Hey Bitch the @ Button is Right There
The leaves turned from green to vibrant colours, signalling the end of September. October began the same way September had ended. Whisperings travelled through the halls about what had happened between the infamous power couple. The head cheerleader and the captain of the varsity hockey team. Stories varied between who you asked. The majority believed that Ryan had dumped Keltie, and that she was spewing bullshit to make him look bad. Some believed their breakup was mutual, that it had just fallen apart. It was believable, considering they had been together for a year and most couples at their school could barely last a month.
The final, and most shocking, was that the perfect Canadian boy, the symbol of manliness, debatably the most admired boy in the 11th grade, was gay. Ask anyone who spent any time with Keltie, and that would be the answer they would give.
Basically only Keltie’s little clique of 12th grade cheerleaders believed the story, but nevertheless Brendon secretly hoped that maybe, just maybe, it was true. Not because Brendon was into Ross. No. That couldn’t be the reason.
It must’ve been because he needed some new ammunition. Normally he only had to insult Ross on ice, but this year they had three classes together, which meant he had to be constantly on his toes.
“Brendon Urie? Did you hear me?” their pretty blonde French teacher asked him. Brendon snapped out of his daze, and noticed Ross squinting at the pen Brendon was continuously clicking.
Brendon shook his head, embarrassed. The rest of their class was giggling.
“You and your seat partner have to write a basic conversation about your school year so far, it’s due Thursday, before the Thanksgiving long weekend. You have every class until Thursday to work on it.”
Ew. A French project with the kid who never spoke French? Brendon wasn’t even sure how Ross was passing this class.
Ryan raised his hand, but barely. That very obvious attempt to make it look like you don’t care at all, but you do.
“Yes, Ryan?”
“Mlle. Ivarsson, j'serai pas icitte jeudi,” Ross announced. What the fuck did he just say?
“Et pourquoi?"” she asked. This gave no context to Ryan’s French. Brendon was good at French. He was really good at it. Ryan was probably just using it wrong.
“M'as visiter ma famille,” he muttered. Brendon wondered why Ryan’s French had a weird, nasally tone to it. Probably trying too hard. Ryan would never be as good as Brendon, he didn’t even have to work at it.
“Ok. Toi et Brendon présenterez mercredi,” she said.
“D’accord,” Brendon had never heard that word before.
“Commencez à travailler maintenant, s’il vous plaît,” Mlle. Ivarsson said.
“Listen, Brendon, I don’t want to have to work with you anymore than you want to work with me,” Ryan asserted before Brendon even had the opportunity to open his mouth.
“Glad to know the feeling’s mutual,” Brendon agreed.
“Listen, I’ll just write us the script so that you can spend your time fixing your shitty slapshot,” Ross insulted him. Brendon didn’t know whether to thank him or shoot something back.
“Oh, fuck off. At least it takes more than someone breathing on me to knock me over,” he chirped back.
Ross didn’t answer, only shot him a nasty look before moving to retrieve something from his bag. Brendon attempted to resist the urge to look at Ross’s ass as it lifted off of his seat, but alas, it was all for nothing. Ross did have a nice ass. All of his extra hours in the gym definitely did him well. Not to mention his tendency towards skinny jeans, the black, ripped up pair he was wearing today complimented him well.
Right before he was caught, Brendon managed to tear himself away from the sight of Ross’s butt and pretend to be looking at a Dr & Mrs Vandertramp poster on the other side of the classroom. He silently cursed Ross, why did he have to have such a perfectly round ass? It simply wasn’t fair. Bad people don’t deserve good asses.
Brendon pulled his phone out of his pocket, awkwardly looking under the table after he slid the screen unlocked. He didn’t have a passcode, in his family, that was seen as suspicious.
He noticed the red badge on the messages, 32 messages. He opened the app, and every one of them was from a group chat between their hockey team. It was normally entitled the real puck sluts™ with all of the sexual emojis one could possibly imagine, but right now, it appeared as daddy dallon with the sexual frownie face copied 4 times. Brendon decided that just for shits and giggles, he’d read it from where he had last opened it.
Kenny: 420 blaze it
Brent: Kenny its 12pm
Kenny: it’s 420 somewhere
Dallon: guys
Ian: what
Brent: what
Dan: what
Kenny: dallon pls tell us daddy
Dan: holy shit kenny shut the fuck up
Kenny: you’re so rude to me daniel
Dallon: GUYS
Kenny Harris has changed the name of the group to daddy dallon
Ian: KENNY
Dan: KENNETH AARON HARRIS
Brent: who’s kicking kenny this time
Dan Pawlovich has removed Kenny Harris from the group
Dallon: LISTEN GUYS
Shane: waddup my phone just finished charging
Ian: shouldn’t u like. Be in school
Shane: nah
Dallon Weekes has added Kenny Harris to the group
Kenny: I’m back with memes danker than ever
Brent: wtf dallon
Dallon: he was harassing me in a DM i felt bad
Brent: who’s kicking Dallon
Shane: nah
Dallon: OMFG r y’all ever gonna stfu
Brent: dallon knows how to swear? Damn i had no idea
Dallon: stfu brent
Dallon: I got the lead in my school play!!! U guys should all come see it!! I’m danny zuko!!
Shane: wtf dallon ur gay that’s not fair
Kenny: don’t be mean!
Shane: how am i being mean dallon’s gay
Kenny: he deserves equal opportunities to the rest of us bros!! I will definitely be there bro. U can count on me
Brent: wait since when does kenny know how to say anything other than rare pepe 420 and dank
Brendon chuckled a little bit under his breath. He really did love all of the guys on his hockey team.
He went to open his private message with Dallon, and sent a quick hey, congrats , then closed it and locked his phone.
He turned to look at Ross, who had the pink eraser of his pencil pressed against his even pinker lips. His jaw was clenched in hyperfocus, prominent and angular. Probably trying to remember what bonjour meant or something. Little strands of hair fell over his chiseled face as he hunched back over the piece of lined paper, which already had some French words written on it in capital letters. Wow, how had he managed to google translate all of that so quickly?
Brendon barely noticed it, but instead of using his last initial on the script, Ryan was using the letter B. Brendon had honestly forgotten that Ross still knew his first name, after so many years of calling one another by their last names, and only addressing one another in the form of insults.
“Can I help you?” Ross looked up from his paper and at Brendon, who recoiled back.
“Just making sure you don’t fuck up our French project,” Brendon responded, a little too quickly. Ross raised an eyebrow at him, but then went back to his work.
Brendon relaxed back into the cold, hard chair of his French desk. He couldn’t make a habit of looking at Ross like that. He pulled his phone back out of his pocket, and saw two notifications on the lockscreen from Dallon. He unlocked it and then opened the messages app. He smiled when he read Thanks bro! And then Can I count on u to be there? Brendon wasn’t really sure what to say to that.
“Oh, by the way Urie, I’m not sure if you understood what me and Mademoiselle were saying earlier or not, but I’m gone Thursday so we have to present Wednesday,” Ross interrupted Brendon’s attempts to materialize a response for Dallon. So that’s what they were talking about. Brendon knew that.
“I don’t fucking care, just finish the fucking project on time and we’ll be fine,” Brendon replied. Deep down, he wondered where exactly Ross was going to be on Thursday that was so much more important than their French project.
He focused his attention back onto his phone, and sent Dallon back yeah, i’ll try my best, but u know how my dad is. He quickly deleted it, as soon as the tiny grey letters “delivered” appeared under it. Dallon knew better than to respond.
“So where are you going anyways?” Brendon asked, sounding a little bit too interested in Ross’s personal life. He cursed himself for letting his curiosity get the better of him.
“Visiting family,” Ryan responded, sounding detached. His full focus was still on their French project.
“And that requires a five fucking day weekend? Sounds to me like you’re just trying to get out of school,” Brendon prodded. Now he didn’t seem so interested.
“They live in Quebec City,” he replied. If Ross had family in Quebec, then why was he so fucking bad at French? One of life’s greatest mysteries. They were probably just his distant cousins or something.
The bell rang, and Brendon silently thanked God. He didn’t need anymore awkward interactions with Ross. This time, as Ryan went to his bag, Brendon managed to keep his eyes off of his ass. Progress.
When he got to cosmetology class, Ms. Orzechowski was sitting at his desk, absentmindedly filing her nails. Brendon always thought she was hot. After all, she was his excuse for taking this class.
Standing at one of the desks, staring in the mirror and plucking her eyebrows was Audrey. Her elbows were resting on the counter, her body leaned over and ass sticking out in a bright white miniskirt. It wasn’t as nice as Ross’s, Brendon observed. He also wondered why it was that she was still wearing miniskirts, it had snowed just yesterday. He hoped she wasn’t too cold.
She kept having to brush pieces of her hot pink bangs out of her eyes, and Brendon wondered why she kept them so big. She looked like something straight out of 2005, the typical scene kid.
Brendon purposely took a space at a counter on the other end of the classroom. Audrey had been hitting on him a lot lately, and he wasn’t really in the mood for that today.
The second bell rang, and Brendon was very aware of the fact that almost everyone had skipped. Left in the room were him, the teacher, Audrey, and about five other girls.
“Since everyone has so graciously decided to skip my class today,” Ms. Orzechowski began, sounding pissed off. “Free day today. Practice whatever skills you want. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me.”
Brendon contemplated going to talk to the young teacher. Maybe try to put the moves on her. She couldn’t have been that much older than him, six or seven years at the most. Unfortunately, his moral code got the better of him. Instead, he just sat and absentmindedly played Twist on his phone.
He felt breath on his shoulder, and jolted back when his eyes were met with extremely heavy black eye makeup.
“Hey Brendon,” Audrey smiled. Ugh. Not this again.
“Hey Audrey, what can I do for you?” Brendon asked, displaying false kindness.
“Oh, uh, I uh,” she stumbled.
“I uh, too,” Brendon laughed in response. Audrey playfully slapped his arm.
“Brendon!” she squeaked.
“So what’s the deal?” Brendon asked.
“I um. I was wondering if you, uh, wanted to maybe, get coffee together sometime or something?” Audrey asked. Ha, fuck Ross! Brendon could get a girlfriend, and he could do it rather easily. Not that Brendon could remember what Ross had said two weeks ago.
“Are you asking me out?” Brendon asked, the corners of his mouth pulling upwards. He wasn’t happy that Audrey was asking him out, but rather, that he had successfully proved Ross wrong.
“Yes,” she said. Brendon’s chest tightened. It wasn’t funny anymore, he had to come up with some ridiculous excuse for why he couldn’t go out with her.
“You know Audrey, I’m flattered but,” he started. He wasn’t sure of what to say, then remembered what Dallon had told him that he always used as excuses. “I’m just really trying to focus on my hockey career right now, okay? I’m on my way to the NHL, and I can’t have any girls distracting me. I hope you understand.”
Audrey’s face fell, “You don’t even have time for one date?”
Brendon squirmed, “I just don’t want to get involved, you know? Hockey’s very important to me, and you’d just feel like a second place to it. Or something like that.”
“If you really don’t like me you could have just said so,” she sighed.
“No I didn’t mean it like that!” Brendon amended quickly. “You’re a great girl and I’m flattered. But I just feel like my life right now is too busy for a girlfriend? I only get to see my friends because they play hockey with me.”
Despite his explanations, Audrey still looked crushed by his rejection. Brendon couldn’t think of anything else to say to her so he pulled out his phone again to seem distracted. When he looked up again Audrey had slinked out of the classroom. The other girls hadn’t been paying any attention to their conversation but Ms. Orzechowski was staring at him, her eyebrow raised quizzically. Her attention made him nervous, as if she was looking into his very soul and uncovering his deepest darkest secrets. Not that he had very many, but if he did, she could see them.
He considered going up to her desk and asking her a question about hairstyling, which was his favourite part of the class, but instead he refocused on his phone. Talking to her wouldn’t have made him feel any less vulnerable.
When the bell finally rang Brendon was out of the classroom faster than a breakaway. With school finished for the day it was time to get back to the one thing he was actually good at: Hockey.
* * *
The next two days passed quickly. School was generally dull and meaningless, and there was no real pressure for him to do any work. Ryan had finished the script for French by Tuesday, and so he and Brendon practiced it twice together, with Ryan stopping every time he spoke to correct his pronunciation. Not that Brendon paid him any mind, seeing as Ryan literally could not speak French.
Other than to occasionally insult Brendon’s french, Ryan seemed subdued. He didn’t react as violently to everything Brendon said like he normally did, and mostly just stared at Brendon and blinked rapidly. He looked a little worn out, but having practices and games so late at night did that to you and Brendon could sympathize. He could sympathize with Ross a lot more than he cared to admit most times, but the lull in their rivalry allowed Brendon to acknowledge that maybe Ryan wasn’t such a bad guy? Like he was pretty to look at and when he didn’t talk much, he wasn’t so bad.
With Ryan’s sudden change in behaviour Brendon had been surprised to overhear Spencer and Ryan arguing at their lockers on Wednesday morning when he’d arrived at school.
“Ryan look at yourself! This isn’t healthy! You’re not helping anyone,” Spencer had snapped.
Ryan had shrugged apathetically -or maybe it was exhaustion?- but hadn’t dignified Spencer with a reply when when he saw Brendon approach.
Jon seemed happy with whatever truce Ryan and Brendon had established for the time being. He talked about how nice it was that they weren’t fighting constantly, and how they could really become friends now. Brendon didn’t know what Jon’s deal with friendship was and why he was so optimistic about theirs, but he smiled and humoured the guy. Of all the people he was forced to hang around with everyday, Jon was the most tolerable. At least he was a genuinely pleasant person.
Unlike some people he knew.
Brendon and Ryan’s presentation went well, although the class kept laughing at them. Brendon assumed it was just Ryan’s terrible French, but he also didn’t understand most of what he was saying. Did Ryan even bother to check if the Google translate had been right?
At one point Ryan had made Brendon say “Ben, j’ai raté mon examen de mathématiques car je jouais l’hockey, mais tu sais quoi? Je le rate aussi.” and as he said it Ryan had thrown his head back and laughed, his hand quickly covering his mouth. Brendon had stared at him, mesmerized and bewildered until Ryan had stopped and recited his next line.
As they sat back down at their desks, Brendon had leaned over to Ryan, “Hey, uh, good job and thanks for writing the script.”
Ryan stared at him incredulously, “Um. Thanks?”
Brendon waited patiently for Ryan to compliment him back but Ryan had just turned back to his French work in front of him.
When they went up to get their marks on the project a few minutes later Mlle. Ivarsson gave them both a stony look.
“La prochaine fois, Ryan, on va laisser Brendon à faire ses propres devoirs?” she asked him.
“P't'êt. On verra bien,” Ryan shrugged. He looked down at his mark and smiled smugly.
Brendon’s own mark was nothing to smile about. He’d gotten 14/20, not even 75%. And he’d even memorized the stupid script too. Her notes said something about pronunciation but he couldn’t make out the rest of what she said as her handwriting was messy and also in French.
At hockey that night Brendon thought he’d had a decent practice but as he’d been chatting with Brent in the changeroom afterwards Ryan kept sending him the dirtiest looks. He had received all of that bastard’s shitty passes and hadn’t chirped him once! Brendon wondered if maybe it was just some kind of miscommunication so as they were leaving the arena Brendon had said bye to Ryan, who hadn’t acknowledge him at all. It had been in front of half of the hockey team and as Brendon had withdrawn his hand from the wave, his face had heated up.
He tried not to let it get to him, after all Ryan might not have heard him, but the nagging feeling in his gut told him that maybe his attempts at friendship were being rather rudely declined.
On Thursday Ryan wasn’t there, and after the budding camaraderie between them over the past week Brendon almost missed him. Or maybe he just missed looking at him and his ass. It was hard to say.
Still, by French class there was a very noticeable Ryan Ross shaped hole in his day. Maybe he missed the bantering or whatever but it felt strange that he was missing from three of their three classes together. Even if Ryan did skip French and Gym a lot, he was always in English class.
As he sat down in his usual seat, Brendon remembered that he would just be listening to presentations and cursed himself for not skipping. At least he had his phone with him.
Ryan’s seat felt like a void next to him, and Brendon wondered once again why he missed the other boy’s presence so much. Surely he wasn’t that pretty.
He grabbed a pen from his backpack and fiddled with it absently. He had to stop thinking about Ross as if the guy was a major part of his life.
Surprisingly, Ryan’s seat filled up quickly. A boy who usually sat across the classroom, with a mop of scraggly brown hair and a grey beanie, plopped himself down next to Brendon. He stuck his hand out, “Hey, I’m Alex.”
Brendon shook his hand awkwardly, “Um hi.”
“I noticed your friend isn’t here, and you’ll notice my friend is also not here, so I came over to introduce myself,” Alex told him.
Brendon looked around the classroom and noticed that the guy with the blonde streak who usually sat near Alex was missing.
“Did he skip?”
Alex shrugged, “Probably. He’s so shit at French.”
“I see,” Brendon totally did not understand that feeling. “Um, is there anything in particular you wanted to talk to me about?”
“What, a guy can’t make polite conversation?” Alex asked innocently. “I’m kidding. I wanted to ask you something.”
“Okay...”
He leaned closer to Brendon, “So did you like, not understand any of your script yesterday? Or were you two just totally fucking with us?”
“Umm... What?”
“You had no clue,” Alex said flatly. “Damn, I owe Jack lunch. Ross is a mean fucker, isn’t he?”
Brendon shrugged, “I guess?”
“Listen, you naive child. Ross totally humiliated you and you don’t even know,” Alex leaned away and shook his head. “I admire that. I don’t know if I want to spoil this.”
Brendon frowned, “Listen fucker, you can’t tell me just that and not tell me everything.”
“Hey, chill out. I know, I know,” Alex said throwing his hands up in defense. “Okay so everything Ross made you say yesterday? It was an insult. Like a self burn. You probably insulted every single thing about yourself.”
“What?!”
“Man I wish I’d gotten it on video...” Alex said. “There was this really good one too, something like ‘I failed my math test because of hockey, too bad I fail at that too’ god, it was so ruthless. And like something about being too shitty to ever play major league hockey, and god maybe something about speaking French so terribly that you make people bleed from their ears.”
“I said all of that? About myself?” Brendon asked unbelievingly.
“Yeah, as I said, Ross is one mean fucker,” Alex replied.
“What the fuck,” Brendon snarled, his hand clenching around his pen.
“Dude, what are you gonna do?” Alex asked. “Are you gonna fight him?”
“Already done that,” Brendon said through clenched teeth.
“No shit? Well let me know when you’re gonna do it the next time so I can watch,” Alex said.
“Sure thing,” Brendon said, but his voice sounded strangled and harsh.
Mlle. Ivarsson called the class to order and started the presentations, so Alex returned back to his regular seat. He tried to focus on the presentations, his pretty teacher, the posters on the walls but all Brendon could think about was how badly Ross had fucked him over. He’d been totally lured into a false sense of security. The dude had totally set him up. First he’d made Brendon believe they were starting to be friends and then he’d totally made a fool of him. He’d humiliated him in front of the whole French class, and with that many people in front of the class he might as well have done it in front of the whole school. He hoped nobody had taped them. God, that’s why Ross had laughed at him. He hated him so much.
Without thinking he opened his phone. He didn’t have any texts and didn’t really feel like texting anyone himself. He didn’t use most of his social media, he just didn’t have the patience most of the time, but today he opened Twitter. He and Ross used to shade each other a lot last year and the year before that but they’d toned it down since then. It felt time to bring it back.
He quickly typed up a tweet,
He typed Ryan’s @ into the search bar and pulled up his twitter. In Ryan's profile picture, Ryan hair was shirt and shaved on the sides, but it had been over a year since Ryan's hair had been that short. He sported a flow, like many hockey players (Brendon's favourite player, Erik Karlsson included) and the ends of his hair curled up at his shoulders. Brendon didn't pause for too long on the profile picture and began to scroll down. Ryan's first couple tweets were about going to see family and hockey (what else?) but there, three tweets from the top.
Brendon seethed at his desk. That asshole! It wasn’t like Brendon asked for his father to be an ex-pro hockey player. God, he’s just mentioned a few of his dad’s streaks the night before and Ross was giving him this bullshit?
Normally Brendon would have just ignored Ryan’s indirects but with the pent up anger from Ryan totally humiliating him and the mention of his father -as if Ross had a fucking clue what he was talking about- Brendon’s critical thinking skills were in low supply.
Ryan’s reply was almost instantaneous.
Before Brendon could type out a reply he got another notification.
As if Jon knew a fucking thing about him and Ross. Fuck that guy.
He tweeted at Ryan again who replied equally fast.
It was such a simple message, but it was enough to get Brendon’s already boiling blood to evaporate. Time to hit Ross where it hurt.
As he waited for a reply, he looked up and saw that Alex and his seating partner were presenting. He felt conflicted over whether he should thank the bastard or punch him in the face for spilling the beans. Preferably both.
He returned to twitter to his notifications blowing up. A bunch of classmates were liking one of his tweets and retweeting it. He frowned. It seemed this twitter argument was far more public than he had assumed. Figured, considering Ross was one of the most popular kids in school.
Brendon rolled his eyes. Of course Keltie and Z had gotten involved. Would Ross’s girlfriends leave him alone? He didn’t care about them, or their petty feud over Ross.
Finally the notification he had been waiting for arrived.
That fucking asshole! Who did he think he was? And Brendon had wanted to be friends with him? He had no fucking respect. God, Brendon hated him. He hated him so much. What a fucking bitch ass, rude motherfucker.
It figured he was a homophobic piece of shit too.
He noticed that the classroom was silent, and they were all staring at him. It occurred to him he might have said all of that outloud.
Mlle. Ivarsson rubbed her temples, “Veux-tu répéter ça?”
Brendon covered his face in his hands.When he looked up, he said sheepishly, “I’ll just pack my stuff and go to the office now.”
He picked up his phone and stuffed his binder and pen into his backpack. As he walked out of the classroom, Alex gave him a little wave and Brendon scowled.
As he walked down the hall he composed another tweet.
He noticed that Spencer had tweeted at him and so had Jon. That was just like them sticking their nose in his business. Stupid Ross and his stupid friends.
Brendon scowled again and shrugged his backpack up on to his shoulder. As he made his way to the principal's office the class bell rang, and Brendon drifted into the crowd, his blue Herschel backpack disappearing in the throng of people.