A Darkening Glow

Ryan’s at Spencer’s house when it happens.

(He came over a few hours before with nothing but the clothes on his back and a bag slung over his shoulder and a tight, miserable set to his jaw that said far more than his mouth ever would. Spencer knew better than to ask so he didn’t, just nodded in answer to Ryan’s unasked question and shouted to his mom that he’d be staying the night.)

They’re in Spencer’s room, lying on Spencer’s bed, listening to music and talking about nothing and letting the world pass them by. It’s warm – it’s always warm in Vegas, even in early Spring – and Spencer’s window is open, a cool breeze wafting in through the gap.

However, unnoticed by either boy, something else drifts in, buffeted by the breeze before slowly coming to rest on the end of Spencer’s bed. It’s tiny and barely significant, pulsing with a vivid, iridescent glow, almost like a heartbeat. Spencer glances up when it lands, frowning, but when he turns to look at the thing sparkling in his peripheral vision, there’s nothing there.

They go to sleep a few hours after it happens, exhausted by the things they’re not talking about, still completely oblivious to the strange glowing thing that came through the window.

***

Spencer wakes first the next morning, Ryan’s legs tangled with his, one of Ryan’s arms thrown across his chest. (Ryan’s not a big cuddler but when he’s angry, when he’s sad, he latches onto the nearest warm body, usually Spencer’s, and refuses to let go.)

Biting back a smile, Spencer wriggles free of Ryan’s grip and rolls out of bed. He trudges to the bathroom, a yawn stifled behind his hand, and when he returns, there’s a strange boy sitting on the end of his bed, watching Ryan intently.

Spencer freaks out.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing in my room?” he demands, hands on his hips, scowl levelled at the intruder.

The boy turns sharply, eyes wide. “You can see me?” he asks, dumbfounded.

“Of course I can see you, you’re right there.” Spencer’s eyes narrow. “Is this some kind of joke? Did Jackie put you up to this? I swear to God, if my sisters think this is funny-”

“It’s not a joke,” the boy says, getting to his feet. He’s shorter than Spencer, but not by much, and nearly as skinny as Ryan. “I- shit, this is gonna be hard to explain.” He scrubs a hand through his messy dark hair, sighs a little. When he looks back up at Spencer, his eyes look so much like Ryan’s that he flinches. “You’re not going to believe me,” the boy continues, biting his lip, “but I’m a guardian angel.”

There’s a moment of silence after that where Spencer replays what the boy just said in his mind and tries to figure out if he’s actually heard what he thinks he’s heard or if more than a decade of friendship with Ryan Ross has finally taken its toll on him and robbed him of his sanity altogether.

Eventually, Spencer decides on the former. (He thinks it’s a little late for him to be driven mad by Ryan’s eccentricities, after all.)

“You’re right,” he says flatly. “I don’t believe you.”

The boy sighs again, but there’s something heavier about it this time, like he’s resigned himself to dealing with unreasonable teenagers who don’t believe in angels and demons and heaven and God.

“Just once,” he mutters, rubbing a hand over his face, “just once I would like to get someone with an iota of belief in something greater than themselves. Is that too much to ask? Is it?”

Spencer wonders briefly who the boy’s talking to, if he’s talking to anyone at all, then decides he doesn’t care. Whatever this is, a practical joke, a misunderstanding, a hallucination induced by prolonged proximity to Ryan Ross, he wants the boy out of his house and he wants him out now. There’s something distinctly unsettling about the way he’s looking at Spencer, something curious and intent in his soft brown eyes.

“You have to leave before Ryan wakes up,” he informs the boy. “I don’t care who you think you are or what you’re doing here or how you even got in, but-”

“I can prove it to you,” the boy says suddenly. “I’ve been watching Ryan, and you, by proxy, since you were kids.”

And then he spouts off a whole load of stuff he can’t possibly know but somehow does, about how Ryan and Spencer met and how Spencer figured out he liked guys and the things Ryan says to him when no one else is listening, when he has nothing left to lose, and Spencer gapes at him.

He tries to say something, but his throat is dry and is refusing to cooperate so the only thing that makes it out of his mouth is a strangled gasp.

“How- how did you- what the fuck?” he manages eventually, voice rasping and cracked in the middle.

“I’m Brendon,” the boy says, holding out a long-fingered hand for Spencer to shake, “and I’m Ryan’s guardian angel. Hi.”

Spencer doesn’t stop gaping at him. Brendon withdraws his hand. Ryan sits up on the bed, yawning, then goes still.

“Spence?” he asks, uncertain and confused. “What’s going on? Who is that and why is he wearing a dress?”

Spencer turns round to look at him the same time Brendon does, so he gets a perfect view of Ryan’s face when Brendon says, cheerfully, “It’s a robe, actually, not a dress. And I’m Brendon, your guardian angel.”

***

Ryan is a lot harder to convince than Spencer. He hasn’t believed in angels and demons and heavens and God for nearly as long as Spencer’s known him, so when Brendon tells him what he told Spencer, all the things he knows about the two of them, he only narrows his eyes at his best friend, gently accusing. Spencer lifts his shoulders in a helpless shrug.

“If you’re a guardian angel,” Ryan says, when Brendon’s finished talking, (and by God can that boy talk, Spencer didn’t think he’d ever stop babbling), “why don’t you have wings?”

“Angels aren’t supposed to have wings,” Brendon retorts. He’s perched on the end of Spencer’s bed, and his foot is tapping impatiently against the floor. “Only cherubs are. Where in the Bible or the Torah or even the Quran, for that matter, does it mention angels having wings? Hmm? HMM?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Ryan says evenly, “I haven’t read any of them.”

“Great,” Brendon mutters, “another unbeliever. This just gets better and better. Look,” he says, louder and more clearly this time, “you can believe me or not, I don’t care, but it’d make my job one hell of a lot easier if you did. At the end of the day, though, I’m still gonna be saving your skinny little ass every time you put yourself in danger, capiche?”

Spencer figures Brendon’s talking to Ryan, then, so he doesn’t say anything, just watches the two of them intently.

“Capiche?” Ryan repeats, a note of incredulity in his otherwise flat tone. “Who even says that in real life?”

“If you’re a guardian angel,” Spencer pipes up, and he can almost feel Brendon’s sigh from across the room, “why are you Ryan’s? Why are you Ryan’s now?”

Brendon’s face softens, and he bites his lip. “Because Ryan needs me now.”

Spencer winces. Ryan visibly bristles, hands folded tight across his chest. “Oh really?” he says, voice even flatter than usual. “I don’t need anyone and I certainly don’t need a freak who thinks he’s my fucking guardian angel or some shit. If you actually are here to save me or whatever, prove it.”

“You want proof? Fine, you can have proof.” Brendon crawls across the bed, in front of Ryan in an instant. “This won’t hurt a bit,” he says, eyes wide and earnest, “you just have to stay still.”

Ryan frowns. “What are you-” He cuts himself off with a gasp when Brendon reaches out and touches his forehead with the tips of his fingers, eyelids fluttering closed.

“Ryan? Ryan, are you okay? What have you done to him?” Spencer demands, stepping towards the bed.

Brendon shushes him but doesn’t open his eyes and doesn’t take his hands off Ryan. Spencer grits his teeth and tries not to think about the creepy voodoo mind-control Brendon might be doing to him, tries to trust a boy he doesn’t know with the safety of the most important person in the world to him.

It seems like an eternity later that Brendon finally takes his fingers away from Ryan’s skin, but it’s probably mere minutes. Ryan’s eyes open, painfully slow, and Spencer lets out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“I’m sorry,” Brendon murmurs, genuine regret in his eyes, “but you asked. I had to show you. Do you- do you believe me now?”

Ryan just nods dumbly, whispers, “I believe you,” voice wrecked and ruined like he hasn’t used it in years. “Fuck, yeah, I believe you.”

“Ryan?” Spencer asks, tiny and quiet. “You okay?”

“He’s legit,” Ryan says, instead of answering Spencer’s question. “He’s my... my guardian angel.” He stumbles over the words, like he doesn’t quite like the taste of them in his mouth and wants it out as soon as possible.

“Ryan-”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” he says abruptly, rising from the bed with his typical awkward grace. “Back in a sec.”

And with that he disappears from the room, door closing gently behind him. Spencer turns to look at Brendon, eyebrows furrowed.

“What did you show him?”

Brendon shrugs. “The thing he wants most in the world,” he says tonelessly. “Or what he thought it was, anyway.”

Spencer’s frown deepens. Ryan wants a lot of things. He wants their band to get famous and for them to be rock stars. He wants that girl in his class that he likes to notice he exists. He wants his mom to come back. He wants his dad to stop drinking.

None of those things would make him look that pale and weak and vulnerable.

(Spencer is Ryan’s best friend and he has no idea what he wants most in the world.

It unsettles him, a little, that Brendon, a mysterious boy who is apparently also a guardian angel, seems to.)

***

The first thing Ryan does when he gets back from the bathroom is flop down on Spencer’s bed, narrow his eyes at Brendon and ask, “So how does this guardian angel thing work, then?” His hair is wet at the sides of his face like he dunked his head in the sink and tried to wash it clean, and he’s looking a lot less dazed than he did before, a hardness in his eyes that Spencer is all too familiar with.

“I basically have to make you sure you don’t kill yourself, which is a lot harder than it sounds,” Brendon explains, grinning. “You’re an accident waiting to happen, Ross.”

Ryan glares at him, but to be fair, it’s kind of true. He’s all awkward limbs and flailing hands and Spencer has had to pull him – and other people – out of the path of mortal peril on more than one occasion.

“I can’t fuck with free will, though,” Brendon continues, a wistful look on his face, “which really sucks when you people wanna do something really, really stupid, and I can’t mess with established events that cannot be changed under any circumstances ever. That kind of shit has bad consequences. Like, seriously bad consequences. Like, the whole universe disappearing into a hole in the fabric of time and space bad consequences.” He pauses for dramatic effect, eyes glinting like this wouldn’t be the horrifically awful event he’s implying, before continuing. “No one can see me except the people I’m protecting, ‘cause there are a lot fewer awkward questions that way. In this case, it’s you, so there are still a whole lot of awkward questions.” Brendon rolls his eyes, but his exasperation is tinged with something that looks a lot like reluctant affection. “Sometimes I have several charges at once, which gets confusing, but you’re special enough that you get the whole shebang.”

Ryan narrows his eyes and for a moment Spencer thinks he’s going to say something about how no one says shebang either. “Spencer can see you,” he says instead, voice even. “Spencer isn’t nobody.”

Brendon shrugs, lower lip caught between his teeth. “He shouldn’t be able to,” he replies honestly. “This is- it’s never happened to me before. I’ve never heard of it happening to anyone else. Usually, we’re- well, we...” Brendon trails off, unwilling or unable to finish, but Ryan’s not one to let something like that go that easily.

“You what?”

Brendon flails his arms around, looking genuinely torn. “We’re usually assigned to people who don’t have anybody,” he admits, still chewing his lip. “To people who feel like they’re all alone.”

Spencer straightens up. “Ryan’s not alone,” he says, and his voice comes out harsher than he means it to, bitten out and chewed off. “He has me, and his dad, and my parents, and-”

“I do feel alone,” Ryan says, his slow exhalation of breath almost a confession, “sometimes.”

Spencer looks down at his best friend, stomach churning with something he can’t describe. “Ryan,” he says, helpless, but Ryan doesn’t look at him.

“Maybe you’re supposed to protect Spencer too,” Ryan says, so calmly he could be suggesting Brendon be Spencer’s best friend for life as well. “Maybe that’s why he can see you.”

Brendon shakes his head, offering the two of them an apologetic smile. “They’d have told me if you were both my charges,” he explains. (Spencer can’t help but notice he hasn’t said who they are. God? Probably. Spencer doesn’t know that he particularly cares.) “And we’re not usually given two people who know each other anyway.”

“We can still share you, though, right?” Ryan sounds vaguely concerned, and Spencer understands his consternation. They’ve just always shared everything, ever since they were kids.

Brendon’s lips quirk and he laughs, softly, before saying, “Yeah, sure, you can do anything you like with me.”

Ryan sits up immediately with renewed interest. “Anything?” he asks, and Brendon laughs again.

“Anything,” he repeats, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “You can do whatever the fuck you want.”

“If you’re an angel,” Spencer says, carefully, “how come you swear?”

Brendon groans, cradling his face in his hands. “Seriously,” he mumbles, voice muffled, “motherfucking awkward questions.”