Fiction: Panic at the Barn Raising
Title: Panic! at the Barn-Raising (or A Little Less 'Sixteen Candles,' A Little More Amish)
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Um. They're Amish.
Disclaimer: They're not really Amish. I made this all up. Don't sue me for anything, I like my house.
Author's Notes: So you know how you make a smartass joking remark, and then suddenly you have an outline, and a file on your computer entitled "The Amish Insanity," and you're doing research because all you know about the Amish you learned on a trip to Amana when you were 9? This is what happens. Un-beta'd, all mistakes are mine. Apologies to any Amish who are offended by this. On to the fic!
~*~
"Spencer, Spencer!"
The cry comes as the door to the clinic flies open and slams shut in nearly the same breath. Spencer sighs, praying for the strength to keep from rolling his eyes as he finishes bandaging the ankle of the youngest Haswell girl. "Next time, look before you leap, young lady."
He pats her knee comfortingly before she limps out. He's not sure he wants to see what Brendon's done now. This is, after all, his cross to bear. He's the one that taught Brendon how to use a hammer, at a barn-raising the summer they'd both been twelve. It's only fitting that he clean up the resulting carnage. He looks up, thankfully taking in blood-free state of Brendon's rough-hewn and oft-patched work clothes. "What did you do now, Brendon?"
"It's not my fault," Brendon's eyes are wide, guileless, which Spencer immediately interprets to mean that whatever happened was in fact Brendon's fault. "The stack of wood just fell over. I think my foot's broken." He hops toward the now-vacated examination table. The table Brendon himself built for Spencer, well for the community, last Christmas. He jumps up, making over-dramatic puppy eyes at Spencer as he plops one booted foot into Spencer's lap. "It feels like dying. Fix me?"
"Like dying?" Spencer does roll his eyes at that. God will just have to forgive him. "Sure, the gangrene's probably already set in. Just let me just get the saw, we'll amputate."
Brendon's mouth drops open, and Spencer has to look away to keep from laughing. Brendon's voice is scandalized when he replies, "Spencer Smith, you leave both my feet attached to me. Aren't you supposed to do no harm? Don't doctors have to swear that?"
"Brendon, you know I'm not really a doctor," Spencer reminds him with a teasing gleam in his eye. "It will be years before I learn all the healing that Deacon Fisher knows. So a foot or two might have to be sacrificed."
He doesn't mention the arguments he's had with his parents, the ones about going away, going to a real school. Learning to truly care for his people. Some days he thinks he'll drown under the weight of their heavy arguments: the corruption of the English, he's only twenty, generations of tradition. He sighs, reaching for the laces of Brendon's boot, carefully undoing them and slipping his foot free of the heavy leather.
"You are a real doctor to me," Brendon says quietly, his voice dipping lower in its sincerity.
"Thank you." Spencer ignores the spark that sends up his spine, pushing the disturbing thought away. He pulls off the black sock, lips quirking as he notices the hole wearing at the toe. Brendon needs a wife. The thought makes him frown suddenly, and he bends over Brendon's naked foot, running his fingers gently across the delicate bones. "Does this hurt?"
"No," Brendon's reply is strangled, half-choked in a way that makes Spencer wonder if he's lying. But why would he? Spencer's deft fingers move on, pressing until Brendon muffles a cry. "There! It hurts there."
Spencer jerks his hands off automatically, then forces himself to touch again, gentle but firm. "It doesn't feel broken. There could be a fracture-" Hairline, he thinks, recalling the descriptions in the texts he has hidden beneath the floorboards under his bed. There's no way of knowing, of course, and Spencer feels a gut-deep longing for the medical wonders denied him, x-rays and the electricity to view them. "I can bind it; there may be swelling. You should keep it elevated when you can, stay off of it whenever possible."
"But who will finish the bed frame for Peter and Patricia?" Brendon counters, laughing. "It has to be done before they return home from visiting next week, and Father is counting on the calf Mr. Wentz has promised for it. 'The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.'"
Spencer smiles, knowing that if it weren't this task, it would be another. Getting Brendon to sit still would require one of God's own miracles. "Do try to exercise caution, Brendon. And stay away from the saw - I refuse to sew your fingers back on."
"I'll just get Ryan to do it," Brendon slides off the table, taking care to land on his good foot. He waggles his still intact fingers in Spencer's direction. "He's a better seamstress than you any way."
~*~
"Horses are Satan's chosen pets." Ryan manages to convey a world of hatred without an iota of actual inflection as he wrinkles his nose and runs the brush over Muffin's hindquarters. Spencer meets his eyes over the mare's back, raising an eyebrow questioningly. "Think about it - the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, that has to be portentous."
Spencer rolls his eyes at his best friend, releasing his sarcasm in this safe-haven from a lecture about strife and vainglory. "Just because they enjoy tossing you around like a child's plaything doesn't make them hell-beasts, Ryan."
"It's but one mark against them," Ryan argues airily, but quietly, in case their voices carry outside the stable. His father would not be well pleased to hear them, speaking English together like they'd sworn to do years ago. When they had to leave school after the eighth grade, step away from that small portal to the outside world and move into their roles as Plain folk, they'd sworn not to lose this bit of learning. Words were important to Ryan, Spencer knew, and so they're important to him too. Ryan wrinkles his nose, ducking down against the plain white scarf closest to his face. "Besides, anything that smells this bad must be of the Devil, seriously."
"What a blessing that you're wearing your twelve protective scarves, then." Spencer deadpans, putting one hand on his hip. Ryan is indeed swathed in a number of them, layered in shades of white and gray and black, and it makes Spencer wonder if Ryan's father has seen him today, and if so, at what consequence. Ryan has never been good at dressing Plain. And Ryan's father has never been good at ignoring what he sees as Ryan's flaws. Ryan's an adult now though, Spencer thinks as he scratches against his new beard, the one he's allowed to have now that he's been baptized, they're both adults and they can make their own decisions. He shifts to lean against the barn wall, curling his thumbs around the suspenders holding up his good church trousers. "Perhaps if you hadn't named her Muffin, she would hate you less."
"I told you, she was already called that when-" Ryan breaks off in the midst of his defense, a distant cry breaking the sacred silence of the Sunday afternoon, followed by a shout of laughter. They both turn to look out the stable door, watching as several small children run by in their Sunday best, smiling and laughing. Not far behind is Brendon, being chased by even more children. He lets them catch him, lets himself be dragged down by his suspenders, dogpiled under a mountain of tiny limbs, his wide-brimmed hat rolling away unnoticed.
"Undignified." Spencer ventures quietly, in Deitsch, without moving.
Ryan's smile is genuine as slowly takes over his whole face. "Decidedly so."
And Spencer can't help but smile back.
~*~
"How exactly did you do this again?"
Brendon has the grace to look sheepish, but the unrepentant grin on his face ruins it. "There might have been a dare involved."
Spencer looks up from the gash across Brendon's knee, alcohol swab poised mid-air, eyebrow arched in question. "A dare? Are you twelve?"
"Some days, Spencer," Brendon nods, not the least embarrassed. "Some days I am indeed twelve. Plus it didn't look that far. I totally could have cleared the gully if I hadn't tripped."
Brendon speaks to him in English, too, when there's no one else around. Spencer never asked him to, never told him about his pact with Ryan. He just does it, switching smoothly back to their mother tongue whenever anyone else comes near.
Brendon is the reason that Ryan and Spencer had gotten to go to English school, instead of going to the one-room schoolhouse favored by their order. Brendon's parents had insisted, when they moved in from a more lax district, that Brendon be allowed the same education that his older siblings had gotten. That was the first time Spencer had ever felt the burn of jealousy, that day when he was ten and Brendon was new and the world that stretched beyond the one lane road they lived on looked even farther out of reach. His mother, bless her, had noticed, and whispered in her husband's ear, and suddenly, when Brendon set off to catch the bus for the first day of real school, Spencer and Ryan went with him, down the dirt road like a band of merry misfits.
So if Brendon wants to speak English with him, that's fine with Spencer, and he doesn't let himself give too much thought about what his life might have been like if Brendon had never tripped into it, just bandages his knee with a light touch and a smirk. "Tripped over your own feet, no doubt."
~*~
Ryan's sitting with Brendon when Spencer walks into the small clinic attached to Deacon Fisher's house, sitting cross-legged on the examination table, laughing at something Brendon's said, eyes alight as he holds a sachet of ice to his forehead.
"Ryan? You're hurt?" And Spencer prides himself on the evenness of his voice, although he can't stop his step from quickening as he crosses the room. His eyes narrow as he lifts the bag to look at a bump on Ryan's forehead and his first thought is quick and murderous, and probably unforgivable in the eyes of the Lord. If Ryan's father did this...
"Muffin finally tired of my attempts to be the next legendary cowboy," Ryan jokes with a half smile on his face, and Spencer can feel some of the tension unlock from his spine.
Brendon cuts into Spencer's relief with a laugh. "You should have seen it, Spence, he actually flew. I think the scarves gave him an extra two, three seconds of air time. It was awesome. His landings, however, could use some work." Spencer laughs despite himself, and meets Brendon's eyes. Sees beyond the amusement there, sees a flash in his eyes, hears the slight quaver in his voice, and knows the fear that coursed through Brendon when Ryan hit the ground, crumpled.
"Did he lose consciousness at all?" Spencer asks Brendon as he crouches down, looking into Ryan's eyes. He begins examining Ryan, shining a penlight into his eyes, watching the reaction of his pupils.
"No, not that I saw." Brendon switches from devil-may-care to grown-up in a heartbeat, and if Spencer weren't so busy worrying about Ryan, it would be harder to ignore the heat that flares in his gut more and more when that happens. "He was already up and cursing Muffin by the time I cleared the fence."
"Nausea? Ringing in your ears? Seeing any lights or spots?" Spencer asks Ryan, getting a negative response for each. "Headache?"
"My head hit the ground," Ryan says to Spencer dryly, giving him a look that succinctly says 'moron' without deigning to go there. "What do you think?"
Brendon laughs as Spencer rolls his eyes, fondly tapping Ryan on the nose with his penlight. "I think you haven't damaged anything that wasn't damaged before. You'll live."
Ryan sticks his tongue out and Spencer wonders for the eight-millionth time how his eyes are not stuck on permanent roll. "If anything changes, you have to mention it immediately. And when you go to bed, you have to be woken up every two hours. You can sleep with me tonight," Spencer says sternly. Brendon makes a slight, strangled noise, and both Ryan and Spencer turn to look at him in surprise.
"I should- I need to go... the cows will be wondering where I've gotten to." Brendon stutters inanely, jumping to his feet and nearly running for the door, almost banging into the doorframe as he goes. Spencer stares after him for a second, before shrugging it off as Brendon just being his spastic self, the same as he's been their whole lives.
Ryan, though, sits lost in thought as Spencer puts a foul-smelling ointment on the bump on his head. It's a full ten minutes before he offers his quiet pronouncement. "Spencer, has it occurred to you that Brendon has gotten clumsier since you've started helping care for the injured?"
Spencer wants to shut his eyes, wants to scream. Of course he's noticed, and for a brief second he hates Ryan for not allowing him his pretenses. There are other things besides medicine that are beyond his reach in this life - this life that he was born into and is all he knows - and it's not fair for Ryan to point them out, not when he knows that Spencer can't have them. He bites back all the vitriolic things he could say to hurt Ryan, to shove sharp words into soft spots, and just quietly ignores the question with a softly-spoken response. "Has it occurred to you that you have to rename that horse before she kills you out of spite, Ryan?"
~*~
The day that changes Spencer's life irrevocably starts out like any other day.
He gets up with the sun. He breaks the fast with his parents, laughing with his sisters, dodging his mother's blatant hints about the middle Buckhout girl, the one she thinks he should court. He works in the fields with his father, following a horse nearly as old as he is, ensuring the rows of fragrant earth are tilled straight.
He works until late afternoon, until the sun is well on its way to the horizon, before Father excuses him to go assist Deacon Fisher. Together, they call on the old and the infirm of their district, and Spencer listens avidly as Deacon Fisher expounds on herbal remedies.
The trouble starts that night at the district meeting. They are of age now, Ryan and Spencer and Brendon, and nothing makes Spencer realize this like walking into the Urie home shoulder to shoulder with his father. One day, he'll be the elder, and the children will be his, and Ryan's, and Brendon's.
He's pulled from this reverie by the shouting coming from the Urie's living room, the angry words made angrier by harsh Germanic syllables. "--we're an Old Order, we do things the way we've always done them. We've no call to change the Ordnung now at the whim of some newcomer!"
Spencer slides into the room after his father, to the sight of Ryan's father shouting and gesturing in Brendon's face, the alleged outsider even after ten years of living in the district. He doesn't need to be close to Mr. Ross to know he's been drinking again; Spencer can see it in the flush of his skin and the hunch of Ryan's shoulders.
Brendon's wide-eyed and nervous, but his voice is calm and respectful as he addresses Ryan's father. "I meant no offense, Deacon Ross. I was only suggesting that we consider purchasing a communal vehicle-"
"It would benefit everyone, Father," Ryan speaks up, and Spencer nearly gasps. Ryan knows better than this, knows better than to cross his father in a temper, but maybe tonight he's tired of it, from the spark that Spencer can see in his eyes even from across the room. "We could deliver our crops into town faster, Brendon could sell more furniture if he could deliver it, and Mr. Schulyer was saying just last week-"
"Keep quiet, Ryan, this is not your concern." No one could miss the dismissive tone in Mr. Ross's voice, and Spencer sees several men look away. "No one cares about your opinion."
Ryan flushes red, and he starts to rise from his chair. "Father, I was just-"
"I told you to hold your tongue!" Mr. Ross grabs Ryan by the shirt neck, pulling him up angrily. "You'll show your father proper respect, boy, or you'll have no father."
Spencer holds his breath as Mr. Ross cocks back a fist. He's never hit Ryan in public before, Spencer knows, because Spencer knows every time Ryan has been hit, or at least every time since he was old enough to know that no one, no one could walk into that many doors. And part of him cheers for his best friend, when he sees the moment in Ryan's eyes when he gathers his courage and crosses the line, when he speaks to his father the way he's always wanted to, his voice grave and earnest and angrier than Spencer's ever heard as he asks, "And how will I be able to tell the difference?"
The crack of fist against jaw echoes through the room, and Spencer's legs finally move like his brain's been ordering them to for what feels like hours, sending him stumbling across the room to the crumpled form of his best friend on the ground. Brendon's beat him there, by sheer dint of being closer, shielding Ryan somehow, despite never having grown much past Spencer's shoulder. Ryan's father, however, doesn't seem interested in going another round, just looking down at his son in disgust. Spencer looks at him, and asks him the question he's wanted to ask for at least a decade. "How could you? He is your son."
"I have no son," Mr. Ross says the words without a slur, but from here, Spencer can smell the alcohol on his breath. "And he has no place in this community."
An audible gasp goes through the room, or maybe it just echoes in Spencer's head, he's not sure. Fit or not, Ryan's father is a deacon and a powerful man in their district. If he shuns Ryan, no one in their community will take him in. No one, Spencer knows by the way his own father looks away from him when Spencer tries to meet his gaze across the room. He looks down at Ryan, cradling his jaw as Brendon helps him sit up, his eyes equal parts anger and anguish as he takes in his father's pronouncement. Spencer has always heard rage described as red, as a heat, but it's a blue ice that runs through him as he turns a withering glare on Mr. Ross. "He always has a place in mine."
He reaches a hand down, helps Ryan to his feet. The room is silent, stunned, as they walk out into the cooling April night. The Urie place is closest to the main road, and they set their feet toward it in unspoken agreement, walking away from the only place that's ever been home. He'll not see his mother again, Spencer thinks numbly, nor his sisters.
They round the bend, hidden from view of the house, and Ryan snaps suddenly, heading for the fence-row to vomit the bile that's been threatening since he stood up. Spencer follows him, rubbing his back soothingly and making shushing noises as Ryan tries to speak through fits of spitting. "Go back, Spence. You can still go back, your family..."
"'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people.'" Spencer quotes softly, the familiar words sliding off his tongue in Deitsch, for the last time, although he doesn't realize it then. Ryan looks at him, eyes wide, like he can't believe something he knows is true. Spencer reaches a hand out, squeezing his shoulder. "You're my family, Ry. You always have been."
Ryan swallows hard, visible in the moonlight, and nods. There's a thrashing sound coming from the field next to them, too big to be a dog, too fast to be livestock, and Spencer has a moment of stupid and horrified thought: Bear. Then he remembers that this is Indiana and there aren't bears and Brendon's head pops over the fencerow as he climbs up and over. A duffel bag lands on the ground just before his feet hit next to it, and he bends down to scoop it up. Spencer recognizes it from the seventh grade, the year Brendon ran track while he and Ryan took band. Spencer wonders for a moment if this is his psyche shattering, the way he's read about in the psychology texts he isn't supposed to have, if his subconscious has just decided he needs his own Brendon if he's going to leave everything else he loves behind. The figments of his imagination can speak though, apparently, because Brendon says, "You guys didn't think you were leaving without me, did you?"
Ryan speaks up finally, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve, as he shakes his head at Brendon. "No, don't. Both of you, don't. It's too much, you can't go back-"
"He was wrong, Ryan, and you. You were standing up for me, and he was wrong. And if they don't see that, then they're wrong too." Brendon shrugs, like he can't understand how anyone could see it any other way, and continues. "And I don't believe what they believe. I thought I could, maybe if I just kept trying hard enough, I could be who they wanted me to be. And now I see that I don't want to be who they want me to be." He shrugs again, like it's no big deal, or like he's embarrassed that he's said so much, and Ryan crosses over to him, hugs him quick and hard. Even in the dark, Spencer can see Brendon hug back. "So let's run away from home already."
They walk all night, dirt road changing to gravel, and then to pavement as the sun starts turning the world pink. They're nearing the outskirts of the town, the one that Spencer has always thought of as Town, but now it occurs to him that of course it isn't the only one. The world is open before them, bathed in dawn and smelling like fresh April rain, and they can, theoretically, go any where their feet will carry them.
A familiar roar sounds behind them, and they move into single-file automatically as a rickety old truck passes by. Spencer's in the lead, and it's a combination of sheer bad luck and timing that when the truck hits the pothole that he's right in line to be doused with muddy water. He hears Ryan's gasp of surprise and Brendon's choked back laughter, and for a moment he fights to stay calm, to take indignity with humility like he's been taught all his life, to turn the other cheek. And then he remembers, he doesn't have to do that any more. He reaches down and scoops up a rock from the roadside and flings it at the truck, taking a deep satisfaction when it pings off the tailgate. Satisfaction, unfortunately, doesn't turn him back into a clean, dry person. "Damn."
And Brendon does start giggling at that, like he can't help himself any more, can't hold back. Spencer grins back at him, feeling for all the world like he's ten and doing something he knows he shouldn't, as he wipes mud out of his beard. Ryan, though, doesn't look happy. "Spencer, Spencer, they're stopping."
Oh. Well, that's not good, Spencer turns warily, and sure enough the truck is pulling over to the side of the road. And Spencer suddenly realizes a couple of things: he's never been in a fight, Ryan weighs 27 pounds soaking wet, Brendon could be blown away with a strong wind, and people who turn the other cheek probably get beaten up a lot less. He squares his shoulders, trying to prepare himself for the worst, watching as a man about his own age slides gracelessly out of the door of the truck, half-spilling on to the roadway. He approaches them with a shout and a wave, eyes dancing with mirth as he nears them.
"Oh, shit. Oh, shit, I got you good," The guy laughs, scratching his own stubble. "I am so sorry! Nice aim, by the way."
"I. You. I am sorry I hit your vehicle," Spencer's English comes out stilted and stuttered, despite all the stealthy practice over the years, nerves stiffening his tone along with his spine.
"Dude, no. I creamed you, man, you had every right. It's cool." Spencer doesn't really understand half of what the guy's saying, but he doesn't seem like he's a threat, so Spencer relaxes just a bit, gives him a small smile as the guy continues. "Did you guys need a ride somewhere? Least I could do, really. I'm Jon, by the way. Jon Walker."
"I am Spencer Smith," Spencer replies formally, and he starts to say thank you but no, until he feels the press of Ryan's hand against his back. They have walked a long way. "We are- we would take a ride but we do not have- we do not know where we are going."
"Adventurers, then? Off to seek your fortune?" Jon's eyes still remain kind as he teases. He gestures behind him, toward the truck. "I'm visiting a cousin, why don't you guys come have some breakfast, get cleaned up?"
Spencer's not sure, wary of strangers, but Brendon pipes up immediately with a hopeful "Breakfast?" and Ryan's stomach growls, and what is he to do? Jon nods, encouraged by Brendon's eagerness. "Yeah, my aunt makes killer, killer pancakes. I was just running to the store to grab something for her, but their farm's just a mile or so back that way."
Spencer nods, his face grave, hoping this isn't a mistake. "We would be pleased to break the fast with you, thank you."
Jon quirks an eyebrow at the odd phrasing, but he just grins wider and says, "Sweet! Hop in!"
They pile in, crammed tight against each other on the truck's bench seat and Spencer slams the door shut. The glove box pops open, whamming directly into Spencer's knee. He gives a little oof of pain, and slams it back shut maybe a little harder than he needs to. Next to him, Ryan gives the first hint of a smile since they left home, small and sideways, and his voice is wry and considered. "I guess the mechanical horses hate you as much as the real ones hate me."
Part Two...
Pairing: Brendon/Spencer
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Um. They're Amish.
Disclaimer: They're not really Amish. I made this all up. Don't sue me for anything, I like my house.
Author's Notes: So you know how you make a smartass joking remark, and then suddenly you have an outline, and a file on your computer entitled "The Amish Insanity," and you're doing research because all you know about the Amish you learned on a trip to Amana when you were 9? This is what happens. Un-beta'd, all mistakes are mine. Apologies to any Amish who are offended by this. On to the fic!
~*~
"Spencer, Spencer!"
The cry comes as the door to the clinic flies open and slams shut in nearly the same breath. Spencer sighs, praying for the strength to keep from rolling his eyes as he finishes bandaging the ankle of the youngest Haswell girl. "Next time, look before you leap, young lady."
He pats her knee comfortingly before she limps out. He's not sure he wants to see what Brendon's done now. This is, after all, his cross to bear. He's the one that taught Brendon how to use a hammer, at a barn-raising the summer they'd both been twelve. It's only fitting that he clean up the resulting carnage. He looks up, thankfully taking in blood-free state of Brendon's rough-hewn and oft-patched work clothes. "What did you do now, Brendon?"
"It's not my fault," Brendon's eyes are wide, guileless, which Spencer immediately interprets to mean that whatever happened was in fact Brendon's fault. "The stack of wood just fell over. I think my foot's broken." He hops toward the now-vacated examination table. The table Brendon himself built for Spencer, well for the community, last Christmas. He jumps up, making over-dramatic puppy eyes at Spencer as he plops one booted foot into Spencer's lap. "It feels like dying. Fix me?"
"Like dying?" Spencer does roll his eyes at that. God will just have to forgive him. "Sure, the gangrene's probably already set in. Just let me just get the saw, we'll amputate."
Brendon's mouth drops open, and Spencer has to look away to keep from laughing. Brendon's voice is scandalized when he replies, "Spencer Smith, you leave both my feet attached to me. Aren't you supposed to do no harm? Don't doctors have to swear that?"
"Brendon, you know I'm not really a doctor," Spencer reminds him with a teasing gleam in his eye. "It will be years before I learn all the healing that Deacon Fisher knows. So a foot or two might have to be sacrificed."
He doesn't mention the arguments he's had with his parents, the ones about going away, going to a real school. Learning to truly care for his people. Some days he thinks he'll drown under the weight of their heavy arguments: the corruption of the English, he's only twenty, generations of tradition. He sighs, reaching for the laces of Brendon's boot, carefully undoing them and slipping his foot free of the heavy leather.
"You are a real doctor to me," Brendon says quietly, his voice dipping lower in its sincerity.
"Thank you." Spencer ignores the spark that sends up his spine, pushing the disturbing thought away. He pulls off the black sock, lips quirking as he notices the hole wearing at the toe. Brendon needs a wife. The thought makes him frown suddenly, and he bends over Brendon's naked foot, running his fingers gently across the delicate bones. "Does this hurt?"
"No," Brendon's reply is strangled, half-choked in a way that makes Spencer wonder if he's lying. But why would he? Spencer's deft fingers move on, pressing until Brendon muffles a cry. "There! It hurts there."
Spencer jerks his hands off automatically, then forces himself to touch again, gentle but firm. "It doesn't feel broken. There could be a fracture-" Hairline, he thinks, recalling the descriptions in the texts he has hidden beneath the floorboards under his bed. There's no way of knowing, of course, and Spencer feels a gut-deep longing for the medical wonders denied him, x-rays and the electricity to view them. "I can bind it; there may be swelling. You should keep it elevated when you can, stay off of it whenever possible."
"But who will finish the bed frame for Peter and Patricia?" Brendon counters, laughing. "It has to be done before they return home from visiting next week, and Father is counting on the calf Mr. Wentz has promised for it. 'The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.'"
Spencer smiles, knowing that if it weren't this task, it would be another. Getting Brendon to sit still would require one of God's own miracles. "Do try to exercise caution, Brendon. And stay away from the saw - I refuse to sew your fingers back on."
"I'll just get Ryan to do it," Brendon slides off the table, taking care to land on his good foot. He waggles his still intact fingers in Spencer's direction. "He's a better seamstress than you any way."
~*~
"Horses are Satan's chosen pets." Ryan manages to convey a world of hatred without an iota of actual inflection as he wrinkles his nose and runs the brush over Muffin's hindquarters. Spencer meets his eyes over the mare's back, raising an eyebrow questioningly. "Think about it - the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, that has to be portentous."
Spencer rolls his eyes at his best friend, releasing his sarcasm in this safe-haven from a lecture about strife and vainglory. "Just because they enjoy tossing you around like a child's plaything doesn't make them hell-beasts, Ryan."
"It's but one mark against them," Ryan argues airily, but quietly, in case their voices carry outside the stable. His father would not be well pleased to hear them, speaking English together like they'd sworn to do years ago. When they had to leave school after the eighth grade, step away from that small portal to the outside world and move into their roles as Plain folk, they'd sworn not to lose this bit of learning. Words were important to Ryan, Spencer knew, and so they're important to him too. Ryan wrinkles his nose, ducking down against the plain white scarf closest to his face. "Besides, anything that smells this bad must be of the Devil, seriously."
"What a blessing that you're wearing your twelve protective scarves, then." Spencer deadpans, putting one hand on his hip. Ryan is indeed swathed in a number of them, layered in shades of white and gray and black, and it makes Spencer wonder if Ryan's father has seen him today, and if so, at what consequence. Ryan has never been good at dressing Plain. And Ryan's father has never been good at ignoring what he sees as Ryan's flaws. Ryan's an adult now though, Spencer thinks as he scratches against his new beard, the one he's allowed to have now that he's been baptized, they're both adults and they can make their own decisions. He shifts to lean against the barn wall, curling his thumbs around the suspenders holding up his good church trousers. "Perhaps if you hadn't named her Muffin, she would hate you less."
"I told you, she was already called that when-" Ryan breaks off in the midst of his defense, a distant cry breaking the sacred silence of the Sunday afternoon, followed by a shout of laughter. They both turn to look out the stable door, watching as several small children run by in their Sunday best, smiling and laughing. Not far behind is Brendon, being chased by even more children. He lets them catch him, lets himself be dragged down by his suspenders, dogpiled under a mountain of tiny limbs, his wide-brimmed hat rolling away unnoticed.
"Undignified." Spencer ventures quietly, in Deitsch, without moving.
Ryan's smile is genuine as slowly takes over his whole face. "Decidedly so."
And Spencer can't help but smile back.
~*~
"How exactly did you do this again?"
Brendon has the grace to look sheepish, but the unrepentant grin on his face ruins it. "There might have been a dare involved."
Spencer looks up from the gash across Brendon's knee, alcohol swab poised mid-air, eyebrow arched in question. "A dare? Are you twelve?"
"Some days, Spencer," Brendon nods, not the least embarrassed. "Some days I am indeed twelve. Plus it didn't look that far. I totally could have cleared the gully if I hadn't tripped."
Brendon speaks to him in English, too, when there's no one else around. Spencer never asked him to, never told him about his pact with Ryan. He just does it, switching smoothly back to their mother tongue whenever anyone else comes near.
Brendon is the reason that Ryan and Spencer had gotten to go to English school, instead of going to the one-room schoolhouse favored by their order. Brendon's parents had insisted, when they moved in from a more lax district, that Brendon be allowed the same education that his older siblings had gotten. That was the first time Spencer had ever felt the burn of jealousy, that day when he was ten and Brendon was new and the world that stretched beyond the one lane road they lived on looked even farther out of reach. His mother, bless her, had noticed, and whispered in her husband's ear, and suddenly, when Brendon set off to catch the bus for the first day of real school, Spencer and Ryan went with him, down the dirt road like a band of merry misfits.
So if Brendon wants to speak English with him, that's fine with Spencer, and he doesn't let himself give too much thought about what his life might have been like if Brendon had never tripped into it, just bandages his knee with a light touch and a smirk. "Tripped over your own feet, no doubt."
~*~
Ryan's sitting with Brendon when Spencer walks into the small clinic attached to Deacon Fisher's house, sitting cross-legged on the examination table, laughing at something Brendon's said, eyes alight as he holds a sachet of ice to his forehead.
"Ryan? You're hurt?" And Spencer prides himself on the evenness of his voice, although he can't stop his step from quickening as he crosses the room. His eyes narrow as he lifts the bag to look at a bump on Ryan's forehead and his first thought is quick and murderous, and probably unforgivable in the eyes of the Lord. If Ryan's father did this...
"Muffin finally tired of my attempts to be the next legendary cowboy," Ryan jokes with a half smile on his face, and Spencer can feel some of the tension unlock from his spine.
Brendon cuts into Spencer's relief with a laugh. "You should have seen it, Spence, he actually flew. I think the scarves gave him an extra two, three seconds of air time. It was awesome. His landings, however, could use some work." Spencer laughs despite himself, and meets Brendon's eyes. Sees beyond the amusement there, sees a flash in his eyes, hears the slight quaver in his voice, and knows the fear that coursed through Brendon when Ryan hit the ground, crumpled.
"Did he lose consciousness at all?" Spencer asks Brendon as he crouches down, looking into Ryan's eyes. He begins examining Ryan, shining a penlight into his eyes, watching the reaction of his pupils.
"No, not that I saw." Brendon switches from devil-may-care to grown-up in a heartbeat, and if Spencer weren't so busy worrying about Ryan, it would be harder to ignore the heat that flares in his gut more and more when that happens. "He was already up and cursing Muffin by the time I cleared the fence."
"Nausea? Ringing in your ears? Seeing any lights or spots?" Spencer asks Ryan, getting a negative response for each. "Headache?"
"My head hit the ground," Ryan says to Spencer dryly, giving him a look that succinctly says 'moron' without deigning to go there. "What do you think?"
Brendon laughs as Spencer rolls his eyes, fondly tapping Ryan on the nose with his penlight. "I think you haven't damaged anything that wasn't damaged before. You'll live."
Ryan sticks his tongue out and Spencer wonders for the eight-millionth time how his eyes are not stuck on permanent roll. "If anything changes, you have to mention it immediately. And when you go to bed, you have to be woken up every two hours. You can sleep with me tonight," Spencer says sternly. Brendon makes a slight, strangled noise, and both Ryan and Spencer turn to look at him in surprise.
"I should- I need to go... the cows will be wondering where I've gotten to." Brendon stutters inanely, jumping to his feet and nearly running for the door, almost banging into the doorframe as he goes. Spencer stares after him for a second, before shrugging it off as Brendon just being his spastic self, the same as he's been their whole lives.
Ryan, though, sits lost in thought as Spencer puts a foul-smelling ointment on the bump on his head. It's a full ten minutes before he offers his quiet pronouncement. "Spencer, has it occurred to you that Brendon has gotten clumsier since you've started helping care for the injured?"
Spencer wants to shut his eyes, wants to scream. Of course he's noticed, and for a brief second he hates Ryan for not allowing him his pretenses. There are other things besides medicine that are beyond his reach in this life - this life that he was born into and is all he knows - and it's not fair for Ryan to point them out, not when he knows that Spencer can't have them. He bites back all the vitriolic things he could say to hurt Ryan, to shove sharp words into soft spots, and just quietly ignores the question with a softly-spoken response. "Has it occurred to you that you have to rename that horse before she kills you out of spite, Ryan?"
~*~
The day that changes Spencer's life irrevocably starts out like any other day.
He gets up with the sun. He breaks the fast with his parents, laughing with his sisters, dodging his mother's blatant hints about the middle Buckhout girl, the one she thinks he should court. He works in the fields with his father, following a horse nearly as old as he is, ensuring the rows of fragrant earth are tilled straight.
He works until late afternoon, until the sun is well on its way to the horizon, before Father excuses him to go assist Deacon Fisher. Together, they call on the old and the infirm of their district, and Spencer listens avidly as Deacon Fisher expounds on herbal remedies.
The trouble starts that night at the district meeting. They are of age now, Ryan and Spencer and Brendon, and nothing makes Spencer realize this like walking into the Urie home shoulder to shoulder with his father. One day, he'll be the elder, and the children will be his, and Ryan's, and Brendon's.
He's pulled from this reverie by the shouting coming from the Urie's living room, the angry words made angrier by harsh Germanic syllables. "--we're an Old Order, we do things the way we've always done them. We've no call to change the Ordnung now at the whim of some newcomer!"
Spencer slides into the room after his father, to the sight of Ryan's father shouting and gesturing in Brendon's face, the alleged outsider even after ten years of living in the district. He doesn't need to be close to Mr. Ross to know he's been drinking again; Spencer can see it in the flush of his skin and the hunch of Ryan's shoulders.
Brendon's wide-eyed and nervous, but his voice is calm and respectful as he addresses Ryan's father. "I meant no offense, Deacon Ross. I was only suggesting that we consider purchasing a communal vehicle-"
"It would benefit everyone, Father," Ryan speaks up, and Spencer nearly gasps. Ryan knows better than this, knows better than to cross his father in a temper, but maybe tonight he's tired of it, from the spark that Spencer can see in his eyes even from across the room. "We could deliver our crops into town faster, Brendon could sell more furniture if he could deliver it, and Mr. Schulyer was saying just last week-"
"Keep quiet, Ryan, this is not your concern." No one could miss the dismissive tone in Mr. Ross's voice, and Spencer sees several men look away. "No one cares about your opinion."
Ryan flushes red, and he starts to rise from his chair. "Father, I was just-"
"I told you to hold your tongue!" Mr. Ross grabs Ryan by the shirt neck, pulling him up angrily. "You'll show your father proper respect, boy, or you'll have no father."
Spencer holds his breath as Mr. Ross cocks back a fist. He's never hit Ryan in public before, Spencer knows, because Spencer knows every time Ryan has been hit, or at least every time since he was old enough to know that no one, no one could walk into that many doors. And part of him cheers for his best friend, when he sees the moment in Ryan's eyes when he gathers his courage and crosses the line, when he speaks to his father the way he's always wanted to, his voice grave and earnest and angrier than Spencer's ever heard as he asks, "And how will I be able to tell the difference?"
The crack of fist against jaw echoes through the room, and Spencer's legs finally move like his brain's been ordering them to for what feels like hours, sending him stumbling across the room to the crumpled form of his best friend on the ground. Brendon's beat him there, by sheer dint of being closer, shielding Ryan somehow, despite never having grown much past Spencer's shoulder. Ryan's father, however, doesn't seem interested in going another round, just looking down at his son in disgust. Spencer looks at him, and asks him the question he's wanted to ask for at least a decade. "How could you? He is your son."
"I have no son," Mr. Ross says the words without a slur, but from here, Spencer can smell the alcohol on his breath. "And he has no place in this community."
An audible gasp goes through the room, or maybe it just echoes in Spencer's head, he's not sure. Fit or not, Ryan's father is a deacon and a powerful man in their district. If he shuns Ryan, no one in their community will take him in. No one, Spencer knows by the way his own father looks away from him when Spencer tries to meet his gaze across the room. He looks down at Ryan, cradling his jaw as Brendon helps him sit up, his eyes equal parts anger and anguish as he takes in his father's pronouncement. Spencer has always heard rage described as red, as a heat, but it's a blue ice that runs through him as he turns a withering glare on Mr. Ross. "He always has a place in mine."
He reaches a hand down, helps Ryan to his feet. The room is silent, stunned, as they walk out into the cooling April night. The Urie place is closest to the main road, and they set their feet toward it in unspoken agreement, walking away from the only place that's ever been home. He'll not see his mother again, Spencer thinks numbly, nor his sisters.
They round the bend, hidden from view of the house, and Ryan snaps suddenly, heading for the fence-row to vomit the bile that's been threatening since he stood up. Spencer follows him, rubbing his back soothingly and making shushing noises as Ryan tries to speak through fits of spitting. "Go back, Spence. You can still go back, your family..."
"'Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people.'" Spencer quotes softly, the familiar words sliding off his tongue in Deitsch, for the last time, although he doesn't realize it then. Ryan looks at him, eyes wide, like he can't believe something he knows is true. Spencer reaches a hand out, squeezing his shoulder. "You're my family, Ry. You always have been."
Ryan swallows hard, visible in the moonlight, and nods. There's a thrashing sound coming from the field next to them, too big to be a dog, too fast to be livestock, and Spencer has a moment of stupid and horrified thought: Bear. Then he remembers that this is Indiana and there aren't bears and Brendon's head pops over the fencerow as he climbs up and over. A duffel bag lands on the ground just before his feet hit next to it, and he bends down to scoop it up. Spencer recognizes it from the seventh grade, the year Brendon ran track while he and Ryan took band. Spencer wonders for a moment if this is his psyche shattering, the way he's read about in the psychology texts he isn't supposed to have, if his subconscious has just decided he needs his own Brendon if he's going to leave everything else he loves behind. The figments of his imagination can speak though, apparently, because Brendon says, "You guys didn't think you were leaving without me, did you?"
Ryan speaks up finally, wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve, as he shakes his head at Brendon. "No, don't. Both of you, don't. It's too much, you can't go back-"
"He was wrong, Ryan, and you. You were standing up for me, and he was wrong. And if they don't see that, then they're wrong too." Brendon shrugs, like he can't understand how anyone could see it any other way, and continues. "And I don't believe what they believe. I thought I could, maybe if I just kept trying hard enough, I could be who they wanted me to be. And now I see that I don't want to be who they want me to be." He shrugs again, like it's no big deal, or like he's embarrassed that he's said so much, and Ryan crosses over to him, hugs him quick and hard. Even in the dark, Spencer can see Brendon hug back. "So let's run away from home already."
They walk all night, dirt road changing to gravel, and then to pavement as the sun starts turning the world pink. They're nearing the outskirts of the town, the one that Spencer has always thought of as Town, but now it occurs to him that of course it isn't the only one. The world is open before them, bathed in dawn and smelling like fresh April rain, and they can, theoretically, go any where their feet will carry them.
A familiar roar sounds behind them, and they move into single-file automatically as a rickety old truck passes by. Spencer's in the lead, and it's a combination of sheer bad luck and timing that when the truck hits the pothole that he's right in line to be doused with muddy water. He hears Ryan's gasp of surprise and Brendon's choked back laughter, and for a moment he fights to stay calm, to take indignity with humility like he's been taught all his life, to turn the other cheek. And then he remembers, he doesn't have to do that any more. He reaches down and scoops up a rock from the roadside and flings it at the truck, taking a deep satisfaction when it pings off the tailgate. Satisfaction, unfortunately, doesn't turn him back into a clean, dry person. "Damn."
And Brendon does start giggling at that, like he can't help himself any more, can't hold back. Spencer grins back at him, feeling for all the world like he's ten and doing something he knows he shouldn't, as he wipes mud out of his beard. Ryan, though, doesn't look happy. "Spencer, Spencer, they're stopping."
Oh. Well, that's not good, Spencer turns warily, and sure enough the truck is pulling over to the side of the road. And Spencer suddenly realizes a couple of things: he's never been in a fight, Ryan weighs 27 pounds soaking wet, Brendon could be blown away with a strong wind, and people who turn the other cheek probably get beaten up a lot less. He squares his shoulders, trying to prepare himself for the worst, watching as a man about his own age slides gracelessly out of the door of the truck, half-spilling on to the roadway. He approaches them with a shout and a wave, eyes dancing with mirth as he nears them.
"Oh, shit. Oh, shit, I got you good," The guy laughs, scratching his own stubble. "I am so sorry! Nice aim, by the way."
"I. You. I am sorry I hit your vehicle," Spencer's English comes out stilted and stuttered, despite all the stealthy practice over the years, nerves stiffening his tone along with his spine.
"Dude, no. I creamed you, man, you had every right. It's cool." Spencer doesn't really understand half of what the guy's saying, but he doesn't seem like he's a threat, so Spencer relaxes just a bit, gives him a small smile as the guy continues. "Did you guys need a ride somewhere? Least I could do, really. I'm Jon, by the way. Jon Walker."
"I am Spencer Smith," Spencer replies formally, and he starts to say thank you but no, until he feels the press of Ryan's hand against his back. They have walked a long way. "We are- we would take a ride but we do not have- we do not know where we are going."
"Adventurers, then? Off to seek your fortune?" Jon's eyes still remain kind as he teases. He gestures behind him, toward the truck. "I'm visiting a cousin, why don't you guys come have some breakfast, get cleaned up?"
Spencer's not sure, wary of strangers, but Brendon pipes up immediately with a hopeful "Breakfast?" and Ryan's stomach growls, and what is he to do? Jon nods, encouraged by Brendon's eagerness. "Yeah, my aunt makes killer, killer pancakes. I was just running to the store to grab something for her, but their farm's just a mile or so back that way."
Spencer nods, his face grave, hoping this isn't a mistake. "We would be pleased to break the fast with you, thank you."
Jon quirks an eyebrow at the odd phrasing, but he just grins wider and says, "Sweet! Hop in!"
They pile in, crammed tight against each other on the truck's bench seat and Spencer slams the door shut. The glove box pops open, whamming directly into Spencer's knee. He gives a little oof of pain, and slams it back shut maybe a little harder than he needs to. Next to him, Ryan gives the first hint of a smile since they left home, small and sideways, and his voice is wry and considered. "I guess the mechanical horses hate you as much as the real ones hate me."
Part Two...