Don't Ever
Don't Ever.
Spencer/Ryan. PG. 2,887 words. Unbeta'd.
Pre-Panic!days. They're 13 and 14 respectively. I don't know where this came from, I wrote it over about three hours whilst drinking too much coffee and doing an aerobics tape with my sister. You'd think it'd be a happier fic *facepalms*
“I had a dream the other night.”
Spencer kicks at the ground with the toe of his sneaker, says, “Yeah?”
It’s not even past five yet, but the sun’s already setting low, bleeding warm reds and yellows into the cold blue, white, like blood down a drain, paint down a sink. Spencer shields his eyes against it, and Ryan, he doesn’t do anything. He’s hanging, both hands gripping a low branch of one of the trees in Spencer’s backyard.
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “It was weird.”
Maybe Spencer would say something else, but Ryan, he’s not hoping for that. Ryan says things in his own time, and Spencer will always wait for him.
Ryan’s eyes clench shut, like he’s remembering something he’d rather not, and Spencer kicks at one of the rock’s his sister painted at preschool.
“My mom called the other day.”
“In the dream?”
“No,” Ryan says, and he drops from the tree, falls on the grass hard enough that Spencer can almost hear the crack, crunch, snap. “For real,” he says. “She called to wish me a happy birthday.”
Spencer squints, because, “Your birthday was four months ago.”
“Yeah,” Ryan shrugs. “But she called, so that was nice of her, I think. She didn’t have to call at all.”
“No,” Spencer agrees, and he moves to drop onto the grass beside Ryan, leans back enough until he’s staring up at the sunset, at the way the clouds runaway with the sun. “She didn’t have to, but she should have.”
Ryan shrugs again, and drops back into the grass beside Spencer. He’s picking at the brown leaves that eloped with each other; fell from the tree in a fit of romance, that’s what Ryan said the other day. Spencer thinks they fell because it’s the fall season, and there’s not really all that much more to it.
Ryan, he thinks, is a hopeless romantic.
Or maybe just hopeless.
“She asked me what it was like being fourteen,” Ryan says, and he scrunches up his nose, stares over at Spencer with his forehead wrinkled from thinking too hard, and his lips pursed. “I told her it wasn’t so great.”
“I bet it’s cooler than thirteen,” Spencer says, and he rolls over until he’s on his belly, watching the grass with half-lidded blue eyes, and Ryan, he just says, “Only cooler because it’s a year closer to being grown up for real.”
Spencer bites his lip, but kind of agrees. “You staying for dinner?”
What he’s really saying is you staying the night?
“Yeah,” Ryan says.
He stays for three days.
*
It’s not that Ryan’s dad is a bad person; it’s just that he has so much in his head and his heart that he can’t communicate, can’t connect. It’s complicated. That’s what Ryan says.
Spencer doesn’t think it’s that complicated. Ryan’s dad drinks. Ryan’s dad gets drunk, and then he’s an asshole, and then Ryan goes to Spencer’s house, bruised and battered and babbling about whose fault it is, and whose fault it isn’t.
It’s never Ryan’s dad’s fault.
Only, Spencer thinks, it always is.
It’s not complicated.
“He was upset,” Ryan says, and there are bruises on the side of Ryan’s arm in the shape of fingers, and his clothes, they smell of alcohol Spencer knows Ryan didn’t drink. “A guy at work was an asshole to him, and then I said stuff I shouldn’t have, and it’s not his fault he got mad. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Ryan spins stories like he washes his hair. Rinse, lather, repeat.
“It looks like he might get fired,” rinse, “and a mortgage payment comes out at the end of the week, and he thinks I don’t know, but I do, Spence, because I opened the bills the other day.” Lather.
“It’s not his fault,” Ryan says, and he plays with the bottom of his t-shirt, wraps it around his fingers. Repeat. “It’s not.”
“Okay,” Spencer says, and he goes to the linen closet in the hall, grabs another pillow and another blanket. His mom bought Ryan a toothbrush last month, a bar of soap and a pair of pyjamas that fit. His mom does shit like that sometimes, and Spencer hates that she has too.
He piles the stuff in one arm and grabs Ryan in the other, pulls him into the bathroom and tells him to shower, to clean up, and then to come to bed.
Ryan stares like he always does, eyes wide, like he can’t quite believe Spencer puts up with this shit, and Spencer, Jesus, he hates that look.
“Just do it,” Spencer mumbles. “We have school in the morning.”
*
“There’s this girl in my math class,” Ryan says. “Her name’s Heidi Elliot and she has the worst hand-writing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Cool,” Spencer says, and he picks at the sponge cake his mom left them for tea. His mom’s a good cook, but Spencer’s not hungry.
“She asked me to go see Jaws with her at that cinema that plays all the old movies.”
“Cool,” Spencer says again, and he breaks up the cake with the back of his fork, squashes it together on the plate. He doesn’t look up, but he knows Ryan’s looking at him, eyes wide, lips parted.
“It might be,” Ryan shrugs. “I said yes, but like, if you don’t want me to go, I can stay here. We can watch Sixth Sense and I’ll pretend not to see you cry at the ending.”
Spencer flips him off, “Fuck you, I don’t cry at that crap.”
Ryan laughs, drops his forehead to the table so all Spencer can see is a pair of thin, shaking shoulders. “You do,” Ryan mumbles, and it’s stifled against the tabletop, Spencer has to strain to hear. “Every time Bruce Willis makes those crazy dopey eyes at his wife you cry like a little bitch.”
“I’m surprised you can hear me through your wails of emo heartache,” Spencer says, and he flicks cake into Ryan’s hair. Ryan doesn’t even notice.
“I won’t go,” he says to the table. “If you don’t want me to.”
Spencer pauses, looks at the slope of Ryan’s slight shoulders, at his fingers spread on the table and the cake in his hair. Says, “No,” says, “You should go.”
*
Later, Spencer wakes up. The clock beside his bed reads half-past one in the morning, and Spencer tries to roll over, would, but there’s a head in the crook of his neck, an arm around his waist and a body pressed too tight against his.
Ryan’s feet are always freezing in the evenings, and Spencer spreads his calves enough to trap Ryan’s feet between them, let his tracksuit-legs soak in the cold and Spencer, he just breathes and falls back to sleep.
*
“Was it any good?” Spencer asks.
Ryan shrugs a little, scrunches his nose, says, “The movie was alright, but Heidi kept trying to make-out. I don’t know, I just don’t think she’s my type.”
“Okay,” Spencer says. “We should go get a tub of ice-cream and watch Titanic on mute. You can be Leonardo Di-Crap-rio this time.”
The smile slides across Ryan’s face like water across tiles - it only catches in the cracks once or twice.
*
The rap on the door wouldn’t be much of a surprise, Spencer supposes, if Ryan hadn’t stopped knocking last year. He pulls open the front door, and thinks that maybe, maybe the bloody nose has something to do with it.
“Huh,” Spencer says.
Ryan’s never been a big kid, but he looks too small right now, shoulders drawn and blood drying beneath his nose, and Spencer doesn’t think he’ll ever not be too young for this shit.
“I fell,” Ryan says, and Spencer just nods, steps aside until Ryan slips in, moves much too quietly, uneasily, up the stairs and into the bathroom, and Spencer doesn’t see red, but maybe he sees every other colour. Maybe it bursts behind his eyes like something worth holding on to.
Spencer stills himself, breathes, closes his eyes. Then he follows Ryan upstairs.
*
Ryan’s rubbed most of the blood off his face when Spencer gets there, but he still looks frailer than normal, breakable, skin too pale and arms too thin, and Spencer grips his wrists, asks, “You fell?”
Ryan looks at him for a minute, unblinking, says, “Yes,” and goes back to washing his face.
“Are you sure?” Spencer asks. “It’s a funny way to fall.”
The eye roll’s not unexpected, the glare is. “Fell, Spencer.”
He’s not sure what to say to that, because Spencer remembers words like wait and maybe, but there’s something bubbling in the pit of his stomach, working it’s way into his throat until Spencer’s not sure if he wants to yell or lash out or cry.
He doesn’t think any of those would help.
Ryan’s rubbing at the space at the corner of his nose too vigorously, enough to flake the skin, and Spencer doesn’t think anything of it, just grabs the wet hand towel from Ryan’s clenched fingers, and digs around in the drawer by the sink to find some antiseptic cream.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan mumbles, and he sounds like he means it, looks like it too, with the way his arms cross tight over his chest and his feet turn into each other on the floor. “It’s not even a big deal.”
“It is,” Spencer says, and he finds some cotton balls, pours enough antiseptic cream onto it to move and rub at the dried blood on Ryan’s face. Spencer bites his lip for a minute, rolls his eyes to the ceiling and adds, “You’re a big deal.”
He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him, wide and stupid, and he’s not surprised when Ryan bats his hand away from his face, but maybe he is when Ryan wraps his own arms around Spencer’s shoulders. He burries his face in Spencer’s neck, and when he breathes, warm and wet into Spencer’s skin, the shiver is a tremor and an earthquake all at once, deep enough that Spencer slides his eyes shut and thinks of happier times.
“You’re not allowed to leave me behind, alright?” Ryan mumbles, and Spencer just thinks, says, “I don’t think I’d ever want to.”
*
“Is it weird,” Spencer says, and he’s flicking through the channels, soap after soap after soap. “Is it weird that I haven’t kissed anyone yet?”
Ryan shrugs, says, “Dude, you’re like, thirteen.”
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Yeah, you’re right.”
He doesn’t say he dreamt of kissing Ryan the night before.
He thinks that would be a little weird.
*
“Heidi asked me if I wanted to go out with her again,” Ryan says, and he’s eating a bowl of pasta that Spencer’s mom wouldn’t let him leave without finishing.
“I said no,” Ryan says, and he eats a forkful of pasta, smiles a little, not enough to be notable if you didn’t know him.
“Why?” Spencer asks, and he’s waiting at the table for Ryan to finish eating. He wants to go watch Happy Gilmore, but his mom gets mad at him if anyone eats on the new sofa. “The first date wasn’t that bad was it?”
Ryan looks at him pointedly, fork pausing halfway to his mouth. “I said she’s not my type, remember?”
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Yeah, I remember.”
*
A year ago, Spencer’s dad bought a hammock. It was kind of awesome when they first bought it because Spencer and his sisters could all sit in it together, huddle in close and Spencer would whisper stories about princes and damsels and heroes.
Sometimes Ryan would lie on the floor beneath it, smile up at him through the flimsy cotton until Spencer couldn’t really see anything else, until the moment went into freeze-frame, slow motion, all those dumb clichés, would all build ridiculously until Spencer’s sister poked him, told him to keep going.
Keep going.
The novelty wore off too quickly. Spencer grew, and his sister’s did too, and suddenly piling into a hammock together seemed something unfamiliar and too familiar all at once. Something stupid.
Ryan never said anything about it, so that’s why it comes as a surprise when he asks to lie in it. Just this once.
“I don’t know,” Ryan says. “I just feel like it.”
So he does lie in it, enveloped by the dirty off-white cotton and Spencer isn’t sure which parts of him feel when Ryan pulls him into the hammock too.
“Cosy,” Ryan mumbles, and Spencer chokes out a laugh, fidgets, because they’re almost on top of each other. Ryan’s tiny frame fitting on top of his like a second hoodie, skin, whatever. His fingers slide to the small of Ryan’s back, to keep him steady.
“This is sort of gay,” Spencer says, and Ryan licks Spencer’s cheek, provoking a cry of outrage.
“Fuck you, dude,” and Spencer tries to rock the hammock over, tries to find his feet, but Ryan clings, wraps his arms tight around Spencer’s waist and laughs into his neck and Spencer’s never been able to do anything that could take away Ryan’s smile, laugh, not when it’s for real.
Ryan’s laughter dies in his throat, and Spencer’s left with heat on every side, building in his stomach, legs, snaking up his chest and he knows it bleeds in his cheeks, knows he looks fucking ridiculous, but Ryan’s so close, fingers feather-light through Spencer’s t-shirt and it isn’t anything, shouldn’t be, only that it is.
“Spence,” Ryan mumbles, and Spencer looks down, up, anywhere, everywhere, and Ryan just pinches his sides. “We should do something,” Ryan says, and Spencer looks at him, finally, and they’re so close, too close. He rubs his sweaty palms on the back of Ryan’s shirt.
“What?”
Ryan blinks, bites his lip. “I don’t know.”
They fall asleep like that, sleep right through until Spencer’s mom comes outside at dusk, shaking Spencer awake lightly and saying things like dinner and catch your death.
*
“I had this dream,” Ryan says, “a few weeks ago, I had this dream.”
“Yeah?”
They’re both lying on Spencer’s bed, beneath the blankets, on top of the pillows, and Ryan’s cheek is squished from where Spencer sees it, his eyes tired, weary, lips parted.
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “In it, in this dream I had, you went away,” Ryan says and his voice doesn’t catch of anything. He says it like he’s reading out his algebra homework, only he can’t meet Spencer’s eye anymore, his fingers clenched tight in the sheets. “You went away, and you didn’t come back and it hurt a lot.”
Spencer’s not sure what he’s meant to say to that, so he just twists closer, moves until their noses are almost touching. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan says. “I think you woke up and realised you didn’t need me, like, you didn’t need me like I needed you.”
“Huh,” Spencer mumbles, and he moves closer until they’re breathing the same air. Their lips are so close like this, too close, and something’s beating it’s way around Spencer’s stomach, fighting to get out, and he tries to bite it back, hold it in his stomach, but he can’t, and he squashes his fingers into the mattress to stop himself reaching out. “That’s stupid,” he says.
“Yeah,” Ryan mumbles, and he moves in closer, curls a hand around the back of Spencer’s head, and says, “Only not really,” and kisses him.
It’s feather light, hardly touches Spencer’s lips until he moves closer, presses their lips together and it’s so chaste, so, so unreal. Spencer thinks he’s seen more sexy kisses between his parents, but he doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything this intimate. This new, this tender, fragile, like he could break it between his fingers if he wanted, if he didn’t.
Ryan’s fingers thread in his hair, and Spencer can’t move his from the mattress, backs away enough to have to lean in again, kisses Ryan’s lips, cheek, nose, chin, mouth.
He wonders if this was always just the next logical step.
“You’re my best friend,” Ryan whispers, “And I need you, okay?”
“Yeah,” Spencer mumbles, and he kisses Ryan again, chaste. “Yeah.”
*
In Ryan’s dream, they’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean. There’s not anything for miles, just endless hours of blue and blues, of shades of grey and woes and hurts and Ryan spends years listening to her cry.
In the dream, Spencer holds Ryan’s hand, and they grow old, grey, wrinkled until suddenly, suddenly they’re not, suddenly Ryan falls overboard and he’s fourteen again, gasping for air until water fills his lungs and he chokes on her sorrows and his own. He reaches, grapples, struggles, and Spencer stands and watches him drown.
Ryan wakes up, and he’s wet the bed. His hands shake and he staggers to the bathroom, looks in the mirror and feels young and stupid and more than a little pathetic. He can hear his dad vomiting in the room down the hall and the sound of the television set downstairs bleeding Jerry Springer and Ryan can’t breathe, gasps for air and feels like he’s still underwater, like there’s nothing there on the surface to reach for.
Ryan’s dream, it’s not a revelation, it just hurts.
*
Listening to:
Brooke Fraser - Deciphering Me
Something for Kate - You Only Hide...
Lior - This Old Love
Missy Higgins - Don't Ever
Donavon Frankenreiter - Stay Young
Bernard Fanning - Watch Over Me
Spencer/Ryan. PG. 2,887 words. Unbeta'd.
Pre-Panic!days. They're 13 and 14 respectively. I don't know where this came from, I wrote it over about three hours whilst drinking too much coffee and doing an aerobics tape with my sister. You'd think it'd be a happier fic *facepalms*
“I had a dream the other night.”
Spencer kicks at the ground with the toe of his sneaker, says, “Yeah?”
It’s not even past five yet, but the sun’s already setting low, bleeding warm reds and yellows into the cold blue, white, like blood down a drain, paint down a sink. Spencer shields his eyes against it, and Ryan, he doesn’t do anything. He’s hanging, both hands gripping a low branch of one of the trees in Spencer’s backyard.
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “It was weird.”
Maybe Spencer would say something else, but Ryan, he’s not hoping for that. Ryan says things in his own time, and Spencer will always wait for him.
Ryan’s eyes clench shut, like he’s remembering something he’d rather not, and Spencer kicks at one of the rock’s his sister painted at preschool.
“My mom called the other day.”
“In the dream?”
“No,” Ryan says, and he drops from the tree, falls on the grass hard enough that Spencer can almost hear the crack, crunch, snap. “For real,” he says. “She called to wish me a happy birthday.”
Spencer squints, because, “Your birthday was four months ago.”
“Yeah,” Ryan shrugs. “But she called, so that was nice of her, I think. She didn’t have to call at all.”
“No,” Spencer agrees, and he moves to drop onto the grass beside Ryan, leans back enough until he’s staring up at the sunset, at the way the clouds runaway with the sun. “She didn’t have to, but she should have.”
Ryan shrugs again, and drops back into the grass beside Spencer. He’s picking at the brown leaves that eloped with each other; fell from the tree in a fit of romance, that’s what Ryan said the other day. Spencer thinks they fell because it’s the fall season, and there’s not really all that much more to it.
Ryan, he thinks, is a hopeless romantic.
Or maybe just hopeless.
“She asked me what it was like being fourteen,” Ryan says, and he scrunches up his nose, stares over at Spencer with his forehead wrinkled from thinking too hard, and his lips pursed. “I told her it wasn’t so great.”
“I bet it’s cooler than thirteen,” Spencer says, and he rolls over until he’s on his belly, watching the grass with half-lidded blue eyes, and Ryan, he just says, “Only cooler because it’s a year closer to being grown up for real.”
Spencer bites his lip, but kind of agrees. “You staying for dinner?”
What he’s really saying is you staying the night?
“Yeah,” Ryan says.
He stays for three days.
*
It’s not that Ryan’s dad is a bad person; it’s just that he has so much in his head and his heart that he can’t communicate, can’t connect. It’s complicated. That’s what Ryan says.
Spencer doesn’t think it’s that complicated. Ryan’s dad drinks. Ryan’s dad gets drunk, and then he’s an asshole, and then Ryan goes to Spencer’s house, bruised and battered and babbling about whose fault it is, and whose fault it isn’t.
It’s never Ryan’s dad’s fault.
Only, Spencer thinks, it always is.
It’s not complicated.
“He was upset,” Ryan says, and there are bruises on the side of Ryan’s arm in the shape of fingers, and his clothes, they smell of alcohol Spencer knows Ryan didn’t drink. “A guy at work was an asshole to him, and then I said stuff I shouldn’t have, and it’s not his fault he got mad. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Ryan spins stories like he washes his hair. Rinse, lather, repeat.
“It looks like he might get fired,” rinse, “and a mortgage payment comes out at the end of the week, and he thinks I don’t know, but I do, Spence, because I opened the bills the other day.” Lather.
“It’s not his fault,” Ryan says, and he plays with the bottom of his t-shirt, wraps it around his fingers. Repeat. “It’s not.”
“Okay,” Spencer says, and he goes to the linen closet in the hall, grabs another pillow and another blanket. His mom bought Ryan a toothbrush last month, a bar of soap and a pair of pyjamas that fit. His mom does shit like that sometimes, and Spencer hates that she has too.
He piles the stuff in one arm and grabs Ryan in the other, pulls him into the bathroom and tells him to shower, to clean up, and then to come to bed.
Ryan stares like he always does, eyes wide, like he can’t quite believe Spencer puts up with this shit, and Spencer, Jesus, he hates that look.
“Just do it,” Spencer mumbles. “We have school in the morning.”
*
“There’s this girl in my math class,” Ryan says. “Her name’s Heidi Elliot and she has the worst hand-writing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“Cool,” Spencer says, and he picks at the sponge cake his mom left them for tea. His mom’s a good cook, but Spencer’s not hungry.
“She asked me to go see Jaws with her at that cinema that plays all the old movies.”
“Cool,” Spencer says again, and he breaks up the cake with the back of his fork, squashes it together on the plate. He doesn’t look up, but he knows Ryan’s looking at him, eyes wide, lips parted.
“It might be,” Ryan shrugs. “I said yes, but like, if you don’t want me to go, I can stay here. We can watch Sixth Sense and I’ll pretend not to see you cry at the ending.”
Spencer flips him off, “Fuck you, I don’t cry at that crap.”
Ryan laughs, drops his forehead to the table so all Spencer can see is a pair of thin, shaking shoulders. “You do,” Ryan mumbles, and it’s stifled against the tabletop, Spencer has to strain to hear. “Every time Bruce Willis makes those crazy dopey eyes at his wife you cry like a little bitch.”
“I’m surprised you can hear me through your wails of emo heartache,” Spencer says, and he flicks cake into Ryan’s hair. Ryan doesn’t even notice.
“I won’t go,” he says to the table. “If you don’t want me to.”
Spencer pauses, looks at the slope of Ryan’s slight shoulders, at his fingers spread on the table and the cake in his hair. Says, “No,” says, “You should go.”
*
Later, Spencer wakes up. The clock beside his bed reads half-past one in the morning, and Spencer tries to roll over, would, but there’s a head in the crook of his neck, an arm around his waist and a body pressed too tight against his.
Ryan’s feet are always freezing in the evenings, and Spencer spreads his calves enough to trap Ryan’s feet between them, let his tracksuit-legs soak in the cold and Spencer, he just breathes and falls back to sleep.
*
“Was it any good?” Spencer asks.
Ryan shrugs a little, scrunches his nose, says, “The movie was alright, but Heidi kept trying to make-out. I don’t know, I just don’t think she’s my type.”
“Okay,” Spencer says. “We should go get a tub of ice-cream and watch Titanic on mute. You can be Leonardo Di-Crap-rio this time.”
The smile slides across Ryan’s face like water across tiles - it only catches in the cracks once or twice.
*
The rap on the door wouldn’t be much of a surprise, Spencer supposes, if Ryan hadn’t stopped knocking last year. He pulls open the front door, and thinks that maybe, maybe the bloody nose has something to do with it.
“Huh,” Spencer says.
Ryan’s never been a big kid, but he looks too small right now, shoulders drawn and blood drying beneath his nose, and Spencer doesn’t think he’ll ever not be too young for this shit.
“I fell,” Ryan says, and Spencer just nods, steps aside until Ryan slips in, moves much too quietly, uneasily, up the stairs and into the bathroom, and Spencer doesn’t see red, but maybe he sees every other colour. Maybe it bursts behind his eyes like something worth holding on to.
Spencer stills himself, breathes, closes his eyes. Then he follows Ryan upstairs.
*
Ryan’s rubbed most of the blood off his face when Spencer gets there, but he still looks frailer than normal, breakable, skin too pale and arms too thin, and Spencer grips his wrists, asks, “You fell?”
Ryan looks at him for a minute, unblinking, says, “Yes,” and goes back to washing his face.
“Are you sure?” Spencer asks. “It’s a funny way to fall.”
The eye roll’s not unexpected, the glare is. “Fell, Spencer.”
He’s not sure what to say to that, because Spencer remembers words like wait and maybe, but there’s something bubbling in the pit of his stomach, working it’s way into his throat until Spencer’s not sure if he wants to yell or lash out or cry.
He doesn’t think any of those would help.
Ryan’s rubbing at the space at the corner of his nose too vigorously, enough to flake the skin, and Spencer doesn’t think anything of it, just grabs the wet hand towel from Ryan’s clenched fingers, and digs around in the drawer by the sink to find some antiseptic cream.
“I’m sorry,” Ryan mumbles, and he sounds like he means it, looks like it too, with the way his arms cross tight over his chest and his feet turn into each other on the floor. “It’s not even a big deal.”
“It is,” Spencer says, and he finds some cotton balls, pours enough antiseptic cream onto it to move and rub at the dried blood on Ryan’s face. Spencer bites his lip for a minute, rolls his eyes to the ceiling and adds, “You’re a big deal.”
He can feel Ryan’s eyes on him, wide and stupid, and he’s not surprised when Ryan bats his hand away from his face, but maybe he is when Ryan wraps his own arms around Spencer’s shoulders. He burries his face in Spencer’s neck, and when he breathes, warm and wet into Spencer’s skin, the shiver is a tremor and an earthquake all at once, deep enough that Spencer slides his eyes shut and thinks of happier times.
“You’re not allowed to leave me behind, alright?” Ryan mumbles, and Spencer just thinks, says, “I don’t think I’d ever want to.”
*
“Is it weird,” Spencer says, and he’s flicking through the channels, soap after soap after soap. “Is it weird that I haven’t kissed anyone yet?”
Ryan shrugs, says, “Dude, you’re like, thirteen.”
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Yeah, you’re right.”
He doesn’t say he dreamt of kissing Ryan the night before.
He thinks that would be a little weird.
*
“Heidi asked me if I wanted to go out with her again,” Ryan says, and he’s eating a bowl of pasta that Spencer’s mom wouldn’t let him leave without finishing.
“I said no,” Ryan says, and he eats a forkful of pasta, smiles a little, not enough to be notable if you didn’t know him.
“Why?” Spencer asks, and he’s waiting at the table for Ryan to finish eating. He wants to go watch Happy Gilmore, but his mom gets mad at him if anyone eats on the new sofa. “The first date wasn’t that bad was it?”
Ryan looks at him pointedly, fork pausing halfway to his mouth. “I said she’s not my type, remember?”
“Yeah,” Spencer says. “Yeah, I remember.”
*
A year ago, Spencer’s dad bought a hammock. It was kind of awesome when they first bought it because Spencer and his sisters could all sit in it together, huddle in close and Spencer would whisper stories about princes and damsels and heroes.
Sometimes Ryan would lie on the floor beneath it, smile up at him through the flimsy cotton until Spencer couldn’t really see anything else, until the moment went into freeze-frame, slow motion, all those dumb clichés, would all build ridiculously until Spencer’s sister poked him, told him to keep going.
Keep going.
The novelty wore off too quickly. Spencer grew, and his sister’s did too, and suddenly piling into a hammock together seemed something unfamiliar and too familiar all at once. Something stupid.
Ryan never said anything about it, so that’s why it comes as a surprise when he asks to lie in it. Just this once.
“I don’t know,” Ryan says. “I just feel like it.”
So he does lie in it, enveloped by the dirty off-white cotton and Spencer isn’t sure which parts of him feel when Ryan pulls him into the hammock too.
“Cosy,” Ryan mumbles, and Spencer chokes out a laugh, fidgets, because they’re almost on top of each other. Ryan’s tiny frame fitting on top of his like a second hoodie, skin, whatever. His fingers slide to the small of Ryan’s back, to keep him steady.
“This is sort of gay,” Spencer says, and Ryan licks Spencer’s cheek, provoking a cry of outrage.
“Fuck you, dude,” and Spencer tries to rock the hammock over, tries to find his feet, but Ryan clings, wraps his arms tight around Spencer’s waist and laughs into his neck and Spencer’s never been able to do anything that could take away Ryan’s smile, laugh, not when it’s for real.
Ryan’s laughter dies in his throat, and Spencer’s left with heat on every side, building in his stomach, legs, snaking up his chest and he knows it bleeds in his cheeks, knows he looks fucking ridiculous, but Ryan’s so close, fingers feather-light through Spencer’s t-shirt and it isn’t anything, shouldn’t be, only that it is.
“Spence,” Ryan mumbles, and Spencer looks down, up, anywhere, everywhere, and Ryan just pinches his sides. “We should do something,” Ryan says, and Spencer looks at him, finally, and they’re so close, too close. He rubs his sweaty palms on the back of Ryan’s shirt.
“What?”
Ryan blinks, bites his lip. “I don’t know.”
They fall asleep like that, sleep right through until Spencer’s mom comes outside at dusk, shaking Spencer awake lightly and saying things like dinner and catch your death.
*
“I had this dream,” Ryan says, “a few weeks ago, I had this dream.”
“Yeah?”
They’re both lying on Spencer’s bed, beneath the blankets, on top of the pillows, and Ryan’s cheek is squished from where Spencer sees it, his eyes tired, weary, lips parted.
“Yeah,” Ryan says. “In it, in this dream I had, you went away,” Ryan says and his voice doesn’t catch of anything. He says it like he’s reading out his algebra homework, only he can’t meet Spencer’s eye anymore, his fingers clenched tight in the sheets. “You went away, and you didn’t come back and it hurt a lot.”
Spencer’s not sure what he’s meant to say to that, so he just twists closer, moves until their noses are almost touching. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Ryan says. “I think you woke up and realised you didn’t need me, like, you didn’t need me like I needed you.”
“Huh,” Spencer mumbles, and he moves closer until they’re breathing the same air. Their lips are so close like this, too close, and something’s beating it’s way around Spencer’s stomach, fighting to get out, and he tries to bite it back, hold it in his stomach, but he can’t, and he squashes his fingers into the mattress to stop himself reaching out. “That’s stupid,” he says.
“Yeah,” Ryan mumbles, and he moves in closer, curls a hand around the back of Spencer’s head, and says, “Only not really,” and kisses him.
It’s feather light, hardly touches Spencer’s lips until he moves closer, presses their lips together and it’s so chaste, so, so unreal. Spencer thinks he’s seen more sexy kisses between his parents, but he doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything this intimate. This new, this tender, fragile, like he could break it between his fingers if he wanted, if he didn’t.
Ryan’s fingers thread in his hair, and Spencer can’t move his from the mattress, backs away enough to have to lean in again, kisses Ryan’s lips, cheek, nose, chin, mouth.
He wonders if this was always just the next logical step.
“You’re my best friend,” Ryan whispers, “And I need you, okay?”
“Yeah,” Spencer mumbles, and he kisses Ryan again, chaste. “Yeah.”
*
In Ryan’s dream, they’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean. There’s not anything for miles, just endless hours of blue and blues, of shades of grey and woes and hurts and Ryan spends years listening to her cry.
In the dream, Spencer holds Ryan’s hand, and they grow old, grey, wrinkled until suddenly, suddenly they’re not, suddenly Ryan falls overboard and he’s fourteen again, gasping for air until water fills his lungs and he chokes on her sorrows and his own. He reaches, grapples, struggles, and Spencer stands and watches him drown.
Ryan wakes up, and he’s wet the bed. His hands shake and he staggers to the bathroom, looks in the mirror and feels young and stupid and more than a little pathetic. He can hear his dad vomiting in the room down the hall and the sound of the television set downstairs bleeding Jerry Springer and Ryan can’t breathe, gasps for air and feels like he’s still underwater, like there’s nothing there on the surface to reach for.
Ryan’s dream, it’s not a revelation, it just hurts.
*
Listening to:
Brooke Fraser - Deciphering Me
Something for Kate - You Only Hide...
Lior - This Old Love
Missy Higgins - Don't Ever
Donavon Frankenreiter - Stay Young
Bernard Fanning - Watch Over Me