Raleigh Harper / Emily Watkins (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
callmeemily) wrote2014-08-23 04:07 pm
callmeemily) wrote2014-08-23 04:07 pm
Entry tags:
Holy crap, there's a new business in town.
Nevermind that it looked pretty run-down. Nevermind that there was a thick layer of dust on everything, that there was peeling wallpaper, that the floors had peeling linoleum.
This.... this was going to be home. Raleigh knew it the moment she and Joel had walked inside; the run-down storefront had been a cupcake shop three years ago before it'd gone bust, and it already had some of the requisite items for a bakery - luckily, a lot of the most expensive ones like a walk-in fridge. It just hadn't had a tenant since 2011, but Raleigh'd managed to cut a deal with the landlord; she'd fix it up, no rent was due until they opened, and she'd have a discounted rate for a year.
It was more than she could have hoped for, although that meant that her days would be full of dust and elbow grease for a while. The doors and windows were wide open, country music pouring out onto the street as Raleigh - in a tanktop, cut-offs, work gloves, and sneakers - perched on top of a tall ladder. She was stripping off wallpaper in big swathes, letting it fall on the floor - not caring that she was a sight, with dirt smearing her bare legs and arms. It felt hot as hell in the tiny store, but that probably had a lot to do with what she was doing.
She's singing to herself as she pulls free more paper, but her glove catches on a nail and she frowns. "Hey!" She leans down a little as she sees somebody passing by, even though from how high she is, she can't see who it is. "Can you pass me that hammer?" It's on the floor, and she doesn't want to have to get down if she doesn't have to.
This.... this was going to be home. Raleigh knew it the moment she and Joel had walked inside; the run-down storefront had been a cupcake shop three years ago before it'd gone bust, and it already had some of the requisite items for a bakery - luckily, a lot of the most expensive ones like a walk-in fridge. It just hadn't had a tenant since 2011, but Raleigh'd managed to cut a deal with the landlord; she'd fix it up, no rent was due until they opened, and she'd have a discounted rate for a year.
It was more than she could have hoped for, although that meant that her days would be full of dust and elbow grease for a while. The doors and windows were wide open, country music pouring out onto the street as Raleigh - in a tanktop, cut-offs, work gloves, and sneakers - perched on top of a tall ladder. She was stripping off wallpaper in big swathes, letting it fall on the floor - not caring that she was a sight, with dirt smearing her bare legs and arms. It felt hot as hell in the tiny store, but that probably had a lot to do with what she was doing.
She's singing to herself as she pulls free more paper, but her glove catches on a nail and she frowns. "Hey!" She leans down a little as she sees somebody passing by, even though from how high she is, she can't see who it is. "Can you pass me that hammer?" It's on the floor, and she doesn't want to have to get down if she doesn't have to.
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She definitely does lose herself, although she doesn't actually know she does it. It gives her this sense of peace that she can't even describe, to be able to let everything just fall to the wayside, to just slip into nothing because all she's concerned with is making.
"I'd love it if you help paint," she says with a slow smile. "I think the front'll be a lot more interesting when ti comes to that - I mostly want it to be easy to clean, back here." She smiles back, her eyes bright as she looks around the kitchen, and then he asks about a mockup, and her brows furrow. "I don't even know- I didn't even know that was a thing, really?" She laughs, even though she's making a face. "I swear, Spencer, I don't know what the hell I'm doing." She just sounds like it, she thinks. She's faking it, sort of, and just waiting for someone else to catch on.
Waving off his concern, she tries to reassure him. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, I just-" She shifts, and levers herself up onto one of the counters so she's sitting on it while she talks to him, picking at the threadbare edge of her shorts.
"It's seriously not about anything, it's just... Do you- I mean. Is it...." It's hard to spit out, and she just kind of... frowns. "I don't think I'm really cut out for this whole... dating... thing." Her eyes flick up to his, and she's frowning some. "And I mean, I just- Uh." She doesn't actually know what she wants to even ask him, because right now... right now it's all sorts of messed up.
"Is that weird?" That's what she finally asks, even though she knows it's not, and it's not her real question - but she doesn't know how to ask him - him, of all people, self-professed man who says he was empty before he found Joel - what exactly she's doing wrong.
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He leans his back against the countertop, near to where she's hoisted herself up, and shifts his gaze toward the back where she'd said she wanted the windows to be.
"It's not weird," he finally manages to spit out, wringing his hands nervously in front of him as he looks back at her because he really isn't sure if there's much of a right thing to say here. "Everyone's different when it comes to this sort of thing, look at me. There was one person before Joel, one, and she-- We went to prom together and--" He cuts himself off because he hardly wants to discuss how uncomfortable and awkward and unfulfilling it had been to lose his virginity to Darcy Haines, absolutely nothing like it is now when he and Joel are intimate. "Well, we went to prom and it wasn't difficult to figure out that she didn't really want to be there with me. It took me eleven years to find someone I trusted enough to actually want to be with, and I fell in love with him."
He shrugs because he doesn't really know how to explain it when he's not quite sure how he'd landed in this position in the first place. Joel is an anomaly, to be sure, and their relationship is a once-in-a-lifetime sort of thing that he hasn't taken for granted for a second since they'd started seeing each other.
"I just think," he continue, rubbing at the back of his neck, "that it's easy for some people, the ones who don't mind that there are going to be good dates and bad dates because one day, hopefully, someone out there is going to give them the best date every single time. Then there are the ones who aren't necessarily interested in facing the disappointment, who'd rather let their person come to them. And of course, there are people like me, people like Joel, who just... stopped trying. Because at a certain point, I had readily accepted that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life and it wasn't sad, it wasn't tragic, it was just a fact. I got lucky. I got so incredibly lucky."
He rubs his thumb over his left ring finger, smiling softly to himself because he knows what's going to be there soon. They'd picked their rings out, he and Joel, they're going to get married in a couple months, Joel's going to be his husband and it makes his stomach feel like it's doing somersaults. "In any case, I have said far too much without knowing if any of that is actually helpful in any way and I feel a bit foolish, but the bottom line is that you shouldn't put pressure on yourself. There isn't a rule book for this kind of thing, though I think people would like to believe differently."
He pauses, taking half a moment to study her. "What brought this on? I mean, obviously things didn't quite work out with the date Joel set you up on, which is fine, by the way, you're not obligated to end a date with hearts in your eyes."
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But Raleigh's listening, and she chews on her lip, looking away when he looks at her, and she sort of hunches her shoulders in a shrug. "Michael was... fine," she said after a second. "I mean, he was sort of the most boring man alive, but he was... fine, it just- I mean.... Uh. There-" She just finally decided that she needed to spit it out. "I went out with this guy on Thursday, he seemed- he seemed really nice, you know?"
She swallows thickly. "Turns out that he just really wanted the scoop on the girl who was kidnapped with Corrine Flynn, before he ended up getting in a fistfight with Fabrice." She's not looking at Spencer, because it's upsetting. It's upsetting, and her jaw's tight. "And just- I mean, I-" She's not going to bring up Jason again, even though she's wondering if maybe-- maybe it's just... too much of a mess. Maybe she should just wait for people to ask her, because the only thing she's done that was okay was when she wasn't expecting anything, when she's gone on dates with friends. The stuff with Coop, the stuff with Jason before she started wondering if it was actually something - those were good. They made her feel... special.
Instead of this crap. "Maybe it's just... not for me."
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His smile slowly turns down into a frown, though, when she mentions the reporter who'd been using her for a story. He hasn't gotten along particularly well with reporters over the past few years, he's very familiar with how nasty they can be, and he has crystal clear memories of the headlines that had been created about him for the local paper because he'd read every single article that had to do with the death of his mother and brother. Even after he'd been released, before the case had gone cold, the papers would never read that Vera and Dane Waters were survived by Spencer; rather, it was always mentioned that the reclusive librarian had been the original suspect of those murders. He'd stayed away from reading what had been written after the incident with Mark and the lighthouse, hadn't wanted to see what sort of nonsense they could come up with about him and Joel.
He supposes he shouldn't be altogether surprised that there are reporters who are still after this story; it's a small town, after all, but he feels his chest constricting with anger, and he has to take a breath to keep himself calm even though his irritation is evident in the way his knuckles have gone white from his grip on the counter's edge.
"Having to deal with people like that doesn't mean dating isn't for you," he says, taking extra care to keep his tone controlled. "People like like are hungry for glory, for power, for the next big thing that will earn them attention when really, it'll be gone just as quickly as they'd found it because there's always going to be something else. It's nothing to do with you, Raleigh. You're not something broken that needs fixing, you're bright and kind and you've got that natural sort of instinct to take care of the people around you so believe me when I say it's not you."
He hesitates for a moment before reaching out to place a gentle hand on her knee. "Whether you think it's for you or not is your decision and yours. I can't stand here and promise that if you just wait until you hit twenty-nine, you'll find the love of your life because you might find it tomorrow and in truth, you'll probably find it when you're not even looking. I know that's not what you're saying, that's not necessarily what you're looking for right now, but... The best advice I can give is to tell you that all the stress and worry and pressure of finding someone, it's not worth. Date who you want to date when you want to date them." He gives her knee a light squeeze. "You're an incredible woman, Raleigh. I doubt you'll find very many people who would disagree."
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He says she's not broken, and she sort of- she hesitates, and it's a struggle, to find the words. "I don't think I'm... okay, the way I should be," she says quietly. "What happened before, it happened a lot... faster. I got better, faster. When Fabrice- he... he broke his nose, and I- He was bleeding, and I just-" She finally looks back at him. "You're the only person I've let see me have- I just- I lose it, and I can't-"
She can't put together the right sentence, and she just sort of stares back down on the floor.
"Is it bad that I just... sort of want to go out with guys that I know nothing will ever happen, just because it's actually fun and I know we're at least friends?"
She said it quietly, because it was something other than what she was just talking about, it was something other than what she tried to say and just failed, that she was worried about herself, that she didn't even want to admit it to him because that would mean she wasn't okay.
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"I think that considering all things, you're far better off than many others might be. I'm not disregarding any of what you feel, mind you, but connecting the way you heal or how quickly you do it to how excellent a dater doesn't quite add up, at least not to me."
He hasn't recovered. He can look the part, he can walk to work every day and smile at Amber at the coffee shop when she slides him that free slice of banana bread and hold a conversation better than he has in years, but he hasn't recovered. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and finds it incredible that the only visible scars he has after all he's been through in the last few years are a few tiny faint ones above his right temple. It almost doesn't seem right, the way he wants so badly to forget all of it but at the same time, wants to be sure the memories are always there because everything that has happened had led him to become the man he is today.
Still, in spite of all that, in spite of the fact that he's still healing, he's capable of loving more than he'd ever thought possible. "If you start to blame yourself for not being part of a fairy tale romance, you'll lose sight of what's really important. That's you, for the record, you're what's most important. It's difficult to live like this, to realize that-- that the smallest thing could put us into a panic but that doesn't make us harder to love. It just means the people who love us have to be as strong as us."
She asks if it's bad to have fun, essentially, and he shakes his head. "Of course that's not bad. It's not bad if you go out with someone and end up developing stronger feelings for him, either. And it's not bad if it turns out those feelings aren't as strong as you think. There's no right or wrong answer here, and I think you'll find you're not the only one happy to operate that way. You're friends with one of the most notorious ones already, and he's an excellent example of why character shouldn't be measured by the number of people he's been with." He turns to face her more fully. "But if there's something else you need to talk to me about, something more than just about the dating, which I am again not an expert on, then you know you can. I'm happy to listen."
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"I don't think I'm going to have a fairy tale romance." She finally says it, and she's as tense as a violin string. He says it doesn't make them harder to love, but all she can think is that it does, that it makes it so difficult even though when she thinks of him, when she thinks of the times that he's been lost in his own mind, in the library, she doesn't love him any less.
"I'm not naive enough to think that's- that's a thing, okay? I mean, for me, I know you and Joel-" She looks away again, and she pulls in a deep breath. "Never mind. The dating thing, never mind, I guess- I guess I'll just-" She doesn't even know. She doesn't know, besides maybe she should just wait longer before trying to date, and instead just... maybe let things go the way they go, and not look for anyone. His advice isn't bad advice-- it's actually good advice, she just doesn't know what to say. "I'll figure it out." She says by the end. "Maybe I'll just... go out with friends, and- maybe just that's okay."
He asks about if there's something else, and she just sort of stops, and she swallows thickly and she waits for a few seconds, a few long seconds of silence.
"How does this work?" She hadn't been planning on even asking him this, not now, and she'd not even thought about it ever, but the question just comes from somewhere because of how he phrased the offer, the offer to listen.
"I mean... How do you see this working? You and Joel are getting married, and- and I am so happy for you, and I'm proud of both of you, but-" She hates that there's a but, and she has to take a deep breath and this conversation - it scares her so much. Maybe that's why she never even thought about it.
"I know you said I could live with you until I got better, but- but I'm not-I can't just live with you forever, can I? You're getting married, Spencer." She's scared. She's afraid that she won't just lose the place that she honestly thinks of as her home, but the thing that's far worse-- that she'll somehow lose both of them. It had always been a far-off question, but now... because they're getting married, because of what happened on the island, it's changing things, it's got her thinking about it.
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"It's okay," he says, and he says it because it seems to him that maybe she just needs someone to tell her that. Maybe she just needs someone to reassure her that she isn't doing it wrong or that there isn't something wrong with her simply because she doesn't think dating is for her. "It's okay to do that, it really is. I couldn't have done it because I... really didn't have friends to go out with to begin with and that was okay, too. For me, that was okay. We all just carry on, don't we? There's little else we can do."
He frowns when she asks about the living situation and to be completely honest, he hasn't given it much thought. "I'm getting married, not boarding up the house so Joel and I can never leave it again," he tells her, a soft smile playing at the corners of his lips. "Though the thought has admittedly crossed my mind."
The joke is poorly placed because he can see that Raleigh's fully serious about this, it's something of concern to her, and he doesn't want to downplay that at all; he'd just assumed they'd all go as they have been. He shrugs before heaving himself onto the counter beside her, kicking his legs out in front of him and staring at his Chucks. "I don't know, Raleigh, it's really up to you. I can promise you that Joel and I had no plans to ask you to leave, none whatsoever. It's not as if having a husband is suddenly going to make me hate your presence in our home." And it is their home. It's Spencer's house, soon to be half Joel's, too, but it's home to all three of them. He's felt that way for what feels like such a long time now, even though the reality of it is that it's only been a couple months.
"I didn't say you could live with me until you got better, by the way," he says, arching an eyebrow at her. He remembers exactly how the conversation had gone, how skeptical she'd seemed at the time, and he knows what he'd told her. "I said you can stay as long as you'd like. 'If you want to stay until tomorrow, the end of the week, the end of the year, you can.' I meant it, I really did. If you decide you want to leave, if you want to live somewhere else one day, that's fine. But you're always going to be welcome there. Please, please don't forget that."
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"I'm scared." The confession comes after a second, and she frowns a little, looking down at her knees. "There was this thing, I... uh. I wrote Joel this letter-" She rubs the back of her neck with a hand. "I just keep being in these places where I don't know if I'm going to make it out, and it's so hard-"
Pulling in a deep breath, she takes another stab at finding the right words. "I don't want to be alone because I didn't do something I should have been doing," she says finally, and then she clears her throat. "So... thank you. For your advice, it's... it's really helpful, and it makes me feel better."
They move on, and it's when he heaves himself up beside her that Raleigh looks over at him. "Living with you is probably the best thing that ever happened to me," she said quietly. "I know that I don't talk about my family much, but... it was kind of messed up, and living with you... I feel like-" She chews on her lip, and she tries to find the right words, so she can make him understand. "When I lived with my mom and Matt, and even when I was in college because I still like, sent my money home and stuff, I was doing what I did for them. I mean, I was in pre-med. Me, pre-med, and I don't even want to be a doctor! It was because my mom needed me, and that's what I could do, I thought, and she never ever told me I had to do what I did for her, but somebody had to take care of her and my brother when my dad left, you know?"
She paused, and tried to figure out how to say this the right way. "Living with you is the first time that I've been able to actually do what makes me happy and have support doing it. We're- We're a family, and it's- It's this good thing where all of us hold each other up and we have good things and bad things, but we're all together, and I am so thankful for that. You have been so giving, and- the reason I ask, the reason I ask every couple of months and why I honestly don't know if I'll ever stop asking every now and again is because if it changes- just, for space reasons, or... whatever, even though I love the house, and I love my room, and I love waking up every morning and knowing that I'm going to see people I care about, I would so much rather it just be out in the open and that it doesn't do anything to the family part of it." She leans forward just a little so she can catch his eye. "Because that's what's important, not so much where I actually live." She bumps her shoulder into his, hoping he understands what she means, not that she's thinking he's going to throw her out on her ear one of these days.
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"It's going to be hard for a long time," he says, and he's saying it to himself as much as he is to her. It's awful and sometimes the pain of memory is so great that it threats to take him over, but he can't let it. He won't; and he'll make sure that he does his best to keep Raleigh from letting the fear overpower her. He knows he can't be there every moment of the day, but he can be someone she confides in. He can be someone she trusts. "I think-- I think it gets a little bit easier when you remember you don't have go through it by yourself. I've made a habit of keeping things to myself, of letting everything build up until I feel like I might explode, but it's been... different, knowing that there's at least one person I don't have to hide that from anymore. Someone who's never going to judge me or make me feel like I'm not getting better quickly enough. If you ever, and I mean ever, need me to be that person for you, I-- I'm just saying, I'm here for you."
He doesn't say it--and maybe one day he will, when it's the right time to tell her more of his story--but he understands what she means when she says she had to take of her mother and brother. By no means had Spencer ever been the strongest member of the Waters family, at least he'd have never claimed the title, but he and Dane and their mother had been an incredibly tight unit. He'd always been quiet, had always preferred to be alone in his room than out with a crowd, but his mother and brother were the exceptions. Going out as a family to dinner or to a movie or on one of their weekend trips out of town had always been highlights for him, things he'd actually enjoyed doing; but he'd always wondered why his mother had never spent as much time doing those things with others on her own.
He remembers walking downstairs one night and finding her with her legs tucked under her on the couch. He'd been prepared to say hello, to offer an explanation of why he was up so late, but then he'd heard the sniffle. He'd gotten close enough to see that she was flipping through an old photo album, and he'd gone through that one in particular enough times to know that it was filled with photos of his father. In all the years they'd spent in Siren Cove after his father had died, Spencer can't remember his mother going on a date even once. She'd had friends, people who'd truly adored her because she was a remarkable woman without an ounce of mean-spiritedness in her, but Spencer knows she'd been lonely. He understands it now, how much she must have loved his father, because it's how he feels about Joel. He'd never be able to move on, there isn't a chance in the world, and that's why he'd stayed. He thinks it's why Dane had stayed. They'd never discussed it, but the silent agreement was there--their mother needed them, and they'd both been happy to be there because it mattered. He knows it's different from Raleigh's situation, the money hadn't been an issue for his family, but there's always been a part of him that believe that anyone who says their family life is truly easy must be a liar.
"Doctor Raleigh Harper," he tests out, and he smiles a little because he can actually see it--Raleigh, ever the caretaker, ever the one trying to help carry everyone else's weight on her shoulders--but at the same time, it makes him wrinkle his nose. "I'm glad you're doing what makes you happy. You deserve to be happy. We all do." When she bumps his shoulder, he rolls his eyes good-naturedly and reaches out to lightly flick her arm. "Whatever happens down the road, whatever changes are made, whether it's Joel and I getting married or having children or you getting married or having children, you'll always be important to me. To us. I know it's hard to stop doubting, I know it is. I lived in doubt of what people really thought of me for so long before-- I just know how it is. I just want to make sure you really understand that. I couldn't have asked for anyone better to deliver me my late mother's junk mail."
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What he says - what he says about it being hard, about how he has one person that he doesn't have to hide from, her heart sinks. It sinks, because even as he offers to be that person, she knows - she knows that she can't. It's not that she doesn't trust him, it's that she doesn't want to put that burden on him. It's why she wrote that letter to Joel, not to Spencer. As ridiculous as it sounds, she needs to keep him safe. That's her gut, that's what's talking right now. She needs to keep Spencer safe, the last thing she wants is him worrying about her.
It's like the library. She taped her hand together, she took care of the glass, she found Joel. She did what she could, because she wanted to take care of him, because he's her family and she needed to. She doesn't want to ever force him to carry the burden that she carries about herself, even though if she was more mature, she'd realise that her trusting him with that wasn't necessarily a burden on him. Still, she nods all the same, and she has to swallow hard, looking up in surprise as he calls her doctor. It doesn't fit, she thinks. It feels like it doesn't fit, and she agrees with him; It's good that she's doing something that makes her happy, and she hesitates, and clears her throat. "I was telling Joel, I could see myself with kids, here. With a little girl sitting on the counter while I teach her to make Linzers."
She looks away, and it's so hard. It's so hard to think of the future, sometimes, when you're not sure if it'll ever come true, and it's just... hard. It's difficult, and her shoulders slump. "I wouldn't change it," she agrees quietly. "I wouldn't change that it's me that got that ad for your mom. If I knew what I knew now... I'd just stop the bad things from happening, as much." That's it. That's the important thing.
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"You needed to say goodbye." His tone is flat, almost hollow, and he can't even look at her as he says this because he'd been perfectly content since he'd been told about the letter to pretend it had never existed. Raleigh's alive, she's okay, they all are, that's the long and short of it; but the letter does exist, she'd felt that fear, and he knows the feeling well enough now to know how much it must have hurt her to write it. "Isn't that right? You just-- You needed to say goodbye." There's a pause, a moment of what would be complete silence if that country music wasn't still blaring from the stereo, before he finally glances up at her. "Don't be upset with him for telling me. Please. It affected him deeply, getting that letter, and as much as he didn't want to keep anything from me, I think he needed to talk about it himself more. See, that's what we do, Raleigh. We lean on each other, even if we think we shouldn't, even if we think it's not fair. After what happened in the lighthouse, after what he d-- after what Mark Fuller did to me, I thought... God, I thought I wouldn't be okay again. And maybe I'm not, maybe I'm not okay, but I'm better now and it's because of Joel, and it's because of you."
When his brother had been alive, Dane had come to Spencer with all his problems, big or small and whether or not he knew Spencer could help him with a solution. His brother had been the only one Spencer had felt like he could reciprocate that kind of relationship, and he remembers telling Raleigh he hadn't had the chance to say goodbye. There'd been a chance of hope that morning of his birthday, that morning he'd found his mother, that Dane was still alive. He'd had no texts, no missed calls, but there'd been a chance and Spencer had held onto that for as long as he could until he'd been given the news that his brother's body had been found. He'd lost it then, all the hope, all thoughts of ever finding someone he could share in that with again, until Joel had found him. Until he'd met Raleigh. Things haven't felt this easy in a long time, even after everything that's happened.
"It's hard for me to talk about things like-- like what happened with my family and what happened with Mark. But sometimes it helps. Sometimes it does more harm than good, but I have to expect that and moreover, I have to accept it because in the end, I'm still here. We both are, we're still standing. We just have to help each other stay upright, and it's not an obligation, Raleigh. I'm here because I want to be. Trust me, I've spent years avoiding getting close to people, years keeping to myself. Social obligation is not something I have a very firm grasp on."
He lets out a long sigh, suddenly feeling so drained but at the same time thinking that maybe it's good they're talking about this, even if they're maybe skirting around some of it a little. He glances around the room when she says she can see herself with kids here, with a daughter, and he nods as he imagines brighter walls and shinier ovens and brilliant sunlight shining through the windows. He can see it, Raleigh and a beautiful and blonde little girl, both their cheeks stained with flour and their hands deep in dough. He swallows hard, an affectionate smile playing at his lips.
"I can see it, too. I can see you doing that with my child, too, Aunt Raleigh teaching her nephew or niece how to bake." He ducks his head as he laughs, and it's the first time he's really talked about having kids to anyone other than Joel, but the image is incredible. "You're going to do amazing things here, Raleigh. I know you are."
TW: Mention of death (?)
"Joel was never supposed to get that letter unless we didn't get off that island, and I couldn't- you can't just have that conversation with someone because no one wants to have it, and I get it, that's why I wrote it down, but it's- I'm so sorry that he found it. And that you know about it." She shakes her head. "I burned it. It's gone."
She pulled in a deep breath. "It's so- It's so weird, and Joel can't understand- he just can't, but it's- What happened on that island, it's... better. It's better. Because both of the other times I had no say, no control, no-" She's saying it because Spencer is the only one who could understand. She realised that about three minutes ago, that he's the only one. "And for once, I was able to be the person-" She scrubs at her cheek again, sniffling once.
"I was able to make a choice, and it's never been like that and it was okay."
She wasn't expecting them to talk about this, and she huffs out a breath. "It was okay, and that's important, and maybe I'm a little more okay now."
Tipping her head back, Raleigh takes a deep breath, and then from somewhere, there's a laugh. "How soon should I be looking at baking lessons?" She raises her eyebrows as she looks at him, still damp, still catching her breath, but it's better, and she doesn't even think before she moves to squeeze his hand. To just have that connection. "I mean, I just need to know if we're talking soon, or like... five years," she says as she raises her eyebrows. "If you know, anyway."
Licking her lips, she shakes her head slightly. "You both will be amazing parents." The words are soft. "You know that, right? Good dads."
Re: TW: Mention of death (?)
Joel couldn't have been expected to notice much of anything with the condition he'd been in, and Spencer... well, Spencer still doesn't think he has much of an excuse. Though the paranoia had lasted, the hallucinations had stopped within the first day he'd been stung, and he'd been heavily concussed with a ringing in his ears that hadn't quite faded until they got home but in spite of all that, Spencer thinks he should have been keeping a better eye on her. He'd been so focused on Joel, on making sure that Joel's leg was okay and that Joel was comfortable, and he doesn't regret that at all but it's clear now that Raleigh had been suffering alone.
That's why he wants to make it so abundantly clear that she won't be kicked to the curb just because he and Joel are going to be starting a new chapter of their lives together. She's not alone, even if she still believes herself to be sometimes, and he wants to work harder at proving that. He's not keen on losing anyone else. His father had been a blow, especially at such a young age, but he thinks he damn well nearly lost his mind after what his mother and brother's deaths. There'd been a few moments when he'd questioned whether any of this was still worth it--this life, one suddenly so void of love and compassion and replaced with disgust and disdain. He'd felt it from so many different directions, so much hate for something he never could have been capable of doing in the first place, and none of those awful feelings could even begin to account for how utterly destroyed he'd been because he'd lost the two people who'd meant the most in the world to him.
They mean the world to him, Joel and Raleigh, and sometimes he'll wake up in the morning to an empty space next to him in bed and his chest will just seize with fear. The notion that he might walk downstairs one day to find Joel or Raleigh's body motionless in their backyard is beyond horrifying, it's an actual nightmare that Spencer has lived through before and never wants to live through again.
"You're a little more okay now," he repeats, and he wonders if his face looks as clammy as it feels as he wrings his hands in his lap. He needs to take his mind off this subject, needs to be able to look at Raleigh right now without picturing her about ten shades paler and drained of her blood, this is an image he wants to erase from his mind's eye forever so he forces a smile.
"I really couldn't tell you," he says honestly, shrugging a shoulder. "We're not exactly in a rush, we just know that someday, that's what we want." His expression softens, his smile becoming more genuine as he thinks back to the night they'd spent in the hot tub, the night that Joel had proposed to him before the cruise had become the trip from hell. He thinks of how they'd told each other the exact same thing, that they'd both make excellent fathers, and Spencer has to admit that he thinks it's true. He has to take a breath before his emotions threaten to overwhelm him, and he blows it back out slowly and gives her hand a squeeze in return. "I suspect that it'll happen when the time is just right, as everything else seems to happen when I'm with Joel."