Red Wine Sundays

Brendon sees the world in hues of yellows, pinks, greens. In blue skies and making love and the colour of Spencer Smith’s eyes.

Brendon drinks red wine from plastic mugs on Sunday mornings and laughs at jokes that aren’t funny because people deserve that. People deserve nice things, nice people, to not have their promises broken.

Brendon wears bracelets and pink hoodies and smiles at strangers on the bus even when his heart is breaking.

Brendon sees the world in hues of yellows, pinks, greens when everyone else sees it in grey.



When Spencer gets sick -- when Brendon learns he isn’t going to get better – he spends a week tracking down Jon Walker.

“Spencer – Spencer’s sick, Jonny.”

It isn’t something Brendon wants to say on the phone, not with Jon Walker thousands of miles away in Chicago. Not when the last time Jon saw Spencer, he was breaking up with him because of reasons Spencer couldn't give, packing up and moving in with Brendon a thousand miles away.

Brendon won’t ever forget the whoosh of air leaving Jon’s lungs, or the way it sounded like he had stopped breathing when he said, “Give me 12 hours.”



He picks Jon up at the airport on Tuesday at two p.m., and they both have watery smiles and watery eyes and Jon holds his hand on the way to the car even though he doesn’t have to.

“I love him,” Jon whispers. It’s taken him until the freeway exit to say it, and the words feel weighted down with miles and miles of nothing.

Brendon touches his thigh, chokes out, “I know.”



Spencer is angry at Brendon. He’s angry a lot, but when his lips curl down and he sits up in bed with a grimace, Brendon doesn’t know what to do to fix it.

“Why is he here?” he demands, and he doesn’t seem to care that Jon is right there, staring at him with broken eyes. He’s clutching the stupid teddy bear he bought from the gift shop downstairs so tight it looks like it’s straining at the seams.

He looks like he’s straining at the seams.

Brendon says, “Spencer.”

Brendon says, “Don't ask me to be sorry.”



Brendon plays the last few days out in his head, lying in bed with a bottle of Coors clutched in his hand like a rosary.

Jon breathes steadily on the floor next to him; he fell asleep and Brendon didn’t.

He wants to be selfish and ask how Jon can sleep at a time like this, when the sound of Brendon’s heart breaking is so fucking loud his brain won’t let him sleep through it.

It hurts to be awake, but he can’t close his eyes without seeing Spencer’s face.

“I want to sleep,” he whispers to the ceiling, and prays for something like faith.



On a Saturday, Ryan agrees to fly down from New York.

He doesn't, but Brendon can’t really make himself blame him.



“It -- I had another last night,” Spencer says, and his smile is trying to be way too fucking reassuring, like he isn't telling Brendon how his heart just stopped. They both pretend Jon isn’t waiting in the hall outside, waiting for Spencer to let him in. Waiting for redemption.

Brendon sits down next to him on the bed and holds his hand, presses his lips to the back of it. “I wish I was here when it happened.”

Spencer squeezes his arm, touches the inside of his elbow. “I don’t.”

Brendon turns to the window and swallows around the way his throat has closed.

“I brought you flowers,” Brendon announces finally, his voice skillfully disguising the way his eyes burn. “Tulips," he whispers. "It's lame..."

Spencer smiles, says, “Let me smell them.” He suddenly looks like that little kid from Vegas, with the short brown hair and eyes like the sky.

Brendon obliges, if only to appease the way his heart tries to shatter right out of his chest.



He buys fresh flowers for Spencer every second day; the kind that he would buy his grandmother. Funeral flowers. They manage to coax a smile out of Spencer anyway.

Most days he knows it’s put-on.

Most days he pretends that’s better than nothing.



“It’s like you’re still right here,” he says, his voice muffled in the scratchy sheets.

He can feel Spencer’s brow knit against his forehead, can feel the confusion; the hurt. “I am still right here.”

Brendon doesn’t say, “Not for long.”

It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.



One morning when they were lying in bed, Spencer’s heart just stopped.

Brendon cradled his head while the ambulance was on its way. He thought he was dead. For hours he thought he was dead and no one could tell him that he wasn’t.

Sometimes he wakes up and he feels like the weight of the world is sitting on his chest because Spencer isn’t in his bed.

They weren’t really anything before, but Spencer never left the hospital and Brendon can't seem to stop trying to change that.



Spencer asks Brendon to bring Jon in on the fourteenth day.

Jon fixes his shirt before he walks in and Brendon leaves with a poorly hidden smile on his face.

He’d give a whole fucking lot up to keep Spencer happy.

Even them.



Brendon and Jon pretty much stop going home. Spencer stops telling them to.



“You look stupid when you lie,” Spencer says, and his words are tinged with a resignation that seems to get louder every day.

Brendon shrugs, doesn’t disagree.

“He said he’d be here,” he swears, and Spencer smiles a little emptily, looks out window, stares blankly at the overcast sky.

“Ryan says a lot of things he thinks he means.”



Brendon misses the days when they were kids in a band; kids in love.

Jon held Spencer’s hand at practice. Ryan stopped being afraid to kiss Brendon in front of them.

They made music on weekends and smoked up on weeknights and pretended they were going to rule the world with a Garage Band demo and a stupid band name.

Brendon misses the days when they were kids in a band; kids in love.



Jon leaves the morning Spence has another heart attack, the stent they had put in giving out.

It takes them two hours to revive him completely; by then they aren’t sure he is ever going to wake up.

Brendon doesn’t follow Jon, just sits in the ICU with his hand in Spencer’s as hot tears slip down his jaw, listens to the bypass machine tick, waits for Spencer’s eyes to flutter open.

The doctors aren’t optimistic, have stopped mentioning transplants and reparations. Even Brendon can’t make himself be.

Jon comes back at dusk smelling like vodka and vomit. He holds Brendon’s hands and cries into his neck, doesn’t let Brendon move until his body has stopped shaking and he can look at Spencer without wanting to fall to his knees.

Jon takes him home and follows him into the shower, fucks him against the sink, presses kisses against his cheek until Brendon’s sobs have turned into sighs and they fall onto Brendon’s bed.

It means nothing when it shouldn't.

Jon is asleep in minutes. Brendon lies awake until sunrise.



Ryan shows up on his doorstep the next day, a Wednesday, and all he’s carrying is an overnight bag and a box of wine.

“Ryan,” Brendon chokes out, and then they’re crying.

If anything, Brendon has learned it’s a lot easier to be sad when it’s with someone else.

Jon stumbles through once they’ve already tangled around one another on the couch, Brendon almost sitting on Ryan’s thighs. Brendon touching Ryan’s face and not hiding the way his body wracks with sobs that make his stomach ache.

Jon sits down across from them. Brendon feels his stare on him, on Ryan, right until he finally falls asleep against Ryan’s chest.



Neither of them are in the apartment when Brendon wakes up, but Jon left a scribbled note on the back of an envelope and he never really has to guess where they are, anyway.



Spencer is awake when he gets there, but his eyes are vacant and he’s refusing to eat.

He’s asleep again within minutes of Brendon getting there and Ryan’s eyes fall so fast Brendon can’t bear to look at him. He figures it isn’t the first time it’s happened that morning. He figures it won’t be the last.

“I tried yoghurt, I tried Jell-O…” Ryan lists off, and Jon eyes him sympathetically. “I don’t know what to do.”

Brendon pulls him into his arms before he can move back to Spencer and whispers, “There’s nothing you can do,” into his hair.

Brendon feels Ryan’s body start to tremble, and he doesn't know if it's grief or guilt or hopelessness. He grips the sleeves of his jacket and lets Ryan fall into him.



Brendon and Spencer used to sleep together. Before.

Spencer was Brendon’s best friend, and it made sense as much as it didn’t, as much as ruining a friendship could make sense if it would mean something more than handjobs and kisses against the kitchen counter.

“It’s like everything has come full circle,” Spencer had mouthed into his hair, pressing himself deeper into Brendon, pushing until Brendon couldn’t make out where he ended and Spencer began; his flatmate, his best friend, his almost-lover.

Brendon didn’t understand him at the time, his mind drowning in SpencerSpencerFuck. He just pushed back against him and kissed him like he understood.



Brendon tries to figure out when he became the person that was holding them all together, sitting in the living room of his apartment with the boys he loves.

“He’s fucking. He’s leaving us,” Ryan whispers, and it’s almost like he says it just to hear it spoken out loud. He’s more than a little drunk, clutching the stem of his wine glass. His voice is barely a rasp over the AC, but Brendon has had ten years to learn the meaning behind every syllable that is Ryan.

Jon smiles this small, lifeless smile and leans into Ryan’s side for the first time since Ryan arrived in New York. He looks right at Brendon when he says, “I kind of want to hate him…”

He doesn’t finish but they all know, were all there when the doctor gave his final prognosis that morning.

Brendon kneels in front of them on the hardwood floors, grabs their hands, and they weep.



Ryan Ross was Brendon’s first and only love, but he’s long since stopped being the only person Brendon would die for.



Brendon wakes up on the couch with a blanket over his hips and his heart heavy in his chest.

He hears Ryan’s voice float in from the kitchen, low and quiet. “What’s… what’s going to happen now?”

Brendon jumps at the sound of something hitting the countertop. “You’re the writer, Ryan. Use your fucking imagination.”

Jon’s voice has never been as loud, as defiant, as it is in that moment.

“I’m not a writer without him. I’m not anything without him.” Brendon has never witnessed pure devastation in just a handful of whispered words before.

Brendon’s bedroom door bangs shut just as he stands up, hears Jon's quiet, You weren't even here for him.

Ryan is leaning against the fridge with his fist over his mouth and fat tears running down his chest. Brendon pulls him in, lets him rest his tear stained cheek against Brendon’s dry one.

“You’re something to me,” Brendon whispers into his hair, and he means it. He means it. “You’re almost everything to me.”



Ryan. Ryan is Ryan fucking Ross, with his skinny legs and pretty words and the way he could make Brendon smile without saying a single of one of them.

Ryan Ross destroyed Brendon without even trying.

“I really thought I loved you,” Brendon said, and it didn’t sound like the secret he knew it was.

“But?” Ryan had whispered back, and his voice had sounded like it struggled to escape the constricting in his throat.

Brendon laughed like it truly was funny that Ryan asked (it was, it always fucking was when Ryan Ross worried about something other than himself, and god it’s a cliché). “But I really just loved the idea of changing you.”

Brendon won’t forget the way his face crumpled, or the way he begged like a child, or the way he whispered, “I love you more than I could ever love myself,” as Brendon left the room.

Ryan Ross was the love of Brendon’s life but the most destructive thing he promised he would never do to himself again.



Brendon walks back from the cafeteria, counting his steps like he’s counting the hours.

He’d left Jon and Spencer alone long enough. He doesn’t care much for damage control, not when he knows how much harm Jon Walker can do with a simple, I love you.

He stands by the door for a second before knocking, scuffing his shoe against the linoleum. It comes away with a black smudge, and he sighs, rapping his knuckles against the wood again.

Nobody answers so he pushes it open. He hears Jon’s soothing voice behind the half-open bathroom door, sees the back of his jeans and Spencer sitting on the toilet seat in a towel. Jon gently coaxes him up, helping him into the tub with a grunt.

Brendon listens for sounds of distress, for Jon’s panicked call, but all he hears is the gentle swish of water and Jon sighing. Brendon takes a step inside, glances at the two of them cautiously. He can see Spencer’s ribs; two weeks and he hasn’t eaten a thing.

Brendon wonders how he’s still with them, and hates himself for it.

Jon stands, reaches for something in Spencer’s bag, and Spencer makes a sound. He turns and smiles a little.

“Don’t go Jon,” he hears Spencer murmur, his voice resonating weakly off the tiles. His lips are blue, body shaking enough to unsettle the water. Brendon can see the steam rising off the bath, thinks he shouldn’t still be shivering, and he can’t look, he just can't anymore. He closes his eyes against the burning behind his eyelids.

“Oh Spencer, Spencer. I’m not. Oh god.” There must've been something in Spencer's eyes (Brendon has seen it, has never been on the receiving end of it, always wanted to be) because Brendon hears him kneel. He imagines his knees staining dark blue in the wetness and his body heaves once.

Spencer whispers something else, quieter, and Jon lets out a sob, hisses, “I love you, I love you.” Brendon opens his eyes to see Jon pull a naked Spencer out of the tub, embracing him dripping wet. Jon collapses under Spencer’s weight and Brendon starts to help them, but Jon is pulling Spencer into his lap and they’re rocking together on the floor.

“I love you, I love you,” he chants, his lips pressed to Spencer’s temple. Tears track down the sides of Spencer’s face, his eyes closed and mouth open in a silent plea for Jon to stay.

Brendon stands there for a long moment before turning away and going to search for Ryan.

Damage control.



Jon is alone with Spencer when he dies.

Brendon is sitting outside the room with his knees tucked under his chin and Ryan’s hand soothing the sides of his face. He’s whispering comforting words but all Brendon hears is radio silence.

Tears burn his cheeks. Everything turns to grey.

It's a Sunday.