Spencer finally lets go of her hand and suddenly hers feels cold without the opposing body heat of another hand, so she moves it to curl around her empty cup because it's still a little warm. Her eyes follow him as he gets to his feet and she smiles a little. "Almost," she says. It isn't true; there's a lot of secrets there, but he's aware of a lot of the ones she holds closest to her heart.
But the smile turns into a smirk in the wake of his comment and she has to laugh a little as she hands her cup to him. "Thank you. I guess I've got some work to do chipping away at that, then, huh?" she asks, the joke clear in the amusement in her voice.
To be honest, she's okay with never knowing Spencer's secrets, if he never wants to share them. Having spent a portion of her time being mind-controlled by someone else has really given Lydia a lot of perspective about mental and emotional boundaries. She'd never really thought about it before and now it's reflex. She can't decide whether that's good or bad, some days.
"You're taking all this information really well, you know. Most people would rather pick it apart or disbelieve it until they can see it with their own eyes," she calls after him, shifting on the couch so that she can lean on the back of it, chin hooking at the top of the couch so she can look over the back of it at him. "I'm not complaining, I'm just saying."
Spencer takes their mugs and limps his way into the kitchen, the limp as minimized as he can make it out of pure, rote habit. As a member of a team of profilers, he's pretty okay with not knowing someone's every secret, too. They learn enough people's life stories that it effectively cures them of needing to know every detail of those around them. What people show you is just as important as what they're hiding.
"I'm suspending a lot of disbelief to be here at all," he informs her factually. The apartment's small enough that it's easy speaking distance from the kitchen. "Your story's frankly small time in comparison. Also, if you are delusional, it would be both cruel and pointless to try to argue with you about it, so it really wouldn't do anything for me. Most people just haven't encountered real delusions before."
There's a short pause as he rummages around. "Do you want more coffee, or hot chocolate?" Because he totally has a sweet tooth.
Some people might have been offended by his comment about her story being small time comparatively, but Lydia finds it oddly comforting. It's nice to know that her tale isn't earth shattering for a change. "That's true, but a lot of people don't think about that, yeah exactly."
Lydia chews her bottom lip a little and pushes herself to her feet to stretch a bit. "I'll take a hot chocolate and then I should probably give you some time to settle in. God knows I've got some settling in to do, myself," she replies with a smile, sinking back down onto the couch again. It's more comfortable than it looks and she makes a mental note to see if her couch is the same way. She's willing to bet that it is.
"I have a friend who might be able to help with the pain in your leg, Spence," she speaks up. "I'd have to ask him; I don't want to just offer his abilities out without asking him first, but...would you want me to ask...?"
Spencer is exacting enough to mix some hot water with the chocolate powder before adding the milk, so it doesn't clump, which means he has a couple extra steps to go through as he prepares their hot chocolates, rummaging around in his kitchen. He's still getting familiar with it. He'd say having someone over is helping him acclimate, but he never has anyone over at home, so it's just reinforcing how very odd it is to be here.
Not bad, but-- odd. Like that offer.
He's quiet for a long moment, ostensibly busy. "Um. Are there any side effects? And is it anything more unbelievable than what you've already told me?" That's a glimmer of humor, though he does mean it sincerely. Having the unbelievable applied to himself directly is a whole other ball game. "Don't go out of your way for me. I'm doing fine."
Reid has been known to say that while suffering from crippling narcotics withdrawal, but in this case he genuinely isn't that poorly off. He's past the crutches stage so he's feeling pretty good about his progress.
Lydia laughs a little, shaking her head. Those are fair questions. "A little more unbelievable, maybe, but the only side effect is not being in pain for a while," she replies. "It's called pain transference. He could siphon the pain out of your leg and into him, but he heals stupid fast, so he'd only feel it for a few minutes, at most."
That's not necessarily true; she doesn't know how much pain Spencer is actually in. If he's in significantly more pain than he lets on, it could take Scott significantly longer to heal, but that's all hypothetical anyway, because she still has to ask Scott and she's only going to do that with Spencer's blessing.
Which, she can see, she isn't really going to get in so many words. It wouldn't be going out of her way, but she can tell when she's being politely dismissed, so Lydia decides to let it go. "Okay. Well, if you change your mind." She gives him a small smile as a sort of peace offering.
It's just a lot for him at once. Reid isn't exactly cooperative about accepting help or treatment on a good day, and although he does what he needs to to recover and he doesn't exacerbate anything, adding a layer of weird supernaturalness to it doesn't make him eager to experiment. Or to put Lydia in an awkward position with potentially asking one of her friends to expose his secrets on Spencer's behalf, when he knows he'll heal just fine with time.
His doctors said he was lucky he didn't have to amputate. As far as he's concerned, the hard, scary part is over, and now he just has slow, self-inflicted physical therapy to endure for another couple months.
He appreciates her wordless acceptance of his dismissal a lot more than he lets on, even as he shoots her a furrowed look over the top of his pass-through counter. "Pain transference sounds like it could be dangerous. Even if he does heal it." If it were Spencer that had it, he'd go around taking on all kinds of things he couldn't handle, because he just couldn't help himself. Maybe Lydia's friend is smarter than that.
"Not that I'm saying I'd make smart decisions with it." He comes out of the kitchen with new mugs in each hand, offering her one.
Lydia gives a little nod, coupled with a thoughtful facial shrug, because she's heard that, but she doesn't really have any firsthand experience with it, obviously. All she knows in that particular vein is that Derek Hale used to be an Alpha and then Cora got really sick and now he isn't. Whether the two are connected, she doesn't know for sure, but she'd be willing to put money on it, if she were a betting woman. She knows that the spark gave Scott a lot of strength he hadn't necessarily known he'd had before.
"Yeah, it probably could be. Admittedly, I don't know much about it. I won't bring it up to him unless you decide it's bad enough that you'd like to see about taking the edge off. He's...kind of the helping people type, so I don't see him saying no, but..."
Lydia shrugs and her voice trails off. "Consider the subject dropped if you prefer it that way. Thank you," she says, taking the new mug from him and settling back into her more comfortable position on the couch, the position in which one of her legs is curled beneath herself and she's leaned into the corner of the sofa. "I'm still trying to decide on a science, but I think I'm going to take your suggestion and go to classes here for a while. Just to keep my mind sharp," she says. "I might ask around."
He gives her an awkward smile at being called out so directly. "Um, guilty as charged. I'll eventually adjust to being here, I swear." Just, you know, maybe not on week one. Week two is possible. Spencer is resilient but he's also an inflexible literalist. If he were in more dire straits, he wouldn't be foolish enough to refuse help, but it's decidedly non-dire.
Taking his seat next to her again, this time with less of an obvious personal space bubble now that they've held hands, he goes on, "If you're used to being in class, being out of it for too long will probably be boring. You might as well try something. Or a few things."
He's definitely going to need to do an array of things to keep himself busy enough to be satisfied.
Shaking her head, Lydia holds up a hand and dismisses the guilty plea. "Don't worry, I won't hold it against you. I've been there. It took a while for me to wrap my head around everything back home, and that was just stuff from my world. You're having to do that times every other world there is besides your own. That's a lot. I don't know if I could do it if I wasn't already used to weird," she says honestly.
She smiles a little, mostly to herself, when she notices that he puts less space between them when he sits again and Lydia takes a sip of the hot chocolate, a very small sip to keep from burning her lips in case it's hotter than anticipated. "That's sort of what I got to thinking," she confesses. "I can only read so many books before I'll need other stimulation. Besides, it's not like the classes here will matter, so if I get bored with something, I can bounce to another field of study, probably."
At least, she would think it would work that way. She's sort of banking on it so that she can hopefully get a plethora of new information before heading back home. She might not get to keep the college credits, but Lydia's hoping that they can't take the knowledge away from her.
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But the smile turns into a smirk in the wake of his comment and she has to laugh a little as she hands her cup to him. "Thank you. I guess I've got some work to do chipping away at that, then, huh?" she asks, the joke clear in the amusement in her voice.
To be honest, she's okay with never knowing Spencer's secrets, if he never wants to share them. Having spent a portion of her time being mind-controlled by someone else has really given Lydia a lot of perspective about mental and emotional boundaries. She'd never really thought about it before and now it's reflex. She can't decide whether that's good or bad, some days.
"You're taking all this information really well, you know. Most people would rather pick it apart or disbelieve it until they can see it with their own eyes," she calls after him, shifting on the couch so that she can lean on the back of it, chin hooking at the top of the couch so she can look over the back of it at him. "I'm not complaining, I'm just saying."
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"I'm suspending a lot of disbelief to be here at all," he informs her factually. The apartment's small enough that it's easy speaking distance from the kitchen. "Your story's frankly small time in comparison. Also, if you are delusional, it would be both cruel and pointless to try to argue with you about it, so it really wouldn't do anything for me. Most people just haven't encountered real delusions before."
There's a short pause as he rummages around. "Do you want more coffee, or hot chocolate?" Because he totally has a sweet tooth.
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Lydia chews her bottom lip a little and pushes herself to her feet to stretch a bit. "I'll take a hot chocolate and then I should probably give you some time to settle in. God knows I've got some settling in to do, myself," she replies with a smile, sinking back down onto the couch again. It's more comfortable than it looks and she makes a mental note to see if her couch is the same way. She's willing to bet that it is.
"I have a friend who might be able to help with the pain in your leg, Spence," she speaks up. "I'd have to ask him; I don't want to just offer his abilities out without asking him first, but...would you want me to ask...?"
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Not bad, but-- odd. Like that offer.
He's quiet for a long moment, ostensibly busy. "Um. Are there any side effects? And is it anything more unbelievable than what you've already told me?" That's a glimmer of humor, though he does mean it sincerely. Having the unbelievable applied to himself directly is a whole other ball game. "Don't go out of your way for me. I'm doing fine."
Reid has been known to say that while suffering from crippling narcotics withdrawal, but in this case he genuinely isn't that poorly off. He's past the crutches stage so he's feeling pretty good about his progress.
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That's not necessarily true; she doesn't know how much pain Spencer is actually in. If he's in significantly more pain than he lets on, it could take Scott significantly longer to heal, but that's all hypothetical anyway, because she still has to ask Scott and she's only going to do that with Spencer's blessing.
Which, she can see, she isn't really going to get in so many words. It wouldn't be going out of her way, but she can tell when she's being politely dismissed, so Lydia decides to let it go. "Okay. Well, if you change your mind." She gives him a small smile as a sort of peace offering.
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His doctors said he was lucky he didn't have to amputate. As far as he's concerned, the hard, scary part is over, and now he just has slow, self-inflicted physical therapy to endure for another couple months.
He appreciates her wordless acceptance of his dismissal a lot more than he lets on, even as he shoots her a furrowed look over the top of his pass-through counter. "Pain transference sounds like it could be dangerous. Even if he does heal it." If it were Spencer that had it, he'd go around taking on all kinds of things he couldn't handle, because he just couldn't help himself. Maybe Lydia's friend is smarter than that.
"Not that I'm saying I'd make smart decisions with it." He comes out of the kitchen with new mugs in each hand, offering her one.
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"Yeah, it probably could be. Admittedly, I don't know much about it. I won't bring it up to him unless you decide it's bad enough that you'd like to see about taking the edge off. He's...kind of the helping people type, so I don't see him saying no, but..."
Lydia shrugs and her voice trails off. "Consider the subject dropped if you prefer it that way. Thank you," she says, taking the new mug from him and settling back into her more comfortable position on the couch, the position in which one of her legs is curled beneath herself and she's leaned into the corner of the sofa. "I'm still trying to decide on a science, but I think I'm going to take your suggestion and go to classes here for a while. Just to keep my mind sharp," she says. "I might ask around."
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Taking his seat next to her again, this time with less of an obvious personal space bubble now that they've held hands, he goes on, "If you're used to being in class, being out of it for too long will probably be boring. You might as well try something. Or a few things."
He's definitely going to need to do an array of things to keep himself busy enough to be satisfied.
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She smiles a little, mostly to herself, when she notices that he puts less space between them when he sits again and Lydia takes a sip of the hot chocolate, a very small sip to keep from burning her lips in case it's hotter than anticipated. "That's sort of what I got to thinking," she confesses. "I can only read so many books before I'll need other stimulation. Besides, it's not like the classes here will matter, so if I get bored with something, I can bounce to another field of study, probably."
At least, she would think it would work that way. She's sort of banking on it so that she can hopefully get a plethora of new information before heading back home. She might not get to keep the college credits, but Lydia's hoping that they can't take the knowledge away from her.