lu_fics | Boywrangling: Days Zack Wants to Lock Them in Cages (Reply)

There are days that Zack wishes it were a good career move to lock them all in cages when they aren't on stage.

He's already had to bowl through three crowds of tiny scene people to rescue one of his own tiny scene persons; somebody gave Brendon chocolate-covered coffee beans and he can't prove it was Picture Tech; the awkward one has wandered off again, and the quiet one has been fingering his makeup bag in a really disturbing way.

Brendon's rebounding off the walls, jittery and warming up with songs that bounce their way all the way up the scale and back down again. Zack turns his back for two seconds and comes back to find that Ross has not only out-Wentzed his normal eyeliner, but has somehow bullied Brendon into sitting down in front of the mirror.

The problem being that Brendon is still practically battery-powered, and Ross is coming at him with a mascara wand. God, they cannot go to the emergency room for an eyepatch right now, and Zack just flat does not have the kind of authority he needs to stop this without making his own job about ten thousand times more difficult.

The pretty one comes back in, one finger hooked through the awkward one's belt. He shoves the awkward one, not unkindly, toward the couch, and lays a hand on Ross's elbow just before he goes in for Brendon's eyes.

"Hey, Ry," he says, casually. "Do me first, okay?"

The quiet one looks like his birthday's come early. "Really?"

"Yeah," Smith says. "I'm in the mood. Say, Bden, would you go run a couple of routines on my practice pads? I wanna make sure they got set up right."

And like that, like magic, the awkward are found, the quiet are entertained without bloodshed, and Brendon is working out his energy without destroying anything.

There really must be something to this Spencer kid.

*~*~*~*~*