Rating:

Explicit

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Bandom

Relationship:

Brendon/Ryan

Tags:

omegaverse

Stats:

Posted on:

2020-07-06

Words:

5,092

Ryan thinks of his life divided by his alphas.

At the beginning it was Brendon, when he turned 19. Spencer’s a beta so he’s good to have as a best friend, but when it was Ryan’s 19^th birthday, he woke up at two in the morning gasping and empty and needing, and when he called Spencer, Spencer told him, “Brendon’s an alpha.”

It was weird asking the newest guy of your band, the one you decided would be taking your place as the frontman, to fuck you when you just discovered you were an omega. All things considered, actually, Brendon could’ve been a lot worse. He could’ve teased Ryan relentlessly, made some bitchy comment about how as much of a control freak Ryan was, here he was now needing Brendon. But all Brendon had done was, when he’d arrived at Ryan’s front door, half-awake and slightly confused, was kiss Ryan on the mouth and taken him to his bedroom and knotted him there.

When Jon joined, part of his appeal to Ryan was that their brains just clicked and Ryan would write a line and Jon would suggest a perfect one to follow it. The other part of the appeal was that Jon was an alpha.

And it wasn’t like Ryan didn’t need Brendon anymore—except he didn’t. Brendon had been a convenience, a good alpha to keep him company for three days once a month for the first year and a half. But with Jon around, he and Ryan would be writing something, and then it would be Ryan’s heat, and Jon would still be around, and could knot him just as well as Brendon could. Sometimes Ryan thought even better, but that might’ve been the bias talking.

Then there was Alex, so he and Jon could trade off when it was convenient. And then there was Z, who’s reliable in a lot of different ways, but if Ryan can’t find a good alpha hook up for the month, she’s willing to do the job for him, even if he’s not exactly her gender of choice. It’s not that hard anymore, in L.A., when he can say, “I’m Ryan Ross, former guitarist of Panic! at the Disco.” There’s even the bit where he’s worked out a little, and looks slightly less than a mess than he did several years ago, where he doesn’t even have to say his name to get his monthly hookup. It’s not unheard of, and certainly not in L.A., where there are god-knows how many celebrity omegas wearing their scent maskers but still trying to find someone to scratch that monthly itch, the bare, hollow feeling of helplessness.

Ryan knows about the bond stuff, but certainly doesn’t believe in it. But his heat is coming up again, creeping through his bones and making him twitch, and one day he wakes up from a dream—or perhaps a memory—of being 18-years old and having Brendon Urie fucking him into the mattress. His eyes shoot open and he gasps, and his underpants are soaked in the darkness of his bedroom.

He checks his phone—it’s five a.m. He texts Z, u awake?, and then remembering that she’s just down the hall from him, stumbles out of his room and into hers.

She snuffles when he barges into her room without abandon, groaning in her sleep. “Ryan, goddammit. What?”

“I,” Ryan says, and it should be easy, asking what he has to ask her only a few times a year. Except this time it feels different. “It’s my heat.”

Z rolls over, sits up, and blinks at him. “What?” she says, and sniffs the air. “Are you sure? You smell kind of… different.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Ryan twitches in her doorway. It’s easier than usual to restrain the urge to pounce on her, and he’s not sure why. “I feel—I need—”

“You need me?” Z asks.

Ryan stops. He thinks.

He whimpers, “No.”

Z looks at her phone. “Oh,” she says. “Happy birthday.”

*

He and Z and now Alex are sitting in the living room. Ryan’s lucky to have two alphas as his best friends, but it really fucking sucks when it’s his heat and he needs an alpha but Z and Alex just don’t feel right.

“God, I can smell you from here,” Alex says, which is not exactly assuring. Ryan whimpers again and hugs his knees.

Z leans over to perhaps pat him on the shoulder, but they both wince when her hand comes in proximity to him, and she leans back. “Well what are we supposed to do?” she asks. “Is there—do you know why your heat feels different this year?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan says, for what feels like the umpteenth time. “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s you guys—”

“Both of us?” Alex says skeptically. “’Cause Brie’s heat was just last week and she seemed pretty happy about that.”

Ryan feels a sudden pang of envy. Alex and Brie never talk about their relationship, and while it’s been ages since Alex has knotted him, he’s generally assumed that Alex would help him get the job done. But now hearing about him and his fiancée sounds perfect, right, and—

“Have you knotted anyone other than her lately?” Ryan asks.

Alex looks uncomfortable all of a sudden. “No,” he admits.

The searing jealousy in Ryan’s chest increases tenfold, and he whimpers again.

Z, on the other hand, turns to Alex. “Wait, are there new developments? That you haven’t told us? Alex!”

“It’s my private life, shut up!” Alex says, although he’s blushing. “It’s just that—she told me that when she was 26 her parents told her she would feel her bond and. She did. And it was me. So.” He fidgets, but beneath it there’s something glowing, happy about him.

Ryan yearns.

Z, meanwhile, smacks Alex on the arm. “Well you could’ve told us that!” she says, then hugs him. “Congratulations! How did her parents know?”

“Said it runs in the family, or something.” Alex shrugs. Ryan and Z don’t expect much beyond that since there are still so many things people don’t know about their third genders, and just. Ryan doesn’t believe in the soulbonding. He doesn’t.

Except right now, he wants to. He wants his alpha, that person that he can depend on for the rest of his life, to knot him, to make a family with him, to be his life partner. He needs he needs he needs it—

And Z turns to Ryan. “Do you think this might be what’s happening with you now?” she says to him.

And Ryan’s a romantic and he doesn’t believe in soulmates but the hole in his body is heart-deep, crushing, emotional and physical all at once. He needs not just a knot to fill it, but someone. The aching is on every inch of his skin and brain and soul.

“Yeah,” he breathes.

*

The problem is, he knows who he wants but he doesn’t want to believe it as fact. Because he’s not going to accept him at all, and Ryan’s pretty sure that he’ll die if (when) that happens.

The other problem is, no one knows how soulbonds actually work. Most people still don’t believe it exists, and bite bond marks on their wedding nights to prevent that sort of trouble from happening. And Ryan’s pretty sure he has bitten someone’s bond mark already, and Ryan will feel helpless and hollow for the rest of his life, constantly trying to find someone to take up that space, but they won’t ever be enough because it’s not him.

It can’t be him.

Z and Alex help him get to work after they’ve slept a decent amount, Alex in Ryan’s bed since Ryan can’t sleep, horny and twitchy for the rest of the night. They research endless things about soulbonds on the internet, but mostly find cute stories on Reddit that make Ryan’s heart ache even more, stories like heat bonds happening between best friends that fit perfectly, heat bonds with someone that they’ve only dated for a month.

Z also finds: “Listen to this,” she says, between a bag of Cheetos at 11 in the morning, while Ryan’s on his seventh cup of coffee. “‘I had my heat around my high school reunion, and when I saw my girlfriend again, it was like everything fell into place. We made love again and she didn’t bite me because she never did, but I wanted her to because I knew it was her. I’m pretty sure I was drawn to her as a teen because I knew, in the end, that she was the one I’d end up with.’”

She casts her gaze on Ryan. “Do you think you’ve slept with the person you’re bonded with already?”

Ryan hasn’t told them his suspicions, so he’s comfortable in saying, “Yeah,” because, in all fairness, he’s slept with a lot of people.

Alex rolls his eyes. “Okay, so that totally narrows it down.”

Ryan mumbles in assent, shifting in his underwear—he’s changed it five times already, he’s been leaking so much.

But Z continues watching Ryan.

“Do you think you know who your bonded person is?” she asks.

“They’re called a mate, Z,” Ryan says.

Z continues looking at him.

Ryan sighs. “Yes.”

Alex looks at him incredulously from his laptop. “Well then, who?” he demands. “Have we been wasting the past five hours researching this?”

“No, you haven’t,” Ryan says, because he really doesn’t want to say his name, but he knows nothing will come of it. “I don’t think they—um—I think I need to find an alternative, honestly.”

“Why?” Z and Alex demand.

Ryan looks forlornly at his phone, at a conversation that stopped three years ago, two exchanges, that he hasn’t had any hope of picking up since.

“Did I ever tell you guys the first alpha I slept with?” he says, instead.

*

In the end, Z agrees with him and continues Googling for research.

Alex, on the other hand, tells him not to give up hope.

Ryan is grateful for both of them, but feels he’s at a stalemate. An entire day passes with the awful, painful urge beneath his skin, and the presence of two alphas is not helping him. He misses the days where Spencer was his best friend, because then at least Spencer could give him cuddles and neutral scent, not a close-but-too-wrong one instead. He loves Z, of course, because Z knows the reality that it’s 2019 and trying to hook up with Brendon Urie, much less telling him that Ryan’s bonded to him, is pretty much a lost cause.

But it does make Ryan miss Spencer something painful, in a sentimental way at least. So he does call Spencer.

“Hey man,” Spencer says, when Ryan calls him. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Ryan’s picking at the tacos he and Z and Alex ordered—he’s getting less and less hungry the longer his heat lasts. “Just missed the sound of your voice.”

“Okay, fruity,” but Spencer laughs, and Ryan hears dogs barking in the background. “What are you up to?”

“Just chilling. Eating lunch,” Ryan says, then looks at the time and frowns. “Or dinner. I don’t know what four o’clock qualifies.”

“Dinner,” Spencer says decisively. “Then you can have supper, like the British say.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around.”

“Fuck you, man, I’m not British,” Spencer says, then laughs. “What’ve you been up to, then? Any new songs?”

“Kind of,” Ryan replies, even though music is the last thing on his mind. And with music and Spencer, and then out of his mouth spills, “Have you talked to Brendon lately?”

There’s a pause, so minute that if Ryan didn’t know Spencer as well as he still knows him, he might not have noticed it. But then Spencer says, “Yeah, why?” Just those two words.

It drives Ryan crazy. “Nothing, I just,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about him lately, y’know.”

He sees Z look up from her laptop. He tries to ignore her.

“I mean,” Spencer says, then laughs again, though this time it’s more of an exasperated exhale. “You could talk to him, you know. You have his new number, right?”

“Yeah, I.” Ryan does. He does. They only exchanged three lines of texts in 2016, but he does. “I could.” The heat is prickling under his skin, and he asks, “How are he and Sarah?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Ryan doesn’t answer.

Spencer sighs. “They’re fine. I mean, like, they’re best friends, y’know? Why are you asking?”

“I just,” it’s hard for Ryan to breathe, he needs to know if they’re bonded, if he’s going to be empty like this for the rest of his life, “I just wanted to know.”

“Well again,” and Spencer sounds amused. “You can ask Brendon.”

They end the call shortly after asking about each other’s families. It feels like a weight on Ryan’s chest should be lifted, but it’s not—I could ask him, I could ask him, is running through Ryan’s mind.

Z’s closed her laptop. “What are you thinking, babycakes?” she asks him.

Ryan chews on his lip. He scrolls down to the U on his phone.

“I just need to know,” he mumbles.

*

Even if Brendon had tried to talk to him more, Ryan knows he wouldn’t have tried prolonging the conversation anyway. They can’t text anymore thanks to that one crazy fan, so he just asks to meet up somewhere, sometime maybe. Preferably in the next forty-eight hours.

To his surprise, it only takes Brendon about twenty minutes to respond: Happy birthday man!!!! yeah I’m free tonight, we could get ice cream or something? and if you’ve never played Fortnite before we can stop by mine and I could kick your ass too :)

Ryan’s heart pangs in his chest, even though it’s probably just Brendon being nice because it’s his birthday. He texts back: Sounds good, how about that vegan place on Fountain? At 7? and Brendon just responds with a thumbs up reaction, because he has an iPhone too.

It’s not a date, because while Ryan does want to get laid, he just—he needs to know the situation. He needs to know if he’ll be stuck around waiting for someone who will never feel the same, for the rest of his life. Even so, he changes his clothes for the fourth time today (and his underpants the ninth time), and while Z and Alex have picked up from context where he’s going, they make no comment on it.

Until he’s just about to leave. Then Z says, “Sweetheart, I don’t—I don’t want you to get your hopes up.” She has her pouty face on, when she really feels bad for him, like when he talks about his father.

Ryan takes a deep breath. “I’ll be fine,” he says, and isn’t quite sure if he’s lying.

“You got us, you know,” Alex says. Then, “Well, her,” nodding towards Z.

“You’re the best,” Ryan tells them. “And Alex, you should go back to Brie anyway, I don’t know how long I’ll be out.”

“Nah, bring Brie over to keep me company,” Z says. “You can leave too, Alex.”

The sound of their laughter is the last thing Ryan hears as he leaves the house.

He drives to the ice cream place, trying not to feel too nervous. It’s not like he hasn’t caught glimpses of Brendon, at malls or shopping centers or hell, even on billboards. He knows what he’s been up to, because of the radio, because of the occasional suggested YouTube video, from the occasional Instagram comment he sees from a Panic! fan every so often.

But when he goes in and sees Brendon there, it’s a whole different experience.

The moment he walks into the ice cream store is the same moment when Brendon swivels around, from his place in line. Their gazes lock immediately and nothing has ever felt so right in Ryan’s life. He forgets that he dressed up for this, that they’re in public, that they haven’t seen each other in literal years. It’s like he’s eighteen years old again and in his first heat and Brendon’s shown up at his doorstep, for him.

Brendon is in front of him, suddenly. He’s older now, of course—he looks good, really good. Ryan’s aching and leaking so much and trying not to whimper at the mere sight of him.

Brendon says, “Are you in heat? Now?”

He sounds aggravated, and… kind of breathless. Ryan blinks.

“Yeah, I mean,” he stammers. “I. I took my suppressants.”

“Are you sure?” Brendon asks. “I can fucking smell you, man, why would you—”

But Ryan knows he did—right before Alex came, way early this morning, Z had tried knotting him and when that didn’t work, he took a pill as Z called Alex three times to come over at six in the morning. It’s the only reason Alex hadn’t felt the need to jump his bones all day, because an omega in heat is a siren call to alphas everywhere, without a suppressant.

“I did,” Ryan insists again.

Brendon glances around. No one else is paying them, much less Ryan, any attention. When Brendon looks back at Ryan, he looks confused and turned on.

Mostly, this is good, but also Ryan needs to know his state of things. If Brendon’s bonded.

“Fuck the ice cream,” Brendon mutters. “Let’s go back to mine.”

“Okay,” Ryan says, but as they leave, Brendon stops and turns back to him.

“In separate cars,” Brendon says.

Ryan swallows. “Okay,” he says.

The moment he’s back in his car, it’s suddenly like he can breathe again—except then the emptiness hits even harder than before, because Brendon was there and now he’s gone. Except he’s not, he’s only thirty-something feet away, in the vehicle in front of him. Ryan can concentrate on driving—or at least, concentrate on following Brendon’s car, and a part of him wants to be let out, to be with Brendon again.

It feels too long and yet not long enough when they’re at Brendon’s house. Brendon’s dogs jump on him eagerly, ecstatic at the presence of a new stranger, and Ryan laughs, accepting their kisses and giving them little nuzzles and kisses back.

When he looks up, Brendon is looking at him strangely. “What?” Ryan says, and Brendon seems to snap out of it.

“Nothing,” Brendon says, except breathless again. He starts to walk towards Ryan and Ryan’s not sure if he even realizes it, because Brendon’s pupils are blown—they were before, in the ice cream shop, but Ryan hadn’t even registered it until now.

Ryan blurts, before he might forget, “Where’s Sarah?”

“Sarah?” Brendon shakes his head, dazed. “Probably out, I dunno.”

“Are—” Ryan can feel Brendon’s heat, smell him all over. It’s making him dizzy, making his words trip in his mouth. “Aren’t you guys bonded?”

“We’re married,” Brendon says, which is not an answer, but then his mouth is on top of Ryan’s and it’s all he knows.

They’ve kissed, before; during Ryan’s old heats, and sometimes not, and just for fun, especially when they were both drunk. Not like this, though, where the collision of their mouths is the most right Ryan has felt his entire life, heat and soft all around him, drawing Ryan closer to him, letting him relinquish all his control. Brendon’s scent is all over him, his hands on his shoulders, tracing his spine, at his hips. Their bodies are much different when they were nineteen and eighteen and Ryan feels like he’s relearning, but he also feels like he’s coming home, at every piece and joint of Brendon’s body.

They break away when Ryan remembers he needs to breathe, but then Brendon’s got his hands on Ryan’s ass, clutching and squeezing and Ryan moans as Brendon licks along his jaw, like he’s never tasted him before. “I,” Ryan says, because while he’s not clearheaded, he came into this meeting with a goal in mind. “I thought you were married.”

Brendon chuckles in his mouth. “Married, not bonded,” he says, and when he bites down on Ryan’s collarbone, so close to his bond mark, Ryan moans. “I thought you and your friend had a similar arrangement?”
Ryan needs a moment to remember anyone other than Brendon exists in the moment. “Z?” he asks. “No, she just helps me take care of things.”

Brendon smiles at him, blinding, perfect. “Exactly,” he says, then pushes Ryan onto his couch and falls over him.

Ryan is losing more and more of his mind, his sense of being—the more Brendon is all over his body, his scent, his fingers, his everything, the more Ryan needs him. “Off, off,” he mumbles, pushing at Brendon’s shirt, his belt, his jeans.

Brendon huffs, “Yeah, okay, Ross.” The shirt comes off and Ryan can’t stop touching him, then Brendon’s naked from the waist down too and so is Ryan, even though Ryan can’t remember when he took his clothes off, when Brendon took his clothes off. They’re on the couch in Brendon’s living room, so unfamiliar but feeling like Ryan’s, and he’s leaking onto the leather, moaning, wanting.

“Brendon,” he sobs, and then Brendon has two fingers in him, twisting, driving into him, feeling everything inside of him. “Brendon,” and Ryan clutches at his shoulders, leaking slick all over his palm and wrist, especially when Brendon adds another finger, then another.

“Jesus Christ,” Brendon mutters, but Ryan can see how dark his eyes are. It’s not like a heat he’s ever had, and as much as it’s like being nineteen again, there’s something different about it—how instead of looking for any other alpha, he’s been looking for Brendon. Brendon, who still sings his words sometimes, who took something he birthed and made it something different, something not necessarily better but still successful, and Ryan just wants to be owned by him.

“God, Brendon,” he says again, then, “missed your cock, your knot, fuck.” He doesn’t know the words that are spilling out of his mouth, except that they feel right.

Brendon kisses him again, then says against his lips, “Missed you.” There’s a squelching sound that’s Brendon inevitably wetting himself up with Ryan’s slick, and it makes Ryan moan.

“God, god, please,” Ryan says, and Brendon slides into him.

He’s not slow, and he’s not fast, but Ryan can feel the length of him sooner than he expects, and it’s perfect. “Fuck,” Ryan says, and he wants to come. It feels so close—closer than it was with Z this morning, closer than it’s ever been with Jon or Alex—and the stretch of Brendon’s thickness is even more delicious than when he was nineteen. Brendon doesn’t fumble or thrust erratically, sloppily, like a boy who’s just trying to get off; he teases Ryan with steady, slow thrusts at first, looking into his eyes as Ryan adjusts around him, loving the feeling of Brendon being slightly too big for him, slightly too there.

He wants Brendon in him always, he thinks, in his haze of heat. Even when he’s not he wants that aching, physical reminder that Brendon owns a part of him, deep in his heart, and his hole clenches around Brendon’s cock, dragging, wanting. Brendon groans and fucks into him harder, cock drawing more friction between them, where they’re joined. “You’re so wet, Ross,” he grunts, and Ryan moans, hearing his constant slick around Brendon’s dick. “Do you always think about my dick when you’re in heat? Remembering what it felt like, wishing it were me?”

The truth is, no, but it feels right for Ryan to say, “Yes,” and “Need your knot so much,” because he does, he needs Brendon to mark him, to know that Ryan is his.

“You’re not as tight as you used to be,” Brendon’s biting out, “but fuck if your hole isn’t the best omega hole I’ve ever had,” and the pure thrill Ryan gets from hearing that fills him with the kind of ecstasy that only the impending orgasm can match. Ryan thrusts back from lying on the couch, needing to feel Brendon big and fat inside him, needing to feel Brendon spilling inside him, the twitch and permanence of his cock in his asshole.

Brendon holds onto Ryan’s ankle, fucking him deep, and still steady. He lets Ryan’s knee drape over his shoulder, and stares at Ryan with dark eyes.

“God, you’re so,” Brendon says, then doesn’t finish the thought, just leans down and kisses Ryan. Ryan makes small noises into his mouth, happy at the affection, delirious from Brendon’s cock, sweating from the heat—

Brendon flips him over so that Ryan’s on his stomach, on his hands more than his knees, still inside Ryan and gripping his hips tightly. He starts fucking him faster, with more aborted thrusts, and Ryan loves it, wants to be used like this. “Ah, shit,” he says, and he wants to come, but he doesn’t want to come without Brendon’s knot inside him—wants to come with him, wants Brendon to know how much he wants him, how much he’s always wanted him. The thoughts don’t feel real but they feel real now, and Ryan’s still making sounds as Brendon fucks him, rhythm starting to grow stuttered, thrusts getting faster and more desperate—

And Ryan is already burning from the stretch and intensity already, but he feels when Brendon’s knot starts to grow, from the very beginning. It starts and then it doesn’t stop and Brendon’s cock is all the way in him now, thickening around his entrance, while Brendon’s thrusts become reduced to small, needy ruts. Brendon’s moaning too as he fills Ryan up with his cock, plugged in him so that even Ryan’s continuous outpour of slick can’t ease him out. He’s so fucking big and then he’s coming into Ryan, his spunk hot and deep that Ryan comes when he starts to feel it. Brendon’s moaning, “Mine, fuck, you’re mine,” as his come shoots into him, spilling and staining his insides that Ryan doesn’t know how to feel anything else. He’s being filled, marked, painted inside of him that he doesn’t know how to breathe, how to think as he comes all over himself and Brendon’s couch. Brendon’s cock keeps twitching, spasming, spilling into him until Ryan’s certain that if Brendon didn’t have a knot it would be spilling all over his cock and Ryan’s taint; instead it makes Ryan feel like he doesn’t have enough to keep all of Brendon in him, but he wants to.

He finally remembers to breathe again when his own orgasm has come down, while Brendon seems to have stopped, aside from the small ruts from still being inside Ryan. Ryan’s pink and sweating all over and still face down. He feels insane and slightly back to himself again, but there’s still a cock inside him and when he clenches down the cock twitches and tenses and Ryan’s asshole still manages to produce a small bit of slick around it.

“Jesus,” says Brendon from behind him. Ryan is loose-limbed, and lets Brendon rearrange them until he’s sitting in Brendon’s lap, Brendon’s cock still firmly lodged inside of him.

Ryan is also a bit sleepy, from not sleeping all day. “Is your wife gonna be mad?” is the first thing he thinks to say, when he’s comfortable.

Brendon tilts Ryan’s face so they can see each other, and gives him a funny look. “Mad about what?”

“That you fucked me,” Ryan sighs. He’s still enjoying Brendon’s cock inside him. “That you knotted me.”

“Like I told you, we just had an… arrangement.” Brendon shifts, arranging Ryan’s thighs neatly around him. “It was convenient to get married because I liked her enough.”

Then he noses Ryan’s neck, close to his bond mark. God, how much Ryan wants him to bite that right now.

“Can you explain something to me?” Brendon asks.

“Mm,” Ryan says, into Brendon’s chest. He arches his neck, trying to make his bond mark more appealing.

“If you took your suppressants, why could I smell your heat then?”

The answer comes more easily to Ryan than he thought it would. “’Cause you’re my mate,” he mumbles. He contracts his hole around Brendon’s knot again.

Brendon groans, thrusts up involuntarily. “Dammit—Ryan,” he says. “I thought you didn’t believe that stuff.”

Ryan shrugs, cranes his neck a bit more. “You can bite me, if you want,” he offers. It doesn’t feel like it matters too much now, but he knows he’ll be asking for it again later. “If you don’t wanna worry about it later.”

“I’m not worried,” Brendon says, but Ryan pushes against his cock again, and Brendon grunts again. “Fuck, Ross, I can’t believe you’re still a pain on my dick years later.”

Ryan hums. “You always loved it,” he says, and reaches behind to where they’re joined, teasing his own entrance, the base of Brendon’s knot.

Brendon inadvertently thrusts back into him again, and Ryan is delighted. “And you’ve always been a needy bottom,” Brendon grunts in his ear.

Ryan laughs, Ryan moans, Ryan comes again.

*

Afterward, when they’ve calmed down after another round (or two), and when Brendon is still stuck in Ryan again but this time on his bed, Brendon kisses the back of Ryan’s neck. It makes Ryan feel warm in his middle, and he burrows closer to Brendon.

“Don’t leave,” he says.

Brendon laughs softly against the back of his neck. “I don’t think I can,” he says, and shifts his hips pointedly so that Ryan can feel the stretch of his knot. “Remember? Plus your heat is three days long, anyway. And it’s my house.”

“I mean,” Ryan says, and laces his fingers with Brendon’s. “Afterward. I’m—”

Yours, he wants to say, but Brendon seems to detect it, because he kisses Ryan’s neck again, this time close to his bond mark.

“We didn’t actually get ice cream for your birthday,” Brendon says. “Or play Fortnite. So don’t think that you’re getting off easy after this.”

Ryan relaxes. His hand is still in Brendon’s, their scent and come and slick mixed. And heat or not, he thinks they can make this work.

“I missed you, you know,” he confesses, and when Brendon kisses him again, it’s on the lips while Brendon says, “I missed you too.”