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fifteendozentimes ([personal profile] fifteendozentimes) wrote2011-06-26 06:29 pm

Ficlet: Maybe We're Both Too Far Gone (Brendon/Spencer/Nicole)

The awesome [livejournal.com profile] sullen_hearts donated in my girlfriend's drive to help out with a giant vet bill, and as per my promise to people on my flist who donated, I've written her fic.

1327 words. R. No warnings.

The house is bare and empty, but there’s sunlight everywhere and even with the walls unpainted and the furniture they’ve been buying for a year still in storage, it looks warm and cozy and absolutely perfect for Brendon and Nicole.

Which is one more reason Spencer should be happy they’ll be moved out of his house and into their own in two weeks, tops. And he is! He is totally, one hundred percent happy they’ll be out of his hair and stop leaving their stuff everywhere and Nicole will stop stealing his shirts to wear as either nightgowns or dresses and they’ll stop fucking so vigorously when their headboard shares a wall with Spencer’s room so loudly Spencer really has no choice but to jerk off listening.

Nicole all but prances through the door, beaming the way she has been since the contractors told them the house was all set, laden down with brushes and rollers and trays. She’s wearing one of Brendon’s shirts today, because Spencer was smart and hid all his so she wouldn’t find them on her quest for suitable painting clothes, and shorts so worn and faded they’re about one wear away from dissolving completely, and Brendon is a lucky fucking asshole.

“So,” the lucky fucking asshole calls from the front yard, “when I suggested we put all the paint cans in a wheelbarrow, why didn’t anyone remind me about the porch steps?”

“Watching you learn from your mistakes is more fun,” Nicole says, and starts setting stuff down while Spencer goes to help the idiot carry in a truly absurd amount of paint.

*

Painting doesn’t take as long as Spencer expected; with Dallon and Ian helping for a few hours a day, and Ryan the two days he actually remembers he said he’d help, and Brendon putting a stop to smoking up while they’re working after Nicole tried to paint the ceiling in the master bedroom by climbing on Ian’s shoulders instead of finding one of the long rollers, they finish up in just under four days.

It shouldn’t take more than three days to get all Brendon and Nicole’s furniture moved in from storage, and one day on top of that to go buy anything else they still need, so Spencer’ll have his house back by Saturday.

“Not that you’ll get to enjoy it yet,” Brendon says, “you totally need to christen our guest room.”

Spencer considers agreeing to christen it all night long, but the second it pops into his head it brings up images of actually christening it all night long, fucking Brendon in lazy strokes while Nicole watches, lazy and sated because - yeah, no, this is not a good time for that train of thought.

“I’ll christen your mom,” Spencer says.

*

Brendon and Nicole throw a housewarming cookout on the beach a week after they move out of Spencer’s place. Spencer obligingly christened their guest room, and then spent three more nights in it just because. He’s fairly sure the mattress in there is exactly the same as his at home, and the sheets are blue pinstripes that don’t look like anything Brendon and Nicole would pick out for themselves (their own sheets, right now, have rainbows printed on them; Spencer has no idea how they managed to find kids’ sheets for a king-size bed). The mattress, the sheets and walls in Spencer’s favorite color, they’re probably just coincidence - blue is a pretty neutral color for a bedroom, really - but whatever.

Their headboard still butts up against the shared wall, and they’re still absurdly loud when they fuck way longer than normal humans should even be physically capable of, and that is completely annoying and not at all one of the reasons Spencer likes sleeping here.

Spencer turns his attention back to whatever Ryan’s rambling about, which is hard because Ryan’s apparently switched topics like eight times since Spencer zoned out. But he totally listens, and doesn’t zone out again when his eyes land on Brendon and Nicole kissing on the porch instead of paying attention to their guests.

*

Everyone leaves not long after Nicole lights a bonfire and almost sets Ian’s hair on fire. Spencer’s not sure if that’s Ian’s fault for getting too close or everyone else’s fault for letting Nicole wield the matches.

Spencer should probably leave, too; he’s never going to wear out his welcome with Brendon, he knows, same way if this house had taken two years to build Brendon still would have had a place at Spencer’s, but if nothing else it’s probably time to take his big idiot dogs home and stop letting them eat all the little dogs’ food.

But Nicole went to all the trouble of building a fire and almost murdering Ian, so he could at least stay and enjoy it for a little while.

Nicole wanders over at some point; it’s late enough she’s changed out of her pretty sundress and into one of Spencer’s shirts - he’s not sure if she stole it before she moved out of his place, or if he left it lying around - and a pair of Brendon’s boxers. She’s ridiculously pretty like this, and someday he’ll be able to think that in the normal dude-who-appreciates-pretty-girls way and not this shitty-friend-who-wants-to-fuck-his-bro’s-fianceé way.

“Brendon and I have been talking about you a lot,” she says, after a long silence. He can’t read her tone at all.

“Is that good or bad?” he asks.

Nicole ignores the question. “I thought we should wait until after we get married to do this, I’ve thought so for a long time. I don’t think he gets it, really, what it’s like to be the person coming into this years-long relationship with all your history, to come in and try and make a place for myself when sometimes I think he’d be happier if I didn’t. And I kind of wanted to make sure I had him in a real, concrete way before I shared him with the person I think is most likely to take him away from me.”

Spencer’s having a little trouble breathing, all of a sudden. Nicole doesn’t seem to notice.

“He thinks I’m being stupid, if I think he’d leave me like that, if I think I can pretend I’m not as into you as he is. He might be right; he probably is, or I’d be a little more annoyed he won this one. Except it’s not really winning, if what I wanted was a commitment and I consider the house a fair stand-in for marriage.”

When Spencer finally risks looking away from the fire and over at Nicole, she’s watching him with wide, apprehensive eyes, biting her lip a little, the hair she hadn’t managed to get into her sloppy ponytail falling into her eyes. Spencer can’t talk, can’t think of what to say, but he can brush her hair out of her face and that makes her relax a little, smile at him, so apparently it was the right choice.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” she says. “And I’m gonna leave the door open. And if you want - if you want what Brendon and I want, what I think you want, feel free to come in. And if you don’t want it, that’s okay, too, we won’t be weird and we hope you won’t be. And if you might want it, someday, but you don’t want it now, that’s okay, too. The door’s - the door will be open.”

Spencer watches her walk away, gives himself about two minutes to run through all the what-ifs, all the worst case scenarios, all the reasons this could fuck up his best friendship or ruin Brendon’s awesome relationship, could hurt him or Brendon or Nicole or any two of them or all three.

And then he scrambles up, douses the fire, and practically sprints into the house.
ext_52657: Lyrics from Empires (Midnight Land), Icon by me! (Default)

[identity profile] mayqueen517.livejournal.com 2011-06-26 10:52 pm (UTC)(link)
This is MOST ADORABLE. Most adorable in the entire world, oh my god.

Bessstttt. <3 <3 <3 <3

(Anonymous) 2011-06-27 05:41 am (UTC)(link)
MASSIVE FUCKING HEARTS EYES, jsyk

~aki

[personal profile] sullen_hearts 2011-06-27 09:43 am (UTC)(link)
Eeee yay! I love it, it's exactly the lazy/slow/cute I was after :)