CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:
THIS IS MY FAVOURITE TROPE
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"No," is the first thing Nina says when Spencer steps out of the bathroom, dressed in his usual flannel pyjama bottoms and a grey shirt, absentmindedly fluffing his damp hair with a towel. "No, absolutely not."
"What?" he goes to ask, then before he can pronounce the T, he sees what she's pointing at. A laugh escapes him, quite without permission. "What do you mean, no?"
"No, you're not sleeping there."
With almost comedic symmetry, they both look down and grimace at his meagre collection of blankets and the single pillow, knitted by his mother during one hour of therapy or another, that lies at the foot of the bed. It doesn't look comfortable, he'll admit. It doesn't look comfortable at all. But he won't complain out loud; it's necessary.
"Sleeping on the floor is good for your posture," he says, clearing his throat and giving her a bright smile. "C'mon. You need sleep."
"The blankets won't even reach your shins," she insists, as he tries to usher her toward his bed.
"Nina, I'm not going to sleep in the same bed as you."
She scoffs. "I meant take the couch."
His turn to scoff.
But it's her turn to return the bright grin, all as he flips back the cover like he's about to tuck her in. With a hand on his chest, she shoo's him away, before nodding again down at his little camping bed set up. "You're not serious, are you? Just get in the bed. It's big enough for both of us."
"I'm not sleeping with you." His voice has raised an octave, and his face feels uncomfortably warm. "That'd be... Highly inappropriate."
"I'm inviting you."
From his throat bubbles an awkward, shy laugh. "And I am graciously declining."
"Get in the bed."
"No!"
"Get in the bed!"
"Nina--"
"Look." She scoops up the pillows and blankets from the floor, dropping them on top of his bedsheets, and she leans over to organise them into a line -- a wall of sorts -- down the middle of his double bed. He tries to ignore the slip of skin at the base of her back, revealed by her shirt riding up when she leans over. "There. Much better."
"Maybe I should invest in bunk beds," he says, the joke coming out before his brain has chance to think about it.
Luckily, Nina laughs.
Unable to believe he's actually allowed this to happen, after ten minutes or so he nonetheless finds himself sliding stiffly into the right side of the bed, Nina on his left, barely visible behind the wall of pillows. He can hear her breathing softly, can sense her body beside him on the bed rather than feel it; the weight of the pillow-wall down the middle of the bed makes it difficult to feel when she shifts.
Inhale. Exhale. Slowly, his breathing slips into rhythm with hers.
Staring at the ceiling, hands on his stomach, he doesn't dare even turn his eyes in her direction. Minutes must pass, and she doesn't move, and her breathing slows. He counts to one-hundred, and wonders if she might be asleep, and debates taking off his shirt because he's very warm, but never do his eyes close.
Is he scared? he realises after a while. Is that why he won't sleep? He puts his hand to his chest, feeling for his heart beat; it beats hard and quick beneath his palm, like the pound of a bird's wings.
But there are plenty of reasons why he might feel fear, that's for certain.
1) There's a woman in his bed.
2) That woman is an international hit woman.
3) That woman is an essential witness under his protection from a powerful public figure, who is currently on the run.
4) There's a woman in his bed. And it's NINA.
Which is why, when a voice speaks, he almost jumps and topples out of the bed from his anxiety.
"Sorry, sorry," Nina said, her messy-haired head poking out from behind the wall of pillows with her eyebrows furrowed in concern. Spencer sends her a glare and pats his chest, as if to tell his pounding heart, There, there, and she bites her lip to contain a wicked little smile of amusement. "You really jumped there."
"Yep. I did." He lies back down, but she picks herself up on her elbows and stays there, smiling down at him.
"You drink a lot of caffeine before bed?"
"I try not to."
"Try harder. You're a little jumpy. I could probably touch you and it'd fry my hair."
He sends her a bemused look, which she mockingly returns with a playful wiggle of her eyebrows, and Spencer hates himself for being unable to prevent the smile that creeps across his face.
"What did you say, anyway?" he asks, clearing his throat.
She flops back down, out of sight. "Nothing," she mutters, at first. Soon she changes her mind. "Tomorrow. My statement. I'm not sure I--" With a sharp inhale, she stops herself from talking. "Are we ever off the record? Or will everything I tell you go to court one day?"
He swallows.
"We're off the record," he tells her.
Nina inhales deeply, then he hears the breath leave her in one long heavy sigh, but after that comes a stretching moment of silence, broken only by his own terse breathing, quick and light. The seconds of quiet are pulled as taut as an elastic band before she speaks again, so suddenly that he could have jumped again if he hadn't expected her to talk eventually.
"Betraying Ed is a big deal for me," she confesses after a long while. "I know it's what he deserves, and it's what I want to do. He's a sour old man who used me like a toy, and now I'm gone he couldn't care less. But he--" She catches herself, stops for a moment. "When I escaped the hospital, I called him. And I asked him, I said, Was I just a business investment for you, was I?"
"What did he say?"
"Does that idea seem far-fetched to you?"
"And what did you say?"
"I called him a cunt."
He shouldn't laugh, but he does (much to his own embarrassment and self-loathing) and he expects his guffaw to offend her, muffling it with his hand -- but beyond the pillow-wall he hears Nina giggling slightly too.
"I told him to have fun in his fancy house, drinking alcohol that doesn't get him hammered fast enough," she continues, and that makes them both laugh harder. In situations like this, what else is there to do but laugh? "I was right! Why are you laughing? I was right!"
The intensity of the privacy presses in on him like a weighted blanket, warming and cocooning. He's glad for the wall that stops him from being able to see her when she laughs; that would be all too much to handle. Eventually, they settle down, sighing out the last of their laughter. Nina hums, audibly smiling, before saying, "It's nice being able to do this. To have someone I can sit with and laugh and be treated like I'm human. I always thought that was Ed." Unspoken, the words, now there's no-one, hang between them.
Spencer's chest softens, like it's filled with molten gold. He is suddenly moved by a change of heart; he wants to look at her, even touch her forehead or the curve of her cheekbones, the sharp jaw that he's memorised every line of.
A maelstrom of memories -- from the diary and the drive out of the city and the phone call and Florence -- come rushing back in a flood. Hadn't he always been the one to see her as a genius, a woman, a person -- not an unsub?
"Multiple times I've tried to articulate how I feel about you, Nina," he murmurs, beginning slowly and picking his words with care. "I tried in the car that night, but that clearly didn't end the way either of us wanted." She grunts in agreement, but he swiftly moves on. "I told you I knew you -- that I understood you . . . But I think you expressed it the best way. I was born for you. I like the wording of that."
"I'm a killer." There's a crack in her voice. "You can't change that."
"And I was supposed to study you and pursue you and watch you and and and. You were my case of a lifetime," he says softly. "And somewhere along the way, somehow, I . . . You became more than an unsub. So here I am, sitting here and laughing with you and treating you like you're human. Just like I was born to do."
She is silent, but he can somehow sense that she doesn't resent him for his words -- they're true, after all -- and the usual shame that accompanies any long rambling speech of his never arrives. In the quiet of his bedroom, he listens to her rhythmic breathing, in time with his own, and finds himself closing his eyes. He can sleep now, better than he has in months with all that off his chest.
Maybe minutes, maybe hours pass, before Nina whispers, "If things were different, we could have been so great, you and I."
Her hand sneaks beneath and between the wall out pillows and takes his. Though his heart does a little jump, he doesn't pull away.
She's right. If things were different, this could have been it. It could have been like this -- sleeping in the same bed, hands and maybe their entire bodies entwined with one another, their breath and heartbeats synced -- all the time. But things aren't different, and everything is far too complicated and irreversible to bother trying to change it now.
But he can pretend. He can pretend things are different, that it's okay for her to take his hand and for him to trace over her knuckles with his thumb. Unlike around his superiors, he's allowed to pretend here, and God does he want to... so he does.
They fall asleep like that, fingers entwined, eyes closed, pretending.
authors note:
HOLY FUCK
i mean they literally just held hands but i'm still screaming
and that last line pained me to write
please let me know what you think!! a little anxious about how well i'm handling pacing etc etc and progressing this relationship is difficult, so feedback would be GREAT for my insecure ass
anyways, how are you all??