Chapter Text
When Spencer Middleton dropped off the face of the earth three months ago, Jack presumed him dead and moved on with his life.
Well, okay, dead may be a bit of an exaggeration; he knows Spencer’s house almost burnt to the ground once, then twice, then Spencer left town without saying a word to anyone. He knows that Diana keeps making casseroles to bring over to the rest of the Middleton family while people chip in to repair the ruined parts of their house, and he knows that Spencer’s parents won’t give anyone a straight answer when they ask where he went. That’s public knowledge.
On a more personal level, Jack knows that, for once, he had a kind-of-sort-of friend at school, and that friend is gone now. He knows Spencer used to grab him by the hood and drag him over to the bench outside of the school, forcing him to sit, and the two of them would watch everyone file out of the building while Spencer smoked his way through a pack of cigarettes he didn’t even like, just to look a little more intimidating, and he knows they got away with it because Spencer could kick the SRO’s ass with his hands tied behind his back. He knows Spencer always offered him one, and he knows Spencer always looked a little annoyed when he said no, because that meant he had to finish the pack on his own. He knows Spencer only made him linger because neither of them wanted to be seen getting in a car together so they could go dick around until one of them needed to leave.
He knows that Spencer isn’t coming back. Some days, Jack walked out of school and sat down on the bench out of habit, and only once the parking lot was empty did he realize Spencer’s mustang wasn’t out there.
But that was April. It’s July now, and next month, Jack will be seventeen years old, going into his senior year of high school. He’s back to having zero friends at school, which is fine, and after a few too many afternoons where he forgot Spencer wouldn’t be there to haul him away in that too-rough manner he always did, afternoon fading into evening above him, he purged Spencer from his mind. He hasn’t thought about him in a small eternity. Any weird, confusing memories go right into the ‘try and forget’ vault, and as far as Jack is concerned, Spencer may as well not exist anymore.
That doesn’t change the fact that Spencer’s mustang just pulled into Jack’s driveway.
On any other night, Jack wouldn’t have been awake. He has no reason to stay up late, not while Sabine is off at summer camp in the middle of nowhere, but tonight, a weird bout of restlessness hit him and refused to be ignored. He’s been self-medicating with a book for a couple hours now, and when he ran out of pages, he perched himself in his bedroom window and watched the street outside, trying to spot raccoons or the occasional pair of headlights. This pair of headlights barrelled down the street like a bat out of hell, swerving into the driveway so hard that Jack hears the tires screech through the window, and-
Here they are.
It might not be Spencer’s car. Just because Spencer drives like that and is the only person in town that drives a black ‘65 mustang doesn’t make it him. The person inside cranks the window down, face still obscured by shadow, and as they open the door, Jack decides that, no, this isn’t Spencer. The person that gets out of the car looks nothing like him. Buzzed hair, black tank top, baggy pants. An air about him like he knows he can kill you with an effortless flick of the wrist. He shuts the door behind him, leaning against it, and looks up to Jack’s window, meeting his eye, and Jack’s breath hitches in his throat.
Nevermind.
“Oh, wow,” he mutters, partially because he didn’t expect to see Spencer ever again, partially because Spencer somehow looks even scarier now. Spencer gives him a little nod and a wave, which Jack reciprocates, but he lingers in the window, unmoving. In elementary school, everyone in town is taught not to run outside to greet a missing friend or loved one if they show up in the middle of the night, seeing as that’s the easiest way to wind up in a ditch with half the amount of kidneys you started with, and that training kicks in right away.
Then, Spencer, with a look of marked annoyance, leans through the window of his car, balls his hand up into a fist, and lays it on the horn.
Sound blares through the night air, startling Jack so badly that he jolts and almost hits his head. He swipes his hand over his neck in a ‘cut it out’ motion, scrambling to his feet, and Spencer just raises an eyebrow at him and presses down more insistently.
Fuck. Okay, fine. Looks like he’s going out there.
Jack grabs the first pair of shoes he can find, slipping them on as he rushes down the stairs. Spencer doesn’t let up on the horn all the while, and when Jack finally bursts outside in his t-shirt and basketball shorts, Spencer just yells over it. “Oh, good! You’re here!”
“Knock that off!” Jack hisses, marching right up to him and shoving him away from the car. Spencer rolls with it and takes a step back, withdrawing his arm from the window. “Are you trying to get me grounded?!”
Spencer snorts. “Like you have a social life.” With that, he takes his spot back, and Jack has to step back this time to avoid hanging out in Spencer’s personal bubble. Spencer jerks his head towards the other side of the car, hand already resting on the door handle. “Get in the car. I’m not leaving this thing running forever. Do you have any idea how much gas costs in this town?”
Jack splutters, blinking at him for a second, just to see if he’ll change his mind. He doesn’t. “Are you insane? It’s like, one in the morning.”
“And?”
Jack stares at him. Spencer stares back.
Crickets.
Jack throws his arms out to either side of him. “And?!”
“I don’t see your point. Get in the car, we’re going out.”
Okay. Fine. This is the hill he wants to die on. Jack sighs, pulling his arms back in and rubbing his eyes, trying to figure out a way to say ‘go fuck yourself’ without getting his head torn off in the process. “Can we do this after sunrise? Or at least a little closer to then?”
Spencer shakes his head, and when he realizes Jack isn’t going to bend without a little bit of convincing, he leans against the car, tucking his hands into his pockets. “No, man. I’m gonna be gone by then. I’ve got places to be.”
“Come on, seriously? Like where?” Jack snaps. Spencer raises an eyebrow, gesturing for him to go on, and begrudgingly, Jack does. “You just- disappeared, for like, three months, and now you show up in the middle of the night to tell me to get in a car with you? I thought you died. You didn’t even tell me where you were.”
Spencer lets out a hiss from between his teeth, barely suppressing an eyeroll. He brings his hand up to his throat, tracing down the line of his throat and into his shirt before he clasps something in his fingers and raises it up to eye level. Something metal. They flash in the glow of Spencer’s headlights. “Well, excuse me for not calling you during basic training.”
Dog tags.
Jack’s stomach drops.
He’s heard stories before. Usually, when people leave his hometown under normal circumstances, they come back within a month; they get homesick before they get the chance to leave the state, and they move back home, wanderlust thoroughly sated. The exception is when they join the military, like Spencer apparently did when he fucked off to god-knows-where. They stay away, usually, or if they come back, they come back… wrong. Stranger than before. Angrier. Twice as mean as before and certainly not the friend you once had.
Jack hears his own voice slip out, barely above an incredulous murmur. “You passed?”
“With flying colors,” Spencer replies with a bit of pride, tucking the tags back into his shirt. He shrugs, just as cocky as Jack remembers, then continues, gesturing vaguely with a hand. “I’m honestly insulted that you’d expect anything else. Have you seen me lately?”
No. “No, I didn’t expect any different, I just-” that’s a lie. That’s a lie, and Jack has no idea how to qualify it. Frankly, he expected Spencer to murder someone as soon as he got out of town, ending up in some prison upstate, or for his temperament to be so bad that no one would take him on, or at least for him to run and never look back their direction, nevermind just his, so this- success- is pure whiplash. He eventually settles on a question. “Why here?”
Spencer’s face twists into a bizarre, unfamiliar sneer. Jack sees the pain seep through at the edges, but doesn’t dare to comment on it. “Where the hell else am I supposed to go? Back to my place?” In an instant, his voice snaps to a casual but saccharine tone, mocking a younger, happier version of himself as he mimes holding a phone up to his ear. “‘Yeah, hey, dad. Was wondering if I could drop by for dinner. Of course I’ll let you get a good punch in, do you wanna break my nose or my other orbital this time? Also, just wondering, is all my shit still on the lawn after you threw it out my bedroom window? No? That’s what I thought, but there’s no shame in asking.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Spencer drops the act, crossing his arms with a slight huff. He props himself up against the car, avoiding Jack’s eye. “God forbid I drop by to say hi to you.”
“There’s very clearly something else on your mind, seeing as you just laid it on the horn in my driveway until I came outside, and then some.” Spencer just shrugs. A bolt of annoyance flashes up Jack’s spine, and for a brief second, he wonders why he ever hung out with this guy. “Just stick around for an extra day. You can come inside. Sleep in my bed if you want, there’s no way I’m going back to sleep. I’m sorry I’m not exactly thrilled to see you right now, but if you give me some time-”
“Why,” Spencer interrupts, his tone even and measured, “would I stay here for any longer than I have to?”
Because you came all this way for me?
Because I want to be happy to see you?
Because, despite how much of a freak you are and the fact that I always thought you’d end up being the one to kill me, I always looked forward to seeing you walk out the doors of the high school?
Because you’re finally here, after all this time?
“Uh, because I want to talk to you?”
That’s not any less true than everything else, but it feels weird to say it. Foreign. Too snide, even if Jack really does mean it.
“Oh yeah?” Spencer asks, rhetorically, but Jack nods either way. Spencer sighs, his eyes flitting up to Jack and locking there. “If you gave a shit about me, then you’d know that this town is my personal hell.”
“Obviously. Mine too.”
“Great. Then you understand why I’m leaving at dawn.”
Jack sighs in exasperation. “No, I don’t. You look like you drove all night to get here. Why come back just to talk to me? If you just wanted to chat, why bother showing up at all?”
Slowly but surely, Spencer starts to bristle with every word, hackles raising, ire prickling along every inch of him. “Do you actually want to see me or not?”
“Of course I do.” He means it.
“Then get in the car.”
“Get in the house.”
They both stand their ground. Jack isn’t sure why. This town means nothing to him, but more importantly, he shouldn’t mean anything to Spencer. If Spencer wanted this to be easy, he wouldn’t have come back at all.
“You understand that I’m offering you a free ticket out of here, right?” Spencer says after a few long moments. Jack just stares at him, silent, and Spencer groans, muttering a soft ‘oh my god’ before uncrossing his arms and standing up to his full height. He takes a step towards Jack, and Jack instinctively takes a step back from him; he looks so much bigger now. Still, when Jack raises his arms in a weak, useless effort to block his face, Spencer snatches one by the wrist, holding it tight. “If we leave now, no one will know. Not your foster family, not Miller, not the cops, nobody. You can come back with me. Enlist if you want, or you can just fuck off and do whatever.”
Jack doesn’t bother trying to pull away. Spencer keeps that death grip on his arm, and if he moves, Jack fears he may just snap it. “What if I don’t want either of those things?”
“Then I’m sure I can find some other way to cram you into my life.” Jack must still look hesitant, because Spencer watches his expression, only for his own to grow more agitated by the second. “Look, Jack, this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve never felt more in control of myself in my entire life. If I keep at it, I can make something of myself. I can be everything that everyone in this shitty little town never thought I could. This is my life now. Do you want to be part of it or not?”
Jack thinks about it. He really, truly does.
Rather, he thinks about everything he’d leave behind. The horrible things, yes- school and Miller and small town life- but the good things, too. His new job, the one working at the gas station at the edge of town, sucks, but he’s making money for the first time in his life, and the owners like him. He just got this new foster family, having settled into his bedroom not all that long ago, and this time, it feels like they may work out. More importantly, he has Sabine, and Sabine has these bright, lofty dreams about where they’ll end up someday, hand in hand, with a wedding and a place carved out in the world for just the two of them, and he can’t just leave her behind. He loves her. He loves Spencer too, albeit in a different way, a stranger way, and while Jack stands there, grappling with his feelings, it all comes back to-
Silence.
Spencer’s face falls slowly, the last couple flurries after the blizzard dies down. His grasp on Jack’s arm loosens, and he pulls away, resigned. “I guess not.”
Jack reaches out to him, but Spencer swings the car door open, and Jack has to recoil to keep from getting hit. “Spencer, wait.”
“No, you know what, Jack?” Spencer snarls, freezing in place. He hovers at the edge of his car, still on the outside with his hand on the door handle. Jack takes a step back, and when Spencer starts to raise his voice at him, he feels his fists ball up at his sides. “I’m not gonna wait! Clearly, you love wallowing in your own misery so much that you’re not gonna take the opportunity of a lifetime when someone serves it to you on a silver platter. There’s no point in getting on my knees and begging when you’ve clearly made up your mind.”
Jack hears an edge creeping into his voice. “If you could pull your head out of your ass for two seconds-”
“Nope. I got the message.” Spencer turns his back to him, starting to climb into the car. He flicks a two-finger salute over his shoulder. “Have a nice life.”
“-you’d see that I missed you, you jackass!”
Spencer freezes. Hell, Jack freezes.
He means it, but Jack can’t help but feel like he crossed a line. They’re not that kind of people. They don’t talk to each other like that, and the stunned look on Spencer’s face betrays as much. Spencer processes that, then looks back at him over his shoulder. “What?”
“Is that so hard to believe?” Jack snaps, as though it wasn’t hard to say. His skin crawls, but he continues anyway, watching as Spencer gets back out and shifts to the other side of the door again, right in front of him. Close enough to touch. Jack refuses to look at him, staring at the tags instead. “You were- are- my friend. You left without saying anything, and showed up unannounced, a-and are basically a whole new person now. I need some time to adjust to that, but if this is the person you are now, I wanna be friends with him, too. If you just give me a couple hours, then maybe I’d have a better answer for you, but you can’t just expect me to drop everything to come with you.”
“And why not?” Spencer protests. He keeps his voice down, calmer now, but Jack can’t help but feel like he’s still being urged into the passenger seat. “What do you have here that’s so phenomenal?”
“I don’t know, man. A job? A high school diploma soon? If I stick around, I get to live here rent-free, which is a huge weight off my shoulders, and besides, there’s-” Jack swallows hard as her face flashes in his mind, sunny and warm, “-there’s Sabine. She wants to get married, eventually. I really like her.”
Spencer keeps his expression unreadable. “Well, good for you.”
“What? Am I not allowed to be happy?” Really, how entitled can he be, driving back here and demanding that Jack tear up his life for him? He should understand better than anyone how hellish that is.
“You’re not happy. You’re just telling yourself that you are.” Spencer sighs, looking away, and he pulls his keys back out of his pocket. “You obviously don’t wanna come with me, and I don’t wanna stay. I can’t, honestly. I need to get out of here as fast as possible, and if you wanna throw your life away, that’s fine by me. Die here, for all I care. Just know I’m not gonna make this offer again.”
A dull ache settles in the pit of Jack’s stomach. By now, he thinks he should be a little bit better at goodbyes, and he usually is, but this- this hurts. He tries not to let it show. “Yeah. Okay. Fine.”
They stand there. Hover. Wait for the other to change their mind and cave.
Jack breaks first. “Maybe I’ll see you around,” he says, knowing full well he won’t.
“In the obituaries, maybe. If I ever come back to this shitty town, I’m here to die.” Spencer takes a step back, refusing to look at him as he gets back into the car. Alone. “Hope it’s worth it.”
“Bye, Spencer.”
Spencer won’t even look at him anymore. He cranks the window back up, jams the key in the ignition, and starts the car. One of his tapes starts blasting music so loud that Jack can hear it through the windows, picking up right where it left off, and Jack stands there, totally numb, watching as Spencer backs out of the driveway and out of his life for good, hands clenched tight on the steering wheel and glaring at the road.
He stays there, actually, for a solid ten minutes. He knows he made the right choice. It’s just… hard to convince himself of that.
When he finally remembers how to move, Jack drags himself back inside, only to find Wendy rifling through the fridge, the glow illuminating her face. Jack shuts the door as quietly as he can behind him, and when Wendy stands up straight again, she’s holding a takeout container, eating out of it with a fork. She takes a bite, then glances over at him, swallowing that before she says anything. “Did you just get dumped?”
“No.” Then, realizing what’s wrong with that sentence, “that’s- no. Spencer isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Well, not anymore.” Wendy shuts the container, tossing her fork into the sink as she puts the takeout back where she found it. “He dumped you.”
“I didn’t wanna go with him anyway.”
“Uh-huh,” she replies, doubtful. She plucks a cherry tomato off the vine, pops it in her mouth, and talks around it as she chews. “You ever been broken up with before?”
Jack thinks about arguing with her again, then decides against it. There’s no point, not when she seems dead-set on the idea of he and Spencer having dated, and, admittedly, he is hurting. He just lost a friend, after all. “No.”
“You wanna go get some ice cream and a bottle of wine and tear through both of them on the roof for a while? I’ll let you bitch about it all you want.”
And that-
That sounds nice. Jack nods, not trusting his voice.
Wendy hums sagely, shutting the fridge. She waltzes right over to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder, and for a split-second, Jack almost believes that he’s her brother. “Alright, buddy. That’s what I thought. I’ll drive.”