Time Means Nothing
Title: Time Means Nothing
Rating: PG-13 (for language and threatened suicide)
Pairing: General
POV: Third person (Spencer centric)
Summary: Months pass, days turn, and Spencer still can’t seem to gather the feeling of being alive.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is fiction, nothing less, nothing more.
Original Post: Here (reading list-locked)
Months pass, days turn, and Spencer still can't seem to gather the feeling of being alive.
Sure, he's alive physically - his brain is still functioning (if admittedly at a lower than normal capacity), his chest is still rising (though only for the purpose of taking in shallow and greedy breaths), and his heart is still beating (Spencer doesn't even want to go there). But no matter what the medical proof may suggest, Spencer knows he's not really alive, not anymore.
Didn't he always say living without Jon was like trying to live without air?
He was right too, and both he and Jon know it. Except that it's not quite as impossible as he previously thought; rather than trying to live without air, it's as if he is trying to live without clean air - not unattainable, but rather sore and all together not enjoyable. Yes, Spencer may still be technically living, but it's an uncomfortable, awkward life, serving only to occupy the free time between waking up and falling back asleep.
For Spencer, life only occupies the time between his dreaming.
Because in his dreams, Spencer can have anything he wants. Jon is back with him, Ryan and Brendon are together and happy, and the whole world is peaceful and still. Their lives are charmed and lovely and no one can do wrong, especially not Spencer, and never Jon.
But it's about the furthest thing possible from reality. In Spencer's real life, in the real world, Jon is not with Spencer, and Brendon and Ryan are not dating and happy and just inherently themselves. Everyone is acting like someone else; Ryan is all hyper and crazy like Brendon used to be (as far as Spencer can tell from the occasional text), Jon is acting secluded and dreamy like Spencer used to (Spencer knows this through his lack of contact with Jon), and Brendon is hiding away, stealing more than his fair share of the world's limited dream supply (just like Ryan used to, back in the day). And Spencer? Spencer is the mature one now, the responsible one, the one who leaves the house fully dressed and presentable and has all his life in order. He's acting like Jon, and it kills him to think of it that way, especially knowing what Jon did.
Or rather, what he didn't do (mainly, stay with Spencer).
Because if Spencer turns out like Jon, if he ends up being as much of a goddamn bastard as Jonathan Walker was, Spencer will kill himself, simple as that.
He doesn't ever want to cause anyone as much pain as Jon caused him.
It's the kind pain that doesn't just jab or twist or cause discomfort; it yanks and bites and tears little pieces of his hopes and dreams apart until the only thing he has left is a futile reminder of what he refers to in his mind as “The Jon Times”. The Jon Times were good, they were innocent, and now that he's lost that he doesn't know how to get it back. Those times... They seem years away, as far distant as his childhood or his elementary school.
The funny, or rather, not so funny, thing is that Spence is sure he could bring his whole childhood back easier than getting back Jon.
Spencer knows the second he rolls out of bed that it's 9:47 in the morning, because Spencer is responsible and careful and he takes notice of these things now. If anyone asked him, he could tell them off-hand that it's June 2, 2009, and it's a Tuesday, the first Tuesday of the month, in fact. Spence has got his shit figured out.
But no one's around to ask him, anyway.
So instead of relaying the date and time and an arsenal of other useless information aloud, Spencer simply drags himself out of bed and ambles off towards the shower.
His shower is exactly 16 minutes long, in case anyone cares, although Spencer is sure no one does. 16 minutes of hard scrubbing and harsh fingers pulling too-long hair, and 16 minutes of crying that is nothing short of an emotional breakdown, while the rest of the world spins in its imperfectly elliptical way.
Spencer allows himself 16 minutes a day to mourn Jon, and then he forces himself to live his life. The other moments in the day, though, the other 704 un-fucking-believably long minutes are spent mourning not Jon, but rather the 16 minutes in which Spencer does mourn Jon. Spencer lives his life in a constancy of longing - the first part of his day longs for past days, while the later parts of his days long for the earlier parts of his days. Spencer genuinely wonders whether he will ever get to a point where he craves the minutes in which he thought about the minutes in which he thought about past minutes with Jon.
God, he hopes not.
When Spencer gets out of the shower his eyes are not red, and his face isn't at all blotchy. And if it is, maybe a little bit, there's always some of Ryan's old makeup sitting in a drawer somewhere in this god-forsaken house. But Spencer doesn't want memories of Ryan today, so he ignores his post-weeping skin and dresses himself and eats. In that exact order, in exactly 22 minutes, because yes, Spencer counted and yes, he needs this constancy.
It's exactly 10:25 when Spencer leaves his house, and he's happy with himself because yesterday he was a minute early, and while it didn't cause anything drastic - the buses outside still ran their routes, people still went on with their walking and talking and ambling, and the world still spun it's wobbly path around the sun - Spencer felt as though maybe the world had lost its motion, and for a moment he simply sat outside with his back against the door until his minute was up and he could go on with his day.
But today, today Spencer has timed everything perfectly. It takes him 5 minutes to walk to the bus stop, 35 minutes for the bus to come and pick him up and drop him off a few stops later, and 37 minutes for him to browse the grocery store he's visiting and pick up some staple food and go to the counter and pay. 28 minutes back on a bus and back home, 5 minutes to walk back to his house. 2 to dig that stupid-god-frickin'-damn key out of his pocket and unlock the door.
It takes Spencer 112 minutes to perfectly live his life.
It takes Jon exactly 7.5 seconds to ruin it.
When Spencer sees him, sitting on the couch inside Spencer's apartment, watching Spencer's T.V. with Spencer's photographs spread in front of him, Spence doesn't say anything. He simply stares open-mouthed for 5 seconds, falls for 2.5 seconds, and forgets the rest.
An indeterminable amount of time - that's the first thing Spencer thinks when he opens his eyes again. He can't remember how long he's been out for, but for some strange reason he doesn't care. And then he looks up, up at where the ceiling should be, and he sees Jon's worry-fraught eyes and knit-together eyebrows and thinks, “Oh.”
He just stares at Jon, and Jon stares back, and they're like that for some amount of time that Spencer cannot and will not care about later. It's just him and Jon and them.
And then Jon says, “I missed you.” And, “I'm sorry.”
And a million other things Spencer knows and saves for later, for later sets of 16 minutes when it will be safe to think and analyze and remember. Because Jon, Jon can't be staying.
Can he?
And Spencer must have said this aloud, “Could Jon be staying?” because Jon looks at Spencer with this expression like oh and please and he says aloud the words Spencer fantasizes about consciously for 16 minutes a day, and subconsciously for the other 704 minutes while he's consciously thinking about the aforementioned 16 minutes.
“I'm staying... If it's alright with you.”
And so Spencer, who has yet to find his words, pulls on the back of Jon's neck until Jon's lips are on his, soft and warm and sweet and just oh. And Jon is kissing back, and they're lying on the floor together where Spencer collapsed and it's hard and uncomfortable and oh-so perfect, and Spencer wouldn't trade it for anything.
He lets go of Jon's neck, pulls away from his lips, and Jon opens his mouth to complain or bitch or make some smart-ass comment, but Spencer's not having any of that.
“Stay,” he whispers against Jon's chest, and Jon quiets and grabs Spencer's face to bring it back to his.
And the world turns - sometimes fast, sometimes slow, because Spencer's not keeping track anymore. And the world spins, spins, spins, and Spencer breathes clean air and thinks about Jon for all the minutes, every uncountable precious minute, not just the allotted 16, and he dreams only at night and only about his Now Life, not about The Jon Times, and it's perfect.
Spencer is with Jon, and Spencer is alive.
Rating: PG-13 (for language and threatened suicide)
Pairing: General
POV: Third person (Spencer centric)
Summary: Months pass, days turn, and Spencer still can’t seem to gather the feeling of being alive.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is fiction, nothing less, nothing more.
Original Post: Here (reading list-locked)
Months pass, days turn, and Spencer still can't seem to gather the feeling of being alive.
Sure, he's alive physically - his brain is still functioning (if admittedly at a lower than normal capacity), his chest is still rising (though only for the purpose of taking in shallow and greedy breaths), and his heart is still beating (Spencer doesn't even want to go there). But no matter what the medical proof may suggest, Spencer knows he's not really alive, not anymore.
Didn't he always say living without Jon was like trying to live without air?
He was right too, and both he and Jon know it. Except that it's not quite as impossible as he previously thought; rather than trying to live without air, it's as if he is trying to live without clean air - not unattainable, but rather sore and all together not enjoyable. Yes, Spencer may still be technically living, but it's an uncomfortable, awkward life, serving only to occupy the free time between waking up and falling back asleep.
For Spencer, life only occupies the time between his dreaming.
Because in his dreams, Spencer can have anything he wants. Jon is back with him, Ryan and Brendon are together and happy, and the whole world is peaceful and still. Their lives are charmed and lovely and no one can do wrong, especially not Spencer, and never Jon.
But it's about the furthest thing possible from reality. In Spencer's real life, in the real world, Jon is not with Spencer, and Brendon and Ryan are not dating and happy and just inherently themselves. Everyone is acting like someone else; Ryan is all hyper and crazy like Brendon used to be (as far as Spencer can tell from the occasional text), Jon is acting secluded and dreamy like Spencer used to (Spencer knows this through his lack of contact with Jon), and Brendon is hiding away, stealing more than his fair share of the world's limited dream supply (just like Ryan used to, back in the day). And Spencer? Spencer is the mature one now, the responsible one, the one who leaves the house fully dressed and presentable and has all his life in order. He's acting like Jon, and it kills him to think of it that way, especially knowing what Jon did.
Or rather, what he didn't do (mainly, stay with Spencer).
Because if Spencer turns out like Jon, if he ends up being as much of a goddamn bastard as Jonathan Walker was, Spencer will kill himself, simple as that.
He doesn't ever want to cause anyone as much pain as Jon caused him.
It's the kind pain that doesn't just jab or twist or cause discomfort; it yanks and bites and tears little pieces of his hopes and dreams apart until the only thing he has left is a futile reminder of what he refers to in his mind as “The Jon Times”. The Jon Times were good, they were innocent, and now that he's lost that he doesn't know how to get it back. Those times... They seem years away, as far distant as his childhood or his elementary school.
The funny, or rather, not so funny, thing is that Spence is sure he could bring his whole childhood back easier than getting back Jon.
Spencer knows the second he rolls out of bed that it's 9:47 in the morning, because Spencer is responsible and careful and he takes notice of these things now. If anyone asked him, he could tell them off-hand that it's June 2, 2009, and it's a Tuesday, the first Tuesday of the month, in fact. Spence has got his shit figured out.
But no one's around to ask him, anyway.
So instead of relaying the date and time and an arsenal of other useless information aloud, Spencer simply drags himself out of bed and ambles off towards the shower.
His shower is exactly 16 minutes long, in case anyone cares, although Spencer is sure no one does. 16 minutes of hard scrubbing and harsh fingers pulling too-long hair, and 16 minutes of crying that is nothing short of an emotional breakdown, while the rest of the world spins in its imperfectly elliptical way.
Spencer allows himself 16 minutes a day to mourn Jon, and then he forces himself to live his life. The other moments in the day, though, the other 704 un-fucking-believably long minutes are spent mourning not Jon, but rather the 16 minutes in which Spencer does mourn Jon. Spencer lives his life in a constancy of longing - the first part of his day longs for past days, while the later parts of his days long for the earlier parts of his days. Spencer genuinely wonders whether he will ever get to a point where he craves the minutes in which he thought about the minutes in which he thought about past minutes with Jon.
God, he hopes not.
When Spencer gets out of the shower his eyes are not red, and his face isn't at all blotchy. And if it is, maybe a little bit, there's always some of Ryan's old makeup sitting in a drawer somewhere in this god-forsaken house. But Spencer doesn't want memories of Ryan today, so he ignores his post-weeping skin and dresses himself and eats. In that exact order, in exactly 22 minutes, because yes, Spencer counted and yes, he needs this constancy.
It's exactly 10:25 when Spencer leaves his house, and he's happy with himself because yesterday he was a minute early, and while it didn't cause anything drastic - the buses outside still ran their routes, people still went on with their walking and talking and ambling, and the world still spun it's wobbly path around the sun - Spencer felt as though maybe the world had lost its motion, and for a moment he simply sat outside with his back against the door until his minute was up and he could go on with his day.
But today, today Spencer has timed everything perfectly. It takes him 5 minutes to walk to the bus stop, 35 minutes for the bus to come and pick him up and drop him off a few stops later, and 37 minutes for him to browse the grocery store he's visiting and pick up some staple food and go to the counter and pay. 28 minutes back on a bus and back home, 5 minutes to walk back to his house. 2 to dig that stupid-god-frickin'-damn key out of his pocket and unlock the door.
It takes Spencer 112 minutes to perfectly live his life.
It takes Jon exactly 7.5 seconds to ruin it.
When Spencer sees him, sitting on the couch inside Spencer's apartment, watching Spencer's T.V. with Spencer's photographs spread in front of him, Spence doesn't say anything. He simply stares open-mouthed for 5 seconds, falls for 2.5 seconds, and forgets the rest.
An indeterminable amount of time - that's the first thing Spencer thinks when he opens his eyes again. He can't remember how long he's been out for, but for some strange reason he doesn't care. And then he looks up, up at where the ceiling should be, and he sees Jon's worry-fraught eyes and knit-together eyebrows and thinks, “Oh.”
He just stares at Jon, and Jon stares back, and they're like that for some amount of time that Spencer cannot and will not care about later. It's just him and Jon and them.
And then Jon says, “I missed you.” And, “I'm sorry.”
And a million other things Spencer knows and saves for later, for later sets of 16 minutes when it will be safe to think and analyze and remember. Because Jon, Jon can't be staying.
Can he?
And Spencer must have said this aloud, “Could Jon be staying?” because Jon looks at Spencer with this expression like oh and please and he says aloud the words Spencer fantasizes about consciously for 16 minutes a day, and subconsciously for the other 704 minutes while he's consciously thinking about the aforementioned 16 minutes.
“I'm staying... If it's alright with you.”
And so Spencer, who has yet to find his words, pulls on the back of Jon's neck until Jon's lips are on his, soft and warm and sweet and just oh. And Jon is kissing back, and they're lying on the floor together where Spencer collapsed and it's hard and uncomfortable and oh-so perfect, and Spencer wouldn't trade it for anything.
He lets go of Jon's neck, pulls away from his lips, and Jon opens his mouth to complain or bitch or make some smart-ass comment, but Spencer's not having any of that.
“Stay,” he whispers against Jon's chest, and Jon quiets and grabs Spencer's face to bring it back to his.
And the world turns - sometimes fast, sometimes slow, because Spencer's not keeping track anymore. And the world spins, spins, spins, and Spencer breathes clean air and thinks about Jon for all the minutes, every uncountable precious minute, not just the allotted 16, and he dreams only at night and only about his Now Life, not about The Jon Times, and it's perfect.
Spencer is with Jon, and Spencer is alive.