He gazes at Brendon over the top of a pair of purely decorative black plastic frames. (Brendon's pretty sure this is the guiltiest he's ever felt - barring that one really lonely night he spent with one of Spencer's pilfered school shirts tucked under his head, but he's never telling anyone about that, ever ever ever.) "You should've come to me," ( Read more... )

The Smoothie Hut is on the end of the mall he doesn't go to very often - all it has is a Dillard's and a sports store and a completely fucking depressing pet store. If this whole thing goes well, he's a little worried he'll spend whatever breaks he gets over there, asking to play with the animals that don't get out very often, getting attached to ( Read more... )

The twisting, tangled feeling in Spencer's stomach still hasn't gone away. He picked at his dinner, even though it was good, he had to keep telling Ryan it was good. Mac and cheese with hot dogs is one of his favorites, but he just couldn't eat, not when he wasn't at his house with his mom and dad and his sisters and his plate and his Batman cup. ( Read more... )

"It's like...like when you and your girlfriend don't want to break up right before the holidays, right? Because damn it, you've held on this long, you want some motherfucking presents," Brendon says, his hands tucked under his head as he stares up at Spencer's ceiling ( Read more... )

His hands drum on the steering wheel the entire four minutes it takes to get to Spencer's, and Ryan can't look over at the passenger seat, where the opened envelope is still lying. He bites his lip, hard, and screeches up behind Spencer's piece of shit car and grabs the envelope before he sprints up to the Smiths' front door ( Read more... )

Spencer misses emailing Jon and asking about Chicago, and joking around with Tennessee and Annie. He misses going to the all-night diner just outside of Summerlin, where they one time saw Mr. Way and some sketch dude with a bunch of tattoos making out in one of the booths. He misses going to the record store, and the Starbucks on Magnolia with the ( Read more... )

Spencer sighs and shifts minutely, trying to keep Brendon in the same spot. They're sprawled on the hide-a-bed that Brendon's trying to pass off as an acceptable alternative to actual mattresses and shit, and Spencer is mostly unmoved on his stance against it ( Read more... )

The worst part of all, Brendon thinks, is that Spencer is trying so damn hard to keep things normal. It twists him up inside til he can barely stand it, watching Spencer smile and joke and tease and then freeze, go silent when Ryan pats him on the shoulder. Smiles at him. Knocks their knees together ( Read more... )

"But you can't be," his mom tells him, tearfully. Brendon swallows loudly and stares at her, red-eyed. She's wringing her hands, hunched over herself on the armchair. "Brendon, you - this isn't you, this is. Did those boys - that Ryan, did he - "

"No, Mom," he tells her, firmer than his voice was a minute ago. "This is me."

"Bullshit this is you ( Read more... )

"Hey," Brendon wheezes, dropping down onto the bleacher beside Spencer and immediately grabbing his Coke and sucking the straw flat. "It's ten thousand degrees."

Spencer winces and sighs, both for his drink's sad fate and for Brendon's predicament. "You were the one who wanted to do marching band."

"Yeah, but it's ten thousand degrees," Brendon ( Read more... )