[shortfic] smudged; ryan/brendon, pg13

title: smudged
pairing: Brendon Urie/Ryan Ross
rating: PG13 (or so)
genre: angry fluff? what?
warnings: ryan ross is a huffy little bitch and there's some bad words i guess. also it is very short.


They're backstage and Ryan, he's been sulking since halfway through the set and now it's worse. Now he's ignoring Brendon. Now he's staring at himself in a mirror looking angry.

"What the hell did I do?" Brendon's only half asking Ryan; mostly the question is directed at Spencer, who's been watching the whole time. Spencer grins, and for a moment Brendon's scared he's going to kill someone, he looks that evil.

Spencer says, "Look at your hand." He says, "No, your fingertips, I'm betting. There. That's MAC right there. That tiny little shiny spot, see."

"Oh, Jesus Christ, Ryan." Brendon ruffles his hair, which makes Ryan duck away and storm out of the room. "God damn. I touch his face and he freaks."

"Calm down. He'll get over it." Spencer pauses. "In a year or two. You smeared the sun, Brendon; can you forgive yourself?"

"I don't know. I mean, I just destroyed an important part of the solar system. I can forgive me, but can the universe at large?"

"No."

Brendon says, "I'm going after him. Seriously, I couldn't even tell looking at it that it was smeared." He says, "Yeah. Going after him."

He finds Ryan outside, flanked by security as he talks to fans. That Ryan would rather talk to the fans than hide out in the changing room, that's saying something. That he's more intent on being social with strangers he doesn't know than with his best friends, that's saying something. "Ryan," he says, flashing a smile at the girl currently getting her shirt signed. He waggles a few fingers at her in a tiny wave, and the girl next to her, that girl sort of squeals. "Come on. Ryan."

Ryan looks up at the girl and he tells her, "He ruined my makeup. Did you see that?"

"Oh, oh," she says, "In the middle of, uhm, the middle of Lying, right?" She says, "Did he? It looks fine."

The other girl, she says, "I was paying more attention to -- did he kiss you? Because from where I was, it definitely looked like a kiss, and I totally have to know. And your makeup is fine."

"Oh, fuck," Ryan says, rubbing at his temples. (Doing that, he smears some of the broad swath of iridescent green across his forehead.) "... Shit," he says again, when he sees what he's done. "I spent hours on this."

"By hours, you mean forty five minutes?" Brendon says, knowing he probably shouldn't. His reserves of tact are running low. He says to the girl, "Almost. He moved."

Ryan says, "You know, the reason people keep saying we're gay probably has something to do with you trying to kiss me on stage."

"Or the sleepovers with Pete Wentz," the girl chimes in. "That's pretty gay too. Although I guess that doesn't implicate Brendon."

"He makes good pancakes," Ryan says. "So shut up."

"Right." Both girls, they have their shirts signed, and the first one says, "Don't kill each other, okay?" and for a while after that the two of them sign things. Jon comes out for a while and holds some actual conversations with the fans, though even he can't quite keep up with the manic ten year olds and their parents.

Then mostly everyone's gone, and Jon asks, "So we actually felt like talking to fans tonight? You guys should have told me when you were going out." He says, "And weren't you two fighting?"

"He's pissed because I almost kissed him," Brendon says, right as Ryan says, "He fucked up my makeup."

"Uh-huh." Jon says, "I'll leave you two to that, then."

-

The next night, the next show, Brendon keeps his hands away from Ryan's makeup. For most of the show, actually, he stays away from Ryan except at a few prescripted moments. For most of the show, the two of them are just a little off.

Brendon waits until the second to last song to drape himself over Ryan, arms around his neck and bodies pressed close together, waits until the second to last song to sing "Haven't you heard that I'm the new cancer?" right into Ryan's ear.

Ryan isn't any happier with him afterwards.

Brendon says, "So are you pissed about the makeup this time?"

Ryan doesn't look at him. Brendon says, "Or is it the part where I didn't kiss you?"

Ryan's still not looking at him, and is just turning his head when Brendon leans in, and their noses bump together and Brendon wonders if his skull is ever going to recover because that hurt, and then there's teeth and he figures he can worry about concussions later. He can worry about his health after Ryan's given him time to breathe again.

It's five minutes before Brendon gets a chance to say, "You know, your makeup's ruined now?" because he wasn't thinking ahead, because he'd pressed a hand to Ryan's cheek and Ryan had bitten at his neck and there's electric blue smudges on his shirt collar somehow, and he doesn't want to know if any got on his face. He says, "Seriously."

Ryan looks at him. Ryan looks at him, and he says, "Oh, shut up."