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He can’t get the fucking song out of his head, and it’s driving him near tears, because there are forty-five minutes left until he’ll be watching Keltie walk down the aisle, and he needs to not be fucking thinking about this.
It started in the morning, before he woke up, even. He hadn’t slept well—even with the sleeping pills he’d taken because he knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep well—and sometime between dawn and the time Spencer came in and started shaking his shoulder, he found himself on the set of I Write Sins, Not Tragedies, asking one of the clowns how the make-up girls had managed to create the cool design over one of his eyes. The clown had moved away, and he’d spotted Brendon through the crowd, humming the melody of the song they were filming the video for softly under his breath and twirling his top hat slowly between his fingers. The hat turned into a veil, but Brendon didn’t seem to notice, just stood up and put it back on his head, moving over to the director to start shooting the next scene.
He’s tried every single trick he knows to make it stop playing, but so far, nothing has worked, and now he’s standing in a hotel bathroom, trying to keep himself together and not hyperventilate, telling himself that he can do this. That it’s just a fucking song.
***
“Hey, half an hour till showtime. You okay? No cold feet? Need a getaway car?”
He turns around and watches Brendon come closer, walking up to where Ryan is standing in the beautifully designed rose garden of the hotel/casino hosting the wedding. He looks pale, and the tone of his voice is unnaturally cheerful. Ryan doesn’t believe it any more than he believes his own, fake, blissful smiles.
Is it everything you hoped it would be?
Now it is.
“I thought your job was to make sure I didn’t run away from the wedding?”
Brendon ducks his head, shrugs, flashes a bright display of white teeth, keeping up the show, keeping things light and breezy.
I love you, Ryan Ross.
“Nah, that’s Spencer’s job. I’m just here to entertain and get drunk with the slutty bridesmaids at the reception.”
I don’t want to finally get to love you just to give you up.
It wouldn't have to be like that.
Then how would it be?
Ryan swallows, because this—what Brendon is doing now—only makes everything harder, only makes Ryan’s heart break into yet another few hundred pieces every time Brendon opens his mouth. He half-wishes that things would have gone further between them, that they would have burnt their bridges and that there would have been anger or accusations or ultimatums to cloud the pain—anything other than this quiet support to what might technically still be a wedding, but which feels a lot more like a wake.
I can’t do this without you.
“Hey,” he murmurs, catching Brendon’s attention, finally meeting his eyes. “If you can’t… I mean, if it’s too—I’m sure Jon could—”
Brendon interrupts him with a hand on his arm, the first actual physical contact they’ve had in days, and shakes his head.
“Thanks, but I need to do this,” he says softly, and all Ryan can think is tell him. “Closure, you know?”
Beautiful ‘someday?’
It’s been in there for so long. I’m not sure how I’d get it out now.
“Yeah,” Ryan whispers, biting down around the I’m sorry I was too scared's and the I’m so in love with you's, keeping them firmly inside his mouth. It’s no use saying them now. This time, it really is too fucking late. He should have said them every day for the past four or five years, or—since he didn’t fully realise what was truly going on until only a week ago—he should have said them on Saturday, at the bachelor party, or on Sunday in Brendon’s car; on Monday, when they were sitting in Spencer’s garden, or on Tuesday in the flower shop. He could have told Brendon he loved him on Wednesday, when they finally talked about the attraction flowing between them, or on Thursday, when they decided to leave behind their fantasies of someday and never talk about it again. A million opportunities, none of which he took. A million moments of standing at the crossroads, and every time, he chose to go down the path he knew—the path of summer breezes and simple love, of family and promises made and convenience. He’s not even sure he regrets it. Time will tell.
“Have lots of kids, okay?” Brendon says, squeezing Ryan’s arm before he lets his hand drop. “I’m sure you’ll have really great ones, and then I can come by every weekend to teach them how to play all their instruments really well and make sure that you and Kelts are giving them a proper Disney education.”
He walks away, goes over to where Jon is chatting with one of the girls who will be playing strings for the wedding march. Ryan watches him go, straight-backed and beautiful, and then turns his gaze away to focus at nothing in particular. There’s a ladybug crawling over a petal of a white rose on one of the nearby bushes, and he stares at it until the burning in his eyes and stinging in the top of his nose goes away. The lump in his throat is harder to get rid of, but swallowing thickly ten or eleven times in a row seems to do the trick, and when one of the hotel wedding planners comes up to tell him they’re about to start, the smile he gives her is almost natural enough to make her smile back.
***
“If anyone knows of any reason why these two should not be wed, let him speak now or forever hold his peace.”
The congregation is silent, as it should be. There’s no reason to object to such a pretty picture, no reason why people shouldn’t see exactly what he’s been projecting unto them for years. There’s no way to know that the poor bride’s groom is a whore—or some other word that might be more appropriate—‘jerk’ maybe—when he’s been nothing but smiles and public gestures, showering the girl next to him with attention from the moment they met.
The key to keeping a perfect secret is to never share it with anyone, and he hasn’t shared this. There’s no one to stand up and stop the scene from unravelling because he’s never trusted anyone with this. Not even Spencer knows. He’s known in the past, and he certainly suspects that something is still there, but suspecting isn’t knowing, and without knowing, you don’t stand up in front of four hundred people and call a wedding to a halt.
He speaks his vows without faltering, tries to focus on Keltie and on how beautiful she looks next to him, tries to forget the hundreds of people around them and Brendon’s eyes on the side of his face.
Everything goes smoothly. Of course it does. This isn’t a movie or a bad sitcom. He’s not going to say the wrong name by mistake, and no one in the pews is going to get to their feet and suggest that he might be in love with someone else in adorable sign language. He reads his vows, says his ‘I do,’ puts the ring on Keltie’s finger.
It’s a little like a dream, just not the kind people normally expect at weddings.
***
The ceremony moves on to the reception, and he’s doing fine, holding it together, smiling and laughing, every inch the happy groom. He makes it through Keltie’s father’s speech and his mother’s (and if there’s a wetness in his eyes, it’s because his own father couldn’t be there, and it’s gone again after a couple of minutes anyway so nobody notices). He even manages to keep his smile through Spencer’s speech, manages to laugh at the jokes Jon tells and to breathe through Pete’s happy wishes.
Brendon gets to his feet for what seems like the hundredth time (Ryan curses himself for asking him to be their toastmaster) and this time, he doesn’t pass the mike to anyone, just stands up, turns towards them and smiles.
The smile is the worst part.
“Hello, everyone,” he starts. “It’s me again, and this time, I actually get to keep this baby to myself for a little while, so I thought I’d take advantage of the moment and say a few words to the lovely couple over here, because they mean a lot to me.” He makes a small pause, looks across the room, gives the crowd a moment to settle down.
“Ryan, when I met you, I was no one,” he says, voice calm and melodic, clear as glass even through the faint buzz of the microphone. “Just a skinny little kid with no friends and nothing to do all day except rebel silently against what people were telling me to do, think or believe in even—without ever having the guts to just be honest and tell it to their faces. And you changed all that. Well, all of you guys did, but you, Ryan, in particular.”
Brendon turns half-way away from the room as he speaks, looking straight at Ryan (well, at the two of them technically, but Ryan feels the whole weight of the brown eyes on his own skin).
“You know, I seriously considered breaking into your house and stealing one of your notebooks,” he says, and the other guests chuckle a little. “Just so that I’d have better, more colourful words to describe how much you mean to me, you know—how much seeing you happy makes my heart sing.”
He accompanies the last sentence with a self-conscious smile, and the wedding party giggles a bit louder.
“Yeah, so obviously I didn’t, right?” he comments, flashing an apologetic expression, and Ryan can’t help but smile, because, yeah, no—that’s a really cheesy turn of phrase and he would never put that in writing. “There’s no way you’d ever use that expression in anything you’d let me sing on stage,” Brendon says, echoing his thoughts, laughing with his audience. “And believe me when I tell you that I think we’re all very grateful for that mercy…”
The speech goes on for a couple of minutes, and with every line, Ryan feels his heart sink. It starts out with mostly light-hearted jokes and things meant to purely entertain, which Ryan can take—
So, Keltie, some things you should know about Ryan now that it’s too late to give him back: one—he steals the green M&Ms and claims that they were never there in the first place and that the rest of us are colour blind. Two: he always folds his socks inside-out when he throws them in the basket, which means they never, EVER get clean in the first round of laundry. Three: he loves the chipmunk in Enchanted, even though he claims that it’s stupid and badly CGI'd…
—but soon moves into heartfelt—completely cheesy but with just enough Brendon in it to make the words achingly sincere.
…I know you’re getting a new family today, but I hope you know that we’ll always be there… You’re the most generous person I know, and if I could, I would give you the world… You made me who I am today, made the band what it is, made us all gods when we were just kids with guitars, pretending to be stars in someone’s living room… Your words make me fall in love, cry, feel so many things I never knew existed before you poured them into my head…
Ryan tries not to listen, tries not to let the words get inside of him, because he only has that much resistance left, and he needs for it to last for at least another five hours. Finally, after about three minutes—that feel more like a decade or two—Brendon leans down, gathers his glass.
“A toast to the lucky two,” he says, raising the flute of champagne in the air. “To finding that special person to brighten your life.” He raises the glass a little higher, smiling big and happy in their direction. “Keltie, welcome to the Panic family,” he says, grinning at her. “And, Ryan,” he continues, moving his attention a little to the right. “What more is there to say? I love you. Always will.”
Brendon tips his glass and looks right into Ryan’s eyes, and Ryan feels his heart stop. Whoever said that Brendon Urie was a cuddly, harmless person obviously never watched him stab someone with a gentle smile and twist the knife around. He breaks the look and lets Keltie pull him in for a kiss, wondering if this is how it’s going to be between them now—daggers made of honesty and sweet innuendo until they’ve managed to completely crush everything that was beautiful between them.
Just as he thinks that he’s got himself somewhat back under control—enough to meet the other guests’ eyes again in any case—Brendon puts down his glass and raises the mike back to his lips.
“I have something more,” he says, and people’s heads turn around once again, some interested, others simply polite. “Actually, the three of us plus a couple of friends do. See,” he continues, moving away from the table, making his way over to the stage at the side of the room, “I kind of lied a little before in my speech. I did sneak into Ryan’s house and steal one of his notebooks a couple of months ago, and there was this one poem in there that I’m pretty sure he wrote about our lovely bride—and it kind of stuck with me and made me think of a song I think you all know. So, anyway, I got these guys to help, and well, you’ll see.”
Ryan stiffens where he sits, doing his best to smile when Keltie shuffles around excitedly in her seat and leans in to press a kiss at the corner of his mouth. Jon and Spencer join Brendon on the stage, and so do Pete and Patrick, Pete foregoing the bass and holding a tambourine instead, grinning and murmuring something into Patrick’s ear as they get ready for whatever Brendon is having them sing. Spencer gets behind the drum set, counts out a slow, steady beat, and Patrick starts to play, plucking the strings on his guitar gently as Brendon leans into the microphone.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby
Ryan closes his eyes, because he’s not going to crumble. He made it too far to fall apart over an old show tune, no matter how frighteningly appropriate it is to his current heartbreak.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true
Brendon got it wrong. Ryan knows what notebook he found, which of the poems made Brendon pick this particular song, and it wasn’t written about Keltie. None of the poems in that notebook were, and he curses himself for leaving it out of the box under his bed where he keeps things that he never intends for anyone to read.
Someday I'll wish upon a star and
wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me
He wants to be angry, and maybe he is, just not for the right reasons. He wants to be mad about the invasion of privacy—that Brendon would pull this particular confession out of him against his will—but the only thing he can really think about as the song goes on and Patrick and Jon join in for back-up vocals is that Brendon didn’t get it. Ryan wrote a whole notebook full of fantasies about the two of them, and even with everything that’s happened—even with all the emotional drama of the past week—Brendon didn’t even fucking get it.
Since when do things turn out this way, the first line of this poem goes. Like melting lemon drops / Filled with chocolate eyes / And endless skies? And he sees how Brendon could have read it as wonder instead of the quiet longing it was meant to convey, he supposes. It’s not such a great leap when you don’t know that the person who wrote it is completely in love with you.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me
He turns to look at Pete, because there’s no way he can look at Brendon right now and not have him see everything that hasn’t been said between them. And it’s too fucking late for that, no matter how much Ryan wants to yank him off the stage and punch him for not getting it in the first place, for letting Ryan push them to this point without stopping him. He looks at Pete instead, because Pete is a lot smarter than the tabloids make him appear, and he’s had Ryan figured out for a long, long time.
Also, Pete has a rainbow of his own to chase, and just like Ryan, he never fucking spread his wings and went for it either. He meets Pete’s eyes and then slowly leans his head a tiny bit to the left. Pete’s smile fades and he throws a quick look to the centre of the stage, where Brendon and Patrick are singing their hearts out into the same mike, harmonising together on the high notes, pitch-perfect and beautiful.
“Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly…” Keltie sings along next to him, leaning her head happily against Ryan’s shoulder. Her voice is sweet and sure as always, but sounds so wrong in his ear that he has to focus all his strength on keeping the smile on his face and not put a hand over her mouth.
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then, oh, why can't I?
Ryan swallows and blinks, steeling himself as he glances over Patrick (who’s smiling into the side of Pete’s face as the dark man puts his chin on Patrick’s shoulder and whispers something into his ear) and finally meets Brendon’s eyes. He doesn’t really know what he’s expecting to see in them—tenderness or resignation maybe? He’s been wrong so many times in the past week that he doesn’t even know what to think anymore.
What he does see manages to pull the last corner of the rug out from under his feet, and as he falls, he wonders how he could have missed it before—in the moment before the ceremony, during the speech, in every word that Brendon is pouring out of himself on the small stage. Resigned acceptance or hibernating hope—it’s not such a great leap when you finally know that someone is completely in love with you, after all.
