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Bend & not break
by Nicola
Rating: PG
Spoilers: #1.05, 'Just Say No'
Luke looked down at the figure in the garden, aware that his itching post-midnight glaze was causing him to stare. It was weird, he reconciled; he was allowed to stare at things that were weird. He was a scientist: he examined.
Adam, partially obscured by the tree, was weaving gently through the Girardis' garden; faded by the darkness and as misplaced as fireless smoke. His head was inclined (wistfully? hopefully? Luke couldn't read his expression from this distance) towards Kevin's window, although Luke guessed he had mistaken the room for Joan's.
The Chem report on Luke's computer glared up at him, the screen seemed overbright in the dim light of his room. Joan, chattering brightly amid the rockin' sounds of this week's pretentious The band, had been busted by mom at 11pm. She'd been given 15 minutes grace before reinforcements (dad) had been called in to press-gang her into bed. Luke had closed his bedroom door at 10:15pm and switched off all the lights save for his desk lamp. The faint hum of his laptop was the only noise to emit the room in four undisturbed hours. Sometimes he wished he weren't so good at going unnoticed.
Luke sighed and waited for Adam Rove to leave. He spun his chair backwards, resting his head against the glass of the window. He watched as Adam picked up a small object (a stone?), juggled it briefly in his hand. He moved to throw it at the window (still Kevin's), before thinking better of it. Apparently newly distracted by the object/stone, Adam began to roll it between his fingers, utterly enthralled.
Probably high, Luke thought uncharitably. Except that Joan claimed Adam wasn't a stoner. Right. And he, Luke, would become captain of the varsity football team next year. Unreleased sarcasm rolled sloppily through his brain, and he felt inexplicably remorseful. Adam wasn't so bad, the kinder part of his brain conceded. He had once corrected the equation on an experiment in Chem class, avoiding Luke an embarrassing accident with hydrochloric acid. There was something basically warm about Adam Rove; it unnerved him, cheered him. He was also an inescapable freakshow, currently cluttering up Luke's lawn.
Suddenly bored with the stone, Adam's eyes rolled the length of the house. Before Luke could duck away, Adam had caught sight of him in the window. With an unmistakable smile, Adam raised a hand in greeting. Like an alien who's just stepped off a spaceship, Luke thought glassily. Adam raised the stone again, aiming this time as if to throw it at Luke's window. Luke stood up and waved his arms frantically, signalling no.
Adam dropped the stone abruptly, grinning wider at Luke's panic. Oh, very funny, Luke mouthed in annoyance. Unperturbed, Adam began beckoning him, his lips forming the words, "come down."
Luke looked away from the window, his eyes glancing over his room; the computer, the piles of books. He needed to finish his report. He needed to sleep. He flicked off his computer abruptly; standing briefly motionless as he listened to its cranky shutting down noises. His brain seemed to whir simultaneously. He exhaled, long and slow, taking the time to examine his feelings. Hypothesise, plan, conduct, conclude, evaluate. His heart was racing a little from the adrenaline rush, his eyes felt weird and staring with sleep deprivation.
He felt wholly, irrefutably awake.
His computer dimmed, finally, and he launched himself out the door. He skidded slightly on the landing, taking his steps on the balls of his feet (socks, no shoes). Nothing stirred as he scrambled down the stairs. If anyone asked, he'd say he was getting a glass of water. If anyone asked.
Luke unlocked the rear door and slipped outside, immediately feeling damp cold seep through his socks. Adam was crouched in the middle of the lawn, seemingly distracted once more. He lifted a silver ring-pull from the ground, twisting it in his fingers and examining the way it caught in the moonlight. Luke walked closer. No sudden movements, he reminded himself.
"What are you doing here?" It seemed like a reasonable opener. Luke crossed his arms. He could be Dad, training a gun on a criminal; he could be Kevin, wielding a bat on the baseball field. A fearless and mighty Girardi.
Adam stood up. The ring-pull, looped around his pinkie finger, was still glinting.
"I couldn't sleep." His shrug was a mere shift of his shoulders. Apparently Adam considered his answer just as reasonable as Luke's question. Seeing Luke's unconvinced expression, he raised his eyebrows in the slightest roll of his eyes, and continued: "I had something I wanted to ask Jane. I thought I'd see if she was . . . around."
"Of course she's around. She's also sleeping," Luke said, failing to mask his exasperation.
"You're not," Adam pointed out. He looked at Luke plainly and without blinking. There was a dreamy sort of clarity to his eyes, and Luke found himself unable to look away.
"Well, sometimes I'm awake late . . . early," Luke said defensively. "Joan isn't," he reasserted.
"Oh." Adam seemed unconcerned, eerily serene. "Sometimes I have . . . dreams. Nightmares, whatever. Why don't you sleep?" He blinked, once.
"I just . . . have trouble . . . switching off," Luke said, annoyed that he seemed to be picking up Adam's speech patterns. He paused and continued, in a single breath, "it's not that I'm not tired it's that my brain is still working away and I can't get to sleep."
This was not the conversation that Luke wanted to be having with Adam Rove at 2am, standing in the middle of his garden without any shoes.
"You got any weed?" Luke asked suddenly. He frowned, and became aware that the statement had sounded too matter of fact. He wasn't sure whether he had meant to sound more accusatory, or genuinely interested.
"Cha. I don't do weed. That whole thing is. A smokescreen." He paused and reconsidered: "Except not literally, because I don't . . . smoke."
"Really."
"Why, do I seem high to you?" Adam was smiling his slight, faraway smile again; something burning a little too brightly in his eyes.
"I don't know, what does high look like?" Luke countered defensively.
He remembered Kevin at 16; the brawny jock oafs and their tittering girlfriends, crowded into the living room, the too-animated laughter and faint burning smell of lime and herb. He remembered himself, cowering and pre-pubescent, pressed against the staircase banister, watching the sudden twist in his brother's face from far away.
Adam was still staring at him. It was his imagination, manic post-midnight neuroses, but Luke felt as though Adam were able to read his thoughts; x-ray through his skull into the bright screen of his mind. It was an altogether different kind of high, and not one that Adam ever seemed to come down from.
"Sometimes it's easier to pretend," Adam said.
"What?" Luke said reflexively. His thoughts had already begun to unravel. He was aware that Adam was still shifting vaguely, as if he were vapour that could be lifted away by the breeze.
"To be a stoner . . . a loser. It makes it easier to be yourself . . . if you just let people think what they like," Adam explained, drifting nearer.
It was flawed logic, Luke's brain countered immediately. Everyone was shaped by other people's perceptions. It wasn't that simple.
"Think I could pretend to be a stoner?" Luke said impulsively, finding himself inexplicably cheered by Adam's flawed worldview.
"Nahh, dude . . . you're like a computer—" Adam smiled slightly "—everything you're thinking is up there all over your face." He reached over and touched the side of Luke's face, his fingers brushing his temple (Luke felt the smooth coldness of metal from the ring-pull). "Too much going on in there."
Without thinking, Luke leaned forward and kissed Adam, catching his lips in a firm, decisive kiss. Adam seemed to taste of the cool night air, although that could have been the mint of toothpaste (from when he brushed his teeth and didn't go to bed?).
Luke pulled away almost immediately. Damn— His mind clouded over immediately. When he'd imagined kissing . . . girls (mostly), it was generally Grace's fierce expression that loomed in his imagination, as if she were daring him to fight crocodiles and a river of burning lava before he was worthy of her affection. Adam, by contrast — very real and very close — seemed unperturbed, even unsurprised by the whole situation.
"I didn't mean to—" Luke said rapidly, his voice suddenly spitting out words.
Adam leaned over, placing two light, consecutive kisses on his mouth. They were quick kisses; warm, brief contact that made something inside Luke twist wonderfully. "Cha. No big," he said softly, pulling away again.
Adam floated a few feet away, seemingly unflustered by the kissing and Luke's burgeoning inner turmoil. He craned his neck up at the tree, waving and bending slightly in the wind, as if it were the most fascinating and beautiful thing in the world.
"Is this a sycamore tree?" Adam asked Luke.
September 2004
Muse music: 'Bend and not break' by Dashboard Confessional
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