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She woke up screaming again, her nails digging tight into her palms as waves of terror beat against her chest. It was a familiar scene — a familiar horror, a familiar helplessness, a familiar routine leaving her exhausted and drained each night.
The only thing not familiar was the dull, impersonal hotel decor, the scratchy hotel blanket bunched around her — and Spencer, kneeling on the rug beside her twin bed.
His kind eyes were fixed on her with sympathetic concern, watching as her breathing stuttered into waking. It was his voice that had woken her, his hands that had pulled her out of the nightmare before it reached its horrific end.
Now he was trying not to crowd her as she glanced frantically around the dim room, past Spencer’s bed, covers thrown to the floor in his rush to get to her, to the little desk in the corner, the dark bathroom, the locked door.
As she tried desperately to reassure herself that she was safe, she realized that her hand was clutching tight to Spencer’s on the bed beside her, so tight the tips of her fingers were turning white. His thumb was running back and forth soothingly over her hand.
If she was hurting him, he didn’t show it, simply asking, “Can I help?” in that soft, sweet voice.
He didn’t know what to do. Of course he was familiar with nightmares, had spent his own fair share of nights waking in a cold sweat in hotels just like this one. But it was something else to see it on her face, to see his usually hyperlexic teammate so rattled that the words wouldn’t come.
“I—“ she started, her other hand come round to follow the movement of his, her own thumb ghosting over their clasped hands.
She was shaking still, and beginning to rock a bit, self-soothing.
“I just—“ she started again, and met his eyes, just briefly, trying to communicate what she was feeling, what she needed, what he could do, all of it wrapped up together in her head, but she found the threads were too tangled to unravel aloud.
But — “I know,” Spencer said gently. “I know.”
And he did. He knew well what it was like be afraid of your own mind. He knew the need to move, to shift the weight of that adrenaline and discomfort. He knew the feeling of sensory overload mixed with the translucent overlay of dissociation at the edge of shutdown.
They had never talked about it, but they had seen each other, even through their respective masks. She had seen him hold back a flapping hand to a tight, small gesture under the table, and avoid unfamiliar touch. He had heard the same song filter out from her headphones over and over again for hours, and seen her pull on her bright blue ear defenders after a long case. This was something they shared — not just being autistic, but the constant efforts of varying levels of success at passing, at blending in.
With a terse nod she let go of his hand, and scootched to the other side of the bed, tucking her feet underneath her. With her eyes settled somewhere near Spencer's shoulder — a far cry from her usual almost-perfect imitation of eye contact with eye to nose — she patted the opposite edge of the bed, a foot or so away from her but very present, still in the pool of the soft bedside light. He felt gratitude bloom in him that she trusted him with this, felt comfortable enough with him to not force out words or a carefully curated response.
Spencer rose immediately from his spot on the floor, climbing up to exactly where she had gestured, leaving careful space.
She took his hand once more, holding it in the space between them as she rocked and they sat together in companionable silence.