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"You know I'm not, like, mad at you or anything, right?" Spencer says out of nowhere, suddenly sitting at Ryan's side and scratching at his head.
"What?" he looks up from his Les Paul.
"Well, if you think about it, you created me, kinda, so even if you had a weird idea of what I was supposed to be, I'm not angry at you." Spencer raises his other hand and it takes a moment for Ryan to realize that he wants to bump fists. He idly smacks at Spencer's fist with the back of his hand and Spencer grins, the same grin he's always had, and gets up.
"I didn't know," Ryan says, after Spencer's wandered away.
-
"I feel weird," Spencer announces after they get a fifteen-minutes-'til-we-march-you-outside warning.
"Weird how?" Ryan asks after he pulls his tie undone and starts again.
"Like, I dunno. Weird."
"Are you nervous, Spencer Smith?" Brendon asks coming out of the bathroom. "Have your nerves of steel finally failed you? Are you going to choke on live, national television?" With each question Brendon creeps closer to Spencer, and he asks the last one into an air microphone before aiming it at Spencer.
Spencer's not playing with him, though, not this time. "No, it's not that," he says, reaching one hand up and rubbing at his temple. "A little dizzy, I guess. Just. Weird."
"You gonna be able to drum?" Jon questions softly from his corner. "No pressure, but we're kinda screwed without you."
"Yeah, no, I can play." Spencer folds his hands in his lap. "I just need to talk to Ryan really quick first." He stands up abruptly.
He only gets a step towards Ryan before his face crinkles in confusion. "What did I just say?" His fingers flutter by his temple again, a half-shadow of his previous gesture and a chill goes down Ryan's spine.
"Hey, Spence, we were just going to talk alone for a sec." He looks pointedly at Brendon, who doesn't blink, just heads for the door, Jon right behind him.
"Spencer," he takes Spencer's hands. "This might sound weird but just answer. Are you real right now?" He's never just bluntly asked before.
"Ryan," Spencer rolls his eyes, "that is the stupidest question you have ever-"
His eyes glaze over. Ryan tightens his grip and focuses.
Spencer shakes his head, shakes his hands out of Ryan's. "Spencer?" he dares. Spencer closes his eyes.
"Damn, you have some timing." he murmurs. Ryan flinches, though he knows Spencer didn't meant it like that.
"I -" but he doesn't know what to say.
Spencer's frowning, concentrating. The line between his eyes is drawn tight.
"No, huh, it's not you," he says. Ryan takes Spencer's hands again and relaxes when Spencer grips him back, firm and warm.
"I don't know what it is, it's like pins and needles, but in a weirdo, not physical way." He opens his eyes. "But I can drum, I swear, I can do this."
It's the one show they can't delay, can't deviate by a hair. The New Year's Eve broadcast schedule is timed to the minute, the half minute, nearly the second during the last hour.
But still Ryan cups Spencer's face gently, looks into his eyes. "Spencer. Spencer Smith. Thank you." Spencer's hands settle over his, hold Ryan's lightly to his face. "I love you."
Spencer's smile is luminous. "I know," and he leans down slowly, ever so slowly, and kisses Ryan chastely.
It's only a second before there's a knock on the door, a shout that they need to get outside, but it's a moment in which Ryan knows he shares everything, absolutely everything, with Spencer.
-
"Ryan!" Spencer grabs him from behind as the ball starts to drop.
"What?" he yells back, barely able to hear.
"I'm a real boy!" Spencer hugs him close, yells directly into his year. "Pins and needles, Ryan, you did it! I can feel it!"
-
"I bet you Pete's not real either," Spencer says one afternoon.
Spencer's favorite game, since they discovered Brent isn't real either, is guessing who else Ryan might have created. Ryan's been paying less attention to Brent since Spencer figured it out. Whatever his subconscious was doing, there, he wants to focus on Spencer more, make sure he gets all the details right.
"Hmm," he responds, looking up, forcing himself not to tense up. "I dunno, I think he's real. He's been around for too long not to be." He doesn't want Pete to be another person he dreamed up. It'd be too fitting, too creepy.
Spencer tilts his head, conceding. "I also doubt you could've come up with all those emo blogs and stuff. Too much detail, too little Ryan Ross. But I bet you did something, something big, to bring him to us."
Ryan shivers. "Maybe."
-
Spencer doesn't always know he's not real. Ryan figured this out the hard way when they were still pretty young. He doesn't remember exactly what happened, he just remembers Spencer's face, blotchy and red, after Spencer had burst into tears at Ryan's ignorant, naïve insistence that Spencer would disappear soon.
It had make Ryan quiet around Spencer, tentative, unsure of how to act when he wasn't sure if Spencer knew. The older they got, the more Ryan took to treating Spencer like a real boy, all the time, even the times he knew Spencer knew he wasn't. It's just easier that way.
It had made Spencer's hidden barbs all the more painful, though, the worst being the time he'd meditatively said, "I can't tell for certain, but I don't think I liked this movie. If I hadn't just been a figment earlier, I'd probably have bartered for something else."
-
The fight starts out of Ryan's idle comments about Spencer's haircut. It's one of those fights that's so obviously not about what they're verbally arguing about, it makes Ryan's anger and frustration hone his words into sharp, spiteful things. They start out amiably leaning against each other, ready to watch another movie, and end up nearly pinned to opposite sides of the bus couch, an invisible line splitting the middle cushion neatly between their toes.
Spencer's trump card, the card that dries up anything Ryan might have been preparing to say, is when he hisses, "You can't just wish me away anymore, it won't work. You have to deal with me now all the time, whether you like it or not."
Ryan feels like he's choking on air, choking on life. "I have never wished you away," he garbles out, on his second try, forcing himself to maintain eye contact with Spencer. "Just because you always know, now, just 'cause you can never forget doesn't mean you get to blame me for not being born a real boy."
"I won't just do what you want all the time," Spencer's tone is still meaner than usual, but more on the side of petulant.
"Spencer," Ryan leans his head against the back of the couch, emotionally exhausted. He can taste the adrenaline in the back of his mouth, fresh and stale at the same time. "There's only been one time I've actually let myself know exactly what I want, what I want with every part of me."
"Well, you got what you wanted," Spencer's response is measured. Ryan nods. The tension's still there between them, just fainter, and Ryan wishes he knew how to get it to go away. "And thank you, for letting me be part of it, the band."
His eyes open as he shoots forward, a sudden flash of anger propelling him to his feet. "I wanted you, dumbass!" he yells, hoarsely. "Not the fucking band, and especially not the band without you!"
Spencer stares at him blankly. "But, when Pete," he reaches up to push his bangs out of his eyes. "I thought," he trails off.
"You're such an idiot." He's agitated. How could Spencer not know? "How could you think that? Then - you should have known, you just should've just known."
Spencer stands, pushing into his space. Ryan doesn't step back, doesn't move away from the heat of Spencer's body, his anger. "I could never actually read your mind THEN, what makes you think I can NOW?"
"Spencer," he reaches, grabs Spencer's hair, his shoulder. "I couldn't - not without you." He pulls, pushes, until Spencer's unlocked. He presses his lips against Spencer's, firmly but not painfully. please he thinks, oh, please. He can't make Spencer, not this Spencer, and he wouldn't want it if Spencer had to.
-
do u ever think about what it'd be like to disappear? he texts Pete at five am when he can't sleep and doesn't want to take an Ambien since he'll have to be awake in five hours.
nt rlly Pete sends back, immediately.
Ryan purses his lips and nods slowly, thinking over the layers of what Pete could mean. Then he flips his sidekick open and closed compulsively, waiting for Pete to elaborate, knowing there's more. He watches the screen flicker up and down, sense to nonsense, nonsensical to sensical, until he's dizzy with it.
i dream about escaping, Pete emails him an hour later, after he's gotten bored enough to make enough of a racket to wake Jon. They've been enjoying a sleepy, cuddly chat on the couch. Jon fades back into sleep, released from his obligation of talking to Ryan, after Ryan picks up his phone to check his email.
i dream im chained in something and i fight my way out in a flashy show and leap up and yell AHA! I DID IT! SUCK ON THAT MOTHERFUCKERS! but i dn't disappear. there's always an audience. the nightmares are the dreams where i dont make it out and i just keep struggling and struggling forever or the ones where i fight out but the crowd dsnt care.
-
"Spencer?" He pounds on the Smiths' front door. The house is dark and quiet, all the blinds shut and curtains drawn. "Spencer, please!" The code on the garage door hadn't worked, the lights had just blinked at him. He knocks with his knuckles until they ache too badly to carry on, then he just switches to the side of his hand, pounds the fleshy curve of it over and over again until he's sure he's bruised, until he switches to the other hand.
He'd come as soon as he could. He hopes he's not too late. Spencer had called Brendon, given him a story about not being able to make it to play for Pete, something about his sisters. He hopes he and Brendon had faked it well enough, but he needs Spencer to come back.
Spencer had called Brendon and had hung up before Ryan could talk to him.
He pounds one last time, then kicks the door before turning to slide down it. He lets his head fall into his hands, hides both behind his knees. He lets himself look as lost and small and alone as he feels. "Please," he whispers to his palms, pressing his fingers into his eyelids. "It's not a fair trade, don't make me choose." He concentrates on Spencer, on Spencer's smile when he's gotten away with something he shouldn't've, on the delicate arch of his wrists when he plays the drums, on the shrug of his shoulders and the way he always stands with his toes pointing in different directions. Otter-pop blue lips and mac-and-cheese eating contests and the scar on Spencer's left hand from when he'd cut himself changing Ryan's skateboard wheels and the way Spencer scratched at his ear when he was trying to lie and every single damn thing that made him real, made him human, made him fallible and Ryan's.
"You can't keep him away from me," he says, finally looking up. He clenches his fists hard enough to bite his nails into his palms and stares at the Smiths' driveway until he can see Ginger's mini-van in his mind, until he can imagine the dent in the front from Spencer's first try at filling the gas tank, the dustiness from rarely being washed, the detritus that would litter the inside: spare soccer equipment and maps and drive-thru napkins and abandoned bottles of water and juice, the jumper cables in the back and the mess of lipstick and spare sunglasses and frequent buyer cards in the front. He stares until his eyes burn, until he has to blink away moisture.
"I'm not stopping," he mutters, "or leaving until I HAVE HIM BACK!" he ends in an unexpected, hoarse scream that stutters out nearly as quickly as it began.
His toes go numb so he crosses his legs and rests his palms on his knees, straightening his spine and breathing deeply. He closes his eyes to picture grocery bags packed into the back, Spencer yelling at him to "fucking get over here already!" and then the door opens and he falls backwards, over the entrance to the house, and sees Spencer's face over him, upside down and puzzled.
"Why didn't you knock?" Spencer asks. "What happened with Pete?"
"We did it, Spence," he gasps, exhausted all of the sudden. "We did it."
-
"Why are you awake?" Spencer's voice isn't quite hoarse, but isn't quite awake. "Stop being a freak, come here."
Ryan rolls over and throws a leg over Spencer's hip, reaches around to rest his hand on Spencer's belly. "Just thinkin'," he says into the messy knot of hair at Spencer's nape.
"Well fucking stop that." Spencer's hand comes over his, pulls their hands up to rest over his heart. "Too much trouble."