Spencer

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36.

Spencer was happily giving a new rendition of the seatbelt lecture. Emily ignored him from the back of the van where she was trying to paint her toenails while lying flat on her back and while Aaron drove them from empty countryside into forested hills.

"No one wears seatbelts, Spencer," Emily complained. "You're fighting a losing battle."

"No, you'll be the one losing," Spencer retorted, "when in the event of an accident you're violently ejected from a moving vehicle." As he said this, he glanced at Aaron's seatbelt, wondering if Aaron would notice his arm sneaking across to grab the thing and buckle it in…

"Don't you dare," Aaron warned him with a grin. "What's the point? Hal can't wear a seatbelt."

"Does safety need a point beyond being safe?"

Spencer sighed. He was never going to win with these people. Didn't they realise that anything they could do to reduce their statistical likelihood of dying was integral to his continued happiness?

Turning back to the window and scowling at his reflection before focusing past it, Spencer stared at the woods flashing past as Aureilo hopped up onto his lap to look too. It was hard not to smile at them despite the alarming regularity of his need to remind them that they were mortal. Leaving the farmland behind for the highlands, a whole new place to explore — he was pretty sure that they could do this forever and he'd never really be bored of it. On a whim, he slid his hand onto Aaron's knee and squeezed.

A sign dashed past, but not so fast that he couldn't read it. Welcome to Wisconsin.

"Yay, dairy land," he heard Emily say. "What are we go—"

Aaron slammed the brakes on, Spencer swinging around just in time to see the deer hurtling towards them.

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37.

Knees cracking as he stood from where he was crouched checking on Emily, who was sprawled on the gravel whimpering, Spencer walked over to where Aaron and the dæmons were inspecting the damage on the van. Their expressions were a mix of grossed out and worried, except Aureilo's, which was open fascination.

"How is she?" Aaron asked. There was a lump on his forehead from where he'd slammed into the steering wheel, and Spencer wondered if now was the wrong time to recap the seatbelt lecture along with an added 'I told you so'.

"Sore," he said instead. "That tends to be what happens when you go from being unsecured in the back of a van to being in the front and at a very sudden stop."

Aureilo muttered, "We told you so."

"Yeah, yeah," Aaron grumbled, "alright, we'll wear our damn seatbelts. What are we going to do about this?"

'This' was the deer still partially splattered across the boxy front of the van, the rest on the road right where someone was probably going to drive into it again.

"Pick it out?" Spencer suggested, feeling queasy. "Did it do any damage?"

Beyond the damage to their heads, anyway. Well, Aaron and Emily's. Spencer was fine, having even had time to grab Aureilo and hold him tight before it had happened.

Another note for the seatbelt lecture.

"I can't tell. I have to get under the goop to see. She's still running, so I guess not too bad?"

"Get a move on then," Emily said. Spencer turned to watch her approach, scowling as she touched again at her bitten lip. "Me and Serge will get that off the road. Spencer, get a stick and help him."

Spencer looked at the goop, then looked at Aaron, and then back at the goop again.

"You know, we could probably eat that," Sergio said as a marmoset. "Yum, yum, venison."

Spencer made it to the woods before he threw up, but it was a close thing.

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38.

As it turned out, the deer had its revenge on them for its untimely, but ironic, death. A small part of Spencer wondered if this was the deer's ghost haunting them. Aureilo picked up on his nervous whimsy and spent the rest of the day as a whitetail deer just to piss the rest of them off, constantly clonking them on the heads with his antlers when he looked around without warning.

There was a gush of steam from under their hood right outside a township. When Aaron pulled to the verge, they all heard the very distinct sound of bubbling water.

"Uh oh," said Aaron. "That's not good."

39.

The day ended with the three of them — Hal helping as a bear and Aureilo and Sergio sitting on top and calling down bad advice — pushing the van a good mile to a rest stop.

"Rest in peace, radiator," Aureilo said when they'd stopped for a while and finally assessed the true damage. "You got us far, you beastly thing, but the buck stops here."

"Alas, twas Beauty that felled the Beast," Sergio added, both him and Aureilo cackling at their own jokes. "Oh deer!"

"It's going to set us back a fair bit," Aaron said to Emily and Spencer as they sat to the side and shared a can of cold beans between them. They were ignoring their dæmons. He was still half under the hood, his clothes disgusting by this point and his arms black with grease. "We might need to replace the whole thing, plus we'll need tools … maybe we can stay here a few days, pick up some casual work around town to make up for what we're spending? We have the money, I'm just reluctant to spend such a chunk without some way of rebuilding it."

"Yeah, we don't want to use up all the doe," Aureilo said, Sergio laughing helplessly. "That wouldn't be fawny."

Hal growled and both of them stopped laughing, trying to look contrite and failing completely.

"That sounds great!" Emily chirped, earning suspicious looks from all of them. "You should show us what part you need. That way we can ask around while we work."

Even as they stared at her, she beamed.

Spencer worried. Maybe she'd really smacked her head when they'd hit the deer. What if this was some kind of terrible brain injury? That came with personality changes, right?

"What's the square root of two-hundred and twenty-five?" Aureilo asked her.

"Go fuck yourself," she replied, just as fast.

Spencer relaxed.

She was fine.

"Well, okay," Aaron said finally, still suspicious. "If there's a library in town, they usually keep all kinds of car manuals in. It'll have the exact model in there. If that's what you want?"

"Sure." Emily licked the fork she was using before dropping it back in the beans, to Spencer's consternation. "Anything to help, buddy."

Aureilo whispered, "Oh boy."

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40.

It was discovered that Spencer was far too shy and definitely too socially awkward to ask strangers for work, Aaron sending him back to the van to 'calm down' while the other two kept asking around town. Since there was little he could do there but read the same book over and over, he napped. Emily woke him up, night having fallen and Sergio a raccoon by her side — never a good sign.

"Put this on," she told him, tossing him her black turtleneck. "Do you remember the radiator Aaron showed us? You remember everything, right?"

"Yes?" Spencer said sleepily, obeying before his brain caught up and burped out, "Why?"

"He's bussing at some shitty diner downtown, he'll be busy till late. Come on. We're helping."

Spencer looked at Aureilo who, wisely, said nothing. Just turned into a bob-tailed housecat and trotted jauntily after Sergio.

"Oh boy," he muttered, but followed her anyway.

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41.

"Where did you even get those?" Spencer asked incredulously.

Emily shot him a hurt look. "I paid for them," she replied, expression sore. "What do you think I am, some kind of thief?"

With that said, she crouched, beckoned him closer with the flashlight, and began to cut into the chain-link fence with the bolt-cutters she'd revealed from somewhere within her clothing. Spencer looked around, at the darkened car-yard they were breaking into and at the abandoned swathes of highway and field surrounding. It seemed abandoned, but he knew better than to hope it actually was.

"This isn't a good idea," he whispered. Aureilo and Sergio were owls swooping around overhead, keeping an eye out for anyone coming. "Can't we just buy a radiator?"

"Sure, if you want Aaron to have a breakdown over the price," Emily hissed back, turning on him with her beanie pulled low over her eyes and a hoodie over that. "You saw his face back there. He's doing that bullshit thing he does where he picks a tiny thing and worries at it until he snaps. We could just buy one, but if we do that he's going to take it as evidence that we're, I don't know, going to die or something. I don't know how his brain works."

She obviously knew more than what she professed to; Spencer was glum to admit that she was right. Aaron picked things to panic over, and this was going to be one of them. And just when they'd gotten him calmed down and starting to have fun, to relax and forget all the stuff that had happened to them. If they walked away now, they might lose him again, just when Spencer had gotten him back.

The fence fell open, leaving a gap for them to crawl through.

"You in or out?" Emily demanded, oozing through the gap without waiting for him. "Otherwise I'm just going to grab the one that looks the likeliest."

Spencer sighed. She was going to do this with or without him. Might as well make sure they got something out of it.

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42.

Emily ran behind him with the radiator in her arms, laughing along with the night and the giddy feeling of getting away with what they shouldn't have gotten away with. Spencer felt sick that they'd done it, but wild that they'd gotten away with it — they were criminals now, him and her, but it was a feeling like being untouchable. He whooped along, leaping a log and sprinting with her until they burst out onto the verge and collapsed together, giggling hysterically as their dæmons danced around them

When they calmed down, finally, they walked back to the van and found Aaron waiting.

"Where the hell were …" he began, trailing off as he saw the radiator that Emily had planned to hide and appear with tomorrow, as a 'gift' from an unspoken benefactor.

Spencer's heart stopped a little at the look on his face, horror sinking deep. Horror, and absolute fear. He couldn't think. Couldn't react. Just felt his brain shut off, Aureilo dropping down instantly into a mouse and crawling up his jeans to vanish under his shirt, trembling against his stomach.

"Where did you get that?" Aaron asked Emily with deadly calm. He ignored Spencer, which was good because Spencer couldn't talk. "Why are you both out of breath?"

"Stole it," she said straight up, squaring her shoulders and staring him down.

Spencer's breath began to whistle.

"Ah," said Aaron. For a second, it almost seemed like he was going to let that slide as he walked very calmly over to them and took it from her, studying it carefully. "Well then. You're just going to turn around and give it back."

"I don't think I am," she replied, dangerously sweet.

Aureilo curled smaller.

Aaron's teeth clicked together.

"Don't fight," whispered Spencer.

But they did.

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43.

The fight was cruel. Spencer hid in the van, curled in a ball with the pillow over his head and trying to ignore it. Unable to block out their voices as they cut each other as deep as only Emily and Aaron knew how. They could each be as mean as each other when properly motivated, and both were definitely motivated: Aaron by anger and his hard-line morals that Spencer had been too stupid to consider when they'd stolen the radiator; Emily by the irrational ferocity that always seemed to ignite in her when she felt like something she'd done to help was being swept aside.

It was about the point that Emily brought up Aaron's dad that Spencer realised he was going to have a panic attack, over this fight and all the smaller fights that had preceded it. That whispering realisation brought a wave of crushing it's over to sweep over him. They'd go home. Back to DC. Aaron to his father and his father's belt. Emily to her lonely self-destruction. Spencer to another apartment they'd paid too much for just to ensure the walls were thick enough to pretend the world was silent. All three of them, apart. No more friendships. No more laughter. Just a lonely boy and his lonely dæmon, until their brain crumpled in on itself and they tried to stop again.

"We're spiralling," Aureilo whispered, vanishing from under Spencer's shirt and returning as a rat in order to push the bottle into Spencer's hand. Spencer slid the cap open, taking two pills out and putting one in his pocket, tracing the other with his fingers. Would they notice? Would they care?

Or would their anger distract them?

You're just a spoiled, bratty rich girl who needs to break the law to pretend that she's better than her mother, floated into the van. You're just like her. You'll grow up just like her — except without a moral to think of.

The door of the van tore open, Spencer startling upright as Emily burst in. Don't go for your stuff, he thought in a panic, desperate for her not to leave, and she didn't. She went for Aaron's. Diving down and emerging with his Bible as Aaron appeared by the door with his expression so dark and angry that Spencer's hand clenched automatically around the pill he was hiding.

"This?" she snarled at him, waving the book in the air. "You think you're so much fucking better than me because of this? You hypocritical piece of trash — it's all lies. You just don't realise it's all lies told to make you happy about your lot in life, so you'll sit down and conform like a good little puppy. Is that you, Aaron? Are you a good dog? I think you are — just a fucking dog begging for scraps from your shithole dad and thankful when he kicks you because, fuck, respect thy father, right?"

"You shut up," Aaron spat. "Shut up!"

"Oh, I will!" With that, she bounded past him, vanishing out of the van with the Bible in her hand. "But I'm going to help you first, Hotshot — more than anyone in your life has ever helped you before. You want the truth? Do you? Everyone in your life has lied to you."

Spencer inched out of the van. He'd never seen this. Never seen this kind of anger in his friends, this kind of fury. Never seen Emily striding to the river that ran reluctantly past the rest stop they were parked at, screaming, "They lied — there's no one up there looking after you, no one gives a shit! You are alone and every priest, pastor, right down to the fucking choirboys, every single one of them would stab you in the back the moment it suited them because you're not shit to them, just a sinful piece of crap the moment you fuck up once and, come on, Aaron, you idiot,you're gay! You think they want you now? They want you dead."

With that, she hurled the Bible, pages fluttering and the cover coming loose, into the river.

Oh, breathed Spencer, shaking so hard he could barely watch it bump along the slow current and vanish under the water.

In the silence that followed, Emily kept her back to them and Aaron didn't say a word. "Think about that," she said finally, her voice low and shoulders hunched. "You're not worth shit to them, Aaron, so maybe you should care more about the people who do value you and less about what your precious book says to judge them by."

She walked away. Spencer didn't know if she was coming back. Aaron turned and strode in the other direction, Hal by his side as the furious wolf.

Spencer slipped back into the van, closed the door behind him, and reached for a bottle of water.

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44.

Someone was shaking him. Shaking and shaking until he opened his eyes and squinted at them. Night had fallen. They were lit by the off-yellow glow from the small bulb above.

"Hey," Aaron said, half in the van through the passenger door and studying him intently. "You're all curled up. You'll get a kink in your neck."

"Mmm." Spencer inched sideways, too distant to really care right now. Aaron kept talking, his voice in and out like a badly tuned radio as Spencer struggled to stay awake. He was tired, just tired. He didn't care. Just let him sleep.

"I'm sorry. That was … we were both really crappy to each other, said stuff I'm sure we both don't believe. I'm going to find Emily and apologise, I promise. I just, I don't think stealing is something I'm in the wrong to be pissed about. You could have been caught — or hurt. What if you'd gotten shot?" Spencer nodded, or he thought he did. When he opened his eyes again, he found Aaron up on the seat next to him. "What's wrong with you?" he was asking. "You're all dopey."

"Sleepy," Spencer mumbled, curling his hand around his little mouse-dæmon. "Where's Em?"

Not back yet, came the far-away reply, a hand coming down to stroke his hair. Are you going to wake up?

Spencer wanted to wake up properly and ask him if this was going to end, if they were all going to go their separate ways. If he was going to go back to being alone. Maybe he did. Maybe, somehow, he managed it. Because he could have sworn he heard Aaron say, "Never."