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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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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.