourself in the foot if you pull back before you even get started." Ryan sounds as if this is a matter of personal integrity and Jon wishes he had been paying attention before it got to this point.

"Dude, I know what I was thinking of when we were writing it, and that's not it. Maybe you should just trust me to know what I'm doing," Brendon says, smiling tightly. He's looking down at his guitar as he gives a little laugh. "I'm sure it'll be fine if we do it my way."

Jon looks up at Shane, who is filming in the corner, for some clue as to what the hell they're talking about. Shane has to mouth the word three times before Jon can decipher glockenspiel. And for fuck's sake, this is what they're really going to argue about?

"But how can you know if you don't at least try this?" Ryan says, exasperated. "Spencer, don't you think we should at least try it my way?"

Everyone in the room turns to look at Spencer for confirmation. Spencer looks down at his kit, quiet for a moment before crossing his arms. He speaks up softly.

"I don't know, Ryan. Maybe we should just wait and see if it works."

No one says anything for a moment.

Jon finds himself speaking up before he can help it. "I don't see why it wouldn't work. We might as well do it. Right?" He throws it out as a possibility to the whole room, easily contested, but he knows he's directing it to Spencer.

Spencer looks at him mutinously, and Jon turns to look at Ryan for confirmation.

Ryan's smiling, not at either of them, but at Brendon who's smiling back. They look like they're near laughter.

"No, Spencer's right. It's just a fucking glockenspiel, dude. We'll figure it out as we go," Ryan says.

They go back to playing.

Ryan's cycling through the seventies these days, and he's currently easing into a prog rock phase. He's found Low Spark of High Heeled Boys on vinyl somewhere, and they're into minute seven of the second track, listening to Steve Winwood's piano, when Ryan asks him what's up with Spencer.

"Spencer and I have a 'don't ask, don't tell' thing about you so you have to tell me," Ryan says very earnestly. They're lying on the floor on their backs, an area rug they found in a store in Santa Monica under them. The ceiling has really nice wood beams.

"You have a policy about it?"

"Well, we didn't used to. It was more like, 'hey, are you fucking our bassist? Because I really want to keep this one.' But then you guys stopped doing whatever and neither of you talked about it, so you know, I figured we weren't talking about it.

"And you know he won't answer anything if you ask him directly, so I didn't bring it up again. But I want to know, so you have to tell me." Ryan flails out a hand at him, narrowly missing his nose, until Jon grabs it and holds on. The tattoos are always interesting up close. He holds Ryan's wrist close to his face, watching the skin change, first solid black when it's right up against his nose then resolving into actual words the farther away he pulls it. Ryan yanks his wrist against Jon's hold after he does it a few times, and Jon remembers that there was a question.

"There's nothing to tell." Jon thinks about the day when he first got back and the lightning-fast switch from easy understanding to frosty silence as soon as he brought up Ryan. It's not fair to drag Ryan into it.

"You know, I don't need a keeper, and the two of you fighting over who's going to hold my hand to cross the street is kind of insulting." He sounds huffy, in the bruised maidenly dignity way that only Ryan can pull off.

Jon turns onto his side, resting his head on one fist. "Who paid your bills this month, Ryan?"

Ryan closes his eyes pointedly. "I figured out autopay."

Jon laughs out loud. "I'm happy it only took you a few years. Maybe we can tackle tying shoelaces next." He lies back down flat on the floor. "We're not fighting over you. We're not fighting. We're just not not-fighting."

"It's great that you've come to some sort of understanding. So, are you still fucking?"

"Sometimes."

"That's good. I'm happy for you."

They were sober enough that the slope of the cabin's roof didn't feel dangerous, and the decision to come out here to talk continued to look like a good one. Spencer had developed a bad habit of bumming cigarettes off of Jon and Ryan, smoking them only occasionally and in certain, unpredictable situations. Apparently a tour through everything Jon didn't know about Panic's early days was a smoking situation.

"We were pretty much on our own, and I was already used to Ryan crashing at my house and Brendon sometimes making it to practice and sometimes not, and they just had a lot of shit to deal with. Like, they grew up a hell of a lot earlier than I did."

Jon nodded and passed his cigarette to Spencer, looking down over the lawn and seeing Ryan lying on his back on the grass, plucking something out on the guitar slung across his chest. Jon smiled down at him, sure that Ryan couldn't see them.

"They just deserved a break at some point, you know? Like, my biggest responsibility up to that point was making sure my sisters did the dishes after dinner. In my house, if I fucked up, no one was going to be really pissed at me; I could always go home. But they couldn't yet. So I couldn't really fuck it up." He ashed and passed the cigarette back to Jon. "I don't know, it was just like, at some point I had to pretend to be the grownup. Brent wasn't going to, because it was still his high school band, you know? And it was never that for them. If it ended up being that they would have seriously fucked up their lives for nothing. So I just, like, picked up the slack. They could do their serious, crazy artist thing and I could make sure we ate something other than Doritos every day."

Jon could remember cruising down the highway in vans, feeling like the world was totally open to him and he could see it all at once. It didn't even occur to him when he was that age that he was only seeing three states, playing tiny community center auditoriums, because the charm of it seemed to hit everyone around him as much as it did him. He couldn't imagine his parents doing anything other than asking for more stories and making sure they had enough money to eat on the road.

"Did you even tell them you were taking over?" Jon stubbed out the cigarette and pulled Spencer closer to him. It was strange: they had been up in each other's personal space pretty much since they met, but something about the isolation of the cabin made it sharper, suddenly something to pay attention to.

"They caught on pretty quick. I mean, it was one of the things that I could do that they couldn't. And I was way too distracted to see it completely then, but Brent was never going to going to be comfortable with this as more than the coolest after-school hobby ever, so I just did it. We were driving in vans all the way across the country and none of us had ever been away from home, and then we were making way too much money and trying not to be douches on national television, and it was just — a lot."

He went quiet for a moment. "I mean, we had help. Pete's dad called my parents and talked some stuff over with them, and things went a lot smoother after that, but that just made me notice it more, you know? Like, my parents were getting a crash course in being my safety net." He laid out against the roof and threw his arms above him into the air, stretching his fingers out one by one like he was counting them. "If nothing else, I can bullshit and say I have some actual music management experience when you guys inevitably fuck up my career somehow and the royalties run out."

Jon leaned in and tickled Spencer along his sides until he flinched away from his fingers, breathless with laughter and trying to the cling to the roof's shingles.

"At least you have royalties to count on. I still have to count on you guys to be pretty enough to sell for at least one more album."

Spencer's face sobered. "Hey, you know you're in this for as long as you want it, right?" He looked away for a moment. "You're the only one Ryan's listening to right now anyway, so we have to keep you around for that."

He smirked. "Although, if it really comes down to it, I could always get you some hot pants and let you entertain me by my pool for a living. Maybe we could even get you a little bowtie. I'd expect you to work off the beer belly first, though. Can't have you embarrassing me."

Jon pointedly dug his fingers into the softness at Spencer's stomach. "Thanks, Spence. It's great that you're thinking about my future."

Spencer rolled towards him and stopped on his side for a moment, looked at Jon, and then kept leaning in. Jon leaned up into the kiss, letting Spencer set the pace first before pulling him down on top of him. Jon had the sudden, grateful thought that they both tasted like cigarettes. It was slow at first, and then Spencer licked Jon's mouth open, nudging at his head to get a better angle. Jon thought that they probably shouldn't move too much, being where they were, but he couldn't stop himself from putting a hand against Spencer's neck, encouraging him.

When Spencer turned away to bite at his neck, Jon felt like he had to question it.

"I'm making a token protest right now. Just so you know."

Spencer laughed into his neck, the sound vibrating against his skin and making him shudder.

"I'm considering it and deciding that this is a good idea anyway." He pulled back and smiled at Jon. "Okay, let's go inside before we roll off the roof and kill ourselves."

"So, you're going home," Jon says. "For a week. To be somewhere without me."

"You go home for weeks at a time and I manage not to bitch." Spencer looks up and smiles at him. "I always appreciate it when people cry over me, though. Feel free to let it all out."

Jon pinches him in the side.

It's just that they're finally getting to the point where they should actually maybe be mentioning to each other when they disappear for a week. They have actual conversations that don't end in silences, and Spencer has stopped getting that awkward twitchy look when one of the other guys walks into the room and sees them together. It's almost like they're really dating.

Spencer looks up and notices Jon considering him and then pushes his backpack out of the way. He presses a hand against Jon's chest, guiding him backwards onto the bed and straddling him.

"My parents aren't expecting me until tonight. That gives us at least an hour until I have to get on the road," Spencer says, grinning down at him.

Jon grabs his ass and pulls Spencer more fully onto him.

"So, why are you leaving me this time?" he asks.

"Family vacation," Spencer says, twisting against Jon's grip on his ass, "I don't think we're actually going anywhere, though, just corralling all the kids at home so we can sit and look at each other for a week." He pushes back against Jon's hands.

Jon thinks it might just be Spencer's parents missing him and Spencer not wanting to say that.

Spencer pulls on Jon's shirt until he can get it up far enough to bare most of his chest, grinding down on him as he unbuttons his jeans and reaches inside.

"I'm going without for a week, and the best I'm getting is a handjob?" Jon asks, teasing.

"Hey, next time maybe you can come home with me for family vacation and we can christen my old bed. We never did that last time, did we?" Spencer asks, bringing one of Jon's hands up to his mouth and biting down on a finger. His pupils dilate and Jon watches intently.

"So, uh." Jon stops for a second and then tries again. "Why didn't we ever do that? We had the time."

"Dude, do you have some kink I don't know about? How is that possible by now?" He's teasing, but for some reason it hits Jon the wrong way.

"Maybe I've developed some new ones in the time we've been apart," Jon says, sitting up. Spencer leans back, and sits on his heels, looking at Jon like he’s not sure where Jon is taking this, which just bothers Jon more.

"No, okay, you know what I've never been able to figure out? That last day before Honda Civic started, when you pulled away and went off to room with Brendon, what was that?" Jon can feel his voice rising, and it's always kind of alien to him when this happens. He's rarely this angry.

Spencer leans back far enough that he's nearly falling off the bed. "Do you really want to do this now. Of all times?"

Jon's feeling strangely defiant. "Yeah, I really want to do this now. You never said anything to me about it after that. We were just kind of done doing whatever we were doing."

Spencer clambers off of him, all unwieldy limbs and jerky movements, and determinedly goes back to packing. "Hey, you never seemed particularly interested in 'whatever we were doing' to start with," Spencer retorts.

"What the hell, Spencer? We were together just about every night we saw each other for a year. I don't know what else you could want me to do."

"You remember that conversation we had, way back at the start, about being everybody's best friend? Maybe you could have given me some sign that you were doing more than just accommodating me." Spencer continues to pick things up off the floor and throw them in his backpack.

"And this isn't even getting into all the Ryan stuff," Spencer continues.

"Oh, for Christ's sake, fuck Ryan. I'm sorry I agree with him a lot. I'm sorry he needs more pats on the head than you do. I've never slept with Ryan though, which should tell you something," Jon says.

"It's not about that. I know it's not like that with you guys. But the fact that I have to defend myself to you about him? That sucks. You're sitting here saying you want to have some sort of real relationship and you can't even meet me halfway on that. Because right now Ryan needs someone to hold his hand and make it all better more than I do, so he gets priority. And that won't work."

"It's not —" he tries, and he doesn't know where he's going with it, so it's a good thing Spencer cuts him off.

"It just got to a point where it was clear that you just got bored because I stopped looking at you like you knew more than I did. Sorry I realized you're just as much of a fuckup as the rest of us."

Jon doesn't say anything, waiting for Spencer to continue.

"Seriously, you spout all of this fake Zen bullshit about just letting go and releasing, and really you're scrambling around trying to make everyone's relationships work the way you want them to the whole time," Spencer says. He stuffs a t-shirt in his bag, one of Jon's. They're always too short and tight on him and he never seems to care. Jon doesn't even know how it ended up in here, and it seems like a bad idea to mention it now.

"You always pull this shit, like you've lived and seen so much so you know how to just relax and take it all in. You're just as clueless in this as I am.

"I'm fucking surrounded by people who pretend that they're just waiting for shit to come to them so they don't have to take any sort of responsibility. And it shouldn't come as a surprise that I put up with that from you for so long, because I've been doing this with Ryan my entire life." He tosses his backpack on the floor and paces to the other side of the room. He's practically vibrating with tension and Jon stays as far back from him as he can, not wanting to make the situation any worse.

"And now you won't get mad, because you don't do that. You understand why that might piss me off, right?" Spencer stops and looks at him. "And I actually spent the past year thinking, 'at least Jon's taking control of things, so I can sit the fuck down and relax for a while,' and it was great. So great that I thought that maybe we could see if our whole thing could work out this time. But I guess we were all just a little too needy, because it worked too well, and you're too busy managing everybody now."

"Hey, you're the one who wanted me to do this. Which one of us exactly passes on interviews so that I'll do them? Who ends up making sure Ryan doesn't fall into a hole somewhere?"

Spencer stops what he's doing and looks down at his backpack before speaking.

"Hey, I'm happy about whatever works best for all of us. I mean, you and Ryan have your crazy thing together, and that's great. It works for you and it works for the band, but it's not like that happened on accident," Spencer reminds him.

Jon's head snaps up at the bitterness in his voice.

"I know, you love to write. But you don't love to write with me or Brendon, do you? What am I supposed to think about that?"

Before Jon can say anything, he feels himself frowning involuntarily, and tries not to do it, because 1) it's a bitch move, and 2) he knows Spencer hates it, but Spencer launches in before he can say anything.

"Really? You're just going to pout at me over that? That's the best I'm going to get from you?"

Jon pushes past him and slams the bedroom door behind him as he leaves.

Jon gives Brendon some credit for letting him sulk in his living room for a day after Spencer leaves for his parents’ house. Brendon's apparently got a sulking time limit, though.

Six hours in, he throws a Nerf ball at Jon's head. "Okay, let's be honest: you've set yourself up as his best friend's protector. From him. I think he has a right to be pissed," Brendon says.

"I'm not trying to be his protector. It's just that Ryan expects him to be there and then he isn't and someone has to be."

Brendon laughs at him. "I love Ryan, but he wouldn't be half the bitch he is if you guys didn't coddle him and let him pull that temperamental artist bullshit. I used to be scared that if I said word one to him about something everyone would jump in to make sure he didn't pitch a fit."

Jon opens his mouth to defend Ryan and then remembers all the princess jokes he's made over the past couple of years. It's a fair point.

"Cut Spencer some slack, dude. We put him through a lot at the beginning, you know. And he acts like we don't remember how much we asked him to take care of, but we do. So if he flakes on stuff or doesn't put up with our bullshit, I'll give him a pass.

"And that doesn't even touch on your freaky relationship issues, which you have somehow managed to mostly shield me from," Brendon continued. "So if he wants to take a break and needs to say, 'fuck you, leave me alone for a week,' then that's understandable."

"But he's wrong," Jon protests.

"And the fact that you think that doesn't really matter at this point, does it? Because he's not here to listen to you."

They had been on the roof of the cabin, which had kind of become their place. Not officially, until Shane came up one weekend and drew a "Drama Queen-Free Zone" sign to hang on the window leading out to their perch. Brendon didn't forgive him for that for about a day.

It was kind of nicely regulated, Jon thought, because they couldn't get fucked up enough to actually be in danger of toppling off the roof, but they tended to ease into a happily honest space where Spencer would let loose with really unfair shit that he probably wouldn't say around other people and Jon felt surprisingly okay about laughing at it. It was pleasantly different from just about anywhere else in the world.

"I used to hate that thing you and Ryan do," Spencer started off, and it took Jon a second to catch up to the change in topic: they had been talking about one of Ryan's LA friends and her awesome tits.

"Like, it used to take him forever to actually have a real conversation with anyone not on the internet so I was shocked as hell when he just brought you home like a new puppy that first time. And then you were there all the fucking time: on our bus, at our sound checks, hanging out after shows." Spencer smiled ruefully. "And everyone loves you, so it's not like I could say shit about it." His eyes tracked up to Jon's quickly. "Don't get me wrong, I love you, too, dude. Like, you know, a lot. But you were there every day, and if you weren't getting Brendon and Brent fucked up and then getting forgiven for it, then you and Ryan were off giggling together, and it's like," he paused and looked out on the trees below them before turning sharply back to Jon, "you don't have to be everybody's best friend."

"I can't help it if I'm charming, Spence." He knew he was hedging.

"Dude. Brent still tells people that you're an okay guy. You can dial it back a little."

"I'm not, like, trying to —"

"No, you don't do it on purpose, I know. I think you're just wired to, like, bullshit people until they like you." Spencer smiled brightly. "It's totally a talent. You should be proud! Most people can't do that shit convincingly."

Jon burst into laughter. "You're such an asshole."

Spencer looked down at the cabin's backyard, suddenly quiet. When Jon looked down, he could see Brendon doing backflips on the grass with Shane filming.

"Hey, one of us has to be, and it's not going to be you, right?"

It was said wistfully enough that Jon knew he wasn't supposed to answer.

One night, about an hour after one of them decides that shots of Jose Cuervo are a really good idea, Eric and Jon get to work on the lumber for the gazebo's floor. It's a huge job, and Jon's pretty sure someone's going to get hurt, but it's been sitting there taunting them for weeks on end, so it's about time.

Dragging the planks from the pile by the deck, they manage to get it all laid out in something resembling the manner the DVD described, Jon assumes. He hasn't watched the DVD as often as Eric and Ryan have. The gazebo DVD has become a source a great entertainment when stoned. Brendon says it's a life-changer.

Ryan directs traffic from a lawn chair with a glass of white wine in one hand. He had given up on even the pretense of lifting anything heavier than one of the finials about a month after Jon got back.

"If you don't lay the planks out straight, then we'll never get the walls around it right. And then the roof won't fit. And we won't have a gazebo. It'll just be a bunch of pieces of wood sticking out of the ground. But with a floor." Ryan sounds increasingly alarmed at the possibilities of bad gazebo construction.

And it's not that he doesn't have really good points, but it's late, and the strings of Christmas lights aren't the best illumination for construction. Jon thinks they might have a flashlight somewhere, but he can't be sure and he doesn't know where he would start looking.

Ryan sounds contemplative from his lawn chair. "You guys. I think that maybe Spencer was right and we should have gone with the palapa instead of the gazebo," he says, with a note of wonder in his voice.

Jon turns to glare at him. Ryan could well be glaring back, but Jon can't tell because he has his douchey sunglasses on at, Jon checks his watch, two in the morning.

"Really, Jon. We could have just gotten a giant thatched umbrella and stuck a table under it. Same basic principle."

"You couldn't mention this before now?" Eric asks, wrestling with one of the planks.

"Everything was already laid out. And we knew how to put it together from the DVD," Ryan replies, offended.

Two hours later, having finally assembled everything into a configuration that looks something like a circle, they curl up and fall asleep in the backyard on top of the slats.

When he wakes up in the afternoon, stiff from sleeping on the wood, Jon stands up and looks at the wreckage, before deciding that it's about time to let somebody else take charge of the damn thing. He staggers inside and takes out the phonebook to find a builder who can finish it. Ryan will thank him in the end.

When Jon comes out onto the front porch the next morning, Spencer is waiting, sitting silently and holding his bag from his trip to see his parents. He apparently hadn’t stopped to drop it off first before coming over.

Jon sits next to him on the stoop, not saying anything. They look at the neighbors passing by for a while.

"So, in the past, I was maybe kind of an asshole who wasn't ready to do this relationship thing," Spencer says, watching Mrs. Logan from down the road walk her King Charles Spaniel past them. She waves to them and Jon and Spencer both wave back politely.

"Yeah, I kind of caught that," Jon says.

"But you're also an asshole, who expects me to just know when you're pulling a self-sacrificing martyr tantrum."

Jon concedes, "This is also true."

Spencer looks at him out of the corner of his eye, "And the Ryan thing is maybe a separate issue. That we don't have to talk about."

Jon lets out a breath. "Yeah, dude. I think I've talked enough about Ryan to everybody. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares about Kerrang! calling to ask me how Ryan feels about us."

"So, in lieu of more discussion and apologies all around, I'd like to remind you that I owe you a handjob," Spencer says when they've looked at the street and the ground and everything but each other for a few minutes.

Jon laughs. "I'd like to remind you that you owe me a blowjob from about a year and a half ago."

"That's a fair request. I'm happy you brought it back to my attention," Spencer says, smiling.

Jon bursts into laughter and invites Spencer inside.

Notes:

Fanart:
The Gazebo Is a Metaphor by brille
Fanmix:
These Games We Play by wishfulclicking
Both art and mix are wonderful, go check them out!
And nota bene, you can totally order a Gazebo in a Box off the internet.

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eidaaaaaan, r4dg, londonb3ckoned, myspacemistress, Chesh1reCat, i_amclandeztine, thissugarcane, SavetheOwls, kkthekat, and Bandom_Unicorn as well as 1 guest left kudos on this work!

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