Simon Vs Fan Fic: Chapter 9 - Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice
Ao3
“How much longer do you think this will take?”
Nora was complaining as she spun in the chair next to me at Walgreens. I was selecting pictures I spent the better chuck of last week compiling of Bram and I’s pictures together across all social media, my phone, Leah’s phone, all my friends’ phones, and even our parent’s phones. We have all been home from school for two weeks now and it was just a few days before New Year’s Eve
“You didn’t have to come.” I say as I give her side eye.
“I need to make sure you choose the best pictures.” She responds, for once staring at the screen with me and not on her phone.
I loved when she chose to selectively care about me. What are little, sometimes-bratty sisters for? I would pick some and she would nod her head and let out an approval grunt. Others I’d go to select and she would grab my forearm and shake her head. I’d ask a reason and she’d make the photo larger and show me why. She had a good eye when she wanted.
“You have a hundred and fifty selected, isn’t that enough?”
Being able to give Bram a million pictures of us wouldn’t be enough.
“I would rather have too many pictures than not enough,” I say as my hair falls messy on my face.
“Half of the ones of you guys are ruined because of the reflection in the glasses.”
“It’s why I’ve started wearing contacts.” I reply in my annoyed older brother tone.
“And yet that face is still not better to look at.” Nora replied.
“You’re going to make an excellent drag queen someday.”
Nora looked up at me, “Oh, aren’t I already?”
Okay, that one made me laugh. “Let me just check out a few more and I’ll print them.”
I found thirty more and finally hit the print button. The photos started plopping out at the bottom at the same speed as the retail workers. This was going to be awhile. Still, though we weren’t talking, Nora was still not on her phone, but staring at each photo as it fell out like she was ensuring the print looked right.
“Okay, Nora, I’ve never asked you this and I think I deserve to know,” I spin to her. “What is it about Bram that makes you act so different?”
She scoffs and rolls her eyes. “What is it about Bram that makes you act so different?”
Repetition. Great.
“My reasons are pretty obvious, Nora.” I answer. “Come on, what is it?”
“I like him.” She answered, almost embarrassed to admit.
I brayed like a horse as my lips trilled. “But you like Nick and Leah.”
“Yeah, but it’s different.” She said trying to avoid eye contact.
“Different how? I’ve known them longer; you’ve known them longer. It just doesn’t make sense and keeps me up at night.” That part was a tad exaggerated. I teased my hair and moved it out of my face.
“Simon, please don’t make me say it.” She pleaded as she stared at the photos.
“No, I think not asking you about it for almost five years is plenty of time,” I reason with her. She looks up and inhales deeply and mouths something very subtly to herself and finally swivels away so I’m looking at her back.
“I like him…because…I like how he makes you feel.” She didn’t look back, like she was talking to the headphones and ear buds dangling on the beige hooks. “I like that you like him and he likes you and because of that you like yourself.”
Nora turned back to me and she allowed tears to fall from her eyes. It made me frown and my lips tremble.
“I remember when we were younger and…you didn’t know that you were gay because you didn’t know what that meant to you yet. We used to play together so much and have so much fun in the back yard with Leah and Nick on the swing set and then one day…it just ended. I would come to you to ask you to play, but you would never feel up for it or you would make excuses that you were too busy. But I could see in your eyes that you so badly wanted to, like you were screaming out to me and I couldn’t help you. It’s when you and Nick and Leah all started to change and I now know that it was puberty, but the free-loving Simon I knew was trapped. I now know that was because you realized something about yourself and you felt like you couldn’t talk to anyone about it, not even us. It was the worst when you were outed and I understood what made you so isolated from us even though you were so present. Then, like magic, you were free. You didn’t skip a beat and you were back to the same fun-loving Simon I knew. I missed that Simon so much and I needed to know that if I couldn’t have freed you that I had to know who did. Then you introduced us to Bram…and how you looked at him was how you looked when you were younger. So full of life and happiness and joy…so when I say I like him, Simon, it’s because he saved you. And I’ll always love him for that.”
Tears fell down my face as more fell from her eyes. She looked up again and wiped under her eyes. I opened my arms and her face broke down as she buried her face into my chest. I gripped her hard as she let it out muffled into my shirt. The pictures continued to fall at a quicker, more rhythmic pace. Finally, she pushed herself away and her face was red and swollen.
“And now you’ve made my makeup run.” She said as she laughed.
I had to wipe my own tears away “Nora, you have to say that…at the wedding. It was honestly the most touching thing I’ve ever heard…and I’m sorry.”
She laughed louder, “Simon, why are you apologizing?”
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t remember what I said exactly.”
“Whip out that phone and type in a note what you do remember, because that was beautiful.”
Nora complied and she quickly typed out as much as she could remember as the photos continued to rain down on the ever-increasing pile. The cashier came over and saw we were both puffy faced and red and gave us a strange look. When the photos finished printing, he gave us a box to place them in and Nora finished with what she remembered. I read it and it honestly made me almost cry again.
“Oh, and one thing Simon. You didn’t say ‘if there’s a wedding,’ you said ‘at the wedding.’” She smiled wide and put her phone back in her pocket.
I pay for the photos and on the way out, I tell her, “When we get home, lets go to the swing set.”
We drive home and I contemplate the deep side of Nora. I wasn’t lying and as soon as we parked, we both raced to the back yard and started going down the obviously-too-small slide and sat on the you’ve-outgrown-them swings and I heard Nora laugh more in the twenty minutes we were out there than I had since high school. It felt like a great breakthrough moment and it made me happy and when we both walked into the house from the back yard, Dad stopped me.
“You convinced Nora to play on that thing again?” Dad asked, genuinely shocked.
“Yeah, why?”
Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “Because she’s been bugging me to get rid of it for years. I always told her no because I wanted the grandchildren to play on it, but it was really because I didn’t want to mess up the lawn.”
“I think it’s safe, Dad.” I reply, patting him on the shoulder.
New Year’s Eve moved from a hum-drum celebration between my friends to a grand ‘ol time where we spilled secrets from the previous year mixed with vodka, rum, whiskey, basically the Mystery Pitcher. This year was going to be even more fun because (not so) surprisingly, Leah invited Ian to come down for a few weeks for our New Year’s Party all the way from South Dakota. The day after Christmas, Leah picked him up from the airport and he’s been staying with us ever since.
“Mr. and Mrs. Spier, you have an outstanding son, he is a gentleman and a scholar and has a hell of a liver.”
Mom’s eyes squinted in judgment as my Dad laughed. I knew Ian and Dad would get along great.
“We’re glad you made it down to Georgia. Was worried we’d only see you up in Connecticut,” Dad said.
“Yes, I’m glad as well. Been meaning to see the place that made Simon into a man. By the way, Mr. Spier, do you happen to like soccer?”
Dad didn’t know much about soccer, but he liked Ian enough to fake it til he made it and Ian called Dad into the living room to discuss it.
“All right Ian, yes – help me I’m in over my head – so tell me about your favorite team.”
“Talk about Argentina.” I offer.
“What’s their team name?” Dad asks.
“Doesn’t matter, Ian will fill in the rest of the conversation.” Leah says as I hand him two beers and he disappears into the living room.
“Thank you again for letting him stay with you,” Leah said to Mom.
“Of course, the more the merrier.” I’m not sure she mean that entirely, but what she did like is me and my friends around the house before we permanently moved away about six months from now.
“You ready?” I ask Leah.
“Duhhhhh, Spier.” She replies.
We go up to my room and we sit on the floor and cut out pictures of Bram and me so they are in various shapes and sizes. My room only had a new desk but other than that hadn’t changed from last summer, which will be super fitting because it will look almost identical for the first time Bram saw it junior year of high school. I rarely wore the Elliott Smith shirt so it would stay in pristine condition, so my room is basically a time capsule.
“How did you invite him down here?” I ask Leah who just finished cutting out a picture of Bram and I when he visited Yale for my first performance as a college student.
“I mean, it wasn’t hard,” Leah said. “He really cares about us.”
I laugh, “Not as much as soccer maybe, but I get your point.”
“No, you don’t. I mean it Simon he really cares about us.” There was a slight smile creeping from her normally neutral face.
“No. Way. Le Burke! Did he ask you out?” I shout whispered.
“Other way around.” She said triumphantly. A smile shot across my face.
“Leah, that’s fuckin’ bad ass. Have you told anyone?”
“Not yet,” She said. “But I had to tell you because he was staying here and because you probably would have figured it out.”
“Subtly off-stage is not his strong suit.” I agree.
“But we’re not going to tell anyone until at least after you propose.”
“You don’t have to do that, Leah.” I tell her, cutting out a picture of Bram and I cheesing out with big smiles and closed eyes.
“No, it’s okay, I like that it’s still pretty much a secret. Very compelling and I discovered keeping it secret is something that actually gets me going if you no what I mean.” We both laugh until Leah catches herself and touches my knee. “Oh! And can we talk about Abby, ‘she’ and Nick makes three?!”
“Oh my god I’ve been waiting so long to talk to you about that!”
“Who do you think it is?!”
We stopped cutting pictures to social media creep on Nick and Abby’s profiles to try to narrow it down to at least five or six suspects. Because that’s what good friends do. The rest of the day turned into cutting the remaining photos and taping them on my door until we put together a pretty badass collage of Bram and I across my door while we brought down the five or six suspects to three or four.
“Si, this looks great.” Leah said, picking up scraps of cut photo paper.
“It does, thanks to you.” I say smiling.
“So are you going to do the rose petals?” she inquires.
“Yeah…yeah I have to, right?” I say. “I think everyone deserves rose petals spelling something out in front of them at least once in their lives.”
“I concur.” She says grinning.
“I also just realized…I’ll have to sleep with my door open or Bram will see everything.” I say, not thinking it through clearly before cutting everything out and hanging it up.
“I realized that after hanging the first photograph, but you looked so darn happy I didn’t want to ruin it.”
“Take it down and put it up later?”
“Absolutely.”
We took all of the photos off and put them into a shoebox that Leah to take home with her. Not that Bram would purposely find them, but with my luck literally accidently come upon them in a weird stroke of luck. When we were done, Leah went downstairs to help Dad with any remaining soccer talk.
“You coming?” She asked.
“No, I got to work on something up here, give me like a half hour.” I almost told her about the poem because she trusted me with the knowledge of her and Ian finally dating, but I want to stick to my guns about this poem being a genuine Simon Spier.
I lay in bed and over the course of about forty-five minutes suss out another good chunk of organized words.
Bzzz.
Bram Hi, I miss you, can I see you?
Of course, are you at your house?
. .. … I’m a little closer, come downstairs :)
I quickly hide my notepad in case Bram decides to surprise me between my mattress and look around for any lingering pictures of us. Leave no trace of proposal materials. Bram is essentially all five of the Scooby-Doo characters in one, efficient, beautiful human form.
I walk downstairs and Bram took over from Dad with the soccer talk as Ian was in deep conversation with him. Dad seemed to escape and he walked over to me.
“Is it possible to know too much about soccer?” Dad asks me.
“He’s like a computer that only knows soccer facts, right?” I reply. “It actually impresses the heck out of the ladies at school.”
Bram eyes me talking to Dad and I pretend not to notice. He excuses himself and comes over to me and lays a kiss on my cheek.
“Hey, B” I purr.
“Hi.” He replies through his slightly parted lips, begging for a kiss on them. I comply and he grins. “You know quite a bit about soccer, Jack. At least according to Ian.”
“Are you serious? He talked the whole time and I would just try to remember phrases to repeat back to him and then he’s go off on another tangent.” He replied, almost exhausted looking form the conversation. “How long were you and Leah up there?”
“About an hour?” I reply.
“What were you guys doin’ up there?” Bram asked, in a genuinely honest manner.
Shit.
“They were giving feedback on my music. I finally let them listen to it.” Nora for the save.
“So now I’m not the only ones who heard it?” Bram said, crossing his arms and bulged out his muscular forearms.
“Finally realized Si’s opinion on music could be valuable,” Nora replies.
“I know it is for me, he’s blown up my library.” Bram answered.
The rest of the night had Mom and Dad exit upstairs to bed with Nora heading to a friend’s house. Leah then excused herself as Ian ‘went to Alice’s room to sleep’ and snuck out the back to follow Leah home. It left Bram and me and we headed upstairs to my room. He inhaled deeply.
“Why did you do that?” I said to him through a scrunched face.
“I missed the smell of your room.” He admitted, tucking his chin to his chest as we laid in bed. I saw the little wrinkle he got above his nose when he told me something that he thought was embarrassing. It’s the cutest.
“Oh? And what is that smell?” I ask, cozying up closer to him.
“Your laundry detergent,” He kissed me chin. “Your deodorant,” He kissed my nose. “Your shampoo,” He kissed my left cheek. “Your body wash,” He kissed my right cheek. “Your musk,” He kissed my lips easily as they were hanging slightly apart. “All of it with a hint of Oreos and sweetened coffee.”
“Sugar and spice and everything nice.” I reply as I kiss him back.
In that moment I get mad at myself because I want just propose, right here, right now. I bite my lip and swallow the idea because Bram deserves the best and I want to give him that. It was hard to fight the urge as he looked so beautiful staring directly into my eyes, light glistening from the dark of his pupils.
I know he’d say yes right now, without hesitation. But he deserves to be treated like the king he is, like anyone else who gets proposed to.
“What are you thinking about?” Bram asks, slightly fogging up my glasses.
I run my hands through his hair and massage his scalp as his eyes close.
“You. Always you. Forever you. You?”
I’m rubbing his scalp with my fingertips as a grin grows across his beautiful face.
“You. Always you. Forever you.”
“I’ve been quoted by the famous Abraham Greenfeld? I’m going to be a star!” I say in an old radio announcer voice that causes Bram to adorably laugh and show his teeth in a huge smile. I take that opportunity to kiss him again as his lips close around mine. I rub his scalp until I know he’s asleep. I can feel the minute elevation from my side of the bed from my notebook and know, in that moment, how to finish the poem.
