(spencer) TRIGGER WARNING: PTSD flashbacks

[callmeemily]

Finally - finally, Raleigh had finished reading Anne of Green Gables. She'd been working on it for what seemed like forever, even though it'd only been a week and a half or so. She wasn't the fastest reader, but she liked it. She liked both reading (usually based on Joel's suggestions), and the book itself. When Joel'd told her earlier that there were a set of them, she'd been thrilled - and Spencer had them in his library so it was even better.

Joel was still at work, but Raleigh knew where she'd gotten the first one. It should have been simple enough - get the book, put the old one back. Nothing was ever simple, it seemed like, since there was a much bigger problem this time around; when she'd swapped the books and turned 'round, she stepped wrong. Her leg decided - after a full day's work, and Raleigh hadn't been all that careful - that it'd had it, and she stumbled into one of the side tables, knocking a stack of books and a glass tumbler to the floor with a crash.

The glass broke on the wood floor, and Raleigh found herself standing in the middle broken glass with bare feet, her leg still spasming whenever she tried to put weight on her foot. "Shit," she said thickly, and she leaned heavily on the table. She bent, trying to pick up the biggest pieces of glass so she could get to a chair or sit on the floor or something, and she hissed as the second piece sliced her hand - not badly, it wasn't going to need stitches, but she was bleeding.

All she could think was that she prayed that Spencer hadn't heard - she was pretty sure the tumbler was his mother's, and she'd have to find a way to tell him - but this? This wasn't the way, with it broken all over the floor.

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[just_another]

Later, when he has some time to think, he'll feel guilty about it, but at the moment he's just grateful that Raleigh has told him she'll be okay. He can't leave Spencer, he just can't, and he knows it's to the detriment of other people sometimes, but the idea of leaving him alone in the library right now so he can help her just sort of makes his chest seize uncomfortably. And it's not that he doesn't want to help her, he does, of course he does, but he can't be everywhere at once. Joel has never so badly wanted to help anyone as he does the two people in the room with him right now; the only thing that's even remotely comparable to how he wants to help Raleigh is the way he tends to care for Charlotte, but she's family. This is different and it's hard, because he wants to do it all and he knows he can't.

And over the past several weeks, too, having spent so much time with her, he thinks he's begun to learn the nuances of her behaviour and there's something about the way she's speaking that makes him think she might want to be alone. At least for a few minutes. The look he flashes her is apologetic and grateful all at once and he hopes she understands.

"Spencer, come with me," he says softly. It hurts a little that Spencer pushes against his chest and he doesn't want it to, that's not fair, but it does all the same. He can't force him -- he won't force him -- but as much as he wants Spencer to be able to spend time in his library again, he thinks maybe Raleigh was right in the first place. Maybe they just need to get out of here, be alone for a little while, be away from the broken glass and the room where it all happened. "Come on. We'll get your painkillers." I'm not leaving now. He'd said it before and he knows no matter how hard he thinks it, Spencer won't be able to feel it like his sister would be able to, but he thinks it anyway.