Work Text:
It's one AM when the fight ends with Spencer shutting down into clipped and nasty and formal, and then walking out his own door. He leaves Austin standing in the living room, and on the one hand she's furious and hurt - a bit - but on the other hand, she mostly can't figure out what they were actually fighting about.
And now she's standing in his apartment, with no real idea what to do with herself.
And no cigarettes in her purse, either. For a minute she contemplates walking down to the corner store to get some, but it's cold out there to her Atlanta-acclimated self, and besides, she's quitting.
Which she actually hadn't gotten a chance to tell him, as a surprise. She meant to slip it in casually, because then it would take a moment to go through the hear-process-react thing he did, which she thought was cute.
She makes herself coffee, instead, and most of the angry and hurt sort of melts away into the completely bewildered. She tries to go over what the hell just happened in her head, but it still doesn't make much sense: he was fine, then he was a little sharp-edged when they were at the pizzeria after the movie, then she said something about her brother and how she wasn't talking to him until he got clean again, and boom.
The fight hadn't even stayed on one tangent, either. No matter how she turns it, she can't figure out what they were fighting about, except that wow, apparently profilers are really, really good at finding places to hit, and she wasn't good at not hitting back.
After one cup of coffee, she still doesn't go get any cigarettes. She does go to the liquor store around the corner, though, and grabs a cheap bottle of SoCo and some Coke to pour it in. When she comes back up, Spencer still isn't back, and she realizes she has no idea where he'd go. He didn't take his car, but she's not sure that means anything.
She sighs, pours her drink, and pulls out one of the work files she brought to do on the plane, because this will not be the first time she's done her paperwork with the help of alcohol.
At two AM, she fishes out her cell and sends a text to Kathy: just had fight w/BF. not sure what it was about. no idea where he is now.
About ten minutes later, she gets a text back with sux :( luv u bb, which is nice, and about as comforting and illuminating as she expected it to be.
It's four AM and she's probably a little bit drunk when the door opens, tentative and slow, and Spencer comes back in. He sees she's sitting at the kitchen table and steps the rest of the way in. He closes the door, and his hands are in his pockets again. He's not doing so good at eye-contact - Austin's not a profiler or anything, but she's figured out by now that means he's stressed out and not sure of where he's standing.
Austin stares, and feels kind of dumb: switch that "probably a little bit drunk" to "definitely a little bit drunk". She puts her pen down, and Spencer makes himself look up and make eye-contact, for all of three seconds.
"I want to apologize for everything I said tonight," he says, like he's trying out the words.
"Okay," Austin says. Her brain takes the next step. "Me too." Spencer looks like he's trying to find the words to say more, so she carefully (so as not to knock over her glass) reaches over to her bottle and holds it up, pointing at the level. "I've had this much SoCo," she says. Explains. "I bought this after you left. Is this something we should talk about in the morning when I'm sober?"
" . . . probably," Spencer says, and a little bit of tension goes out. "You should have some water," he says, because sometimes he just can't seem to help himself.
"I should," she agrees, and while she gets up to (carefully) get her water, Spencer peers at the table.
" . . . are you doing paperwork?" he says, but cautiously, like he's not sure he's allowed to comment yet. Sometimes Austin thinks everything Spencer knows about interacting with people, he learned from his psychology degree and his team.
"Trust me," she says, "I could do this paperwork hopped up on horse tranquillizers. It's the same form over and over and over again." She leans on the counter to drink her water, so as to avoid swaying.
Spencer nods, and to prevent an awkward silence, Austin sorts through and lights on something that might count as good news. "I quit smoking," she tells him, gesturing with her water-glass to her purse on the other chair. "See? No smokes in the bag."
Something like a smile looks like it's trying to sneak onto Spencer's face. "Really?" And then it disappears, like the sun behind a cloud, and he swallows, and says in a more Spencer-ish voice, "I'm really sorry, Austin."
"Okay," she says. She puts her water-glass down and goes over, and mostly means to just give him a kiss on the cheek, to show no harm no foul, but he makes it a real kiss instead, with his pretty hands holding her face.
Normally, Austin would reserve make-up sex for after she knew what the hell just happened anyway, but she figures she can make an exception. Because he has pretty hands. That do magic.
****
She doesn't even have a hangover, due to minor miracle and how much water Spencer talks her into drinking, along with a multi-vitamin. Spencer still woke up before her, but she's come to the conclusion that Spencer will always wake up before her, because Spencer sleeps like a nervous cat.
Austin crawls out from under blankets and sheets, and after a little bit of peering finds underwear and her t-shirt and figures the rest can just go to hell, because she's really thirsty, and really needs the bathroom. When she emerges from there, she discovers Spencer's not just up, but apparently had an attack of the guilt-monster, because he went out to the cafe and got really good coffee, and cinnamon buns. Fresh cinnamon buns. With a lot of icing.
He's at the table, toying with his. She deliberately gets a morning-kiss, in spite of morning-breath, before she sits down, just to make it clear she's not mad anymore. Then she says, "I think you're supposed to eat it, Spence, not play with it."
He gives her the squashed smile-grimace of acknowledgement (Spencer Expression #22, and Kathy makes fun of her for having a list), and then takes a breath like he's steeling himself. "There was a case," he says. "A while ago - the unsub was killing people, calling 911 just before he did and, um, filming it on webcams." He stops and swallows. "There's a lot of case details that aren't really important. It was in Atlanta, actually."
Austin nods, and doesn't say anything about her city apparently racking up a collector's series, because she doesn't think this is a good moment for snark as a defense mechanism.
"JJ and I went to a house, out of town, we thought of a witness. It turned out to be the unsub, and I - " he paused and took a breath, "I did something stupid, I separated myself from JJ and I wound up out in the field." He stops, looking down at his hands and then says, "I was abducted," in his agent-voice, like he's falling back on it. "The unsub's name was Tobias, he abused a mixture of dilaudid and hallucinogenics, and due to that and a series of stressors his psyche fractured into three separate personalities, Tobias, his father, and Raphael, who actually carried out the killings. For several days, I was - "
Austin leans forward and puts her hand over one of his, because she knows that look - not from Spencer, but she knows it. "Hey," she says, softly. "Spence." When he glances up she says, "If you want to tell me, I'm listening, but you don't have to, okay?"
He nods, the muscles in his jaw clenching for a moment, but he squeezes her fingers. "So you're telling me we shouldn't be going to anymore horror movies," she says, slowly, piecing that together a bit with last night. Well. That made a lot more sense, and she thinks, oh for crying out loud, Spencer, but doesn't say it.
"I thought I could handle it," he says, and she squeezes his fingers this time.
"It's okay," she says, and adds, "Ask me how many times I've been to a club lately." And he blinks, like maybe for a minute he forgot. Blinks, then nods again.
"When Tobias was . . . Tobias," he says, "he would inject me with the same stuff he was using. It was his way of doing me a favour. That - " and he stopped to take a deep breath, "gave me a . . . problem, with dilaudid, for a while."
Which finishes the pieces, and Austin takes his other hand, too. "I'm sorry, babe," she says, softly. He shakes his head.
"It's not your fault," he says, quickly. "I know better." And Austin looks at him for a second and tries to think about whether she should say this.
In the end, she does - she says, "Spencer?" and waits until he looks up again. "Does it ever occur to you that even geniuses can be just as stupid about really big, really bad emotions as the rest of us?"
Spencer gets Spencer Expression #13 (the puzzled, thinking-frown) and says, "That's what Emily says."
"Emily's a pretty smart person. Seriously, Spence," she says. "I'm sorry. And I forgive you. No harm, no foul, okay? God knows," she adds, "I just quit smoking this week, I'm probably a bitch and don't even realize it."
"No, you're not," Spencer says immediately, which might be true or might be loyalty: sometimes it's hard to tell, with Spencer. He brushes his thumbs over the backs of her hands for a second, and then adds, "I'm really glad you quit smoking, though."
"Yeah, see if you're this glad when I run up against a work deadline and I'm biting everyone's head off," Austin says, a little sourly, taking one hand back so she can drink her coffee.
"I think you'll be fine," Spencer says, and he's probably right.