*
Jon woke up disoriented, expecting to be in his bed at home, but finding himself instead in a determinedly bright, barren room that wasn't even his. He reached out and found that the other side of the bed was empty, anyway; and then remembered: Spencer.
He flopped back down onto the pillows and put a hand over his face. He had no idea what time it was or how long he'd been asleep, but he found the idea of going to investigate particularly unappealing. Worse, though (once he thought about it) was the prospect of Spencer coming back and finding him still here, lounging in his bed in some of yesterday's clothes, with the rest of them still on the floor.
He very quickly got up and got the fuck out.
*
He managed to avoid Spencer for an entire two days, death glares from Ryan notwithstanding. It wasn't like it was any of Ryan's business anyway; and if he really wanted to get some song-writing done, it wasn't like he needed Jon there to hold his hand or something. And it wasn't like they'd been doing so well with the music, anyway, that two days lost was going to be a total disaster.
So when Ryan sat him down at the kitchen table and took away his freshly-rolled joint, Jon was more or less prepared to tell him to fuck right off. It wasn't even any of Ryan's business.
But Ryan said, "Don't even think it," and smacked Jon's hand when he reached for his hard-won weed.
Jon made a face. On the up side, he still had a tin in his pocket.
"What," he said.
Ryan made an impatient gesture, and Jon handed him the lighter.
"Spencer's a girl," Ryan said, and lit up.
"I've been saying that for months," Jon said.
"I mean literally," Ryan said. He handed the joint back to Jon, in a rare moment of magnanimity.
"I've been saying that for months," Jon repeated. He took a long hit. Weed was delicious, he thought.
"You're not listening," Ryan said impatiently. "I mean he's actually a girl, with the anatomy and everything."
"That's a good one," Jon said.
"I'm not joking," Ryan said.
"Hilarious," Jon insisted. He didn't really know what Ryan was getting at--after all, they'd had this fight--he and Spencer had, anyway--and it totally wasn't any of Ryan's business, and there was no sense getting him involved. What the fuck was Spencer's problem, anyway? "That doesn't mean I'm not still pissed at him."
"Jon," Ryan said, and this time Jon's head snapped up. There was something in Ryan's voice that suggested that maybe this wasn't just about the other night, that maybe there was something he was actually supposed to be absorbing from this whole exchange. It didn't make any sense.
"What?" Jon asked.
Ryan plucked the joint out of his fingers. "I'm only going to say this one more time," he said between short, wasteful puffs. "Something happened and--Spencer's a girl now. I mean like, he doesn't--he's not a guy anymore, okay?"
"That doesn't make any sense," Jon said.
"I know!" Ryan said, flailing a little. "But that's what happened, and it's. I thought I should tell you."
Jon took back the tiny stub of a joint, and inspected it long enough that it burned his fingers. He stubbed it out in the ashtray. "Okay," he said after a while, but that didn't mean he got it.
*
"Fucking leave me alone," Spencer yelled. He didn't sound any different through the door, except maybe that he was a little hysterical, but that could totally be chalked up to the fact that Jon was being kind of an asshole, right, or so Jon figured.
"I just want to see," Jon yelled back, not unreasonably.
"I don't want you to fucking see! Leave me alone!"
Jon tipped his head back against the door, hard enough that it hurt when it made contact. It was a good noise, though. "But how else am I supposed to believe you?"
There was a shuffling sound from inside Spencer's room, and then something banged on the other side of the door, making Jon jump. "I don't give a shit if you believe me!" Spencer yelled. He was starting to go hoarse, it sounded like. "It's not even any of your business. I didn't even want you to know!"
Jon rolled his eyes again. "Yeah, but now I do," he said. "And you can't stay in there forever."
"I can try," Spencer replied.
"You're such a fucking girl," Jon said, and then clapped a hand over his mouth before he started laughing again.
"Fucking leave me alone," Spencer yelled again.
Jon gave up.
*
"But why would he not tell me?" he asked, for maybe the fifteenth time. He had a feeling that Ryan was going to start kicking him soon, sick of listening to the same questions over and over and over again, and so he passed along the joint in self-defence.
"I dunno," Ryan said, after taking a hit. "Maybe he thought you'd take it badly. I don't know why," he added meaningfully.
"I'm not taking it badly at all," Jon said. He didn't think he was, anyway--it wasn't like there was a prescribed set of reactions you were supposed to have when you found out that one of your friends had spontaneously turned into a girl, in the totally biological sense of the word. And if there was, he didn't think a little bit of complaining would have been too flagrant a violation.
"I'm just wondering," he added, in case that wasn't perfectly obvious.
"Well it's kind of embarrassing," Ryan said, all in a rush. Jon suspected those had been Spencer's exact words.
"Sure," he said, reaching for the joint back. "But like what, was I gonna laugh at him?"
"I don't know," Ryan said, narrowing his eyes. "Were you?"
"No!" Jon said. "I mean--"
"You were totally laughing earlier," Ryan said.
"But that was nervous laughter," said Jon. "Besides, it was kind of idiotic."
"Right," Ryan said. "And Spence would've totally appreciated it."
"Come on," Jon said. He kept smoking, very pointedly not giving it back to Ryan. There was a point to be made in all this. "Like you didn't laugh at him."
"That's different," Ryan said.
"It's so not! You're supposed to be his best friend, dude. That's kind of worse."
"No way," said Ryan. He was getting a bit fidgety now, so Jon stubbed out the joint. It was kind of burning his fingers anyway. "I mean, like, yeah, but you're his--you know."
"What?" Jon said.
"You know," Ryan repeated.
Jon was pretty sure that he'd totally missed a part of this conversation. He couldn't quite remember if he'd actually missed it, due to a very real lack of attention span, or if this was just Ryan's way of having a conversation without actually involving another person. He was leaning towards the latter, so for good measure he repeated, "What?"
"Like," Ryan said, and made some kind of hand gesture. Jon thought it looked a little obscene, although it was hard to tell sometimes.
"Oh," Jon said. He didn't really know what Ryan was talking about, but it might be better not to push it. "But why--" he started.
"It would be bad for his ego," Ryan said, and then stood up. He knocked his knee hard against the table as he did, and then hobbled feelingly out of the kitchen. He was already down the hallway by the time Jon caught up with the thought and said:
"What?"
*
Jon didn't see Spencer the next day, or the day after that. Part of him secretly hoped that Spencer was starving to death in his room, sulking instead of, whatever--dealing with it or something. But the other part of him spent the time slowly making his way through a bottle of Jack Daniel's and watching terrible reruns on A&E and occasionally picking out bass lines whenever Brendon told him he'd finally figured out the new song and it was totally going to work this time, promise, and then scrapping it all when it turned out it still sucked.
The third, badly calculated part of him spent most of the time trying to imagine what the fuck Spencer might actually look like now that he was (supposedly) a girl.
The thing was--he hadn't seen Spencer at all since that night when he'd fallen asleep in Spencer's bed. And it was hard to reconcile that--the memory of lying beside Spencer, not touching. He hadn't been able to sleep for thinking about Spencer, not more than two feet away, with his mouth and his hands and his hips.
He'd been so strung out by it, being so close and sleeping with Spencer--but not sleeping with Spencer--that he'd hardly been able to sleep. And that'd even been after the fight, after Spencer had let Jon kiss him, but then told him to get the fuck off, to leave it and just go to sleep and keep his goddamn hands to himself. But Jon had felt him starting to get hard, before; had felt the strain in Spencer's legs, and it was just--
It was hard to imagine how that had changed. He'd felt the hard press of Spencer's cock, and now it just wasn't there.
*
On the third day, Jon had taken up his position outside Spencer's door again, and was reading aloud in a monotone everything that WebMD would tell him about spontaneous sex changes. It wasn't much (at all), and he was certain that the monotonous repetition of the same key words over and over again would eventually drive Spencer to come out, if only to kick him in the head.
Hope was almost over springing eternal when finally the door opened, and Jon over-balanced and tipped into Spencer's room.
"Would you shut up," Spencer said, and stepped over him on the way to the bathroom.
"Oh my god," Jon said, and sat up immediately, dumping his laptop on the floor.
"Fuck off," Spencer said.
"Oh my god," Jon repeated, just to be annoying. He scrambled to his feet, and chased Spencer halfway down the hall before Spencer slammed the bathroom door in his face. "You look exactly the same!" he said, although he had to admit it was getting a little old. "You lied!"
"Would you leave me alone?" Spencer yelled. "It's none of your fucking business."
Jon waited. Logically, Spencer had to come out some time, unless he was planning on drowning himself in the bathtub. But the thing was--Spencer did look exactly the same. Admittedly, minus the stubble, and he was wearing a hoodie and a pair of ratty sweats, so it wasn't like he was really flashing the goods for inspection--but Jon was pretty sure that there should have been some obvious differences. He should have looked like a girl, and not just like, well, Spencer.
Jon listened to him piss and wash his hands, and then hesitate before re-emerging into the hallway. Spencer looked at him, maybe a little warily, and seemed perfectly prepared to just walk right by before Jon grabbed his sleeve as he went past.
"Come on," Jon said.
"Come on what," Spencer said, and jerked out of Jon's grasp. He didn't move, though. "I don't know what you think, but this isn't funny."
"I just want to see," Jon said.
"I don't have to show you anything," Spencer said, defensively.
Jon made a face. "No, but you might want to," he said.
Spencer returned the look. "Why would I want to?"
Jon spread his hands. "Because we're friends?" he hazarded. He knew immediately from the way Spencer's expression closed off that that had been the wrong thing to say.
"Right," Spencer said. He jerked a thumb down the hallway, toward his room. "I'm going back there. Maybe next time you'll have stopped being an asshole."
Jon followed him back down the hallway. "No fucking way," he said, and got in the way before Spencer could close the door on him. "How am I--how is this at all my fault? You let everybody else see, so why not me? What the fuck?"
"Everybody else," Spencer said, scornfully. "Ryan and Brendon aren't everybody else, asshole."
"They're the only other people here," Jon said. He felt awkward now, having pretty much forced his way into Spencer's room when it was pretty obvious that Spencer didn't want him there. It looked more or less the same as it had the last time he'd been in there, except with maybe more clothes and junk on the floor, but for some reason it felt different. Probably the part where last time he'd actually been welcome there.
Spencer threw up his hands. "Okay," he said. "Fine. You wanna see?"
Jon looked at him. "Yeah," he said, and then kicked himself for saying it. It was like once he'd started down this path of fucking things up, he was totally incapable of stopping himself.
Before he could change his mind, Spencer had sat down at the end of his bed and unzipped his hoodie, and shrugged it off. He was wearing a t-shirt under it, which made Jon feel like way less of a perv; but it was tight and white with grey silkscreening, and as Jon's gaze wandered up over the curve of Spencer's belly (god), his breath caught, and--yeah. There was really no other way to describe it. Spencer was a girl, with breasts, small but perfectly formed, and Jon wanted.
"I am so sorry," Jon blurted, and slammed the door behind him as he went.
*
It wasn't Jon's fault, either: Spencer was hot. He kind of always had been, obviously; but there was something about the tilt of his hips, the curve of his waist now that was just impossibly hot. Of course, he didn't really look all that girly--at least no more so than usual, if that even counted. It was just--knowing, even abstractly, that Spencer was a girl under that same ridiculously tight t-shirt and badly fitting sweats--it was hot.
It was kind of hard not to think about it.
It was especially hard not to think about it, considering that he already had been. It was that now he could resolve the differences between the unfocussed physicality of Spencer lying in bed next to him, hard, wanting and angry, and the obvious and untouchable reality of Spencer's breasts, the curve of his waist, the unseen softness of his pussy.
It was--he kept telling himself not to think about it, to stop thinking about Spencer and stop thinking about that. But the more he thought about it, and didn't think about it, the more it became obvious that this wasn't a new thing, and wasn't something that just didn't matter, and wasn't something that he could just stop.
Because if he was perfectly honest with himself--and Jon was pretty good at not doing that--he might've admitted that it was a way bigger problem than just wanting to lick his way down Spencer's new body until he squirmed, then sliding back up and pushing his cock in, and then fucking him until neither of them could move.
It made him feel kind of dirty, but also kind of turned on, like, all the time. It was kind of a problem.
*
Brendon caught the bottle and set it down on the floor before it tipped over.
"Dude," he said. "You've been lying there for like six hours. Are you sure you don't want to move?"
Jon gestured aimlessly up from the couch. It was true; it probably had been about six hours, give or take a few. They were all starting to run together, what with all the bad TV sapping his will to live and the desperate need to avoid Spencer prickling along the edges of his consciousness. "It is pretty boring," he admitted. "What did you do with my beer?"
"I saved it from certain death," Brendon said. "It's pretty much empty anyway."
"Cool," Jon said, and then knocked it over anyway when he went to reach for it. Brendon sighed in a long-suffering manner.
"Come on, dude," Brendon said. "Spence said he'd jam with us, so we should, you know. Do it. It is kinda what we're here for."
"Sure," Jon said. He sat up. Brendon was right; there hadn't been much left in the bottle, so there was only a small wet patch on the floor next to the couch. "Should I clean that up?" he asked, and Brendon shrugged.
He didn't.
*
As jam sessions, or song-writing, or whatever it was, went, it was a pretty shitty one.
And Jon was pretty sure that, as far as coping mechanisms went, theirs were pretty bad.
*
"No," Spencer said.
He was still sitting behind his kit when Jon came back, even though they'd given up on writing anything nearly an hour ago and Jon had wandered away, disinterested. But he knew Spencer'd still be here, being able to hear the insistent rhythm of a snare snapping through the soundproofing in the basement. Jon had felt bad interrupting, because he knew Spencer hadn't been down since before, but he'd also chosen to interpret it as a gesture of goodwill, that maybe Spencer had stopped resenting him enough not only to show up to a jam but also enough to hang around after. Maybe.
"Dude," Jon said. "You don't even know what I was going to ask."
"No anyway," Spencer said.
Jon rolled his eyes and pulled up a stool. He was close enough that he could smell Spencer, just a sharp-sweet tang under his usual smell of soap and shampoo, and it made his stomach turn over. He had no idea what he was doing or if Spencer was going to punch him or what, but he half expected that whatever it was--however this went, it would be better for him and Spencer and the band if he just got it over with.
"I just thought that we should talk about this," he said.
"There's nothing to talk about," Spencer said.
"There is too," Jon insisted. "You wouldn't even talk to me, and then you turned into a girl, and I've seen you, like, once since then--"
Spencer put his sticks down. "Maybe I just don't want to talk about feelings," he said.
"That's not what this is about," Jon said, suddenly confused.
Spencer looked at him sharply. "Then maybe I don't want to talk at all," he said.
"What the fuck, Spencer?" Jon asked. "Why are you always such--"
"A fucking girl about this?" he interrupted. Jon saw, suddenly, that he was shaking, although from anger or nerves, Jon couldn't tell. "I don't know, Jon," Spencer said. "Maybe because you don't think I'm capable of functioning as an adult except as a girl, so."
Jon jerked back. "What are you talking about?"
Spencer stood up. His face was very slowly going very pink. "What the fuck do you think I'm talking about?" he yelled. "Do you think this happened for nothing?"
Jon looked down. It suddenly hurt, looking at Spencer and seeing a girl--and an angry girl at that. It hurt, because he was supposed to be able to look at Spencer and see one of his best friends, that he could fight with and make up with and things would be okay. He was supposed to be able to look at Spencer and see someone that he wanted and cared about, someone who wanted him and cared about him in return, and not someone who could hardly stand to be with him and who didn't even want Jon to see him (or was it her?).
And that was the worst of it, really: that he looked at Spencer now, when Spencer let him, and for all that he was like the Spencer that Jon had had, Jon had never made him look like that before--sad and reserved and angry, all at once.
"I didn't do this to you," Jon said, but as soon as it was out of his mouth, he was no longer even certain about it. He added: "But I'm sorry it happened anyway."
Spencer visibly deflated.
"Come on, dude," Jon said, seeing an in. He touched Spencer's fingers with his own. They were cold. Instead, he laced their fingers together and stood up when Spencer didn't pull away. "I don't want things to be like this," he said.
Spencer's fingers tightened around his, but Spencer looked away. He said, his voice strained: "You said it'd be easier if I'd been a girl."
Jon's stomach turned over unpleasantly. "I what?" he said.
"You said," Spencer said levelly, "that it would be easier if I'd been a girl. Because I didn't want to sleep with you. On Thursday."
Jon opened his mouth, and then closed it. Then he opened it and closed it again. Finally he said, "oh."
And when Spencer just looked at him expectantly, he added: "I was wrong."
Because he had been: it wasn't.
*
This time, when Jon slid his fingers into Spencer's hair and flipped them over, Spencer's legs fell open easily, letting Jon slip in between his thighs. The friction was different this time too--Spencer's boxers slid strangely over his skin, clinging where they never did, and his hips moving more slowly where they'd once snapped rough against Jon's. But it was still so hot, his mouth soft and wet under Jon's, his fingers dipping under the waistband of Jon's underwear, splaying over the curve of his ass, the point of his hipbone.
They hadn't even done anything, and Jon was so hard he thought he might come just from this.
He tore his mouth away from Spencer's. Spencer was looking up at him, eyes wide and breathing hard, and Jon just--couldn't.
"I need to fuck you," he said. By way of reply, Spencer pushed his hips hard against Jon's.
"Yeah," he breathed.
They pulled apart long enough to strip out of their clothes, hands barely lingering over skin in haste to get naked. But Spencer's skin was soft, maybe softer even than Jon remembered it, and he just wanted.
It was a blur of hands and mouths, of Spencer's tongue licking into Jon's mouth as he spread his thighs, of Spencer's fingers splayed over Jon's ribs, of slickness on Jon's fingers and on his cock--tension in Jon's belly as he held back, and desperation in Spencer's voice as he whispered Jon's name.
They ended up fucking fast and hard, Spencer's thighs clenched tight, Jon's face buried in the crook of Spencer's neck. He hadn't--it wasn't the way he'd thought, but Spencer's pussy was hot and slick and his breath came in short, sharp moans; and it had been so easy to slide in, and so easy to come, just like that.
*
They'd fallen asleep with the curtains open, and when Jon woke up he thought he might be permanently blinded by the sunlight streaming in.
"Oh god," he said, very succinctly, and rolled over.
Spencer's back was to him, but it was a start, so Jon hooked an arm around his waist and closed his eyes. Sunlight was still bouncing off the vibrant white walls and glaring against his eyelids, but it was better than nothing.
He woke up later to Spencer's voice saying his name, sounding somewhat strained.
"What is it," he said, not even able to formulate a question. Spencer's skin was warm against his, and at some point Spencer must have gotten up and closed the curtains, because it was much darker than it had been. He didn't want to get up, or have a conversation, for that matter.
"I don't want to alarm you," Spencer said.
"'kay," Jon agreed, and pushed his nose against the back of Spencer's neck. He smelled warm and sleepy and it wasn't helping his cause, at all.
Spencer didn't say anything else, but curled his hand over Jon's where it was resting against his belly. Jon was almost asleep again, lulled by the warmth and darkness and the relief of finally, finally getting this when he realized what Spencer was doing as he guided their hands down, and curled their fingers, together, over his--Spencer's, god--dick.
Jon just scooted closer and kissed the back of his neck.
"That's more like it," he said, and even in the darkness he could feel Spencer smile.