livejournal fics//joncer

And Then The Morning Comes Part One

Author: sIlver_etoile 

When Ryan said he wanted to make a bucket list, Spencer had scoffed.

"You're too young to make a bucket list," he'd said, sifting through the Rolling Stone magazines intermixed with Spin and a random copy of Seventeenthat Ryan swore wasn't his.

"You never know," Ryan had responded, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom and turning his math book over in his hands as though that would help him understand it.

"You're only sixteen," Spencer had muttered, grabbing the copy of Seventeen and flipping it open.

*

Spencer closes the old, faded magazine and looks around the empty apartment. The curtains are open and the bright spring sunshine pours in from the east, spilling onto the brown couch, still as ugly as the day Spencer helped Ryan lug it up the stairs.

"Spencer, I found this box." Brendon appears in the doorway from the bedroom, a cardboard box in his arms. The edges are wrinkled and bent, one corner falling apart. He juggles it in his arms, a stack of books perched on top, and Spencer tears his eyes away from the magazine in his hands.

"Just put it on the coffee table. I'll go through it."

Brendon comes over, setting the box gently on the table and edging over to Spencer carefully.

"I wish he wasn't gone," he says quietly, and Spencer doesn't reply, brushing a thumb over the date on the magazine. It's dated ten years previously, Ryan's old address printed in the corner. Spencer had found it shoved in the magazine rack along with month's old copies of Home Living and Reader's Digest.

The apartment isn't dusty or unlived in or any of those other clichés. Ryan's keys are still tossed haphazardly on the countertop, a dirty cup sitting in the sink, half full of water from the tap. The mail is unopened next to the keys, dated two weeks before.

"We should... start cleaning," Spencer says finally, moving away from Brendon. "You, um. You should get more boxes."

Brendon nods after a second, casting a careful glance at Spencer, but he doesn't say anything as he pulls car keys from his pocket and leaves through the door, leaving it open a crack. Spencer listens to his footsteps down the hall and the doorway to the stairs being pulled open and shutting with a loud click.

His mouth twitches once but he takes a breath and moves over to the couch, sinking down into the worn cushions and staring at the old box before him.

The top is folded together messily, like it's been opened and closed a lot, and considering how many times Ryan moved, it isn't surprising. There's a scribbled label on the side, fading black marker in Ryan's scratchy handwriting.

random stuff – bedroom

It isn't exactly telling, but Ryan had never been very organized. Spencer had always been the one to label the boxes when he moved.

Cracking open the top, Spencer peers inside. The box is only half-full and most of it is unorganized papers, a few old books, random things that Spencer automatically recognizes from their childhood.

Picking up the Hard Rock Café baseball hat, Spencer huffs out a quiet laugh, remembering when Ryan thought he was a skater and used the wear that hat almost every day. They'd been such dorks.

Digging through the rest of the box, Spencer pulls out sheets of loose leaf papers, some with nothing more than a scribbled bit of a song or poem or something Ryan had just written down before he lost it. Most of it makes absolutely no sense, but Spencer sighs and sets them into a neat pile on one side of the box.

Three books on Proust later, Spencer gets to the bottom of the box, pulling out the last paper. This one is folded multiple times, the bottom crumpled a little as Spencer unfolds and flattens it out on his knee.

He recognizes the title immediately, Ryan's cramped handwriting scrawled across the top.

Something tightens in Spencer's chest as he stares at the list, exactly the same from that day when Ryan had said, "I want to make a bucket list." A few things have been added to the end, and a few have been scribbled over or ex-ed out, some even crossed out.

Some are ridiculous, like becoming a BMX skateboarder and meeting Tony Hawk, but other things are not so crazy like going to Paris and getting published in The New Yorker.

There are more than Spencer remembers, but then, all he remembers is rolling over onto his stomach and saying, "You're never gonna be a Mousketeer. You can't put that on."

"I could," Ryan just said, but it's not on the list so he must not have written it down.

Blinking away the stinging in his eyes, Spencer sets down the list, biting back the tremble in his lip and focusing on his hands.

There's noise outside, cars and dogs barking even though he's on the third floor. Cars honk obsessively, blaring into the apartment but Spencer doesn't hear it.

The apartment seems achingly empty considering Spencer has only been there once and that was three years ago when Ryan moved in.


"You like it?"