Categories > Celebrities > Panic! At The Disco > A Road Called Loathing
The following morning, Margot was stirred from sleep by the red glare of the morning sun penetrating her eyelids. Her body was curled around something flimsy and soft, and the bed felt much harder than it had the night before. Perhaps she had just been too tired to notice the firmness of the mattress. She opened her eyes and sat up, noting that she had been wrapped around her pillow, and uttering a noise of pure disgust when she looked around and found that she was no longer in the bed.
Margot stood up from the floor, stretching her aching joints and rolling her neck to get the crick out. She turned a scornful eye on Brendon, whose body was splayed out on the bed like a rag doll, taking up the entire thing in his slumber. At some point during the night, he had shed his shirt (what else he had shed, Margot couldn’t tell, for the comforter covered all below his waist). Margot slapped his chest rapidly, trying to rouse him from sleep as harshly as possible.
“Brendon! Come on, Brendon, it’s time to wake up.” The boy groaned and mumbled incoherently, twisting around and contracting his limbs from all corners of the bed. “Come on, sleepy-time is over. And put a shirt on,” she added as he sat up, rumpling his shaggy hair with one hand and rubbing his red face with the other. “ You’re not attractive enough to go au naturale.”
“Fuck you, Margot. I’d rather see a shirtless Larry the Cable Guy than see you in your birthday suit.” Brendon tumbled out of bed, revealing that he had also lost his jeans, clad only in boxers.
“How the fuck did I end up on the floor last night?” Margot asked, ignoring Brendon’s last comment.
“Well, it was getting a little cramped, and you were at the edge of the bed anyway, so all it took was a little…nudge, and you fell off without even waking up.” Brendon found his clothes on the side of the bed that he woke up on and began to redress himself.
“Whatever. I’d rather be on the floor than spooning you, anyway.” Margot was in the adjoining bathroom now, washing her face and rubbing makeup residue from underneath her eyes.
“Psh, in your dreams, Miner. May I remind you that I have a girlfriend that is about a hundred times hotter than you?”
“Mmm…Yes, silicon-sexy. Tell me, what costs more: the bottle her hair comes in, the electricity for her tan, or the plastic for her nails?” Margot was pressing her face into a towel, which she then threw at Brendon while passing him on his way into the bathroom and her way out.
“Hardy-har. I’ll have you know that many consider Victoria the hottest girl in school. I could scarcely say the same for you.”
“Yes, because that’s what I want: the acceptance and approval of the dip wads that go to our school.”
“You say that now, but tell me, how does it feel to know that you’re a nice person with only one friend, and yet I, a huge asshole and a con-man of sorts, am unanimously liked by everyone?”
He had touched a nerve, and Margot was feeling it. She bit her lower lip, trying not to give him the satisfaction of a reaction as she laced up her chucks, yanking the laces a bit tighter than she intended. “Come on,” she said, standing and walking out of the bedroom. “The sooner we find a mechanic and a phone, the sooner we’ll be on our way, and this road-trip from Hell will be over.”
Brendon followed her downstairs, where both teens could already smell Gail cooking breakfast. Both their mouths watering as they entered the kitchen, they greeted the older woman with a good morning and at down at the table.
“Good morning to you two as well,” Gail said, slipping strips of bacon onto two plates and setting them down in front of the kids. Margot tried to discreetly slip hers onto Brendon’s plate, but he, of course, had to make a fuss about it.
“What’s the matter, Margot? You don’t like Gail’s cooking?” He smirked, shoving a whole strip of bacon in his mouth at once.
“No, it’s not that at all,” Margot said quickly as Gail turned around, looking hurt. “It’s just, I don’t eat meat.”
“Since when?” Brendon asked incredulously.
“For, like, a year,” Margot said defensively, as though Brendon was questioning her honesty, which he was. “Don’t you remember, at Thanksgiving you kept trying to slip meat into my food so I wouldn’t notice and eat some on accident?”
“Oh, yeah,” Brendon grinned at the memory of how Margot had been so close to putting a bit of mashed potato-infused-with-turkey into her mouth before checking to make sure Brendon hadn’t pulled a trick again.
“Oh, I can’t believe a nice boy like you would do something like that!” Gail seemed shocked.
“Oh, it was all in good fun, Ms. Gail,” Brendon simpered, offering up a playful-yet-innocent smile. “I would have never let her actually eat any meat.”
“Yeah, right,” Margot murmured.
After breakfast, Gail loaded the two into her pick-up truck and the trio puttered off into the nearby town, no more than a few miles out. She dropped them off outside the mechanic’s, apologizing that she had to run, but there were chores to do around the house that she needed to tend to. Brendon and Margot thanked her again and said their goodbyes, watching her shabby red pick-up drive off the way they had come.
It took Margot and Brendon about three hours to find the mechanic, get out to the car, and bring it back, and then another hour for the mechanic to tell them that the car needed a new engine.
“How long will that take?” Brendon groaned, running his hand through his hair.
“Well, installation takes about an hour, but I don’t just have a crate of engines sitting in my back room, y’know.” The mechanic replied. “I get a new shipment in tomorrow, so I’ll just call ‘em up, tell ‘em what I need, and it’ll be here around noon. Think you can hang in there until then?”
“I guess we don’t have a choice,” Brendon said, somewhat bitterly. “Listen, do you have a phone I could use? I need to tell my parents about this…and how much it’ll cost,” he added regretfully.
“Right there in back,” the mechanic said, gesturing to a phone sitting on the counter. “Dial nine before the number.”
While Brendon was telling his parents about the break-down, Margot bought a soda and stood gazing out the window as she drank. She hadn’t been able to call Spencer; he was probably worried by now. She made a mental note to call him when they got to their hotel room.
“Aright,” Brendon said, joining her and then walking out the door. “That guy said there’s a hotel just down the road that we can stay at,” he continued as they began walking toward the hotel. “He said to come back here around one-thirty and he’d have the car fixed. I grabbed some clothes from your bag and your toiletries and stuff.” Brendon handed these things to Margot, slightly surprising her with his kindness.
“Oh…um, thanks, Brendon,” she said, unsure of how to react. She could spit a comeback out without a problem, but she wasn’t used to genuine politeness on Brendon’s part.
“Yeah, you smell pretty bad, so I figure you’ll be more bearable to be around after a shower and a change of clothes.” There was the Brendon she knew.
“Of course they only had a room with one bed,” Margot said as they walked into the shabby room they had bought for the night.
“You can drop the act, Margot. I know how much you secretly love having an excuse to be so close to me.” Brendon collapsed on the bed, sighing exhaustedly.
“What, are you switching tactics now, Brendon? First you torture me, now you’re trying to seduce me?” Margot was gathering up her pajamas and hair products so that she could go shower.
“Perhaps I am,” Brendon said, eyes still closed. “Maybe, subconsciously, I’ve always wanted to get inside your pants, Margot. Drop a few pounds and I might be willing to act on those suppressed desires.”
Margot chose to ignore him as she walked into the bathroom. She turned on the shower and shuddered in the warm flow of steamy water. She showered slowly, half to unwind from the long day, half to annoy Brendon, who was waiting for his turn to shower. She finally shut off the stream, stepping out and wrapping her hair in a towel and getting dressed. Margot heard Brendon saying what she thought sounded like her name just before opening the bathroom door and stepping out into the hotel room.
“What do you want from me--” Margot began. She was, however, cut short when she saw Brendon. For a split-second, they both just stared at each other; then, an explosion.
“What the fuck, Margot!”
“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Brendon, what the fuck!” Margot dropped her shampoo and conditioner, throwing her hands over her eyes and running back into the bathroom. “Cover yourself up, you disgusting swine!”
“What the fuck!” Brendon yelled for Margot to hear through the door. “Open the door with a little caution next time, you fucking--”
“Are you finished?” Margot screamed, hands still covering her eyes as though trying to block out the image of Brendon having “private time” that was permanently burned into her brain.
“Did I look finished?” Brendon spat back.
“I’m sorry if I didn’t stick around long enough to find out!” Margot had now taken to beating her forehead against the wall of the bathroom, wishing with all her might that she could forget what she’d seen.
“I’m dressed now, if you want to come--”
“Never use that word around me again, Brendon!” Margot ordered, walking cautiously out of the bathroom as though expecting to find him at it again. The boy’s face was burning brightly red, and Margot would have delighted in his humiliation, had she not just witnessed him in all his glory. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.
“I--” he began, but was saved from coming up with an apology with a hastily-interrupting Margot.
“I have to go use the phone,” she said quickly, running to the door and fumbling to get out of the hotel room. “You can…finish, or--” She didn’t bother continuing the sentence and ran out with a slam of the door.
“Hello?” Spencer’s groggy voice came out of the receiver of the pay-phone. It was quite late, nearly midnight, and he had probably been asleep. Oh well, better late than never.
“Spence?” Margot said timidly.
“Margot!” Spencer sounded immediately more awake. “What happened? I tried calling you, but I kept getting this out-of-service message, and--”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Margot said quickly, feeling very guilty for making Spencer worry. Brendon had been right about one thing, at least: Spencer was her only friend. She hastily explained how the past 24 hours had gone for her, hesitant to mention the most recent ordeal that she had undergone with Brendon.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe that! You’re okay, though?” Concern filled Spencer’s voice, and it made Margot smile a bit to know that he cared so deeply.
“Yeah…” she said evasively, twirling the phone cord around her finger gingerly.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Well…” Margot was unsure how to word it. “I was taking a shower, and when I got out…Well…Brendon was…busy…”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I came out of the bathroom, and he--he was…having some Brendon-time, if you catch my drift.”
“Huh--Ohhh…” It finally dawned on Spencer, and after understanding, he made a distinct noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “That’s fucking classy.”
“And there’s one other thing,” Margot said, very much wondering whether or not she should tell Spencer this last bit.
“More?”
“Yeah…Before I walked out, I thought he was, like, calling me, or something, because I heard him say my name.”
“Yeah, so--Oh. Oh! Oh my God!” Spencer gasped, dropping his phone and hastily grabbing it back up.
Margot nodded, face burning red, wondering if she had actually heard what she thought she’d heard.
Brendon had been thinking of her.
Is there anyone who still doesn't know what Brendon was doing when Margot got out of the shower? I really don't feel like going into even greater detail...Someone else explain it to the ones who don't understand. I have so much fun writing this, and I don't know why. I already have so many ideas about what I want to do with it already. Oh gosh. Okay, so please go comment, and subscribe, if you haven't already. OverAndOutxx
PS: Did anyone catch the innuendo with the title? ;D
PPS: At the beginning, you thought I would have them wake up and be cuddling or something, didn't ya? Ha! I am not so predictable.
Margot stood up from the floor, stretching her aching joints and rolling her neck to get the crick out. She turned a scornful eye on Brendon, whose body was splayed out on the bed like a rag doll, taking up the entire thing in his slumber. At some point during the night, he had shed his shirt (what else he had shed, Margot couldn’t tell, for the comforter covered all below his waist). Margot slapped his chest rapidly, trying to rouse him from sleep as harshly as possible.
“Brendon! Come on, Brendon, it’s time to wake up.” The boy groaned and mumbled incoherently, twisting around and contracting his limbs from all corners of the bed. “Come on, sleepy-time is over. And put a shirt on,” she added as he sat up, rumpling his shaggy hair with one hand and rubbing his red face with the other. “ You’re not attractive enough to go au naturale.”
“Fuck you, Margot. I’d rather see a shirtless Larry the Cable Guy than see you in your birthday suit.” Brendon tumbled out of bed, revealing that he had also lost his jeans, clad only in boxers.
“How the fuck did I end up on the floor last night?” Margot asked, ignoring Brendon’s last comment.
“Well, it was getting a little cramped, and you were at the edge of the bed anyway, so all it took was a little…nudge, and you fell off without even waking up.” Brendon found his clothes on the side of the bed that he woke up on and began to redress himself.
“Whatever. I’d rather be on the floor than spooning you, anyway.” Margot was in the adjoining bathroom now, washing her face and rubbing makeup residue from underneath her eyes.
“Psh, in your dreams, Miner. May I remind you that I have a girlfriend that is about a hundred times hotter than you?”
“Mmm…Yes, silicon-sexy. Tell me, what costs more: the bottle her hair comes in, the electricity for her tan, or the plastic for her nails?” Margot was pressing her face into a towel, which she then threw at Brendon while passing him on his way into the bathroom and her way out.
“Hardy-har. I’ll have you know that many consider Victoria the hottest girl in school. I could scarcely say the same for you.”
“Yes, because that’s what I want: the acceptance and approval of the dip wads that go to our school.”
“You say that now, but tell me, how does it feel to know that you’re a nice person with only one friend, and yet I, a huge asshole and a con-man of sorts, am unanimously liked by everyone?”
He had touched a nerve, and Margot was feeling it. She bit her lower lip, trying not to give him the satisfaction of a reaction as she laced up her chucks, yanking the laces a bit tighter than she intended. “Come on,” she said, standing and walking out of the bedroom. “The sooner we find a mechanic and a phone, the sooner we’ll be on our way, and this road-trip from Hell will be over.”
Brendon followed her downstairs, where both teens could already smell Gail cooking breakfast. Both their mouths watering as they entered the kitchen, they greeted the older woman with a good morning and at down at the table.
“Good morning to you two as well,” Gail said, slipping strips of bacon onto two plates and setting them down in front of the kids. Margot tried to discreetly slip hers onto Brendon’s plate, but he, of course, had to make a fuss about it.
“What’s the matter, Margot? You don’t like Gail’s cooking?” He smirked, shoving a whole strip of bacon in his mouth at once.
“No, it’s not that at all,” Margot said quickly as Gail turned around, looking hurt. “It’s just, I don’t eat meat.”
“Since when?” Brendon asked incredulously.
“For, like, a year,” Margot said defensively, as though Brendon was questioning her honesty, which he was. “Don’t you remember, at Thanksgiving you kept trying to slip meat into my food so I wouldn’t notice and eat some on accident?”
“Oh, yeah,” Brendon grinned at the memory of how Margot had been so close to putting a bit of mashed potato-infused-with-turkey into her mouth before checking to make sure Brendon hadn’t pulled a trick again.
“Oh, I can’t believe a nice boy like you would do something like that!” Gail seemed shocked.
“Oh, it was all in good fun, Ms. Gail,” Brendon simpered, offering up a playful-yet-innocent smile. “I would have never let her actually eat any meat.”
“Yeah, right,” Margot murmured.
After breakfast, Gail loaded the two into her pick-up truck and the trio puttered off into the nearby town, no more than a few miles out. She dropped them off outside the mechanic’s, apologizing that she had to run, but there were chores to do around the house that she needed to tend to. Brendon and Margot thanked her again and said their goodbyes, watching her shabby red pick-up drive off the way they had come.
It took Margot and Brendon about three hours to find the mechanic, get out to the car, and bring it back, and then another hour for the mechanic to tell them that the car needed a new engine.
“How long will that take?” Brendon groaned, running his hand through his hair.
“Well, installation takes about an hour, but I don’t just have a crate of engines sitting in my back room, y’know.” The mechanic replied. “I get a new shipment in tomorrow, so I’ll just call ‘em up, tell ‘em what I need, and it’ll be here around noon. Think you can hang in there until then?”
“I guess we don’t have a choice,” Brendon said, somewhat bitterly. “Listen, do you have a phone I could use? I need to tell my parents about this…and how much it’ll cost,” he added regretfully.
“Right there in back,” the mechanic said, gesturing to a phone sitting on the counter. “Dial nine before the number.”
While Brendon was telling his parents about the break-down, Margot bought a soda and stood gazing out the window as she drank. She hadn’t been able to call Spencer; he was probably worried by now. She made a mental note to call him when they got to their hotel room.
“Aright,” Brendon said, joining her and then walking out the door. “That guy said there’s a hotel just down the road that we can stay at,” he continued as they began walking toward the hotel. “He said to come back here around one-thirty and he’d have the car fixed. I grabbed some clothes from your bag and your toiletries and stuff.” Brendon handed these things to Margot, slightly surprising her with his kindness.
“Oh…um, thanks, Brendon,” she said, unsure of how to react. She could spit a comeback out without a problem, but she wasn’t used to genuine politeness on Brendon’s part.
“Yeah, you smell pretty bad, so I figure you’ll be more bearable to be around after a shower and a change of clothes.” There was the Brendon she knew.
“Of course they only had a room with one bed,” Margot said as they walked into the shabby room they had bought for the night.
“You can drop the act, Margot. I know how much you secretly love having an excuse to be so close to me.” Brendon collapsed on the bed, sighing exhaustedly.
“What, are you switching tactics now, Brendon? First you torture me, now you’re trying to seduce me?” Margot was gathering up her pajamas and hair products so that she could go shower.
“Perhaps I am,” Brendon said, eyes still closed. “Maybe, subconsciously, I’ve always wanted to get inside your pants, Margot. Drop a few pounds and I might be willing to act on those suppressed desires.”
Margot chose to ignore him as she walked into the bathroom. She turned on the shower and shuddered in the warm flow of steamy water. She showered slowly, half to unwind from the long day, half to annoy Brendon, who was waiting for his turn to shower. She finally shut off the stream, stepping out and wrapping her hair in a towel and getting dressed. Margot heard Brendon saying what she thought sounded like her name just before opening the bathroom door and stepping out into the hotel room.
“What do you want from me--” Margot began. She was, however, cut short when she saw Brendon. For a split-second, they both just stared at each other; then, an explosion.
“What the fuck, Margot!”
“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Brendon, what the fuck!” Margot dropped her shampoo and conditioner, throwing her hands over her eyes and running back into the bathroom. “Cover yourself up, you disgusting swine!”
“What the fuck!” Brendon yelled for Margot to hear through the door. “Open the door with a little caution next time, you fucking--”
“Are you finished?” Margot screamed, hands still covering her eyes as though trying to block out the image of Brendon having “private time” that was permanently burned into her brain.
“Did I look finished?” Brendon spat back.
“I’m sorry if I didn’t stick around long enough to find out!” Margot had now taken to beating her forehead against the wall of the bathroom, wishing with all her might that she could forget what she’d seen.
“I’m dressed now, if you want to come--”
“Never use that word around me again, Brendon!” Margot ordered, walking cautiously out of the bathroom as though expecting to find him at it again. The boy’s face was burning brightly red, and Margot would have delighted in his humiliation, had she not just witnessed him in all his glory. He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.
“I--” he began, but was saved from coming up with an apology with a hastily-interrupting Margot.
“I have to go use the phone,” she said quickly, running to the door and fumbling to get out of the hotel room. “You can…finish, or--” She didn’t bother continuing the sentence and ran out with a slam of the door.
“Hello?” Spencer’s groggy voice came out of the receiver of the pay-phone. It was quite late, nearly midnight, and he had probably been asleep. Oh well, better late than never.
“Spence?” Margot said timidly.
“Margot!” Spencer sounded immediately more awake. “What happened? I tried calling you, but I kept getting this out-of-service message, and--”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Margot said quickly, feeling very guilty for making Spencer worry. Brendon had been right about one thing, at least: Spencer was her only friend. She hastily explained how the past 24 hours had gone for her, hesitant to mention the most recent ordeal that she had undergone with Brendon.
“Oh my God, I can’t believe that! You’re okay, though?” Concern filled Spencer’s voice, and it made Margot smile a bit to know that he cared so deeply.
“Yeah…” she said evasively, twirling the phone cord around her finger gingerly.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Well…” Margot was unsure how to word it. “I was taking a shower, and when I got out…Well…Brendon was…busy…”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I came out of the bathroom, and he--he was…having some Brendon-time, if you catch my drift.”
“Huh--Ohhh…” It finally dawned on Spencer, and after understanding, he made a distinct noise of disgust in the back of his throat. “That’s fucking classy.”
“And there’s one other thing,” Margot said, very much wondering whether or not she should tell Spencer this last bit.
“More?”
“Yeah…Before I walked out, I thought he was, like, calling me, or something, because I heard him say my name.”
“Yeah, so--Oh. Oh! Oh my God!” Spencer gasped, dropping his phone and hastily grabbing it back up.
Margot nodded, face burning red, wondering if she had actually heard what she thought she’d heard.
Brendon had been thinking of her.
Is there anyone who still doesn't know what Brendon was doing when Margot got out of the shower? I really don't feel like going into even greater detail...Someone else explain it to the ones who don't understand. I have so much fun writing this, and I don't know why. I already have so many ideas about what I want to do with it already. Oh gosh. Okay, so please go comment, and subscribe, if you haven't already. OverAndOutxx
PS: Did anyone catch the innuendo with the title? ;D
PPS: At the beginning, you thought I would have them wake up and be cuddling or something, didn't ya? Ha! I am not so predictable.
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