𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎𝚛 𝚛𝚎𝚒𝚍 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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piscesnebula2024-01-02 04:08 pm
technophobics) wrote in piscesnebula2024-01-02 04:08 pm
technophobics) wrote in piscesnebula2024-01-02 04:08 pm
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His shoulders hike high into his ears, and for a moment Sam looks like a kid who got caught stealing from the cookie jar. It's a stark contrast to the world-weary, pensive and brooding, posture that he typically sports.
Spencer's willingness to work with him is surprising, he'd been so sure that he would have to escape on the fly or use his one phone call to pull another Houdini-level disappearing act. The cops generally don't give him the benefit of the doubt, not even when things are obvious and plain as day right in front of them.
For a fed, he had a good head on his shoulders, and it's with some disquiet that Sam realizes because of this that Spencer's life will never be the same again.
"Okay, but I don't have local anesthetic." He's got what he needs to get the job done, but it's a far cry from triage at an emergency room and he knows it. "I'm staying at the place right outside of town. Gimme a sec and I'll get us a ride."
Sam pulls up the Uber app on his phone and punches in the locations. It's a small blessing ride share apps work on the fly, because most of his life he had to rely on hoofing it, hitchhiking, and "joy rides."
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"I'll meet you there," he decides, because he's already memorized the target location Sam put in on the app. "I can't just leave the squad car here, it'll raise too many questions."
With that, he sees Sam off once the Uber arrives -- within a couple of minutes, it's not surprising there'd be at least a few hanging around the hospital waiting for fares -- and takes the police car back to the local station his team has been working out of. Taking care not to be seen, he gets his own Uber out to Sam's location.
On the way, he allows himself a minor internal freakout. It goes something like:
What the fuck. The supernatural is real. Magic is real. What else real? If vampires are real, are werewolves? Angels? God? Does mental illness really exist or were they right in the medieval era when they said it was demons? How often are people killed because of this stuff? What the fuck???
The whole time, he runs his fingers over a beaded yellow bracelet on his wrist, and that makes it's way into his thoughts too. It had been a gift from a man involved in a case a couple of years ago; he'd called it Orula's Ide. A token for a Yoruban diety, Orula, a being of powerful wisdom and healing. Spencer hadn't believed in any of it at the time, but could there actually be something to it? Had this bracelet ever protected him or guided him?
It's enough to make his head hurt by the time he arrives at the place Sam is staying, but he's feeling... calmer, at least. More open to new knowledge. Eager for new knowledge, even.
He knocks on the door. "Sam? It's Spencer Reid." A beat, and then, awkwardly, "I promise I didn't bring any police with me." Another pause. "Oh, that just makes it sound like I did. But I definitely didn't."
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Sam realizes a bit too late for comfort that he could have just taken off when Spencer said that he'd meet him at the motel. It's not like he had anything of value there, and he would've had a head start of at least fifteen minutes in any direction he saw fit, but something makes him stay. The pale sick look on the agent's face was telling, and Sam, try as he might to steel himself and separate from the emotion on the job has never been able to just let someone suffer through the new reality. Not while also sporting injuries like the kind they had. The burden of truth on a guy like Spencer came with more questions than answers, and so against his own better judgment, he stopped by the local liquor store for some good drinking booze and alcohol to use as antiseptic, quality fishing line, needles, and gauze.
The knock at the door, and the words that follow, shouldn't bring a smile to his face but they do. A wry look of disbelief at his current situation, and the notion that even when he's out manages to find a way back in - with or without his brother.
He opens the door, the TV is playing some old Western black and white, and the southern drawl is a dulcet undertone in the room the light from the television and the desk lamp is the only thing illuminating the dark and dingy environment.
"How's the wing?" Strain from driving probably didn't make it any better. Sam shuts and bolts the door behind him. "I'm gonna take care of you first. You have the choice of the desk, or the bathroom, but I'm guessing you'll pick the bathroom."
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This hotel is awful. Look, Spencer's not one to judge based on economic situation, but he's fairly certain those bed linens had last been washed about a year and a hundred people ago, there's dubious stains on the carpet, and any surface he touches probably hasn't been sanitized in a while. He is not going to get stitched up in the main room. It makes him grateful that the FBI budget shells out for medium range rooms.
It does make him wonder, briefly, how Sam actually has a hotel room. How does he earn money? They profiled the Winchesters as constantly on the move, with an inability to hold steady, legal employment. Are they stealing the money? Gambling? Doing under the table work?
What a complicated life Sam Winchester must lead.
Spencer reluctantly shucks his sweater and leaves it folded on the tiny, rickety table (which he judges to be likely the safest of the surfaces), leaving him in just a shirt, which he gingerly rolls up to the elbow to bare the bite on his forearm. In the bathroom, he gets started getting the dried blood off, the water running pink in the chipped sink. Under the white lighting, his cheekbones look hollow, the permanent dark smudges under his eyes downright skeletal.
"What else is real?" he asks Sam, chewing on his lip. "Your file mentions everything from shapeshifters to ghosts to werewolves. It's all assumed to be delusions, of course. But... that's not true, is it?"
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Thanks to Charlie some of those expenses felt lighter but not by much because ethically Sam didn't believe in pushing that envelope too far. He had moral limitations when it came to defrauding the government. Dean never saw that as an issue, but he also had to not only raise him but risk his life early on with all the same conditioning. He considered it part of the perks of being the one to go toe to toe to save the people that would have been prey.
"Yeah, it's all real, Spence." Maybe not the best time for nicknames but he's doing what he can to keep him distracted while he preps the area. He does him the service of not warning him as he debrides it and not wasting time. "That, and the demons that were responsible for what happened in Monument, Colorado."
That much had to be in his file seeing as it was from one FBI agent that later wound up being a casualty after helping them fake their deaths. A lot of good people died there, people Sam would've wanted to help get out and then help disappear. They didn't deserve what happened to them, and even though Lillith's not a player now he takes the blame for that and those casualties knowing that none of it mattered in the long run and that those people, good people, were just canon fodder for a holy war.
Sam's quick about disinfecting the tissue, and when he stitches him up he's efficient, surgeonly, about pinching the skin together so that it'll heal. When he's done, he wraps it in thick tourniquet gauze and then drops his arm, and where he'd been bracing Spencer's wrist with his hand.
"It'd be a whole lot easier for both of us if I was some deranged serial killer playing with nightmare scenarios."
The audible sigh that follows speaks to his exhaustion and the genuine desire for that to be true. He washes his hands, careful to get Spencer's blood off his palms and out from beneath his fingernails and then he offers up the whiskey, for a little relief. Raw-dogging stitches, even with the help of some top-shelf booze as local anesthetic wasn't easy.
"We can take a break before you do me if that's better for you." It might behoove them both to give Spencer a little time to digest everything and adjust to the tightness in his arm before he worked on his shoulder.