would you do one where set during the summer before spencer went to college and after she escaped from the dollhouse toby takes her to dinner with his weird uncomfortable parents and spencer has anxiety rashes all over her body from ptsd and his step mom notices it and makes her feel uncomfortable or self conscious about it and then a while later toby goes looking for her and finds her in the bathroom trying to scrub at the rashes with hot water? you can rearrange this any way you want :))))
hello hello! thank you for this lovely prompt! i changed a lot of it around, i hope you don’t mind - kept the essence of spencer and toby going to dinner with his terrible parents though :) i hope you enjoy!
/set post dollhouse, pre-CeCe reveal
She really didn’t know why she had agreed to this.
Rationally, it made no sense to agree to it. Toby didn’t like his parents. Spencer didn’t like his parents. It didn’t make any sense to go to his parents’ house for dinner, while she was in the middle of trying to get the hell over -
Get the hell over -
All of -
All of this.
“Spencer,” he said quietly, practically in her ear. She looked up to see his parents - especially his stepmother, both her eyebrows arched, God, she looked so much like Jenna - staring at him, it was like their eyes were digging into hers, their eyes their eyes their eyes digging into hers,
as if they were waiting, perhaps? Waiting for the crazy girlfriend to go crazier?
She unclenched her fist from the fork and forced a smile. “Sorry, Mrs. Cavanaugh,” she said, putting on her AP Spencer voice. “What was that?”
It was her idea, was the most ridiculous part. She needed to do something to make up for what she had done to him, for almost having him lose his job. Something besides throw away all the “sweets” Samara had given her, something besides apologize over, and over, and over, and over again. She had needed to do something grandiose and girlfriend-like. Something normal. Something to prove that she was normal.
That she was back to normal.
(you’ll never ever ever ever be back to normal, who in the hell are you trying to fool, you’ll never ever ever be back to normal)
So she had told him, in a moment of desperation, “why don’t we have dinner with your parents like they’re always saying,” and he had raised his eyebrows and asked her if she was feeling oka - but he had caught himself because those jokes weren’t funny anymore. He was tiptoeing around her these days and she hated it, it made her want to break plates, it made her want to show him that she wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t -
wasn’t what?
She would have been able to handle it if he had been angry, about the drugs, about almost having him lose his job. And he had been at first. But he had backed off far too quickly, because he still saw it sketched all over her face whenever he looked at her. He saw The Dollhouse beamed over her face every time he met her eyes and she hated it, hated it, hated it, so she had kissed him and pretended she was normal (pretended she was real) and said “come on baby it’ll be fun and we’ll finally get it over with right?” And he had laughed and played along but it was like he was waiting, waiting for her to shatter into (bitsandpiecesandsmithereens) -
“Oh, it was just a rumor I heard when at the PTA meeting this morning,” said Mrs. Cavenaugh chipperly. Spencer had not spent much time with Mrs. Cavenaugh over the years. It seemed like there was not much time to spend. They had been eating dinner for the past half hour and she had not looked at Toby once.
Jenna wasn’t there, at least. Spencer had survived a lot of things, but she didn’t think she could survive a dinner in which Jenna Marshall was in attendance.
“Oh?” She was forgetting, forgetting how to be Spencer - the real Spencer. The real Spencer, who she had been before the Dollhouse. Spencer beneath crazy broken PTSD Spencer, but God, who the hell had that been? Had she ever been that person?
(could she ever, ever be that person again?)
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Cavenaugh. Was she Southern, perhaps? It was funny how little Spencer knew about Toby’s parents. He never talked about them. She could kind of see why, she supposed. “Yes, a rumor that they’re not letting you girls go to prom!”
Toby laughed, so easily taking the conversation into his hands. Spencer had the strangest feeling that he was pretending, just like but better than her, to be more comfortable than he really was in this house he had never for a moment called home. “Come on, Melanie,” he said, which was what he called his stepmother, “I don’t think Spencer wants to talk about that.”
“No, it’s not a problem,” said Spencer, smiling, unsure if any of her words made sense. The rattling entropy in her brain was so effing loud. “Yeah, it’s - we were pretty disappointed, but it’s a security concern, you know?” Take a bite of food. Take a sip of water. Look around this room do you see any exits could you get out in a hurry? There’s food in front of you eat quick before he takes it away eat quick before he takes it away
I’M NOT THERE ANYMORE, she screamed at herself. I AM NOT THERE ANYMORE.
you’re always going to be here you’re always going to be here you’re always going to be here
“Security concern,” said Melanie, and was she crazy (yes) or was a touch of disdain? “For who, exactly? You all, or for..”
“Come on, Mel,” muttered Toby’s father, who was so inconsequential it didn’t seem he really existed in this household.
“Well, you know I like to look out, darling!” said Melanie brightly. “I mean, no offense, Spencer darling, but if you’re understood by the Rosewood PD to be a security concern..”
a l i a b i l i t y is what you are
Don’t act crazy don’t be crazy be normal but she was crazy, she was crazy, she was crazy
“Excuse me,” she managed to say before getting up from the table, before walking, before walking until she got to a door, opening it and stepping out into the warm May air.
–
He came out and joined her less than two minutes later. She was standing on the deck of his house, her elbows against the railing, breathing in the night, looking at the stars, trying to gather herself back together, which was impossible, because some giant, pertinent pieces had been left in a bunker underground.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“Did you build this deck?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “A couple of summers back. My dad painted it.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Thanks. Spencer.”
“Toby, it’s fine. It’s - fine.”
“It’s not fine. My stepmother, she - ”
“It’s fine. I’m the one who wanted to come, remember?”
“Spencer - why?”
She swallowed and looked at him, and he was looking at her, too, and maybe he saw the word Dollhouse sketched over her face but maybe he saw her, too, underneath.
He was Toby.
“Because I don’t want you looking at me like I’m someone who could break,” she said, hearing her voice break even as she said the words. “I don’t want you looking at me like someone who’s already broken, and I just, maybe I am, but I thought, if I could be normal - if I could just - ”
He leaned forward, so gentle she could feel tears pulsing in her eyes, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She shuddered and leaned against him.
“I don’t mean to look at you like that,” he said quietly, his hands lacing through hers. “I’m sorry.”
She almost laughed, resting her head on his shoulder. She was so, so tired, all the damn time. “You apologize way too much, baby.”
He laughed, enfolding her entirely in his arms.
(for a moment, half of one maybe, she felt something like safe.)
“You’re not broken,” he said, pressing his lips to her hair. “You’re Spence. Being whole doesnt mean you have dinner with my parents.”
She laughed. Maybe it was broken but maybe it was good. Maybe she was broken, but maybe it could be good.
“I’m so sorry,” she said into his chest. “About your job. About the brownies. About - I’m so sorry.”
He pulled back a little. “To make up for it,” he said, and there was the lightest, gentlest note of teasing in her voice and it was like her chest splitting in relief for the normalcy, “why don’t, instead of dealing with the world’s most uncomfortable dinner in the world, you take me out to dinner?”
She laughed. The air was warm, and she was breathing, and she was here (i’m here) so she laughed. “That sounds like a pretty good plan to me. What about your parents?”
“They will have to learn to live with disappointment,” Toby informed her.
It was the best response he could have given her. They did go out to dinner, and sat in his truck for two hours together afterward listening to their playlists on loops, and maybe it wasn’t normal (maybe nothing ever would be again) but it was okay, and it was real, and tonight, it was right.
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