It's about five years from now when Tom and Jon buy a house together.  Completely platonically, they tell the press and the fans when they ask.  It's just that they've been best friends for years and between touring and producing and everything else, neither of them is in Chicago often enough that it matters if they share a house.  And if anyone notices that for two people who don't expect to be in Chicago much, their visits to the city overlap quite a bit, no one mentions it.

They don't have to tell their friends anything.  Brendon takes one of the three pictures that actually exists of the two of them physically together (because most of the time one of them is behind the lens of the camera) and frames it and decorates the matte with glitter and hearts.  Ryan hands them a c.d. that ends up being him, Spencer, and Brendon (and Pete playing bass as needed) covering songs starting with A Whole New World and ending with Your Song, with Kissing Old Friends in the middle.  It's ridiculously sappy but Jon can't help playing it all the time.  Tom's band buys them a wine rack and tells them if they're staid and committed enough to buy a house together, they'd better give up on the real drinking and start collecting wine instead.

Of course, they take this as a challenge and have a huge party with all sorts of old Chicago friends there.  Amazingly, their house does not get totally trashed and they get to catch up with a lot of people.  Pete's there and so are Joe and Patrick because they're home for a break and Tom's band shows up and even Bob Bryar is in town and stops by for an hour or so.  The amazing thing is meeting the people they used to talk to all the time, like one of Jon's friends who worked at Starbucks with him and is now putting herself through vet school while volunteering at a no-kill animal shelter.

Jon and Tom promise to stop by, and maybe sign some stuff that could get auctioned off to help support the animals.  They even manage to find a couple of 504 Plan shirts to sign.  Then they get there, and all of a sudden Jon's in playing with the dogs and there's the most adorable mutt with muddy brown fur and big eyes that's just sitting right next to him, waiting for him to look.  Tom takes a picture, which catches Jon's attention.  He nods down at the puppy and Jon gives it a head scratch.  He goes to get up, because time flies, and it's almost 5 and they were going to go out for an early dinner, except the dog lets out such a pitiful bark that he can't help but kneel back down.  Somehow they end up walking out of the shelter holding the puppy and a certificate which names them the proud owners of Sunshine.  When people ask about the name, Jon laughs and says that they should talk to Sunshine's daddy, jerking his head towards Tom.

Tom normally fucking hates it when people anthromorphize their pets like that but when Jon does it, something in his heart just melts and it makes him wonder if someday Jon would be willing to do something more.  He knows the house is a big thing, and so is the dog, they mean something, but part of him wants the chance to get up in front of all their friends and say, "Hands off, this is mine. From his bass playing to his photography to the way he smiles when he thinks no one is looking."  Most of the time it cracks him up because he never thought he'd be that guy. Some of the time, he has to push it away because he wants it so badly it hurts, the way music can hurt sometimes, because it's too perfect and too loud, reverberating through the speakers and through his body and he can feel it in every inch of him.  He feels like Jon is in every inch of him sometimes.

The thing is, when it does finally happen, it's not like Tom imagines at all. He thought they'd talk about it for ages and maybe he'd have to prod Jon into it a bit and it was enough to turn him off the idea all together.  He didn't want it to be something Jon did to humor him.

Then, one morning, he wakes up to an empty bed and on the pillow next to him is a photograph, a Polaroid at that, of Jon, kneeling down. He rubs his eyes and blinks and looks at it again. Then grabs it, and rolls out of bed to find Jon and ask him what's up. As he goes to leave the room, he sees another Polaroid taped to the door. It's a picture of a yellow post it note that says, "Will you" and he wonders what Jon is up to this time. He pads down the stairs and heads for the kitchen. Jon's sitting at the table, camera in hand. Tom waves the pictures at him, as if to ask, "What's going on?" and Jon just points to a final Polaroid on the table. Tom picks it up slowly, scared it doesn't say what he wants it to, and stares at it for a moment before his eyes focus enough to read it. It finishes the question, a picture of a post it note that says "Marry me?" and the yes slips out of Tom without any thought at all, and as it does, Jon snaps a final picture. "So we have this moment for always." he says, shaking and counting and then peeling apart the Polaroid carefully before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a plain gold band and grabs Tom's hand and slips it on.

The end