A/N: I'm pretty sure that writing Spoby is just like contracting one of those viruses where you have it once, and then it will always be in your system for all of time. Seriously, I had no intention of writing this and I don't know what came over me. So please be kind, because it felt a little messy but I did my best ;)

The title comes from a line in Slowly by Barcelona which you may recognize from the cuteness that was 5x02. I own nothing from the show or the song. Also, depending on my level of inspiration, I might turn this fic into a multi-chap...but only as a series of unconnected one shots that revolve around other S5 episodes. So yeah, we'll see!

Can you pick me up on your way home?
We'll talk about love, it's just about
If everything fell apart, trust me, we will fight that slowly.

"And we're never coming back."

It should have sent an instant spurt of elation through him. It was everything he'd ever wanted, the subject of his every daydream—packing up, driving away, leaving once and for all. Hell, he'd wanted that before the letter 'A' had even the slightest of implications in his life. Rosewood was nothing to him, just a black holding cell, a pit of vipers, a mass of unremitting quicksand. Only one person had the power to hold him in this desolate wasteland of a town and he didn't resent her for it, not for second. Leaving her behind, even if only for a matter of months until graduation, meant abandoning her in a tumultuous volcano of hazard and tragedy. No, being here—with her—was better than any other alternative.

But now she'd put words to the melody of his single greatest wish. Just him and her, free to live a new life that would not include psycho stalkers or vengeful serial killers. He didn't care if it was London, Beijing, the South Pole, or a freaking NASA space station. Spencer Hastings was the only necessary component to guarantee his happiness.

His bliss was short lived, though. Those sweet, dim, raspy words had been stained with tattered emptiness, a congested gravelly weariness that had put him on an immediate alert. At the time, he couldn't get a read on her, couldn't break through the veiled sadness that contorted every inch of her. It terrified him, absolutely paralyzed him to the core. On instinct, he just wanted to love her as fully and unselfishly as possible. It was the only thing he could see in her anyway; she was craving him as much as he was craving her.

Hunger had radiated in her huge almond eyes, a palpable need charging like a current from the tips of her searching fingers directly into his bloodstream. He'd known how much he'd missed her, had felt it from a different time zone, had ached for her from more than 30,000 feet above the ground. He'd flown in at such an unreasonable hour, and yet it had still taken an immense amount of restraint to not drive straight to her house. As much as he needed to see her, to know that she was okay and that they were okay, he somehow doubted that Mr. and Mrs. Hastings would appreciate a visit at two in the morning.

Here in the light of day, all of his separation anxiety was obviously for nothing. They'd barely scratched the surface of need-to-know conversation, but he couldn't bring himself to pry any further. She was brimming with a myriad of foreboding emotions, the blend of confusion and self-loathing and exhaustion all clouding her beautiful features. She was so soft, carrying a fragrance akin to sunshine and speaking to him in a low, buttery tone that held an ocean's worth of listlessness and longing. It was bizarre to see her like this, oddly mellow and yet still bursting with relief every time her eyes attached themselves to his. And her hands…they were unbelievably distracting. She had caressed a line over his calloused knuckles, massaged his shoulders, clutched his shirt, traced his face. From the moment their mouths connected, there had been no question as to whether or not she'd felt his absence with an equaled fervor.

And then quite suddenly, as the cliché goes, one thing literally just led to another. She had been murmuring a line about Alison …some snippet of a discussion that had transpired at the bus terminal…but her index finger was outlining his lower lip, her entrancing gaze following the same path by extension. Words fell away with discreet desertion. Everything between them went white and hot, like how the air swells up in a late August afternoon with all the edges going fuzzy and lethargic.

He half-led, half-carried her out of the living room and up the stairs. They fumbled and stuttered over the last four steps, both of them stubbornly refusing to break the meeting of their mouths. Suddenly a handful of days apart had stretched into years. He almost couldn't remember what it felt like to be with her, to be all wrapped up in her. The thought of it was creating an unexplainable whirlpool in his mind, erasing any concept of what came before this moment or what would come after. It was only her taste on his tongue and her name seared into his conscious thoughts.

His shirt was off automatically. He launched her backwards across the mattress, spurring a spontaneous giddiness in her smile that made his pulse sputter. Then she was underneath him, so slight and so delicate. Her legs imprisoned him, her heels scraping over his back pockets and sliding along the length of his thighs. His lips moved faster, consuming every inch of her graceful collarbone, her sweet-smelling shoulder, her elegant neck. He felt like a man who had been deprived of oxygen or water, desperate and insatiable.

"Toby, the next time you go to London…"

The crooning refrain of her voice had caught him off guard, practically imperceptible over the rush of his beating heart. "Yeah?"

"You're taking me with you…"

Gladly. A vacation with Spencer would be—

"…and we're never coming back."

His overjoyed expression died before it could even truly live.

It wasn't like he was opposed to her request. It hadn't been the words she'd said, but the way they'd been framed in such a deep casket of melancholy. She didn't sound anything like a seventeen-year-old senior with the whole world ahead of her. She was damaged, decayed and rotting away, lost in a place that was all too familiar.

Even hours later, much after the moment had passed, Toby was still haunted by the sound of it.

He was too young, too helpless himself, to have any real solution for her. So with a tender nudge from his nose to hers, he tried to tell her that he'd follow her anywhere. With a fevered kiss from his lips to hers, he did his best to express the depths of his love, his unending devotion. Maybe that could be enough for right now.

They kissed and kissed and kissed. Her nails charted a course over his shoulders and across his back, then trailed the span of his bicep, leaving a standing ovation of goose bumps in their wake. He shivered with approval, the motion creating a sensuous friction between her pelvis and his.

And then kissing was no longer enough.

But later, with discarded clothes littering the floor and their bodies cozily entwined, the room was still bogged down with the burden of something unsaid. The intimacy was as alive as ever, their skin melting together, her touch lingering over his hairline and down across the slope of his jaw. They were stealing kisses, exchanging long looks, basking in the affectionate company of one another. It was almost enough to convince him that she really was alright.

Until her phone decided to intrude on the otherwise idyllic seclusion.

He thought that maybe she could finally open up to him this time, tell him what was dragging her down; but with every lifeless "no," that she uttered, his heart sank lower in his chest. This girl, this despondent beauty with wounded doe eyes and a shattered voice box, was miles apart from the Spencer Hastings that he'd initially fallen in love with. Between the Adderall relapse and –A's constant provoking, a traumatic night in New York, the added stress of Alison's reappearance, and now new information about Melissa's deception…well, he couldn't blame her. And while he'd never had the courage—or perhaps the recklessness—to speak it aloud, part of him was certain that her short stint in Radley had inflicted a subtle fracture to her soul that simply could not be healed. It was his biggest fear, to think that his misguided actions had left her far more fragile than she'd ever been before. What if she eventually ran out of steam altogether, just caved under the weight of it all and raised a permanent white flag of surrender?

Toby tucked himself more tightly against her and inhaled the cherished scent of her shampoo. If he could form a protective shell around her, both physically and metaphorically, he would do it. If she needed him to lie there all night and say absolutely nothing, he'd be perfectly content. After enduring a separation of 4,000 miles between him and the woman he loved, time was officially irrelevant. He could have stayed in that bed forever.

Unfortunately, the disrupting force of her cell phone was unrelenting. Even after she'd silenced it, the screen continued to light up with a stream of incoming calls and text messages. Her thin frame stiffened with each additional invasion. Doors slammed from somewhere down the street and a glow of dull orange fell across the shadows of her room, needlessly reminding them of their proximity to the ill-fated DiLaurentis household.

He'd mapped out the column of her spine, first with his finger tips, then again with his mouth. He kissed her shoulder blades and toyed with the ends of her chestnut hair. It did nothing to ease the mounting tension that gripped her body.

"Can I get you anything," he'd muttered into her skin, "like maybe some coffee? Or we could go out and grab dinner?"

Spencer just shrugged, her face still turned away from him.

"I'll go look around the kitchen, okay? It's getting kind of late and we have to eat something eventually."

Her tiny hum of agreement settled his decision. If he could just get some food in her…

But when he'd returned a few minutes later with a takeout menu in hand, she was sitting atop a pristinely made bedspread, completely dressed and tapping through her droning list of unanswered text messages.

"Hey, I'm sorry, but something came up with the my friends."

She wouldn't look at him. Her tone was flat and her lips were thinly compressed. Toby watched in frustration as her eyelashes twitched together rapidly, letting him on the little secret that tears were just a breath away. She knew what she was doing to him and she already hated herself for it.

"Spencer…" His teeth clenched together as he shook his head. How could she—

"I know, I know," the arcing pitch of her apology was abnormally high. "I suck, this whole thing sucks."

"Then just stay." It came out weakly, like he'd already been defeated.

Her unflinching gaze was trained on the windowpane. Of course. Alison's house was in her direct line of vision, taunting both of them with just its mere existence. "I want to. You have no idea how much I want to."

"What's so important then? And if you're going to lie, then don't even bother responding. I'd prefer silence to that."

He had her attention then. Her head whipped sideways to give him a full view of her glistening irises. "Em and Hanna…they tried to call earlier because…because Jason has been acting suspicious and they ended up tailing him all the way to Philly. Sounds like nothing really came of it, but now they need me to divert Mr. DiLaurentis long enough to…to…sneak Ali over here and…"

"I get the point," he mumbled, searching reluctantly for his shirt.

She sniffled inadequately. "That is the truth, Toby."

"I believe you." He tugged at one shoe, stopping to shove his hair backward before going to work on the other. "That doesn't mean I like it."

"Look, I just have to do this. I've been ignoring them since you got here, and I feel awful. I feel awful for leaving you, awful for letting them do this stuff on their own, and—"

"You know, your family ought to be Catholic for the amount of guilt you're always toting around." Toby had smoothed the sullenness out of his voice, exchanging it for a lighter flippancy. There was no sense in making this worse on her when she was clearly upset enough for the both of them. He ambled over to the bed and pulled her upward, his hands cupping her elbows while he scattered a few kisses over her forehead. "Be safe, okay? If for no other reason, please do it for my sake."

She nodded meekly before pressing her face into the ridge of his shoulder. "I'll call you later, I promise."

They parted downstairs with a crushing hug, the farewell feeling much too premature for them both. "Seriously, Spence, don't do anything stupid. I have presents from London back at the loft and it would really be a shame if I had to pass them to you through the bars of a jail cell."

A twinkling smirk donned her features as she stepped away from him. "Presents, huh? That would be a shame…"

He was somehow able to return her expression despite the pit of uncertainty that occupied his stomach. "I was hoping that might be a motivating factor for you."

"I'll be fine, Tobes, honestly. You have to be beat with jet lag anyway…aren't you four or five hours ahead? Go home and sleep it off, baby."

She had a point. His eyes were burning with fatigue and he felt like midnight had already come and gone.

But as it turned out, his brain had just spun in circles from the second he'd pulled out of her drive. The air in his loft had an odd staleness to it, something he'd figured would be gone by now. A bulb in the kitchen had burnt out, his refrigerator was empty, and a tuneless singer was screeching out a bland chorus from beneath his floor boards. To top it off, he'd stubbed a toe on the corner of his heaping suitcase before collapsing dismally into the jumble of his sheets. He just felt off.

Maybe because it wasn't really home if Spencer wasn't in it.

Toby sat up and scrubbed his eyes, unsuccessfully attempting to squash the stream of restless thoughts that was crammed between his ears. She could be walking straight into a trap. What if Jason was dangerous? Or what about Alison for that matter? It's not like her track record was any good. For all they knew, the whole DiLaurentis family could be active participants in a deranged voodoo cult. Stranger things have happened, right?

The surly rumble of his stomach interrupted the dark twist of sleepless abstraction. So without thinking twice, he got up and swiped his keys off the nightstand. He couldn't make her decisions for her, but that didn't mean he was forced to sit idly and wait for the worst.

In the fifteen minutes it took for the Grille to prepare his order, Toby talked himself in and out of his plan at least a hundred times. She'd probably be livid. It was his first day back and he was already crossing the elusive line of trust by barging his way back into her house.

The first one didn't really register. The noise inside of his head was somehow louder than the competing wail of a boisterous siren.

The second one came quickly after. Not a cop this time, but an ambulance.

And then two more squad cars shrieked down Main Street.

By the time Toby had paid and was out the door, every fine hair on the back of his neck was prickled in sickening apprehension. He broke several traffic laws on the way to her house, but he wasn't too worried about it since all of Rosewood PD seemed to be out in front of him. They were all pooling in the same general direction, and that direction just happened to be his destination as well. His gut was wringing with terror as he swung into her neighborhood. Please, God, don't let it be…

Eerie flickers of red and blue kindled across the ethereal landscape, a commotion of voices and activity spiraling from every available speck of the vindictive scenery. It all played out before him like the conclusion of an antiquated horror flick. "No, Spence, no…"

He threw the truck into park in the middle of her street. A few officers called out to him, but his feet were striking the ground with an unheeded savagery. Screw them, screw the whole effing town, he was getting to her whether they liked it or not.

The front door was his only option. Everything else was already blockaded with garish yellow tape. It was grossly peculiar, standing on the doorstep that he'd never really used in more than a year of dating her. He might as well be at someone else's house for how foreign this stoop was.

Even weirder?

The door wasn't locked.

"Spencer! Spencer?"

What the hell was going on? There were swarms of police officers forming a human web between her house and Alison's, and her door was not even locked.

"Spencer?!"

He was mid-step, racing past the living room and toward the staircase when he saw her. In the misty grid of the yard, standing in profile, shaking uncontrollably next to her mother—one look at her and the wind was knocked right out of him.

"Spencer."

It had only been a whisper that time, but in an inexplicable chain reaction, she glanced up and spotted him through the sprawling expanse of floor-to-ceiling glass doors. He could read his own name on her trembling mouth as she began to stagger toward him. Toby.

She flung herself into his arms faster than he could even blink, chewing up the distance between them at an inhuman pace. They were wobbling back and forth, barely steady enough to remain on their feet, swaying together as one cohesive unit. He was vaguely worried about the possibility of breaking her in two for how zealously he was holding her, and yet he couldn't bring himself to loosen his grasp even marginally.

She didn't seem to mind.

"Oh my god, I'm so glad you're here, Toby…it was...she's…"

"Who, sweetheart? Who is it? Why are they all here?"

Spencer lifted her head from the folds of his coat, gleaming rivers trickling from her wide eyes. "M-Mrs. DiLaurentis is d-dead. She…she was buried j-just like…"

Toby cut her off, chastely kissing her cheek before steering her to the sofa. "Shhh, you don't have to say any more, Spence. I get it, it's just…this is unreal."

She nodded vacantly. "I can't keep doing this. I can't."

"C'mere," he hummed softly, cuddling her limp form against his chest. "I know it isn't much, and I wish I had something—anything—better to say, but…I'm here, Spencer. I'm here and you aren't alone in this."

Her head tunneled further into his shirtfront, moisture seeping right through to the skin below. As muffled as it was, he could still hear the echo of her earnest reply—"Trust me, there's nothing better than hearing you say that."

They sat there for countless hours, Toby's memory of now-cold takeout and an illegal park job were completely neglected as he shielded her against the irreconcilable buzz of the outside world. As badly as he'd wanted to be near to her, these were not the circumstances he would have ever chosen. He rubbed her back and kissed her temple repeatedly, feeling utterly insufficient against the mountain of her anguish.

He didn't remember dozing off; a sudden pressure dipped onto his shoulder as someone spoke in a low tone from above his head. "Toby? I hated to wake you, but can you manage to get Spencer to her room? You'll both thank me for this in the morning."

"Hmmm?" His bleary gaze washed over the petite brunette who was snuggled compactly in his lap, sound asleep and as gorgeous as ever. He had no concept of how long they'd been like this or when Veronica had even come back inside. Last he could recall, she was still on the back porch, vigorously condemning the coroner for his lack of proper protocol. "Mm, sure, Mrs. Hastings. I'll be back down in a second."

He bundled Spencer more firmly to his chest and stood slowly, smiling fondly when she nuzzled her face into the hollow below his chin and let out a serene sigh, her eyelids staying placidly shut.

Veronica corrected her throat with a mild trace of discomposure. "And Toby…maybe I wasn't clear enough the first time. You don't have to come back down here. Not if you don't want to."

His jaw was practically on the floor. She was telling him he could stay? "Wow, uh…thank you."

She dismissed the sentiment with a stern shake of her head. "You're the one who deserves the appreciation here. She would have been up all night if you hadn't come over."

After a half-step toward the kitchen, she stopped herself abruptly and swiveled back to look at him once more. "How did you get here so quickly? Unless Spencer contacted you and I somehow missed it..."

"No, I hadn't heard anything from her." He glanced down again, infinitely grateful for the steady sensation of her breath against his neck. "I was just dropping by on my way home."

It was the only a partial truth. He had been on his way home, just not in the most literal definition of the word.

Toby couldn't say for sure, but judging by the knowing glint in Mrs. Hastings' eyes, he was fairly confident that the deeper significance behind his words was not lost on her.

A/N 2: thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts in the pretty little review box below :)

and shameless plug, but I would be so grateful if you went over and read my other most recent one shot, Winner Takes All. I got less hits on that one for some reason, and I'm bummed because it was one of my all-time favorites to write! (unless it just sucked and I lack self awareness haha)

But no pressure! thanks again!