Balcony
It begins on a balcony…
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She found him on the balcony of the shittiest hotel in DC. Barely even a balcony, really, just some iron gridding nailed to a wall. His ass on the windowsill and lanky legs hanging off out into space. The air was thick, musty. Humid from the building storm and clouded by the old scents mixing in the forgotten room.
He knew she was there. She'd heard his intake of breath.
"Couldn't have gotten somewhere nicer?" she asked, inching forward. Wary, like she didn't belong anymore. A ghost in his life, half-returned from the dead. Not quite alive yet. Not until they found Doyle.
Found Doyle, she repeated to herself as Spencer tilted his head around to stare accusingly at her through the yellowed lace curtains curling around his body. She could see nicotine and other stains she didn't want to think about on those curtains, wincing and stepping forward again to pull them away from him. He hated germs. They shouldn't touch him. Found Doyle, because Spencer was never cold and never furious, except for right now when he was both.
"I grieved you," Spencer said coldly. This was why he'd insisted on a hotel; this homecoming was going to be fierce and angry, and neither wanted to bring it into the worlds they returned to every night. "You were dead."
She looked at him.
"He killed you," he continued, knuckles whitening as his fingers knotted together. Shivering with anger, his cheeks flushing red. Always pretty, even when he scared her.
Especially pretty when he scared her.
God, she was fucked up.
"I'm not dead," she said, taking his hand. It was cold. "I'm not dead." She pulled him from that deadly iron contraption and back into the musty hotel. "I'm not dead."
She kissed him.
She wasn't dead.
Once they'd found Doyle, she'd prove that.
