Can't Ever Go

Spencer's been home for all of half an hour before his sidekick buzzes, and it's Brendon, of course, his voice hushed, a little awed. "My room," he says. "It's like. There's a *floor*, Spencer, and I don't think there was one when I left." Spencer would roll his eyes and maybe say something about how they'd just said their goodbyes an hour ago in the airport parking lot, but.

But, he's standing in the middle of his room, too (which may also have more of a floor than it'd had when he left) and he's spent the last few minutes thinking that it's darker than he remembers. That the white-painted walls are closer together, his windows smaller, more shaded. That the posters and playbills tacked to his walls are looking a little faded.

Instead he says, "Wow, that must have been quite a shock," his voice only a little dry, and he can almost hear the sound of Brendon's empathetic nodding through the phone. Brendon's already moving onto the next topic, though. "So Ross and I were thinking. Tomorrow night, the three of us. Dinner, movie in the theater for once? What do you say? You in?"

Spencer feels like he should say no, because he can hear his mom moving around in the kitchen, getting dinner together. He can hear his sisters in the hallway, talking, giggling, and these are the sounds he's dreamt about for days, weeks, almost there, almost home.

When he sits down on his bed, though, it's too soft, too large, too still, and he hears himself saying, "Yeah, count me in."

*
 
It doesn't take long before he starts to settle back into a routine.

On day three, his mother asks him to take out the trash. On day four, his sisters start yelling at him to get out of the bathroom already, God, Spencer, some of us actually have places to *be* today. On day five, he spends the night at Ryan's, lying on a too-thin pillow and underneath a too-short blanket on the floor, with Ryan on the couch and Brendon curled up into almost-ball on the recliner, his head pillowed on one arm, one of his feet dragging on the floor.

Spencer sleeps better than he has in six days.

And after that, after he's visited all of his old haunts—the Port O' Subs down at the strip mall; the record store two blocks away, with it's black-lights making the neon murals painted on the walls glow, the most random (awesome) albums hidden in the unorganized bins; the bagel shop and the Borders and the building where he used to take drum lessons, but now houses a marshal arts studio—well, he starts to feel like he hasn't been gone as long as he has been.

On day seven, his parents host a 'welcome home' cookout in their backyard—two grills, ten bags of chips, three cases of Pepsi, twenty or thirty family members, friends, and neighbors, and an hour into it, Spencer nearly falls down when someone leaps onto his back, arms tight around his neck, and he smiles at Mrs. Willis, his mom's coworker, and says, "Excuse me, I need to go kill my bandmate now."

She's grinning indulgently, nodding, and Brendon doesn't let go even when Spencer turns around, even when he sees Ryan standing there, smirking, laughing. The next instant, Brendon drops to the ground, letting out a muffled 'oof', and then he drapes an arm around Spencer's shoulders, his other around Ryan's, and from that point on, it's the three of them against the crowd—talking, laughing, telling tour stories, falling into old familiar patterns.

It even ends like most of the parties Spencer's parents have thrown since, well, forever, with Brendon and Ryan crashed out on the floor of Spencer's room, windows open, listening to something on the CD player. Talking shit: who they'd seen, what had happened to so and so.

Just like always. Just like home.

Except not, too, because Brendon says, "So, yeah. I talked to Jon yesterday," and Spencer—

He'd picked up his phone on the fourth night, his house dark and quiet around him, and he'd scrolled through his phonebook until he'd reached Jon's name. It'd been eleven thirty in Vegas, not too late, comparatively, but it was later in Chicago, and they were back in their old lives, and for the first time in months, Spencer didn't know what Jon would be doing. That he'd answer.

Brendon keeps talking ("Yeah, and he said he'd been out with Tom and you'll never believe—") and it's almost like they're back on tour, Brendon relating something that Jon had told him about the Academy guys, or the Five-Oh-Four Plan guys, and in a minute, Jon would speak up, say, "No, no, you're screwing it up, man. What actually happened was—"

Ryan laughs at the story's punch line, so Spencer does, too, but it's not quite genuine, not quite right. Before he can dwell, though, there's a knock on his door, and his mother's peeking into the room, saying, "We have leftovers downstairs, boys. Why don't you come help yourselves."

He says, "Yeah, mom. Okay. We'll be right down."

He's the last one out the door, and as he looks at the rumpled covers on his bed, Brendon's shoes in the middle of his floor, Ryan's jacket piled next to them, he thinks, *almost*.

Almost.

*

The eighth night, he watches Jeopardy with his parents until the sun is halfway below the horizon, the sky stained peach and orange and red, and then he says, "I'm going to—" he motions at the stairs, up towards his room, and his mom nods, smiles.

He sits down on his bed, picks his sidekick up off of his desk, and it's early still—maybe too early? Maybe Jon's out and about, hanging with the Chicago crowd. Maybe, maybe, but Spencer dials anyway, and he tries not to breathe a sigh of relief when Jon picks up.

"Hey, man," Jon says, and it sounds like he's smiling. "Hi."

"Hi," Spencer says, and there's a moment of silence where he can hear the sound of Jon breathing, as familiar to Spencer's ears as his own breaths, Brendon's, Ryan's, after months of living in each other's space, on top of each other, and something inside of him stills, relaxes.

He slouches down against his pillow a little more, but there's a crackle of static then, a reminder of how far apart, exactly, they are.

"So Brendon was telling us about your night out with Tom," he says after a moment, before the silence can move from comfortable to awkward, and Jon laughs and says, "Let me guess. He totally embellished? We probably ended up in, like, go-go boots, dancing or some shit like that, right?"

Spencer grins. "Close. No go-go boots, but I think there was a tango involved," and he can almost see Jon rolling his eyes. "Of course," Jon sighs. "Of course it would be the tango. Yeah. No. See, Tom and I thought it would be a good idea to—"

And just like that, it's like it hasn't been a week, eight days. Like there aren't thousands of miles separating them. If Spencer closes his eyes, he can almost imagine that he's on the bus again, Jon sitting on the opposite couch, and maybe there's a movie on, or Brendon's playing his guitar in the back lounge, because Spencer hears music, soft and muffled, but *real* and the next time Jon pauses, he asks, "Are you—?" and Spencer can picture Jon's shrug, his fingers moving over strings as he says, "Yeah. You know."

It's just simple chords, acoustic, and Spencer does know, because before he even realizes he's doing it, he's reaching over onto his desk, picking up his sticks, his electronic drum pad, and he taps the sticks on it once, twice, and Jon pauses.

"What are you playing?" Spencer asks after a moment, switching the phone over to speaker and putting it down on his bed. The sticks feel good in his hands, right, and he spins them between his fingers as Jon says, "I don't— I was just--"

"It sounded good," Spencer says, and that's all the encouragement Jon needs, because he starts picking out the chords again. Whether it's spontaneous, or something he's been working on, Spencer doesn't know, but there's a beat there, and they've been playing together for long enough now that Spencer feels comfortable picking up the rhythm. Staccato beats and drum rolls, mostly overpowering the sound of the guitar on Spencer's end, muffled as it is through the phone, but when he pauses he can still hear Jon, the notes and chords matching the tempo in Spencer's head, and Spencer takes a deep breath, starts tapping out the beat again, thinking, yes.
 
*Yes.*
 
End.
-back- -email-