Same Song Twice (PG-13)
Title: Same Song Twice
Author: justthismorning
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Spencer/Ryan
Word Count: 2200
Summary: Ryan's mom took him with her when she left, and Spencer and Ryan never met as children. When Spencer finds him, years later, Ryan's just the remnant of a broken shell - addicted and helpless and maybe shuffling his way back to actually living once more.
Beta: willow_fae_20
Warnings: Addiction fic. In other words, vague references to drugs and drug use
A/N: Surprisingly not entirely prompted by Ryan's crack scandal. Although, I'll admit it did have some influence. lol. Also, I know, I know. Total deviation from my OTP. This is probably not the time to tell you I have a Jon/Ryan cooking, or a Ryan/Brendon on the go, right?
I found him at the end of my driveway.
“Dude, you reek,” I said.
He peered at me from behind greasy bangs. In between telling me he’d lost his wallet and his phone and his car keys, I must have told him that I didn’t let addicts in my house.
When I left for work, he was still standing at the end of my driveway.
--
“I wasn’t always a junkie,” he said, when I pulled in after work. There was grass on the seat of his pants and the rosy beginnings of a sunburn painting his cheeks. I rolled up my window, making his words sound muffled until I opened the car door.
“I used to be…” he said.
“Innocent?”
“Whole.”
--
“You might as well shower,” I said. I held out the orange juice. I didn’t offer him any of my morning coffee. I didn’t know if it would react with the drugs, or what. He drank it greedily. The few spare drops that slipped down his chin etched lines through the grit there, clearing paths to the creamy skin hiding behind days worth of stubble.
“If you don’t mind,” he said.
“I mind when you hang around in my driveway, and that hasn’t stopped you yet.”
“I’ll be five minutes.” I followed him into the house and gave him a clean pair of boxers that I’d grown out of.
--
I gave him a bowl of Cheerios before I made him go stand on the curb again. He sat on the lawn there, picked at the end of one of his scarves, threaded his fingers through the grass and hung his feet into the road. I tried not to watch him as his image shrunk in my rear view mirror.
--
“You have a hobo outside your house.”
I shrugged and rinsed out the coffee mugs. He’d been sleeping stretched out beside the bushes when we returned from the show last night, and she hadn’t seen him. Now he was facing the road with his arms wide and his head tipped back.
I buttered the toast and brought it out to him. He ate everything but the crusts, which he tucked in his pockets with a shy grin.
--
“You can’t do drugs in my house,” I told him and watched for the flinch. There was none, just wide honey colored eyes. Something was smudged on his nose.
“No drugs in your house,” he said slowly.
“I will kick you out,” I said. He nodded.
“No drugs.” His pupils were enormous.
--
He lost his juice glass three times inside the hour, and by the time I sent him to bed, his feet were restlessly shuffling against the carpet under his chair. We were watching a special on Discovery. It was about otters.
“I always wanted to be an otter,” he said.
The voice-over said otters were very playful. “You wouldn’t like it,” I said.
“I don’t like being me.” When he went to bed, his borrowed pyjama pants sagged on his hips and the neck of the t-shirt I loaned him fell off his shoulder. The bones in his spine were so fragile, just prominent bumps leading into his hair.
“Good night,” I said. He didn’t answer me.
--
I made sure he was wearing clean clothes when I sent him outside in the mornings. He jiggled his leg, flicked the end of his scarf until it was a blur of movement.
“I’ll be home at five fifteen,” I said before I pulled out of the driveway.
He nodded at me. He didn’t have a watch. He’d be there anyway. He always was.
--
“My dad died a little while ago,” he said. His hands fluttered over the scarf, twisting it and rolling it and laughing when it sprung free from his fingers. “Mom wouldn’t ever let me see him.”
The steaks were done. I made him set the table, one place for me and one for him, while I turned off the grill and got the pitcher of water from the fridge.
“He used to live down the street from you. We could have been friends.”
I didn’t tell him probably not. I peered at him while he cut his steak into tiny, tiny pieces and spread them all over his plate.
“You’re George’s kid,” is what I said. The dainty way he chewed his meat and the lopsided grin pulling on his mouth answered for me.
--
“The hobo is in you spare room.”
He was lying on the bed, giggling through a nosebleed and I had told him no drugs in the house.
“He’s not a hobo if he has somewhere to stay.”
She looked at me. “He’s not staying here. That’s ridiculous, Spencer.”
She left an hour later, with all the clothes she’d ever left at my house, and a stream of angry words floating in her wake.
“Did your girlfriend just break up with you?” he asked and his eyes were sad when I looked at him.
“I broke up with her.”
--
“I’m trying to quit,” he said into the sunset. “It’s not good for me.”
The orange light burned the roof of the house across the street. It ghosted over the bones of his face, into the hollows beneath his eyes.
“The drugs?”
He shrugged, and the hoodie I gave him bunched around his shoulders. He didn’t look at me when he said, “All of it.”
--
“Don’t answer the door,” I said. I felt like my mother, except I wasn’t leaving her teenage son in charge of the twins. “Don’t answer the phone. My work number is on the fridge.”
He bounced on the balls of his feet and huffed out a breath.
He didn’t say goodbye, but his face stayed in the front window until I rounded the corner and pulled out of sight.
--
He wasn’t a bad cook. He made pasta with sauce from a can, but he chopped up peppers and mushrooms, and grated mozzarella cheese into it.
“It’s not as good as yours,” he said, with his eyes wide and wet. I put my hand over his, to keep his fork from rattling against the plate. I didn’t tell him I’d done a year in culinary arts before I got my business degree. By dessert, he was tipping his head back and letting easy, loose chuckles bubble from his throat.
--
The lump in my guest bed didn’t move when I opened the door.
“If you don’t get up before I leave for work, I’m going to think you died.”
There was a groan at that, and a shuffle as the blankets slipped sideways. “I’ll make sure I die outside,” he said. I closed the door and fixed the knot of my tie. He was still sleeping when I locked up the house.
--
“Hey, focus,” I said, when he ran his fingers through the beads on the rack behind me. The sales lady raised her eyebrow at him.
“I don’t need new pants,” he said. When I looked pointedly at his tattered slacks, he followed my gaze and seemed to get stuck staring at his shoes.
“Pants, then shoes, then lunch,” I said. The sales lady raised her other eyebrow as well and inched away.
“I don’t need your fucking charity,” he snapped, loud enough for the entire store to hear.
We still walked out with a pair of black pinstriped dress pants and a grey vest he’d been staring at.
--
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said. She shuffled from foot to foot, but never tried to come in. “I see what you’re doing. I understand now.”
He stood behind me, watching. I could feel him breathe, even though he stayed as far back as the entrance to the kitchen.
“We can give it another try. I understand now.”
When he faded back into the kitchen, my skin itched, and my fingers curled around air as though they were grasping the thin bones of his wrist.
“I don’t think so,” I said, and closed the door.
--
The sound of glass shattering woke me. It was almost four o’clock.
“Ryan?” I called, as I crept down the stairs and into the kitchen.
He was crouched over the shredded remains of his favourite juice glass. The tears dripping off his chin mixed with the sticky liquid staining his feet.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he whispered, when I tugged him to his feet. It took him a moment, but he tucked his face into the crook of my neck. His chin jabbed into my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I said.
--
“Is this your hobo? Ow!”
My sister glared at me, baleful and pouting.
“I’m not a hobo,” he said.
“He’s not a hobo,” I said.
My sister rubbed her arm where my other sister pinched her. “Fine. Is this your junkie,” she said.
He didn’t protest the terminology. Neither did I. I didn’t know if it was still true or not. I was afraid to ask.
--
I came home to find him on the floor, surrounded by newspapers open to the classifieds, and fliers torn down from bus stops and telephone poles. He wasn’t looking at them. He was on his back, with his limbs spread messily over the sprawl of paper.
His eyes were closed.
“I want,” he said, when he heard my footsteps. “And sometimes it’s real bad.”
“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t know, not really.
--
He got fired from his job as a short order cook in a tiny diner-type thing. He yelled at a customer and then broke down crying over the grill. I came to pick him up and we drove to the edge of town, far enough that the lights were dimmer and we could pretend for a little while.
“Dad was an addict,” he said.
“Recovered alcoholic,” I corrected and thought of George, of his sad, sad eyes and his even sadder smile whenever he talked about his son, the one he never saw.
“Can I do this?”
I squeezed his hand where it was fidgeting on his lap. “Yes,” I said. I repeated it in my head, just to convince myself.
--
When my door creaked open, and the sliver of moonlight leaked into the room and crept up my face, I shifted over and waited for the bed to dip under his weight. His hands were cold, trembling.
“A new job,” he said, but the words were mostly lost in the cotton of my shirt.
“I’ll come get you if you need me,” I said into his hair. It smelled clean; it smelled familiar.
--
“Just water,” I told the waitress, when she handed us the drink menu. She glanced down at our suits - mine from my cousin’s wedding last summer. His was new, still pressed and sharp.
“Okay,” she said and disappeared into the clatter and noise of the restaurant. The champagne bucket of the next table was too close.
“I’m clean,” he said, following my eyes.
“I know,” I said. I hadn’t known. Maybe I should have. I smiled across the table at him, wanted to smile so hard my face would be sore for weeks from it. He grinned shyly back.
--
He got his fourth pay check, and then his fifth, from the bookstore. “I can move out,” he said.
I stared at him. It was his turn. He was winning. I was kind of bad at Scrabble.
“Don’t,” I said.
He laid out his squares, tallied his points. “Okay.”
--
“You’re in love with him,” she said. It was raining and her car was sitting on the street. The fat beads of moisture gathered on the surface and rolled, pulled by gravity, until they fell into the gutter and washed away with the rest of the water.
“Why are you here?” I asked. He was at work. I was supposed to pick him up in an hour. He called me and asked.
“I came to return this,” she said, and handed me the key to my house, the one I’d forgotten she’d had.
“He has one?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Yeah, he does.” She nodded too.
“Good.”
--
I found him on the end of my driveway, when I came home from work. He was smiling. He was wearing the new hat I bought him for his birthday.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said when I got out of the car.
The sun was behind me, setting behind the houses. The last of the light caught on the strands of his hair and made them shine.
“I’m going to kiss you,” I said and tugged him to me.
“Okay,” he said, but he was already against my mouth and his breath tickled. “Okay.”
I didn’t have to see his smile to know it was there.
Author: justthismorning
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Spencer/Ryan
Word Count: 2200
Summary: Ryan's mom took him with her when she left, and Spencer and Ryan never met as children. When Spencer finds him, years later, Ryan's just the remnant of a broken shell - addicted and helpless and maybe shuffling his way back to actually living once more.
Beta: willow_fae_20
Warnings: Addiction fic. In other words, vague references to drugs and drug use
A/N: Surprisingly not entirely prompted by Ryan's crack scandal. Although, I'll admit it did have some influence. lol. Also, I know, I know. Total deviation from my OTP. This is probably not the time to tell you I have a Jon/Ryan cooking, or a Ryan/Brendon on the go, right?
I found him at the end of my driveway.
“Dude, you reek,” I said.
He peered at me from behind greasy bangs. In between telling me he’d lost his wallet and his phone and his car keys, I must have told him that I didn’t let addicts in my house.
When I left for work, he was still standing at the end of my driveway.
--
“I wasn’t always a junkie,” he said, when I pulled in after work. There was grass on the seat of his pants and the rosy beginnings of a sunburn painting his cheeks. I rolled up my window, making his words sound muffled until I opened the car door.
“I used to be…” he said.
“Innocent?”
“Whole.”
--
“You might as well shower,” I said. I held out the orange juice. I didn’t offer him any of my morning coffee. I didn’t know if it would react with the drugs, or what. He drank it greedily. The few spare drops that slipped down his chin etched lines through the grit there, clearing paths to the creamy skin hiding behind days worth of stubble.
“If you don’t mind,” he said.
“I mind when you hang around in my driveway, and that hasn’t stopped you yet.”
“I’ll be five minutes.” I followed him into the house and gave him a clean pair of boxers that I’d grown out of.
--
I gave him a bowl of Cheerios before I made him go stand on the curb again. He sat on the lawn there, picked at the end of one of his scarves, threaded his fingers through the grass and hung his feet into the road. I tried not to watch him as his image shrunk in my rear view mirror.
--
“You have a hobo outside your house.”
I shrugged and rinsed out the coffee mugs. He’d been sleeping stretched out beside the bushes when we returned from the show last night, and she hadn’t seen him. Now he was facing the road with his arms wide and his head tipped back.
I buttered the toast and brought it out to him. He ate everything but the crusts, which he tucked in his pockets with a shy grin.
--
“You can’t do drugs in my house,” I told him and watched for the flinch. There was none, just wide honey colored eyes. Something was smudged on his nose.
“No drugs in your house,” he said slowly.
“I will kick you out,” I said. He nodded.
“No drugs.” His pupils were enormous.
--
He lost his juice glass three times inside the hour, and by the time I sent him to bed, his feet were restlessly shuffling against the carpet under his chair. We were watching a special on Discovery. It was about otters.
“I always wanted to be an otter,” he said.
The voice-over said otters were very playful. “You wouldn’t like it,” I said.
“I don’t like being me.” When he went to bed, his borrowed pyjama pants sagged on his hips and the neck of the t-shirt I loaned him fell off his shoulder. The bones in his spine were so fragile, just prominent bumps leading into his hair.
“Good night,” I said. He didn’t answer me.
--
I made sure he was wearing clean clothes when I sent him outside in the mornings. He jiggled his leg, flicked the end of his scarf until it was a blur of movement.
“I’ll be home at five fifteen,” I said before I pulled out of the driveway.
He nodded at me. He didn’t have a watch. He’d be there anyway. He always was.
--
“My dad died a little while ago,” he said. His hands fluttered over the scarf, twisting it and rolling it and laughing when it sprung free from his fingers. “Mom wouldn’t ever let me see him.”
The steaks were done. I made him set the table, one place for me and one for him, while I turned off the grill and got the pitcher of water from the fridge.
“He used to live down the street from you. We could have been friends.”
I didn’t tell him probably not. I peered at him while he cut his steak into tiny, tiny pieces and spread them all over his plate.
“You’re George’s kid,” is what I said. The dainty way he chewed his meat and the lopsided grin pulling on his mouth answered for me.
--
“The hobo is in you spare room.”
He was lying on the bed, giggling through a nosebleed and I had told him no drugs in the house.
“He’s not a hobo if he has somewhere to stay.”
She looked at me. “He’s not staying here. That’s ridiculous, Spencer.”
She left an hour later, with all the clothes she’d ever left at my house, and a stream of angry words floating in her wake.
“Did your girlfriend just break up with you?” he asked and his eyes were sad when I looked at him.
“I broke up with her.”
--
“I’m trying to quit,” he said into the sunset. “It’s not good for me.”
The orange light burned the roof of the house across the street. It ghosted over the bones of his face, into the hollows beneath his eyes.
“The drugs?”
He shrugged, and the hoodie I gave him bunched around his shoulders. He didn’t look at me when he said, “All of it.”
--
“Don’t answer the door,” I said. I felt like my mother, except I wasn’t leaving her teenage son in charge of the twins. “Don’t answer the phone. My work number is on the fridge.”
He bounced on the balls of his feet and huffed out a breath.
He didn’t say goodbye, but his face stayed in the front window until I rounded the corner and pulled out of sight.
--
He wasn’t a bad cook. He made pasta with sauce from a can, but he chopped up peppers and mushrooms, and grated mozzarella cheese into it.
“It’s not as good as yours,” he said, with his eyes wide and wet. I put my hand over his, to keep his fork from rattling against the plate. I didn’t tell him I’d done a year in culinary arts before I got my business degree. By dessert, he was tipping his head back and letting easy, loose chuckles bubble from his throat.
--
The lump in my guest bed didn’t move when I opened the door.
“If you don’t get up before I leave for work, I’m going to think you died.”
There was a groan at that, and a shuffle as the blankets slipped sideways. “I’ll make sure I die outside,” he said. I closed the door and fixed the knot of my tie. He was still sleeping when I locked up the house.
--
“Hey, focus,” I said, when he ran his fingers through the beads on the rack behind me. The sales lady raised her eyebrow at him.
“I don’t need new pants,” he said. When I looked pointedly at his tattered slacks, he followed my gaze and seemed to get stuck staring at his shoes.
“Pants, then shoes, then lunch,” I said. The sales lady raised her other eyebrow as well and inched away.
“I don’t need your fucking charity,” he snapped, loud enough for the entire store to hear.
We still walked out with a pair of black pinstriped dress pants and a grey vest he’d been staring at.
--
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said. She shuffled from foot to foot, but never tried to come in. “I see what you’re doing. I understand now.”
He stood behind me, watching. I could feel him breathe, even though he stayed as far back as the entrance to the kitchen.
“We can give it another try. I understand now.”
When he faded back into the kitchen, my skin itched, and my fingers curled around air as though they were grasping the thin bones of his wrist.
“I don’t think so,” I said, and closed the door.
--
The sound of glass shattering woke me. It was almost four o’clock.
“Ryan?” I called, as I crept down the stairs and into the kitchen.
He was crouched over the shredded remains of his favourite juice glass. The tears dripping off his chin mixed with the sticky liquid staining his feet.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he whispered, when I tugged him to his feet. It took him a moment, but he tucked his face into the crook of my neck. His chin jabbed into my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I said.
--
“Is this your hobo? Ow!”
My sister glared at me, baleful and pouting.
“I’m not a hobo,” he said.
“He’s not a hobo,” I said.
My sister rubbed her arm where my other sister pinched her. “Fine. Is this your junkie,” she said.
He didn’t protest the terminology. Neither did I. I didn’t know if it was still true or not. I was afraid to ask.
--
I came home to find him on the floor, surrounded by newspapers open to the classifieds, and fliers torn down from bus stops and telephone poles. He wasn’t looking at them. He was on his back, with his limbs spread messily over the sprawl of paper.
His eyes were closed.
“I want,” he said, when he heard my footsteps. “And sometimes it’s real bad.”
“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t know, not really.
--
He got fired from his job as a short order cook in a tiny diner-type thing. He yelled at a customer and then broke down crying over the grill. I came to pick him up and we drove to the edge of town, far enough that the lights were dimmer and we could pretend for a little while.
“Dad was an addict,” he said.
“Recovered alcoholic,” I corrected and thought of George, of his sad, sad eyes and his even sadder smile whenever he talked about his son, the one he never saw.
“Can I do this?”
I squeezed his hand where it was fidgeting on his lap. “Yes,” I said. I repeated it in my head, just to convince myself.
--
When my door creaked open, and the sliver of moonlight leaked into the room and crept up my face, I shifted over and waited for the bed to dip under his weight. His hands were cold, trembling.
“A new job,” he said, but the words were mostly lost in the cotton of my shirt.
“I’ll come get you if you need me,” I said into his hair. It smelled clean; it smelled familiar.
--
“Just water,” I told the waitress, when she handed us the drink menu. She glanced down at our suits - mine from my cousin’s wedding last summer. His was new, still pressed and sharp.
“Okay,” she said and disappeared into the clatter and noise of the restaurant. The champagne bucket of the next table was too close.
“I’m clean,” he said, following my eyes.
“I know,” I said. I hadn’t known. Maybe I should have. I smiled across the table at him, wanted to smile so hard my face would be sore for weeks from it. He grinned shyly back.
--
He got his fourth pay check, and then his fifth, from the bookstore. “I can move out,” he said.
I stared at him. It was his turn. He was winning. I was kind of bad at Scrabble.
“Don’t,” I said.
He laid out his squares, tallied his points. “Okay.”
--
“You’re in love with him,” she said. It was raining and her car was sitting on the street. The fat beads of moisture gathered on the surface and rolled, pulled by gravity, until they fell into the gutter and washed away with the rest of the water.
“Why are you here?” I asked. He was at work. I was supposed to pick him up in an hour. He called me and asked.
“I came to return this,” she said, and handed me the key to my house, the one I’d forgotten she’d had.
“He has one?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “Yeah, he does.” She nodded too.
“Good.”
--
I found him on the end of my driveway, when I came home from work. He was smiling. He was wearing the new hat I bought him for his birthday.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said when I got out of the car.
The sun was behind me, setting behind the houses. The last of the light caught on the strands of his hair and made them shine.
“I’m going to kiss you,” I said and tugged him to me.
“Okay,” he said, but he was already against my mouth and his breath tickled. “Okay.”
I didn’t have to see his smile to know it was there.