Boys Will Be Boys *Ryden*

Verbal Darts

In the morning, Ryan woke up and was surprised to find himself alone in bed. Brendon had somehow managed to get up, get dressed, and let himself out while Ryan slept. He frowned and tried to convince himself that he wasn't even the tiniest bit bothered by it, but he couldn't lie to himself. He mentally shook it off and got out of bed, heading for the shower. It was the first day of tour.

He had to cut his shower short when he heard someone pounding on his door. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he dripped a path across the carpet as he went to look through the peephole, fully expecting to see a big brown eyeball again. Instead, it was Zack. Ryan opened the door a crack and said, "Hey, I'm just drying off. What's up? What time do we have to leave?"

"We have to be on the bus in an hour. Rehearsal, then a couple hours of down time, then soundcheck and the show," Zack told him. "I'm going downstairs to hit the breakfast buffet, you want me to bring you anything?"

"Uhhh...just coffee, I guess. Oh, and maybe a muffin or something. Blueberry, chocolate chip, whatever they have."

Zack nodded. "You got it. I'll be back in a bit."

*****

The first venue on the tour was ten minutes away from the hotel. The band, crew and equipment took up five buses. Four of them were plain and beige on the outside, while the fifth one -- the one the band and Zack occupied -- was painted with the band's logo. Ryan always felt a strange mix of pride and scorn when he looked at the bus: pride because they'd come this far, and scorn because it seemed stupid that their bus wasn't beige like the others. Were they deliberately trying to entice fans to scream and chase after them at the end of every show? Wouldn't it be smarter to leave the logo off the bus and be a bit more inconspicuous? Sometimes Ryan couldn't help shaking his head whenever he looked at it.

They checked out of the hotel and started boarding the buses. Ryan was the last one to board and it appeared the rest of the band had already been on the bus for a while. They were relaxing in the lounge, watching TV and snacking on Pirate's Booty. When he saw Brendon he felt a bolt of desire, a longing to straddle him on the couch and make out with him. Fuck, he thought. This is not good.

Brendon caught his eye and winked at him. The motherfucker winked. What if the other guys saw that? Ryan hadn't even had time to recover from it when Brendon said, "Well, look at you. You're all glowy. You got some last night, didn't you, Ross?"

Ryan's mouth dropped open for a second before he realized what he must look like. Pulling himself together, he said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I fell asleep watching TV."

"I dunno," Brendon said, shaking his head slowly. "I walked past your room pretty late last night and unless you were watching porn, those sounds were definitely not coming from the TV."

Ryan was starting to think that if he earned a dime for every time he thought I'm going to kill Brendon lately, he'd be a very rich man and could quit the band and go live on a tropical island somewhere. An island without Brendon on it. Nary a Brendon as far as the eye could see.

But, since that wasn't a possibility yet, Ryan decided to change tactics. Two could play this game.

"Ok, yeah. I got some. It just wasn't worth mentioning because it wasn't that great. She was a little too...inexperienced."

Brendon didn't miss a beat. Ever the actor, he arranged his face into an expression of confusion. "It was a she? Are you sure about that? Because I should have specified that it sounded like gay porn."

I'm going to kill him, Ryan thought, mentally collecting a dime.

Spencer and Jon hadn't been paying much attention to the conversation, but now they were both looking up with interest. Everyone knew that Ryan occasionally hooked up with other men, and none of them had a problem with it. Still, if they knew that Ryan and Brendon were the ones hooking up, well, that was a game-changer. It needed to be kept secret and Ryan was going to do everything in his power to make that happen.