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They’d been staying in one of the holiday cabins as they investigated a series of murders in the small Alaskan town. They were all cramped in together, and Spencer’s neck still hurt from sleeping on the couch after giving up the last bed to JJ. Penelope got the only single bedroom since she was coming down with a cold and nobody wanted it. She complained the entire case, from the horrible signal to her runny nose to the cold cabin and pretty much anything else she set in her sights.
Once the case was closed, she’d slept in, and no amount of telling her they were going to be late, that there was a snowstorm on the way so they had to leave now, or insisting she would be stuck there for at least another day could get her out of bed.
“We can’t leave her here,” Emily huffed. No one wanted to be here any longer than they had to.
“I could carry her to the jet,” Derek offered, only half joking.
“I could stay with her,” Spencer suggested. He may as well have said the Earth was flat and he was planning to see the Arctic Wall by the way everyone’s head spun to face him. He raised an eyebrow at their surprise. “What?”
“You want to stay with someone with more mucus than blood at this point?” Derek clarified.
“There are nine to eleven pints of blood in the average person; the body produces just over three pints of mucus without a virus like the common cold, but there’s at most an additional thirty or so grams of mucus when it is sick.” Their look of disgust said he should’ve kept that fun fact to himself.
“Point being, you want to stay with Garcia when she’s sick? You won’t even shake hands with me!” JJ argued.
“They’ve come into contact with too many germs.”
“So you don’t touch them because you might get sick.”
“I don’t touch them because there are too many germs.”
“I’m not following the logic here.”
“You wouldn’t touch a visibly dirty handle.”
“Right, because it’s dirty.”
“That’s the logic.” She squinted at him. “I don’t have a fear of getting sick necessarily. Realistically, I should, since I’m more at risk after being infected with anthrax and the lingering damage from being shot in the neck. It’s more so an avoidance of germs in general.”
“Germs aside,” Emily interrupted before they could delve any deeper into the topic. “You won’t have any service by the time the storm rolls in. You’ll be stuck up with a tech lover without her tech.”
“It seems she’ll spend most of it sleeping,” he pointed out. “It’s not like I’ll have anyone to contact either.” His mum was settled into the memory care facility, or as much as she could be. She’d be surrounded by nurses and was a stone’s throw away from the hospital where they could follow her care plan. Nothing was going to change drastically within the span of 24 hours. Well, he hoped not, at least. “I’d be the best option, being ‘techphobic’, in her words.”
“Only if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” What did he have to go home to anyway?
Penelope woke up with a groan and did her best to go back to sleep before she caught sight of the digital alarm clock sitting on her table. Huh, 10 am? Been a while since she woke up that late without the residual taste of wine on her lips. Then again, she could feel the pressure in her nose and the headache it caused. Well, she’d already slept in this long, she may as well try to sleep off the worst of it. She let her eyes drift closed with a sniffle and pulled the covers closer.
These weren’t her bedsheets.
Her eyes shot open as she realised she wasn’t at home and looked again to make sure she definitely read the time right, and to her horror, she had. She scrambled out of bed, coughing and spluttering as the phlegm in her chest was rocked around by her frantic dash for more appropriate clothes. She must’ve made some racket as her door opened suddenly to reveal Spencer, who only seemed to realise his mistake right after he’d caught sight of her underwear. He slapped a hand over his eyes and twirled around, but she could practically feel the heat radiating from his embarrassed flush.
“I’m so sorry! I heard banging- I should’ve knocked!” he shouted, his voice a pitch too high.
“Oh my- Get out!” she shrieked. She hacked into the crook of her elbow in compensation.
“I’m sorry!” He patted for the door handle before slamming it closed. She could see the shadow of his feet from underneath the door, but at least he wasn’t in the room anymore. She collected up the clothes she’d tossed the night before in favour of her pyjamas and rushed to get dressed. “Are you okay?”
“We’re late! How could you let me sleep in?”
“Oh, the rest of the team already left because you slept in. You were nigh impossible to wake up, so we decided they would leave in time to fly back before the snowstorm, and we would fly once it ended.”
“You what?” She calmed her efforts enough to claim the robe hanging on the back of the door. She quickly wrapped it around herself and tied the knot tight so he couldn’t see she was half dressed underneath. She opened the door slowly to find Spencer standing in the hall, but still facing the opposing wall with his hand over his eyes. “You can look now.” He turned back, his face still bright red and refused to make eye contact. “What do you mean they left?”
“We did explain to you there would be a snowstorm- well, Derek explained, and you told him to shove it up his ass.” She vaguely remembered doing that. “We’ll be staying here until it’s over. Hopefully you feel better by the time it ends, which is approximately 8 am tomorrow.” She nodded slowly, then raised an eyebrow at him.
“Did you draw straws to stay or something?”
“No, I offered. I don’t like germs; I don’t fear being sick, if you were about to ask.”
“I was gonna say thank you,” she replied. “It’s sweet you’d stay with me.”
“We couldn’t leave you alone, especially when you’d be trapped here for the near future,” he argued, but the soft smile gave the game away. “You didn’t hurt yourself before, did you?”
“Only my pride.”
“I really am sorry.”
“You’re fine, Spencer.” He nodded, still flushed.
“Do you want me to make you something?”
“Tea would be great, maybe some toast if we have anything like that.”
“No problem. You can go back to bed if you want, and I’ll bring it up. You should rest as much as possible.”
“What’s the fun in being sick if I can’t complain to people about how sick I am?”
Snow piled up against the window pane, silently warning them that they wouldn’t be able to leave soon enough. Spencer didn’t mind all that much. He didn’t have a tonne of experience with the snow, but it was pretty enough, and he could appreciate the cosy vibe of being trapped inside as it glinted in the sunlight. It looked like someone sprinkled glitter on printer paper and taped it against the window. He knew there was a black SUV parked outside, but if he hadn’t seen it first, he wouldn’t know it was there at all. He could understand why so many Christmas postcards showed cabins partially buried in a thick layer of snow. All in all, he didn’t care that he’d be trapped for the foreseeable future.
Penelope, on the other hand, was ten minutes away from clawing at the walls. Again, he understood why. As nice as the snow was to look at, it had killed any chance of getting a decent signal, rendering her precious internet connection useless. The TV was just another piece of furniture since it could only manage a grainy picture and crackled audio from all its channels.
“This sucks,” she complained as Spencer handed her another cup of hot chocolate. He’d already given her the fun fact about the myth that milk caused more mucus, so she was thankfully spared this time round. “This is the last time you bring me to Alaska.”
As much as she complained, which she had regularly throughout the day, she had to admit it was a little nice to be doted on even if it came with a side order of slightly disgusting facts. She was a little surprised how well he took to it. It seemed impossibly easy for him to fix her blanket when it tangled around her legs, making sure she still ate even when nothing sounded good and never missing a window to offer more cold medicine- ah. His mother. He spent his childhood looking after her. Did that make Penelope his mother now? What a hit to the ego that was. They weren’t that far apart in age, though you should never ask a lady her age, so he hopefully didn’t see her that way.
“It wasn’t so bad the first time.”
“For you, maybe,” she snarked. He smirked as he returned to his book. He’d taken her comment about company rather seriously, only leaving the room to get supplies for her or use the bathroom. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t appreciate it although she would’ve preferred he talked during that time instead of sticking his nose in whatever novel he’d pulled from the shelves. “I’m losing my mind here.”
“Is there anything I can do?” he asked with renewed concern.
“Got any drama happening?” He shook his head like the liar he was.
See, Spencer liked to think he could hide everything, and whilst he did a very good job of shoving his skeletons to the back of the closet, some weren’t as deep as he thought. He couldn’t hide leaving to find quiet corners to speak in a hushed voice to someone on the phone or nervously waiting for a text when he should be concentrating on a case.
Penelope suspected he was hiding another woman again, and she wouldn’t let him make the same mistake twice. He was going to introduce them; they were obviously going to get along like a house on fire, and she’d have another girlfriend to go shopping with. Maybe she could convince her to get Spencer some normal-looking clothes so he didn’t turn up to a movie night like he was going to a charity gala right after. She couldn’t speak too harshly about overdressing; her jewellery gave her away before her footsteps did, but even she owned casual bits and pieces.
“You sure? No lucky lady in your life?” she questioned before blowing her nose. It was supposed to come out smug. She wasn’t sure how, but that’s what she intended it to be, as Spencer tripped and tumbled his way into a confession. Instead, he got a sort of lost look in his eyes.
“Not since Maeve,” he replied softly. She grimaced and coughed, mostly out of awkwardness. Oops. Derek did say to leave the matter alone (of course, they’d had a good gossip about the new behaviour and he pretended to be all high and mighty about it as if he wasn’t itching to know too), but she really couldn’t help herself sometimes.
“Sorry. I just uh- You’ve been taking some calls lately, and I just thought maybe you were looking again.”
“I wasn’t really looking when I found Maeve,” he admitted, smiling despite himself. "But no, I haven't been seeing anyone. I don't intend to."
“So who’s calling you?”
“It’s nothing.” She clearly didn’t believe that. Though muffled by her cold, there was a palpable seriousness on her face.
“Spence, you are locked in here with me for the foreseeable future. Do you really wanna see how many times I can say why in the space of 24 hours?”
“It’d be more like 18, and given your health, it would be recommended to sleep eight hours, so it’s more like 10. Not counting bathroom breaks and such.”
“And how many of those hours do you wanna sit through?” He shrugged. “Please? For me? Sick wittle ol’ me?”
“It won’t make you feel better.”
There was a gravity to his voice that insisted she very much didn’t want to know. He used it when she didn’t need to subject herself to another gory crime scene photo, a warning to look away whilst she had the chance. She was tempted to press on, insisting that she could handle whatever torture painted her screen, but she couldn’t will herself to. Her head still hurt, her nose still felt like a pressurised hose about to burst, and she’d probably just stick her foot in her mouth again.
“Fine. Keep your secrets,” she groaned. “You’d tell me if it was really bad though, right?” No. He absolutely would not until someone was on death’s door, and even then, he’d be hesitant to get anyone else involved.
“Yes.” As long as all the boxes were checked and he had no other choice. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“I don’t know, entertain me,” she suggested.
“I could read to you?”
“What’re you reading?”
“Essays of-”
“Pass.”
“I didn’t finish.”
“As soon as there are essays, I know what I’m in for. I’m sick already; don’t make me even more bored on top of that.” She clapped her hands. “Entertain me!”
“I’m not a jester.”
“You’d be a horrible jester.”
“Evidently. You’ll have to help somewhat.”
“But I’m siiick,” she whined back.
“There were some VHS tapes.” She perked up briefly before he started listing out the names. “Tracy Takes Tokyo, Old Summer Temptations, Turn On with Kelly Nichols.”
“Spencer.”
“What?”
“They’re porn. You just listed porn.”
“How was I supposed to know?” he shot back, his voice creeping up in pitch.
“Turn On with Kelly Nichols?!?” she cackled.
“I should’ve left with the others,” he grumbled. He got up in a huff and stormed away, though he was severely lacking options on where to go.
“No! Come back! I’m sick, you can’t leave me!”