We Who Are About to Die Salute You (1/1)
Title:We Who Are About to Die Salute You
Author: 3traditions
Pairing:Ryan/Spencer
Rating: Low?
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary:Spencer needs help.
“I’m sorry. I don’t-I don’t understand why this has to be a thing.”
Spencer just stares numb. He can feel this big, empty space pressing up under his rib cage, this strip of pressure against his the bottom of his heart and he’s doesn’t know how to express it, how to say all these thoughts, how to drum out this beat.
Ryan is staring at him, face blank, and arms crossed in that fragile way of his and Spencer feels like he did when he was five and asking Ryan to his house for the first time, and when he was eleven and wrapping an ace bandage around Ryan’s wrist and when he was fourteen and Ryan was leaving him behind for catholic school, like he is right on the verge of losing Ryan, like if he grips too tight Ryan will destroy himself against his fingers and if he holds too loose Ryan will slip away like he isn’t wanted.
Ryan’s demanding answer, arms crossed and eyes defiant, so Spencer nods slowly and tries to smile because, because he won’t loose Ryan over this. He won’t.
Ryan nods back jerkily at him and turns sharp on his heel, slipping out of the bus and walking across the parking lot to The Academy Is…’s bus.
Spencer watches him go, feeling the tension in his chest expand up into the back of his throat. It tastes metallic and Spencer feels nauseated as he stubbles back to his bunk, fumbling the curtain open, sinking onto his back and pulling it shut behind him. He lies on his back, staring up into the darkness, trying to hold himself together around the emptiness inside him.
+++
The next day, Spencer ignores the hickeys on Ryan’s neck when he slips back onto the bus in the morning and he ignores Brendon’s worried looks and tries not to cry Jon passes him a cup of coffee in the big red mug.
Spencer functions on autopilot all day. He tries act normal, joking and talking but he feels numb, separate, distant, and he can tell by the way Brendon and Jon exchange looks and Ryan ignores them that he is probably not succeeding.
So he just gives up and finds his practice pad but he doesn’t play anything they wrote together. He just finds a rhythm he likes, that’s soothing, and plays variations on it until Jon startles him with a hand on his shoulder and tells him it’s time for sound check.
Spencer’s shoulders and wrists and knuckles and fingers and hands and arms ache but if he focuses on that he can pretend the pain in his chest is just tiredness too. So he gets up without a word and follows Jon through the venue and plays through a couple songs then follows Jon again and gets dressed and follows Jon to the stage and plays some more and then follows Jon backstage and through the fans to bus. When Jon stops though, Spencer keeps walking all the way to his bunk and he lies there and looks into the darkness and doesn’t know if he sleeps and feels the same way he did last night.
+++
The next day is a travel day and Spencer lies in his bunk and listens to the road and lets it lull him into sleep or a trance or maybe he passes out but there are voices in the front of the bus when he comes back to himself. Spencer listens distractedly, he feels like there’s a thick, impossibly clean plate of glass between himself and everything else. He presses up against it, lies along it, but still just feels its cool frictionless surface.
Ryan’s voice behind it is muffled, or maybe that’s the distance and the bunk curtain or maybe that’s the same thing.
“-doesn’t want to talk to me! I’ll only make it worse.” He sounds upset, pissed off, defensive, worried Spencer notes. He doesn’t like that. Spencer gets up quietly. Upset, pissed off, defensive, worried, disappointed, angry, sad, mean, concerned, anxious, (anything), Ryan is he responsibility.
“He’s so sad, Ryan!” Brendon sounds upset, worried, angry Spencer thinks. He needs to fix that too. “He’s so sad and he doesn’t talk or do anything! He just drums and frowns and looks like he’ll break if we touch him.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Ryan explodes, loud, angry, mean Ryan. “I-I can’t be what he wants and we shouldn’t have and I’m sorry but there isn’t anything I can do!”
Spencer can see Ryan now from his position in the doorway and he looks miserable and angry. He’s got his arms crossed, glaring across the bus at Brendon who’s glaring back. Jon is on his far side and he looks miserable too. Everybody’s miserable, the lives of rock stars. Spencer giggles.
Jon looks up and Ryan and Brendon both jerk to face him in a move that looks synchronized. Spencer laughs again. Ryan and Brendon matched in so many ways. Maybe they could be happy to together, maybe Ryan could love skinny, broken Brendon because they matched in a way he could never love stupid, solid (fat) Spencer.
“Spencer?” Jon broke Spencer out his train of thoughts. Ryan could love Jon too, cool, relaxed Jon who fit in among them so perfectly. Ryan had loved Jon long before Spencer did, had trusted him after Brent before Spencer could. Spencer had wondered about that until Jon won him over with his steady patience and then it had seemed obvious that of course Ryan would always be ahead of Spencer.
“What?” Spencer asked and his voice was hoarse from disuse and rough with something else and Jon just looked at him sad and soft and Spencer didn’t know if he could handle that, could handle the softness of Jon’s gaze against him, so he turned to look at Ryan but Ryan wasn’t looking at him, was staring over him or through him, it didn’t matter, just not at him.
“Would-” Spencer turned to Brendon, who faltered, eyes big and scared and gentle too and that hurt so Spencer just looked through him. “Would you like some cereal?”
Spencer just shakes his head and heads for the coffee maker. He finds half a cup of cold coffee swill, which he pours into the chipped white mug before starting a fresh pot. He gulps down the cold coffee while he waits and feels the acid burn his stomach. He is dimly aware of the others, silent and watching him but he ignores them in favor of watching the coffee brew. When there’s about a cup worth he grabs the pot, empties it into his mug and sticks it back under the drip, ignoring the droplets that fell and splashed into little pieces during the procedure.
Spencer swallows the second cup down quickly feeling the heat scorch his tongue and throat before dropping the mug and turning, grabbing a pair of sticks and retreating into the back of the bus to practice. He can’t hear the frantic whispers over the noise the sticks make against the pad.
+++
Brendon approaches him the next day, two days after Ryan last spoke to him, after Ryan last touched him, so when Brendon reaches out, eyes wide and serious to touch him, Spencer jerks back. No one, expect Jon, had touched him in two days and he hadn’t liked that, Jon’s fingerprints smudging Ryan’s on his skin, Spencer doesn’t like how he can’t really feel the sensation, just the pressure through the space between skin. Ryan’s hands had been warm and intimate until they were rough and distant and gone and maybe what bothered Spencer the most was that it hadn’t even been him with Ryan that night, at least not to Ryan, when it had been Ryan every night for Spencer since he started having nights and dreams and fantasies.
Brendon looks hurt and Spencer feels sorry but pressure in his chest presses harder so he just pulls back. Brendon sighs, resigned and worried, licking his lips hesitantly.
“Spencer. I’m worried about you. We’re all worried about you. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you just drum and pretend like everything’s fine and its not and Ryan won’t talk either! He just writes lyrics and fucks around on The Academy Is…bus and glares at anyone who tries to talk to him!” Brendon has gotten more and more agitated through this speech but Spencer just sits still and lets it wash over him until Brendon sighs and says more softly, “I-I just don’t get it, Spence. You’ve always-It’s been like no matter what unconditionally you guys have always just forgiven each other, like a long time ago you guys just decided that nothing either of you could ever do could be bad enough to not be worth the other person, nothing.”
Spencer shakes his head a little. “Not you guys.” Brendon looks confused, then sad, so, so sad and old too, old in a way that Brendon never looks but Spencer always feels so Spencer just says, “Nothing” with conviction and picks up his sticks and his beat and ignores Brendon when he leaves.
Jon tries next and Spencer has lost track of the days in the darkness of his bunk but the sun is in the sky when Jon yanks the curtain open and shoves a plate with a sandwich at him.
“Eat. Jesus Christ, Spence, if I watch you shove food around your plate without actually putting any in your mouth one more time, I am going to help Brendon figure out how to dissolve poptarts in coffee and believe me, it will be grosser than that sugary, creamy swill Brendon keeps trying to get you to drink.” Spencer wrinkles his nose. Brendon had been unsubtly attempting to feed him by mixing copious amount of cream and sugar into all the coffee on the bus.
Spencer looked down at the sandwich and felt his stomach roll but Jon was glaring at him and Spencer didn’t feel like fighting or pushing or anything really expect drumming so he picked it up and took a bite, chewing thoroughly. It didn’t taste like anything but the lettuce stuck heavily to the roof of his mouth and the break squished grossly between his teeth, making Spencer’s mouth feel dry and the whole bite seemed to catch in his throat.
Spencer shoves the plate away and oddly feels like crying, feels the tears working their way past the sandwich lump in his throat and pressing hot in his eyes. His hands are shaking and Spencer feels like he can’t breathe but when Jon reaches out, he jerks back instinctually, banging his head on the edge of the bunk. The pain is dull compared to the bright bursts of light behind his eyes.
For a moment, Spencer sways before he fails out, rapping his knuckles on the wall of the bus which he uses it to steady himself breathing hard. Jon has backed up, is sitting on Ryan’s bunk opposite his. He’s looks at Spencer, soft and understanding and Spencer feels kind of like crying again but instead shuffles back into himself and curls up watching Jon, whose asking the question even if he isn’t saying it.
Tiredly, Spencer just shakes his head. “I never got over my first love, Jon.” Then he shuts his eyes and pretends to be asleep until the bus stops moving.
+++
Ryan is the one who notices his fingers, black and blue and swollen as they curl around the smooth white wood of his drums sticks. He twitches and makes a little noise of surprise as they wait in the dressing room for call. Jon looks up from his bass and Brendon turns around form his vocal warm ups in the corner, eyes following Ryan and widening. “Oh my God, Spencer!” He gasps.
Spencer looks down and notices for the first time his right hand, swollen and bruised from where he hit it on the wall. He flexes his fingers and dully notes the pain. He does it again, curling and wiggling his fingers, relishing the way the pain filters pass his numbness.
As Spencer tries to curl his fingers into a fist for a third time, fingers moving stiffly, Ryan’s hand shoots out grips his wrist. “Stop that!” His voice is sharp, angry. Spencer glances up in confusion and Ryan immediately releases his wrist. “Are you good to play?” He asks, looking away, hair falling and concealing his face, his tone blank.
Spencer swallows, his throat feels dry, his wrist burns where Ryan touched. As if Ryan’s touch unlocked all his senses, Spencer is suddenly aware of how much his hand hurts, of how his joints ache from drumming too long, of the exhaustion in his muscles from holding them tense. Spencer doesn’t feel like playing, he doesn’t feel like doing anything except going back to the bus and hiding in his bunk and hoping that he can eventually lull himself back into his numb state.
Instead of saying that though, Spencer says, “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
Brendon frowns worried and steps toward him and Ryan. Ryan jerks his head up and, like he just realized how close he and Spencer are, backs away to lean against the wall, a prefect picture of casual. Brendon ignores him. “Spence-Spencer, are you sure? That looks like it really hurts and we can-”
“He said he was fine.” Ryan interrupts and his voice is implacable. Still Brendon opens his mouth to protest eyes flickering between the two of them. Jon interrupts this time.
“Don’t worry about it, Brendon. Come on, let’s go see if we can’t find some ice for Spencer.”
Brendon hesitates, casting a glance between Ryan and Spencer one more time before sighing and following Jon out the door. The air in the room changes after the door clicks shut. It’s the first time Spencer and Ryan have been alone together since Ryan asked why it had to matter and that was all wrong. In the early days, Spencer and Ryan used to sneak away from Brent and Brendon, not because they weren’t good friends but because Spencer and Ryan were SpencerandRyan and nothing could come between that except from the “and”.
Now, though Ryan just looks miserable. He glances at Spencer, frowns, sighs, shuffles his feet and then mutters, “I can’t stand this” and launches himself off the wall towards the door which he bangs shut behind him. Spencer filches, Ryan hates slamming doors, it reminds him of his father and “besides its fucking cliché, Spence”.
This is what they’ve become, Spencer reflects idly, waggling his fingers again just for the hell of it. Best friends for all their lives and now Ryan can’t even stand to be alone with him.
It’s funny.
Spencer doesn’t feel like laughing.
Spencer had always known Ryan was going to leave him one day, was going to realize Spencer was painfully ordinary and Ryan is painfully extraordinary and just leave Spencer behind. Spencer’s always known this, so it’s funny because he should have been fucking prepared.
He’s not though, not a little bit and Spencer spends the half hour before their set vomiting, stomach acid and coffee burning his throat until he hears a tech banging on the door telling he has ten minutes.
Spencer heaves himself up and avoids the mirror as he rinses his mouth out. He tries to drink a little but his throat protests after all the vomiting so he spits it out and follows the tech through the maze of backstage and arrives just in time to watch the opening act finish their set before following Jon onto stage. He hurries to his kit, grabs his sticks, and sits ready to start, without once looking at Jon or Brendon or crowd or Ryan. It should feel like a victory but mostly it feels like failure.
The show sucks. Spencer hurts. His arms, chest, and back are shaking from exhaustion, the impact of the sticks on the drums sending reverberations through his damaged fingers and along his skeleton in, Spencer notes with pride, prefect time. He holds down his part, he can still that at least but mostly he just aches, with exhaustion, with the music, with heartbreak.
Spencer is relieved when the show is over, even though throwing his sticks into the audience requires him to contort and new and incredible painful ways. Luckily, his throat is still too wrecked to allow the sounds he makes really carry.
He stumbles a little coming off the stage, wobbling dangerously until a hand reaches out against the small of his back steadying him and Spencer find himself blinking down at Ryan who is glaring up at him furiously. “Jesus, Spence” He’s saying. “Jesus.”
Spencer tries to pull away from Ryan but that just sends him more off balance and isn’t that just the fucking prefect metaphor. Ryan makes a huffing little annoyed sound in the back of his throat and wraps an arm around Spencer’s waist steadying him.
“Come on”, he says, still sounding annoyed as he pulls Spencer in the direction of the bus ignoring Brendon and Jon’s worried looks as they follow behind. Spencer ignores them too because this is the closest he’s been to Ryan in days and that gives him a whole new awareness of Ryan that he’s never had before, even when Ryan presence was a constant, something he could ground himself in as he grew up and got famous.
Spencer wonders why he never appreciated how the shell of Ryan’s ear curves just so until now or the way the knob of bone at the top of his spine presses out under his skin. He doesn’t remember when he started noticing those things about Ryan and he doesn’t remember when he started training himself to ignore them but he imagines they were at roughly the same time, so Spencer’s never really taken the time to just look at Ryan.
Now though, he doesn’t care. He’s tired and his hand hurts and Ryan hates him anyway so what’s the point of self denial anymore?
It is that thought that drives him to grab at Ryan sleeve when he dumps him on the couch in the bus and turns toward the coffee. Ryan makes a clicking annoyed noise and slaps his hand away and Spencer can’t help the little noise of pain because it was his bruised hand and Ryan just…
Ryan spins around to face him immediately, face furious but with something like desperation underneath. As soon as he sees Spencer cradling his hand against his chest, his eyes widen in shock. “Spence? No, Spence. No” He says voice gentler. “I didn’t mean…” He reaches for Spencer’s hand but Spencer just pulls himself back, folding himself up around his hand, around the hurt that is Ryan not even wanting to touch him. Ryan’s shoulders slump and his mouth falls into this sad little frown.
He turns away and walks toward the refrigerator, opening it and rummaging around. He says, back to Spencer. “See, this is my point. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never mean to hurt you, Spencer.” He voice goes gentle over that last part and he turns back to Spencer but keep his eyes on the bottle of water in his hand. “I’m not-I’m no good for you, Spence. I’m no good for anyone, okay. I’m not good at taking care of people, at being good for them.”
Spencer makes a rough little sound in his throat, which still hurts and he doubts he could speak even if he could find the words to say, No and you’re always good for me and the things he told you weren’t true. But Ryan looks up and his eyes are clouded and he seems to understand what Spencer is trying to say. He shakes his head. “No, Spencer. Not really. Sometimes…sometimes I manage to be good to you but I’ve never been good for you.”
That forces speech out of his mouth even though his throat is raw, even if it were fucking bleeding Spencer would need to respond to that. “You made me a rock star, Ryan. I get to play drums everyday with people I…I love” he stumbles and Ryan looks down shaking his head. “You-You wouldn’t give up on us, on anything, even though everything in your life said you should have and you got us here Ryan. You got Brendon out and safe to be himself and you found us Jon and you made…you made…” Spencer stumbles again because he can’t find the right words, he’s never been able to find the right words, that’s Ryan’s job, to put words together perfectly to make them break hearts and then mend them again. Spencer has never found the words to do that.
If he could have, if he’d been a better friend, Ryan wouldn’t be so sad now, he might even have left Spencer behind for something better, something he deserved more, or maybe Spencer would just deserve him. “You made” He tries again. Ryan looks tense and ready to run and Spencer wishes that his certainty that Ryan would leave him didn’t make him want to hold on tighter, to find some way of making Ryan his is as many ways as possible so he would be leaving more, so he would be leaving too much.
He opens his mouth to try and explain this, to try and explain anything, but he gets interrupted by a fit of coughing, the rough kind that rip at the throat and sound like an opera heroine coughing out her good bye in song.
Ryan is next to him in a second, finger tips resting feather light on the sleeve of his t-shirt and eyes brown and sincere next to his face. “Spencer? Spencer? Are you aright?’
Spencer tries to nod but his mouth tastes like pennies and he figures that is a bad thing so instead he shakes his head and buries it in Ryan neck, trying to match his breathing to Ryan’s. It does really work, Ryan is panting and clutching at Spencer hands shaking and for a second Spencer thinks he’s pulling him closer before Ryan’s hands are tugging at his hair and Spencer backs off immediately and tries to pull away but Ryan grabs at him and looks right into his eyes, searching and terrified.
Ryan still tests Spencer all the time, not as much as he tests Brendon or Jon or even as he used to but he still does it. He’s been testing Spencer since he was five and Spencer is used to it and he generally knows to keep still and wait and promise anything he knows he can give or thinks he get or Ryan wants but this one time Spencer doesn’t know what Ryan wants so he just promises as hard as he can everything, everything.
And that’s enough. Somehow, miraculously, that’s enough and Ryan is leaning in and he looks tentatively happy and Spencer can feel the hope burning bright and hot in his chest right under his heart and then Ryan kissing him and that hope explodes, shattering Spencer into little Spencer bits that settle around Ryan, a hand on the small of his back, an eyelash against his cheek, lips against his.
With a noise Ryan pulls back, and licking his lips glares at Spencer. “You’re bleeding.” He sounds accusatory and Spencer tries to explain that he was sick earlier and coughing but he voice is still hoarse and croaky when it comes out which just makes Ryan frown harder, so he shut his mouth and looks down.
“Hey, hey, Spence. No, let’s just, let’s…fuck!” Ryan says flustered, reaching out to tilting Spencer’s head up and pressing a closed mouth kiss into his lips then steeping back and running his finger through his hair. “Okay, Spence, let’s just go to bed, okay. You look like you need…and yeah” Ryan gestures vaguely at him making weird fluttery hand motions and Spencer wants to laugh but as soon as Ryan said bed he felt a thick wave of exhaustion and now all he wants is his bunk with Ryan in it, all wrapped around him.
So he let’s Ryan guide him with a hand on the small of his back in his bunk and when this time when he grabs Ryan’s hand and tries to tug it towards him, hopeful and hesitant, Ryan just laughs a little and shakes his head, you’re a fool, Spencer Smith, and Spencer just smirks and shakes his head and burrows into Ryan chest.
Author: 3traditions
Pairing:Ryan/Spencer
Rating: Low?
Disclaimer: Not mine
Summary:Spencer needs help.
“I’m sorry. I don’t-I don’t understand why this has to be a thing.”
Spencer just stares numb. He can feel this big, empty space pressing up under his rib cage, this strip of pressure against his the bottom of his heart and he’s doesn’t know how to express it, how to say all these thoughts, how to drum out this beat.
Ryan is staring at him, face blank, and arms crossed in that fragile way of his and Spencer feels like he did when he was five and asking Ryan to his house for the first time, and when he was eleven and wrapping an ace bandage around Ryan’s wrist and when he was fourteen and Ryan was leaving him behind for catholic school, like he is right on the verge of losing Ryan, like if he grips too tight Ryan will destroy himself against his fingers and if he holds too loose Ryan will slip away like he isn’t wanted.
Ryan’s demanding answer, arms crossed and eyes defiant, so Spencer nods slowly and tries to smile because, because he won’t loose Ryan over this. He won’t.
Ryan nods back jerkily at him and turns sharp on his heel, slipping out of the bus and walking across the parking lot to The Academy Is…’s bus.
Spencer watches him go, feeling the tension in his chest expand up into the back of his throat. It tastes metallic and Spencer feels nauseated as he stubbles back to his bunk, fumbling the curtain open, sinking onto his back and pulling it shut behind him. He lies on his back, staring up into the darkness, trying to hold himself together around the emptiness inside him.
+++
The next day, Spencer ignores the hickeys on Ryan’s neck when he slips back onto the bus in the morning and he ignores Brendon’s worried looks and tries not to cry Jon passes him a cup of coffee in the big red mug.
Spencer functions on autopilot all day. He tries act normal, joking and talking but he feels numb, separate, distant, and he can tell by the way Brendon and Jon exchange looks and Ryan ignores them that he is probably not succeeding.
So he just gives up and finds his practice pad but he doesn’t play anything they wrote together. He just finds a rhythm he likes, that’s soothing, and plays variations on it until Jon startles him with a hand on his shoulder and tells him it’s time for sound check.
Spencer’s shoulders and wrists and knuckles and fingers and hands and arms ache but if he focuses on that he can pretend the pain in his chest is just tiredness too. So he gets up without a word and follows Jon through the venue and plays through a couple songs then follows Jon again and gets dressed and follows Jon to the stage and plays some more and then follows Jon backstage and through the fans to bus. When Jon stops though, Spencer keeps walking all the way to his bunk and he lies there and looks into the darkness and doesn’t know if he sleeps and feels the same way he did last night.
+++
The next day is a travel day and Spencer lies in his bunk and listens to the road and lets it lull him into sleep or a trance or maybe he passes out but there are voices in the front of the bus when he comes back to himself. Spencer listens distractedly, he feels like there’s a thick, impossibly clean plate of glass between himself and everything else. He presses up against it, lies along it, but still just feels its cool frictionless surface.
Ryan’s voice behind it is muffled, or maybe that’s the distance and the bunk curtain or maybe that’s the same thing.
“-doesn’t want to talk to me! I’ll only make it worse.” He sounds upset, pissed off, defensive, worried Spencer notes. He doesn’t like that. Spencer gets up quietly. Upset, pissed off, defensive, worried, disappointed, angry, sad, mean, concerned, anxious, (anything), Ryan is he responsibility.
“He’s so sad, Ryan!” Brendon sounds upset, worried, angry Spencer thinks. He needs to fix that too. “He’s so sad and he doesn’t talk or do anything! He just drums and frowns and looks like he’ll break if we touch him.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Ryan explodes, loud, angry, mean Ryan. “I-I can’t be what he wants and we shouldn’t have and I’m sorry but there isn’t anything I can do!”
Spencer can see Ryan now from his position in the doorway and he looks miserable and angry. He’s got his arms crossed, glaring across the bus at Brendon who’s glaring back. Jon is on his far side and he looks miserable too. Everybody’s miserable, the lives of rock stars. Spencer giggles.
Jon looks up and Ryan and Brendon both jerk to face him in a move that looks synchronized. Spencer laughs again. Ryan and Brendon matched in so many ways. Maybe they could be happy to together, maybe Ryan could love skinny, broken Brendon because they matched in a way he could never love stupid, solid (fat) Spencer.
“Spencer?” Jon broke Spencer out his train of thoughts. Ryan could love Jon too, cool, relaxed Jon who fit in among them so perfectly. Ryan had loved Jon long before Spencer did, had trusted him after Brent before Spencer could. Spencer had wondered about that until Jon won him over with his steady patience and then it had seemed obvious that of course Ryan would always be ahead of Spencer.
“What?” Spencer asked and his voice was hoarse from disuse and rough with something else and Jon just looked at him sad and soft and Spencer didn’t know if he could handle that, could handle the softness of Jon’s gaze against him, so he turned to look at Ryan but Ryan wasn’t looking at him, was staring over him or through him, it didn’t matter, just not at him.
“Would-” Spencer turned to Brendon, who faltered, eyes big and scared and gentle too and that hurt so Spencer just looked through him. “Would you like some cereal?”
Spencer just shakes his head and heads for the coffee maker. He finds half a cup of cold coffee swill, which he pours into the chipped white mug before starting a fresh pot. He gulps down the cold coffee while he waits and feels the acid burn his stomach. He is dimly aware of the others, silent and watching him but he ignores them in favor of watching the coffee brew. When there’s about a cup worth he grabs the pot, empties it into his mug and sticks it back under the drip, ignoring the droplets that fell and splashed into little pieces during the procedure.
Spencer swallows the second cup down quickly feeling the heat scorch his tongue and throat before dropping the mug and turning, grabbing a pair of sticks and retreating into the back of the bus to practice. He can’t hear the frantic whispers over the noise the sticks make against the pad.
+++
Brendon approaches him the next day, two days after Ryan last spoke to him, after Ryan last touched him, so when Brendon reaches out, eyes wide and serious to touch him, Spencer jerks back. No one, expect Jon, had touched him in two days and he hadn’t liked that, Jon’s fingerprints smudging Ryan’s on his skin, Spencer doesn’t like how he can’t really feel the sensation, just the pressure through the space between skin. Ryan’s hands had been warm and intimate until they were rough and distant and gone and maybe what bothered Spencer the most was that it hadn’t even been him with Ryan that night, at least not to Ryan, when it had been Ryan every night for Spencer since he started having nights and dreams and fantasies.
Brendon looks hurt and Spencer feels sorry but pressure in his chest presses harder so he just pulls back. Brendon sighs, resigned and worried, licking his lips hesitantly.
“Spencer. I’m worried about you. We’re all worried about you. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you just drum and pretend like everything’s fine and its not and Ryan won’t talk either! He just writes lyrics and fucks around on The Academy Is…bus and glares at anyone who tries to talk to him!” Brendon has gotten more and more agitated through this speech but Spencer just sits still and lets it wash over him until Brendon sighs and says more softly, “I-I just don’t get it, Spence. You’ve always-It’s been like no matter what unconditionally you guys have always just forgiven each other, like a long time ago you guys just decided that nothing either of you could ever do could be bad enough to not be worth the other person, nothing.”
Spencer shakes his head a little. “Not you guys.” Brendon looks confused, then sad, so, so sad and old too, old in a way that Brendon never looks but Spencer always feels so Spencer just says, “Nothing” with conviction and picks up his sticks and his beat and ignores Brendon when he leaves.
Jon tries next and Spencer has lost track of the days in the darkness of his bunk but the sun is in the sky when Jon yanks the curtain open and shoves a plate with a sandwich at him.
“Eat. Jesus Christ, Spence, if I watch you shove food around your plate without actually putting any in your mouth one more time, I am going to help Brendon figure out how to dissolve poptarts in coffee and believe me, it will be grosser than that sugary, creamy swill Brendon keeps trying to get you to drink.” Spencer wrinkles his nose. Brendon had been unsubtly attempting to feed him by mixing copious amount of cream and sugar into all the coffee on the bus.
Spencer looked down at the sandwich and felt his stomach roll but Jon was glaring at him and Spencer didn’t feel like fighting or pushing or anything really expect drumming so he picked it up and took a bite, chewing thoroughly. It didn’t taste like anything but the lettuce stuck heavily to the roof of his mouth and the break squished grossly between his teeth, making Spencer’s mouth feel dry and the whole bite seemed to catch in his throat.
Spencer shoves the plate away and oddly feels like crying, feels the tears working their way past the sandwich lump in his throat and pressing hot in his eyes. His hands are shaking and Spencer feels like he can’t breathe but when Jon reaches out, he jerks back instinctually, banging his head on the edge of the bunk. The pain is dull compared to the bright bursts of light behind his eyes.
For a moment, Spencer sways before he fails out, rapping his knuckles on the wall of the bus which he uses it to steady himself breathing hard. Jon has backed up, is sitting on Ryan’s bunk opposite his. He’s looks at Spencer, soft and understanding and Spencer feels kind of like crying again but instead shuffles back into himself and curls up watching Jon, whose asking the question even if he isn’t saying it.
Tiredly, Spencer just shakes his head. “I never got over my first love, Jon.” Then he shuts his eyes and pretends to be asleep until the bus stops moving.
+++
Ryan is the one who notices his fingers, black and blue and swollen as they curl around the smooth white wood of his drums sticks. He twitches and makes a little noise of surprise as they wait in the dressing room for call. Jon looks up from his bass and Brendon turns around form his vocal warm ups in the corner, eyes following Ryan and widening. “Oh my God, Spencer!” He gasps.
Spencer looks down and notices for the first time his right hand, swollen and bruised from where he hit it on the wall. He flexes his fingers and dully notes the pain. He does it again, curling and wiggling his fingers, relishing the way the pain filters pass his numbness.
As Spencer tries to curl his fingers into a fist for a third time, fingers moving stiffly, Ryan’s hand shoots out grips his wrist. “Stop that!” His voice is sharp, angry. Spencer glances up in confusion and Ryan immediately releases his wrist. “Are you good to play?” He asks, looking away, hair falling and concealing his face, his tone blank.
Spencer swallows, his throat feels dry, his wrist burns where Ryan touched. As if Ryan’s touch unlocked all his senses, Spencer is suddenly aware of how much his hand hurts, of how his joints ache from drumming too long, of the exhaustion in his muscles from holding them tense. Spencer doesn’t feel like playing, he doesn’t feel like doing anything except going back to the bus and hiding in his bunk and hoping that he can eventually lull himself back into his numb state.
Instead of saying that though, Spencer says, “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”
Brendon frowns worried and steps toward him and Ryan. Ryan jerks his head up and, like he just realized how close he and Spencer are, backs away to lean against the wall, a prefect picture of casual. Brendon ignores him. “Spence-Spencer, are you sure? That looks like it really hurts and we can-”
“He said he was fine.” Ryan interrupts and his voice is implacable. Still Brendon opens his mouth to protest eyes flickering between the two of them. Jon interrupts this time.
“Don’t worry about it, Brendon. Come on, let’s go see if we can’t find some ice for Spencer.”
Brendon hesitates, casting a glance between Ryan and Spencer one more time before sighing and following Jon out the door. The air in the room changes after the door clicks shut. It’s the first time Spencer and Ryan have been alone together since Ryan asked why it had to matter and that was all wrong. In the early days, Spencer and Ryan used to sneak away from Brent and Brendon, not because they weren’t good friends but because Spencer and Ryan were SpencerandRyan and nothing could come between that except from the “and”.
Now, though Ryan just looks miserable. He glances at Spencer, frowns, sighs, shuffles his feet and then mutters, “I can’t stand this” and launches himself off the wall towards the door which he bangs shut behind him. Spencer filches, Ryan hates slamming doors, it reminds him of his father and “besides its fucking cliché, Spence”.
This is what they’ve become, Spencer reflects idly, waggling his fingers again just for the hell of it. Best friends for all their lives and now Ryan can’t even stand to be alone with him.
It’s funny.
Spencer doesn’t feel like laughing.
Spencer had always known Ryan was going to leave him one day, was going to realize Spencer was painfully ordinary and Ryan is painfully extraordinary and just leave Spencer behind. Spencer’s always known this, so it’s funny because he should have been fucking prepared.
He’s not though, not a little bit and Spencer spends the half hour before their set vomiting, stomach acid and coffee burning his throat until he hears a tech banging on the door telling he has ten minutes.
Spencer heaves himself up and avoids the mirror as he rinses his mouth out. He tries to drink a little but his throat protests after all the vomiting so he spits it out and follows the tech through the maze of backstage and arrives just in time to watch the opening act finish their set before following Jon onto stage. He hurries to his kit, grabs his sticks, and sits ready to start, without once looking at Jon or Brendon or crowd or Ryan. It should feel like a victory but mostly it feels like failure.
The show sucks. Spencer hurts. His arms, chest, and back are shaking from exhaustion, the impact of the sticks on the drums sending reverberations through his damaged fingers and along his skeleton in, Spencer notes with pride, prefect time. He holds down his part, he can still that at least but mostly he just aches, with exhaustion, with the music, with heartbreak.
Spencer is relieved when the show is over, even though throwing his sticks into the audience requires him to contort and new and incredible painful ways. Luckily, his throat is still too wrecked to allow the sounds he makes really carry.
He stumbles a little coming off the stage, wobbling dangerously until a hand reaches out against the small of his back steadying him and Spencer find himself blinking down at Ryan who is glaring up at him furiously. “Jesus, Spence” He’s saying. “Jesus.”
Spencer tries to pull away from Ryan but that just sends him more off balance and isn’t that just the fucking prefect metaphor. Ryan makes a huffing little annoyed sound in the back of his throat and wraps an arm around Spencer’s waist steadying him.
“Come on”, he says, still sounding annoyed as he pulls Spencer in the direction of the bus ignoring Brendon and Jon’s worried looks as they follow behind. Spencer ignores them too because this is the closest he’s been to Ryan in days and that gives him a whole new awareness of Ryan that he’s never had before, even when Ryan presence was a constant, something he could ground himself in as he grew up and got famous.
Spencer wonders why he never appreciated how the shell of Ryan’s ear curves just so until now or the way the knob of bone at the top of his spine presses out under his skin. He doesn’t remember when he started noticing those things about Ryan and he doesn’t remember when he started training himself to ignore them but he imagines they were at roughly the same time, so Spencer’s never really taken the time to just look at Ryan.
Now though, he doesn’t care. He’s tired and his hand hurts and Ryan hates him anyway so what’s the point of self denial anymore?
It is that thought that drives him to grab at Ryan sleeve when he dumps him on the couch in the bus and turns toward the coffee. Ryan makes a clicking annoyed noise and slaps his hand away and Spencer can’t help the little noise of pain because it was his bruised hand and Ryan just…
Ryan spins around to face him immediately, face furious but with something like desperation underneath. As soon as he sees Spencer cradling his hand against his chest, his eyes widen in shock. “Spence? No, Spence. No” He says voice gentler. “I didn’t mean…” He reaches for Spencer’s hand but Spencer just pulls himself back, folding himself up around his hand, around the hurt that is Ryan not even wanting to touch him. Ryan’s shoulders slump and his mouth falls into this sad little frown.
He turns away and walks toward the refrigerator, opening it and rummaging around. He says, back to Spencer. “See, this is my point. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never mean to hurt you, Spencer.” He voice goes gentle over that last part and he turns back to Spencer but keep his eyes on the bottle of water in his hand. “I’m not-I’m no good for you, Spence. I’m no good for anyone, okay. I’m not good at taking care of people, at being good for them.”
Spencer makes a rough little sound in his throat, which still hurts and he doubts he could speak even if he could find the words to say, No and you’re always good for me and the things he told you weren’t true. But Ryan looks up and his eyes are clouded and he seems to understand what Spencer is trying to say. He shakes his head. “No, Spencer. Not really. Sometimes…sometimes I manage to be good to you but I’ve never been good for you.”
That forces speech out of his mouth even though his throat is raw, even if it were fucking bleeding Spencer would need to respond to that. “You made me a rock star, Ryan. I get to play drums everyday with people I…I love” he stumbles and Ryan looks down shaking his head. “You-You wouldn’t give up on us, on anything, even though everything in your life said you should have and you got us here Ryan. You got Brendon out and safe to be himself and you found us Jon and you made…you made…” Spencer stumbles again because he can’t find the right words, he’s never been able to find the right words, that’s Ryan’s job, to put words together perfectly to make them break hearts and then mend them again. Spencer has never found the words to do that.
If he could have, if he’d been a better friend, Ryan wouldn’t be so sad now, he might even have left Spencer behind for something better, something he deserved more, or maybe Spencer would just deserve him. “You made” He tries again. Ryan looks tense and ready to run and Spencer wishes that his certainty that Ryan would leave him didn’t make him want to hold on tighter, to find some way of making Ryan his is as many ways as possible so he would be leaving more, so he would be leaving too much.
He opens his mouth to try and explain this, to try and explain anything, but he gets interrupted by a fit of coughing, the rough kind that rip at the throat and sound like an opera heroine coughing out her good bye in song.
Ryan is next to him in a second, finger tips resting feather light on the sleeve of his t-shirt and eyes brown and sincere next to his face. “Spencer? Spencer? Are you aright?’
Spencer tries to nod but his mouth tastes like pennies and he figures that is a bad thing so instead he shakes his head and buries it in Ryan neck, trying to match his breathing to Ryan’s. It does really work, Ryan is panting and clutching at Spencer hands shaking and for a second Spencer thinks he’s pulling him closer before Ryan’s hands are tugging at his hair and Spencer backs off immediately and tries to pull away but Ryan grabs at him and looks right into his eyes, searching and terrified.
Ryan still tests Spencer all the time, not as much as he tests Brendon or Jon or even as he used to but he still does it. He’s been testing Spencer since he was five and Spencer is used to it and he generally knows to keep still and wait and promise anything he knows he can give or thinks he get or Ryan wants but this one time Spencer doesn’t know what Ryan wants so he just promises as hard as he can everything, everything.
And that’s enough. Somehow, miraculously, that’s enough and Ryan is leaning in and he looks tentatively happy and Spencer can feel the hope burning bright and hot in his chest right under his heart and then Ryan kissing him and that hope explodes, shattering Spencer into little Spencer bits that settle around Ryan, a hand on the small of his back, an eyelash against his cheek, lips against his.
With a noise Ryan pulls back, and licking his lips glares at Spencer. “You’re bleeding.” He sounds accusatory and Spencer tries to explain that he was sick earlier and coughing but he voice is still hoarse and croaky when it comes out which just makes Ryan frown harder, so he shut his mouth and looks down.
“Hey, hey, Spence. No, let’s just, let’s…fuck!” Ryan says flustered, reaching out to tilting Spencer’s head up and pressing a closed mouth kiss into his lips then steeping back and running his finger through his hair. “Okay, Spence, let’s just go to bed, okay. You look like you need…and yeah” Ryan gestures vaguely at him making weird fluttery hand motions and Spencer wants to laugh but as soon as Ryan said bed he felt a thick wave of exhaustion and now all he wants is his bunk with Ryan in it, all wrapped around him.
So he let’s Ryan guide him with a hand on the small of his back in his bunk and when this time when he grabs Ryan’s hand and tries to tug it towards him, hopeful and hesitant, Ryan just laughs a little and shakes his head, you’re a fool, Spencer Smith, and Spencer just smirks and shakes his head and burrows into Ryan chest.