meet me out back in 10
Jun. 16th, 2008 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skoosiepants* Got a hold of dog ordinances - no limit as long as you care for them properly, and also no breed restrictions. It was a little hairy for a mo because the district directly next to ours is VERY strict, requiring special 500 dollar, 20k dollar bonds for owning pit bulls, and also you can only have 2 dogs. We are so lucky, the border is mere miles away. Still have to go to court, though, and still have to get a hold of our lawn dude and figure out how to fight this *shakes tiny fist*
* PB can now text! We are having too much fun, even though she only got a 250 limit plan and she says I'm eating up all her texts :)
* MCR!Spencer AU is at about the 20k mark, and I still have to write Frank's Vegas B-day party and Gabe's grand departure (Bill is heartbroken!) and Homecoming. This is becoming more and more ridiculous.
* Hey, hey, WIP amnesty maybe? Can that be granted for this? Because I started this thing back in November and it's gone exactly NOWHERE. It's less than 2k words, so I feel no serious pull to finish it. In a way, it sparked both Tear Down the Slaughter-house and The Magic Friend Band. Weird. I've posted snippets of it before, I think. Here-in lies broken hearts, babies, carpentry, parrots, road trips, and the Pete Wentz Booster Club. Ever see that Night Court where Bull made that list of things he wanted to do before he died? (Did I just totally age myself there? NIGHT COURT!) Yeah, okay, I thought wouldn't it be awesome if Brendon had something like that, too.
One day, Spencer wakes up and he realizes his bed doesn’t feel empty – probably hasn’t felt empty for months, even though he’s never acknowledged it before. He’d stretched out in his sleep, sprawled across the middle of the mattress, face planted in the valley between pillows, and he hadn’t groped blindly for Haley’s warm body before blinking open his eyes, hadn’t felt that swooping drop in his belly when all he caught was air, cool smooth sheets.
He rolls over onto his back, watches the sun spread steadily across his ceiling for the next hour, chest tight, breathing sort of shallow. Then he calls Ryan, palming his Sidekick and tugging the covers up to his chin.
“If you were a binkie, where would you be?” Ryan asks instead of saying hi. Spencer can hear Molly’s hiccupping sobs in the background, her cries of, “Daddy, Daddy.”
“Lower bookshelf,” Spencer says. “Behind those Golden books you don’t let her play with by herself.”
“Hey, she’s sort of unbelievably messy,” Ryan says, then, “Dude, how did you know that? All right, here, here, stop crying, geez, hey, look, it’s binkie! Go bug mommy for a snack, ‘kay princess?”
Spencer smiles a little, because Ryan doesn’t even sound like a dad, and he’s been at it for two years now.
“You didn’t just wake up, did you?” Ryan asks.
Spencer sighs. “Maybe.” He moves his feet under the bed sheet, swish, swish, swish. “Do you remember that song?”
There’s a soft pause, the sound of a door opening and closing. “What song?”
“The one. The one about the donkey that Brendon taught her.” Spencer pinches the bridge of his nose. “They sang it for, like, four hours straight that Christmas.”
“Spencer—”
“It’s just a stupid song,” Spencer says, and he knows he sounds defensive, but it’s the stupid shit, the little things that kill him when they slip away. He can hear her laugh, see her smile, the way she always tossed her hair over her shoulder, but he can’t remember the look on her face when he’d asked her to marry him.
“No, hey. Call Brendon, okay?”
“Yeah.” He isn’t going to call Brendon. Brendon’s been acting weird lately, even weirder than normal.
“Shit, listen, Keltie’s yelling for me, so I gotta get out of this closet before she figures out where I hide when I want to stab myself in the brain with Molly’s digital thermometer. I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”
Spencer pulls himself up, fists the blankets on his lap as he settles back against the headboard. “Ry—”
“I’ll come drag your ass out of bed if you don’t show.” And Ryan will, too, or he’ll get Zack to do it, because Zack has some empty nest issues that Ryan likes to regularly exploit.
Spencer gives in pretty easily at the prospect of having Zack haul him over his shoulder and stuff him into a cab. He probably wouldn’t let him get dressed, either. “Yeah, okay, see you then,” he says.
*
Spencer makes coffee, because coffee is an integral part of his morning, despite the fact that it’s almost noon. Waiting for it to perc, he listens to his voicemails – three of them, all from Brendon. Brendon’s making a dresser – “Armoire, Spencer; it’s, like, all fancy and shit” – with his bare hands. He found an old carpentry book at some flea market, and that’s just an accident waiting to happen. The last voicemail is delivered in Brendon’s sleepy voice, muttering something about wooden pegs and joints and Spencer really hopes Brendon wasn’t still in his newly outfitted garage-slash-workshop when he left it.
He doesn’t call Brendon back.
He sips at his coffee and does the Time’s crossword in pen and is a dangerous fifteen minutes late to meet Ryan.
Spencer likes routine. Ryan likes any excuse to get out of the house – he loves Molly, Spencer knows, but Ryan had trouble handling a puppy, so this baby business kind of left him in a permanent spin – and so they have a standing lunch date every Friday at the local Denny’s.
Denny’s is kind of horrible, but they know the waitresses and they don’t make a big deal about who they are, even though Ryan still wears these huge-ass dark sunglasses and a cap pulled down low over his forehead. He looks like a tool.
“You look like a tool,” Spencer says, sliding into the booth across from him.
“And you’re a lucky man.”
Spencer glances down, sees Ryan’s thumb hovering over speed dial three on his cell, which is a little strange, since Spencer knows Brendon’s three, and Zack’s, like, five or six. Brendon would’ve been kind of useless at getting Spencer out of bed. He’d probably climb in with him for a cuddle.
He shrugs out of his coat. “I’m here.”
“So Brendon’s going to Maine,” Ryan says.
Spencer blinks. “Okay.”
“He wants to see a wild moose.”
Spencer doesn’t bother blinking again. He just points out, “There’s moose in, like, Wyoming, right?”
“Right. He wants to go to Maine.”
“He knows they eat lobster up there as a hobby?”
Ryan holds up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he says, nodding, “second option, he goes on tour with Fall Out Boy.”
One of the waitresses slides a mug of coffee in front of him and Spencer shoots her a grateful smile. “I thought he was building an armoire?” he asks Ryan. “And what’s this sudden worry over how Brendon’s spending his time?” Spencer’s kind of confused. He’s the one who woke up miserable that morning. As far as he knows, Brendon’s been happy since 2004.
And then Ryan shrugs, tight, like he’s hiding something, and he hasn’t hid anything from Spencer in. In ever, Spencer’s pretty sure.
Spencer’s just pissed off enough about that to not dig any further. “Right,” he says, eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, so. I think you should go with him.”
Spencer narrows his eyes even more. If he closes them completely, he can pretend he’s still at home, asleep. “No.”
“Seriously.” Ryan’s staring at him now, his dead carp stare that reminds Spencer of zombies. It’s Ryan’s desperate look, though. He’s serious. He really wants Spencer to go with Brendon.
“No,” Spencer says again.
“Jon’ll join you in September,” Ryan goes on, like Spencer hasn’t said a word. “He’s got the boys ‘til school starts or he’d kick off the tour with you. I’d go, but.” He trails off, wistful. Ryan would probably kill to go, but he’d miss Molly every second, and their year off is supposed to be a year off. Spencer can’t believe Jon even wants to tour again so soon. And not even tour. Tag along. Tech maybe, and, fuck, there’s no way they’ll get a bus for this.
Spencer realizes he’s screwed when he starts thinking himself into the scenario.
Ryan seems to know it, too. He beams at Spencer, picks up a laminated menu. “I think I’ll have pancakes today.”
*
Spencer has only been on a handful of disastrous dates in the two years since the accident. Which basically means he hasn’t had sex in forever, and the pathetic thing is that he hasn’t even really noticed.
“It’s not even that I need to get laid,” he tells Jon. He bends down, shoving the Swiffer under the kitchen table.
Jon makes a noncommittal noise.
“Are you listening?” Spencer asks.
“Yeah,” Jon says, then yells, “Are there elephants upstairs?” away from the phone. “Sorry,” he says to Spencer. “Sorry, right, you need to get laid.”
“I don’t. The point. The point is.” Christ, he’s not even sure he has a point anymore. He sighs, gives up. “So. Brendon.”
“He’s making an armoire.”
“Did you seriously agree to tour with Fall Out Boy?”
“I did.” Spencer can hear the shrug in his voice. “I won’t have the—boys!”
Spencer jerks back. “What—”
“Sorry, shit. I think one of the munchkins fell down the stairs, um.”
“Go.” Spencer rubs a hand over his forehead, hitches a breathy laugh, because it’s hard to keep Jon on the phone when the boys are in town. “Seriously, make sure they didn’t break anything.”
“One more month,” Jon says wearily.
Spencer leans into the back of a chair, propping the Swiffer up against the fridge. “You love it,” he says. It’s pretty obvious that Jon adores his kids.
“Maybe, yeah.” There’s a smile in his tone this time. Then, “Fuck, crying. I hate crying. Call Brendon, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Spence.”
“I will. Promise.”
*
“I bought a parrot.”
“No, you didn’t,” Spencer says, because Brendon didn’t buy a parrot. That would be stupid, even for Brendon. And then he hears a squawk in the background and Spencer says, “Tell me you didn’t buy a parrot.”
“I can’t tell you that, Spencer Smith, because that would be a lie.”
Seriously. Seriously, Brendon hit thirty and got fucking weird.
*
A year off from touring is not exactly a hiatus, because Ryan can be a driven asshole, and not even a baby can get him to give up the band completely. He writes. He writes lyrics and emails them to Spencer, and then Spencer either forwards them to Brendon and Jon or calls Ryan up and laughs his ass off.
“This is a song about a mermaid,” Spencer says when he catches his breath. “I’m pretty sure it’s a song about that mermaid Barbie I gave Molly two months ago with the purple hair.”
“Fucker,” Ryan says. “Hear me out.”
“We’re not making an album for kids, Ryan.” Spencer slumps forward, rolls his forehead on the table, thinks about how depressing it is that the kitchen is where he spends the bulk of his day. There’s even a little TV on the counter.
“Okay, I know, it’s like, so last decade, right?”
“But,” Spencer prompts - there’s totally a but in there – then finishes for him, “but you want to write about mermaids.”
There’s a pause, then Ryan says, “Brendon’s willing to sing about unicorns and bears, too.”
“Like that’s a fucking surprise,” Spencer mutters. Honestly, he doesn’t think they could actually pull off a kids’ album. It’d end up with all sorts of weird subtextual messages about fucking and lying to your mom.
Brendon calls him up later that night, after Spencer has removed everything from under the kitchen sink and scrubbed the cabinets down with Simple Green, and says, “Calypso, Spencer! Think about the maracas,” and his stupid fucking bird is gulping, “Hello, hello,” down the line, and the thing about parrots is that they don’t die. They live for fucking ever, and Brendon is an idiot.
*
Brendon shows up at his house with an RV. A fucking RV is parked in Spencer’s driveway.
“We’re gonna be, like, the Fall Out Boy booster club,” Brendon says excitedly.
Spencer doesn’t take his eyes off the huge beige behemoth. “Does that mean we have to sleep with Pete Wentz?”
“Um.” Brendon’s face is scrunched up when Spencer glances at him. “I hope not.”
It’s not like an RV is so different from a bus, except for the fact that they don’t have a driver, and Brendon apparently expects Spencer to let him behind the wheel at least half the time. This is going to suck.
* PB can now text! We are having too much fun, even though she only got a 250 limit plan and she says I'm eating up all her texts :)
* MCR!Spencer AU is at about the 20k mark, and I still have to write Frank's Vegas B-day party and Gabe's grand departure (Bill is heartbroken!) and Homecoming. This is becoming more and more ridiculous.
* Hey, hey, WIP amnesty maybe? Can that be granted for this? Because I started this thing back in November and it's gone exactly NOWHERE. It's less than 2k words, so I feel no serious pull to finish it. In a way, it sparked both Tear Down the Slaughter-house and The Magic Friend Band. Weird. I've posted snippets of it before, I think. Here-in lies broken hearts, babies, carpentry, parrots, road trips, and the Pete Wentz Booster Club. Ever see that Night Court where Bull made that list of things he wanted to do before he died? (Did I just totally age myself there? NIGHT COURT!) Yeah, okay, I thought wouldn't it be awesome if Brendon had something like that, too.
One day, Spencer wakes up and he realizes his bed doesn’t feel empty – probably hasn’t felt empty for months, even though he’s never acknowledged it before. He’d stretched out in his sleep, sprawled across the middle of the mattress, face planted in the valley between pillows, and he hadn’t groped blindly for Haley’s warm body before blinking open his eyes, hadn’t felt that swooping drop in his belly when all he caught was air, cool smooth sheets.
He rolls over onto his back, watches the sun spread steadily across his ceiling for the next hour, chest tight, breathing sort of shallow. Then he calls Ryan, palming his Sidekick and tugging the covers up to his chin.
“If you were a binkie, where would you be?” Ryan asks instead of saying hi. Spencer can hear Molly’s hiccupping sobs in the background, her cries of, “Daddy, Daddy.”
“Lower bookshelf,” Spencer says. “Behind those Golden books you don’t let her play with by herself.”
“Hey, she’s sort of unbelievably messy,” Ryan says, then, “Dude, how did you know that? All right, here, here, stop crying, geez, hey, look, it’s binkie! Go bug mommy for a snack, ‘kay princess?”
Spencer smiles a little, because Ryan doesn’t even sound like a dad, and he’s been at it for two years now.
“You didn’t just wake up, did you?” Ryan asks.
Spencer sighs. “Maybe.” He moves his feet under the bed sheet, swish, swish, swish. “Do you remember that song?”
There’s a soft pause, the sound of a door opening and closing. “What song?”
“The one. The one about the donkey that Brendon taught her.” Spencer pinches the bridge of his nose. “They sang it for, like, four hours straight that Christmas.”
“Spencer—”
“It’s just a stupid song,” Spencer says, and he knows he sounds defensive, but it’s the stupid shit, the little things that kill him when they slip away. He can hear her laugh, see her smile, the way she always tossed her hair over her shoulder, but he can’t remember the look on her face when he’d asked her to marry him.
“No, hey. Call Brendon, okay?”
“Yeah.” He isn’t going to call Brendon. Brendon’s been acting weird lately, even weirder than normal.
“Shit, listen, Keltie’s yelling for me, so I gotta get out of this closet before she figures out where I hide when I want to stab myself in the brain with Molly’s digital thermometer. I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”
Spencer pulls himself up, fists the blankets on his lap as he settles back against the headboard. “Ry—”
“I’ll come drag your ass out of bed if you don’t show.” And Ryan will, too, or he’ll get Zack to do it, because Zack has some empty nest issues that Ryan likes to regularly exploit.
Spencer gives in pretty easily at the prospect of having Zack haul him over his shoulder and stuff him into a cab. He probably wouldn’t let him get dressed, either. “Yeah, okay, see you then,” he says.
*
Spencer makes coffee, because coffee is an integral part of his morning, despite the fact that it’s almost noon. Waiting for it to perc, he listens to his voicemails – three of them, all from Brendon. Brendon’s making a dresser – “Armoire, Spencer; it’s, like, all fancy and shit” – with his bare hands. He found an old carpentry book at some flea market, and that’s just an accident waiting to happen. The last voicemail is delivered in Brendon’s sleepy voice, muttering something about wooden pegs and joints and Spencer really hopes Brendon wasn’t still in his newly outfitted garage-slash-workshop when he left it.
He doesn’t call Brendon back.
He sips at his coffee and does the Time’s crossword in pen and is a dangerous fifteen minutes late to meet Ryan.
Spencer likes routine. Ryan likes any excuse to get out of the house – he loves Molly, Spencer knows, but Ryan had trouble handling a puppy, so this baby business kind of left him in a permanent spin – and so they have a standing lunch date every Friday at the local Denny’s.
Denny’s is kind of horrible, but they know the waitresses and they don’t make a big deal about who they are, even though Ryan still wears these huge-ass dark sunglasses and a cap pulled down low over his forehead. He looks like a tool.
“You look like a tool,” Spencer says, sliding into the booth across from him.
“And you’re a lucky man.”
Spencer glances down, sees Ryan’s thumb hovering over speed dial three on his cell, which is a little strange, since Spencer knows Brendon’s three, and Zack’s, like, five or six. Brendon would’ve been kind of useless at getting Spencer out of bed. He’d probably climb in with him for a cuddle.
He shrugs out of his coat. “I’m here.”
“So Brendon’s going to Maine,” Ryan says.
Spencer blinks. “Okay.”
“He wants to see a wild moose.”
Spencer doesn’t bother blinking again. He just points out, “There’s moose in, like, Wyoming, right?”
“Right. He wants to go to Maine.”
“He knows they eat lobster up there as a hobby?”
Ryan holds up his hands. “Okay, okay,” he says, nodding, “second option, he goes on tour with Fall Out Boy.”
One of the waitresses slides a mug of coffee in front of him and Spencer shoots her a grateful smile. “I thought he was building an armoire?” he asks Ryan. “And what’s this sudden worry over how Brendon’s spending his time?” Spencer’s kind of confused. He’s the one who woke up miserable that morning. As far as he knows, Brendon’s been happy since 2004.
And then Ryan shrugs, tight, like he’s hiding something, and he hasn’t hid anything from Spencer in. In ever, Spencer’s pretty sure.
Spencer’s just pissed off enough about that to not dig any further. “Right,” he says, eyes narrowed.
“Yeah, so. I think you should go with him.”
Spencer narrows his eyes even more. If he closes them completely, he can pretend he’s still at home, asleep. “No.”
“Seriously.” Ryan’s staring at him now, his dead carp stare that reminds Spencer of zombies. It’s Ryan’s desperate look, though. He’s serious. He really wants Spencer to go with Brendon.
“No,” Spencer says again.
“Jon’ll join you in September,” Ryan goes on, like Spencer hasn’t said a word. “He’s got the boys ‘til school starts or he’d kick off the tour with you. I’d go, but.” He trails off, wistful. Ryan would probably kill to go, but he’d miss Molly every second, and their year off is supposed to be a year off. Spencer can’t believe Jon even wants to tour again so soon. And not even tour. Tag along. Tech maybe, and, fuck, there’s no way they’ll get a bus for this.
Spencer realizes he’s screwed when he starts thinking himself into the scenario.
Ryan seems to know it, too. He beams at Spencer, picks up a laminated menu. “I think I’ll have pancakes today.”
*
Spencer has only been on a handful of disastrous dates in the two years since the accident. Which basically means he hasn’t had sex in forever, and the pathetic thing is that he hasn’t even really noticed.
“It’s not even that I need to get laid,” he tells Jon. He bends down, shoving the Swiffer under the kitchen table.
Jon makes a noncommittal noise.
“Are you listening?” Spencer asks.
“Yeah,” Jon says, then yells, “Are there elephants upstairs?” away from the phone. “Sorry,” he says to Spencer. “Sorry, right, you need to get laid.”
“I don’t. The point. The point is.” Christ, he’s not even sure he has a point anymore. He sighs, gives up. “So. Brendon.”
“He’s making an armoire.”
“Did you seriously agree to tour with Fall Out Boy?”
“I did.” Spencer can hear the shrug in his voice. “I won’t have the—boys!”
Spencer jerks back. “What—”
“Sorry, shit. I think one of the munchkins fell down the stairs, um.”
“Go.” Spencer rubs a hand over his forehead, hitches a breathy laugh, because it’s hard to keep Jon on the phone when the boys are in town. “Seriously, make sure they didn’t break anything.”
“One more month,” Jon says wearily.
Spencer leans into the back of a chair, propping the Swiffer up against the fridge. “You love it,” he says. It’s pretty obvious that Jon adores his kids.
“Maybe, yeah.” There’s a smile in his tone this time. Then, “Fuck, crying. I hate crying. Call Brendon, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Spence.”
“I will. Promise.”
*
“I bought a parrot.”
“No, you didn’t,” Spencer says, because Brendon didn’t buy a parrot. That would be stupid, even for Brendon. And then he hears a squawk in the background and Spencer says, “Tell me you didn’t buy a parrot.”
“I can’t tell you that, Spencer Smith, because that would be a lie.”
Seriously. Seriously, Brendon hit thirty and got fucking weird.
*
A year off from touring is not exactly a hiatus, because Ryan can be a driven asshole, and not even a baby can get him to give up the band completely. He writes. He writes lyrics and emails them to Spencer, and then Spencer either forwards them to Brendon and Jon or calls Ryan up and laughs his ass off.
“This is a song about a mermaid,” Spencer says when he catches his breath. “I’m pretty sure it’s a song about that mermaid Barbie I gave Molly two months ago with the purple hair.”
“Fucker,” Ryan says. “Hear me out.”
“We’re not making an album for kids, Ryan.” Spencer slumps forward, rolls his forehead on the table, thinks about how depressing it is that the kitchen is where he spends the bulk of his day. There’s even a little TV on the counter.
“Okay, I know, it’s like, so last decade, right?”
“But,” Spencer prompts - there’s totally a but in there – then finishes for him, “but you want to write about mermaids.”
There’s a pause, then Ryan says, “Brendon’s willing to sing about unicorns and bears, too.”
“Like that’s a fucking surprise,” Spencer mutters. Honestly, he doesn’t think they could actually pull off a kids’ album. It’d end up with all sorts of weird subtextual messages about fucking and lying to your mom.
Brendon calls him up later that night, after Spencer has removed everything from under the kitchen sink and scrubbed the cabinets down with Simple Green, and says, “Calypso, Spencer! Think about the maracas,” and his stupid fucking bird is gulping, “Hello, hello,” down the line, and the thing about parrots is that they don’t die. They live for fucking ever, and Brendon is an idiot.
*
Brendon shows up at his house with an RV. A fucking RV is parked in Spencer’s driveway.
“We’re gonna be, like, the Fall Out Boy booster club,” Brendon says excitedly.
Spencer doesn’t take his eyes off the huge beige behemoth. “Does that mean we have to sleep with Pete Wentz?”
“Um.” Brendon’s face is scrunched up when Spencer glances at him. “I hope not.”
It’s not like an RV is so different from a bus, except for the fact that they don’t have a driver, and Brendon apparently expects Spencer to let him behind the wheel at least half the time. This is going to suck.