PATD ficlet: Home (Ryan/Spencer, PG-13)
From my All-Panic-Pairings Experiment (this thing I'm doing as I settle into this new fandom). Lesson learned today: Spencer + Ryan = more sap than is strictly necessary + a generous helping of snark.
Ignore at will, even you small contingent of bandom people. Still possibly getting clichés out of my system. This time: growing up in the Las Vegas metro.
Title: Home
Pairing: Spencer/Ryan
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A tour ends and they come home to Las Vegas. Established relationship. 1800 words.
Home
The bulb in the entryway is out, so Ryan manages to bang his knee on the low table by the door when they come in. He hisses out a curse at the sharp pain and stops, rubbing at it furiously. The bulb blew sometime the night before they left town the last time. He was the one who flipped the switch and saw it pop bright before the room plunged into darkness. But that seems like a lifetime ago. Vegas itself is like a lifetime ago even as it also means coming home.
He wonders which of them was supposed to change the bulb. Not that it really matters. He doesn't really want light right now anyway. He's just come out of so much tacky brightness, that part of the city that everyone thinks of as the city even though it's not. Las Vegas is just another sprawling parking lot of a town. It seems like only a coincidence that the strip happens to be there, like when you cross Paradise on Tropicana you're entering a portal to some unreal dimension unconnected to the desert or even planet earth. They didn't even go near the strip tonight, but as they left the old Vegas part of town, Ryan found his eyes reflexively searching for that familiar skyline, the center of the city around which everything else seems to spread. Seems being the operative word, because it's not the heart of the city. Not really. He watched, calming, as it got smaller and smaller but no less itself as the roads wove them back into the greater blanket of lights that is the familiar valley.
He's exhausted, so much that his skin buzzes with it and his throat feels scratchy, so he's rather glad it's dark in here, his complaining knee notwithstanding. There is only the night light in the kitchen to cast a helpful, navigating glow over the front of the house. As the front door closes behind him and he hears Spencer turn the lock, it occurs to him that that light is on a sensor, so it must've come on at dusk every night even when Spencer was on tour. Like the house has been waiting for him.
When did the house know it was waiting for them? When did they know?
It had been so quiet on the way home, a good kind of quiet, but Ryan's cursing somehow broke it up, made him feel their separateness like a lack, and now he feels words crowding at him-any words, really, so long as he gets words back from Spencer, to fill up the heavy silence.
"I am remembering this," Ryan says, stretching his leg out again with a wince as he toes off his shoes. "Potentially forever."
"Sorry," Spencer replies. He pulls at the sleeve of Ryan's jacket as, petulantly, he tries to work it off. "I swear, I'll change the lightbulb in the morning."
"No," Ryan says. "I'm remembering that it was your bright idea to go out the night after we got home."
Spencer just snorts, and Ryan stands there, hands shoved into his back pockets, and waits as Spencer casts off his own jacket and works his feet out of his shoes, too.
He balances himself on Ryan's shoulder as he does the second one, and then he stays there leaned up against him, as if in lieu of seeing him very well he needs to at least touch him to assure himself that, yes, Ryan is indeed still making a pissy face.
Spencer's left hand touches his neck for a moment before his right gropes for Ryan's hand to pull him out of the entryway and down the hall to the rest of the house. As if Ryan doesn't know the way to the bedroom, or, even more absurd, needs coaxing to go there.
Spencer says, "I don't remember holding you at gunpoint."
Ryan makes a grumpy noise.
Spencer offers, "We can sleep all day tomorrow."
"I need easily like a week of sleep."
"We can do that, too."
"Oh, no. I know you, Spencer Smith. You're like a nympho when we get out of the bunks and into a bed. You're going to want marathon sex for the foreseeable future."
"You keep acting so put-upon about it, and I'll want no sex for the foreseeable future."
Ryan just rolls his eyes, which Spencer will expect-maybe feel, somehow-even if he can't see it.
"Sure," Ryan says. "Right. You just wait. You'll be waking me up to fuck at like nine in the…" Ryan stops. "Shit."
"What?"
"I almost fucking said nine in the fucking goddamn afternoon."
Spencer snorts, then a warm peal of his laughter echoes into the kitchen and Ryan cuffs him on the arm.
"Fuck you," Ryan murmurs as he moves farther down the hallway, toward the bedroom. "I'm too tired to think, and you've got us down on Fremont Street, in hats that better be fucking disguises and not your idea of fashion-although the idea that drunk frat boys from the flyover states would or even could keep up with your morphing facial hair well enough to recognize you is ridiculous-drinking cheap-ass beer and watching the Keno zombies at 3 in the morning."
Ryan's ready for an all-out battle of sleepy, grumpy wits, or at least an entertaining lackthereof, but Spencer simply says, "I missed Vegas."
"Shut up," Ryan says, voice a gravelly rumble. He clears his throat. "You did not."
"I did," he says insistently, almost sharply. Ryan's about to pop off with something tired-lame-stupid-shut up Spencer when Spencer mumbles, "I've never seen Vegas with you."
Ryan stops and swings around, leaning up against the wall and squinting into the darkness at him. They're outside the bathroom, so he reaches in and gropes for the light switch. They both blink against the fluorescence, Spencer ducking his head, but not before Ryan sees his eyes, how they glow in the light, how his emotions kind of flash up into them, brighter and so much better than the bulbs in any tacky-ass casino sign. Ryan's overcome with some kind of nameless emotion he doesn't take the time to wrap his weary brain around. It's better to just feel it anyway.
Spencer is starting to turn a little red, and even if Ryan thinks he knows why, he has to say it anyway.
"Spence, we've lived our whole lives here."
Spencer sighs and bites his lip. He nods. "But it's different now that we're …"
Ryan can't help it. A big goofy grin comes over his face, but he quickly forces it to a smirk "…in love?"
Spencer grins too, just before he pokes Ryan in the stomach. "Shut the fuck up."
"Damn. I forgot what kind of romantic you are."
"You did not. Like you didn't know exactly why I dragged you to Binion's and made you play penny slots."
Spencer's edging up to him now, the way Spencer does when he wants to be close but he doesn't want to have to meet his eyes for long. It's a little like the way he saves his fiercest sarcasm for Ryan, for those times he's being too honest.
Ryan pulls away a little, but only so he can plunge them into darkness again. He doesn't really go anywhere, though, as he waits for his eyes to adjust again. He can feel Spencer's body brushing his, the solidness of him so close Ryan could just fall into it. Or he could do nothing at all (he could be scared, like he used to be scared) and it would still happen because Spencer gets him. Spencer would wrap his arms around him right here, maybe kiss and touch and even fuck him against this wall.
But Ryan's too tired for all that. Too tired, but he still doesn't want to separate from him. That's almost incomprehensible to him-that they just finished the tour, so he should be running screaming from all human contact, especially from the guys, but he doesn't want to let him go. Because he's Spencer. So he turns and lets Spencer slip his arms around his waist before they shuffle down the hallway to the bedroom together.
They don't turn on the light, even when they part to get undressed.
Ryan says, "I really would have run away from home that time."
"I know."
"I was mad at you for like a week."
After a pause, Spencer says, "Longer than that."
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I was."
Ryan's already undressed when he finally hears Spencer's keys and wallet clatter to the dresser and then the sound of a zipper and more clothes softly falling to the floor in a heap. When Ryan manages to find the bedside lamp and clicks it on, they're both down to their boxers and Spencer is already crawling into the bed, his bed which is now somehow Ryan's bed, too, or at least it has been every time they've taken a day or two off from touring. Things seem more permanent now that they're going to start sharing this house, but he can't think about that right now. It's late and all he has energy for thinking-for feeling-is SpencerSpencerSpencer and mineminemineminemine.
After Ryan climbs in after him and Spencer gets himself wrapped tightly around him, his thighs hot against the backs of Ryan's and his hand resting flat on his stomach, Ryan sighs into an arousal so fast but so sleepy-lazy it makes him want to just roll over and grind their hips together and tongue fuck him until they're both sweating and throbbing and mustering their only remaining bit of energy to have quick, sloppy sex. But Ryan doesn't move, not just yet, and when he feels Spencer's lips on the back of his neck, he thinks about how Spencer is more his home than this strange town or even this bed that smells like them.
Ryan says, "I think that was the first time I really got it, you know?"
"Got what?"
"Vegas. The stupid way people feel when they… Well, not when they first come here. Not like the strip. But when they stay too long. Like…I don't know? Desperation? But edged with hope."
He wants to say it's the other way around now, at least for him-hope edged with a little welcome desperation-but he can't. Spencer probably knows anyway; he just holds him tighter.
Before it gets too quiet, Ryan adds, "I was happy. I don't know if I ever told you that. I was kind of glad you found me."
There is a smile in Spencer's voice as he replies, "I know."
~
Ignore at will, even you small contingent of bandom people. Still possibly getting clichés out of my system. This time: growing up in the Las Vegas metro.
Title: Home
Pairing: Spencer/Ryan
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A tour ends and they come home to Las Vegas. Established relationship. 1800 words.
Home
The bulb in the entryway is out, so Ryan manages to bang his knee on the low table by the door when they come in. He hisses out a curse at the sharp pain and stops, rubbing at it furiously. The bulb blew sometime the night before they left town the last time. He was the one who flipped the switch and saw it pop bright before the room plunged into darkness. But that seems like a lifetime ago. Vegas itself is like a lifetime ago even as it also means coming home.
He wonders which of them was supposed to change the bulb. Not that it really matters. He doesn't really want light right now anyway. He's just come out of so much tacky brightness, that part of the city that everyone thinks of as the city even though it's not. Las Vegas is just another sprawling parking lot of a town. It seems like only a coincidence that the strip happens to be there, like when you cross Paradise on Tropicana you're entering a portal to some unreal dimension unconnected to the desert or even planet earth. They didn't even go near the strip tonight, but as they left the old Vegas part of town, Ryan found his eyes reflexively searching for that familiar skyline, the center of the city around which everything else seems to spread. Seems being the operative word, because it's not the heart of the city. Not really. He watched, calming, as it got smaller and smaller but no less itself as the roads wove them back into the greater blanket of lights that is the familiar valley.
He's exhausted, so much that his skin buzzes with it and his throat feels scratchy, so he's rather glad it's dark in here, his complaining knee notwithstanding. There is only the night light in the kitchen to cast a helpful, navigating glow over the front of the house. As the front door closes behind him and he hears Spencer turn the lock, it occurs to him that that light is on a sensor, so it must've come on at dusk every night even when Spencer was on tour. Like the house has been waiting for him.
When did the house know it was waiting for them? When did they know?
It had been so quiet on the way home, a good kind of quiet, but Ryan's cursing somehow broke it up, made him feel their separateness like a lack, and now he feels words crowding at him-any words, really, so long as he gets words back from Spencer, to fill up the heavy silence.
"I am remembering this," Ryan says, stretching his leg out again with a wince as he toes off his shoes. "Potentially forever."
"Sorry," Spencer replies. He pulls at the sleeve of Ryan's jacket as, petulantly, he tries to work it off. "I swear, I'll change the lightbulb in the morning."
"No," Ryan says. "I'm remembering that it was your bright idea to go out the night after we got home."
Spencer just snorts, and Ryan stands there, hands shoved into his back pockets, and waits as Spencer casts off his own jacket and works his feet out of his shoes, too.
He balances himself on Ryan's shoulder as he does the second one, and then he stays there leaned up against him, as if in lieu of seeing him very well he needs to at least touch him to assure himself that, yes, Ryan is indeed still making a pissy face.
Spencer's left hand touches his neck for a moment before his right gropes for Ryan's hand to pull him out of the entryway and down the hall to the rest of the house. As if Ryan doesn't know the way to the bedroom, or, even more absurd, needs coaxing to go there.
Spencer says, "I don't remember holding you at gunpoint."
Ryan makes a grumpy noise.
Spencer offers, "We can sleep all day tomorrow."
"I need easily like a week of sleep."
"We can do that, too."
"Oh, no. I know you, Spencer Smith. You're like a nympho when we get out of the bunks and into a bed. You're going to want marathon sex for the foreseeable future."
"You keep acting so put-upon about it, and I'll want no sex for the foreseeable future."
Ryan just rolls his eyes, which Spencer will expect-maybe feel, somehow-even if he can't see it.
"Sure," Ryan says. "Right. You just wait. You'll be waking me up to fuck at like nine in the…" Ryan stops. "Shit."
"What?"
"I almost fucking said nine in the fucking goddamn afternoon."
Spencer snorts, then a warm peal of his laughter echoes into the kitchen and Ryan cuffs him on the arm.
"Fuck you," Ryan murmurs as he moves farther down the hallway, toward the bedroom. "I'm too tired to think, and you've got us down on Fremont Street, in hats that better be fucking disguises and not your idea of fashion-although the idea that drunk frat boys from the flyover states would or even could keep up with your morphing facial hair well enough to recognize you is ridiculous-drinking cheap-ass beer and watching the Keno zombies at 3 in the morning."
Ryan's ready for an all-out battle of sleepy, grumpy wits, or at least an entertaining lackthereof, but Spencer simply says, "I missed Vegas."
"Shut up," Ryan says, voice a gravelly rumble. He clears his throat. "You did not."
"I did," he says insistently, almost sharply. Ryan's about to pop off with something tired-lame-stupid-shut up Spencer when Spencer mumbles, "I've never seen Vegas with you."
Ryan stops and swings around, leaning up against the wall and squinting into the darkness at him. They're outside the bathroom, so he reaches in and gropes for the light switch. They both blink against the fluorescence, Spencer ducking his head, but not before Ryan sees his eyes, how they glow in the light, how his emotions kind of flash up into them, brighter and so much better than the bulbs in any tacky-ass casino sign. Ryan's overcome with some kind of nameless emotion he doesn't take the time to wrap his weary brain around. It's better to just feel it anyway.
Spencer is starting to turn a little red, and even if Ryan thinks he knows why, he has to say it anyway.
"Spence, we've lived our whole lives here."
Spencer sighs and bites his lip. He nods. "But it's different now that we're …"
Ryan can't help it. A big goofy grin comes over his face, but he quickly forces it to a smirk "…in love?"
Spencer grins too, just before he pokes Ryan in the stomach. "Shut the fuck up."
"Damn. I forgot what kind of romantic you are."
"You did not. Like you didn't know exactly why I dragged you to Binion's and made you play penny slots."
Spencer's edging up to him now, the way Spencer does when he wants to be close but he doesn't want to have to meet his eyes for long. It's a little like the way he saves his fiercest sarcasm for Ryan, for those times he's being too honest.
Ryan pulls away a little, but only so he can plunge them into darkness again. He doesn't really go anywhere, though, as he waits for his eyes to adjust again. He can feel Spencer's body brushing his, the solidness of him so close Ryan could just fall into it. Or he could do nothing at all (he could be scared, like he used to be scared) and it would still happen because Spencer gets him. Spencer would wrap his arms around him right here, maybe kiss and touch and even fuck him against this wall.
But Ryan's too tired for all that. Too tired, but he still doesn't want to separate from him. That's almost incomprehensible to him-that they just finished the tour, so he should be running screaming from all human contact, especially from the guys, but he doesn't want to let him go. Because he's Spencer. So he turns and lets Spencer slip his arms around his waist before they shuffle down the hallway to the bedroom together.
They don't turn on the light, even when they part to get undressed.
Ryan says, "I really would have run away from home that time."
"I know."
"I was mad at you for like a week."
After a pause, Spencer says, "Longer than that."
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess I was."
Ryan's already undressed when he finally hears Spencer's keys and wallet clatter to the dresser and then the sound of a zipper and more clothes softly falling to the floor in a heap. When Ryan manages to find the bedside lamp and clicks it on, they're both down to their boxers and Spencer is already crawling into the bed, his bed which is now somehow Ryan's bed, too, or at least it has been every time they've taken a day or two off from touring. Things seem more permanent now that they're going to start sharing this house, but he can't think about that right now. It's late and all he has energy for thinking-for feeling-is SpencerSpencerSpencer and mineminemineminemine.
After Ryan climbs in after him and Spencer gets himself wrapped tightly around him, his thighs hot against the backs of Ryan's and his hand resting flat on his stomach, Ryan sighs into an arousal so fast but so sleepy-lazy it makes him want to just roll over and grind their hips together and tongue fuck him until they're both sweating and throbbing and mustering their only remaining bit of energy to have quick, sloppy sex. But Ryan doesn't move, not just yet, and when he feels Spencer's lips on the back of his neck, he thinks about how Spencer is more his home than this strange town or even this bed that smells like them.
Ryan says, "I think that was the first time I really got it, you know?"
"Got what?"
"Vegas. The stupid way people feel when they… Well, not when they first come here. Not like the strip. But when they stay too long. Like…I don't know? Desperation? But edged with hope."
He wants to say it's the other way around now, at least for him-hope edged with a little welcome desperation-but he can't. Spencer probably knows anyway; he just holds him tighter.
Before it gets too quiet, Ryan adds, "I was happy. I don't know if I ever told you that. I was kind of glad you found me."
There is a smile in Spencer's voice as he replies, "I know."
~