Spencer Hastings makes shockingly bad choices. (ctrl_a) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2017-06-14 20:45:00
Who: Joe Hardy and Spencer Hastings When: Early June Where: Rainbow Motors What: Spencer tells Joe about her relationship with Toby Rating/Warnings: Low/None Status: Complete
Well, now that things were progressing with Toby, Spencer felt she owed an explanation to Joe. She had to end their friends with benefits relationship, and revert it simply back to a friends relationship. She hoped that wouldn’t make things awkward. Joe was a great guy, and she wanted to stay friends… even if they weren’t sleeping together anymore.
So after finals, Spencer headed to Joe’s auto shop with a couple of coffees. Hopefully a little caffeine would help smooth things over.
Since taking over the business, Joe and Stefan put a lot of working hours in at the garage. Owning a business was something Joe had done before, but owning a garage was very different than running a detective agency. Joe enjoyed the work though, it kept him occupied, and for the most part, out of trouble.
He was having a little difficulty in focusing lately, though. His mind kept wandering back to that poor guy he and Stefan had found in the alley. Who was he? What had happened? He checked the newspapers every morning to see if he could find anything. There had been a short report the morning after the murder, and a scant follow-up a few days later stating that the man in the alley had been identified as Harald Leiber, but that no new leads had surfaced.
It bothered Joe, and he knew exactly why it bothered him, and that bothered him even more. He had to literally tell himself every day that he wasn’t going to get involved. And yet, still, every morning, he was checking to see if anything had changed. Nothing. Soon Harald Leiber would be completely forgotten, just another name on a file somewhere.
He was thinking about Harald Leiber as he was working on a transmission. He was so lost in both thought and what he was doing, he did not see Spencer as she crossed the lot with her coffees.
“I expected to see a big change, or something,” Spencer said as she entered the garage with the coffees and moved to lean against the car Joe was working on. “I mean, new management and all that. New ownership? But the place looks just the same as it did before.” She gave him a smile, but it withered slightly when she saw the concentration on his face. Then she held up the coffee for him. “Hi?”
Joe had registered that someone had come into the garage. He even registered that someone was talking directly to him. However, he was so deep in thought and what he was doing, it wasn’t until she placed the coffee right in front of his eyes that Spencer was able to break through to him.
Joe glanced up from the engine, first at the coffee, then at the girl holding it. “Spencer,” he blinked, “Hi. Shit, I’m sorry. I heard you come in, but I was so …in…this…” he glanced down at the engine and wondered for a moment just how long he’d been working on the damn thing. He glanced up at the clock on the wall and saw he’d been working on the same damn engine a lot longer than he thought. Maybe it was time for a break.
He set his tools down and dragged the inside of his elbow across his eyes and forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said again, a little more genuinely this time and with a little fatigue. He gave her a pleasant, if not sheepish little smile. “I guess I need the distraction. Thank you for the coffee.”
It was a little concerning that Joe hadn’t seen her come up--or recognise her, anyway--but she figured he was busy. She was catching him when his mind was occupied with thoughts of engines and running a business, and man, did she choose a bad time to come and distract him from his work? But then the smile came, and she brightened a little herself. That little smile was one of the things that had first attracted her to him in the first place. “No problem. I didn’t mean to distract you from something important.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Joe shook his head. He reached for a cloth to wipe the oil and grease from his hands before he took the offered coffee from Spencer. “I always got time for you,” he winked and laughed. Spencer had turned out to be a good friend and Joe enjoyed their time together, and he really needed something to take his mind off of the murder. “Did you come to check out the garage?” He asked. He was pretty proud of what he and Stefan had been able to accomplish since taking over Rainbow Motors. The transition hadn’t been entirely seamless, but transitions like this rarely were. So far he and Stefan had done really well assuring their regular customers that they would still get the same top-notch service and treatment they would have gotten when Dean was still in charge. So far, it seemed to be working.
That pride was evident in Joe’s voice as he motioned around the bay he was working in. “Stefan and I have been pretty busy and we’re doing really well.”
Spencer felt her cheeks burning and knew she was blushing a bit. Damn. Totally not the reason she came here. She had to think about Toby. This was a weird thing to do--to come to her fuck buddy’s work and tell him they had to stop? She’d never in her life even imagined she’d have one of these conversations, and here she was. It was true: weird things happened in Orange County.
She waited while he wiped his hands, then passed over the coffee. “Yeah. I know you’ve been putting a lot of time into it, so I wanted to come by and see how things were turning out.” She sipped from her own cup. It’d cooled a little on the drive over here, so it was perfect drinking temperature. “Wanna give me the tour?”
“Sure,” Joe beamed. He was part owner now. He could take Spencer on a Grand Tour, and he did. He showed her the bays where they worked on the cars (which she had already seen). The lobby and waiting area (which she had seen already as well), as well as the office where he and Stefan kept the business running smoothly. It had changed a bit since Dean, for obvious reasons. Stefan and Joe had to share the space, so there was a mixture of their personalities in the office.
“Have a seat,” he motioned to one of the chairs in the office. “Tell me what you’ve been up to. How you’ve been?” Spencer’s Dreams were rough. She had told Joe about them and he’d given her a safe place to hang out and get away from them while he and Frank had lived outside the county. He’d hoped maybe they would have gotten a little better for her, but it had been Joe’s experience that once the Dreams had taken a turn, they didn’t necessarily get any better, maybe a little easier to cope with, but not better.
Spencer followed Joe through the garage that was familiar to her. Over the time that she’d spent with Joe, she’d been here a handful of times, hung out while he worked, whatever. So she knew her way around. Not a whole lot had changed--except in the office area. She could tell they’d made it theirs, so to speak. Spencer slipped into the chair, folded one leg over the other, and hugged the coffee cup to her chest.
“I’ve been all right. Getting ready for finals.” She sipped from her cup, then brought it back down. “I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with this guy from my Dreams, too.”
“Really?” Joe raised his brows. Spencer had mentioned meeting someone from her Dreams a few weeks ago, back when Joe and Frank were still living just outside Orange County. At the time it hadn’t seemed like meeting anyone from her Dreams was a good thing, so Joe was a little surprised to hear that she was spending time with this guy.
Looking at her closely it didn’t seem as though she was stressed out about it, or the guy was giving her a hard time. Joe was pretty sure if he was, Spencer would have mentioned it before now. “Is that good?” He asked before taking a sip of his coffee.
“Yeah,” Spencer said, nodding once. She ran her finger over the cardboard sleeve around her coffee cup as she thought about it. It was reasonable for Joe to sound suspicious. Spencer’s Dreams sucked. Her brother-in-law tried to kill her, she was being blackmailed by a stranger in a black hoodie, and one of her girlfriends died during a sleepover at her house. Yeah. It was a lot.
“I think so.” Spencer said, finally looking over at him again. “Dream!me is in love with him. Head over heels, really. And we’re… I don’t know. Trying to figure out what’s going on there.”
Joe blinked once. He’d heard about people meeting loves from their Dreams before. He’d kind of experienced it himself back in October...sort of. Maybe. Joe still didn’t really know what the fuck all of that had meant, but it had really fucked him up, so he could only imagine what meeting someone alive you loved from the Dreams would do. At least he’d gotten a little bit of closure out of his experience.
“Huh,” he leaned back against the desk and tilted his head a little. Tink had mentioned recently about how the version of her in her Dreams was in love with someone there. It was confusing, but she was still very much into Frank. But the Dreams worked differently for everyone.
“Do you think you love him?” Joe asked curiously. “Or do you think you love him because of the Dreams?”
“Well that’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?” Spencer said, then sighed deeply and deflated a little. She was confused about the whole thing. She wasn’t sure what was real, what came from her Dreams, what was bleedover, and whether or not it mattered if it was Dream bleedover. Did that make any of those feelings less real? “I don’t know. I know I have really, really strong feelings for him. But I’m confused about it all.” She set her cup down on the coffee table and turned to look at him.
“I’ve just realized I’ve got to stop running away from my feelings and try to figure out what the fuck’s going on.”
Joe tilted his head a little. Spencer had every right to be confused. He set his coffee cup down and folded his arms lightly over his chest, not in a closed off posture, but a thoughtful one. “You know, the Dreams influence a lot of what we do and what we feel. The people in them are versions of us and the people we know, but they aren’t them. We aren’t them either. I know some people who use what the Dreams show them, what happens in them, to help guide them to become better people.” He shrugged thoughtfully, “if you want to use the Dreams to figure that out for yourself, I think that’s a good idea. Spend time with this Toby guy. Find out how he makes you feel. Ask yourself if the Dreams weren’t a thing, if you’d still feel the same way. It may take a little while before you can answer that for yourself.”
Spencer paused for a long moment, looking thoughtfully into Joe’s eyes a she considered what he was saying. It was actually amazing advice. He was able to put into words exactly what she was thinking but hadn’t been able to form into coherency yet. It wasn’t that Spencer didn’t consider Joe to be a smart guy, but this was insight she hadn’t expected from him. She was surprised. Pleasantly surprised.
“That’s… exactly it. That’s exactly what I want to do. What I should be doing.” She said, then gave him a soft smile. “How’d you get to be so smart about all this Dream stuff?”
Joe shrugged, but gave Spencer a smirk. “My brother got the lion's share of the brains between us, but I can hold my own every now and then.” Was he utterly convinced of his own pleasant sounding words? Not exactly. There were a lot about his own Dreams he wasn’t sure fell into the category of “soul searching”, or were meant to necessarily make him a better man. He honestly didn’t know what the purpose of his Dreams was. Sometimes, he really wished he did.
Joe picked up his coffee again. “So you’re gonna figure stuff out with this guy?”
Spencer took a long moment to think about that question. This was something that’d been coming for a while now, something she’d sort of been fighting off. But now she’d decided. She owed it to herself to try for something with Toby. She owed it to him, too. “Yeah.” She nodded, and finally turned her eyes toward his face again. “Yeah, I think so. I think it’s best to. I mean, I need to know one way or another.”
Joe smiled. “Good,” he nodded. “I think that’ll be best for you. If it works out between you and Toby, then awesome. If not, then at least you tried.” He finished off his coffee and tossed the used cup into the trashcan by his desk. “If you ever need anything, want to talk, you know where to find me.” He grinned, “I’ll be here.”
Joe was under no illusions that he and Spencer would continue sleeping together. It wouldn’t have been fair to Spencer in her attempt to figure herself out if they did, and Joe didn’t want to be a variable that would only complicate things further. It was disappointing, sure, but what kind of person would Joe be to deny Spencer the chance to grow as a person?
It was disappointing. That’s why Spencer had let it go for so long. She probably should have called things off a long time ago, but something about Joe was very attractive to her. Nevertheless, she was being honest with him. They could stay friends. Should stay friends. And the fact that this bridge wasn’t burnt meant that the future had limitless possibilities. (Or was that selfish?)
“Thanks, Joe.” Spencer said, returning his smile with one of her own. “And the same goes for you, you know.”
And Joe wasn’t beyond bashing in a few heads should Toby turned out to be trouble. It was the least he could do, really. It wasn’t like he could tell her right then and there that he’d witnessed a murder, watched as the guy had literally died in his arms, and his friend (and business partner) had flirted with going into a blood frenzy at the sight. Noooo, best not to even bring that up. “Yeah, Spence, I know.”