Work Text:
When Spencer is thinking hard, which is usually, he likes to have something to do with his hands. If paper and pencil are handy, he doodles, sometimes creating the most intricate patterns of lines, loops, and squiggles. Other times they take a more defined form, animals or monsters or people. These get left in a variety of places throughout the house, depending on where Spencer has been doing his thinking. Jason frequently analyzes these doodles when he finds them afterwards; it gives him some insight into what Spencer might have been thinking at the time. Aaron saves the doodles he finds, putting them into the scrapbook folder he has marked for Spencer. He has a folder like this for each of his children, though he isn’t sure when, if ever, these folders might be converted to actual scrapbooks.
Spencer’s need to have his hands busy while thinking isn’t much of a problem if writing implements are within reach; the doodles are innocuous and don’t really inconvenience the family too much. The problem comes when Spencer can’t doodle. Because at times like these, he fiddles with pretty much whatever he can get his hands on. And while it really can be just about anything, the most frequent victims of Spencer’s thinking hands are paper clips.
Nobody is quire sure where he manages to produce them from, actually, but nine times out of ten, if Spencer is lost in thought, a mangled paper clip tends to be the final result. These, too, can be found throughout the house, scattered about on almost any surface imaginable. Desks, tables, windowsills, and, on several inexplicable occasions, bathroom counters, all ended up covered in ex-paper clips at one point or another. And much as Spencer does try to make the effort of keeping them off the floor, they end up there anyway. This is less due to inattentiveness on Spencer’s part, however, and more due to the inexplicable habits of Sergio the cat, who apparently enjoys the sound that the paper clips make when they fall on the floor. And, once there, the mangled metal becomes what appears to be the most exciting toy any cat has ever encountered, judging by the frequency with which the twisted shapes can be found halfway across the house from wherever they were originally destroyed.
Sergio isn’t the only one who actually likes finding the unfolded, refolded, and entirely redesigned metal wires that Spencer leaves behind. It cheers Penelope every time she finds one. She knows it means her little brother has been thinking hard, and she also thinks that the designs the paper clips get folded into are actually kind of pretty. The prettiest ones she finds, she hoards, like she does with a variety of other bits of shiny she comes across on a daily basis. Currently, she’s got about 50 stashed in a box under her bed. She’s thinking about making jewelry out of them, but hasn’t quite figured out what, or how, just yet. All she knows is that sometimes, even very inconvenient habits can be endearing.