InsaneJournal

Title: The Centre Cannot Hold (ch. 4/5)
Characters: Dr. Spencer Reid, Jason Gideon, Emily Prentiss, Derek Morgan, Aaron Hotchner, Jennifer Jareau, Penelope Garcia, Tobias Hankel, Ethan, mentions of several.
Pairings: Reid/Morgan, Reid/Elle, Reid/Tobias; all minor.
Rating: R/FRM.
Warnings: Mature themes, sexuality, slash, subject matter, general spoilers for the series, explicit discussion of drug abuse and addiction.
Summary: A case in Washington brings Spencer back in contact with his old mentor, but nothing can be as easy as it looks.
Word Count: ~9,400
Disclaimer: Criminal Minds, the characters and situations, and other related things belong to Jeff Davis and CBS, which is to say: not me.
Feedback: Very much welcome!
A/N: This chapter is unbeta'd; I've given it a couple looks over and all mistakes are mine. ♥
SPOILERS: A good many, but notably: 1x22 & 2x01 “The Fisher King,” 2x05 “Aftermath,” 2x10 “Lessons Learned,” 2x11 “Sex, Birth, Death,” 2x12 “Profiler Profiled,” 2x13 “No Way Out,” 2x15 “Revelations,” 2x16 “Fear and Loathing,” 2x17 “Distress,” 2x18 “Jones,” 2x23 “No Way Out II,” 3x01 “Doubt,” 3x02 “In Name and Blood,” 3x04 “Children of the Dark,” 3x16 “Elephant’s Memory,” 4x07 “Memoriam,” 4x24 “Amplification”
Links to Previous Parts: one, two, three

Coming here, Spencer had designs to be nice -- he remembers thinking that he owed Gideon the courtesy. After so long away, Gideon deserves a meeting that isn't full of all that they've missed in each other, or at least without the negative sides. Perhaps it's a lie, Spencer's statement of intention, his thought that he meant the best -- honesty, while the best policy, is something horrible and difficult to muster, giving Spencer as much trouble as the powerful allure of going off the wagon; Spencer hasn't outright lied during this entire sit-down, but he hasn't told Gideon everything either. Maybe, just maybe, in that willful exclusion of some (most) details, the ones he's not allowed or just refuses to share, he's lied to Gideon, but he's quite certain, as he stops Ellen and politely asks her for a strawberry milkshake, that lying now falls lower on his list of sins against his old mentor. Why did Gideon even agree to meet him here? Probably just to get Spencer off his back -- throw the genius Doctor Reid a bone, then he'll go back to Quantico, Gideon will stay here, and it might as well be like he was never in Olympia, never in that mall at that time, never being a remembrance of things past to begin with -- that must be it. Any paternal instincts that might have driven Gideon to his protege long ago must have passed on into the ether by now, they probably did so when he finished his goodbye letter. It can't be the food or the atmosphere, unless Gideon's gotten over certain things, and who knows? He could have done that, it's certainly possible, though even Spencer doesn't know the statistics that would explain it. Given what he knows of Gideon, getting over that in favor of a happy life is very likely. It's just also true that he doesn't have a good history with diners. Off the main drag in Golconda, there's a diner almost exactly like this one, and almost exactly like the all-night diner Spencer went to with Ethan after all their final exams, and almost exactly like another of their fellows in the Poconos that Spencer may or may not be going to with Derek, the next time they get a break. All of them are near-perfect copies, as though painstakingly modeled from the same plan, by the same metaphysical craftsman. Clearly, he took so much pride in his masterwork design that he had to schedule repeat performances across the country. Other diners, close cousins to these four, must be out there, somewhere. Their color schemes are different, the waitresses have uniforms unique to their location, they don't have the same pictures or knick-knacks on their respective walls -- but that diner in Golconda has the irremovable stain of tragedy on it. That alteration can't be seen, but it's something you can feel, the way the air inside Mom's house always changed when she went crazy. Coming home from school, Spencer would feel the agitated charge tickling the air like a battery, he'd smell the difference and know what he'd find in her room, or at the kitchen table. Golconda has the same feeling of premonition, lingering like unforgiving clouds over that little diner, that place where people should feel safe enough to sit and eat. They rained only once, during the worst of the trauma -- and with Frank dead, they never will again -- but it doesn't take a genius to see the truth about that diner in Golconda. It can never be the same. Some people don't know this -- most don't, really -- but those who do remember the stand-off, and the kidnapped kids, and how a sexually sadistic psychopath came through their little town each year, looking for time with his woman, the only one who hadn't shown him fear when he'd tried to cut her up. Every time he wandered through, he stopped there, and he always got a strawberry milkshake, nothing more, nothing less. Spencer wonders if they still serve those things there. Ellen smiles, broadly and innocently, when she brings Spencer's concoction of milk, ice, and artificial flavoring; it's the sort of smile that she would have reserved for children, had she gotten around to having them. As she sets down the perspiring glass and refill, saying, "Here you go, sweetheart. Enjoy.” She has a tone that suggests her relief at seeing him order something visibly unhealthy. So he's not so thin because he doesn't eat. It must be stress from work, or just a natural predisposition towards his slender build. Returning the look, he thanks her, but waits until she leaves to begin. He keeps his face neutral, if a bit wide-eyed, spooning the whipped cream into his mouth, swallowing the melting mix of chemicals, and dropping in the straw. Putting the straw to his lips and sipping, he can't help but smirk a little. Even if his lips don't curve into the self-satisfaction he feels, his eyes do, and Gideon has to be aware of this. Politely enough for everyone else, he points the straw across the table. "Want to try some?" he asks, pleasant, measured, as though he has no idea what he's doing. Gideon is not impressed. "You're being passive-aggressive." "What? Me?" His tone's still light. Of course he's being passive-aggressive. That was rather the point, wasn't it? To make Gideon uncomfortable while not doing a thing to attract attention to them or flaunt this discomfort. This is the least that Spencer should be afforded. Since they've been here, he's let Gideon get away with telling him he's not that hard to profile, asking him not to force Gideon to do so, reminding him that his leaving wasn't meant to cause Spencer any pain, talking about Derek -- Gideon's allowed to push his buttons. In a way, Spencer's just returning the favor. "Yes, you," Gideon says calmly. "Special Agent Doctor Spencer William Reid." Spencer wrinkles his nose. "What, did they teach you that in FBI school?" It seems all too long ago that he asked the same of Elle: she broke into a drawer, in the process finding a laptop that they needed for that case, and, baffled, he asked her, "Did they teach you that in FBI school?" Oh, the logic underlying her actions was perfectly clear -- find the dirt (pornographic images of young boys, or, more specifically, something tying this Mehtevas, this well-respected principal, to the auction of Dustin Powers), catch the unsub, and take down a ring of pedophiles while they're at it. What made no sense was the casual ease with which she handled the drawer and picking its lock, how the only thing keeping them from their former prosecutor boss was a door and a glass window but Elle just didn't care. Because they're the BAU, and they needed to get their man. Ever herself, she snarked back, "No, they taught me that in Brooklyn." It's not to say that he doesn't like Emily, because he does. The three years she's been on the team have brought Spencer a new friend, someone he respects and enjoys being around -- but sometimes, he really does miss Elle. If he could have helped her more, if he'd blown the whistle sooner (he saw her drinking, at the very least), she might not have gone off the rails so badly. Maybe she could've been helped, but, then again, maybe she's happier now that she's not in the BAU. Spencer thought similarly of Gideon until now. Now, instead of smiling, the way he's tried to through this meeting, his face is pale, his eyes stormy. None -- or very little -- of his paternal charm lingers, and, even though this comes as a surprise, Spencer knows he's brought it on himself. ~*~ Spencer brings a lot of things on himself -- all he can think sometimes, handcuffed in this wooden chair, is that if he hadn't been such an idiot, he wouldn't be here now. He knows better than to think like this; hypotheticals don't help right now, they can't, because it's impossible to tell what Tobias might have done, but he would have helped himself to impossible degrees if he hadn’t split up from JJ. He also knows better than to blame himself for Raphael's latest murders; he saved Marilyn David, he's not responsible for the others. Charles and Raphael are perverting religion to justify murder -- through a webcam, Gideon said exactly that and the truth of his words rings clearer, truer than the memories he's revisited, than his mother delicately pronouncing Proust or the door slamming as his father leaves... It's just that the screams of Raphael's victims are louder than everything else. The knife sings as Spencer watches the webcam feeds, minute symphonies are played out in shrill, rushing violins each time Raphael slaughters someone for his or her respective sin. Like animals, all too easily, they die. Marilyn David is lucky, and Spencer is a genius, but how much of a genius could he really be, if he can't find some way to keep all of them that lucky? Before, he managed to keep some unconscious moments to himself, but now he only closes his eyes when Tobias loads him up with Dilaudid. Tobias who comes through the door so skittishly, who looks just like the Raphael who has killed so many and held a loaded gun to Spencer's head; Tobias, who's the spitting image of his father Charles -- Tobias who looks the same as they do, but improves on them. He can't help but do so; he gives Spencer a reprieve. And is that really so much better? Spencer isn't sure. By the third time, he's relieved. It isn't rest, not like this, not seeing Mom at the kitchen table with her books or watching the orderlies escort her out. Is she even louder than the dying people outside his head? Before he can consider that, Charles speaks again -- What're you sorry for, boy? Possibly a pointless question, Spencer muses, but without the abrasive yelling from before. In a way, it's almost tender, the way Charles listens, tells him to name his punishment as writ in Exodus, takes off his handcuffs... Throwing hints to the team, directly addressing Hotch, resolving to be survive because of Gideon (You are stronger than him, he cannot break you repeats itself ad nauseam as Spencer fumbles his shovel, claws into the freezing earth, feels it worm underneath his fingernails) -- all of these, Spencer planned to do. He orchestrated them, played his chess pieces in a way that would trounce Gideon, were real life a game-board. Shooting Charles is a blur of opportunity -- somewhat distanced from them, he hears the entrance of the team. Charles is distracted, his pistol falls; Spencer grabs it and gets lucky -- oh, his shot hits perfectly, and its noise is met by Morgan shouting, "Reid!" But it was luck, a chance of one in six, that put the bullet in the chamber then. It's luck or lack thereof, he tells himself, that killed Tobias Hankel. If not for the abuse, there'd be no Dilaudid; if not for the Dilaudid, there'd be no psychotic break; if not for the psychotic break, there'd be no murders; if not for the murders, there'd be no kidnapping; if not for the kidnapping, Spencer wouldn't need to shoot Tobias to kill Charles and Raphael. His stumbling crawls bring him to Tobias just in time to hear his last words, to watch his eyes go dull. Do you think I'll ever see my mom again? Spencer wants to cry, but there's no time for that; the team's coming, they can't see him like that. Knowing what they saw on the webcam is bad enough. He hugs Hotch. Hotch returns the gesture, and the rest of the team, somehow, shows their support. Spencer takes a minute to himself, fumbling the leftover Dilaudid into his pocket, and, on the ride to the hospital, he can't make himself look at Gideon. For a while, that's fine. The EMTs are busy checking him for things they can deal with, what they need to report to the real doctors, the ones for whom Spencer's frequently mistaken when, in his firm, business voice, Gideon introduces him as "Doctor Reid." The shield of efficiency falls away before they reach the hospital. With the tenderness Spencer is still unaccustomed to, that particular warmth unique to him, Gideon whispers, "You did well, Spencer. You're going to be all right." And Spencer isn't sure whether or not to count this as a lie. The next time he'll see the inside of an ambulance, he'll be willing to give anything for Gideon to be there with him, telling him what's been said now. Kimura will do her best, her job, everything she can -- but she won't have the fortitude to lie and give Spencer any false hope, and when the aphasia sets in, she'll be momentarily stricken speechless. At the hospital, everything is so matter-of-fact and procedural, so by-the-book that the tenderness he's given sometimes seems surprising. Every time a nurse touches him, Spencer freezes for a second, his tension nigh imperceptible. He has a shower, refuses to let anyone take his clothes. JJ and Morgan stay the night with Spencer, which isn't a shock in the slightest, not given his desire to protect people and her guilty conscience. What is comes in the middle of the night, when Spencer comes to from a dreamless sleep and sees Elle sitting at the foot of his bed, smiling her sardonic, Brooklyn-bred smile. She's wearing scrubs -- why would she be wearing scrubs? She hasn't been out of the BAU long enough to have become a nurse yet. More importantly, why would she be in Georgia, of all places? "What are the statistics on people who survive what we did, Reid?" she asks. Something's not perfectly right about her voice -- the accent and the timbre are the same as Spencer remembers, but there's a suspicious absence of the edge she used to have. Did leaving the Bureau take that away? "They're... they're not very hopeful," he says slowly, stumbling over his figures like a drunk dancer. ...Statistics about PTSD, he knows the statistics about PTSD, knows them better than he knows more practical things (like the value of not splitting up), why can't he remember the stupid statistics about PTSD? "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," she comments airily, her guarded, desperate tone the same as that night in Ohio, when he found her drinking -- but, again, the edge is missing. "Approximately seven-point-seven million Americans over the age of eighteen are thought to suffer from it, twice as many women do as men, median age of onset is twenty-three, and based on reports from mothers, sixteen-point-five percent of children who lived through a life-threatening hurricane showed symptoms of PTSD a year after the event. Nineteen percent of Vietnam vets have experienced it, and twenty-one percent of men who suffer from PTSD because of combat exposure engage in spousal or partner abuse... I don't think you'll need to worry about that, at least, Reid." "Because I don't have a partner?" "No." She shakes her head sympathetically. "Because if you tried anything with the team, even JJ could kick your scrawny ass." For a long moment, which takes forever, like how time seems to slow when an unpleasant touch won't go away, she sits in silence, staring at the wall. Spencer looks from her to that spot, and all he sees are spiders, scuttling along and minding their own business. Finally, she asks him: "What did it feel like in that shed, Reid? How could you deal with having to trust someone you knew hurt you so badly?" "Elle, I... Hankel was having a psychotic break, he'd -- his consciousness had split into three different personalities... it wasn't Tobias that tortured me--" "It was Tobias who drugged you," she points out. "But... but, his father--" "They had the same face, Reid," she sighs. "Don't tell me that you're dealing with this perfectly." Another pause before she looks at him again, moves closer to him on the bed. "You're not dealing with this perfectly, Reid, and you won't. You can't do it -- no, not even you, genius Doctor Reid. Don't try to tell yourself that you can cope with this on your own either, because you know what that feels like?" Following her eyes downward, he sees that he's been cut open, but there isn't any blood coming. How weird is that? He's not bleeding and he feels fine -- until he feels something worming slowly across his insides and hears his heartbeat in his ears. Had it stopped before now? If it did stop, why does it come back now with a pounding that drowns everything else in a haze? Why do the edges blur, the colors run together? And then, why does it stop like hitting a brick wall? Everything snaps back into place, and Spencer sees Elle standing opposite him, a thin black paintbrush in her hand. On the wall, in what he knows is his blood, sits one word: WEAKNESS. Looking out the door, she calls, "Are you ready, Doctor Hankel?" Before Spencer knows it, Tobias swoops in and pins him to the bed with just one hand. Where Elle's hand was, Tobias's now feels around, tracing along the sensitive cells and pressuring them where he sees fit to do so -- only the colors don't blur this time, the edges don't drip and melt like some Dalí nightmare. Spencer feels everything, he sees it all, down to the dirt on Tobias's fingernails. Sweat trails down his forehead, cheeks, neck, but he's paralyzed. Even his vocal chords don't work. Tobias claws into his heart, grinning, demoniac, not himself, or Charles, or Raphael -- and even staring at that face, Spencer can't bring himself to scream... "Reid!" Spencer jolts awake still in his bed, shaking and cold sweating, Derek's hand on his shoulder, the other man's eyes wide. Inhaling makes him tremble, subject to the whims of an unseen breeze, freezing under the white light of the hospital. Things do not get better. Spencer doesn't see how they can. Immediately upon his return to active duty, he's whisked off to the New York suburbs. No paperwork, no room for recovery, he doesn't need to recover. Gideon hand-picked him for the team for a reason: he's a genius... but he has to question that right now. If he really were so smart, he could move on, he could forget Tobias and the heavy scent of burning fish hearts. Wooden chairs wouldn't remind him of the shed so much that he still avoids sitting in them to this extent. He's Genius Doctor Reid, he should be able to pull through this. So why, when he's alone, does he always feel cold? His own steps on the hardwood floor make him shake, sometimes. The only warmth he finds is chemical, and yet he doesn't want it. He knows better, far better, than to think this high is his to chase. Genius Doctor Reid wouldn't want to escape. Genius Doctor Reid would have the strength to cope. Genius Doctor Reid wouldn't succumb to nightmares or to the force of memories; he'd buck up and do Gideon proud. He'd put his brilliant mind to work and get over it, knowing that at least he managed to survive. But Spencer looks at his life and what's been thrust upon him, and when he sees it, he can't think straight. Nausea explodes in him like gunfire when he tries to remember that those sensations just aren't real, that he's here and not in Georgia, that Tobias's lifeless eyes are just products of his over-stressed imagination. Spencer can't be Genius Doctor Reid; Spencer just wants to get away. At the metro stop that morning, his first morning back to work, he sees someone light a cigarette and stops dead, the smell of blackened entrails as fresh a week later as if Charles had just set the fire. Someone knocks into him and his feet hurt, his lungs seize up and his heartbeat's imperceptible, like he's going into cardiac arrest again. Still, he presses on, slouching towards his destination. When some kids laugh, it ricochets off the walls and vaulted ceilings, careens into Spencer and pulls him under, turns the shed into the football field. His hands feel bound and handcuffed, both at once; he feels the goalpost against his back, hears Alexa Lisbon and the others jeering, smells the smoldering flesh, and freezes underneath his many layers -- then he hears the train. He remembers where he is. He doesn't cry or falter, just gets on and heads to his familiar stop. Work trips up his attempted façade, but he doesn't lose his head. It's just hard to keep cool when JJ shares the case. He's seen hundreds of crime scene photos, and so many of them were worse than these, but as soon as he sees Sandra Davis in the leaves, he loses track of things again. Anything that goes near his neck feels like straw and leaves, which makes his heart rate climb. These feelings just aren't right -- he wasn't in Georgia or in high school earlier, and he's not back in the corn field now. It just gets worse. By the time he holes up in the precinct bathroom, he's sure he won't be able to keep his coffee down. Swallowing thickly, he hears Tobias around every corner and his hands shake. Controlling it gets to be too hard. Is he trapped inside a maelstrom, or is this normal for survivors? Did Elle's hands ever do the same? Did she ever look into a mirror and see a ghost who couldn't be anyone but her? Spencer's ghost is pale, slightly thinner than he remembers, and clearly sleepless. It sets its coffee down to rummage for the vials in his bag, intends to shoot up and pours the Dilaudid into his coffee when he hears Hotch calling. Past all the sugar, the taste of drugs is hard to find. When it starts to wear off, he doses another drink -- it's wrong, he knows full well, but it's better than hearing the clicks of a revolver, his own weak voice begging reason, pleading logic in the face of Raphael. Only Morgan seems to notice, or, if anyone else does, they say nothing. Not even Gideon speaks up about it. Even Derek doesn't bring it up until they're on the jet back home, and Spencer doesn't let it get that far. Under Derek's scrutinizing eyes, Spencer's insides writhe and tremble, the arctic chill sweeps over him again, and he deflects. Blaming the crime scene photos is easier than admitting something like this -- and really, how can he trust Morgan? Morgan ran to Hotch and Gideon about Spencer's nightmares; for Dilaudid, he'd have to blow the whistle. Derek doesn't press the issue, but some small part of Spencer wishes that he would. As they leave the jet, he wants someone to come home with him and make sure he's okay; he wants to break down and confess, but owning up to his weakness would just make things worse. Once he set out there, he wouldn't be able to get it back. All his wounds and more would be left open for judgment and derision; everything is ammunition that could get him fired. He says nothing, no one seems to think he might need help. This, he thinks as he gets on the late-night metro, must be how Elle felt: the past slithered up around her ankles and legs, wrapped like vines around her chest, then tightened on her neck. She was anchored in a quagmire while everyone else went forward -- and now Spencer feels it too. The stop he gets off at isn't where he goes to get home, it's not even close. Under the frigid haze of street lamps, he's ventures into the Capitol's dregs, down streets he once traversed only because he wanted to help people. Whores and junkies go together, it's classic textbook. In odd reflections and plays of light, he sees ghosts of Nathan Harris -- the pallid face, the haunted eyes, the bleeding wrists... it couldn't be anyone else. Spencer needs to shake himself around to remember that Nathan can't be here -- he can't because he's getting help. With new vials of Dilaudid in his pocket, Spencer sees one of the women he helped protect from Ronald Weems, the blonde one who was friends with Holly, their fourth victim; she smiles at him and waves. He goes home, shoots up, and tries his damnedest to forget; he leaves behind the icy streets for the warm comfort of his drug. It starts to show; how can it not? Even before New Orleans, he starts to feel all his lies unraveling, his security of deflection wearing thin beneath him. After a week of paperwork and waiting for a new case, Morgan sits on Spencer's desk and asks if he wants to go grab lunch. Spencer refuses, but has to wonder when the last time he ate was. He doesn't remember. If anyone would ask, he'd talk their ears off about the dreams he's had, about when Mom read him Chaucer and when her hair was long but she took care of it, when her episodes came less frequently, and when she didn't seem to be so crazy. Her embrace was warm, her kisses soft, and she was once again his mother, if only in his head. More time passes between cases. Spencer knows better than to go and think that there's a lull in serial killers and rapist activity, but there's enough time for things to get much worse. Every time Spencer shoots up or drugs his coffee, a little bit of tolerance gets laid; each subsequent hit has less of a kick behind it, less impact on his nervous system. They offer less and less protection, and Spencer only sees one option: taking more, more, still more, wondering when his point of overdose might be and hoping to never find out the hard way... Houston is a disaster, there's no other word for it. The future of this case is foretold when he comes in late, something unheard of on his track record. Since childhood, he's been horrendously insistent on being on time. Nothing changes for the better: he's on edge and running low on his stash -- he bought more than enough, he thought; it should have lasted him until now -- and when he tries to find some way to get it, Emily has to go and interfere. Hating her would be so easy. Self-important Emily Prentiss, the Ambassador's daughter, fluent in Arabic and God knows what else, one of the main reasons they managed to foil Jind Allah's attempted mass infection -- she might not be a genius, but she's close enough to perfect for the BAU that it doesn't matter. It all fits together perfectly: he's the new Elle, Emily's the new him; soon enough, he'll put the team in danger with his weakness and he'll be out. Then things will go back to equilibrium and he'll flounder and destroy himself alone. No one will care; they're teammates and nothing else. Before, when he was too naive to know better, he thought it meant something that they spent so much time together, but it doesn't. All the subtext there is that they would rather work than have their lives. Hotch has his wife and Jack, Gideon has Sarah, Morgan has a line of girls waiting for him to open up and call them "baby girl" the way he does Garcia, but it makes no difference. The BAU comes before anything else. That's just a given. So what, they know some of each other's secrets? Spencer hasn't heard anything new in weeks, and he only used to because people trusted him not to talk to anyone. The team only knows about Diana Reid because the Fisher King was a threat to her safety. Only the team, Dennison and Gordinski, James Barfield, and Carl Buford know Morgan was molested; had it not come out because of a case, it's something a friend would know; given the circumstances, it's practically shop talk. Mom's schizophrenia is water cooler chat, the same way the Super Bowl would have been anywhere but here. Even Gideon, Spencer's mentor, who gave him some purpose when he thought that was impossible, and JJ, whom, in some half-mad daydream, he thought he could deserve, aren't his friends. Gideon only tried to help him with his nightmares so the team wouldn't suffer, and JJ only humored him with a date because of his birthday. What else should Spencer interpret from all the inaction on their parts? Friends would do something; friends would tell him to stop. The team hasn't done that, ergo they must not be friends. Logically, the syllogism is pathetically simply. Elle thought the same thing, and Spencer can't see how she could have been wrong. If he weren't supposedly some kind of genius, the team wouldn't want him around at all. Outside the homeless shelter, he hovers and wonders what would happen if he snuck away and tried to pick something up. Emily's not Morgan, she wouldn't even pretend to give him the benefit of confidence. She'd probably pick up the phone and tattle to Hotch before Spencer could get outside a three-block radius. Why she looks so consternated when she emerges is beyond him, for the moment. Perhaps he didn't need to tell Angie what he did, perhaps he left her unreasonably scared, but he doesn't deserve the glare he's getting. "What's the matter with you?" Emily demands. If only Morgan could have been so blunt -- if he'd skipped the subtlety earlier, Spencer might not have been able to deflect. Help would have been demanded without his consent, without giving him the chance to float in his denial. By now, deflection is second nature, acting befuddled by reality is all too natural. "What -- what do you mean, what's the matter with me?" "I've never seen you act like this." Snapping at her happens before Spencer can even think that it might be a bad idea, that maybe she doesn't deserve it, and that there's a chance she wasn't simply digging around for something that would knock him down a few pegs. Whether she looks hurt or simply flabbergasted, he can't tell, but the possibility of the former nestles itself in the lowest pit of his stomach. Since he hardly eats these days, its company is the other things he won't discuss: the tract marks he now has to hide, why he's put more sugar than usual in his coffee since New York, Tobias and Charles and Raphael, Alexa Lisbon, all the things he can't reconcile and, as such, tries not to acknowledge. Festering is what things like this do best, and they do it so well together. Emily isn't even the only one he snaps at -- Hotch escapes it, by virtue of being Spencer's boss, and Gideon skips out too, but this doesn't stop at being irritated by Perfect Emily Prentiss. Temper this bad is something uncharacteristic for him. If anything, he's always been too calm for normal people to handle. Now, everything sets him alight in ways that make no sense. He can almost see his bridges burning below his feet every time he tells someone off for something insignificant. The words aren't his, but they're in his voice, and inside him somewhere, the real Spencer, or some unacknowledged strength, cries out and tells him to stop saying what he doesn't mean... but he can't do it. Any time he considers trying, his reaction is anaphylactic: his lungs spasm, his throat closes up; it's a wonder he doesn't cry or break out in hives. Routine is the salve that doesn't do him wrong. In the morning, he primes his concoction -- Costa Rican beans, table sugar, and dihydromorphinone; the only mixture that can get him through the day. Lunch starts out hit or miss, he may not drug himself if things go well, but when they don't, he knows he has to make allowances for his habit; after a week or so (he's stopped keeping track), he has to give himself a break, he needs his fix. At night, when he's alone again, Dilaudid sings him to sleep better than "A Parliament of Fowls." His highs are hardly wearing off each time he gets a new one, but he can't afford to let them get that far. He knows what will happen if he does. Dreaming gets no easier; if anything, his dreams get more surreal. He writes them all down while his morning coffee percolates -- one night, he's covered in tattoos, spirals and tribal designs he can't decipher, and a parasite snugs throughout his chest, daring him to cut it out. Another time, he meanders through a war zone, the gray and blighted landscape no comfort until Elle's silhouette rises from the ground; he runs to catch her, knocks her down, and knows her, Biblically, the way he could never know JJ. Her hands are cold, her naked body paler than he would have thought, and the only time she kisses him, it tastes like smoke; he nearly chokes on it and his lungs turn to ash inside his chest. When they're done, Raphael grabs Spencer off her and throws him into a tiny cell; the walls and bars close in around him, and Spencer never sees his captor, but the voice that quotes Leviticus is unmistakable. All too often, he dreams of Tobias -- Tobias killing him like a stuck deer, Tobias feeling inside him, Tobias tying him up, Tobias's dead eyes. He dreams of the shack, of how it chilled him to the bones, and he always wakes up shivering. Waiting for the base of his morning necessity, he huddles at the kitchen table, in a sweater and a heavy blanket, and even together, they aren't enough. Loneliness is colder than the blank expanse of future stretched out before him like a corpse prepared for autopsy, than the early onset stages of withdrawal. One morning, Spencer almost calls someone, he almost bares his soul. Impatiently shaking, he goes through his phone's list of contacts -- Garcia's cell, Garcia's direct line, Gideon's cell, Hotch's cell, JJ at home, JJ's cell, Morgan's cell, Prentiss... but what is he thinking? He can't call any of them. There's only one name on the list he doesn't work with, Ethan, and they haven't spoken in so long that he has to question the wisdom of making a call. What would Ethan say, what could he tell him that Spencer doesn't already know? Nothing useful, Spencer bets -- and the only other person Spencer could talk to can't take calls, she's probably having an episode right now anyway. This is worse than being ten years old and wondering how he'll get to school registration, worse than the office to which Dad never returns. In the deepest pit, Challenger Deep in Marina Trench, thirty-six thousand feet from life, his ears deaf from the submersion and the sediment rubbing his back like a mother, Spencer finds a tender Tobias, a gentle one like the one who drugged him. This Tobias has soft hands, unbecoming of a hunter, and he drags them across every inch of Spencer's skin. Holding down Spencer's arms, he rips into Spencer's body, takes him hard and merciless, and as the joint weight of Tobias and the water crushes his chest, Spencer watches the foraminifera drifting by. Oh, to have a life so simple, to not need to cleave so hard when living should be simple, a habit that requires no needles or excess of sugar. In New Orleans, things fall apart. He's not as edgy as he was in Houston, having a routine for getting high makes him calmer and sedate -- but in place of that irksome quality, his performance slips instead. Turning his phone off feels all too strange, but ignoring Prentiss doesn't hurt him any. Missing the flight is so simple, but it doesn't feel right. Falling into Ethan's apartment, into kissing him, into more than that but nothing that really counts as sex... it happens too, too naturally, and everything around is too, too solid, why can't it all just melt away? When Morgan tells him, "The unsub's a woman," the subtext needs no explanation: it's not been that long since New York, since Spencer picked out a teenage girl by looking at a threatening note; how the Hell could he miss that now? True, he picked out Sarah Danlon's modus operandi, her imitation of Jack the Ripper, but some sign of her gender had to be there. After the case, it's Gideon who comes to find him, in the bar where Ethan plays piano. Spencer's lied to Morgan and Prentiss about the missed flight, he's told them what they expect to hear given the story and how distant with them he's grown, but the look Gideon gives him sends his expectations crumbling. It makes no accusations or pretensions, and Gideon says nothing, waits for Spencer to be ready in a way that no one else would, a comfort that someone who was just a boss wouldn't allow. How long now has he told himself that they aren't friends, that all he means to Gideon is his brain and service to the team? "How did you find me?" he asks softly. With a smile, Gideon affirms, "You're not that hard to profile." They exchange words while Ethan finishes up his set and sit together on the ride back home; no one says anything for the whole flight. Emily and JJ get reading done, Morgan puts his headphones on, and after calling Jack and Haley, Hotch falls dead silent. Brewing storms have never been so loud about their work. The drive back to the Bureau is equally quiet, and everyone files into the bull-pen like mourners at a wake. Everyone disperses, only Hotch and Gideon are together; while they chat with each other, Spencer sits at his desk and fusses with a pencil. When he hears Hotch call him to his office, Spencer almost wonders if it isn't an early auditory hallucination -- between his genetic predisposition and everything he goes through, going crazy would be no surprise. As he trudges up the stairs, Spencer's sure that he knows what's coming. He missed the flight, he disobeyed orders from a superior office; he's going to get chewed out, suspended, God only knows what else. Keeping with this expectation, Hotch and Gideon are waiting for him... but neither sits behind the desk. Hotch has his arms crossed over his chest, but neither of their expressions have the anger they're supposed to -- even in Hotch's face, where Spencer anticipates the most cold fire, the most outage at their pet genius disappointing them, all he can make out is deep concern. Spencer swallows thickly, looks from one to the other, and when neither speaks, he hazards to prod, "...Yes, sir?" Hotch doesn't respond fast enough: "...Gideon?" "Shut the door, Spencer," Gideon instructs gently. "No one else needs to hear this." Spencer does as he's told before asking, "...They don't need to hear what?" "We know what's going on Reid," Hotch answers without hesitation. "We know about the drugs." Spencer bows his head in preparation for what has to be coming; he tries to make a fallout shelter of his hair, now glad that he never bothered getting it cut, that he hasn't since before Elle left the team. You're becoming a danger to the team. Your performance is slipping. You're this close to getting fired, and if you don't stop, I'll have no choice but to report this to Strauss. I only haven't done so yet because you're a member of my team and I trust you. Don't make me regret that, Reid. He may not be that hard to profile, but predicting these fill-in-the-blank superior officer to drug-addled special agent answers is so simple that Spencer's high and has no trouble. He knows where his place is in the team: he's the idiot genius who got himself in trouble and wasn't strong enough to stop. Hotch is telling him off only as a boss. "We're worried about you, Spencer." It sounds like something Gideon should say, but it's in Hotch's voice, and he continues talking when, taken aback, Spencer looks up again. "The whole team is." When Spencer can't bring himself to respond, Hotch goes on, "We're all here for you, Spencer, and we're not going to lose you. I won't let that happen." "I'm sorry that you're even in this position, Spencer," Gideon chimes in with frank solemnity, his apology so earnest that, for the first time in weeks, Spencer shakes with something besides early withdrawal. "If I could, I would do this for you, and I'm sorry that I haven't taken better care of you when you've needed it most." In vain, Spencer tells himself that he won't cry, but before he knows it, tears roll down his cheeks and Hotch's arms are around his middle. His arms wrap tight around Hotch's shoulders, his face burrows into Hotch's neck, and his lower lip hurts where he's biting it so hard. Gideon's hand moving up and down his back is a warm comfort more earnest than his drugs, but it strangely doesn't help at all, it only makes his weakling sobs come closer to the surface, gasping for air and forcing their way out in a jagged, unpredictable rhythm. They let him have it out until the sobs subside, until the tears come out but do so quietly -- Spencer can't remember when he's ever cried so hard. Pulling back from Hotch, he rests against Gideon instead, Gideon's one arm paternal around his insubstantial shoulders. It's bound to be some miracle that he keeps eye contact when Hotch tells him, "Take a long weekend, Reid. Turn your phone off, don't even think about the office or the cases. Just work on getting yourself well." Spencer nods, but before he can say anything, Gideon tells him, "Spencer, can you please step outside for a minute." There isn't any question hidden in his tone or phrasing, so Spencer ducks outside. Before heading to the stairs, where he settles and tries to eavesdrop, he makes sure the door is cracked enough for him to hear. "I know you two are close, Jason, but if both of you are unavailable until Monday, I'm down two of my team members and I'll be stuck if something comes up." "How many weeks did we have between Houston and New Orleans, Hotch?" "That isn't the point. If a new case comes up immediately and you two aren't here--" "Hotch, he's been closing himself off and losing his trust in the rest of us. You know as well as I do how he'll be feeling -- hopeless, alone, vulnerable... I am not letting him go through that with no one else there." "We can go in shifts, Jason, the whole team--" "He needs something more than just the team right now--" The door opens and a third voice joins in the debate: "You're talking about Reid?" Morgan. What he thinks he's doing, Spencer can't even begin to fathom. "What's happening? How can I help?" "I know we all want to help Reid," Hotch says, his forced calm audibly straining. "But if we don't find some way to keep this organized, he really will be better off without us." After a short silence, Gideon insists, "I am not leaving him to go through this alone." That really should be where the discussion ends; everything about Gideon's tone implies the And that's final that, being a professional, he leaves out. Although Spencer intends to listen in to more, a soft, "Hey, Reid," pulls his attentions back around to his seat upon the stairs. Looking down from Hotch's office door, he sees Emily, JJ, and Garcia, all lined up like the Fates where, if he were stupid, he could try to make his escape. To his left, Garcia looks the most overtly sympathetic, while JJ might cry for any number of good reasons and Emily is, as usual, more stoic. Did the whole team plan this, or something? Was getting him alone with Hotch and Gideon just the first part of some whole team intervention plot? ...No, that makes no sense. If the whole team were involved, then Morgan wouldn't have needed to ask what was going on... this must just be some well-timed coincidence. There are any number of stories that Garcia could be thinking of telling as a means of getting through to him, from coming to the BAU only to find that the skinny little prodigy from CalTech had beaten her there to watching him with Nathan and knowing he was meant to be here, saving people from the worst things imaginable, but all she manages is, "Whatever it takes, you... you -- please get better, boy genius, or I swear to God, I will--" "Penelope," JJ interrupts carefully. "Spence... what she means to say is that you don't need to feel alone. We're all here for you, and that's not going to change. We care about you." He thanks them, says he knows, and with a few other assorted pleasantries, JJ and Garcia disperse; as they go, he tells them that he'll be fine. Outgrowing his habit of deflecting personal concerns, of hiding when being emotionally honest gets to be so hard... this process will take ages for him. Even when he and Morgan -- Derek -- fall together, coalesce into a whole that's more than the sum of their parts, in their earliest months as something more, Spencer will try to brush off a dangerous investigation with how he hasn't seen Mom in too long to be allowed. Even though JJ and Garcia leave – probably, Spencer thinks, to comfort each other, to reassure themselves that he isn’t lying to them this time – Emily hangs around, her odd expression entirely unreadable, some nagging hint of guilt or unforeseen knowledge behind it. She, too, has problems keeping eye contact, and she leans against the railing before speaking to him. “Reid,” she says, “I know we haven’t really gotten off on the right foot here… and I don’t want to presume to know what you’re going through, but I – if you ever want someone to talk to… well, you know where to find me.” He looks up to meet her eyes and, in a voice that, even through the lingering haze of his last hit, he recognizes as his own, whispers, “I’m sorry, Emily.” Whatever she isn’t telling him about this, whatever knowledge she shouldn’t have – she’s an Ambassador’s daughter; sure, she’s lived everywhere, learned languages enough to put the rest of the team to shame, and she’s proven herself more than competent on their team… but that doesn’t mean she has intimate knowledge or familiarity with addiction, it doesn’t fit her profile – but, even so, it’s gnawing on her like the cravings do on him. Worse than that, he owes her an apology. She deserves one more than all the others; he let himself be outright cruel when she did nothing to deserve it. He doesn’t envy her for having whatever schooling informs that offhand smile. “It’s not your fault, Reid.” Is she talking about the Dilaudid, about when he verbally attacked her, or is she speaking about something else? “Drugs can make you say things that you don’t mean.” “I – I did mean it, though,” he admits weakly. “I… I was angry – upset that you… you haven’t known me as long as Morgan, or JJ, definitely not as long as Gideon, but… you read the signs better than anyone. You were the only one being blunt with me… and I didn’t like it that no one else was reaching out.” Being honest hurts like withdrawal. He might need to stop soon, unless some blessed interruption comes. “Trust me, Reid,” she says. “As someone else who knows, that wasn’t you I was talking to in Houston. Drugs make you… they hold on and don’t let go, Reid, and they don’t want to share you with anybody.” She pauses and extends a hand; cautiously, Spencer interlocks their fingers. “You’re stronger than they are, Reid. You have to fight them, and I have faith in you.” For a moment, Spencer is almost ungrateful. He wants to ask her how she knows, and how, only having known him for a few months, she can have so much faith in him to beat this thing he can’t even really name, but then he meets her gaze. Looking in her eyes is like nothing Reid’s ever felt before. Exactly what it is, he can’t quite place – he’s been with other people who knew the same things that he does, and he’s found kindred spirits in others before, but something else is going on here. He opens his mouth and can’t find the words, and just when he thinks that they might be there, he feels a heavier, stronger hand than hers on his shoulder. Breaking his locked gaze with her, he looks up into Gideon’s eyes. “Come on, Spencer,” he says. “Let’s go home.” The long weekend, Wednesday night to Monday morning, is excruciating, the worst pain that Spencer’s ever been in, and there’s nothing he can do to make it easier for himself. At least Gideon’s with him, at least he has the strongest support network that he can think of. Every morning, Gideon makes him coffee (and gets the proper ratio of sugar to coffee, something Spencer thought no one else can manage) and breakfast, and even though the chills and nausea set in soon after, even though he never manages to keep much down, Spencer’s grateful. When he sits on the sofa, cocooned in blankets, he has to wonder whether or not the withdrawal will get him overheating soon. Even Gideon’s hand on his back can’t help with that – but the first interruption of this momentary peace doesn’t come from sweating or even from the sharp, shaking, bone-deep pain of coming off Dilaudid. “Does your mother know yet?” Gideon asks quietly, watching Spencer as he tries to write Mom another letter. “I told her I was sick yesterday,” Spencer says, barely above a whisper. Morgan and JJ came over after Hotch let them go home for the weekend; they stayed awhile, made sure Spencer was as okay as he could be. Something’s wrong. Responding shouldn’t be this difficult. Even when he’s admitting to things he doesn’t want to air, he shouldn’t have this much trouble. “I – I don’t know how to break it to her, she… she has too much faith in me not to get into things like this out here.” “You don’t have to tell her until you’re ready.” Spencer doesn’t know when he’ll ever be ready to admit that he let his mother down in the worst way possible, but he’s certainly not ready for what comes next. His stomach feels worse than it has yet. Clawing his way to standing, he gambols down the hallway and flings himself into the bathroom. He falls to his knees, slides hard across the chilly tiles to the toilet, and what he hasn’t eaten comes up too, too readily. Time slips away into the pain; Spencer isn’t even aware that it goes forward until Gideon pulls his hair back for him. In the next few months, he comes to rely on Gideon perhaps even more than he did when he first joined the team. More than anyone else, Gideon becomes his anchor, his rock, and when he disappears, Spencer floats without aim – he comes to work, he does his job, and, even so, when they get back from Denver, from dealing with unsubs who destroy entire families, he puts a chair outside of Gideon’s office. He sits there well past when he should have gone home, staring at the entrance and waiting. Statistically, the chances that he’ll get what he wants are almost negligible, but he still looks at the door and hoping that, perhaps, Gideon will walk through it. It was all a mistake, he just needed some extra time, he’ll apologize and Spencer will hug him, and everything will be okay… “Reid, it’s midnight.” He looks up into Hotch’s eyes, and sees that concern again. It’s still weird. “What are you still doing here?” “I… I know we’ve been okay without him,” Spencer explains. “But, I just keep hoping…” “Take a long weekend, Reid. Get some rest, clear your head.” Hotch lets Spencer hug him again, but Spencer doesn’t tell him what he actually plans to do. There’s only one person he can be honest with right now, and the next morning, he’s on a flight down to New Orleans. Ethan’s sofa welcomes him back as though he never left, and Ethan makes him coffee. When Ethan asks how Spencer’s been, quivering his hand by way of making his specific intention clear, Spencer tells him all about Gideon and how he left, how hard the past few weeks have been. “I can’t do it without him, Ethan,” he concludes, his voice breathy, weak, trembling. “I – I’m not strong enough.” Ethan sighs and heads for his desk drawer. “Never thought I’d get to do this twice, Reid,” he says wearily as he paws through it. “Not that I don’t like getting to see you, but you know you can’t just come down here every time the going gets rough.” He drops a pamphlet into Spencer’s lap; emblazoned across the top in stark black letters are two words: Narcotics Anonymous. It’s several months before Spencer breaks and admits that he needs to go. The cravings are intense, to the point of impeding his focus, so he goes to a meeting. ~*~ That’s where he should be right now – a meeting. He shouldn’t be here, dumping all of these problems on Gideon. It’s been long enough that Gideon has no need of him, and he should have no need of Gideon. What is he even doing here? Maybe it’s a valid desire, wanting to see if he’s past any of what he remembers, but when just talking to Gideon brings up things like these, it’s obvious that he’s not. It’s one of the downsides to an eidetic memory: he remembers everything, and even when he integrates new things into is view of the world, he can never be fully past them. Making Gideon meet him was a low move, even for him, which his stomach seems to realize. Dinner’s come and gone, and Spencer hasn’t touched his milkshake in half an hour. With a sigh, Spencer looks out the window. It’s getting dark… he could call Derek and just go back to the hotel. Anything he might have wanted, he’s not getting, and, really, he shouldn’t impose on Gideon any more than he already has. Gideon left the BAU to find some peace of mind, some faith in happy endings, and here Spencer is, challenging the fact that he has both of these things. It’s not fair to Gideon for Spencer to stay. He has a normal life now; doesn’t he deserve to keep that? “I should go.” He stands up and pulls out his wallet. “How much do I owe you for dinner?” “Come on, Spencer,” Gideon insists. Inexplicably, he delves into his backpack. “Stay a little longer. You’ve got until morning anyway, right?” Gideon sets a travel chessboard on the table and smiles. “Play with me.”