Fic -- Someday I'll Fly, Someday I'll Soar
Merry Christmas to my flist! I bring you depressing yet kinda hopeful fic!
Title: Someday I'll Fly, Someday I'll Soar
Pairing: none, really, though in my brain it's Brendon/Spencer pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: attempted suicide
Word Count: ~4,000
Summary: Spencer's not worried about getting his life back on track, because at the moment that shit just sounds way too demanding. Instead, he'll just try to find a way to be content.
Spencer gets back from his Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory class around two o'clock in the afternoon. He sits on his bed for a long time, looking at his backpack, thinking that he should take his books out. He doesn't. His roommate comes back from class and Spencer's pretty sure he makes small talk, but he doesn't know for sure. Then his roommate leaves again and Spencer sits on his bed, still staring at his backpack. He thinks about unpacking his books. He thinks about taking a nap. Instead, he drinks two beers and a shot of whiskey and takes a razor blade out of his dopp kit.
His one concession to the living is to at least do it in the bathroom, so it'll be easier to clean up. He waves at a couple of guys from his hall on the way to the bathroom, walks into one of the stalls fully clothed, turns on the water, and slits his wrists.
Everything's kind of a blur after that.
**********
Spencer's twenty-one years old, a junior majoring in economics with a minor in sociology. He's made the Dean's list five semesters in a row, has a solid 3.92 GPA. He plays intramural basketball in the winter, intramural softball in the spring. He's a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon, the American Constitution Society, the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and is the Internal Financial Director for Student Government.
He's put on involuntary commitment for seventy-two hours and nobody cares what his GPA is. His new roommate is a man in his seventies who tells Spencer very seriously that he's Robinson Crusoe. Spencer actually loved that book when he was a kid. He wonders if it's a sign, or maybe he just thinks it’s a sign because of the blood loss.
Spencer lost a lot of blood. Before they put him in the psych ward, they weren't sure his kidneys were going to pull through.
He spends three days in the psych ward and he's a smart guy, he knows the answers the doctors want to all their questions. He knows what to say, when to stay silent, how to act, how to be normal. He's been pretending to be normal for so long, it's second nature.
He doesn't think about what he's going to do when they let him out. He has a vague plan to take a roadtrip, but he doesn't know where he'd go. He's not surprised to see his mother waiting for him when they finally let him out. He hadn't thought about her being there, but once he sees her, it makes sense.
She says, "I should tan your behind for this."
Spencer says, "I know."
She hugs him so tight, tighter than he thinks he deserves. He thinks he doesn't deserve much from her at all. Her eyes are filling with tears when she pulls away, and Spencer can't watch her cry. He turns and looks out the window and the clothes he's wearing are so stupid. He's wearing baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt that's too small and hard plastic flip-flops. The clothes he was wearing before are trashed, he's sure, probably bloodstained and ruined from the ER staff having to cut them off him.
She says, "Our flight's in five hours. You're coming home."
Spencer nods his head. He says, "Okay."
She's already cleaned out his dorm room. There's a suitcase full of his clothes in the hotel she'd booked and he showers the hospital stink off him and puts on jeans and a button-down that covers his wrists. The stitches are black and neat, the wounds still angry red but starting to heal. Spencer pokes at them, then wraps them with gauze.
On the flight back to Las Vegas, he thinks about how hard he worked, how much he's giving up, how much he's losing by just leaving like that after five and a half semesters. He doesn't think he'll miss it at all.
**********
The day after he gets back to Vegas, he plugs in his phone. The battery had gone dead while he'd been almost dying and then confined. Once his turns his phone back on he's not surprised to see that he doesn't have any messages. He networked and had acquaintances, but he'd never actually made a friend.
Crystal's not talking to him, but Jackie spends the first Saturday he's home sitting with him on the couch, curled up against his side, watching stupid movies on cable. She presses her face to his shoulder and whispers, "You're so fucking stupid." Her voice is thick, full of tears.
He says, "Hey, don't--"
"Promise me," she says, sniffling. "Promise me you won't ever try it again."
He nods and promises her. He wouldn't anyway. He's seen how drawn and old his father seems when he looks at Spencer, now. He's heard his mother crying when she thought no one would know. He won't ever try it again.
The only problem is, he doesn't feel any different. He tried to kill himself. He almost died. He spent days locked up with people who were actually crazy, and he doesn't feel any different than he did before. He doesn't feel much of anything at all.
**********
On Monday, his mother drives him to therapy. He's never been before, so he's not sure what to expect. His therapist is a middle-aged woman named Linda who he wants to dislike, but he doesn't. He doesn't know if he likes her, but she doesn't look at him with fear or pity and she seems to have a low tolerance for bullshit, so he kind of likes her against his will.
She asks him how he's feeling and when he says, "Fine," she rolls her eyes.
"You're actually allowed to tell me the truth, you know," she says.
Spencer's quiet for a long time. Finally he says, "I don't know how I feel."
She doesn't argue with him, she just nods and says, "Knowing what you're feeling takes practice. You haven't had a lot of that, have you?"
She gives him a piece of paper with lists of words to describe feelings. She tells him she wants him to go over it throughout the day and pick out a few he's experienced and write them down. She tells him she wants him to bring the list back the next time she sees him.
"Is she nice?" his mother asks on the drive back.
"Sure," says Spencer.
"Do you think she can help?"
He shrugs. He doesn't even know what's wrong.
**********
On Tuesday, his sisters have school and his parents have work. His mother doesn’t want to go, but he tells her he's fine. "I promise," he says.
She looks unconvinced.
"I don’t need a babysitter."
"I think you might."
Spencer sighs and tells her again to go to work. She's already taken a week off.
"Seriously," he says. "You're going to be twenty minutes away. I'll be fine."
She leaves a little after nine o'clock in the morning. Spencer goes back to bed. When he wakes up, it's nearly one. He showers and rewraps his wrists. He doesn't actually need to wrap them anymore, they're healing just fine and the stitches will probably come out within the week. He wraps them anyway and pulls on a long-sleeved t-shirt.
When he comes downstairs, Ryan's sitting in his kitchen. He says, "I thought those were your footsteps. What are you doing home?"
Spencer wants to ask Ryan what the hell he's doing there, but he already knows. He can hear the washing machine running. Ryan will always be Spencer's mom's other son, even if he and Spencer never talk anymore.
Spencer realizes that nobody's told him, that Ryan doesn't know that he tried to kill himself and spent time in a psych ward. He says, "I'm just home. What's up?"
"Laundry," says Ryan.
Spencer nods. Things with Ryan didn't end badly, they just ended. They stayed friends until the end of Spencer's freshman year, when they were both so busy with other people and other things that they stopped calling or emailing. Standing there in the kitchen with Ryan is awkward in the same way it would be if Spencer had to stand in the same room with a stranger.
Spencer thinks, awkward, and makes a note to write the feeling down so he can show Linda.
"You're really skinny, dude," Ryan tells him.
"Oh," Spencer says, looking down at his body, like he hadn't noticed, like he hadn't worked for it. "Yeah. I guess."
"You wanna go get food?"
Spencer thinks, No. Spencer thinks that he doesn't know this person, this stranger dressed in skinny jeans and a soft tan sweater with hair that's long and curling around his ears. He's never known a Ryan that looked laid back and happy. He says, "Yeah. Okay."
They go get subs and Spencer forgets after a while that Ryan's a stranger. Ryan does most of the talking, anyway, tells Spencer about his girlfriend and his band, tells Spencer about the short story he wrote that was published in The Alaska Quarterly Review. Spencer's never heard of the magazine, but Ryan seems excited and really pleased.
His phone rings as they're walking back out to Ryan's car, and he answers when he sees it's his mother.
"Spencer James where the hell are you?" she demands.
He sighs. He probably should have left a note. "I'm okay," he says softly. "I'm with Ryan. We're just getting food."
"Let me talk to him," she says.
"No. Mom. I'm fine."
She's quiet for a long time. Spencer's about to ask if she's still there when she says, "All right. But don't stay out too long."
"Okay," he says. When he clicks off his phone, he looks over to see Ryan looking at him. Ryan never just looks at anyone. Ryan digs into people when he looks at them, brain always working, always slotting things into place. Spencer realizes that his sleeve is pushed up and the gauze around his wrist is visible.
"So," Ryan says. "What are you doing home again?"
Spencer leans against the bumper of Ryan's car, the same Grand Am he'd had in high school. "I may or may not have had a slight mental breakdown," he admits.
"How slight?"
Spencer pushes back the gauze so Ryan can see where he'd sliced deep into his left wrist.
He's shocked when Ryan slaps him, but the hug afterwards is a nice surprise.
**********
"I was still in high school when Ryan's dad killed himself," he tells Linda the next day. "He was a freshman at UNLV. I mean, he was dying anyway. Sort of. He was an alcoholic. It was really bad. His liver and his kidneys, and he shook all the time. Ryan says he only waited as long as he did because he wanted to be sure Ryan was okay before he left."
"And was he?" Linda asks softly.
He thinks about Ryan curled up against him the night of the funeral, too hurt to even cry. "No." He doesn't wait for her to ask him another question before he says, "I was in love with him. With Ryan. Not his dad. That would have been weird."
"And Ryan?" she asks.
Spencer shakes his head. "He's straight. I always knew that. I just. It didn't stop the way I felt about him, knowing he'd never love me back."
"How did he react when you told him?"
The idea is so ludicrous that Spencer laughs out loud.
"Why is that funny?"
"I never told him," Spencer says. "I couldn't. I mean. People don't just go around saying things like that."
"Actually, they do."
"I didn't. I couldn't. There wasn't any point. I knew he didn't feel the same way, that he couldn't feel the same way. It just--" he breaks off when he realizes that he's crying. "This is so stupid," he whispers.
"You were in pain," she says.
Spencer nods.
"You're in pain, now, too. Is it still the same pain from before? From when you loved him?"
"No," Spencer says. "I don't know." He can't stop crying. Linda doesn't try to make him. She just lets him cry and hands him tissues and when he's reached the end of it, is starting to hiccup and snot is flowing and he's exhausted, she reaches out and brushes his hair out of his eyes.
"Why didn't you make any friends at college, Spencer?"
"I was busy."
"Everyone's busy. Everyone's busy together. That's part of college. Why didn't you let anyone in?"
It seems too easy, but he says it anyway. He says, "That way I couldn't get hurt."
He knows it's too easy, knows he can't blame everything on an unrequited love he had when he was in his teens, and Linda seems to know it, too, but at least it's a start.
**********
There are walking trails and parks all throughout Summerlin. When he was growing up there, he thought they were lame, but now he thinks they're kind of nice. He starts going for walks every morning. Sometimes he brings his iPod and sometimes he stuffs a book in his back pocket in case he wants to lounge on the grass in one of the parks and read, but mostly he just walks.
He starts recognizing people, and he knows it's not making friends, but he nods to the people he recognizes and they nod to him and sometimes say, "Hello," and sometimes make comments about the weather and it makes him feel normal.
It's mostly young moms walking with their kids or retirees keeping fit, but there's at least one other guy Spencer passes on the trails who seems about Spencer's age. He's shorter than Spencer with dark hair and dark eyes, and he's usually got headphones on.
One day as they pass each other, Spencer nods and says, "Hey," and the guy jumps and pulls out one of his earbuds and laughs kind of nervously and says, "What?"
"I said hello," Spencer tells him.
"Oh," says the guy. "Right. Um. Hi." He stands there awkwardly.
"Have a nice day," Spencer tells him, and starts walking again. He wonders if he should have made conversation instead, but he doesn't know what he would have said.
**********
"You're coming," Ryan tells him.
Spencer says, "I don't know if I'm really ready. For, you know. People."
Ryan says, "Bullshit."
Spencer frowns. He'd just gotten his stitches out that morning. His wrists sort of ache. "My wrists ache," he tells Ryan.
"Good. Asshole. You're coming."
"I won't know anyone there."
"It's not like I'm inviting you to some formal gala. It's dinner. There will be, like, four other people. You'll get to know them."
Spencer grudgingly agrees to go. He thinks Linda would probably approve.
Ryan lives in a questionable apartment complex near campus. The stairs are rickety and the elevator's broken. The apartment itself is nice, though. The floors are hardwood and the furniture is mismatched in a funky, stylish way. There are huge paintings hung on the walls and photographs and knick-knacks on all the shelves and it's nothing like the house Ryan grew up in, but it feels right, like the kind of place Ryan belongs.
Ryan's girlfriend is beautiful, blonde with sharp green eyes and a quick smile. She hugs Spencer when Ryan introduces them, and it feels awkward to hug a stranger, but Spencer does it anyway. They sit in Ryan and Libby's funky living room and a cat jumps up onto Ryan's lap and he scratches behind its ears absently as he listens to Libby tell them about her day. She's an artist, the paintings on the walls are hers, and Spencer knows shit about art, but he likes them.
Ryan pours them glasses of red wine, and when he sees the look on Spencer's face, he laughs and says, "I've made my peace with alcohol."
It's nice sitting there listening to Libby and Ryan banter. He doesn't have to say much and the chair he's in is really comfortable.
The other people who were supposed to come end up canceling, so it's just the three of them much to Spencer's relief. Halfway through dinner, Libby starts pestering him for the dirt on Ryan's childhood.
There's so much to choose from, Spencer doesn't really know where to begin. He could tell her terrible things or tragic things or heartbreaking things, but he doesn't want to. Instead he tells her the funny things, making bombs out of plastic bottles filled with gasoline and shoplifting candy in elementary school and running around in their Underoos thinking they were superheroes.
By the end of the night, they're all a little trashed on wine and Spencer crashes on their couch, covered up with a hand-crocheted afghan. He kind of hopes Ryan was the one to crochet it because that would be hilarious, but he doesn't ask.
He wakes up halfway through the night, and Ryan's curled up in one of the armchairs, reading. His arm is dangling down and Spencer can see a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It says, Be Infinite.
"Hey," Spencer whispers.
Ryan looks over at him, blinking. It always takes him a minute or two to come out of his reading trance. "Did I wake you up?"
Spencer shakes his head.
"Libby's asleep, and I just..." He shrugs. He's always been an insomniac.
Spencer says, "I was in love with you in high school." He doesn't know if he's still drunk or still crazy. Maybe it's a combination of the two.
Ryan tucks his book between his body and the side of his chair. "I know."
Spencer blinks at him for a long time. "What?"
Ryan looks down at his hands. He rubs the back of one thumbnail with the pad of his other thumb. "I knew."
"Oh."
When Ryan looks up, again, he looks familiar. He looks small and frightened, tense, guilty. He looks like the Ryan that Spencer had always known, and Spencer hates it. "I'm sorry, Spence," he whispers. "I didn't know what to do about it. I just ignored it. I know it was shitty."
Spencer shakes his head. "No. It wasn't. I didn't expect you to love me back."
"I thought about it," Ryan admits. "I thought maybe I could if I tried, but I couldn't."
"I know. I knew it then, too. That's not why I did it. It's not your fault."
"Why did you do it?" Ryan asks. He's the first person who's actually asked Spencer that.
"Because I hated my life and I didn't know how to get out of it."
"You couldn't have just picked up and left?"
"I probably could have, but I didn't know that at the time."
"You're an idiot," Ryan tells him. Spencer kind of agrees.
**********
Spencer notices the dark haired guy pretty much every day on his walks, and sometimes he sees him three or four times. He starts to think maybe the guy is following him.
One day, when he sitting on the grass at the edge of the park reading Ryan's published story, he sees the guy out of the corner of his eye. He looks up and the guy jerks back.
"Are you a stalker?" Spencer asks him. "Because if you trying to be a stalker, you doing a pretty shitty job."
The guy sits down a few feet away from him. "I'm not a stalker. Well, I'm kind of a stalker. I keep hoping to run into you and then I see you and I don't talk to you because I'm lame like that."
"Okay," Spencer says.
The guy says, "This is weird, I know this is weird, but do you mind if I just, like, hang out within sight of you? Because I'm not very good at being alone anymore. I just spent two years where I was literally never alone unless I was using the bathroom, so I'm out of practice."
Spencer says, "You what? Were you a hostage?" And the guy laughs and says, "Kind of."
Turns out the guy is named Brendon and he just got back from his mission. There are enough Mormons in Summerlin that Spencer kind of understands what that means, going to someplace for two years to preach the word of Jesus. Or maybe Joseph Smith. Spencer's not too clear on whose words the Mormons are actually preaching, and he doesn't want to ask.
"Where did you go?" Spencer asks.
"Calgary," says Brendon.
Spencer frowns. "Calgary? Not, like, someplace exotic?"
Brendon shrugs. "It was really cold. That's kind of exotic."
"Did you like it?"
"Not really."
"Because of the cold?"
"Because of the mission."
"Oh," says Spencer. "That's kind of shitty. And also a relief."
"Oh, yeah, no," says Brendon. "I'm totally not trying to convert you. You're just the only person I've seen since I got back who looks like maybe he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing with his life, either. I'm supposed to go to BYU, now. Or, well, I was supposed to go, starting at the beginning of this semester, but I just kind of. Didn't. My parents are losing patience with me."
"I had a mental breakdown," Spencer says.
"That sucks," Brendon says.
"Yeah. I don't know. I think maybe it was for the best." It's almost noon and Spencer's getting hungry. He says, "Do you wanna go get some food?"
Brendon smiles at him and nods and says, "Yes, absolutely, I would love so, so much to go get food with you, and not just because the only people I've spoken to in the past few months are related to me or members of the church."
Spencer thinks that maybe Brendon's even crazier than he is. It's kind of reassuring.
**********
Linda looks almost proud of him when Spencer tells her about the conversation he had with Ryan. "He knew the whole time?" she asks.
"I guess so."
"And how do you feel?"
Spencer's getting better, but that doesn't mean he's good. He still has to stop and think and sometimes refer to his list of feelings before he can figure out what's going on in his head. It takes him a while, but finally he says, "Sympathetic."
"Because?"
"Because he felt shitty about it, too. We were both kind of miserable and hiding it from each other."
"And?"
"And," says Spencer. "Brave. For telling him."
Linda nods.
"And," says Spencer. "Speaking of which, you'll never believe it, but I made a new friend."
Sequel: Keep Me Where the Light Is
Title: Someday I'll Fly, Someday I'll Soar
Pairing: none, really, though in my brain it's Brendon/Spencer pre-slash
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: attempted suicide
Word Count: ~4,000
Summary: Spencer's not worried about getting his life back on track, because at the moment that shit just sounds way too demanding. Instead, he'll just try to find a way to be content.
Spencer gets back from his Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory class around two o'clock in the afternoon. He sits on his bed for a long time, looking at his backpack, thinking that he should take his books out. He doesn't. His roommate comes back from class and Spencer's pretty sure he makes small talk, but he doesn't know for sure. Then his roommate leaves again and Spencer sits on his bed, still staring at his backpack. He thinks about unpacking his books. He thinks about taking a nap. Instead, he drinks two beers and a shot of whiskey and takes a razor blade out of his dopp kit.
His one concession to the living is to at least do it in the bathroom, so it'll be easier to clean up. He waves at a couple of guys from his hall on the way to the bathroom, walks into one of the stalls fully clothed, turns on the water, and slits his wrists.
Everything's kind of a blur after that.
**********
Spencer's twenty-one years old, a junior majoring in economics with a minor in sociology. He's made the Dean's list five semesters in a row, has a solid 3.92 GPA. He plays intramural basketball in the winter, intramural softball in the spring. He's a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon, the American Constitution Society, the campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity, and is the Internal Financial Director for Student Government.
He's put on involuntary commitment for seventy-two hours and nobody cares what his GPA is. His new roommate is a man in his seventies who tells Spencer very seriously that he's Robinson Crusoe. Spencer actually loved that book when he was a kid. He wonders if it's a sign, or maybe he just thinks it’s a sign because of the blood loss.
Spencer lost a lot of blood. Before they put him in the psych ward, they weren't sure his kidneys were going to pull through.
He spends three days in the psych ward and he's a smart guy, he knows the answers the doctors want to all their questions. He knows what to say, when to stay silent, how to act, how to be normal. He's been pretending to be normal for so long, it's second nature.
He doesn't think about what he's going to do when they let him out. He has a vague plan to take a roadtrip, but he doesn't know where he'd go. He's not surprised to see his mother waiting for him when they finally let him out. He hadn't thought about her being there, but once he sees her, it makes sense.
She says, "I should tan your behind for this."
Spencer says, "I know."
She hugs him so tight, tighter than he thinks he deserves. He thinks he doesn't deserve much from her at all. Her eyes are filling with tears when she pulls away, and Spencer can't watch her cry. He turns and looks out the window and the clothes he's wearing are so stupid. He's wearing baggy sweatpants and a t-shirt that's too small and hard plastic flip-flops. The clothes he was wearing before are trashed, he's sure, probably bloodstained and ruined from the ER staff having to cut them off him.
She says, "Our flight's in five hours. You're coming home."
Spencer nods his head. He says, "Okay."
She's already cleaned out his dorm room. There's a suitcase full of his clothes in the hotel she'd booked and he showers the hospital stink off him and puts on jeans and a button-down that covers his wrists. The stitches are black and neat, the wounds still angry red but starting to heal. Spencer pokes at them, then wraps them with gauze.
On the flight back to Las Vegas, he thinks about how hard he worked, how much he's giving up, how much he's losing by just leaving like that after five and a half semesters. He doesn't think he'll miss it at all.
**********
The day after he gets back to Vegas, he plugs in his phone. The battery had gone dead while he'd been almost dying and then confined. Once his turns his phone back on he's not surprised to see that he doesn't have any messages. He networked and had acquaintances, but he'd never actually made a friend.
Crystal's not talking to him, but Jackie spends the first Saturday he's home sitting with him on the couch, curled up against his side, watching stupid movies on cable. She presses her face to his shoulder and whispers, "You're so fucking stupid." Her voice is thick, full of tears.
He says, "Hey, don't--"
"Promise me," she says, sniffling. "Promise me you won't ever try it again."
He nods and promises her. He wouldn't anyway. He's seen how drawn and old his father seems when he looks at Spencer, now. He's heard his mother crying when she thought no one would know. He won't ever try it again.
The only problem is, he doesn't feel any different. He tried to kill himself. He almost died. He spent days locked up with people who were actually crazy, and he doesn't feel any different than he did before. He doesn't feel much of anything at all.
**********
On Monday, his mother drives him to therapy. He's never been before, so he's not sure what to expect. His therapist is a middle-aged woman named Linda who he wants to dislike, but he doesn't. He doesn't know if he likes her, but she doesn't look at him with fear or pity and she seems to have a low tolerance for bullshit, so he kind of likes her against his will.
She asks him how he's feeling and when he says, "Fine," she rolls her eyes.
"You're actually allowed to tell me the truth, you know," she says.
Spencer's quiet for a long time. Finally he says, "I don't know how I feel."
She doesn't argue with him, she just nods and says, "Knowing what you're feeling takes practice. You haven't had a lot of that, have you?"
She gives him a piece of paper with lists of words to describe feelings. She tells him she wants him to go over it throughout the day and pick out a few he's experienced and write them down. She tells him she wants him to bring the list back the next time she sees him.
"Is she nice?" his mother asks on the drive back.
"Sure," says Spencer.
"Do you think she can help?"
He shrugs. He doesn't even know what's wrong.
**********
On Tuesday, his sisters have school and his parents have work. His mother doesn’t want to go, but he tells her he's fine. "I promise," he says.
She looks unconvinced.
"I don’t need a babysitter."
"I think you might."
Spencer sighs and tells her again to go to work. She's already taken a week off.
"Seriously," he says. "You're going to be twenty minutes away. I'll be fine."
She leaves a little after nine o'clock in the morning. Spencer goes back to bed. When he wakes up, it's nearly one. He showers and rewraps his wrists. He doesn't actually need to wrap them anymore, they're healing just fine and the stitches will probably come out within the week. He wraps them anyway and pulls on a long-sleeved t-shirt.
When he comes downstairs, Ryan's sitting in his kitchen. He says, "I thought those were your footsteps. What are you doing home?"
Spencer wants to ask Ryan what the hell he's doing there, but he already knows. He can hear the washing machine running. Ryan will always be Spencer's mom's other son, even if he and Spencer never talk anymore.
Spencer realizes that nobody's told him, that Ryan doesn't know that he tried to kill himself and spent time in a psych ward. He says, "I'm just home. What's up?"
"Laundry," says Ryan.
Spencer nods. Things with Ryan didn't end badly, they just ended. They stayed friends until the end of Spencer's freshman year, when they were both so busy with other people and other things that they stopped calling or emailing. Standing there in the kitchen with Ryan is awkward in the same way it would be if Spencer had to stand in the same room with a stranger.
Spencer thinks, awkward, and makes a note to write the feeling down so he can show Linda.
"You're really skinny, dude," Ryan tells him.
"Oh," Spencer says, looking down at his body, like he hadn't noticed, like he hadn't worked for it. "Yeah. I guess."
"You wanna go get food?"
Spencer thinks, No. Spencer thinks that he doesn't know this person, this stranger dressed in skinny jeans and a soft tan sweater with hair that's long and curling around his ears. He's never known a Ryan that looked laid back and happy. He says, "Yeah. Okay."
They go get subs and Spencer forgets after a while that Ryan's a stranger. Ryan does most of the talking, anyway, tells Spencer about his girlfriend and his band, tells Spencer about the short story he wrote that was published in The Alaska Quarterly Review. Spencer's never heard of the magazine, but Ryan seems excited and really pleased.
His phone rings as they're walking back out to Ryan's car, and he answers when he sees it's his mother.
"Spencer James where the hell are you?" she demands.
He sighs. He probably should have left a note. "I'm okay," he says softly. "I'm with Ryan. We're just getting food."
"Let me talk to him," she says.
"No. Mom. I'm fine."
She's quiet for a long time. Spencer's about to ask if she's still there when she says, "All right. But don't stay out too long."
"Okay," he says. When he clicks off his phone, he looks over to see Ryan looking at him. Ryan never just looks at anyone. Ryan digs into people when he looks at them, brain always working, always slotting things into place. Spencer realizes that his sleeve is pushed up and the gauze around his wrist is visible.
"So," Ryan says. "What are you doing home again?"
Spencer leans against the bumper of Ryan's car, the same Grand Am he'd had in high school. "I may or may not have had a slight mental breakdown," he admits.
"How slight?"
Spencer pushes back the gauze so Ryan can see where he'd sliced deep into his left wrist.
He's shocked when Ryan slaps him, but the hug afterwards is a nice surprise.
**********
"I was still in high school when Ryan's dad killed himself," he tells Linda the next day. "He was a freshman at UNLV. I mean, he was dying anyway. Sort of. He was an alcoholic. It was really bad. His liver and his kidneys, and he shook all the time. Ryan says he only waited as long as he did because he wanted to be sure Ryan was okay before he left."
"And was he?" Linda asks softly.
He thinks about Ryan curled up against him the night of the funeral, too hurt to even cry. "No." He doesn't wait for her to ask him another question before he says, "I was in love with him. With Ryan. Not his dad. That would have been weird."
"And Ryan?" she asks.
Spencer shakes his head. "He's straight. I always knew that. I just. It didn't stop the way I felt about him, knowing he'd never love me back."
"How did he react when you told him?"
The idea is so ludicrous that Spencer laughs out loud.
"Why is that funny?"
"I never told him," Spencer says. "I couldn't. I mean. People don't just go around saying things like that."
"Actually, they do."
"I didn't. I couldn't. There wasn't any point. I knew he didn't feel the same way, that he couldn't feel the same way. It just--" he breaks off when he realizes that he's crying. "This is so stupid," he whispers.
"You were in pain," she says.
Spencer nods.
"You're in pain, now, too. Is it still the same pain from before? From when you loved him?"
"No," Spencer says. "I don't know." He can't stop crying. Linda doesn't try to make him. She just lets him cry and hands him tissues and when he's reached the end of it, is starting to hiccup and snot is flowing and he's exhausted, she reaches out and brushes his hair out of his eyes.
"Why didn't you make any friends at college, Spencer?"
"I was busy."
"Everyone's busy. Everyone's busy together. That's part of college. Why didn't you let anyone in?"
It seems too easy, but he says it anyway. He says, "That way I couldn't get hurt."
He knows it's too easy, knows he can't blame everything on an unrequited love he had when he was in his teens, and Linda seems to know it, too, but at least it's a start.
**********
There are walking trails and parks all throughout Summerlin. When he was growing up there, he thought they were lame, but now he thinks they're kind of nice. He starts going for walks every morning. Sometimes he brings his iPod and sometimes he stuffs a book in his back pocket in case he wants to lounge on the grass in one of the parks and read, but mostly he just walks.
He starts recognizing people, and he knows it's not making friends, but he nods to the people he recognizes and they nod to him and sometimes say, "Hello," and sometimes make comments about the weather and it makes him feel normal.
It's mostly young moms walking with their kids or retirees keeping fit, but there's at least one other guy Spencer passes on the trails who seems about Spencer's age. He's shorter than Spencer with dark hair and dark eyes, and he's usually got headphones on.
One day as they pass each other, Spencer nods and says, "Hey," and the guy jumps and pulls out one of his earbuds and laughs kind of nervously and says, "What?"
"I said hello," Spencer tells him.
"Oh," says the guy. "Right. Um. Hi." He stands there awkwardly.
"Have a nice day," Spencer tells him, and starts walking again. He wonders if he should have made conversation instead, but he doesn't know what he would have said.
**********
"You're coming," Ryan tells him.
Spencer says, "I don't know if I'm really ready. For, you know. People."
Ryan says, "Bullshit."
Spencer frowns. He'd just gotten his stitches out that morning. His wrists sort of ache. "My wrists ache," he tells Ryan.
"Good. Asshole. You're coming."
"I won't know anyone there."
"It's not like I'm inviting you to some formal gala. It's dinner. There will be, like, four other people. You'll get to know them."
Spencer grudgingly agrees to go. He thinks Linda would probably approve.
Ryan lives in a questionable apartment complex near campus. The stairs are rickety and the elevator's broken. The apartment itself is nice, though. The floors are hardwood and the furniture is mismatched in a funky, stylish way. There are huge paintings hung on the walls and photographs and knick-knacks on all the shelves and it's nothing like the house Ryan grew up in, but it feels right, like the kind of place Ryan belongs.
Ryan's girlfriend is beautiful, blonde with sharp green eyes and a quick smile. She hugs Spencer when Ryan introduces them, and it feels awkward to hug a stranger, but Spencer does it anyway. They sit in Ryan and Libby's funky living room and a cat jumps up onto Ryan's lap and he scratches behind its ears absently as he listens to Libby tell them about her day. She's an artist, the paintings on the walls are hers, and Spencer knows shit about art, but he likes them.
Ryan pours them glasses of red wine, and when he sees the look on Spencer's face, he laughs and says, "I've made my peace with alcohol."
It's nice sitting there listening to Libby and Ryan banter. He doesn't have to say much and the chair he's in is really comfortable.
The other people who were supposed to come end up canceling, so it's just the three of them much to Spencer's relief. Halfway through dinner, Libby starts pestering him for the dirt on Ryan's childhood.
There's so much to choose from, Spencer doesn't really know where to begin. He could tell her terrible things or tragic things or heartbreaking things, but he doesn't want to. Instead he tells her the funny things, making bombs out of plastic bottles filled with gasoline and shoplifting candy in elementary school and running around in their Underoos thinking they were superheroes.
By the end of the night, they're all a little trashed on wine and Spencer crashes on their couch, covered up with a hand-crocheted afghan. He kind of hopes Ryan was the one to crochet it because that would be hilarious, but he doesn't ask.
He wakes up halfway through the night, and Ryan's curled up in one of the armchairs, reading. His arm is dangling down and Spencer can see a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It says, Be Infinite.
"Hey," Spencer whispers.
Ryan looks over at him, blinking. It always takes him a minute or two to come out of his reading trance. "Did I wake you up?"
Spencer shakes his head.
"Libby's asleep, and I just..." He shrugs. He's always been an insomniac.
Spencer says, "I was in love with you in high school." He doesn't know if he's still drunk or still crazy. Maybe it's a combination of the two.
Ryan tucks his book between his body and the side of his chair. "I know."
Spencer blinks at him for a long time. "What?"
Ryan looks down at his hands. He rubs the back of one thumbnail with the pad of his other thumb. "I knew."
"Oh."
When Ryan looks up, again, he looks familiar. He looks small and frightened, tense, guilty. He looks like the Ryan that Spencer had always known, and Spencer hates it. "I'm sorry, Spence," he whispers. "I didn't know what to do about it. I just ignored it. I know it was shitty."
Spencer shakes his head. "No. It wasn't. I didn't expect you to love me back."
"I thought about it," Ryan admits. "I thought maybe I could if I tried, but I couldn't."
"I know. I knew it then, too. That's not why I did it. It's not your fault."
"Why did you do it?" Ryan asks. He's the first person who's actually asked Spencer that.
"Because I hated my life and I didn't know how to get out of it."
"You couldn't have just picked up and left?"
"I probably could have, but I didn't know that at the time."
"You're an idiot," Ryan tells him. Spencer kind of agrees.
**********
Spencer notices the dark haired guy pretty much every day on his walks, and sometimes he sees him three or four times. He starts to think maybe the guy is following him.
One day, when he sitting on the grass at the edge of the park reading Ryan's published story, he sees the guy out of the corner of his eye. He looks up and the guy jerks back.
"Are you a stalker?" Spencer asks him. "Because if you trying to be a stalker, you doing a pretty shitty job."
The guy sits down a few feet away from him. "I'm not a stalker. Well, I'm kind of a stalker. I keep hoping to run into you and then I see you and I don't talk to you because I'm lame like that."
"Okay," Spencer says.
The guy says, "This is weird, I know this is weird, but do you mind if I just, like, hang out within sight of you? Because I'm not very good at being alone anymore. I just spent two years where I was literally never alone unless I was using the bathroom, so I'm out of practice."
Spencer says, "You what? Were you a hostage?" And the guy laughs and says, "Kind of."
Turns out the guy is named Brendon and he just got back from his mission. There are enough Mormons in Summerlin that Spencer kind of understands what that means, going to someplace for two years to preach the word of Jesus. Or maybe Joseph Smith. Spencer's not too clear on whose words the Mormons are actually preaching, and he doesn't want to ask.
"Where did you go?" Spencer asks.
"Calgary," says Brendon.
Spencer frowns. "Calgary? Not, like, someplace exotic?"
Brendon shrugs. "It was really cold. That's kind of exotic."
"Did you like it?"
"Not really."
"Because of the cold?"
"Because of the mission."
"Oh," says Spencer. "That's kind of shitty. And also a relief."
"Oh, yeah, no," says Brendon. "I'm totally not trying to convert you. You're just the only person I've seen since I got back who looks like maybe he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing with his life, either. I'm supposed to go to BYU, now. Or, well, I was supposed to go, starting at the beginning of this semester, but I just kind of. Didn't. My parents are losing patience with me."
"I had a mental breakdown," Spencer says.
"That sucks," Brendon says.
"Yeah. I don't know. I think maybe it was for the best." It's almost noon and Spencer's getting hungry. He says, "Do you wanna go get some food?"
Brendon smiles at him and nods and says, "Yes, absolutely, I would love so, so much to go get food with you, and not just because the only people I've spoken to in the past few months are related to me or members of the church."
Spencer thinks that maybe Brendon's even crazier than he is. It's kind of reassuring.
**********
Linda looks almost proud of him when Spencer tells her about the conversation he had with Ryan. "He knew the whole time?" she asks.
"I guess so."
"And how do you feel?"
Spencer's getting better, but that doesn't mean he's good. He still has to stop and think and sometimes refer to his list of feelings before he can figure out what's going on in his head. It takes him a while, but finally he says, "Sympathetic."
"Because?"
"Because he felt shitty about it, too. We were both kind of miserable and hiding it from each other."
"And?"
"And," says Spencer. "Brave. For telling him."
Linda nods.
"And," says Spencer. "Speaking of which, you'll never believe it, but I made a new friend."
Sequel: Keep Me Where the Light Is