Work Text:
Spencer knew that he was being paranoid.
The likelihood of him being stalked and followed were slim. Only one percent of the population in the United States were stalked yearly. Spencer tried to reassure himself with that fact but once he factored his career in the FBI and his unusually impressive ability to annoy pretty. much everyone he met, those figures rose exponentially.
Even so, Spencer tried to take his mind of the topic. He knew that he was being paranoid. There wasn't people following him. The face he saw on every other street corner couldn't have been the same man he saw outside of his apartment complex this morning. And of course that black SUV he had seen behind him at least six times today couldn't have been the same car.
Yet he quietly turned off his phone and slipped into the nearest back alley. He pushed himself up against the wall, trying to ground his mind back into reality. Spencer knew that he was being absurd. He had been cleared of his crimes, the law saw him as a innocent and free man. He just had to focus on the free bit.
It was the idea of being stalked that freaked him out. He couldn't help but kwt his mind wander back to his mother and her crazed ramblings. Schizophrenia was hereditary. He knew this, probably more than the scientists and doctors who dedicated their careers to it. Spencer lived through his mother's descent into another reality, one where she barely surfaced into the real world.
He also knew that the faces on the street corners couldn't possibly the same man. And he knew that being in Washington DC meant that there was tons of black SUVs. Spencer knew all of this, but his mind still ran with the idea that it was real.
And his new reality scared him, because if he could believe that, what else would his mind trick him into?