Punch Drunk Kiss (Ryden)

.2.

"Um, Brendon?"

"Yeah?"

"You're hugging me. You don't hug me that often unless something's wrong. Is something wrong..?" Spencer's at just about chest level to me, so I was basically hugging his shoulders and upper back, but whatever. He's right, I don't hug him that often. I just feel like it's necessary today, "It's almost five and you're just getting home, you look like you just ran into a burning building- Did you do that? In your pyjamas? Brendon, that's so-"

"Dumb?" I looked down and saw his bright blue eyes filled with worry staring up at me, "I know, you little babblebox," Spencer likes to talk. A lot. So, he's my little babblebox, "I'm okay.." I winced slightly as his hand traveled down my back and found both the hole in my shirt and the burn in it.

"Something hurt you really bad.. I don't like that.."

"Well, you know I've never been very smart," I let him go and knelt down in front of him so I could meet his eyes, "Do you want to help me?"

"Mm-hmm!" That got him to smile. He looked at my hand for a moment before deciding it was okay to grab and dragged me down the hall to the bathroom.

Like I said, I've never been very smart, so I get a scrape here and there every once in a while, usually from the stupidest little accidents. Spencer says he's known how to patch up anything since he was about five years old. Every time he does this for me, he says, 'It's nice to do this for someone else.'

I can't imagine..

But, I think his nightmares that he has sometimes hurt him the most.

"Lift up your shirt for me?"

"Sure, Spence."

They usually go one of two ways. One, we share a room, so some nights, he'll crawl into my bed in the middle of the night. He won't want to wake me up to comfort him, so he'll just quietly cry himself back to sleep. The second way is.. not any better. Actually, it's worse.

"This might sting just a little bit."

He'll just start.. screaming for someone to help him... The second it starts, I usually bolt out of bed and comfort him for a couple hours. I always tell him that nothing can hurt him now, but it takes him a while to believe me, or maybe just fake it, and fall back asleep.

But. It's only happened a couple times.

"You okay?"

"Yeah.."

"What really happened to you?" Spencer filled the sink with cool water and motioned for me to put my hands in it, "You don't usually sunburn like this and it's February. You know you can tell me stuff, right? What's going on? I wanna know why you got hurt!" See? Babblebox.

"It's a secret."

"What kind of secret?"

"The secret kind."

"How big is the secret kind of secret?"

"Really big."

"Bigger than.." He paused to lower his voice to a whisper, "My secret?"

"Mm.. maybe on the same level?"

"Wow... that's really big.."

There's a kid in Spencer's class named Jon Walker. Connect the dots.