Categories > Celebrities > Panic! At The Disco
Cocktails
Brendon, being a Vegas boy and not a particularly well-behaved one at that, knows a fair bit about cocktails. About the flavours, the artistry behind each blend, which person suits what kind and what occasion best suits each cocktail.
Another thing that Brendon Boyd Urie knows a lot about is George Ryan Ross, Ry, his boyfriend. He gets everything about the clumsy little daydreamer; understands that Ryan has to sleep on the right side of the bed so that he never wakes up on the wrong side, that Brendon has to have a ready supply of hot chocolate should a thunderstorm roll in around Ryan’s frantic mind, that Ryan is special and needs to be constantly reminded of it.
Now, when Brendon really gets interested in something (i.e. Ryan or cocktails), he really gets into it. Will research and learn and research some more until he is certain that he is the greatest power in whatever it is that has taken his interest. Which is why Brendon can correlate Ryan and cocktails, knows how to use each to the other’s advantage, perfectly.
He likes to think of it as a weird kind of wizardry. A superpower, if you will.
*
When the pair first met, Brendon was working at a bar in the quiet, more sinister part of town. He was the main attraction there, could look at person and then immediately guess what cocktail they wanted. Correct guess meant that the customer would pay double, incorrect and the rest of the drinks for the night came out of Brendon’s wage.
Ryan had strolled up to the bar in what had felt to be slow motion to Brendon, kind of like that moment in all good chick flicks when the dream girl sees the dream guy and some kind of cheesy love song starts playing in the background as the two of them realise that they’re meant to be together after just seconds of knowing one another existed. Yeah, it was like that.
In reality, Ryan was out on his best friend’s twenty-second birthday party, had gotten ditched a few bars back and found his way to Brendon’s place of employment in search of something to pick up his evening.
Brendon had taken one look at him, at the clothes he was wearing and the earnest shade in his brown-black eyes, and said, “Pimm’s, right?”
“How-“
“You look like a gentleman.” And, because Brendon was feeling a little too lucky, he added, “A hot gentleman, at that.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
*
The first time Ryan got sick, Brendon had almost flat-lined in panic.
Spencer, the same best friend who’d accidently led Ryan straight into his boyfriend’s capable hands, just showed up out of the blue on Brendon’s doorstep with an unconscious Ryan held in his arms. Brendon had all but screamed at the sight, fully prepared to murder Spencer for letting his boyfriend of two months fucking die, when Spencer had somehow managed to put a finger to his lips.
“Shut it, Urie.” The tone was hushed, urgent. “He needs his rest.”
As though this had snapped Brendon out of his swarm of fears about his beloved Ryro’s wellbeing, he sprung to life and snatched his boyfriend away from Spencer, carrying him to the double bed that may have well have been Ryan’s home anyway.
“I think it’s flu.” Spencer said once Brendon had tucked in their charge, looking at the scene of the two lovers from the corner of the bedroom where he had a clear view of Brendon sat on the edge of the bed, one hand in Ryan’s hair and the other rubbing circles onto one of his palms. “You know Ry, keeps on going until he just can’t.”
Brendon nodded because, yes, he did know Ryan. Knew him well enough even back then to understand that he wouldn’t have admitted to being sick and needing help until he was literally minutes from death. That’s why Brendon made it his duty to act as his boyfriend’s shadow, to pick up on all of the little things that Ryan would otherwise leave hidden.
“He needs someone to look after him. His apartment is a mess, I’m going to visit my grandparents tomorrow and everyone else who knows Ry doesn’t know him well for him to be comfortable staying with them.” Spencer stops, looking away as his best friend groans in pain. “He trusts you, so until I get back or he gets better, he’s your problem.”
And like that, Spencer left without giving Brendon the option to opt out. Not that he would have, not for anything. It had been a good few days since Brendon had last seen Ryan, most likely on purpose so the older boy’s sickness would go undetected, and he was itching to snuggle with his boyfriend.
So that’s what he did; buried himself under the covers and held Ryan’s shivering, yet boiling, body as though it were a teddy.
They remained like that well into the night, Ryan too feverish to even notice that Spencer had caused him to have a change in location and Brendon too worried to leave his beloved boyfriend’s side.
Well into the sixth hour, Brendon’s thoughts were interrupted by a tiny voice croaking, “Bren?”
“I’m here, Baby.” He’d replied within a heartbeat, planting an uncountable number of kisses all over Ryan’s sweat-slicked forehead. When Ryan’s eyes showed a seed of confusion, Brendon stunted it’s growth into panic by saying, “Spencer bought you over. Said you need looking after.”
“Oh.” Ryan had said, head pounding too hard for any real reply to be possible, and then, “Sorry.” A few minutes passed of a kind of comfortable silence, Brendon nuzzling into Ryan’s neck in that special way that only Brendon knew how, before another thought danced into Ryan’s brain like an elephant doing the tango. “Cold.”
Brendon looked his boyfriend over, seeing sweat and red skin in everything he saw. Ry undoubtedly had a fever; the last thing he needed was more heat. But there was something else that Brendon could give him and well, even if that didn’t work, it would at the very least help Ryan to sleep off some more of his evil ailment.
“Sangria?” He offered, thinking of the soft burn of the spices and how it made him think of warm places. It was Brendon’s favourite wintertime cocktail for the reason that it made him feel a little less cold, so maybe it would work for Ryan. “It always makes me feel warmer. Tastes good too.” He stops to let Ryan think, an adorable look of befuddlement on his face due to exhaustion and illness. “So, Sangria?”
“Please.”
*
Brendon had never seen a truer smile than that of the one on Ryan’s face when Brendon gave him a Long Island Iced Tea.
“Happy birthday, Baby.” He had said, wearing that special kind of beam that’s for Ryan’s eyes only. “Twenty-four. You’re a big boy now.”
Ryan had rolled his eyes, yet hadn’t taken them off of the cocktail that Brendon had handed him. You see, it wasn’t just Brendon who could learn things; Ryan was far more than capable of that feat when he wanted to be. And when it came to Brendon, boy could he be.
By this point in the relationship, Ryan understood that cocktails always held some sort of significance for them. Like Brendon always served Pimm’s whenever Ryan had clearly had a bad day, or would give him a refreshing blast of Mojito if a day had been brutally hot. Brendon always had a cocktail for every occasion, be it good (Daiquiri Royale for celebrations) or bad (Jägerbomb for when Ryan needed picking up from really deep depths).
However, he had never before encountered a Brendon bearing a Long Island Iced Tea.
Brendon watched in mild amusement as Ryan tried to puzzle it out, the two of them knowing that Ryan needed a definition for the cocktail other than it being ‘just because Brendon wanted to make that today’. They, as couple, wanted to be deeper than that.
“Got it yet?” Brendon asked after five minutes of using extreme amounts of self-control to keep his excitement inside. “Or do you give up?”
One look at how desperate Brendon was to let out his apparent secret and Ryan couldn’t deny him, “Go for it. You’ve defeated me.”
“We’re going to New York!” Brendon squealed, tackling Ryan into a great big bear hug. “And then! And then, we’re gonna go to Madison Square Garden to see Blink-182!”
Never mind the cocktail, Brendon thought that Ryan might just be drunk on happiness.
*
Brendon never really approved of using alcohol to drown one’s sorrows, but for Ryan Ross he could make an exception. So he made him a Pisco Sour, a strong South American cocktail with a taste a little too sour for Brendon himself to fully appreciate.
“You’re trying to tell me something.” Ryan had said, upon finding that Brendon had squeezed in a little too much lime juice in order to amplify the sourness of the mouth-scrunching liquid. “Either that or you’re losing your touch, Bren.”
Brendon had just giggled, something of a feat for someone with such a deep voice, before giving Ryan That look. The one that said Ryan had to figure it out for himself or else no lesson would have been learned.
The older of the two had just swirled the drink around the glass a little bit, looked deep into it’s murky depths, and took another taste-bud-murdering sip. He looked thoughtful for a few minutes before making a sound of mild understanding.
“Something to do with being sour, right?”
Brendon very nearly guffawed at his boyfriend’s answer; Ryan had been taking sour to a fucking nuclear level the whole weekend. Ever since his fall-out with Spencer Smith over something that had originated from a debate over who was the coolest Beatle. Both men were stubborn to a fault, throw in Ryan’s precious pride and you have an eruption of volcanic proportions.
Of course things would be back to normal by Tuesday at the latest, they all knew that well enough from experience, but at that moment in time Ryan was acting like a warlord readying for battle to the death.
“You’re telling me to stop being sour with Spence, aren’t you?”
Ryan sighed, looking so very defeated that Brendon was moved to say, “Sour really doesn’t go with your hotness,” and followed it up with a kiss that stole the overpowering taste of lime away from Ryan’s poor mouth.
Sure enough, Ryan was texting Spencer his apology mere minutes later.
*
It was Brendon’s twenty-third anniversary of life when things got mixed up a little into a rare cocktail of their own.
“I made you a cocktail, Bren!” Ryan had announced proudly, holding the slender glass in both hands and taking so much care over his movements that Brendon couldn’t not find it heart-meltingly cute. “For your birthday. It doesn’t really have any great meaning, though.”
Brendon knew that it did have a meaning however, a huge great massive meaning that couldn’t be denied by even the greatest liar; Ryan had made the effort to get involved with something that mattered to Brendon. And that was meaning enough for it to mean the world to him.
He smiled up at his older boyfriend gratefully and took the glass from Ryan’s inexperienced hands. The glass pressed cool against his lips, he took a sip of what he though was meant to be a Margarita.
And immediately spat it back out again.
“Think I found the meaning, Ry.” Brendon deadpanned after managing to remove the taste from his mouth. “It means that you leave the cocktails to me.”
“Okay, Cocktail King.”
A/N: This is the third part in my ‘Alphabet Challenge’ (C for Cocktails). I don’t normally write this kind of thing, so sorry if it sucks. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think! :D
Brendon, being a Vegas boy and not a particularly well-behaved one at that, knows a fair bit about cocktails. About the flavours, the artistry behind each blend, which person suits what kind and what occasion best suits each cocktail.
Another thing that Brendon Boyd Urie knows a lot about is George Ryan Ross, Ry, his boyfriend. He gets everything about the clumsy little daydreamer; understands that Ryan has to sleep on the right side of the bed so that he never wakes up on the wrong side, that Brendon has to have a ready supply of hot chocolate should a thunderstorm roll in around Ryan’s frantic mind, that Ryan is special and needs to be constantly reminded of it.
Now, when Brendon really gets interested in something (i.e. Ryan or cocktails), he really gets into it. Will research and learn and research some more until he is certain that he is the greatest power in whatever it is that has taken his interest. Which is why Brendon can correlate Ryan and cocktails, knows how to use each to the other’s advantage, perfectly.
He likes to think of it as a weird kind of wizardry. A superpower, if you will.
*
When the pair first met, Brendon was working at a bar in the quiet, more sinister part of town. He was the main attraction there, could look at person and then immediately guess what cocktail they wanted. Correct guess meant that the customer would pay double, incorrect and the rest of the drinks for the night came out of Brendon’s wage.
Ryan had strolled up to the bar in what had felt to be slow motion to Brendon, kind of like that moment in all good chick flicks when the dream girl sees the dream guy and some kind of cheesy love song starts playing in the background as the two of them realise that they’re meant to be together after just seconds of knowing one another existed. Yeah, it was like that.
In reality, Ryan was out on his best friend’s twenty-second birthday party, had gotten ditched a few bars back and found his way to Brendon’s place of employment in search of something to pick up his evening.
Brendon had taken one look at him, at the clothes he was wearing and the earnest shade in his brown-black eyes, and said, “Pimm’s, right?”
“How-“
“You look like a gentleman.” And, because Brendon was feeling a little too lucky, he added, “A hot gentleman, at that.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
*
The first time Ryan got sick, Brendon had almost flat-lined in panic.
Spencer, the same best friend who’d accidently led Ryan straight into his boyfriend’s capable hands, just showed up out of the blue on Brendon’s doorstep with an unconscious Ryan held in his arms. Brendon had all but screamed at the sight, fully prepared to murder Spencer for letting his boyfriend of two months fucking die, when Spencer had somehow managed to put a finger to his lips.
“Shut it, Urie.” The tone was hushed, urgent. “He needs his rest.”
As though this had snapped Brendon out of his swarm of fears about his beloved Ryro’s wellbeing, he sprung to life and snatched his boyfriend away from Spencer, carrying him to the double bed that may have well have been Ryan’s home anyway.
“I think it’s flu.” Spencer said once Brendon had tucked in their charge, looking at the scene of the two lovers from the corner of the bedroom where he had a clear view of Brendon sat on the edge of the bed, one hand in Ryan’s hair and the other rubbing circles onto one of his palms. “You know Ry, keeps on going until he just can’t.”
Brendon nodded because, yes, he did know Ryan. Knew him well enough even back then to understand that he wouldn’t have admitted to being sick and needing help until he was literally minutes from death. That’s why Brendon made it his duty to act as his boyfriend’s shadow, to pick up on all of the little things that Ryan would otherwise leave hidden.
“He needs someone to look after him. His apartment is a mess, I’m going to visit my grandparents tomorrow and everyone else who knows Ry doesn’t know him well for him to be comfortable staying with them.” Spencer stops, looking away as his best friend groans in pain. “He trusts you, so until I get back or he gets better, he’s your problem.”
And like that, Spencer left without giving Brendon the option to opt out. Not that he would have, not for anything. It had been a good few days since Brendon had last seen Ryan, most likely on purpose so the older boy’s sickness would go undetected, and he was itching to snuggle with his boyfriend.
So that’s what he did; buried himself under the covers and held Ryan’s shivering, yet boiling, body as though it were a teddy.
They remained like that well into the night, Ryan too feverish to even notice that Spencer had caused him to have a change in location and Brendon too worried to leave his beloved boyfriend’s side.
Well into the sixth hour, Brendon’s thoughts were interrupted by a tiny voice croaking, “Bren?”
“I’m here, Baby.” He’d replied within a heartbeat, planting an uncountable number of kisses all over Ryan’s sweat-slicked forehead. When Ryan’s eyes showed a seed of confusion, Brendon stunted it’s growth into panic by saying, “Spencer bought you over. Said you need looking after.”
“Oh.” Ryan had said, head pounding too hard for any real reply to be possible, and then, “Sorry.” A few minutes passed of a kind of comfortable silence, Brendon nuzzling into Ryan’s neck in that special way that only Brendon knew how, before another thought danced into Ryan’s brain like an elephant doing the tango. “Cold.”
Brendon looked his boyfriend over, seeing sweat and red skin in everything he saw. Ry undoubtedly had a fever; the last thing he needed was more heat. But there was something else that Brendon could give him and well, even if that didn’t work, it would at the very least help Ryan to sleep off some more of his evil ailment.
“Sangria?” He offered, thinking of the soft burn of the spices and how it made him think of warm places. It was Brendon’s favourite wintertime cocktail for the reason that it made him feel a little less cold, so maybe it would work for Ryan. “It always makes me feel warmer. Tastes good too.” He stops to let Ryan think, an adorable look of befuddlement on his face due to exhaustion and illness. “So, Sangria?”
“Please.”
*
Brendon had never seen a truer smile than that of the one on Ryan’s face when Brendon gave him a Long Island Iced Tea.
“Happy birthday, Baby.” He had said, wearing that special kind of beam that’s for Ryan’s eyes only. “Twenty-four. You’re a big boy now.”
Ryan had rolled his eyes, yet hadn’t taken them off of the cocktail that Brendon had handed him. You see, it wasn’t just Brendon who could learn things; Ryan was far more than capable of that feat when he wanted to be. And when it came to Brendon, boy could he be.
By this point in the relationship, Ryan understood that cocktails always held some sort of significance for them. Like Brendon always served Pimm’s whenever Ryan had clearly had a bad day, or would give him a refreshing blast of Mojito if a day had been brutally hot. Brendon always had a cocktail for every occasion, be it good (Daiquiri Royale for celebrations) or bad (Jägerbomb for when Ryan needed picking up from really deep depths).
However, he had never before encountered a Brendon bearing a Long Island Iced Tea.
Brendon watched in mild amusement as Ryan tried to puzzle it out, the two of them knowing that Ryan needed a definition for the cocktail other than it being ‘just because Brendon wanted to make that today’. They, as couple, wanted to be deeper than that.
“Got it yet?” Brendon asked after five minutes of using extreme amounts of self-control to keep his excitement inside. “Or do you give up?”
One look at how desperate Brendon was to let out his apparent secret and Ryan couldn’t deny him, “Go for it. You’ve defeated me.”
“We’re going to New York!” Brendon squealed, tackling Ryan into a great big bear hug. “And then! And then, we’re gonna go to Madison Square Garden to see Blink-182!”
Never mind the cocktail, Brendon thought that Ryan might just be drunk on happiness.
*
Brendon never really approved of using alcohol to drown one’s sorrows, but for Ryan Ross he could make an exception. So he made him a Pisco Sour, a strong South American cocktail with a taste a little too sour for Brendon himself to fully appreciate.
“You’re trying to tell me something.” Ryan had said, upon finding that Brendon had squeezed in a little too much lime juice in order to amplify the sourness of the mouth-scrunching liquid. “Either that or you’re losing your touch, Bren.”
Brendon had just giggled, something of a feat for someone with such a deep voice, before giving Ryan That look. The one that said Ryan had to figure it out for himself or else no lesson would have been learned.
The older of the two had just swirled the drink around the glass a little bit, looked deep into it’s murky depths, and took another taste-bud-murdering sip. He looked thoughtful for a few minutes before making a sound of mild understanding.
“Something to do with being sour, right?”
Brendon very nearly guffawed at his boyfriend’s answer; Ryan had been taking sour to a fucking nuclear level the whole weekend. Ever since his fall-out with Spencer Smith over something that had originated from a debate over who was the coolest Beatle. Both men were stubborn to a fault, throw in Ryan’s precious pride and you have an eruption of volcanic proportions.
Of course things would be back to normal by Tuesday at the latest, they all knew that well enough from experience, but at that moment in time Ryan was acting like a warlord readying for battle to the death.
“You’re telling me to stop being sour with Spence, aren’t you?”
Ryan sighed, looking so very defeated that Brendon was moved to say, “Sour really doesn’t go with your hotness,” and followed it up with a kiss that stole the overpowering taste of lime away from Ryan’s poor mouth.
Sure enough, Ryan was texting Spencer his apology mere minutes later.
*
It was Brendon’s twenty-third anniversary of life when things got mixed up a little into a rare cocktail of their own.
“I made you a cocktail, Bren!” Ryan had announced proudly, holding the slender glass in both hands and taking so much care over his movements that Brendon couldn’t not find it heart-meltingly cute. “For your birthday. It doesn’t really have any great meaning, though.”
Brendon knew that it did have a meaning however, a huge great massive meaning that couldn’t be denied by even the greatest liar; Ryan had made the effort to get involved with something that mattered to Brendon. And that was meaning enough for it to mean the world to him.
He smiled up at his older boyfriend gratefully and took the glass from Ryan’s inexperienced hands. The glass pressed cool against his lips, he took a sip of what he though was meant to be a Margarita.
And immediately spat it back out again.
“Think I found the meaning, Ry.” Brendon deadpanned after managing to remove the taste from his mouth. “It means that you leave the cocktails to me.”
“Okay, Cocktail King.”
A/N: This is the third part in my ‘Alphabet Challenge’ (C for Cocktails). I don’t normally write this kind of thing, so sorry if it sucks. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think! :D
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