Phoenix | S.R.

Ch. 8 | Forget Me Not

Summary: Spencer!POV. Spencer begins to learn about the consequences of his death.

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The week following my return home felt like a blur. This was particularly jarring because, with the way my mind works, things never feel that way to me. Usually, I have perfect recall of every monotonous moment. But that week I could barely remember going through the motions.

I couldn't know if it was the exhaustion, the shock, or the trauma that turned crystalline images into cloudy shards, but I thanked whatever force was at play. It was the worst week of my life, and I had survived two separate encounters with death before now.

I just wanted everything to go back to normal, and each day that I tried, it became clearer to me that it was an idealistic fantasy. Normal was farther from my reach than ever before. I wondered if it was even possible to find such a thing anymore.

These weren't appropriate thoughts to have while driving a giant government SUV, but I had them, anyway. It was hard not to, because beside me in the passenger seat was a very silent and frustrated (y/n).

We'd exchanged several words since my return, but always about work, and never in any great detail. I was honestly surprised that she'd even agreed to ride back with me.

Then again, she hadn't really been given a choice. Everyone else was heading to the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit and for some reason, she couldn't go, and everyone had agreed she shouldn't drive.

I didn't ask about it. It felt like it wasn't my business, and I was just grateful to have a chance to be alone with her. Even like this.

Some twisted part of me hoped the proximity alone would be enough to bring us back together, but I knew that was unlikely. It couldn't hurt to try though, I thought. I quickly learned that I was wrong.

"(Y/n), I—"

"Is this about the case?" she responded immediately, overlapping with the very beginning of my attempts at a conversation.

"No."

"Then I don't want to talk about it."

It was in moments like these I really wished that I could trade a few dozen IQ points for the common sense and social skills everyone else seemed to possess. But alas, I was stuck playing the absolute idiot begging someone better than me to give me a chance.

"Please, we can't keep doing this."

I lifted a hand from the wheel as I spoke, rubbing it over my tired eyes for a second before returning my attention back to the road. I tried not to look at her yet. Because every single time I looked at her, I devolved into a disaster.

But she was ignoring me now, and my peripheral vision told me that she was staring out the window. She was avoiding looking at me, too, and I didn't know what to make of that.

"Are you just going to ignore me forever?"

"I made it six months without you, Spencer," she whispered with enough animosity to elicit goosebumps, "I was ready to do it forever."

Any words that would have come out were stopped by my jaw clenching shut so tightly I thought my teeth might crack under the pressure. I didn't have a response to that. At least, not one that didn't end in both of us screaming through fits of tears.

So, I let it go, and the rest of the ride continued in a suffocating silence. And once we got back to the local sheriff's station, we sat in silence there, too. The room was just as small as the SUV, but she managed to maneuver the space without ever once touching me or looking at me at all.