FicWad

Brendon's P.O.V.

Once the elevator had come to a halt on the second floor, I craned my head out, into the hall. Again, it was off-white. Again, it was long and intimidating. Again, it seemed to have no end. Sighing, I stepped out, allowing myself to take in any and all differences this floor held from any other floor in this damned hotel. There were none, not yet anyway.

I blinked, somewhere to my left was the dull hum that could only be a soda vendor. That, or an ice dispenser. I then decided that it hadn't really mattered whichever it was; we needed ice as well. And so, I began my trek through the halls with one step. My shoe landed with a soft, inaudible thud against the carpet, smack in the middle of one Argyle-imitating diamond. I continued like this, each step slow and cautious, as if I had expected land mines to be hidden strategically somewhere beneath me, invisible and ready to tear into my pale flesh at any moment.

I turned a corner. It was amazing really, the fact that so much of one place could be so symmetrical, so similar. Every step was identical to the one before it.
Every Argyle diamond was typical, all with the same dimensions, measurements, everything, as the one behind it and beside it. Just one second in this hell hole was like a trip through the Twilight Zone, except this episode, however, had no end in sight. It was like Maple Street again and again and again, every time it reached the end, the tape would be rewound and it would begin. Again.

Then there it was. The Pepsi Cola machine, in all its murmuring glory. It was at least five yards down the hall, where it broke off into another turn. I sighed. This place was like a maze, so much of one, in fact, that I wouldn't have been surprised to come across a mouse trap, quite possibly set up by the mice themselves to catch human beings instead of the other way around, the way in which mouse traps were intended.

The bait? Pepsi. Definitely Pepsi.

And so, with this thought of purely delusional paranoia still secured within the premises of my mind, I approached the machine. With a bit of effort, I managed to fit my hand inside my pocket, revealing two three-dollar bills, six in all. Grinning, I slid one dollar bill into the appropriate slot, allowing the machine to make its expected buzzing sound.
----------

"What took you, Brendon?" Ryan asked, taking one of the three sodas I had managed to obtain somehow. "Zach was practically breathing fire. I honestly thought he was seconds from beheading us."

"You have no idea. Apparently, only one soda machine works in this joint. I tried two others; one in the lobby, one on the second floor, and one, the only one that had worked, which had conveniently been placed down the hall and to the right. This, of course," I had cracked the lid off a can and began to sip the contents. "I had discovered once I had been to two other floors."

"We've been here for a week, Brendon, you should know your way around here by now. And, dare I ask, did you get the ice?" Jon questioned, massaging his temples as he read whatever had been displayed on the computer screen.

"No, I did not get your freaking ice. This place scares the hell out of me and I am not leaving this room for your damn ice." I hissed, shooting Jon death stares which he had been too distracted by the computer's words to have witnessed.

"Spencer's lonely. Go play Guitar Hero with him." Ryan suggested absently whilst scanning the page of some book. "Maybe that'll take your mind off your new phobia."

"I am not lonely, Ross." Spencer retorted, shuffling a few cards which had been placed in rows about carpet.

"You're playing Solitaire, Spence. Even the name suggests loneliness." He flicked to the next page. "Besides, only lonely people play card games with themselves."

With this, Spencer flung several cards at Ryan, although, with his bad aim, they missed, instead pinging against the nightstand and returning, helter-skelter, to the floor.

"And you're picking them up." Ryan released one hand from the book to waggle a finger in Spencer's direction. He, of course, was abruptly flipped off.

"Hey, Jon." I pressed, approaching the place in which he sat. "Check the flights. I hate it here and want to leave, like, now."

"While you were gone, Zach booked some flights for next week." Jon replied, his voice low and kept strictly to a monotone basis. This was usual; he never had much of an attention span when it came to anything but the computer.

"For next week? Fuck, man... Why can't we get anything sooner?"

"Don't know." He replied, going back to whatever he was reading. I sighed, leaning against the wall beside a power outlet, a black streak outlining the wall to its right. Life in a hotel room for another week was going to be hell.

"I heard," Ryan began, thumbing through yet another page of a novel in which he'd most likely already read in the past. "That the hotel is holding some convention to promote coffee and donut sales at a local coffee franchise. Apparently," He paused again, rereading a paragraph and skimming through the last of the page. "They're giving away free samplers for new coffee. You know," Again, he stopped, sliding the book shut and tossing it beside him. "Setting the people up as taste testing guinea pigs. But everything's free, so no worries."

"Where in the hotel?" I asked, not wanting to imagine trying to find my way through the halls again, its bleak wall color finding its way into my dreams and turning them sour.

"The lobby."

"When?" I counter-asked, playing loosely with a lavender-colored rubber wrist band.

"Tomorrow, at noon." Ryan replied smoothly. It seemed as if he had been trained specifically with this information, as if someone or something had drilled this speech and the answers to my questions so far into his brain that he could relay anything without thinking. Robot.

"Want to go?" Alas, it was Spencer's turn to contribute to the conversation. He stacked the playing cards in a pile beside the lamp and stood up, stretching.

"It's up to you guys." Ryan and I answered at once. "Jinx, you owe me a soda.
"And you're getting it, count me out." I added after a bit of thought. Ryan just simply rolled his eyes and sat up. Somewhere to my left, Jon closed the computer.

"Bravo!" I exclaimed, patting him on the back. "The Incredible Jonathan Jacob Walker puts down the computer! Woo!"

"Urie, I wouldn't be talking if I were you. Can you say... Playing D & D* for ten hours straight? Anything ring a bell?" Jon asked, smirking.

"I'd be careful if I were you, Jonnyboy, 'cause one day, you may just find a dash of super glue in those beloved flip-flops of yours." I warned, giving his feet a peculiar and only half-serious expression of caution.

"Oh, you naughty, naughty boy." He observed, shaking his head. "I'll just have to beat your ass in Guitar Hero, just for saying that."

"I'd like to see you try!" I shot back, taking a step toward the television set. "You are so on."

Ren's P.O.V.

The lighting was dim, an internal twilight, what little was provided shot down through the darkness in weak beams from fixtures fastened to the ceiling. It was the auditorium of Palo Verde High, a high school located in west end of Las Vegas, Nevada. People continued to file this way and that, the occasional boy or girl bothering to asked to be excused, but very little actually caring if you did take the initiative to "pardon" them or not.

I had taken a seat in the front row where the stage was best visible, the teachers and other various classes of adults still crowding in masses scattered across its length.

A rather fat boy managed to squish himself into a seat to my left, his hair literally dirty blonde. He planted the side of his face into his fist and began to bustle his hands through the several metal loops that had been tasseled to his black shorts.

A quartet of girls filled the seats behind me. Their clothes matched to a T, not one fashionable rule broken or even tampered with. One concept they had not been able to master, however, was the art of silently chewing gum.

This was the typical sequence of events for any assembly held at our school. This I had grown accustom to, for anything that followed a set path always seemed to be the easiest, the one with least heart ache, heart break, and the most efficient when collectively discarding any sort of trouble that managed to appear. When I had observed the scene and made this assumption, however, I had not known and accounted for the people to my right until afterwards.

"Her chest looks like a plumber's ass." A boy to my right stated, a rather wide grin making its way onto his face and plastering itself there.

"Oh my god it does. Striking resemblance, really." Someone beside him responded, laughing darkly. Smirking, I looked down, studying my jeans.

"Hey." The boy with the plumber's ass fetish greeted from beside me. I broke my gaze from the texture of my jeans to look up at him. His hair seemed to be loosely connected to that of the Beatles'. "What's your name?"

"Ren." I replied, biting tenuously at the flesh of my lower lip. His irises were saturated in pools of umber, converting to more of a sorrel closest to the base. "You?"

"Brendon. You look familiar." He established, bringing a hand up to shake mine. I smiled lightly, taking it.

"I think you're in one of my classes." I replied, as he released my hand, allowing it to return to its prior position on my lap. "Chemistry, I think."

"Ah, yeah, that's it." Brendon leaned further into his seat, falling back into whatever conversation he had been holding with the boy beside him.

Above us, the lights dimmed ever more so to a pitch shades above total darkness. The microphone had been tapped, tested, and was now effortlessly spreading Mrs. Robins' voice throughout the audience. I myself had lost complete and utter focus in her speech as the boy, Brendon, turned toward me again.

"Look at her shoes." He whispered into my ear, sending a sequence of shutters down my spine.

"What am I looking for?" I counter-questioned, looking back at him.

"Ren, why are you talking?" Mrs. Robins had interrupted her own self to scold me for whispering. Tch.

"Watch. The clogs she's wearing are too big for her. She'll try to step down once from the stage, but end up tripping." He answered as she turned her back towards us. Nodding, I disregarded this as him just attempting to be psychic. A mere stab in the dark.

"Guys, everyone can get at least a B. Or maybe even an A." She ranted, pacing mildly before us. "It really depends on if you add in that effort. That extra mile. That-" And there it was. Her arms left her sides to flail haphazardly through the air. This frail attempt to reclaim balance, however, had been in vain, for she eventually met her fate on the floor. The microphone which had been in her hands now rolled out from under her, unattended.

Brendon and I had been the first to laugh. The people behind us joined in seconds later as a crowd of backup hilarity. Har-de-har-har.

"You," She pointed directly at me before forcing herself onto her feet. "Go to the office. Now." Mrs. Robins dusted herself off and approached me, the microphone now being held more like a weapon, a tantalizing sword ready to pierce flesh, and less like a sound-amplifying instrument. "And you? You go too." She lazily pointed toward Brendon, signaling for us to leave.

"For some reason, I don't really care." I muttered, not bothering to wait for Brendon who had been surreptitiously high-fived by the boy who had sat next to him.

"Eh, you shouldn't." He replied once we had reached the hallway. "She's a bitch anyway."

"I guess so. It's just, I normally would care. But I don't right now."

"It's me." Brendon joked, once he had caught up to me and was now at my side. "I just have that effect on people."

*D &D is an abbreviation for Dungeons and Dragons, a fantasy-style board game played by Panic! At The Disco, also referred to by anything pertaining to a "twelve-sided die."

*Large portions of bold, italisized print is flashbacks, past events.