grass under your feet
(~22,500 words) // (Panic At The Disco) // (Ryan/Spencer) // (R)

Ryan Ross and Spencer Smith meet, grow up, and fall in love.




{x. and the shadows capture me in webs}

They fire Brent on a Wednesday when the heavens open and it feels like a tiny army is battering the sides of the bus with their fists. They have no idea where the hell he is – yet again – and they weren’t even sure he’d pick up his cell.

Spencer handles it, because Spencer handles things.

Jon’s on the bus by Brendon-ordered official comfort duty, and Katie’s in the kitchen with Dusty, the two of them cooking pancakes on the little stove.

“Perfect comfort food,” Katie says decisively, her gypsy earrings hitting her jaw. The mood on the bus isn’t so much miserable as it is somber – as if someone died, but everyone was expecting it, so it’s a dull pain, not agony. Brendon’s snuggled up with Jon, his face drawn. Spencer knows he feels unspeakably guilty – Brent was his “in” to this secret world, and now Brendon has survived him in it. He might be taking this worse than any of them.

Ryan looks numb. He stares out the bus window and doesn’t say much but, by the same token, he doesn’t flinch away when Spencer rests a hand near his left knee.

||

Jon was the obvious choice, and it’s so much better on stage with him anyway. Ryan doesn’t look so jittery, doesn’t turn around so much to check that Spencer’s still there. Jon’s like a rock in the stream they can all flow around, solid in the corner of the stage. He’s a good sport, too; not objecting too much when Ryan insists on a shirt festooned with what look like moldy cartoon roses. He gives Brendon piggybacks through the venues, learns Ryan’s moods quickly and plays the dual role of tech and performer perfectly.

Spencer is on stage one night in early June, listening to the roar of the crowd, squinting against the lights and knowing that nothing - nothing can stop them now. Katie and Dusty twitch their hips around each other, everything in the air is infectious. Brendon goes for a spontaneous high note and smashes it.

Spencer drums in time with the beat of his heart and wishes for his whole life to become this one moment, forever.

||

When Ryan’s dad dies it is different to when Bella died. It isn’t just different in the obvious ways – Bella was a cat and Ryan’s dad is a person. Ryan and Spencer are adults now.

It’s also different in that when Bella died, their grief was overwhelming and easy to express. Bella was their sister – the thing that brought them together, a lifelong confidant.

When Ryan’s dad dies, Ryan withdraws from all of them. That day – a Thursday – is a hotel day, and Ryan hides in the room he’s sharing with Spencer with the curtains drawn. He lies in the hotel bed and pretends to sleep, but Spencer can see the reflections at the corner of his eyes. He’s not interested in eating anything or talking to anyone, and ignores Spencer when he perches on the edge of the bed.

Spencer doesn’t grieve because he doesn’t know how to, this way. Bella was Spencer and Ryan’s cat, but Ryan’s dad is all Ryan’s. Spencer never really saw or spoke to him much – didn’t much want to, either. Ryan’s dad was an alcoholic, he wasn’t a bad man – but Spencer didn’t know the difference, when he was a kid. Maybe Ryan did, Spencer doesn’t know. Maybe he feels guilty now that he didn’t.

Spencer lies on top of the covers next to Ryan and they watch endless nature documentaries on the Discovery Channel. The one on orangutans finishes and something about penguins comes on, and the narrator’s line about how they mate for life jogs Spencer’s memory.

He wants to say – hey, do you remember – but he can’t; because everything he might say sounds like, so, your dad’s dead.

Eventually they shut the TV off and lie in the dark, neither of them sleeping or speaking. The reason Spencer feels so hollow is because he can grieve for Ryan’s dad – in the sense that he loves Ryan, and Ryan is aching.

||

The tour’s on hiatus. Ryan hasn’t left his bed in two days, so neither has Spencer. They watch endless movies and bad cable TV, and don’t speak. When Ryan falls asleep during the day, Spencer leaves him in bed and goes to report to Zack, to Jon and Brendon. There’s never much to report – Ryan doesn’t really change. The three of them go to stores during the day, though, bringing back different foods that Spencer takes up to Ryan, so Ryan can not eat them.

When night falls, Spencer crawls under the covers with Ryan and holds his hands. It’s a stupid gesture, but they used to do it all the time when they were kids, if something was scary. They didn’t even realize it was a weird thing to do until they were about eleven.

Ryan’s hands are cold, but Ryan’s hands are always cold. Spencer looks at their clasped hands lying between them on the mattress, at Ryan’s thin arms. Ryan’s eyelids are half-shuttered. Spencer moves his thumb in a soothing circle against the back of Ryan’s hand.

“The funeral’s Friday,” Ryan says, his voice croaky from underuse.

“I know,” Spencer admits.

“I’ll book the plane tickets tomorrow,” Ryan says.

“You want me to come, then,” Spencer says, neutrally. Ryan gives him a funny look.

“Of course I do,” he says.

They don’t say anything more, but Ryan shuffles across the mattress to lean his chin against Spencer’s shoulder. Spencer moves his arms slowly, as if Ryan’s a wild animal who could bolt at any second, and slings one around Ryan’s waist. Ryan closes his eyes, and it’s the easiest he’s slept since the news.

{xi. just tangled up in what I’ve seen}

Spencer feels uneasy at the funeral. His parents are there, but he doesn’t sit with them – he sits with Ryan. He wishes that they weren’t there, that Ryan wouldn’t be reminded of what Spencer has and what Ryan doesn’t. He feels like a traitor for being happy to see them, amidst everything else.

The ceremony is brief. Both Ryan and Spencer wear dark suits – and it’s never not weird to Spencer how similar funeral and wedding attire can be – and sit in the front row. Ryan cries, but Spencer isn’t certain what he’s crying about. They sing Amazing Grace, and Spencer remembers that time in his grandmother’s garage, Brendon’s voice soaring around the rafters and waking all the spiders.

After, they get back in Ryan’s rental and drive. Spencer thinks there should be some radio station exclusively for people who have just been bereaved - there’s a song from a new Disney channel sensation that just feels like a mockery, and makes the elephant in the room – or, rather the car – even harder to ignore. Spencer’s continually switching, looking for something appropriate.

Spencer isn’t sure where they’re going at first, but then Ryan makes a right and Spencer remembers. It’s the way to the lake on the outskirts of town. They used to go there when they were younger, with Spencer’s parents and sisters and then, later, alone. Spencer remembers making out with a girl here and then telling Ryan about it later that night.

The lake’s beautiful in the early afternoon. The sun’s out – photoshoot kind of lighting, Spencer thinks. Ryan leaves the car door open when he gets out, and leaves the radio playing. They’re the only people there.

Ryan stoops and rolls his pants legs up past his knees – the suit’s too big for him – and wades in, slowly. Spencer stays on the shore, thinking about Ryan’s straight back at the funeral, the tears rolling down his face without any sound. He loosens the knot of his tie.

Ryan’s just standing in the lake with his back to Spencer, knee deep, looking at the horizon; so Spencer gets out his sidekick and thumbs funeral over. ryan ok i think, sending it off to Brendon.

Ryan wades back out to shore and picks up a stone. It’s small and smooth, but he doesn’t throw it properly, and it sinks. It’s followed by a rain of similar stones, all sinking, but Ryan makes no pretence of skimming them anymore. He’s hurling them.

“I hated him,” Ryan says. He doesn’t look at Spencer. “I loved him.”

“Ryan –“ Spencer begins, getting up, but Ryan’s still speaking around the plop of sinking stones.

“I feel like I should cry about it, and then I feel like I want to and I can’t – he used to say that, you know, you’re a big boy now George, you’re a big boy and fuck it, Spence, I am a big boy now. I didn’t need him, I don’t need him.”

He stops throwing the stones, his arms hanging at his sides. Ryan squeezes his eyes shut against his ragged breath, and Spencer reaches out to touch him, grasping his shoulders in sure hands. Every day, Spencer is getting taller than Ryan. The cycle changing again.

“Things were getting better,” Ryan whispers. He closes his eyes and clutches the front tails of Spencer’s jacket in his hands. “I spoke to him – I spoke to him on the phone two days before – before I got the news. He said he was proud of me. I didn’t even – who found him? Who f-found him, when he was dead? I wasn’t even here.”

“Shh, Ryan,” Spencer says, cupping a hand around the nape of Ryan’s neck. “You didn’t – you couldn’t know, this isn’t your fault.”

Ryan tips his head forward against Spencer’s shirtfront, his nose nudging Spencer’s chest between the buttons.

“I want to fucking, to fucking drive that stupid rental into the lake and destroy it,” Ryan murmurs. “I want to ruin this suit, too, and my shoes.”

“We can do that,” Spencer offers. “I can jiggle some tour funds around to cover the car.”

Ryan huffs a little laugh through Spencer’s shirt.

“I’m here,” Spencer says, and a flock of birds rises, all at once, from the trees surrounding the lake and flies off into the sun.

{xii. and every word I have not said}

They have one night in Vegas before their flight leaves. Spencer’s standing in the bathroom in his boxers and a threadbare t-shirt, looking at his face in the sickly light, when Ryan opens the door, catches one side of Spencer’s jaw in his hand and kisses him.

Spencer stumbles a little – Ryan has to lean up, and that’s not a great combination for balance when one of the participants has just been startled out of his mind - but he rights himself with a hand braced against the sink.

Ryan kisses open-mouthed and feverish, like he’s looking for something. Spencer lets him, opening his mouth under Ryan’s and gripping Ryan’s hip in his free hand. He almost double takes at how far around his hand fits.

“Take your shirt off,” Ryan says, pulling away and resting his mouth against Spencer’s jaw, before retaking the path with his tongue.

“Okay,” Spencer says, voice steady, “but do we have to do this in the bathroom?”

Spencer walks Ryan backwards into the bedroom, trying to get used to the feeling of Ryan’s hands on his stomach, his back. Spencer scrambles out of his shirt and as soon as it’s landed on the floor, Ryan’s back again, licking into Spencer’s mouth. He holds Spencer’s wrists in his hands, and Spencer lets himself be held. It’s strange to just allow things to happen to him.

Ryan nudges Spencer back against the bed with one knee, and Spencer’s knees give at the angle. Ryan pins his wrists above his head, against the bedspread, and crawls up above Spencer, his knees on either side of Spencer’s hips. Ryan kisses Spencer like he wants to hurt him, but his fingers skittering over Spencer’s chest and stomach and hips are gentle.

Spencer’s pretty sure Ryan doesn’t really want to hurt him, that Ryan’s trying to hurt himself.

Ryan kisses Spencer with his eyes open, like he’s afraid Spencer will disappear. Spencer thinks it’d probably be strange and uncomfortable with anyone else, but looking straight into Ryan’s eyes doesn’t make this weirder, it makes it a little bit less weird. Maybe it’s just because this couldn’t get any weirder – but it makes a scary kind of sense to Spencer, too. It’s just like one of those things they do or did – holding hands when things are scary, Spencer’s head against Ryan’s legs in the bus lounge.

Ryan’s hard against Spencer’s thigh, Spencer can feel it. Spencer wonders whether Ryan’s having the same internal tussle that he is – about whether having sex on the eve of a funeral is icky and gross.

Ryan releases Spencer’s wrists and sits back, below Spencer’s knees. Spencer reaches up and undoes the knot in Ryan’s tie, gently, and throws it vaguely behind him. Ryan’s breathing is ragged as he watches Spencer’s fingers. Spencer undoes Ryan’s top button, the second.

“What the fuck are we doing?” Ryan asks him, suddenly, shattering the precarious momentum. Spencer stops immediately, and almost pushes back.

“I have no fucking idea,” Spencer admits. “I’d pull out the old gem of you started it here, but I think we’re too old for that.”

Ryan laughs at that, and sits back down heavily on Spencer’s shins. His shirt’s half undone and all skew-whiff on his thin frame. He covers his face with his hands, still laughing.

“I’m sorry,” he says. His laughs have become gusty, tired hiccups. “Just, you ever get that feeling where you can’t feel anything at all? It’s kind of scary.”

“I’d rather you slept with me than hurt yourself,” Spencer says, seriously. Ryan sighs and pitches forward, leaning his forehead against Spencer’s bare shoulder.

“I think that would drag you way beyond the line of duty,” Ryan says. Spencer strokes the hair at the nape of his neck, comforting.

“There’s still time,” Spencer says. “We can still drown the rental car.”

||

In the end, they pack Ryan’s suitcase and drive back to the lake. Then, they get out of the car, Ryan opens his suitcase, and spends a half an hour throwing everything in to the water, item by item. Then he throws the shoes he’s wearing. Then he throws the suitcase.

“Feel better?” Spencer asks, after they watch the suitcase sink, slowly, making noises like some monster of the deep.

“Yeah,” Ryan says. As better as he’s going to feel, right now.

{xiii. but someday when my heart exhales}

It’s Saturday, and the last show of the tour is over. They’re going home. Well, they’re going somewhere that isn’t the bus, at any rate. Spencer isn’t really sure where they’re going. He thinks he’s taking Ryan home with him, but Brendon made noises about going with Jon to Chicago.

Spencer hugs Katie the longest. She smells of incense and blueberries. He wants to hang on to her shoulders and keep her from going.

“Seriously, you know, if you ever want another gig tour managing –“ Spencer says, and Katie smiles. She rocks up on to her toes and presses a kiss to Spencer’s mouth.

“Maybe someday, Mr Smith,” she says. “Whatever happens, we’ll see each other again.”

||

Ryan and Spencer go home. No matter what Ryan thinks – how alone he feels – they go home.

Ginger seems to attempt to make up for all that time they spent on the road in the space of one homecoming dinner – the table is groaning under the weight of all the different dishes she’s made. She’s seriously made enough to feed the entire crew of their last tour, along with all of the performers.

The whole family plays silly boardgames in the lounge for hours, as if it’s Christmas day. The house feels smaller to Spencer than the last time he was here – maybe he’s just getting bigger. That’s a sad thought, somehow.

Ryan’s good at Trivial Pursuit, but he stinks at Monopoly. Spencer wins, as he always does. He’s pretty sure he’s the only one of them who still enjoys Monopoly, actually, as he ruthlessly crushes the rest of them every time.

They’re too big to both get into Spencer’s bed, but they do it anyway. It’s tradition. Despite the incident in the hotel room after the funeral – which is pretty easily explained away – everything’s the same between them. Totally the same. Spencer never – It’s totally and completely the same.

“Your foot –“ Spencer grunts, and elbows Ryan in the ribs. Ryan yelps and digs his knee into Spencer’s stomach, and then they’re laughing breathlessly, whirling their limbs around and getting tangled in the comforter.

“Maybe we should lie top to tail,” Ryan says after, when they’re lying on their backs, trying to get their breath back.

“And have your feet in my face all night? No fucking way, you’d probably break my nose, as well,” Spencer says.

Ryan starts laughing again, and that’s contagious, and then Spencer’s wheezing with it, because this is so stupid. They’re two grown men, practically, lying in a bed meant for one person with a rocket-patterned comforter. Spencer’s feet are sticking out, so he draws his knees up and puts his soles on Ryan’s shins.

“Fuck!” Ryan yelps again, surprised. “Your feet are like icicles.”

“Perils of being a tall person,” Spencer replies, and rubs his feet against Ryan’s legs, hoping friction will thaw his feet.

“Oh, what, I’m like two inches shorter than you,” Ryan says, rolling his eyes. He doesn’t kick Spencer’s feet away though.

There are things Spencer wants to say, but he doesn’t know if he should say them, or how.

“I still miss the damn cat,” Ryan says, finally, and the moon shines through the window.

“Me too,” Spencer says. They go to sleep, and when they wake in the morning, they’re tangled together, just like when they were kids. Spencer rests his sore head against the cool wall, and his mother calls them down for breakfast.

||

Spencer walks into the bathroom after breakfast to find Ryan standing around with wet shoulders, a towel wrapped around his waist. The room’s all steamy.

“Sorry,” Spencer says quickly, trying not to sound too hysterical, and fumbles for the doorhandle. Then he accidentally bangs his elbow, and ow. Okay, maybe everything’s not the same.

Maybe it’s kind of completely different.

||

Spencer leans his back against the bathroom door, his hands shaking. Okay, that was weird. Probably he’s just having flashbacks of that other time one of them was in the bathroom and the other interrupted. You don’t just get over stuff like nearly having sex with your best friend, no matter how plausibly the desire can be explained away and hushed up.

That’s all it is. Ryan rattles the doorhandle from his side and Spencer hears his name.

He darts into the next bedroom just before Ryan gets the door open.

||

They don’t have long in Vegas. Maybe a week, max. Then it’s on to LA, where the four of them are going to take over Pete’s house while he isn’t there, lie in his pool and spend some time together not on tour – properly assimilate Jon into the group, and all that.

Ryan wants to go back to all the old places. Everything seems smaller than it used to. Shabbier.

The old aquarium is the same, except it’s daytime when they’re there. The kids’ chattering enthusiasm is infectious.

“Look,” Ryan says, lifting his shades and nudging Spencer with his elbow, “they still have the penguins.”

They do. They’re not from those same eggs they saw so long ago, but there are little penguin chicks waddling around, all fluffy and scared at being so brand new.

“I bet those are the kids of those penguins that we saw that hadn’t hatched yet,” Ryan says, and after a little bit of counting back, Spencer thinks he could be right – considering neither of them really knows anything about penguins. “The ones that were still eggs.”

“Could be,” Spencer says.

“All the penguin love stories came true, then,” Ryan says. Spencer looks at him – stupidly tight pants, rockstar fauxhawk, oversized shades – smiling at and saying sentimental things about a bunch of fluffy penguin chicks. Sometimes, Spencer thinks, he’s never really going to understand Ryan completely.

That’s probably what makes it interesting.

||

They can climb up the old tree in the front yard in about two strides, now. The change in perspective will never not be weird to Spencer. Their last night in Vegas, they sit up there and split a bag of popcorn that Ryan opens with his teeth. Spencer throws them, and Ryan catches them in his mouth most of the time, using one long leg thrown over a branch for balance. One drops on the ground, and Ryan laughs and says, “oops.”

“Doesn’t matter, Bella’ll get it,” Spencer says easily, and then pauses.

They don’t say anything for a few minutes, after that. It’s just the same as how they don’t look over the new fence to see Ryan’s dad’s house – there’s a new family living there. Spencer’s parents are talking about getting a new cat – the girls were barely old enough to even remember Bella – but Spencer doesn’t want anything to do with it.

“Hey,” Ryan says, after they’re silent for a while. Spencer looks at him.

“Let’s – “ he begins, fumbling in his pockets for something, “before we go –“

He pulls something out of his back pocket. Spencer can’t see too well in the darkening light, but it looks like it might be some kind of knife.

“Ryan, once you’re over thirteen, you’re too old for blood brothers,” Spencer says, and Ryan gives this impatient little huff, like Spencer’s being deliberately difficult.

“That’s not what I-“ he says, and drops out of the tree. Like, one minute he’s in the branch, and the next he has fallen from sight, like a marionette whose strings have been abandoned.

The ground is so much closer now, Spencer remembers after his heart drops in his chest. He almost laughs, giddy with relief.

It’s a Swiss army knife. Ryan flicks the blade open with an easy turn of his wrist and tests the blade against the trunk a couple times. Spencer hangs over the branch and asks what he’s doing.

“Get down here,” Ryan says. He brushes the hair out of his eyes and goes to work at the trunk, scratching something out. Spencer drops carefully, bending his knees. It’s just like missing a step going down.

Ryan’s halfway through carving his own name into the trunk with clear, clean lines. It’s funny how handwriting is so idiosyncratic that even when it’s diluted to difficultly-hewn lines in a trunk, it’s still recognizable as Ryan’s.

“Do yours,” Ryan says, after he carves a slightly slanted ampersand after his own name. He hands the knife over. The bark is slightly damp under Spencer’s hands and he forms the letters carefully. Their names are just under Spencer’s parents’.

“Well, this is gay,” Spencer says. Ryan looks at him and then cracks up, hands over his face.

“Yeah, well,” he says, finally, and then starts to laugh again. “Motherfucker,” he says, in his flat voice, “this was supposed to be all meaningful and shit.”

It is, though. No matter what Spencer tries to do to diffuse the situation, the air is heavy all around them.

When Spencer looks back, years in the future, he won’t even be able to call it a revelation. In that second, it occurs to him that he’s probably been in love with Ryan since he was seven years old.

He should be afraid. He isn’t.

PART FIVE