Chapter Text
The buses smelled like gasoline, cheap cologne, and winter.
It was early 2006, the start of the Nothing Rhymes with Circus Tour, and everything felt too big for Ryan Ross.
The venues were bigger.
The crowds were louder.
The expectations were suffocating.
Ryan stood near the back lounge of the tour bus, guitar strap hanging loose around his shoulder even though he wasn’t playing. He always held it like that when he didn’t know what to do with his hands. Which was often.
Outside, stagehands were hauling equipment through slushy parking lot snow. Inside, Spencer and Jon were arguing softly about set times. The heater rattled. Someone’s phone buzzed. It was chaos in the small, ordinary way that touring chaos always was.
And then there was Brendon.
Brendon Urie was in the kitchenette area trying to make coffee and failing spectacularly.
“I don’t understand,” Brendon said, squinting at the machine like it had personally betrayed him. “I followed the instructions. I’m literate. I think.”
“You poured the water into the filter,” Spencer called without looking up.
“Oh.” Brendon paused. “Well. That explains the smell.”
Ryan bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling. He looked down at his boots instead, scuffing the toe against the carpet like it might swallow him whole if he tried hard enough.
Brendon glanced over his shoulder.
Their eyes met.
Ryan immediately looked away.
It wasn’t new. None of it was new. They’d known each other for years now — Vegas summers, cramped practice spaces, the early shows where twenty people felt like a miracle. But something about this tour made everything feel different. Sharper. Brighter. More dangerous.
They weren’t just playing songs anymore.
They were becoming something.
Brendon cleared his throat and abandoned the coffee machine. “Ryan,” he said, too casually. Always too casually. “You, uh… you nervous?”
Ryan adjusted his guitar strap again even though it wasn’t slipping.
“No,” he said.
He was lying. Badly.
Brendon nodded like he believed him anyway. “Cool. Me neither. I’m totally calm. Completely chill. Just a relaxed individual about to sing high notes in front of a thousand people.”
Ryan let out a small breath that might have been a laugh.
Brendon noticed. His face lit up like he’d just won something.
“Hey,” Brendon said, softer now. “It’s just another show.”
Ryan shrugged. “It’s not.”
Brendon tilted his head. “No?”
Ryan’s fingers tapped nervously against the body of his guitar. He hated talking about feelings. He hated when people looked at him while he did. He especially hated when Brendon looked at him like that — open and patient and waiting.
“It’s the first show,” Ryan muttered. “That’s different.”
Brendon considered that. “Okay,” he said finally. “Yeah. That’s fair.”
There was a pause. The bus felt smaller.
Spencer stood up and grabbed his jacket. “Soundcheck in twenty,” he said, disappearing toward the front.
Jon followed.
And suddenly it was just them.
Ryan immediately pretended to tune his guitar.
Brendon hovered awkwardly near the table like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to exist in the same space. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Picked up a paper cup. Put it back down.
“Do you—” Brendon started, then stopped. “Never mind.”
Ryan glanced up despite himself. “What?”
Brendon scratched the back of his neck. “I was gonna ask if you wanted to, um… run through ‘Lying’ one more time. Just the bridge.”
He said it like it was a normal question.
It wasn’t. Not really.
The bridge of Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off meant standing too close under hot lights. It meant shared microphones. It meant harmonies that felt like secrets.
Ryan swallowed.
“Sure,” he said.
They moved to the middle of the bus because there wasn’t really room anywhere else. Their shoulders brushed when Ryan adjusted his stance.
He stiffened immediately.
Brendon stiffened too.
“Sorry,” they said at the same time.
They both laughed — quiet and embarrassed.
Ryan counted them in under his breath.
They sang softly at first. The bus walls absorbed the sound, turning Brendon’s voice into something intimate and warm instead of explosive. Ryan focused on the chords, on the precision, on anything that wasn’t the way Brendon leaned closer on instinct during the harmonies.
When they reached the bridge, Brendon’s voice dropped lower, softer.
Ryan missed his cue.
Brendon faltered too.
They both stopped.
“Sorry,” Ryan said quickly, cheeks burning.
“No, no — that was me,” Brendon said just as fast. “I came in weird.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t.”
They stared at each other.
Brendon broke first, laughing under his breath. Not cocky. Not loud. Just a little helpless. “We’re really bad at this.”
“At what?” Ryan asked.
Brendon opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
“At… bridges,” he finished weakly.
Ryan knew that wasn’t what he meant. And the fact that he knew made his stomach flip.
A knock on the bus door saved them.
“Soundcheck!” someone shouted.
Ryan stepped back immediately, putting space between them like it was oxygen.
Brendon rubbed his palms against his jeans. “Right. Yeah. Cool. Soundcheck. Normal. We’re normal.”
Ryan nodded too many times.
They walked off the bus one after the other, shoulders almost touching but not quite.
The venue was already buzzing — techs shouting, amps humming, lights flashing against an empty crowd space that would soon be full. Ryan slipped into his stage persona like armor: hair perfectly in place, expression carefully unreadable.
Brendon tried to act the same.
He failed immediately.
He tripped over a monitor cable.
“I meant to do that,” he announced to no one in particular, cheeks pink. “Tested its durability.”
A crew member snorted.
Ryan ducked his head, smiling into his collar.
During soundcheck, they kept stealing glances. Ryan would look up mid-chord and find Brendon already watching him. Brendon would start to say something funny, then lose the punchline halfway through because Ryan was staring back.
They were worse around everyone else.
Spencer noticed.
Jon definitely noticed.
But neither of them said anything.
When they finished running through the set, the stage went quiet again. The house lights dimmed to a low amber glow. The calm before the storm.
Ryan stood at center stage, looking out at the empty seats.
Brendon drifted over, stopping just close enough that their sleeves brushed.
“You okay?” Brendon asked softly.
Ryan hesitated.
He could lie.
Instead, he said, “I don’t want to mess it up.”
Brendon’s expression shifted — not teasing, not playful. Just honest.
“You won’t,” he said. “You wrote the songs. I just scream them dramatically.”
Ryan huffed a small laugh. “You don’t just scream.”
“Oh, I absolutely scream.”
Ryan looked at him then. Really looked at him.
Brendon shifted under the weight of it, suddenly shy. “What?”
“Nothing,” Ryan said quickly, gaze dropping again.
Brendon swallowed.
The stage manager called for them to clear out before doors opened.
As they walked offstage, Brendon reached for Ryan’s wrist — just for a second — like he was going to say something important.
He stopped himself.
His fingers barely brushed Ryan’s skin before he pulled back like it burned.
Ryan felt it anyway.
They didn’t talk about it.
They just walked back toward the dressing room, awkward and quiet and orbiting each other like gravity hadn’t quite decided what it was doing yet.
Outside, the line of fans was already stretching around the block.
Inside, two boys stood too close in a fluorescent-lit hallway, pretending they didn’t notice the way their shoulders kept finding each other.
The circus hadn’t even started yet.