Chapter Twenty-Five: November, 2000

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It wasn't just that they needed the money. They did. And he was adamant that was why he was doing this.

But it wasn't.

The problem with sobriety is how dull it was. Spencer was bored. He was bored and he was muted and everything seemed lesser, duller, tedious, when compared with the sharp-edged brightness of being high. And he knew it was just a side-effect of his body protesting the removal of chemicals it craved—but that didn't make it any easier.

"You're going to feel like this for a while," Ethan had told him that morning, walking out and finding Spencer sprawled on the couch belly-down, staring blankly at the wall. Unshowered and unshaven and wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing for three days. "Come on. You know this. Don't let it beat you."

"The neurotransmitter levels in my brain that combat depression are still in the process of recovering," Spencer had replied, turning his face into the couch and mumbling into the fabric. "Let me mope."

"No shit." Ethan had flopped down at the end of the couch, shoving Spencer's legs out the way. "You think I don't get it? I've been numb since I kicked it the first time at twenty-one. Find something to distract."

But the problem was, Spencer had found, that when he had a brain capable of doing so many things at once, it always seem to prioritize a small section to the process of whispering how much more everything would be if he was stoned. And that small part was quite gleeful to remind him that it hadn't always been bad trips and ODing… it was quick to bring up the times he'd been delightfully buzzed and cuddled up on the couch watching Ethan playing, with the music visually flickering around his housemate's clever fingers. Or the days that the coke sharpened his focus to the point that he knew his mind was almost transcendental, infinite, and everything he'd ever wanted to know was dancing at his fingertips.

He didn't miss the sex. That had always been an uncomfortable side-effect of the process of finding that pure bliss. Fantastic at the time, sure, and there had been times he'd felt like he was learning everything about the person he was with simply by exploring their bodies with his, as though he was connecting, on a level he couldn't manage when sober… but always followed by the come-down, the sick realization that he was wrong, coarse, corrupt, and he didn't believe in the concept of sin when applied to the collective of humanity but he was sure it was threaded through his veins alone.

The problem was, he'd found a new way to get that dopamine kick. And his tolerance level was already rising.

He'd started in the licensed casinos, those that didn't serve alcohol on the floor. They allowed those under twenty-one to play, and play he did. But that grew boring quickly, even his muddled mind still together enough to walk him mindlessly through the paces. It was comforting, in a way. Poker in the smoky casinos with the bark and chatter of slot machines in the background was a quiet narration of his childhood, the hometown song of Las Vegas, and it pulled at a part of him that was buried deep and tucked in with memories of Saturday morning cartoons and digging through the cereal box for a gimmicky toy.

But he couldn't really cheat there, or he could, but he knew that would end with his name in the unspoken book and his face banned from every gambling establishment in DC.

He couldn't really, but he did, and it was thrilling. He didn't win too often. He couldn't afford to be pulled aside, questioned, perhaps a little more. Couldn't afford the threat of bruises. But the adrenaline of the maybe kept him going back.

But what were bruises?

He shifted to the seedier establishments. Still licensed. Alcohol ran quickly, he was glad of his fake ID, and winning big got you a shark smile and eyes following you to the front door. There was coke in the bathrooms and women who would slip to your side if they thought you were lucky.

Spencer was lucky—or rather, he was clever—but he eschewed both. Because this was thrilling and vivid and real, but anything more would be failing his friend and the contract he'd bound himself to. At the end of the night, Spencer would return home and quietly leave his winnings on the kitchen bench when Ethan wasn't looking, all the better to avoid the pinched lips and worried eyes of his roommate when he noticed them.

"Gambling?" Ethan asked once, almost like he didn't want to.

"Statistics," Spencer corrected him.

And the seedier joints wouldn't leave him with just bruises. There'd be a back room somewhere and possible broken bones, fractures, all under his clothes and out of sight. He wouldn't end up on a book, but he may end up bleeding.

Tonight, he was cheating, badly. His brain was scattered, fogged by the thick stink of cannabis smoke cloying the air and the distraction of the open drug use around him. Within reach and people were revelling in it. A man hung close, his mouth slipped up into a lazy smile and his eyes sharp enough as he scanned Spencer's bare arms that Spencer knew he was noting the barely fading track marks, the traces of scabbing where he'd scratched at the skin, the tremble to his agile fingers. Spencer was marked, and he knew it was making him clumsy.

He ignored the crowd around them, drunk and loud and screeching. Beery breath and sticky surfaces and there was another man with a burly physique who'd marked Spencer as well, but in a different way. He shoved close and crowded hard and every one of Spencer's neuroses bound around his personal space were clamouring. It was a hard-edged adrenaline that was transitioning into anxiety, and Spencer swallowed down the panicked push of fear and tried to work through it.

He drew the wrong cards. Jack high.

He folded regretfully and knew eyes were on him. To shake them off, he schooled his expression to boredom and scanned the foggy room, trying not to linger his gaze on the girl in the corner distributing pills from a Hello Kitty fanny-pack, the irony in the smiling cartoon cat's speech bubble proclaiming 'Have a Happy Trip!' lost on no one.

New deal. Pair of aces. The crowd scuffled and he slipped a card. Lightning fast and he knew there weren't cameras on these tables, but someone's head snapped around to him and he was forced to make unbroken eye contact just to disarm them from their half-built suspicions. The room was cold, all the better to keep people drinking and moving, and he saw the suspicion vanish as they drain their glass and moved on to more interesting occurrences.

Then he looked around the room once more. Someone fell over against the wall. The pool tables were crowded. One stood slightly apart, empty except for a girl waving the cue around excitedly and her companion, a wide-shouldered man, watching her with his back to Spencer. Dark hair and his expression was obscured, but Spencer could see tension in the line of his body, even from this far.

"Oi." The sharp retort was enough to catch his attention, drawing it back to the game, but he'd lost the edge. Scanned his cards and tried to think. Time to walk away.

A hand caught his as he murmured his resignation and gathered his winnings. It closed tight.

"Not quite yet," said the burly man with a knife-edged smile, his friends circling like vultures, and there it was. The kick Spencer was looking for.

In that moment, he was frightened, giddy, and alive.

Instead of talking his way out of it, he grinned sloppily and let it play out as it would.

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The beating wasn't the worst he'd ever had. Not even close, but bad enough that he was going to need to bother Ethan because there was no hiding the blow to his mouth or temple. And he wasn't willing to skirt brain damage with an undiagnosed concussion. He rolled with the hits and then felt a hand wrap through his collar and haul him backwards.

And that hadn't been part of the plan. Going stiff and anxious, he tried to tear himself out of that grip as it ripped him through the bustling crowd and towards an outside door. Fire escape. Would almost certainly open into an alleyway, a secluded place. Dim lighting, plenty of forgotten places, and no eyes on him.

The grip twisted and his shirt bit deep into his throat, and panic tried to decimate him. "Guh," he managed as his airway was obscured, shoving away a grim reminder of all the bad things that could follow that incrementally increasing pressure. Spots danced and then he was flying, through the door and into the cold air of the outside, hitting the cement hard on his back and gasping as he lost all his wind and struggled to regain it.

They surrounded him, the door clicking shut. For a single long moment, he hoped it would open again, some sign of security following. A false hope. So, he counted. Five on one.

Bad odds, he thought glumly, and curled up tight to transfer the wad of money he'd pickpocketed off the man who'd hit him first from his sleeve to his pant pocket, unseen. The ground smelt of piss and spilt gas and garbage and his nose burned from the noxious mix. Then he went limp.

It'd hurt less if he was relaxed.

Spit-flecked and gasping, their slurs and insults were unimportant, their gestures of contempt irrelevant. Being spat on wasn't fun and the germaphobe in him was internally screaming, but it wasn't the first time and he doubted it'd be the last. He just tilted his face away, closed his mouth tight and filed away all the information on saliva based bacteria for later perusal. Preferably while within a hot, soapy shower.

And then number six arrived.

"Excuse me," said a polite voice, and they all looked around. Spencer took the chance to catalogue his injuries, and then found himself looking up into dark eyes and a practised calm expression. Dark eyes, dark hair, on a handsomely shaped profile, and Spencer knew that profile, once he removed age and added softer eyes. He knew those eyes too. Knew them laughing, knew them crying, knew them looking out over an empty quarry and seeing magic instead of misery.

He knew them. He couldn't not know them. And bizarrely, as he studied them and committed them to memory, he thought, I knew you'd find me eventually.

"Aaron!" shouted one of the group of friends who'd shown up to lend the dark-haired man a hand, and Spencer walked faster. Away from a possible confrontation and away from the gut-wrenching lurch of holy fuck that followed the confirmation that his mind wasn't fucking with him.

But the feet followed, a familiar/unfamiliar tread, and Aaron was there. Spencer stooped and bowed and just breathed through a wave of panicworryshocksomethingmore, until the voice said, "You're hurt."

Oh, Spencer thought, and closed his eyes. Back to Aaron, coat on his arm, and he knew Aaron hadn't recognised him. He knew. Yes. Yes, I am, and you are too, and you don't even know.

Because if there was any one thing he knew that he remembered impeccably, it was Aaron's voice when he talked to Spencer. The tone. It was a tone just for him, soft and awed and a little overwhelmed. And it was sharp when he was grumpy and barely awake and giddy when they were kissing and gentle when they were walking together.

"A thanks would be nice," said the voice, and it wasn't any of those. It was a bit thick, a little amused, a lot worried. But the distant kind of worry of a stranger. And his voice was deeper, broken.

Spencer wanted to hear that voice say his name. Like it had used to.

Before all of this.

"Thanks," Spencer managed, eyes unblinking and focused on a storefront across the street. He was dizzy and shaken and desperate to turn around. He was dizzy and desperate and… terrified of turning around. "Is that all you wanted?"

He needed to run. He needed to turn. He needed to… sit down.

A scuff of a footfall. Aaron was approaching. His chest tightened.

"Not gonna get checked out?" Aaron said quietly, and Spencer almost gasped because he cared. Spencer was no one to him and he cared enough to step in, get hurt, and he had no idea. No. Fucking. Idea. "No point in me getting my ass kicked for you, only for you to go home and die from internal bleeding or something."

"Or something," Spencer managed. "That was unnecessary, what you did. I'm grateful. But I brought it on myself, you didn't. I was clumsy."

"They said you were cheating."

"I was. Clumsily." Clumsily, and he didn't deserve this. His hand drifted from his aching gut to his pocket, thumbing the notes and realizing, with a jolt of oh no what this meant. What the money meant. And his coat was off, his arms bare, and he looked down and swayed when he saw the track marks vivid in the yellow streetlight. He needed to…

Run.

"Their drunken attempt at 'teaching me a lesson' also allowed me to regain my winnings." He turned with his face tilted down at an obscure angle, and threw the money down in front of Aaron's shoes. "Here. My thanks." Magic; delay, distract… disappear.

And he walked away without looking. If he looked, he couldn't do this. He couldn't do this again.

Every step final. Every atom of his body buzzing as he was horribly, dangerously aware of everything that had changed in him and made him unworthy of his past's regard.

But Aaron followed. Running, grabbing Spencer's arm, he dragged him around and barked, "You fucking encouraged them to beat you, didn't you you fucking idio—"

And he stopped. Stared. Reeled.

"Hi, Aaron," said Spencer. He licked his mouth. He saw Aaron realize. He saw the shock and the confusion and, finally, he saw what looked almost like hope. "You look… exactly the same."

Aaron said nothing. Just looked Spencer up and down, slowly, his eyes lingering on Spencer's. A dark, deep, transfixing gaze, and Spencer almost stepped forward into it. Unequivocally summoned by that stare.

Fuck, Spencer thought, because apparently he'd spent the last two years running and he hadn't run fast enough; his heart hammering and his palms sweating and his knees trying to drop him to the ground.

"You don't," Aaron suddenly said, blinking rapidly. His hand twitched up, fingers brushing Spencer's hand, and every nerve on Spencer's body burst to life at that featherlight touch. Spencer held his breath as the fingers dipped up, clearly following a muscle memory path up to his jaw, before dropping back to twitch by his side. "What the fuck." He swayed, back, and then forward, and then Spencer watched as Aaron's knees did what Spencer's had been threatening to and buckled.

"You're falling," Spencer said, too shaken and woozy to catch him. But he tried, with a shivering hand that he regretting holding out as soon as he looked down and saw the marked skin of his arm looking back up at him. His body flushed hot and cold with instant horror; he watched the hairs on his arm stand on end.

Don't look, don't see, he chanted.

"I'm sitting," Aaron mumbled, eyes closing. He knocked Spencer's hand away as his ass hit the curb and his head bowed between his splayed knees. He didn't see. Spencer breathed out roughly, wrapping his arms around his stomach, hiding his shame. "It's voluntary."

Spencer wavered. He could run. He could stay. Moving forward.

Or stopping.

Aaron's shoulders bowed forward, his back stiff and breath rasping. A car wheeled past. Someone nearby shouted.

Spencer walked towards him. And, for the first time in three years, he reached down and touched Aaron's shoulder. It was warm. His shirt was soft, dirty, and gave way slightly under his fingertips. Spencer's breath caught. Touching. They were touching. This was real. He was a tactile man, his brain was wired for words and it was wired for thought but his body, his body was wired for touch and that single second of contact between them was a flood of every prior moment. It was an erasure of the last three years. It was Rhosgobel and a camp bed he never slept in and it was bowed over a desperate letter to a brother who could save his friend.

Aaron looked up at him. He reached his hand up.

Spencer took that hand. And he couldn't.

He couldn't process. Overwhelmed and overstimulated, his brain took that tactile sensation, and it and his eidetic memory worked together to consume him until there was nothing but Aaron's hand in his and a numb, blanketing panic. A buzzing distant sensation that he knew would soon hit and bring him to his knees.

That was the problem with a brain like his. Sometimes it was too fast. Too much brain, not enough Spencer.

So, he stepped away. Not physically. Physically, he helped his friend up. Physically, he smiled blankly but without feeling, because he couldn't feel without collapsing.

Mentally, he closed the door.

"We need to talk," Aaron stammered, his face flushed and eyes huge and Spencer nodded vaguely. "Now."

"Okay," Spencer replied, feeling nothing. Keeping smiling. Eventually, his brain would chunk this information into something more tangible and less overpowering. "Your friends are looking for you."

Aaron swore. He said, "Wait here," and then he began jogging away. "I'll grab my stuff and come back, and then we can talk, okay?"

"Sure," Spencer managed. And his brain replied, the date. He thought about that for a moment, murmured, "Happy Birthday," after Aaron's retreating back, and caught his friend's gaze one last time before he vanished around a corner.

And here came the crash.

Once, when Spencer was seven, his teachers had decided he should be placed into a program designed to 'normalize isolated students.' That had been news to Spencer. He hadn't realized he'd needed normalizing, not yet. The 'normalization' consisted of a room full of barely supervised children from five years to fifteen, all entirely encouraged to conduct themselves in a 'normal' manner. Spencer had found it fascinating, at first, seeing what he should be. Interested in sports, he'd ascertained from watching the boys—there was a visible gender divide, he'd also noticed—and prone to shouting and jumping around a lot. After that, he'd begun to find it loud. Then he'd found it uncomfortable. And they wouldn't let him leave.

And it had gotten louder and louder until he'd found a corner and curled up close and wished he was home. But they hadn't let up. They'd pushed him to join in, and he'd felt anxious, distant, panicked, not enough. The crash had come. The utter, senseless panic. Fight or flight.

So, he'd run.

And he ran today. Just the same. The same seven-year-old boy, terrified of being faced with his own abnormality and his inability to reach expectations, let alone exceed them.

I'm sorry, Aaron, he thought, as he ignored the pain of his body and focused, for a moment, on the pain in his mind. But we're not friends anymore.

You wouldn't like me as I am now.

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Climbing the stairs was a bizarre out-of-body experience. He felt drained, peculiar; very much like he'd left some integral part of himself behind on a dirty street.

But he paused outside his apartment, because something salient was happening within. Stepping forward, he pressed his hand to the wood and listened, intently, and for a second forgot that his world had been rocked, because he'd been wrong.

Seeing Aaron, knowing he was here, in DC, alive, had felt very much like no time at all had passed. Spencer could have, if he was brave, stayed on that street and waited for Aaron to return and they could have returned to what they'd used to be. As though no time had passed between them.

But time had passed. And things had changed.

It would be a mistake to discount the importance of that.

And so, he unlocked the door quietly and stepped inside, walking silently to his housemate's room and stepped inside. And, just as silently, he watched Ethan play; noting the soft and unfamiliar smile on his friend's lips, the clever tap of his fingers over the keys of his Samsung, and the absolute feeling of being lost that was written on every aspect of the man's countenance. It wasn't a song Spencer had ever heard before, but there was an innumerable amount of music he'd never heard.

Despite the statistical likelihood of it being a song he'd simply never encountered, Spencer knew that wasn't true.

"You're composing again," he said quietly, during a lull in the almost discordantly syllabic tune. Ethan twitched violently, head jerking around to stare. For a moment, there was utter confusion on his face, a being lost in something bigger than he was. Absolute focus, shattered.

"What the fuck happened to your face?" he barked, jumping up. "What the fuck happened to you? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Nah," Spencer said, submitting to his friend manhandling his jaw as he frowned at the cut. "Just a memory." He smiled. "A good one."

He looked at the abandoned keyboard. Something loved, set aside temporarily. Ready to be picked up again.

He hadn't faced that memory tonight.

But he would.