PatD: Intermission (Spencer/Brendon)

Title: Intermission
Pairing: Spencer/Brendon, with a side of (vaguely implied) Ryan/Jon.
Rating: PG13
Summary: They have five days before they fly to Europe.
Disclaimer: Not real.
Word count: 2500(ish)
Notes: cmonkatiekatie fixed my Britisms, made soothing noises about my inability to write short sentences and generally did the beta thing, for which I love her very, very much.



They have five days at home before they head off to Europe. It’s long enough to be called a break or a rest or the end of one tour and the start of another, but it’s not long enough to really get to grips with not being on the road with its sleeping in what basically amounts to a box in a bigger box on wheels, and eating junk food and take out backstage, and never really knowing where they are when they wake up, because hotels and highways and rest-stops and venues look the same wherever they are in the country, just with more trees or more mountains or less desert to set them apart.

Spencer knows there’s no real point in unpacking and settling in to his house and his life in Vegas because he’ll just have to leave again in a matter of days. So he unpacks enough to do his laundry and switch out some of the clothes he took with him and never actually wore, with others that will lie in the bottom of his suitcase in just the same way, but in different countries and in different time zones like he’s taking his clothes on a vacation from his closet or something. He has dinner with his parents like the dutiful son he is and he gives his sisters the big bag of presents he picked up for them from random places on the road. And he gives his mom the pot holder he brought in Tucson because it reminded him of her, and his dad the comedy bootlace tie that he saw in the same store – because his family still kind of sees touring in the same way as a vacation, and vacations mean presents for the people left behind and Spencer always makes sure and gets as many as possible because he hates to see anyone disappointed.

And that’s one evening and a day gone by already and he spends another day just lounging on his couch with his dogs, drinking the beer that someone, probably Jon, left in his refrigerator just because he can. Then coffee when he realizes he doesn’t really want the buzz the beer is giving him. Then water to wash down the Advil he ends up taking for the headache that the beer/coffee combination gives him. Then, after watching eight solid hours of Bear Grylls survive things and the Mythbusters blow things up and the Hansen brothers arguing about the best way to catch crab in Alaska, Spencer goes to bed because there’s nothing better to do.

Mid-morning on the third day, Ryan calls from a gas station just outside town because he can’t remember if he locked his door when he left and can Spencer go round and check please? Spencer rolls his eyes at his phone and calls Ryan an idiot in his head but he’s still up and pushing his feet into shoes and grabbing his keys from the bowl beside the door as he’s doing it. He walks to his car with Ryan’s voice in his ear quoting Hunter S Thompson and telling him how he and Jon are going on a trip to recreate the American psychedelic dream: Spencer considers pointing out that they’re heading in the wrong direction, that they should have started out from L.A. not Vegas but, really, that’s the pair of them all over. Plus he knows that all that will happen is they will get about twenty miles down the road, get bored, pull the car over so they can smoke up and play guitars in the middle of the desert and pretend they’re on some inspirational quest for just the right chord combination to capture its beauty or its desolation or its something, then they’ll call him or Brendon to come get them because they’re too stoned to drive home. And really all it is, is them suffering from the same closed in feeling of not being on the road that he is, only they’re being more creative in their ways of dealing with it. Or more clichéd. Either or. It’s hard to tell.

Ryan’s door is locked when he gets there, but Spencer can hear the TV blaring away inside so he goes in and switches it off like Ryan forgot to do because Ryan’s neighbors won’t want to hear that at all hours of the night and day. And he walks round and checks that everything else that should be off is off and that should be on is on, then he sets the alarm because Ryan totally didn’t and locks the door behind him again as he leaves. He gets halfway to his car when he has to turn back and check he really locked the door just in case Ryan’s new found sense of disconnection with reality has rubbed off on him a little too much - although it isn’t really all that new, it was always there but it’s stronger now that Ryan doesn’t have to live in the real world if he doesn’t want to and most of the time he doesn’t, so. Then when he’s checked and triple checked, Spencer gets in his car and he’s most of the way to Brendon’s apartment when he remembers that some space to do things that aren’t them doing things together was what they decided on when they got back into town, so he turns his car around and heads in the opposite direction instead.

It’s not that they’re arguing or anything. They don’t really do that, at least not about big things anyway. They’re both big on Speaking Up and Talking Things Through complete with capital letters because Spencer can always hear the mental shift key when Brendon’s being serious. They leave the brooding and the heavy sighing and the passive aggressive silences to Ryan and Jon because lord knows nothing would ever get done if they were all that way. It’s just that they agreed a little distance is sometimes a good thing, and they haven’t had any for the last couple of months what with being on tour and stuck with each other day in day out, so, yeah, five days of absence to make hearts grow fonder, or less likely to take other hearts for granted, or something that made way more sense when they were both so tired they could hardly stand up for long enough to hug out an au revoir and press kisses to lips that said ‘I’ll miss you but we need this’.

Only Spencer is thinking now that they don’t need it and that he wants to turn his car back round and pull up in Brendon’s drive way and walk to his front door and maybe sit on Brendon’s couch doing exactly what he was doing in his own house but with Brendon there by his side. But he doesn’t because they agreed and Spencer’s okay with that really, he’s just bored and restless and maybe itching to get back on the road before he relaxes too much, and time seems to go quicker when he’s with other people.

He drives around for a while: cruises the strip because it’s something to do and because he likes the bustle of it and the neon that’s lit up even though it’s daytime and the ridiculous show that is Vegas that vaguely makes him think of being on stage. Then, when he’s had his fill of tourists and billboards and glitz, he heads home. Dropping in on his favourite pizza place and getting a pizza that’s far too big for just him because he wasn’t really thinking when he ordered it and his mind is still working in multiples rather than singles. But he can have what’s left for breakfast or brunch or lunch depending on when he wakes up tomorrow so it’s not like it’s a waste.

When he turns into his street there’s a car on his drive and when he gets closer he can see there’s a Brendon sitting on his doorstep and Spencer maybe smiles a little too wide and speeds up to get there quicker. When he gets out of the car Brendon looks up and he’s grinning but looking a little sorry at the same time, like he’s about to apologize for being there, but he doesn’t. Brendon just shrugs and says he was bored and tries to sneak a look at what pizza Spencer is carrying, laughing and saying, "are you a psychic now? Did you magically know I would be here?" when he finds out it’s a vegetarian supreme with the spicy tomato base that’s his favourite. And Spencer stops and thinks for a moment and, yeah, maybe he totally did.

Later when he’s lying sleepy-sated with a belly full of pizza and a bed full of Brendon all curled up beside him, and Ryan’s on the phone again with Jon laughing in the background, telling him how they made it as far as Barstow (when the drugs kicked in, Spencer’s brain supplies but he doesn’t say it out loud, it’s a given) and now they’re stopped for the night in a motel that’s stuck in a time warp with curtains that Ryan wants to make a vest out of – "just the back panel, yeah," - and Ryan’s saying they, he and Brendon, should come see it for themselves, and Jon’s stealing the phone so he can tell Spencer about the hawk they saw hovering over the highway – "it was fucking huge and just hanging there, Spence, fucking awesome," – Spencer thinks about nudging Brendon awake and dragging him out to the car and driving down the night time highway to join Ryan and Jon on their magical mystery tour. But he’s warm and sleepy and comfortable and they only have two days left before they’re on the road again, and Spencer maybe would be happy to just stay where he is with his couch and his dogs and his Brendon, in a little bubble behind his locked door. So he tells Ryan no and that he’ll see him on Friday, and Ryan says that they’ll be back before then anyway so he’ll see Spencer on Wednesday or maybe Thursday and they can hang out and rent a movie or something, and Spencer says okay then goodbye and hangs up and rolls over so he’s closer to Brendon than he was and Brendon mutters something incoherent in his sleep and shifts so there’s no space between them at all.

Spencer wakes up to an empty bed and voices drifting up from downstairs. He blinks at the ceiling for a minute or two then drags himself up and into some sweats and navigates the bathroom, then the stairs, on autopilot and somehow ends up in his lounge without really thinking about getting there. Jon is crashed out on the couch with his head in Ryan’s lap and his feet in Brendon’s. Ryan is rubbing circles on Jon’s shoulder with one hand and gesturing wildly with the Starbuck’s cup in his other hand to illustrate his point and Brendon is doing that thing where he listens with his whole body and laughs with it as well. Ryan doesn’t stop what he’s talking about to say hello or good morning or anything that passes for a polite greeting but Spencer wouldn’t expect him to, but he does point his straw in the direction of Spencer’s coffee table where there’s a half drunk frappuccino and another full one sitting beside it half melted away just like Spencer likes it. Spencer trails his hand across Brendon’s shoulder to say good morning and Brendon grabs it and links their fingers together so Spencer can use him as balance when he leans forward to pick up his cup before slumping on to the floor and leaning back against the couch, with Brendon’s hand still in his and Jon sleepy-patting him on the back to say hi and Ryan still talking about the drive back, which they started out on at four am because they were bored with Barstow and couldn’t sleep and couldn’t be bothered to drive anywhere else but home. Spencer thinks that next time they have a break in between touring they should just park the bus up in Vegas and carrying on living on it. Because clearly they all suck at relaxing in their respective homes and having time apart, and maybe it should be worrying how co-dependant they all are but it isn’t because it works out okay most of the time.

He zones out for a while, drifting in and out of the conversation because he wasn’t really ready to wake up when he did and he’s used to catching sleep where and when he can and the floor is as good a place as any and better than some. He comes back to the here and now when Ryan starts poking him to get his attention, saying he wants the name of Spencer’s realtor because Jon is thinking about getting a place in Vegas so he’ll have somewhere of his own to crash at times like this when it isn’t really worth him flying all the way back to Chicago just to fly back again. Spencer thinks about asking why Jon doesn’t just move in with Ryan permanently because he’s there most of the time, but he doesn’t say it out loud because that’s maybe pushing when they’re not ready to be pushed and it’s probably a good idea that Jon has a place of his own. And then he thinks that maybe they should all just buy a big house together and give up on the pretence of having separate lives once and for all.

He’s about to say something when Brendon gets there first, his voice half-joking but half not like maybe he’s thought about suggesting it before. Ryan jumps in straight away with it needing at least four bathrooms so they can have one each because calling ‘first shower’ at home would just be annoying, then Brendon starts talking about finding somewhere big enough to build a studio in and Jon mumbles out a sleepy sounding ‘count me in’ and Spencer doesn’t have to turn round to know Jon's hand is raised in the air.

Spencer is pretty sure that it won’t really happen, because the chances of them finding a place big enough that they all agree on are slim to none. But he also knows that by the time they’re boarding their plane on Friday they’ll have a list of requirements and maybe some roughly drawn floor plans of the perfect house, and Ryan and Brendon will be arguing about carpets and upholstery and he and Jon will be laughing at them and begging for there to be at least one room where the patterns don’t clash or it isn’t so bright that it hurts the eyes to sit in it for more than an hour. But mostly he’s thinking that planning a future that will most likely never happen, with three of the only people in the world he’d be willing to share it with if it did, is as good a way as any to waste their last two days of freedom away.