heartless || leo & spencer

SPENCER
SALEM

It was always just... simple. Spencer running to catch up with Leo in the hallway and mumbling a quick, "You busy later?" and if he was busy, he found someone who wasn't. If he wasn't busy, he made sure to stop off at a convenience store bathroom on his way over to brush his teeth. And there was no thought to it, like breathing, or scratching an itch.

He smiled against Leo's lips. It was always simple, but it was also always passionate. About as close to romantic intimacy as he could handle, caught breaths and bitten lips and fistfuls of cheap bedsheets. Leo pushed him against the wall and instinct took over. Routine found within the primal. He pushed the both of them onto Leo's bed as he began to undo his belt and-

He hesitated, hand on Leo's chest to keep him on his back while he pulled away.

"Is something burning?"

Recognition flooded the other boy, and Spencer followed his gaze to the open, uncovered window, where he could just see smoke from the floor above them. Nothing too bad: he guessed from the stench that it was food left on the stove too long. Just as Leo stood and began speaking, a fire alarm pierced through the air, loud enough to make Spencer flinch and loud enough to completely kill the mood.

"Fuck. We gotta evacuate?"

A brief moment passed where Spencer considered doing something stupid, like grabbing for Leo's hand, or wiping a strand of hair from his forehead but, instead, he busied his hands with undoing all their hard work and putting the clothes he'd shed back on.

SPENCER
SALEM

He was going to be honest, hearing that question from Leo was, if only a bit, off-putting. He was usually so quick to abandon hope after the slightest inconvenience. He couldn't be sure, but Spencer thought he remembered a time when Leo had climbed out the bathroom window at school and walked all the way home to avoid taking a biology test. It wasn't a bad thing, necessarily. Leo knew what he wanted and had no idea what he was capable of if he ever set his mind to getting it.

Spencer wouldn't have ever, even possibly, been one of the things he wanted. And Spencer was selfish when it came to this. To release. No one did it better and in some weird, twisted, fucked up way, Spencer knew that something bigger than this lurked beneath the surface. That would sink further and further until it drowned if Leo wasn't so damn lazy, so, yeah. It made him a bad person, but Spencer reveled in the flaws of his friends because he couldn't shake the idea that their flaws were the only reason they tolerated being near him.

"Depends," he said, biting his bottom lip and leaning almost close enough to kiss the other boy, "How willing to be arrested for indecent exposure are you?"

SPENCER
SALEM

He could feel the exact moment things stopped being black and white and ventured off into some gray area, Leo's fingers in his hair and the smell of his minty gum outweighing even the smoke and the desperation of the situation. The moment where this, potentially, became something more than it was. Changed. Spencer Salem was terrified of any change he didn't consciously choose for himself.

He recoiled to the door, opening it without breaking his line of sight with Leo, as if looking away might reveal that there was some fragment of his busted-ass moral compass telling him that he wanted it. But uncertainty lies in the jump of the thing, not in the moments before, when you're standing in a high place and craving the feeling of the butterflies in your stomach. Jumping always meant one of two things: flying, or crashing.

He didn't feel particularly light yet, so he let his eyes say what his mouth couldn't, unsaid apology, before nodding to the door.

"I know a spot."

SPENCER
SALEM

"Fuck, I hope not," he smirked, leaning his head up so that the sunlight could catch it, "The wrestling mats they store in the auditorium are pretty soft."

He opened his eyes and found Leo's. He winked.

He was already walking toward the park that marked the halfway point between his own house and Greer's. Park was a generous word for it, though. It was little more than a couple acres of petrified trees, some rocky walking paths, and a few convenient hiding spaces.

He remembered telling Ripley that he went cruising there sometimes and she'd squinted a quick, that's a cruising spot? and he had smiled and said, is when I'm there.

"Unless you're scared of getting caught by Mrs. Sutton."

Something about walking around with Leo in a not-platonic way felt strange. Scary, but also strangely exhilarating. As they joined the crowd, all eyes peering up at the smoke billowing out of the window, they were no one. He felt like he was free to do all the things he was afraid of: wrap his arms around Leo's waist, whisper in his ear, cup his cheeks and tell him he'd always thought his eyes were so beautiful and so full of sadness. But he didn't.

"They got this," he said, "Let's go."