AN: I know - another story, another universe? Really? It honestly is a sickness, I have a problem, etc etc. I don't know.
Possibly, this is a different basket of eggs though - does that make it better or worse?
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It's way past midnight when Winnie walks into the waiting room at Mount Sinai. It's been such a long fucking day that when he first sees her, Spike thinks he might be dreaming. Like maybe he fell asleep in one of these uncomfortable plastic chairs and didn't realize he'd fallen asleep.
He sits up, cracks his neck and back. Checks his watch and shakes his head. It's been a long time, something Leah keeps muttering to herself, but he thinks a long time is better than no time. No time, where the doctor will come in and-
Winnie sits next to Dean and they talk quietly for a moment and Spike wonders what she could possibly be saying because he has no idea, no words at all that are going to comfort Greg's son and he's supposed to be a negotiator but in his head, everything sounds wrong. Winnie pats Dean on the shoulder and says something else and he smiles at her and Spike thinks it might be the first time the kid's smiled all night. (He smiles too, just for a second. Winnie's got that kind of smile, where you smile back even if you don't want to. Like she could be turning you down and you'd still end up smiling back at her, just a little.)
She gets up and then stands awkwardly in the middle of the room for a second before she clears her throat and says, "Sam, I need you to sign off on this for me," all professional and with her back straight.
Sam and Jules both look at her and Spike just thinks Sam looks confused.
Winnie reaches into her bag and pulls out the file that he suddenly realizes is from Team One's last call. Spike knows they're all staring at it and Sam looks like he'd rather be five hundred feet away from the thing. "I know this is the last thing you want to do," she says and her voice is gentle. "But Holleran wants to see it first thing in the morning."
What Spike wants to ask her is if she's been at work all this time, while they've been getting patched up (Jules), interviewed by SIU (Ed) and sitting in this waiting room. Wants to know if she's just been sitting at her desk or in the briefing room all on her own. Something about it makes him feel like he needs to clear his throat, get rid of the scratchy feeling at the back of it.
Sam still doesn't reach for it. "I'm not-"
Spike knows Jules is looking at Sam even though she doesn't say anything. Thing is, he's looking at Winnie, that's why he sees the file tremble, just for a second. "I'll do it." He kind of wonders why she didn't ask him in the first place.
Winnie's eyes flick to his and it's stupid, but he kind of thinks she's looking at him like he's her hero (like he said – stupid. He's always pretty stupid when it comes to her though, it stopped being a big deal a while ago). She hands it to him and they stand there looking at each other with the file in between them and he thinks she really does have a ridiculously pretty face.
And then she clears her throat and lets go, goes and takes a seat beside Marina. She's right in his line of sight though, all he has to do is glance up and he can see her. Gives him a lot of time to think, reading that report with one eye and keeping the other on her.
He liked her the first second he met her (not like that, no matter what anyone says, there were no lightning bolts, no light bulbs, no love at first sight bullshit), how she always had a smile on, always found him funny. She was funny too, was the thing, and it's not like he'd spent that much time around pretty girls who were funny, who found him funny. And he supposes if he looks back on it now, that's exactly how he missed it – because he was so busy liking the fact that she was easy to talk to that he missed the one where he went out of his way to make her laugh purely because she just looked so goddamned pretty when she did.
Lew used to say she cleaned up real nice, all those after-shift evenings spent at different bars and like objectively speaking, Spike always agreed with him, even though he would ignore Lew's raised eyebrows and nudges in the ribs. Because he thinks Jules is pretty too, and Leah.
Just. Not the way he thinks Winnie is. (He's wondered, more than once, if maybe Lew saw something that he didn't see, all that talk about Winnie, about water, about how things were going to be okay – then Spike figures he's just looking for meaning where there isn't any meaning so that he can help himself feel better or something.)
He focuses on the pages in front of him, on the audio transcripts and they paint a pretty accurate portrait of the chaos and it's about as shitty as he thought it'd be reliving it but it's only when he gets to Winnie's notes, all neat and succinct and right to the point that he has to swallow a little harder. She's gone and done their work for them and he stares at her again, signs his name and then doesn't close the file. It's just – he figures that debriefing over this call isn't exactly going to take place tomorrow afternoon.
She's pale in the shitty overhead lighting, face all drawn, exhausted and he's still thinking about kissing her. Is worried too, though. She doesn't look like Winnie's supposed to look.
He watches her for another few minutes and then gets up and hands the file back to her. "Looks good."
She looks up at him and he tries to smile reassuringly, feels a little worried when she barely lifts the corner of her mouth, how she looks like it's expending so much effort. He wants to tell her to go home, get some sleep, eat something, maybe. He doesn't know how to say any of that stuff without coming off incredibly condescending or worse, like he's her dad or something.
"I'm going to Timmy's," he says, still standing in the middle of the room and he's directing it to everyone but he's only looking at her. "Anyone want anything?"
He gets immediate requests for coffee and lots of it, figures bagels are going to have to do for food and then he raises his chin at Winnie and says, "You wanna come help me?"
And she kind of looks like she would really rather not, at all, but she nods, says, "Yeah, sure," with a smile. She never tells him no (you know, other than that one night when he asked her out and she said no but other stuff? Never).
She doesn't say anything as they walk down the corridor and he wonders what other people are thinking, one girl in navy polyester and one cop in tac gear, wonders what they look like standing there together. He kind of wishes he'd thought to, at the very least, leave the vest in the truck.
"You okay?" she says when they're waiting for the elevator.
He raises his eyebrows. "I'm fine. How are you doing?" He hadn't meant to turn it back on her like that, supposes it's too much time spent at SRU. There was an urban legend, when he first started, about guys who couldn't stop seeing profiles and behavioural reasoning wherever they went. It's just-well, after that whole thing with Rangford, people stopped mentioning urban legends.
She shrugs. "Wasn't me out there." She kind of sounds a little bitter. Or maybe he's reading her wrong and what she actually sounds is scared.
"Good." It just pops right out and look, he loves his team, loves them as family but he doesn't know how Sam and Jules do it, out on those calls together, making choices that could ensure that one of them doesn't come home. It's not something he'd ever want to choose, is all (but then he thinks, maybe Sam and Jules? Maybe they didn't really get a choice, like the alternative wasn't an alternative at all).
She looks at him suspiciously, like there's some kind of hidden meaning in that word but he just stares back at her, holds his arm out against the elevator doors and ushers her in.
He's pretty much used to the thing his heart does when he's close to her now, thinks he's done the best he can at making his peace with the whole thing. What can he do, right? She doesn't date cops, he's a cop. Talk about doomed.
(He still likes to make her laugh though, still thinks she's the prettiest girl he's ever seen when she's laughing.)
They get in line at the Timmy's across the street and he feels supremely unconcerned when Winnie says, "How are we going to get back in?" right as they walk through the automatic doors.
He snorts. "Perk of the uniform."
She looks at him and then at it and he thinks he should probably feel a little sillier than he does with her running her eyes up and down him like that. She lets out a laugh though and he feels a little relieved, how it makes something in him relax a little.
He orders everything for everyone else and then a large black for her, glances at her. "Doughnut?"
"Uh-"
"And a honey cruller," he says.
Look, you work together for years with someone the way he has with her and you figure out their order, is all. It doesn't deserve the kind of flush she suddenly has on her cheeks. "Thanks."
He shrugs at her, shoots her a teasing smile. "Not exactly nutritious."
"Still my favourite."
And he doesn't say anything because he already knows. He watches her as they stand to the side and wait and up close, her eyes are red and she looks like she's been crying. Which is silly. He's never seen Winnie cry, just doesn't think it's the kind of thing that happens too often. Even when someone gets abrupt over the headset, even if she's the one who gets the brunt of the yelling, she's not the type to run off to the locker room and wail (they had a dispatcher who was like that, actually. Nearly drove Ed to despair, how he was always getting told that it wasn't the things he'd said, it was the way he'd said them).
"You okay?" she asks softly.
"I'm fine." Pauses. "What about you?" Because, for him, this is the job. It's what he prepares for every morning, what he relies on his team for. Only now he's thinking about it and he wonders if the dispatchers are the same way, if they all get drinks now and then and gossip like crazy over who's the most foul-mouthed over the headsets, who fucks up the most in the field, if they've got a favourite team and a favourite team member (it's just – so it's probably bad form to pick a favourite dispatcher and it's not like the rest of them are bad or anything. It's just that Winnie's voice in his ear has always been something that made him feel less alone. It's stupid but it is what it is).
He just wonders if they're there for each other the way the rest of Team One is there for him.
She smiles but it's not a regular Winnie-smile. She just looks so young, like she lost the ten years everyone else gained today. "I'm fine," she echoes.
He clears his throat as they pick up the trays of coffee. "You uh. You want to talk about it?"
She swallows and shrugs. "Nothing to talk about. Bad shift, right?" There's a pause and then she suddenly looks really guilty. "Oh shit. I mean. Did you need to talk about it?"
God. She's just like-she's really beautiful, he has to shake his head a little to stop thinking that, knows that it's adrenaline that still hasn't worn off and how his body's running on fumes. "I uh. I dunno. Was messed up." He clears his throat. "And Sam. I thought-" He doesn't even want to say it, doesn't really feel like replaying those moments, fixes his thoughts on her mouth instead even though he knows better. "We got lucky." He can't talk about Donna. Not yet.
She's looking at him though and she must know how he feels because she doesn't say anything at all about Donna either. "Not with the first bomb. That was pretty much you being-" She stops talking, shakes her head.
He wants to ask her what exactly he was being, if it's a good thing or a bad thing or something else entirely. "Nothing more than anyone else did." He pauses. "Well. I mean. Except for Sam." God, it's a bad joke, it's a really bad joke.
She does exactly what he'd hoped she'd do though, cracks a smile, just for a second before she's all serious again. "He scared Jules. Really bad." It looks like he scared her too. And Spike knows Sam scared the ever living shit out of him.
"That's the job. They both knew that going in." He clears his throat again. "Guess they figure that it's worth it, Winnie. You know?" He wonders about that sometimes, how Sam and Jules could just know the way they seem to, so sure about them that they both risked everything. Wonders if he'll ever feel what that's like, that there's something bigger than just him.
"I can't believe they have to spend their wedding night like this." She suddenly looks so incredibly upset that it takes all his restraint not to dump the coffees and do something really stupid. Hug her. Rub her back. Kiss her forehead, maybe. Yeah, that's the adrenaline for sure.
"Yeah. I know."
"Sometimes, I hate people," she mutters savagely. "And Boss is-"
"Boss is going to be fine," he says. "He can't not be." It's crap logic, he knows that, and he's not supposed to say things like that, he knows that too. But he doesn't care.
She stares at him for a second and then she smiles slowly. "Right. You're right."
When they head back into the hospital (and she smirks like anything when the nurse on duty takes in the uniform and the coffee and then opens the doors and lets them right in and he feels a silly sense of accomplishment at the expression on Winnie's face) and everyone else in the waiting room breathes this sigh of relief at seeing the coffee, he and Winnie sit next to each other and Dean gives him a weak smile when he takes his cup.
The tv's on, home improvement show that he recognizes because when he'd first joined the Team, Jules had considered watching them part of his initiation or something. He gets a wave of nostalgia, for things to be the way they were when it was easier. Except, then he takes in the way Jules looks at Sam, like there's no one else in the room, the fact that Dean's there at all, Winnie – and so, maybe, it's okay, the way things have changed.
Spike's dozing a couple hours later, Winnie propping her elbow up on the arm rest between them, leaning her chin on it with her eyes closed and Dean leaning next to the window. Sam has his arm around Jules and she's sleeping against his chest and every now and then, Sam presses a kiss to her hair. Spike smiles at that.
He's not worried the way everyone else is. Not that he's not worried, it's just-if Boss weren't going to at least fight, they wouldn't all still be sitting here. And if there's one person who knows what it means to fight hard, it's Boss.
Possibly, he's also a little deluded, just thinks it wouldn't be fair, losing Lew and his Dad and Mac and then Boss too? He doesn't think the universe could be that cruel and he knows that that's not exactly logical but he's going to stick to it.
He watches Marina and Dean when the doctor comes in, watches the rest of them too and he's so grateful for them, for all of them, always feels grateful but tonight? Tonight he's glad that it's these people and this family and he takes a second outside the room to take a breath before he calls Ed, passes on what the doctor said word for word.
"Clark's sleeping, I'll-"
"Stay with him," Spike says. "Not like Boss is awake right now anyhow, Ed. S'nothing you can do. I'll call you again when we can see him."
There's a pause and Spike knows his TL, has followed him into gang zones and entry zones and really, would follow him anywhere at all. "I-okay. Okay. Spike-"
"I know," he says, leans back against the wall and suddenly feels the whole day catching up with him. Pushes it away. "Clark okay?"
Ed pauses and Spike hears all the stuff that they're not going to talk about, not yet. "Yeah. Yeah, he's okay. Uh. Soph said to say thanks. For stopping by earlier."
Spike smiles, shakes his head like Ed can see him. "Yeah well. I watched the kid grow up." He fiddles with the strap on his vest. Thinks about the time Ed had begged him to help his kid with some grade school Science project because Clark didn't want his father's help and he was doing it all wrong. "You better warn the nurses to watch out for the player." He rolls his eyes as he says it, it's really not his best work.
Ed laughs though, this exhausted, heavy sound and Spike wonders what it was like for him, digging his oldest child out of brick and cement and rebar. Remembers his own heart feeling like it was being squeezed in his chest, right after Donna, that thought that loss might not be over yet. "Yeah. Yeah."
"Okay."
"Good work today," Ed says abruptly. "Uh. Pass that onto the Team?"
And despite everything, Spike smiles, remembers when he first joined Team One, Ed and Boss always so aware that the rest of them were from a different generation entirely. "You got it."
They hang up and he steps back into the waiting room. Marina smiles at him, blonde hair and relief all over her face. "We can see him in a little bit. They just want to wait for him to wake up first."
He nods. "That's good."
Dean looks up sharply and Spike wonders exactly what he said that upset him. Winnie's looking between the two of them, shakes her head ever so slightly and then gets up, leans against the windowsill next to Dean and neither one of them says a word. It makes Spike think about blood and siblings, about finding family in unexpected places.
When Dean and Marina follow the doctor, Spike licks his lips and coughs, drinks the last of his coffee even though it's cold. "Uh. Ed wanted me to tell you guys. Good work today." He feels a little uncomfortable, everyone staring at him like that and this is Sam's job to be doing, not his, he's not ever going to be doing that kind of thing, he's not TL-material, has never really wanted to be, but Sam and Jules got married less than twenty-four hours ago and then Sam nearly died and there's no way Spike wants either one of them to be sitting there as anything less than equals.
Sam and Jules have their fingers interlaced and even though they both look relaxed, he sees the way their fingers tighten so he moves his eyes to Winnie and she just stares back at him and he has no idea what time's doing, if it's going backwards or forwards or some other direction altogether.
He gets to Leah and she sits forward and then holds out her closed fist and seriously, despite the kevlar and the boots and the job, Leah is a total girly-girl, all coloured eye shadow and lip gloss first thing in the morning, more suited to hugs than anything else but Spike stares at her for a second and then meets her fist with his own.
