White Houses
Title: White Houses
Author: Telis (theaerosolkid)
Rating: G
Pairing: None
Summary: Spencer; on the difficulty of transition.
Word Count: 753
Disclaimer: It's all fake; standard disclaimers apply.
A/N: I put my iPod on shuffle, driving home, and this song popped up. I thought, ohh, Spencer, right away, drove home, and banged this out. I hope you like it. For we_are_cities February 10.
"If you're sure," they say, and it hurts, because he isn't. It's not for lack of trying, but when your job is to sit in back and keep the beat (keep pumping), sometimes all that concentrating on keeping time with everyone else can take away time you would normally spend thinking about yourself.
"This could end really badly," his mother cautions gently. "But I think that if you don't do it, you're really going to regret it."
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Spencer mumbles and she smiles a little, her expression unreadable.
"I can't make your choices for you," she says.
"What would you do, if you were me?" Spencer asks his father later that night, staring at the stars on the cold pavement of the sidewalk at two a.m.
"I'm not you," his father says easily.
"But if you were," Spencer presses.
"Well," his father begins. "I don't know how to be."
Spencer has never been the special one. Brent has sports and the closeness of his family, the almost-vicious way they protect each other. Ryan is the beautifully damaged artistic one. Brendon is the charismatic deeper-than-you-think one. Spencer is just the steady backbeat, mostly; and steady gets taken for granted far too often.
This is one of the reasons Ryan and Spencer are still and always will be friends - despite the aloof front he holds to like a talisman, Ryan craves stability, he yearns for it. Spencer happens to have stability in spades. When it counts, Ryan appreciates him and is grateful.
When it counts means when he's stolen away from home, for a few hours, stretched on this same patch of sidewalk, waxing philosophical beneath a waning moon. It's nice, then, just lying there with closed eyes and open ears, listening to the low, throaty rise and fall of Ryan's voice, feeling the hot, stagnant Nevada air move around as Ryan's long spindly limbs jerking around, gesturing, enforcing.
"I just can't wait to get out of here, get started," Ryan says, and there's power in the words. "Know what I mean?" And Spencer does, really he does, but only for the big moments.
The big moments are actually pretty small - usually snippets of time when everything goes click! during rehearsal; when Brendon's voice stays strong and Brent manages to play through and clean the whole time and Ryan is interacting instead of just existing. It also means when he's driving and hears something on the radio and knows, just knows that even their crappy little laptop-recorded demos are better than what he's hearing. "Fuck you, Stacy, and your mom, too," he breathes out, and then feels like an asshole.
"I think it'll be easier when we're, like, sequestered," Spencer says to his mother the next night, scraping potato off the dishes into the garbage disposal. She flicks the switch thoughtfully, gives herself time to think. Brendon's sleeping on the couch tonight, but he's so tired that nobody in the Smith house thinks that any noise they make could possibly awaken him.
"Sequestered?"
"Yeah," Spencer says. "We'll get an apartment, or something, to live in, you know, the label will pay for it or whatever, while we're writing and recording the album. If there is one."
"You're writing now, I thought," she says, picking up a Windex-soaked clump of paper towels and swiping them at the sink. It doesn't escape Spencer's notice that the sink is already clean.
"It's not enough, though," Spencer says as an answer.
"No," she says carefully. "It might not be. But, you know, it might be."
"When it comes right down to it," his father says that night, standing at the doorway, one foot in, uncharacteristically hesitant, "it's your choice, but here's a good way of thinking about it: will you be more upset if you try and fail, or if you don't try and never know?"
It seems so much more profound then Spencer knows it to be, later, when he's much wiser at only a year older. Still, he hadn't thought of it that way and when he does, the answer is obvious.
"Eighty years with luck, or even less," he murmurs to himself, and signs his name on the dotted line, last but never, never least.
Author: Telis (theaerosolkid)
Rating: G
Pairing: None
Summary: Spencer; on the difficulty of transition.
Word Count: 753
Disclaimer: It's all fake; standard disclaimers apply.
A/N: I put my iPod on shuffle, driving home, and this song popped up. I thought, ohh, Spencer, right away, drove home, and banged this out. I hope you like it. For we_are_cities February 10.
"If you're sure," they say, and it hurts, because he isn't. It's not for lack of trying, but when your job is to sit in back and keep the beat (keep pumping), sometimes all that concentrating on keeping time with everyone else can take away time you would normally spend thinking about yourself.
"This could end really badly," his mother cautions gently. "But I think that if you don't do it, you're really going to regret it."
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Spencer mumbles and she smiles a little, her expression unreadable.
"I can't make your choices for you," she says.
"What would you do, if you were me?" Spencer asks his father later that night, staring at the stars on the cold pavement of the sidewalk at two a.m.
"I'm not you," his father says easily.
"But if you were," Spencer presses.
"Well," his father begins. "I don't know how to be."
Spencer has never been the special one. Brent has sports and the closeness of his family, the almost-vicious way they protect each other. Ryan is the beautifully damaged artistic one. Brendon is the charismatic deeper-than-you-think one. Spencer is just the steady backbeat, mostly; and steady gets taken for granted far too often.
This is one of the reasons Ryan and Spencer are still and always will be friends - despite the aloof front he holds to like a talisman, Ryan craves stability, he yearns for it. Spencer happens to have stability in spades. When it counts, Ryan appreciates him and is grateful.
When it counts means when he's stolen away from home, for a few hours, stretched on this same patch of sidewalk, waxing philosophical beneath a waning moon. It's nice, then, just lying there with closed eyes and open ears, listening to the low, throaty rise and fall of Ryan's voice, feeling the hot, stagnant Nevada air move around as Ryan's long spindly limbs jerking around, gesturing, enforcing.
"I just can't wait to get out of here, get started," Ryan says, and there's power in the words. "Know what I mean?" And Spencer does, really he does, but only for the big moments.
The big moments are actually pretty small - usually snippets of time when everything goes click! during rehearsal; when Brendon's voice stays strong and Brent manages to play through and clean the whole time and Ryan is interacting instead of just existing. It also means when he's driving and hears something on the radio and knows, just knows that even their crappy little laptop-recorded demos are better than what he's hearing. "Fuck you, Stacy, and your mom, too," he breathes out, and then feels like an asshole.
"I think it'll be easier when we're, like, sequestered," Spencer says to his mother the next night, scraping potato off the dishes into the garbage disposal. She flicks the switch thoughtfully, gives herself time to think. Brendon's sleeping on the couch tonight, but he's so tired that nobody in the Smith house thinks that any noise they make could possibly awaken him.
"Sequestered?"
"Yeah," Spencer says. "We'll get an apartment, or something, to live in, you know, the label will pay for it or whatever, while we're writing and recording the album. If there is one."
"You're writing now, I thought," she says, picking up a Windex-soaked clump of paper towels and swiping them at the sink. It doesn't escape Spencer's notice that the sink is already clean.
"It's not enough, though," Spencer says as an answer.
"No," she says carefully. "It might not be. But, you know, it might be."
"When it comes right down to it," his father says that night, standing at the doorway, one foot in, uncharacteristically hesitant, "it's your choice, but here's a good way of thinking about it: will you be more upset if you try and fail, or if you don't try and never know?"
It seems so much more profound then Spencer knows it to be, later, when he's much wiser at only a year older. Still, he hadn't thought of it that way and when he does, the answer is obvious.
"Eighty years with luck, or even less," he murmurs to himself, and signs his name on the dotted line, last but never, never least.