Work Text:
Okay, so Spencer's an accountant, right? Mid-level, not a peon, not a partner. He has his own office, it's not a bad gig, just kind of boring. Spencer's whole LIFE is kind of boring. His only RL friend to speak of is Ryan, though sometimes he goes out for drinks after work with some of the people from work, but it's all these really shallow, meaningless acquaintanceships, like, they only ever really talk about the weather or last night's TV shows or how much Mondays suck. Some people have kids, they talk about their kids a lot. Spencer knows more about their kids than he does about some of his actual coworkers. Ryan works for a publishing company. He is disillusioned in the extreme, because he wanted to work with authors of great new literature, but instead he is stuck working his way up through the ranks, reading romance novel submissions that people mail in cold, total unknowns writing trash novels. Ryan is exasperated with his life.
Ryan is actually how Spencer got into fandom, way back in the day when they were kids. He fanboyed Pete Wentz and Fall Out Boy SO HARD, and he liked to write, and the next thing you knew, he was kind of dipping toes into fandom and dragging Spencer down with him. Ryan was a straight teenage boy, though, so like. He didn't get very far into fandom, really. Wrote a fairly epic canon-based gen piece, read a handful of gen and some of the het porn. Spencer, who at the time was mostly serving as Ryan's forced beta, actually got a little intrigued by fandom in general, and ended up sucked in way deeper than Ryan ever did. It stuck for him, even after Ryan pretty much fell out of fandom. He's actually gay, so fandom had a lot more to offer him than it did Ryan, anyway. Ryan remains the only real-life person in Spencer's life who knows about the fandom, and he's not allowed to mock because it was all his fault anyway.
Online, Spencer has some weirdo LJ screen name he's been stuck with since high school, something like n_different or this_is_not_here. Whatever. Anyway, he's pretty firmly entrenched. He's kind of a novelty to a lot of people, one of the relatively few actual gay men amidst the sea of fangirls, so he tends to get a lot of people asking questions about gay sex, etc. It's led to a fairly-large flist, quite a few friends he knows better than he knows most of the people he sees every day, despite not knowing some of their actual names.
He writes fic. He doesn't have an OTP, but about 80% of what he writes is Brendon/Somebody. Currently, he's very frustrated by a kink_bingo piece he's stuck on. The prompt is "gun play." Spencer has no ideas whatsoever, but he spends a lot of time in boring meetings at work, thinking things like 'Officer Urie and JWalk the naughty lawbreaker? Ugh. No. Maybe Officer Wentz, and Brendon the naughty lawbreaker? What is wrong with my brain?" His fellow accountants would be scandalized. Sometimes Ryan gets stuck listening to him talk about this shit over pizza and beers. Ryan tries hard to be supportive, even though sometimes conversations about a kinky nipple-clamp bunny Spencer is struggling with or something still leave him feeling a little shell-shocked and woozy.
Spencer hears about it pretty much immediately when Brendon Urie becomes a client of the firm. Fortunately, he is in no way high enough up the ranks to have to worry about dealing with rock stars, but he still geeks out about it to Ryan for awhile, and wishes he could make a huge-font LJ post exclaiming "OMG BRENDON MIGHT BE COMING TO WHERE I WORK" and chasing it with a couple thousand exclamation points. He picspams Brendon's vast array of stupid faces instead.
So Spencer spends a little while keeping an eagle eye out at work, just in case Brendon comes in and he, like, sees him in the lobby or something. Nothing happens. Eventually, Spencer relaxes his vigil, assumes Brendon must be meeting with his people elsewhere, or maybe he has ACTUAL people that come in and deal with shit like this for him, or maybe he does everything by phone and courier. Who knows? Anyway, it doesn't seem likely that Spencer's going to spot him, so. Whatever.
Then one day Spencer is in the middle of reading this REALLY HOT Gerard/Brendon virgin fic at work, which he totally shouldn't do but he's very conscientious about clearing his cache and anyway, nobody ever checks that shit here. Spencer knows for a fact Martin from the third floor watches actual porn in his office. Spencer's office is right below his, and Martin doesn't seem aware that the vent actually isn't a magical sound barrier.
So but Spencer is reading, and then suddenly there's this knock at his door and this voice saying, "Hey, sorry, just--is there a restroom anywhere around here?" and Spencer looks up and there is BRENDON ACTUAL URIE standing in the doorway of his office beaming at him, and Spencer completely loses control of the English language and mostly just stares with wide, half-horrified eyes at Brendon, who starts looking a little uncertain after a few seconds of this staring.
"Or. Um. I could just keep looking," Brendon says awkwardly. "...Thanks?"
He starts to turn away, and Spencer finally rejoins reality and manages to cough out. "No! Sorry, no. Sorry." He barely manages not to say 'no' again, and maybe just repeat those two words over and over for all of time. "I--think I slipped into a coma there for a second. Seriously, I'm sorry. What did you need? The restroom?"
Brendon has this hesitantly hopeful smile on his face again, and Spencer cannot EVEN BELIEVE he is actually HOTTER IN PERSON, HOLY CHRIST. "Yeah, if--is there one around here?"
Spencer manages an actual smile. "Yeah, end of the hall, turn left, and it's the second door on the right." He's proud of himself. If you discount that whole horrified-staring and deathly-silence thing from earlier, he's actually handling this pretty smoothly, he thinks. Maybe he should admit to being a fan. Would that be creepy? Can he say it casually? By the way, big fan. Nice to meet you! Is that really douche-y? Probably people say that to Brendon seven thousand times a day.
"Awesome, thank you," says Brendon, and Spencer suddenly realizes he's been staring again. This time Brendon seems to have been staring too. Also he's still not leaving. "Hey, I love this song. Is that your iPod?"
Spencer turns, as if looking at the iPod in question will refresh his memory. "Oh," he says. "Yeah." It occurs to him that the next song on this particular playlist is a Panic! song. Hopefully Brendon will leave soon.
"Cool," says Brendon, leaning in the doorjamb and by all appearances making himself comfortable. "So, uh. My name is Brendon, by the way. Are you...Spencer?"
He sort of points at the shiny gold sign engraved with Spencer's name on the door. Brendon is as much of a dork in real life as Spencer always assumed he was. Spencer's crush is OUT OF CONTROL.
"Yeah, hi," Spencer says. "Nice, uh. To meet you. I'm--" He rolls his eyes and just says it. "Big fan."
It had to happen. The Journey song is three seconds from ending, and Folkin' Around is totally about to come on, there's nothing he can do about that.
"Oh!" Brendon brightens. "Yeah? Thanks, that's aweso--"
He breaks off as his own song starts up on Spencer's iPod, and then beams so brightly at Spencer that Spencer doesn't even care if his face is bright pink. Which it is. He discreetly closes the virgin-porn window. Brendon can't see it, but dude. It's still fucked-up.
Um. Okay. Let's see. Brendon hears his own song on Spencer's iPod and starts beaming at him, and Spencer's sort of embarrassed and basically ends up shrugging sort of sheepishly and admitting, "I knew that was going to happen, but I couldn't stop it," and Brendon actually laughs, this awesome big dorky laugh like Spencer said something amazing and funny instead of just uncomfortable and awkward, and Spencer just sort of stares at his desk for a second so that he's not actually staring at Brendon.
"No," Brendon tells him, "It's awesome that you like it!"
And then there is this uncomfortable pause, because what is Spencer supposed to say? Thank you? That makes no sense. You're welcome? God, it's finally happened, Spencer spent too much time with Ryan and all his social skills disappeared.
Brendon continues to hover in the doorway, smiling at Spencer. "Listen," he says after a second, and he kind of bounces on his toes a little. "I'm--you know, I just finished up with James, so I'm done here for the day, and I. Um. If--do you get a lunch break here?"
Spencer's heart starts racing in his throat, which is a very uncomfortable feeling, and he feels like he is simultaneously blushing and going pale, which must be attractive to look at, and somewhere early in his life his fight-or-flight reflex got all mixed up with his sarcasm reflex, and now he's totally panicking so there's a whole string of shit like, 'No, they don't like for us to eat or sleep,' trying SO HARD to fall off the tip of his tongue and he's barely managing to bite it back.
"I...actually, not today," is what he eventually says. "I mean, I have a lunch meeting today, so it's not really a break, not that they don't let me eat lunch--" He shuts up, because A.) he's babbling, fuck, and B.) that is a total lie. He does not even know why he made that up, because it sounded a lot like Brendon Urie was ASKING HIM OUT TO LUNCH, but all he can even think right now is about how SIXTY SECONDS AGO HE WAS READING ABOUT GERARD TEACHING BRENDON THE JOYS OF FINGERING, and there is no way he can go out to lunch with Brendon fucking Urie while he still has the sentence 'One long, slender fingertip circled Brendon's hole teasingly, and Brendon sucked in a startled breath, kind of glowing behind his eyes.
What the fuck is he even thinking, there is no way he can go out to lunch with Brendon fucking Urie EVER. That way lies madness. Besides, Brendon will forget all about him three seconds after leaving the building.
Brendon's face falls. "Oh," he says, and bites his lip. "Okay. I--um. You know, I should go find that bathroom."
"Right." Spencer is a twisting, churning mass of anxiety. "Right, yeah! Um. End of the hall, turn left, second door on the right."
Brendon smiles. "Thanks," he says again.
And then he's gone.
A week passes.
Spencer tells Ryan in excruciating detail every single thing that happened, one billion times. Ryan laughs hysterically every time, because Spencer being a loser will never stop being funny. Spencer tries to write the gunplay fic again, but now he CAN'T, because Brendon is this ACTUAL PERSON, and that's just weird. He ends up writing a short, stupid Frank/Gerard AU where Frank is Gerard's bodyguard and they get up to some kinky stuff with the gun, but he hates it. He posts it anyway, because he's three squares away from a blackout and he can't just quit now.
One of his friends posts an awesome long Brendon/Jon fic but Spencer only reads half of it before he has to stop in frustration because Brendon's characterization is all wrong--Spencer would KNOW, okay, he spent A WHOLE MINUTE with the guy--and also, he suddenly kind of can't see Brendon and Jon together. Whatever. Things are just weird right now. He'll be back to normal soon.
Except that the following Friday, Brendon appears in his doorway again.
This time Spencer is doing actual work at least, so that could have been worse. But Brendon is just suddenly THERE, smiling and kind of goofy and sort of awkwardly shifting from foot to foot.
"Hey," he says. "I just got out of another meeting with James, thought I'd come by and say...hi." He trails off kind of lamely, and Spencer can't really breathe again but he manages to smile and say hi back, and then they stare awkwardly at each other for a minute and everything is stupid.
"Um," says Spencer. "How's it going?"
He hates himself.
Brendon, though, Brendon smiles at him like he's RELIEVED or something, and starts babbling about writing new music and surfing and how they just finished their last tour a month ago and he already kind of misses being on the road.
Spencer already knows all of these things, because he follows Brendon on twitter. He keeps his mouth shut, though.
"That sounds awesome," he says, when Brendon stops for breath. "I'm kind of jealous."
He smiles as he says it, like that will make him sound less like a loser. Brendon just grins, though.
"How about you?" he asks, like he's really interested and wants to know. Spencer has no idea what to say.
"Fourteen thousand spreadsheets and a lot of Thai takeout," he admits sheepishly. "It's not a very exciting life. Last week I helped my friend Ryan read through half a dozen manuscripts for romance novels, so that was...y'know. A stupid way to pass some time."
Brendon comes right into the office, plopping down in one of the chairs across from Spencer's desk and propping his bright-orange Converse up against the wood. "No, that sounds awesome! Is he an editor, or what?"
Somehow, Spencer ends up talking about Ryan's job and about some of the horrible romance novels he's read in the name of friendship, and then suddenly an hour has passed and Spencer doesn't even know where the time went. He gets randomly embarrassed, but Brendon is still laughing about the maiden-on-a-pirate-ship story and doesn't seem to notice.
"Come to lunch with me," he says suddenly, and Spencer's head snaps up. Brendon is bright-eyed and beaming. "I will tell you all about my own epic plans to write a romance novel. It involves a dastardly rake and a virginal princess. Ryan will love it."
Spencer should NOT SAY YES, because he is still totally the same exact freak who stalks Brendon online and has written forty-two porn stories about him. He should NOT SAY YES.
They go for pizza.
Halfway through lunch, Spencer goes to the bathroom, and his phone buzzes. Brendon has just sent out a tweet. 'Best date ever.'
Spencer dies.
Spencer barely makes it through the rest of lunch, he's so embarrassed. He gets back to work and immediately drops Brendon's tweets from his device updates, even though it's not like he's ever going to actually SEE him again. Still. Better safe than sorry. What if Brendon had tweeted at the actual TABLE, and then Spencer's phone had started buzzing??? Gah.
So, he calls and leaves thirteen messages for Ryan babbling about how he needs to call back RIGHT NOW, and there is no way he's going to get any more work done this afternoon so he logs into LJ and scrolls through his flist, only to discover, to his extreme dismay, that everyone on it is speculating about who Brendon went on this mysterious date with, and there are ficlets for every conceivable Brendon-based pairing being written RIGHT AT THIS EXACT MOMENT.
Spencer dies again, and logs out of LJ. He ends up spending the last three hours of his day obsessively refreshing his twitter page. Brendon tweets four more times. Two of them are about his dog. One of them is a twit-pic of Shane and Regan.
The last one says, 'What's the deal with the three-day rule. Is that an actual thing? Not sure if I can wait that long to call. Someone explain the point of that?'
Spencer hyperventilates, and calls Ryan again.
Brendon doesn't call him that night, and doesn't tweet again. Ryan comes over and tries to explain a lot of logical things about how, like, Brendon doesn't actually have Spencer's cellphone number, but Spencer is uninterested in reason. He is having an ANXIETY ATTACK, OKAY?
He starts to delete his entire LJ account, but Ryan--of all people--manages to convince him that's a stupid idea, because the pages will still be there, just cached, and all he will accomplish by suddenly disappearing is to draw attention to himself.
Not that there's anything to draw attention to. It was one lunch. That tweet might not even have been ABOUT him. Brendon probably goes on five dates a day. He's hot; he's famous. Lunch with Spencer probably wasn't even an actual date. Maybe Brendon was being SARCASTIC.
"You're officially a crazy person now," Ryan tells him tiredly. "I don't want to talk to you anymore."
Ryan goes home. Spencer freaks out for the rest of the night by himself.
Brendon calls him at work the next day. "There's this three-day rule," is what he opens with, as soon as Spencer answers the phone. "I don't get it, and nobody can explain it to me, but I know there is one. So let's pretend it's been three days already. Can we do that?"
Spencer is charmed and panicky and kind of sick to his stomach all at once. He feels a little creepy, actually, in a way he didn't really feel before. Internet-stalking celebrities, fanfiction...it all seemed really innocent, like, nobody was getting hurt or anything, but now here's Brendon actually FLIRTING with him, as insane as that is, and how is Spencer supposed to deal with the fact that he already knows Brendon's entire history, from the falling out with his family to the sushi he had for dinner last week and felt the need to tweet a photo of--he knows his birth date and his friends' names and what the inside of his living room looks like. He could pick Brendon's dog out of a lineup. How is any of this even remotely okay???
He laughs, a little nervously. "Three days. Got it." God, he's such a lamer.
"Awesome," says Brendon happily. "So hey, I had a really nice time three days ago, and I'm sorry if this is weird and really out of line or whatever, but can we have dinner? Tonight? You can pick the place, my treat, I just--am not very good at this. I'm. I'm asking you out. Again. In case that wasn't clear."
And Spencer doesn't even know what the hell he's going to say to that even as he opens his mouth, but what ends up coming out is, "I'd--I'd really, really like to. But. Um. Brendon..."
"Oh, god," Brendon says, sounding horrified. "You have a boyfriend. Or. Wow, maybe you're not even gay. Are you gay? Have I totally freaked you out? I'm so sorry--"
"Brendon," Spencer interrupts. "I'm--I'm gay, it's not--I don't have a boyfriend or anything, okay, it's just...I don't know what to do. With you."
There is a long pause. "You have dinner with me," Brendon finally suggests, carefully. "And I remember to get your actual phone number this time. And then probably I call you fifteen minutes after we say goodnight, because, like. At this point there's really no point trying to hide that I'm. Y'know. Interested. And also kind of a loser with no idea how to play it cool, so. There's that. But--that'd be a good start. Right? For what to do with me. Unless YOU'RE not interested, and then--"
Spencer flails a little at his desk. "I'm boring," he explains. "I'm--Brendon, I'm an accountant."
Brendon is quiet for another minute. "I don't think you're boring," he says softly. He doesn't say anything else.
And Spencer should say no, ohmygod, he should never have even let himself get in this far, he ABSOLUTELY NEEDS TO SAY NO, but...
"Dinner, huh?"
On the other end of the line, Brendon laughs in relief, and Spencer lays his head down on his desk and thinks, What is my life?
Spencer gets to pick where they go and Brendon insists on treating, so Spencer decides they're going to get subs and chips and sodas and go to the park or something. Brendon does him one better and takes him to the beach, a quiet little one that Spencer's never been to, not that he does a whole raging lot of beach-hopping anyway. They talk a lot about music. Spencer knows a lot of the bands Brendon likes from all the...y'know. Stalking. But he's not bored at all, because listening to Brendon talk about WHY he likes all the things he likes is awesome and weirdly informative. Brendon knows a LOT about music. Spencer has always known that he plays a ton of instruments and whatever, but he's not sure he ever really put together in his head how much Brendon actually KNOWS.
Spencer can't contribute on that level, but his high-school Summer League days with Ryan give him something amusing to contribute to the conversation at least, and Brendon is totally excited to find out that Spencer plays drums. Like it's an accomplishment, or something special. Brendon himself can play the drums, and like seventeen other instruments besides, not to mention the fact that like, ALL of his friends are these really incredible musicians or whatever, but for some reason the fact that Spencer can play All The Small Things on the drums is some huge accomplishment. Spencer wants to feel condescended to or patronized, but Brendon is so earnest and genuinely excited that it's impossible.
They talk about life as a rock star, and Spencer gets to hear a lot of things he has always wondered about, like how small the buses actually are--("You hear stories or whatever, but anybody having sex in one of those bunks is going to end up with a black eye and probably a fractured rib or two.")--and how many people are actually on one at any given time--("Between the drivers and security and whatever random techs there's no room for on the tech bus, and the girlfriends or boyfriends or best friends of whoever has decided to bring somebody along, you can't even move half the time.")--and how bad the food from catering actually is. It would really fuck with all his future fanfics, if he weren't feeling so sick and ashamed about fanfic in general right now that he can't imagine ever writing any again.
"It's pretty awesome," Brendon finishes sheepishly, and Spencer laughs, because he could tell by the way Brendon's eyes were shining the entire time he was rattling off that list of complaints.
They talk about Spencer's job, but Spencer hates talking about his job because it's boring, and it's never felt so boring before as it does now that he's talking about it with a rock star, so he doesn't let that conversation run on too long. They talk about Ryan some more, and Brendon asks about Spencer's other friends but Spencer runs into something of a brick wall there because most of his other friends are fandom friends, and just...no. He talks about his family instead, and that turns out to be an open door into talking about BRENDON'S family, and that story is even more heart-wrenching when you're hearing it told so simply and matter-of-factly by Brendon himself, and Spencer's stomach is twisting itself up again, because here is Brendon, who has every reason in the world to be wary and cautious and withdrawn about his life but he's being so candid and open and honest, and then there is Spencer...who has a flash drive full of pictures of Brendon and has never, ever felt like such a fucking creep.
Brendon insists on taking Spencer out for ice cream after they finish their sandwiches and sodas and sat around talking on the beach for more than two and a half hours, and the evening stretches on as they bicker over acceptable ice cream preferences (Brendon likes this weird cappuccino flavor with fudge and caramel swirls, to which he adds hot fudge and whipped cream; Spencer finds this horrifying on every level. Spencer likes raspberry swirl in a cone, which Brendon finds distressingly uninteresting) and then suddenly they're outside Spencer's door and Spencer is trying to decide whether there is anything incriminating sitting out and around in his apartment or whether he can actually invite Brendon in and play him that song by fun that he babbled about for like half an hour in the car, but before he reaches any firm conclusions, Brendon says, "I had a really nice time tonight," and then sweeps in with a nervous smile and--holy FUCK.
Spencer is kissing Brendon Urie.
Okay, so they kiss on the porch and then Brendon smiles all sweet and goofy and says, "I stole your phone earlier and programmed my number into it. I, um. I have your number too. Is that creepy?" and Spencer thinks, 'You do not begin to understand what creepy even means, oh my god,' and tries not to look too guilty.
Brendon leaves without trying to come in, which Spencer thinks is probably a good thing because he's pretty sure the notebook on the coffee table is totally open to a page of half-scribbled sentences like, 'tentacleporn wtf,' and 'piercings--brendon gets nipples done, y/n?' and god, what is his LIFE.
He doesn't call, but Brendon does, and Spencer tries to be a good enough person to walk away but just...isn't, because Brendon is funny and awesome and earnest and kind of PERSISTENT, and what the hell do you even do with that? He ends up shutting off all his device updates on twitter and he can't even look LJ in the face anymore, and he's pretty much ignoring the stray emails that do come in from online friends wondering where he's gone and if everything is okay. He feels a little guilty about it, but nowhere near as guilty as he feels about the fandom thing in general, so. Whatever.
Two weeks into, christ, DATING BRENDON URIE, Brendon asks to meet Ryan, and Spencer arranges for the three of them to meet for dinner. Brendon beams at Ryan and says brightly, "Spencer has told me so much about you!" Ryan stares back and, totally straightfaced, replies, "He's told me a lot about you, too." Behind Brendon, Spencer winces and glares at him.
A week after that, Brendon takes Spencer to a get-together at Pete's, where Pete, Ashlee, Shane, Regan, and Zack all stare at him like a zoo exhibit. Spencer's hands won't stop shaking, and his stomach is churning too much for him to reasonably be able to eat anything, and this is all so surreal he can hardly comprehend it anymore.
By two months, Spencer has mostly stopped feeling quite so sick inside every time he looks at Brendon. He threw away all his flash drives and hasn't so much as looked at any of the areas of the internet he used to frequent, and that's why he's not actually the first one to know when the pictures hit.
He goes to Brendon's for their planned date, and finds the front door open and Brendon at his kitchen table, sitting cross-legged on one of the chairs and staring a little blankly at the screen of his laptop.
"Everything okay?" says Spencer, concerned, as he kicks off his shoes by the door. Spencer is conscientious about that shit.
Brendon doesn't look at him. "Jon Walker? You wrote me with Jon Walker?" He hesitates, as Spencer's stomach goes ice-cold in an instant. "He's practically my brother."
Spencer already knows what he's going to find when he walks around behind Brendon, but he does it anyway, like a compulsion. Sure enough, there's his LJ staring back at him, a long string of kink_bingo stories as his most recent posted entries, most of them featuring Brendon in some form or another.
Spencer can't breathe or speak.
"H--how..." he finally manages, and Brendon looks up at him. He doesn't look angry, though he probably should. He looks...hurt.
Spencer's stomach twists again, sickly.
"We were photographed," Brendon says flatly. "Or. Pete and Ashlee were. We just happened to be there. But. I guess someone online recognized you. And then--I don't know. Somehow it ended up at Oh No They Didn't, and--"
He clicks on another open tag along the top, and yeah. Fuck. There it is. A photo of Brendon and Spencer, beaming at each other with heads tilted close together as they exit the restaurant behind Pete and Ashlee, and next to it--
"God," whispers Spencer.
It's a screenshot of one of his porniest fics ever, a GSF where Brendon got gangbanged by Jon, Ian, and Dallon all together. Spencer wants to die.
--
OKAY, MORE BUNNY:
There is nothing Spencer can say that will make this okay. He knows this immediately and unequivocally. No amount of apologies will fix this.
He IS sorry, though, and he wants Brendon to know that, at least. Not to try to fix it. Just...so that Brendon will know.
"I didn't know I was being creepy," he says hoarsely, into the silence that has fallen over the room. "I didn't--I didn't expect to meet you, much less--and I just. It didn't feel creepy then. As soon as--but. There's nothing I can say, I'm so...sorry. I'm so sorry."
And then he steps back into his shoes and he leaves. Brendon stares after him and watches him go.
Spencer drives to Ryan's, because he can't be alone right now or he's going to--like. Throw stuff, or scream, or...or CRY or some shit. So he goes to Ryan's instead, and throws himself on Ryan's couch and refuses to speak except to say, "He knows," and when Ryan says, "Shit, fuck, what happened--" Spencer says, "Oh No They Didn't," and then doesn't say another word. He pulls a couch pillow over his face and listens to the silence, and then to the sound of Ryan's fingers tapping on the keys of his laptop, and then to the sucked-in breath and soft curses when he finds it.
Ryan sits next to him on the couch in silence all afternoon. They don't talk or turn on the TV or do anything but sort of stare at each other, when Spencer is willing to come out from behind his pillow. It's supportive, in a very RYAN way, and Spencer' appreciates it.
A week passes. Spencer doesn't hear from Brendon and doesn't expect to. He also doesn't look at the internet, though Ryan keeps him up-to-date on the gossip. It isn't huge news, but it's embarrassing and tawdry, so it ends up rating a mention on MTV, and Spencer is suddenly very glad he works with accountants, because all the talk at work is about the Discovery Channel and, like, Big Bang Theory. No one is aware of Spencer's shame, though his SISTERS watch MTV, so he has an extremely awkward conversation with his family to get through. He's pretty sure his dad is going to stutter awkwardly in his presence for LIFE. It's one thing to accept that your son is gay, and be supportive of that. It's another thing to learn that, among certain (admittedly very specific) circles, your son is recognizable primarily for gay porn.
Halfway through the second week of life post-Brendon, Spencer is still completely depressed. And humiliated, which is just the icing on this entire cake of pain. He spends Saturday in his sweatpants under a blanket on his couch, ignoring his phone and pretending not to exist, at least until Ryan shows up and lets himself in--Spencer should never have given him a key--and he's practically vibrating with excitement, which looks a little strange on Ryan, and Spencer finds himself mildly interested in spite of himself.
Then Ryan grabs Spencer's laptop and pulls up the internet browser, and Spencer pulls a couch pillow over his face again and tells Ryan in a muffled voice to fuck off. Ryan ignores him, and yanks the pillow away, dragging Spencer into a sitting position while he's at it.
"Look," he says flatly, and shoves the laptop at Spencer's face. Spencer can't possibly miss that he's staring at twitter--that he's staring at BRENDON'S twitter--and from there it's only a small step to actually reading the tweet Ryan has so thoughtfully pulled up.
'Trying my hand at fanfiction,' it says. 'Please read and review!'
There's a fucking link.
"ARGGGGHHHH," says Spencer, and tries to fall back down to hide in the pillows again, face burning, but Ryan won't let him.
"Click the link," he orders. Spencer glares. Ryan glares back. "Click the fucking--oh, fuck you."
Ryan clicks the link himself.
'TITLE: Happily Ever After
AUTHOR: Brendon Urie (seriously)
PAIRING: Brendon Urie / Spencer Smith'
Spencer chokes on an inhale, and snatches the computer out of Ryan's hands. "What the fuck--"
"It's horrible," Ryan tells him, clearly delighted. "There is absolutely no plot, you have to read it, and he has some kind of serious comma problems, they're fucking everywhere. You should offer to beta for him, that'd be hilarious--but wait. No, that's not the point. The point is, he wants you back!"
"He--" Spencer says stupidly. "He can't--"
"He does," Ryan cuts him off. "Seriously, this is the world's stupidest story, all about Brendon the lonely rock star, and then he meets this awesome amazing accountant named Spencer Smith, and Spencer has the prettiest smile and the prettiest eyes and most alluring beard--seriously, you have to READ it, it's HILARIOUS--but okay, so then Spencer the accountant screws up, right, because he kept this huge secret from Brendon the lonely rock star, this whole huge part of his life, and then Brendon finds out and he's all hurt and sad and Spencer just LEAVES, doesn't even try to explain, and Brendon waits and waits for him to call but he doesn't, and then in the end Brendon makes this big grand stupid gesture and Spencer totally comes back and they--SERIOUSLY, OKAY--they ride off into the sunset on BRENDON'S TOUR BUS." Ryan is gleeful beyond bearing. "This is my favorite fanfic ever."
"Oh my god," says Spencer. "Oh my GOD, Ryan, are you fucking with me?"
"I could not have made this up if I tried," Ryan tells him solemnly, then smirks. "I was never the writer you were when it came to shit like this."
"Fuck off," Spencer says absently, but he's already skimming the story. His heart is racing.
Then Spencer does something awesome and he totally gets back together with Brendon and they ride off into the sunset on Brendon's tour bus I DON'T EVEN KNOW, OKAY, CHRIST. /o\
Forget all of this, I will MAKE UP SOMETHING BETTER. MY BRAIN IS CLEARLY DEAD TODAY.