fic: for i was an earthly knight (1/3)
Jun. 12th, 2008 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
violaceaFor I Was An Earthly Knight
Band(s): Panic at the Disco, with appearances from The Academy Is… and Pete Wentz
Pairing(s): gen, with Jon/Spencer undertones
Word Count: 21,485
Rating/: PG-13
Author Notes: Half of the credit for the plot of this story belongs to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rue_quercus, who brainstormed with me on the long drive to fangirl shenanigans in Chicago last October. She deserves more thanks than will ever be possible to give, not only for that, but for listening to me obsess about writing it over the last few months, and reading it over to assure me it made sense after I'd lost all perspective. More thanks go to ignipes for being an awesome beta, and to dragonsinger for being the best cheerleader in the entire world!
Summary: Once upon a time, Jon Walker's great-grandmother told him tales of faerie lords and human knights. He never thought they'd be this relevant to his adult life.
Bonus Tracks/Enhanced Content
Fanart:
wind and fire, earth and sea bybrandixcyanide
Fanmix:
Hard To Pin Down bydruidspell
“Once upon a time …”
(Jon’s great-grandmother’s stories always began, “Once upon a time…” But, even at the ripe old age of seven, he’d learned to recognize the look in her eye when she was about to tell her favorite story of all. There were other stories that Jon preferred, stories that had dragons and swords and brave warriors, but he enjoyed the happy look on Gran’s face enough to sit down and pay attention every time she began the telling. Her favorite story went something like this: )
“Once upon a time, there was a farmer who lived with his family on land owned by a faerie lord. Now, the fae can be a horrible, untrustworthy lot, always playing pranks and getting humans into trouble, but this particular faerie lord was a good soul who treated this farmer well. He never asked for more tax money than the farmer could afford, and he provided men to protect the farmer’s land when thieves rode through. The farmer became so loyal to the faerie lord that he wished to pledge his life to the lord’s service.”
“Now, Jon,” she’d always say at this point, chucking Jon under the chin with a bent finger, “pledging your life to a faerie lord isn’t something anyone ever does lightly! Because once a man makes the pledge, his soul belongs to that fae, no matter what. And there are a lot of fae you wouldn’t want to trust with your soul. Most of them, in fact. But this fae, he was worthy, so the farmer asked if they could speak the words of binding.”
(“Say it, Gran!” Jon would say here. He liked the way her voice sounded when she said it, deep and rich and important.)
“’By wind and fire, earth and sea, I ask you pledge your life to me,’ the faerie lord said. And the farmer responded, ‘Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die.’ Once the words were spoken, the lord looked at the farmer. ‘I must leave to take care of my other lands. We will finish the binding when I return.’ And so, the lord left during the summer, and the farmer continued to mind his land and his family.
“But, the faerie lord did not return in the summer, or the fall. These were hard seasons for the farmer; his crops did not fare well, and his family had little to eat. One day during the harvest, the farmer went to town to attempt to sell what little he could, hoping to earn some money to buy food they did not have. As he stood in the market, watching all the people passing him by, he suddenly noticed a man drop a billfold on the ground, right in front of him. The man walked away without turning around. The farmer picked up the billfold – inside was enough money to keep his family fed for the entire winter. The man had noticed nothing, he thought, it might be easy to just keep the money. After all, didn’t he have a need for it? But he thought of the man – what if that man had a family to feed, too? And even if he didn’t, this money was probably rightfully earned, and the farmer didn’t have any right to it at all. So, he ran through the town until he found the man, and returned his billfold. The man was very grateful, and gave the farmer a small reward – enough to buy a small amount of food, for which the farmer was thankful. Small bounties honestly earned, he thought, were better than large ones ill gotten.
“Winter came, and still the faerie lord did not return. One cold, cold night, the farmer answered a knock on his door to find a man shivering on his doorstep. His clothes were fine; he was obviously a much richer man than the farmer. But, he said, he was lost, and could not find his way back to his chosen path in the dark. Could the farmer shelter him for the night? When the nobleman looked at the meager fare on the farmer’s table, he told the family that he did not require food, just a roof over his head. The farmer bade him to stay, without hesitation, and told him to sit at the table. As long as he was a guest, the nobleman would have food to eat. There wasn’t much to go around, but everyone ate. In the morning, the nobleman left them a few gold coins, not a lot, but enough to ensure that they would not starve.
“Spring came, and the faerie lord did not return. Tales began to reach the farmer of a wolf in the woods, killing cattle and sheep and dogs. Everyone lived in fear; families stayed inside and the planting season suffered. Finally, the farmer took it upon himself to go to the woods to slay the wolf. He had no experience fighting dangerous animals, and his wife and children despaired. But, he told them, he refused to cower inside while people he cared about were in danger. So, he took his sword and headed to the woods. He was scared, but he knew what had to be done.
“When he found the wolf, he nearly ran away, because it was as big as a man, with teeth the size of daggers. The wolf growled at the farmer, advancing forward and snapping its jaw with force that could take the farmer’s head off, if he got too close.”
(This was always Jon’s favorite part. “Tell me about the wolf, Gran! How big was it?” Gran would always laugh and pat his head, “The wolf isn’t the point of the story, love. Pay attention.”)
“The farmer knew he was outmatched, but he held his sword in front of him and said a silent prayer. The wolf lunged for him, and he lunged forward with the sword – time stopped for him, just for a moment, but when he came back to himself he realized that the wolf was dead on the ground, its throat slashed. His sword dripped with blood. He’d killed it, he’d actually done it.
“’You are a worthy man,’ came a voice from behind the farmer. He turned to find the faerie lord standing next to a tree. ‘You passed the three tests – honor, selflessness, and courage. I am proud to name you knight, and you and your family will be under my protection for as long as you all shall live.’ Thus, the knight took the farmer and his family to live with him Underhill, where all the faeries live, and they all lived happily ever after.”
Jon liked the idea of being a knight. Knights were cool, they got to fight bad guys and rescue girls and be the heroes! He had a plastic sword – okay, it was a He-Man sword, which was kind of lame, but it did the job – and he spent many hours twirling in his backyard, sword above his head, practicing the knight’s oath. “Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die. Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die. Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die.” He could imagine the crowds surrounding him, cheering his victory over the dragon, or the evil wizard, or the monster masquerading as the mean old man down the street. Someday, he knew, he’d get his chance to be the hero.
The last time Jon ever saw his Gran, she was in a nursing home, her skin as gray as the walls in the lifeless room. During a still moment, she pulled him close enough to whisper in his ear. “I had the Sight, once. I used to be able to see faeries. Keep your eyes open, Jonny boy, you have the look about you. You might see them one day.” Then, she started coughing, a deep hacking sound, and Jon’s mother hurried him out of the room.
The next time he saw her, she was lying peacefully in a casket. Jon climbed up onto the kneeler next to the casket and placed a flower on her chest. He secretly believed that the faeries had come to take her Underhill, where she’d be young and happy forever and ever.
***
Years passed, and Jon forgot about the faeries. He discovered music, which was magic enough for him.
***
“Seriously, do they breed them like you guys in Vegas?” Jon laughed and poked Spencer in the arm. “Because I thought you were the normal one, but sometimes, I wonder. Especially with your fashion sense.” Jon looked over at Spencer’s t-shirt – white, with an intricate gold flame and shield design painted across his chest, obviously purchased from the girl’s section of some department store.
Spencer smiled, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. Jon noticed. Jon noticed a lot of things about Spencer Smith, and about the rest of his band. “Those are some weird kids, aren’t they,” he’d said to Tom, one of the first nights of the tour, as they sat on top of the tour bus, passing a joint between them. Tom had just frowned and said, “No weirder than anyone else around here, trust me.” Tom was like that sometimes, like he had a secret he wouldn’t share with Jon. It was irritating, but not enough to call Tom on, not when they had a nice breeze and moonlight and calming smoke.
“What are we like, Jon?” Spencer squinted into the sunlight, shading his eyes to look out at the blacktop in front of them. Jon enjoyed touring in the south and west during the winter months – it was nice, to be able to stand outside and not feel like his important bits were going to freeze off. Only buses and trucks littered their vision, the muffled sounds of the tour distant, musicians and roadies and fans in line in front of the venue. When Jon didn’t answer right away, Spencer bumped his shoulder against Jon’s. “What are we like?” he repeated.
Jon thought for a moment more. “Hard to pin down,” he finally settled on. “Every time I think I’ve got one of you figured out, you mess with my head.”
It was true. Jon had met Ryan Ross two days into the tour; he’d come across a skinny kid in the green room of a club in the middle of the Midwest and figured he knew exactly what he was getting. Scene kid, with a defiant slant to his mouth, desperate to prove himself. He’d known a dozen like Ryan, even counted some of them as his best friends. He knew what he was getting into. But once he started hanging out with Ryan, Jon would catch a look out of the corner of his eye, an expression of wonder and concentration on Ryan’s face that might have the power to take Jon’s breath away, if he ever caught it full on. Every time he turned to look, however, Ryan’s face was schooled in that impassive stare that made everyone else roll their eyes behind his back.
Brendon Urie was also straightforward, Jon thought. Lead singers usually were. Give them enough attention, they stay content. It was a simple enough formula, one he was prepared to employ with the enthusiastic boy who suddenly hung off of Jon’s shoulders like a lemur. But sometimes, Jon would catch Brendon alone, sitting at a piano or holding a guitar, and the sound of the notes drifting from the instruments would catch in Jon’s chest and make him want to drop to his knees. In those moments, Brendon’s entire body was still in a way it never was at any other time, except for the hands creating the notes. A moment later, Jon would exhale too loudly, or he’d blink, and suddenly Brendon moved again, vibrating with energy, and the knot in Jon’s chest was gone as if it never existed.
The bass player, Brent, was something of a mystery from the start. Jon didn’t actually notice him until five dates into the tour; when he ran into Brent after the show, he thought the kid was just a fan until he pulled out a key to Panic’s bus and disappeared inside. After that, Jon got the weird impression that Brent was hiding from someone. Jon caught glimpses of him from far away – Brent always seemed to be walking away, away from the venue, away from the bus – but any time Brent noticed that Jon was looking at him, he’d disappear. Jon would look away, just for a second, and the when he looked up, Brent would be gone. Odd kid, Jon thought.
Spencer, Jon thought at first, was the only member of Panic! at the Disco that seemed normal. If normal even existed on the road, which Jon doubted most of the time. But Spencer was just a guy, a drummer and a kid, smart and funny and a little bit weird in the way of musicians. He laughed when Jon made faces at him from off-stage, and he held enthusiastic debates about famous drummers with Butcher. If Jon felt a little twist in his belly when he saw Spencer smile, well, Jon had come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t entirely straight a while ago. Being attracted to a good-looking guy was nothing out of the ordinary.
But, today, Jon wasn’t so sure about Spencer. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but walking through the venue with him, he felt this stillness, the feeling that the universe had suddenly hit the pause button. Jon was almost used to it. He felt it a lot on this tour – not just with the Panic boys, but with the Academy guys, too. A time or two, he’d looked at William, taking up the entire couch at the back of the bus in a loose-limbed sprawl that would suggest sex to a nun, and suddenly wondered where all the air in the room had disappeared to. At first, he thought it meant he was attracted to William, a thought that had sent him into a brief panic - he’d known William long enough to know how much of a truly bad idea that would be. But, then, he’d gotten the same feeling from Siska, who was most definitely slotted firmly into the ‘baby brother’ box, no sex involved, so Jon had dismissed the whole thing as a product of no sleep and too much booze.
“Everyone messes with your head,” Spencer said, and Jon had to mentally scramble to find the conversation thread again. “In our world, everyone’s looking for the advantage.”
Spencer, Jon thought, had learned a lot about the music business really quickly. His eyes seemed older, much older than his teenaged years, for a long moment, until Spencer smiled a smile that finally reached his eyes. “You don’t, though,” he said, his eyes meeting Jon’s. “Not when it matters. I like that about you. You’re one of the few people I know who doesn’t want something.”
“I want plenty,” Jon protested. “Right now, I want a goddamned beer, but Butcher drank the last one this morning. Asshole.”
Spencer laughed. Jon felt a smile spread across his own face – Spencer’s laugh was contagious.
Jon and Spencer paced the back parking lot of the club. The local crew hurried around them; Jon smiled at people he recognized as he listened to Spencer talk about the plot of the absurd fantasy novel he’d picked up at the last truck stop. “And then, the banshee was male, which I know comes from some sort of stupid role-playing game, but I wish the author had done some actual research, because banshees are actually all female …”
Jon opened his mouth to tease Spencer about his geek tendencies, but when he turned his head towards the side of the building, he saw a girl heading towards them. She didn’t wear a venue pass, which was his first clue that something was wrong. Her blonde hair was swept up into a severe ponytail, and her mouth was set in a grim line as she made a beeline for Spencer. A fan, Jon thought immediately, the same kind of girl who had tried to hide on Panic’s bus in Texas. That one had been discovered hiding in Brendon’s bunk, her face pressed into his sheets as if she could surround herself with them and become invisible. This one, though, might be looking to do damage to Spencer, judging by the hard set of her jaw. When she spoke, though, it made no sense to him. “You don’t belong here,” she said, pointing at Spencer. “This isn’t your place. It’s our world, not yours!”
Jon took a brief moment to glance at Spencer, whose face had lost all expression. Jon saw the girl move, however, and turned back to her. He closed the distance between them and put a hand on her shoulder. “You shouldn’t be back here,” he said, trying for a gentle tone. “You need to go back out front.”
“I’m not the one who doesn’t belong here,” she repeated, staring over Jon’s shoulder at Spencer. She wasn’t as young as Jon originally thought - he upped his estimation of her age from mid-teens to mid-twenties, with a scar on the side of her face, a velvet ribbon in her hair, and fire in her eyes, all heat directed towards Spencer.
Spencer was quiet, but he also didn’t head for the door to the venue, like Jon thought he might (and should). Jon could feel the weight of his stare in the back of his head, knew that Spencer was watching them. Jon stepped forward again, forcing the girl – woman – to step backwards to avoid getting shoved. “Go, now. Before I call security.”
“He’s going to bring ruin. They all do. They always do.”
Bring ruin? Jon had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling; who said that kind of thing, anyway? He stepped forward again, and the woman moved backward reluctantly. “Seriously, lady, go home. You can’t …”
“No, you can’t,” she interrupted. “You have no idea, do you? You should leave now, too, before it’s too late.”
“Before what’s too late?” Jon asked, despite himself. Quit engaging the crazy, he mentally smacked himself.
“Before you end up like me.” She grabbed Jon’s shoulder and looked him square in the eye. For a moment, he felt that stillness, that strange feeling of being somewhere that wasn’t right. Then the woman stepped backwards, out of his reach. “If you knew what was good, you’d let me take care of him.”
That snapped Jon back to reality. “Seriously, lady, I’m going to call the cops. Get the fuck out of here.”
He fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone, but by the time he pulled it out, she’d turned and run towards the crowd in front of the building. Jon stared at his phone for a minute, but then closed it and put it away reluctantly. What would he say to the police, anyway? That some random crazy girl was making vague threats? He’d just have to tell venue security to keep an extra eye out that night.
Jon turned back to Spencer. “Okay,” he said, keeping his voice light, “I thought William had some crazy-ass fans, but apparently you guys take the cake.”
Spencer’s face was still blank. He made a low humming sound before his eyes flicked over to Jon’s face. After a moment, his expression returned. “I’ve seen her before,” he said. “She has … an old problem.”
“Jesus, really? Your first tour, and you already have crazy stalker fans?” Jon shook his head. “You guys should have a restraining order on her, maybe, or at least give her description to venue security every night.”
“It’s fine. She doesn’t really cause trouble. Just headaches, every once in a while.” A small smile spread across Spencer’s face. “Jon Walker, my hero,” he said teasingly.
Jon laughed. “Hey, man, it’s all part of the service. Guitars serviced, photos taken, insane fans chased away.” He punched Spencer in the arm playfully. “Maybe you should start paying me.”
Spencer chuckled. He touched Jon’s face. Jon felt his brows furrow – it felt like a lover’s caress, and what the hell was that? The skin underneath Spencer’s fingertips seemed to hum; Jon fought the urge to clap his hand to his cheek, as if he was burned. Spencer was smiling, as if at a private joke, when he said under his breath, “By wind and fire, earth and sea, I ask you pledge your life to me.”
Jon blinked. He’d heard that before, where had he heard that before? After a moment, he remembered his Gran’s voice completing the fairy tale verse. “Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die.” He didn’t realize he had spoken aloud until he saw Spencer react.
Spencer’s eyes widened, until they seemed to take up half of his face. All the white disappeared until there was nothing left but blue and black and suddenly the air around them was still and stifling. Jon drew in a shallow breath and felt a pressure in his head that made his vision swim. “Fuck,” he heard Spencer say, and Jon wanted to laugh, because the obscenity was so common. Why would he think that? It had to be the heat or something, because he felt like he was going to faint. Maybe he hadn’t had enough water, or maybe the scene with the girl had made him more tense than he realized, or …
As Jon slid into unconsciousness, his last sight was of the strange emblem on Spencer’s shirt. It glowed, burned into the backs of his eyelids as they fluttered shut.
***
Jon’s job as guitar tech was casual – he’d mostly been asked along as a photographer – so he felt perfectly justified in leaning against a wall and watching Panic’s set from backstage while everyone else hustled around him. His head still throbbed from his random moment of weakness. “You passed out, dude,” Spencer said when Jon came to. He pressed a bottle of water into Jon’s hand. “Like some Victorian maiden!” Jon had managed a weak laugh. Spencer’s joke hadn’t quite made it to his eyes, and Jon wondered exactly how bad he’d looked when he fainted.
He liked watching these kids – they had a sense of drama that a lot of bands on the scene didn’t. Jon chuckled to himself – “kids”, he thought, as if they were more than a year or two younger than him. But they did seem like kids, especially when he and William first watched them go through sound check, before the first show of the tour. “They don’t know what it’s like up here in the world,” William said dismissively. “They’ve been so sheltered.”
“Up here in the world?” Jon repeated, laughing. “Has Las Vegas become actual hell sometime when I wasn’t looking?”
William had looked at him for a moment before letting a sly smile cross his face. “Yeah, Vegas. If you don’t think that’s hell, you haven’t spent enough time there.”
The show continued, and Jon’s attention drifted to the front of the stage, where Brendon held court as some kind of small, demented ringleader, all grand gestures and wide-eyed stares. Ryan moved more cautiously, but with passion contained in his small motion, enough to match his singer in an odd way. Jon watched Brent for a few moments – on stage was one of the few times he could catch Brent, without the bassist skittering off to parts unknown. He seemed to be more grounded than either Brendon or Ryan – as did Spencer, though Spencer’s calm was a completely different sort than Brent’s.
Energy seemed to flow off the stage. Jon could see it rising, like heat waves. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. Brendon stood at the edge of the stage nearest to Jon, reaching out to the audience during a break in the vocals. When he began singing again, he stepped back and zipped to the other side of the stage, but Jon could see a shadow where he had been, a red-gold glow that lingered in the shape of Brendon’s outstretched arm for a split second. Jon thought he’d imagined it when it disappeared, but then he noticed the glow following Brendon, trailing in his wake like smoke in the shape of a boy. Brendon passed behind Ryan, and for a moment, his glowing trail intersected with another, more sedentary glow, this one darker, almost violet in color. The gold swirled away as Brendon returned to center stage, but Jon’s attention remained on the violet color. Ryan stepped to his microphone to join the vocals, and the dark color retained Ryan’s shape, thin limbs and hair and guitar, just long enough for Jon to feel like he was seeing double, before dissolving back into Ryan’s actual body.
Across the stage, Brent stood in place, concentrating more of his bass than on the audience. Jon saw a deep green puff rising from Brent’s hand as he played, wrapping tendrils around the neck of the guitar and disappearing back into Brent’s body where the body of the bass rested against his hip. When Brendon walked to his side of the stage, gold approached green, but instead of mixing, Brent’s colorful shadow retreated back against his body. Brendon’s trail quickly changed directions and stretched out towards the audience instead.
Jon closed his eyes against the glow, which seemed to swirl inside his head and mess up his vision. Obviously he was still recovering from whatever had happened earlier. Maybe he’d hit his head? Maybe he should ask a local crew member to point him towards the local free clinic, see if someone could prescribe him some heavy duty ibuprofen or something.
When he opened his eyes, he turned his attention back to Spencer. Which was a mistake. Spencer’s arms moved in a blur, sticks steady on the drums, keeping a beat that thrummed inside Jon’s head. With every movement, an ice-blue glow rose from his skin like a heat image, shivering and shimmering and disappearing into puffs of nothingness around Spencer’s head. The faster Spencer moved, the more the blue shimmers danced, in a way that seemed to caress Spencer’s skin before combining with each other and drifting into the air. Spencer’s eyes were closed as he played, and some of the blue shimmers seemed to seep behind his eyelids, so that Jon half-believed he’d see Spencer’s eyes glow when he opened them. Jon’s stomach roiled as his eyes attempted to follow the loops and curls of blue heat. The motion made him feel like he was on a roller coaster, waiting for the last curve but ready for the ride to be over.
Brendon moved back to the drum kit when Ryan began playing a solo, and suddenly sweeping gold light mingled with ice-blue shimmer, lights dancing with each other and combining into colors that Jon couldn’t describe and didn’t think existed in nature. A moment later, Ryan stepped back, and Brendon began to step forward again, but for a moment all three of them were close enough that their colors met in the middle of the stage, gold and violet and blue. Colors that shouldn’t complement each other did, somehow, in a large swirl that looked like a moving modern painting, color and light and somehow a sense of heat – Jon felt sweat dripping down his forehead, felt his brain pressing against the backs of his eyes, but couldn’t look away. The colors were so beautiful, but the dryness in his mouth felt more like fear.
When Brendon and Ryan moved back to the front of the stage, their colors moved with them, leaving Jon staring at Spencer and his blue aura. As the song ended, Spencer glanced in Jon’s direction. Jon didn’t know what he saw – couldn’t tell what kind of expression he had on his own face – but Spencer’s eyes narrowed, and the blue swirls shot up higher than his head, higher than the stacks of amps. It looked like blue fire, as if it should be burning Spencer alive. But, yet, Spencer sat calmly in the middle of it, staring at Jon with eyes that looked so normal and human, but colder than Jon had thought possible.
Jon didn’t realize he’d moved until he was vomiting into the trash can next to the stage. When he was done, he leaned his forehead on the wall next to him, unwilling to look back up at the stage. He simply crouched there and listened to the music until he stopped seeing waves of color behind his eyes.
***
The guys teased Jon for the rest of the night – Mike asked him if he’d stopped being able to handle his liquor, while Tom told him he should go back to Chicago and college if the road was that hard on him now – but Jon didn’t mind. Whatever was making him hallucinate, he was just ready to sleep it off and forget it.
At the end of the night, he stood in the parking lot, taking one last drag off of a cigarette before getting on the bus. As he exhaled smoke towards the parking lot, he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Jon. Hey, Jon.”
Jon ignored the flip of his stomach at the sound of Spencer’s voice. He hummed a noncommittal greeting and turned around. Spencer was dressed in the same t-shirt from earlier in the day, with the strange gold shield – Jon inexplicably shivered at the sight. When Spencer didn’t speak right away, Jon waved a hand at him. “We gotta get on the road. Texas has a lot of fucking miles to cover.”
“Jon.” Spencer stopped, shifted his weight from one leg to another, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What did you see earlier?”
Jon flicked his cigarette away and shoved his hand in his pocket. “What?”
“When you got sick. What did you see?”
“What did I see?” Jon repeated, frowning. “Um, you guys, until my body decided it liked the Big Mac enough to taste it twice.”
Spencer stared at him. Jon met his gaze; an effort, because everything in his brain screamed at him to turn around and walk away. The air seemed to still around them. For a moment, Jon felt like they were in a bubble, like they were only two people in the world. He opened his mouth to snap at Spencer, to make a joke or just tell him to fuck off, but he couldn’t make his chest form the sounds.
After what seemed like an hour, Spencer looked away; he stared at the side of the bus with the same intensity, but at least he was no longer looking at Jon. “Good,” he murmured, low enough that Jon was fairly sure he wasn’t meant to hear. “Are you feeling better?” he asked in a louder voice.
Jon shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll be fine, just need some sleep.”
Spencer nodded. “Right. I’ll let you go, then.” He took a step backwards, and Jon finally felt the breeze on his cheek again. “Good night, Jon.”
Jon waved a response. From somewhere above him, inside the bus, he could hear Butcher cackling loudly. He stared up at the window when he heard Mike and Tom shouting, presumably at the television. When he looked back down, Spencer was already gone.
***
The next morning, Jon woke up on the couch in the lounge with William standing over him. “You alive, Jonny Walker?”
Jon moved his head experimentally. “Yep,” he said, “preliminary tests are promising.”
“Good.” William stared at him for another long minute. “You need to stay away from those Panic children, they’re bad news.”
Jon laughed. It didn’t hurt his head, which was another good sign. “Like you have room to talk, Bill.”
“I have only your best interests in mind,” William sniffed. “Your best interests just happen to be mine, too.”
“Uh-huh.” Jon sat up. “Are we … wherever we were going?”
“Almost. Early sound check today, you’d better be ready to actually work today, asshole.” William flounced off towards the front of the bus. An emerald-green light trail followed behind him like a cape. Jon blinked. The green didn’t disappear, not until Bill was long in the kitchen, at which point it dissolved into the bunks.
“Jon.”
Jon looked over at the sound. Tom sat on the floor across from him, stretched out, with a guitar in his hands. He stared at Jon, frowning. Jon shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Didn’t see you there, dude.”
“What were you looking at?” Tom asked. He sounded like Spencer had the night before, with the same indecipherable tone.
“Nothing. My head’s still a little messed up, I guess. You have any Advil?”
Tom reached over, grabbed a bottle that lay on the floor and tossed it to Jon. He continued to frown. “I hope the Advil fixes it.”
“It should.” Jon swallowed three pills dry. “If not, I may have to suck it up and find a doctor. I must have hit my head when I fell, or something.”
“Or something,” Tom echoed. He stood up and walked over to the couch, where he sat down next to Jon. “Be careful. Seriously, Jon, some of the people around here …” He trailed off and stared at the floor.
“What?” Jon poked Tom’s legs. “Just spit it out, man.”
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
Tom gave Jon a measuring look, but then shook his head. “I just hope … never mind.” He stood up. “Come on, let’s go raid the kitchen before Mike eats all the Lucky Charms.”
Jon scowled at Tom’s retreating back. At least he wasn’t followed by a colored swirl. That was an improvement.
***
Three days later, everyone decided to talk the drivers and managers into spending their night off at a local Indian casino. Jon hopped off the bus, dressed only in jeans and a t-shirt. He shivered, and then looked over to the thin figure that stood next to the other bus. “Fuck, Ryan, why do you have my hoodie?”
Ryan just shrugged. “You left it at the venue. I was cold.”
Jon stared at Ryan. “Don’t you have your own?”
“Yours is warmer.” Ryan wrapped his arms around himself. The sleeves of Jon’s hoodie didn’t quite reach the ends of his wrists, so he shoved his hands into the opposite sleeves. “Jesus. It was eighty degrees before the sun went down.”
Jon shrugged. “You’re from Las Vegas; you should be ready for this kind of thing. Also, it’s not my fault you’re an unnaturally skinny little shit.”
Ryan flipped him off as Spencer and Brendon emerged from their bus. Brendon stopped and bumped into Jon with his hip. “You gonna win me some money?” he asked, grinning.
“Win your own, motherfucker, I’ve got bills to pay,” Jon said, wrapping an arm around Brendon’s waist.
Spencer, however, didn’t even stop to glance at them; he simply walked towards the casino, where everyone else waited for them. When Jon looked at Ryan, he just raised his eyebrows and shrugged, following Spencer. Jon and Brendon trailed after them.
In the doorway, Ryan shrugged out of the hoodie. “Here, it’s warm enough inside.”
“Oh, thanks.” Jon put it on and smacked Ryan in the arm. “Thanks, asshole.”
“Any time.”
Ryan wandered off towards the slot machines with Mike, while Spencer and Brendon seemed to be distracted by the craps tables. Jon followed Bill and Butcher towards the roulette wheel. Roulette was a sucker’s game, he knew, but it was good for standing around and bullshitting with everyone, which was really all he came to the casino to do.
Jon bought himself fifty dollars worth of chips and started throwing money down on the haphazard pattern he always did – a few chips on his brothers’ birthdays, a few on his parents’ birthdays, a few on random dates and lucky numbers and on the double zero just because he liked it.
When his fifty had turned itself into two hundred dollars, Butcher turned to stare at Jon. “Dude. Did you find a magic genie or something?”
Jon stared at the wheel, which had just stopped on 23, earning him another seventy-five dollars. “I have no idea.”
Tom came over to lean on Jon’s other side. “What the fuck? You always lose all your money in, like, an hour.”
“Apparently it’s my night.” Jon grinned at him.
At four hundred dollars, Jon let out a whoop and pounded the table with his fist. At a warning look from the dealer, he snatched his hand back and stuffed it in his pocket, choosing to sit out the next round instead. Inside his pocket, he felt a strange wad of fabric. He pulled it out and stared at it. Brown fingerless gloves –he recognized them as Ryan’s. Ryan must have shoved them in there when he was wearing the hoodie.
Jon started to shove the gloves back in his pocket – fuck it, he’d give them back to Ryan later, the wheel was spinning to a stop and he had to figure out his bet for the next round – but as he closed his hand around them, he saw a puff of …something drift up from his hand. He nearly dropped the gloves. He glanced around, but no one else had noticed. He looked back down, hoping he’d been seeing things, but no, the violet swirls – the same kind that followed Ryan around everywhere, the ones Jon had been working hard to ignore for days – still curled around his fingers in a pattern that Jon expected to feel sliding along his skin. Still, he felt nothing.
During the next spin, Tom noticed Jon’s fist in his lap and looked down with interest. “What do you have there?”
Jon looked at Tom’s face, but there was no recognition there, just curiosity. “Must be Ryan’s gloves,” he said, in what he hoped was a nonchalant voice. “He was wearing my hoodie earlier.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “Weird fucking kid.”
Jon watched the violet swirls fade back into the gloves as he relaxed his grip. “You have no idea.”
He shoved the gloves back into his pocket and reached for his chips, but he kept his fingers in his pocket, touching the gloves, trying to figure out if he could feel the swirls if he wasn’t looking at them. He couldn’t, but as he moved to put his chips onto 17 – his birthday – he suddenly changed his mind. He shoved a pile of chips – more than he’d bet on anything else at one time, more than a hundred dollars – onto 10. Butcher poked him in the arm. “Getting cocky?”
“Just have a feeling.” And he did. He still couldn’t feel anything on his hand, the one still clutching the gloves, but if he concentrated he felt … sure. Confident. It was weird. If he was wrong, well, he was still up a shitload of money.
When the ball landed in the 10 slot, the whole table – not just Tom, Butcher, and Bill – stared at him. Jon stared at the pile of chips the dealer shoved over to him. “Wow. Holy shit.”
Jon saw Ryan across the room, sitting at a slot machine and talking to a pretty waitress. Ryan’s eyes slid in Jon’s direction, and even from the distance, Jon felt a chill. Suddenly, he pulled the gloves out of his pocket and shoved them into Tom’s hand. “Humor me,” he whispered. “Hold these for a minute, and make a bet.”
“What?”
“Just do it, okay?”
Tom rolled his eyes, but did as Jon asked. They both placed chips on different numbers before the wheel spun. When it landed, Jon had lost, and Tom was staring at a pile of chips he didn’t have before. When he looked over at Jon, his eyes were wild. “Fuck no,” he whispered, almost too low for Jon to hear over the crowd. “Take them back, give them back.”
“What?” Jon felt Tom shove the gloves back into his hand.
Tom stood up. He grabbed his chips and bent over to speak in Jon’s ear. “Get rid of them. Get out of here. Seriously, quit playing with this freaky shit. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Tom walked away. Jon looked across the room again – Ryan was still sitting at the slot machine, playing half-heartedly. Jon squeezed the gloves in his hand and looked down. Purple patterns still played across his hand, and seemed to seep into his jeans. Jon was beginning to get used to the colors, after spending a week watching several of the people he knew – Ryan, Spencer, Brendon, William, Siska – walk around with their own rainbow following them. It felt almost normal.
He squeezed the gloves tighter and placed another bet, this time with half of his money. Butcher gaped at him, but nearly lost his mind when Jon won again. “Dude, what the hell? Wanna share some of that shit with the people who are kindly paying you to lounge around our bus?”
Jon looked down again. His hand looked entirely purple in his lap. When he moved his fist, the swirls followed him, making patterns in the air that made Jon’s breath catch in his throat. He thought about the chips in front of him, and the things waiting for him at home – student loans, a bedroom in his parents’ basement, a cobbled-together darkroom and photography studio that could use a lot of new equipment. If the gloves were giving him money … but, man, wasn’t that crazy? That couldn’t be, could it?
He looked at his chips again. Then, he looked across the room, to where Ryan pressed buttons on his slot machine, his face expressionless as usual. He tightened his grip and clapped Butcher on the shoulder. “Hey, dude, watch my chips for me, I’ll be right back.”
Jon ran across the casino floor. When Ryan looked up at him, he shoved the gloves into his hands. “Here, you lost these.”
He could feel Ryan staring at his back, but he ran back to the roulette table before he could change his mind.
Back at the table, Jon shoved half of his chips onto 17. “Here goes nothing,” he told Butcher and Bill, twisting his mouth into a smile.
He endured their good-natured ribbing when he walked out of the casino with twenty dollars to his name. As he passed the slot machines, he saw Spencer sitting next to Ryan, their heads tilted together in quiet conversation. Spencer stared at Jon as he passed, but Jon refused to stop until he was back on his bus.
Part Two
Band(s): Panic at the Disco, with appearances from The Academy Is… and Pete Wentz
Pairing(s): gen, with Jon/Spencer undertones
Word Count: 21,485
Rating/: PG-13
Author Notes: Half of the credit for the plot of this story belongs to
rue_quercus, who brainstormed with me on the long drive to fangirl shenanigans in Chicago last October. She deserves more thanks than will ever be possible to give, not only for that, but for listening to me obsess about writing it over the last few months, and reading it over to assure me it made sense after I'd lost all perspective. More thanks go to ignipes for being an awesome beta, and to dragonsinger for being the best cheerleader in the entire world! Summary: Once upon a time, Jon Walker's great-grandmother told him tales of faerie lords and human knights. He never thought they'd be this relevant to his adult life.
Bonus Tracks/Enhanced Content
Fanart:
wind and fire, earth and sea by
brandixcyanideFanmix:
Hard To Pin Down by
druidspell“Once upon a time …”
(Jon’s great-grandmother’s stories always began, “Once upon a time…” But, even at the ripe old age of seven, he’d learned to recognize the look in her eye when she was about to tell her favorite story of all. There were other stories that Jon preferred, stories that had dragons and swords and brave warriors, but he enjoyed the happy look on Gran’s face enough to sit down and pay attention every time she began the telling. Her favorite story went something like this: )
“Once upon a time, there was a farmer who lived with his family on land owned by a faerie lord. Now, the fae can be a horrible, untrustworthy lot, always playing pranks and getting humans into trouble, but this particular faerie lord was a good soul who treated this farmer well. He never asked for more tax money than the farmer could afford, and he provided men to protect the farmer’s land when thieves rode through. The farmer became so loyal to the faerie lord that he wished to pledge his life to the lord’s service.”
“Now, Jon,” she’d always say at this point, chucking Jon under the chin with a bent finger, “pledging your life to a faerie lord isn’t something anyone ever does lightly! Because once a man makes the pledge, his soul belongs to that fae, no matter what. And there are a lot of fae you wouldn’t want to trust with your soul. Most of them, in fact. But this fae, he was worthy, so the farmer asked if they could speak the words of binding.”
(“Say it, Gran!” Jon would say here. He liked the way her voice sounded when she said it, deep and rich and important.)
“’By wind and fire, earth and sea, I ask you pledge your life to me,’ the faerie lord said. And the farmer responded, ‘Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die.’ Once the words were spoken, the lord looked at the farmer. ‘I must leave to take care of my other lands. We will finish the binding when I return.’ And so, the lord left during the summer, and the farmer continued to mind his land and his family.
“But, the faerie lord did not return in the summer, or the fall. These were hard seasons for the farmer; his crops did not fare well, and his family had little to eat. One day during the harvest, the farmer went to town to attempt to sell what little he could, hoping to earn some money to buy food they did not have. As he stood in the market, watching all the people passing him by, he suddenly noticed a man drop a billfold on the ground, right in front of him. The man walked away without turning around. The farmer picked up the billfold – inside was enough money to keep his family fed for the entire winter. The man had noticed nothing, he thought, it might be easy to just keep the money. After all, didn’t he have a need for it? But he thought of the man – what if that man had a family to feed, too? And even if he didn’t, this money was probably rightfully earned, and the farmer didn’t have any right to it at all. So, he ran through the town until he found the man, and returned his billfold. The man was very grateful, and gave the farmer a small reward – enough to buy a small amount of food, for which the farmer was thankful. Small bounties honestly earned, he thought, were better than large ones ill gotten.
“Winter came, and still the faerie lord did not return. One cold, cold night, the farmer answered a knock on his door to find a man shivering on his doorstep. His clothes were fine; he was obviously a much richer man than the farmer. But, he said, he was lost, and could not find his way back to his chosen path in the dark. Could the farmer shelter him for the night? When the nobleman looked at the meager fare on the farmer’s table, he told the family that he did not require food, just a roof over his head. The farmer bade him to stay, without hesitation, and told him to sit at the table. As long as he was a guest, the nobleman would have food to eat. There wasn’t much to go around, but everyone ate. In the morning, the nobleman left them a few gold coins, not a lot, but enough to ensure that they would not starve.
“Spring came, and the faerie lord did not return. Tales began to reach the farmer of a wolf in the woods, killing cattle and sheep and dogs. Everyone lived in fear; families stayed inside and the planting season suffered. Finally, the farmer took it upon himself to go to the woods to slay the wolf. He had no experience fighting dangerous animals, and his wife and children despaired. But, he told them, he refused to cower inside while people he cared about were in danger. So, he took his sword and headed to the woods. He was scared, but he knew what had to be done.
“When he found the wolf, he nearly ran away, because it was as big as a man, with teeth the size of daggers. The wolf growled at the farmer, advancing forward and snapping its jaw with force that could take the farmer’s head off, if he got too close.”
(This was always Jon’s favorite part. “Tell me about the wolf, Gran! How big was it?” Gran would always laugh and pat his head, “The wolf isn’t the point of the story, love. Pay attention.”)
“The farmer knew he was outmatched, but he held his sword in front of him and said a silent prayer. The wolf lunged for him, and he lunged forward with the sword – time stopped for him, just for a moment, but when he came back to himself he realized that the wolf was dead on the ground, its throat slashed. His sword dripped with blood. He’d killed it, he’d actually done it.
“’You are a worthy man,’ came a voice from behind the farmer. He turned to find the faerie lord standing next to a tree. ‘You passed the three tests – honor, selflessness, and courage. I am proud to name you knight, and you and your family will be under my protection for as long as you all shall live.’ Thus, the knight took the farmer and his family to live with him Underhill, where all the faeries live, and they all lived happily ever after.”
Jon liked the idea of being a knight. Knights were cool, they got to fight bad guys and rescue girls and be the heroes! He had a plastic sword – okay, it was a He-Man sword, which was kind of lame, but it did the job – and he spent many hours twirling in his backyard, sword above his head, practicing the knight’s oath. “Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die. Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die. Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die.” He could imagine the crowds surrounding him, cheering his victory over the dragon, or the evil wizard, or the monster masquerading as the mean old man down the street. Someday, he knew, he’d get his chance to be the hero.
The last time Jon ever saw his Gran, she was in a nursing home, her skin as gray as the walls in the lifeless room. During a still moment, she pulled him close enough to whisper in his ear. “I had the Sight, once. I used to be able to see faeries. Keep your eyes open, Jonny boy, you have the look about you. You might see them one day.” Then, she started coughing, a deep hacking sound, and Jon’s mother hurried him out of the room.
The next time he saw her, she was lying peacefully in a casket. Jon climbed up onto the kneeler next to the casket and placed a flower on her chest. He secretly believed that the faeries had come to take her Underhill, where she’d be young and happy forever and ever.
***
Years passed, and Jon forgot about the faeries. He discovered music, which was magic enough for him.
***
“Seriously, do they breed them like you guys in Vegas?” Jon laughed and poked Spencer in the arm. “Because I thought you were the normal one, but sometimes, I wonder. Especially with your fashion sense.” Jon looked over at Spencer’s t-shirt – white, with an intricate gold flame and shield design painted across his chest, obviously purchased from the girl’s section of some department store.
Spencer smiled, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. Jon noticed. Jon noticed a lot of things about Spencer Smith, and about the rest of his band. “Those are some weird kids, aren’t they,” he’d said to Tom, one of the first nights of the tour, as they sat on top of the tour bus, passing a joint between them. Tom had just frowned and said, “No weirder than anyone else around here, trust me.” Tom was like that sometimes, like he had a secret he wouldn’t share with Jon. It was irritating, but not enough to call Tom on, not when they had a nice breeze and moonlight and calming smoke.
“What are we like, Jon?” Spencer squinted into the sunlight, shading his eyes to look out at the blacktop in front of them. Jon enjoyed touring in the south and west during the winter months – it was nice, to be able to stand outside and not feel like his important bits were going to freeze off. Only buses and trucks littered their vision, the muffled sounds of the tour distant, musicians and roadies and fans in line in front of the venue. When Jon didn’t answer right away, Spencer bumped his shoulder against Jon’s. “What are we like?” he repeated.
Jon thought for a moment more. “Hard to pin down,” he finally settled on. “Every time I think I’ve got one of you figured out, you mess with my head.”
It was true. Jon had met Ryan Ross two days into the tour; he’d come across a skinny kid in the green room of a club in the middle of the Midwest and figured he knew exactly what he was getting. Scene kid, with a defiant slant to his mouth, desperate to prove himself. He’d known a dozen like Ryan, even counted some of them as his best friends. He knew what he was getting into. But once he started hanging out with Ryan, Jon would catch a look out of the corner of his eye, an expression of wonder and concentration on Ryan’s face that might have the power to take Jon’s breath away, if he ever caught it full on. Every time he turned to look, however, Ryan’s face was schooled in that impassive stare that made everyone else roll their eyes behind his back.
Brendon Urie was also straightforward, Jon thought. Lead singers usually were. Give them enough attention, they stay content. It was a simple enough formula, one he was prepared to employ with the enthusiastic boy who suddenly hung off of Jon’s shoulders like a lemur. But sometimes, Jon would catch Brendon alone, sitting at a piano or holding a guitar, and the sound of the notes drifting from the instruments would catch in Jon’s chest and make him want to drop to his knees. In those moments, Brendon’s entire body was still in a way it never was at any other time, except for the hands creating the notes. A moment later, Jon would exhale too loudly, or he’d blink, and suddenly Brendon moved again, vibrating with energy, and the knot in Jon’s chest was gone as if it never existed.
The bass player, Brent, was something of a mystery from the start. Jon didn’t actually notice him until five dates into the tour; when he ran into Brent after the show, he thought the kid was just a fan until he pulled out a key to Panic’s bus and disappeared inside. After that, Jon got the weird impression that Brent was hiding from someone. Jon caught glimpses of him from far away – Brent always seemed to be walking away, away from the venue, away from the bus – but any time Brent noticed that Jon was looking at him, he’d disappear. Jon would look away, just for a second, and the when he looked up, Brent would be gone. Odd kid, Jon thought.
Spencer, Jon thought at first, was the only member of Panic! at the Disco that seemed normal. If normal even existed on the road, which Jon doubted most of the time. But Spencer was just a guy, a drummer and a kid, smart and funny and a little bit weird in the way of musicians. He laughed when Jon made faces at him from off-stage, and he held enthusiastic debates about famous drummers with Butcher. If Jon felt a little twist in his belly when he saw Spencer smile, well, Jon had come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t entirely straight a while ago. Being attracted to a good-looking guy was nothing out of the ordinary.
But, today, Jon wasn’t so sure about Spencer. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but walking through the venue with him, he felt this stillness, the feeling that the universe had suddenly hit the pause button. Jon was almost used to it. He felt it a lot on this tour – not just with the Panic boys, but with the Academy guys, too. A time or two, he’d looked at William, taking up the entire couch at the back of the bus in a loose-limbed sprawl that would suggest sex to a nun, and suddenly wondered where all the air in the room had disappeared to. At first, he thought it meant he was attracted to William, a thought that had sent him into a brief panic - he’d known William long enough to know how much of a truly bad idea that would be. But, then, he’d gotten the same feeling from Siska, who was most definitely slotted firmly into the ‘baby brother’ box, no sex involved, so Jon had dismissed the whole thing as a product of no sleep and too much booze.
“Everyone messes with your head,” Spencer said, and Jon had to mentally scramble to find the conversation thread again. “In our world, everyone’s looking for the advantage.”
Spencer, Jon thought, had learned a lot about the music business really quickly. His eyes seemed older, much older than his teenaged years, for a long moment, until Spencer smiled a smile that finally reached his eyes. “You don’t, though,” he said, his eyes meeting Jon’s. “Not when it matters. I like that about you. You’re one of the few people I know who doesn’t want something.”
“I want plenty,” Jon protested. “Right now, I want a goddamned beer, but Butcher drank the last one this morning. Asshole.”
Spencer laughed. Jon felt a smile spread across his own face – Spencer’s laugh was contagious.
Jon and Spencer paced the back parking lot of the club. The local crew hurried around them; Jon smiled at people he recognized as he listened to Spencer talk about the plot of the absurd fantasy novel he’d picked up at the last truck stop. “And then, the banshee was male, which I know comes from some sort of stupid role-playing game, but I wish the author had done some actual research, because banshees are actually all female …”
Jon opened his mouth to tease Spencer about his geek tendencies, but when he turned his head towards the side of the building, he saw a girl heading towards them. She didn’t wear a venue pass, which was his first clue that something was wrong. Her blonde hair was swept up into a severe ponytail, and her mouth was set in a grim line as she made a beeline for Spencer. A fan, Jon thought immediately, the same kind of girl who had tried to hide on Panic’s bus in Texas. That one had been discovered hiding in Brendon’s bunk, her face pressed into his sheets as if she could surround herself with them and become invisible. This one, though, might be looking to do damage to Spencer, judging by the hard set of her jaw. When she spoke, though, it made no sense to him. “You don’t belong here,” she said, pointing at Spencer. “This isn’t your place. It’s our world, not yours!”
Jon took a brief moment to glance at Spencer, whose face had lost all expression. Jon saw the girl move, however, and turned back to her. He closed the distance between them and put a hand on her shoulder. “You shouldn’t be back here,” he said, trying for a gentle tone. “You need to go back out front.”
“I’m not the one who doesn’t belong here,” she repeated, staring over Jon’s shoulder at Spencer. She wasn’t as young as Jon originally thought - he upped his estimation of her age from mid-teens to mid-twenties, with a scar on the side of her face, a velvet ribbon in her hair, and fire in her eyes, all heat directed towards Spencer.
Spencer was quiet, but he also didn’t head for the door to the venue, like Jon thought he might (and should). Jon could feel the weight of his stare in the back of his head, knew that Spencer was watching them. Jon stepped forward again, forcing the girl – woman – to step backwards to avoid getting shoved. “Go, now. Before I call security.”
“He’s going to bring ruin. They all do. They always do.”
Bring ruin? Jon had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling; who said that kind of thing, anyway? He stepped forward again, and the woman moved backward reluctantly. “Seriously, lady, go home. You can’t …”
“No, you can’t,” she interrupted. “You have no idea, do you? You should leave now, too, before it’s too late.”
“Before what’s too late?” Jon asked, despite himself. Quit engaging the crazy, he mentally smacked himself.
“Before you end up like me.” She grabbed Jon’s shoulder and looked him square in the eye. For a moment, he felt that stillness, that strange feeling of being somewhere that wasn’t right. Then the woman stepped backwards, out of his reach. “If you knew what was good, you’d let me take care of him.”
That snapped Jon back to reality. “Seriously, lady, I’m going to call the cops. Get the fuck out of here.”
He fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone, but by the time he pulled it out, she’d turned and run towards the crowd in front of the building. Jon stared at his phone for a minute, but then closed it and put it away reluctantly. What would he say to the police, anyway? That some random crazy girl was making vague threats? He’d just have to tell venue security to keep an extra eye out that night.
Jon turned back to Spencer. “Okay,” he said, keeping his voice light, “I thought William had some crazy-ass fans, but apparently you guys take the cake.”
Spencer’s face was still blank. He made a low humming sound before his eyes flicked over to Jon’s face. After a moment, his expression returned. “I’ve seen her before,” he said. “She has … an old problem.”
“Jesus, really? Your first tour, and you already have crazy stalker fans?” Jon shook his head. “You guys should have a restraining order on her, maybe, or at least give her description to venue security every night.”
“It’s fine. She doesn’t really cause trouble. Just headaches, every once in a while.” A small smile spread across Spencer’s face. “Jon Walker, my hero,” he said teasingly.
Jon laughed. “Hey, man, it’s all part of the service. Guitars serviced, photos taken, insane fans chased away.” He punched Spencer in the arm playfully. “Maybe you should start paying me.”
Spencer chuckled. He touched Jon’s face. Jon felt his brows furrow – it felt like a lover’s caress, and what the hell was that? The skin underneath Spencer’s fingertips seemed to hum; Jon fought the urge to clap his hand to his cheek, as if he was burned. Spencer was smiling, as if at a private joke, when he said under his breath, “By wind and fire, earth and sea, I ask you pledge your life to me.”
Jon blinked. He’d heard that before, where had he heard that before? After a moment, he remembered his Gran’s voice completing the fairy tale verse. “Ocean and flame, land and sky, I swear my oath until I die.” He didn’t realize he had spoken aloud until he saw Spencer react.
Spencer’s eyes widened, until they seemed to take up half of his face. All the white disappeared until there was nothing left but blue and black and suddenly the air around them was still and stifling. Jon drew in a shallow breath and felt a pressure in his head that made his vision swim. “Fuck,” he heard Spencer say, and Jon wanted to laugh, because the obscenity was so common. Why would he think that? It had to be the heat or something, because he felt like he was going to faint. Maybe he hadn’t had enough water, or maybe the scene with the girl had made him more tense than he realized, or …
As Jon slid into unconsciousness, his last sight was of the strange emblem on Spencer’s shirt. It glowed, burned into the backs of his eyelids as they fluttered shut.
***
Jon’s job as guitar tech was casual – he’d mostly been asked along as a photographer – so he felt perfectly justified in leaning against a wall and watching Panic’s set from backstage while everyone else hustled around him. His head still throbbed from his random moment of weakness. “You passed out, dude,” Spencer said when Jon came to. He pressed a bottle of water into Jon’s hand. “Like some Victorian maiden!” Jon had managed a weak laugh. Spencer’s joke hadn’t quite made it to his eyes, and Jon wondered exactly how bad he’d looked when he fainted.
He liked watching these kids – they had a sense of drama that a lot of bands on the scene didn’t. Jon chuckled to himself – “kids”, he thought, as if they were more than a year or two younger than him. But they did seem like kids, especially when he and William first watched them go through sound check, before the first show of the tour. “They don’t know what it’s like up here in the world,” William said dismissively. “They’ve been so sheltered.”
“Up here in the world?” Jon repeated, laughing. “Has Las Vegas become actual hell sometime when I wasn’t looking?”
William had looked at him for a moment before letting a sly smile cross his face. “Yeah, Vegas. If you don’t think that’s hell, you haven’t spent enough time there.”
The show continued, and Jon’s attention drifted to the front of the stage, where Brendon held court as some kind of small, demented ringleader, all grand gestures and wide-eyed stares. Ryan moved more cautiously, but with passion contained in his small motion, enough to match his singer in an odd way. Jon watched Brent for a few moments – on stage was one of the few times he could catch Brent, without the bassist skittering off to parts unknown. He seemed to be more grounded than either Brendon or Ryan – as did Spencer, though Spencer’s calm was a completely different sort than Brent’s.
Energy seemed to flow off the stage. Jon could see it rising, like heat waves. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. Brendon stood at the edge of the stage nearest to Jon, reaching out to the audience during a break in the vocals. When he began singing again, he stepped back and zipped to the other side of the stage, but Jon could see a shadow where he had been, a red-gold glow that lingered in the shape of Brendon’s outstretched arm for a split second. Jon thought he’d imagined it when it disappeared, but then he noticed the glow following Brendon, trailing in his wake like smoke in the shape of a boy. Brendon passed behind Ryan, and for a moment, his glowing trail intersected with another, more sedentary glow, this one darker, almost violet in color. The gold swirled away as Brendon returned to center stage, but Jon’s attention remained on the violet color. Ryan stepped to his microphone to join the vocals, and the dark color retained Ryan’s shape, thin limbs and hair and guitar, just long enough for Jon to feel like he was seeing double, before dissolving back into Ryan’s actual body.
Across the stage, Brent stood in place, concentrating more of his bass than on the audience. Jon saw a deep green puff rising from Brent’s hand as he played, wrapping tendrils around the neck of the guitar and disappearing back into Brent’s body where the body of the bass rested against his hip. When Brendon walked to his side of the stage, gold approached green, but instead of mixing, Brent’s colorful shadow retreated back against his body. Brendon’s trail quickly changed directions and stretched out towards the audience instead.
Jon closed his eyes against the glow, which seemed to swirl inside his head and mess up his vision. Obviously he was still recovering from whatever had happened earlier. Maybe he’d hit his head? Maybe he should ask a local crew member to point him towards the local free clinic, see if someone could prescribe him some heavy duty ibuprofen or something.
When he opened his eyes, he turned his attention back to Spencer. Which was a mistake. Spencer’s arms moved in a blur, sticks steady on the drums, keeping a beat that thrummed inside Jon’s head. With every movement, an ice-blue glow rose from his skin like a heat image, shivering and shimmering and disappearing into puffs of nothingness around Spencer’s head. The faster Spencer moved, the more the blue shimmers danced, in a way that seemed to caress Spencer’s skin before combining with each other and drifting into the air. Spencer’s eyes were closed as he played, and some of the blue shimmers seemed to seep behind his eyelids, so that Jon half-believed he’d see Spencer’s eyes glow when he opened them. Jon’s stomach roiled as his eyes attempted to follow the loops and curls of blue heat. The motion made him feel like he was on a roller coaster, waiting for the last curve but ready for the ride to be over.
Brendon moved back to the drum kit when Ryan began playing a solo, and suddenly sweeping gold light mingled with ice-blue shimmer, lights dancing with each other and combining into colors that Jon couldn’t describe and didn’t think existed in nature. A moment later, Ryan stepped back, and Brendon began to step forward again, but for a moment all three of them were close enough that their colors met in the middle of the stage, gold and violet and blue. Colors that shouldn’t complement each other did, somehow, in a large swirl that looked like a moving modern painting, color and light and somehow a sense of heat – Jon felt sweat dripping down his forehead, felt his brain pressing against the backs of his eyes, but couldn’t look away. The colors were so beautiful, but the dryness in his mouth felt more like fear.
When Brendon and Ryan moved back to the front of the stage, their colors moved with them, leaving Jon staring at Spencer and his blue aura. As the song ended, Spencer glanced in Jon’s direction. Jon didn’t know what he saw – couldn’t tell what kind of expression he had on his own face – but Spencer’s eyes narrowed, and the blue swirls shot up higher than his head, higher than the stacks of amps. It looked like blue fire, as if it should be burning Spencer alive. But, yet, Spencer sat calmly in the middle of it, staring at Jon with eyes that looked so normal and human, but colder than Jon had thought possible.
Jon didn’t realize he’d moved until he was vomiting into the trash can next to the stage. When he was done, he leaned his forehead on the wall next to him, unwilling to look back up at the stage. He simply crouched there and listened to the music until he stopped seeing waves of color behind his eyes.
***
The guys teased Jon for the rest of the night – Mike asked him if he’d stopped being able to handle his liquor, while Tom told him he should go back to Chicago and college if the road was that hard on him now – but Jon didn’t mind. Whatever was making him hallucinate, he was just ready to sleep it off and forget it.
At the end of the night, he stood in the parking lot, taking one last drag off of a cigarette before getting on the bus. As he exhaled smoke towards the parking lot, he felt a tap on his shoulder. “Jon. Hey, Jon.”
Jon ignored the flip of his stomach at the sound of Spencer’s voice. He hummed a noncommittal greeting and turned around. Spencer was dressed in the same t-shirt from earlier in the day, with the strange gold shield – Jon inexplicably shivered at the sight. When Spencer didn’t speak right away, Jon waved a hand at him. “We gotta get on the road. Texas has a lot of fucking miles to cover.”
“Jon.” Spencer stopped, shifted his weight from one leg to another, and pushed his hair out of his eyes. “What did you see earlier?”
Jon flicked his cigarette away and shoved his hand in his pocket. “What?”
“When you got sick. What did you see?”
“What did I see?” Jon repeated, frowning. “Um, you guys, until my body decided it liked the Big Mac enough to taste it twice.”
Spencer stared at him. Jon met his gaze; an effort, because everything in his brain screamed at him to turn around and walk away. The air seemed to still around them. For a moment, Jon felt like they were in a bubble, like they were only two people in the world. He opened his mouth to snap at Spencer, to make a joke or just tell him to fuck off, but he couldn’t make his chest form the sounds.
After what seemed like an hour, Spencer looked away; he stared at the side of the bus with the same intensity, but at least he was no longer looking at Jon. “Good,” he murmured, low enough that Jon was fairly sure he wasn’t meant to hear. “Are you feeling better?” he asked in a louder voice.
Jon shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll be fine, just need some sleep.”
Spencer nodded. “Right. I’ll let you go, then.” He took a step backwards, and Jon finally felt the breeze on his cheek again. “Good night, Jon.”
Jon waved a response. From somewhere above him, inside the bus, he could hear Butcher cackling loudly. He stared up at the window when he heard Mike and Tom shouting, presumably at the television. When he looked back down, Spencer was already gone.
***
The next morning, Jon woke up on the couch in the lounge with William standing over him. “You alive, Jonny Walker?”
Jon moved his head experimentally. “Yep,” he said, “preliminary tests are promising.”
“Good.” William stared at him for another long minute. “You need to stay away from those Panic children, they’re bad news.”
Jon laughed. It didn’t hurt his head, which was another good sign. “Like you have room to talk, Bill.”
“I have only your best interests in mind,” William sniffed. “Your best interests just happen to be mine, too.”
“Uh-huh.” Jon sat up. “Are we … wherever we were going?”
“Almost. Early sound check today, you’d better be ready to actually work today, asshole.” William flounced off towards the front of the bus. An emerald-green light trail followed behind him like a cape. Jon blinked. The green didn’t disappear, not until Bill was long in the kitchen, at which point it dissolved into the bunks.
“Jon.”
Jon looked over at the sound. Tom sat on the floor across from him, stretched out, with a guitar in his hands. He stared at Jon, frowning. Jon shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “Didn’t see you there, dude.”
“What were you looking at?” Tom asked. He sounded like Spencer had the night before, with the same indecipherable tone.
“Nothing. My head’s still a little messed up, I guess. You have any Advil?”
Tom reached over, grabbed a bottle that lay on the floor and tossed it to Jon. He continued to frown. “I hope the Advil fixes it.”
“It should.” Jon swallowed three pills dry. “If not, I may have to suck it up and find a doctor. I must have hit my head when I fell, or something.”
“Or something,” Tom echoed. He stood up and walked over to the couch, where he sat down next to Jon. “Be careful. Seriously, Jon, some of the people around here …” He trailed off and stared at the floor.
“What?” Jon poked Tom’s legs. “Just spit it out, man.”
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
Tom gave Jon a measuring look, but then shook his head. “I just hope … never mind.” He stood up. “Come on, let’s go raid the kitchen before Mike eats all the Lucky Charms.”
Jon scowled at Tom’s retreating back. At least he wasn’t followed by a colored swirl. That was an improvement.
***
Three days later, everyone decided to talk the drivers and managers into spending their night off at a local Indian casino. Jon hopped off the bus, dressed only in jeans and a t-shirt. He shivered, and then looked over to the thin figure that stood next to the other bus. “Fuck, Ryan, why do you have my hoodie?”
Ryan just shrugged. “You left it at the venue. I was cold.”
Jon stared at Ryan. “Don’t you have your own?”
“Yours is warmer.” Ryan wrapped his arms around himself. The sleeves of Jon’s hoodie didn’t quite reach the ends of his wrists, so he shoved his hands into the opposite sleeves. “Jesus. It was eighty degrees before the sun went down.”
Jon shrugged. “You’re from Las Vegas; you should be ready for this kind of thing. Also, it’s not my fault you’re an unnaturally skinny little shit.”
Ryan flipped him off as Spencer and Brendon emerged from their bus. Brendon stopped and bumped into Jon with his hip. “You gonna win me some money?” he asked, grinning.
“Win your own, motherfucker, I’ve got bills to pay,” Jon said, wrapping an arm around Brendon’s waist.
Spencer, however, didn’t even stop to glance at them; he simply walked towards the casino, where everyone else waited for them. When Jon looked at Ryan, he just raised his eyebrows and shrugged, following Spencer. Jon and Brendon trailed after them.
In the doorway, Ryan shrugged out of the hoodie. “Here, it’s warm enough inside.”
“Oh, thanks.” Jon put it on and smacked Ryan in the arm. “Thanks, asshole.”
“Any time.”
Ryan wandered off towards the slot machines with Mike, while Spencer and Brendon seemed to be distracted by the craps tables. Jon followed Bill and Butcher towards the roulette wheel. Roulette was a sucker’s game, he knew, but it was good for standing around and bullshitting with everyone, which was really all he came to the casino to do.
Jon bought himself fifty dollars worth of chips and started throwing money down on the haphazard pattern he always did – a few chips on his brothers’ birthdays, a few on his parents’ birthdays, a few on random dates and lucky numbers and on the double zero just because he liked it.
When his fifty had turned itself into two hundred dollars, Butcher turned to stare at Jon. “Dude. Did you find a magic genie or something?”
Jon stared at the wheel, which had just stopped on 23, earning him another seventy-five dollars. “I have no idea.”
Tom came over to lean on Jon’s other side. “What the fuck? You always lose all your money in, like, an hour.”
“Apparently it’s my night.” Jon grinned at him.
At four hundred dollars, Jon let out a whoop and pounded the table with his fist. At a warning look from the dealer, he snatched his hand back and stuffed it in his pocket, choosing to sit out the next round instead. Inside his pocket, he felt a strange wad of fabric. He pulled it out and stared at it. Brown fingerless gloves –he recognized them as Ryan’s. Ryan must have shoved them in there when he was wearing the hoodie.
Jon started to shove the gloves back in his pocket – fuck it, he’d give them back to Ryan later, the wheel was spinning to a stop and he had to figure out his bet for the next round – but as he closed his hand around them, he saw a puff of …something drift up from his hand. He nearly dropped the gloves. He glanced around, but no one else had noticed. He looked back down, hoping he’d been seeing things, but no, the violet swirls – the same kind that followed Ryan around everywhere, the ones Jon had been working hard to ignore for days – still curled around his fingers in a pattern that Jon expected to feel sliding along his skin. Still, he felt nothing.
During the next spin, Tom noticed Jon’s fist in his lap and looked down with interest. “What do you have there?”
Jon looked at Tom’s face, but there was no recognition there, just curiosity. “Must be Ryan’s gloves,” he said, in what he hoped was a nonchalant voice. “He was wearing my hoodie earlier.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “Weird fucking kid.”
Jon watched the violet swirls fade back into the gloves as he relaxed his grip. “You have no idea.”
He shoved the gloves back into his pocket and reached for his chips, but he kept his fingers in his pocket, touching the gloves, trying to figure out if he could feel the swirls if he wasn’t looking at them. He couldn’t, but as he moved to put his chips onto 17 – his birthday – he suddenly changed his mind. He shoved a pile of chips – more than he’d bet on anything else at one time, more than a hundred dollars – onto 10. Butcher poked him in the arm. “Getting cocky?”
“Just have a feeling.” And he did. He still couldn’t feel anything on his hand, the one still clutching the gloves, but if he concentrated he felt … sure. Confident. It was weird. If he was wrong, well, he was still up a shitload of money.
When the ball landed in the 10 slot, the whole table – not just Tom, Butcher, and Bill – stared at him. Jon stared at the pile of chips the dealer shoved over to him. “Wow. Holy shit.”
Jon saw Ryan across the room, sitting at a slot machine and talking to a pretty waitress. Ryan’s eyes slid in Jon’s direction, and even from the distance, Jon felt a chill. Suddenly, he pulled the gloves out of his pocket and shoved them into Tom’s hand. “Humor me,” he whispered. “Hold these for a minute, and make a bet.”
“What?”
“Just do it, okay?”
Tom rolled his eyes, but did as Jon asked. They both placed chips on different numbers before the wheel spun. When it landed, Jon had lost, and Tom was staring at a pile of chips he didn’t have before. When he looked over at Jon, his eyes were wild. “Fuck no,” he whispered, almost too low for Jon to hear over the crowd. “Take them back, give them back.”
“What?” Jon felt Tom shove the gloves back into his hand.
Tom stood up. He grabbed his chips and bent over to speak in Jon’s ear. “Get rid of them. Get out of here. Seriously, quit playing with this freaky shit. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
Tom walked away. Jon looked across the room again – Ryan was still sitting at the slot machine, playing half-heartedly. Jon squeezed the gloves in his hand and looked down. Purple patterns still played across his hand, and seemed to seep into his jeans. Jon was beginning to get used to the colors, after spending a week watching several of the people he knew – Ryan, Spencer, Brendon, William, Siska – walk around with their own rainbow following them. It felt almost normal.
He squeezed the gloves tighter and placed another bet, this time with half of his money. Butcher gaped at him, but nearly lost his mind when Jon won again. “Dude, what the hell? Wanna share some of that shit with the people who are kindly paying you to lounge around our bus?”
Jon looked down again. His hand looked entirely purple in his lap. When he moved his fist, the swirls followed him, making patterns in the air that made Jon’s breath catch in his throat. He thought about the chips in front of him, and the things waiting for him at home – student loans, a bedroom in his parents’ basement, a cobbled-together darkroom and photography studio that could use a lot of new equipment. If the gloves were giving him money … but, man, wasn’t that crazy? That couldn’t be, could it?
He looked at his chips again. Then, he looked across the room, to where Ryan pressed buttons on his slot machine, his face expressionless as usual. He tightened his grip and clapped Butcher on the shoulder. “Hey, dude, watch my chips for me, I’ll be right back.”
Jon ran across the casino floor. When Ryan looked up at him, he shoved the gloves into his hands. “Here, you lost these.”
He could feel Ryan staring at his back, but he ran back to the roulette table before he could change his mind.
Back at the table, Jon shoved half of his chips onto 17. “Here goes nothing,” he told Butcher and Bill, twisting his mouth into a smile.
He endured their good-natured ribbing when he walked out of the casino with twenty dollars to his name. As he passed the slot machines, he saw Spencer sitting next to Ryan, their heads tilted together in quiet conversation. Spencer stared at Jon as he passed, but Jon refused to stop until he was back on his bus.
Part Two
