Chapter Text
It’s simple, he reassures himself, as he comes back from his unconscious state on the floor of the matience closet. After today— which he assured himself would be the last day he got high, he would focus on everything and anything to distract him from the cravings.
He pushes himself up, rolling down his sleeve and slipping out of the closet before returning to the bullpen. Emily is staring at him like she can see right through him and it leaves him unsettled to his very core.
She blinks at him before looking away, and Morgan quickly obscured his view.
“Hotch needs you in his office,” He states, and theres something in his voice that’s equally as alarming as the heat behind Emily’s stare. “Now.”
Reid walks up the steps, shoving his shaking hands into his pockets as he kicks open the door with a sigh.
Hotch looks up, eyes cold and serious, “close the door behind you.”
That’s not good, Reid thinks distantly, nodding as he closes the door with his back as hands still shoved deep in his pockets to hide the shaking.
“This will never leave these four walls. The team has been worried about you, and we just pulled your tox screens from the hospital. Your behaviour started making a lot more sense when I realised what was happening.”
The room is spinning, and not because Spencer is definitely still coming down from high. He feels Hotch’s hands on his shoulders guiding him back down onto the couch as Spencer fumbles for words.
“You can’t— I’m— those are private,” Spencer wheezes, looking at his shaking knees, “I don’t need— there’s nothing wrong.”
Hotch simply sits on the coffee table, observing Reid for a long moment, “you’re high now, aren’t you?”
Spencer can’t meet Hotch’s eyes
“It’s okay to need help,” Hotch tells him, but Spencer’s eyes are still trained on the ground. “What’s not okay is to not want to try at all.”
“I tried,” Spencer mumbles, “but I was so mad at everything and I didn’t like feeling that.”
Hotch sighs, glancing at the bullpen where the team is huddled together shamelessly staring.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Hotch commands, but his voice is oddly soft, “I’m going to send you home this week—“
“But—“
Hotch ignores him, moving on, “We’ll tell everyone you have the flu, but I will be sending the team to watch you in shifts. Capisce?”
Spencer finally raises his eyes to Hotch who simply stares him down in return, “I know you don’t like help, but it’s either this, or I send you to rehab and have to write an official incidence report and notify more people.”
Spencer swallows hard, fiddling with the buttons of his cardigan, shaking hands in full view.
“Reid,” Hotch sighs, “You know we’re doing this because we love you, right?”
Spencer shrugs complacently, gnawing on the inside of this cheek, “I guess.”
He tries to ignore the voice in the back of his head that whispers that the cracks in him are too deep to be loved. His mess is not beautiful, it is just that. A mess of insurmountable flaws.
“I need you to be honest, are you still coming down from a high?” Spencer just nods- a single clipped bob of the head.
Hotch nods, “How long does it take to come down?”
“A couple hours. I dosed probably like thirty minutes ago,” he murmurs, voice abashed, “this is the clearer side, in another half hour I’ll be a mess.”
Hotch just listens, nodding. His eyes reflect his disappointment, but there’s something fatherly about how he’s looking at Reid, “I’ll go get you some water, I want you to take a quick nap. That’s an order, lay down.”
Spencer just lets out a huff, laying down on his back as he stares at the ceiling. Hotch disappears and reappears, setting a water on the coffee table and returning to his work.
A little over half an hour passes before the high fully hits Reid. The ceiling is splotching with colours and it feels like the couch he’s laying on is swaying beneath him. He can feel Hotch’s eyes on him, but he can’t begin to think about anything besides how good it feels to be lost.
He lets his eyes close and slowly he drifts into the numbing void of nothingness, somewhere between darkness and bliss.
Once Reid’s breathing has dropped off, eyelids fluttering with whatever dreams are running through his head, he rises to his feet gesturing to the briefing room— the team following in suit.
Once they arrive he sighs, closing the door behind them and slapping the tox screens down on the table.
“This doesn’t feel real,” Penelope is the first one to speak, “out of all of us, it was Boy Wonder.”
A dark cloud fills the space around them, and it’s Prentiss who sighs, “I can’t believe it took us this long to...” she trails off, resting her chin on her palm.
“Reid is high,” Hotch says, and they look at him, “He’s sleeping it off in my office but as soon as he’s up I’m sending him home.”
“I’ll go with him,” Morgan offers, “I have more experience than I’d care to admit.”
“I’ll go too,” JJ says with a nod, “I’ve taken care of a sick Reid.”
Hotch nods, continuing, “I’ve given him the week off. I want someone with him at all times. Remember, he’s going to be a mess during the withdrawal.”
“This is Reid,” Penelope murmurs sadly, “We’d do anything to see him okay again.”
“This is Spence,” JJ echos, “and we will do anything to help him right now and always.”
Reid wakes up to JJ and Morgan sitting over him, watching him carefully. He can’t stop the mumble that escapes his lips when he murmurs, “oh, it wasn’t a dream.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, Kid,” Morgan jests, but it does little to lighten the mood with the serious overtone of the situation.
“We’re taking you home,” and it’s much to their surprise that the kid complies without complaint. He rises to his feet, stiff limbs cracking as he follows them out and to the car.
He sits in the backseat, eyes staring vacantly out the window, body still with the exception of the tremors in his hands.
He’s broken out of his stupor by JJ, who’s turned backwards in her seat to look at him, “Do you have any on you?”
“If you have my bag, yeah. If my bags still in Hotch’s— oh, yeah. It’s in the bottom, there’s an inner side pocket,” He mumbles, “there’s also some behind my copy of War and Peace. I shoved it in the back of my book case. The needles and capsules are in my go bag in the back of my car— the one I used today is in one of the biohazard containers in the bathroom.”
“Good,” JJ says softly, “That’s a start.”
Reid adverts his gaze back out the window, allowing his head to thumb back against the seat of the car.
“I can see the wheels turning in your head, Kid,” Morgan avers, sending Reid a wary glance in the mirror. “What going on up there, kid?”
“Did you know they approved Dilaudid as a lethal injection drug? It’s potency is already substantial enough that it’s—“ he trails off, catching the concerned look that Morgan sends him in the rearview.
“Is that your little Boy Genius way of telling us you want to die?” Reid can tell from the way Morgan phrases it that’s it’s meant to be lighthearted.
But he can’t bring himself to answer.
The car goes silent and Morgan glances back at Reid a few times in the mirror before pulling the car over and turning to look at him. Reid just stares back, gnawing silently on the side of his cheek.
“Am I missing something here, Kid?” Morgan asks, eyes blown wide and mouth slightly ajar, but Reid shakes his head dismissively, lips pulled into a thin line.
“No, I’m... just addicted to an opiate— suicidal thoughts are actually a biproduct of— this is just unsettling you more isn’t it? Oh look at that I’m exhausted,” he closes he eyes, chin on his wrist as he feigns a few snores.
“We’re not done—“ JJ clears her throat, and a Morgan just huffs out a frustrated sigh, gritting his teeth and restarting the engine.
Morgan just sends a few stray glances at Reid, and he finds himself wondering if the kid actually did fall asleep. The answer is made clear when the car comes to a full stop, and Morgan sees Reid sitting up— lacking anything that remotely resembles grogginess.
He makes eye contact with Morgan in the mirror and he jolts, eyes darting back and forth before he exaggerates a yawn, rubbing his eyes, “What a good nap?”
Morgan rolls his eyes and he sighs, following the duo with a low hung head as they reach his apartment. He shuffles around his pockets for his keys, jamming them into the door. He allows JJ and Morgan to glance around— JJ’s eyes immediately find the bookshelf, and when she lands on the binding of War and Peace, she pulls it out.
Spencer watches her shoulders drop minutely, her forearm disappears into the hole and pulls out two vials.
She turns to look at him with poorly masked despair, “I’m putting all of my trust in you. I am choosing to believe that you wouldn’t lie, and that this is all of it.”
Spencer’s bottom lip nestles it’s way between his teeth, shoulders dropping as he sits down adjacent his coffee table, pulling the uncut two vials he tucked away in the couch cushions.
“These are the only other ones,” he laments, extending them up and out to her, earnestly (and somewhat ashamed) tacking on, “I promise.”
She nods, disappearing out the front door with them and he deflates, dropping his head into his hands.
“You tired, kid?” Morgan appears in his peripheral view. Spencer simply shakes his head, ”you should lay down. As soon as withdrawal hits you’re going to wish you had.”
Spencer complies, knowing that in the next few hours he’s going to be the type of person that makes his friends leave— though distantly, he supposes, he’s been that person since childhood.
He can hear Morgan opening and closing his cabinets and he allows his mind to wander, never truly falling asleep despite having allowed his eyes to flutter to a shut.
He hears his door open and shut and he realises that JJ must have returned— he feels her hovering above his prone frame prior to making any motions that actually acknowledge her presence.
Slowly, she crouches in front of him tucking away the strands of hair that have made theirselves at home on his face.
She slowly rises to her feet, leaving him lying on the couch. She props a bit of the blinds open, incase Reid is either pretending to be asleep for her own an Morgan’s mental stability, or wakes up. It’s probably the former, but a woman can dream.
“Is he asleep?” Morgan questions, not even glancing away from the pantry.
“Seems like it,” She responds simply, lifting herself to sit on the island counter, “What’s the damage here?”
“He’s a mess, I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.” Morgan pills open Reid’s fridge and freezer first.
All together, there’s a mostly empty pack of dinosaur chicken nuggets, jarred maraschino cherries, a block of cream cheese, and a bottle with only orange Flintstone’s Gummies.
And the sight of the pantry isn’t much better. Inside, there sits melatonin, three bags of ground coffee and a single saltine cracker on the shelf.
JJ doesn’t hesitate at the sight, pulling her phone from her pocket and calling Prentiss.
“Hey, can you tell whoever is watching Reid next to bring some... well, anything of sustenance?” She rolls her eyes, “I’m talking chicken noodle soup? Eggs? Maybe even a vegetable of some sort?”
“It’s that bad?” She sighs.
“Worse,” Morgan calls softly, rifling through the cupboards.
“Yeah,” Prentiss says, “Hotch is headed your way with the goods now. He’s not going to stay but he didn’t want to leave you two there without any source of food.”
“Oh, we could share the five dinosaur nuggets and the block of cream cheese,” JJ suggests, the desperation in her voice clear.
“Block of— I’ll bet you three shots that it’s mouldy,” Prentiss says.
Morgan shrugs, reaching into the fridge and pulling the cream cheese from its packet gagging when he sees a single bite mark in it.
“Oh my God,” Morgan says breathlessly, “He’s more of a mess than I thought.”
A few hours pass of JJ and Morgan tip toeing around the apartment before the couch dips beside Reid and a hand finds its way to his shoulders.
He hasn’t been asleep, per se, but he can tell his eyes definitely have been closed for a few hours based on the odd feeling that he can only relate to grogginess when he looks at JJ.
Time flies when you’re on an extremely potent opiate that’s been cut with a psychedelic, he thinks coolly.
“Hey,” she states softly, “I thought you’d be harder to stir, you haven’t moved in hours. Do you have any appetite? Hotch brought some food. I think we should try to get some into you now because you probably won’t be able to keep much down once the withdrawal symptoms hit.”
Spencer looks at her, rubbing a hand over his face, “How much do you want me to force down?”
“Just a little. If you find you’re more hungry than you thought, then that’s fantastic,” she holds the bowl of soup while he props himself up.
As expected, he just kind of swirls the spoon around after he forces a bit of it down.
“Morgan?” Spencer asks quietly, “Have you ever seen someone go through withdrawal?”
Morgan just nods, and Spencer continues, “I want you to know I’m advance that I’m sorry for whatever I do. The last time I went without Dilaudid it was only a few days— thirty nine hours— and I hated who I was.”
The two just stare at him, and he swallows down a spoonful of warm broth, eyes full of unadulterated worry, “How bad is this going to be?”
“Horrible,” Morgan sighs, and he looks like he would give anything to see Reid be anywhere else, “But we’re going to be here around the clock, and you’re going to be okay in the end.”
Reid swallows thickly, nodding, “I’m scared.”
And he can tell from the way that JJ says, “everything will be okay again,” that she’s trying to convince herself of it too.
“Garcia looked into it, and she said it’ll take you about seven to ten days to fully detox, but the symptoms will peak anywhere from twelve to twenty four hours after your last dose.”
They wait expectantly and Reid realises they’re waiting for him to fill in the blanks, “three, I took my last dose at three.”
Morgan turns to glance at the clock, “in that case, you should try to go to bed. It’s probably going to be your last good night of asleep for a few days.”
Reid may not be the best at social cues, but he understands the unspoken, ‘and mine’ behind Morgan’s words.
So he nods, taking another hearty sip of the chicken noodle soup in his hands, before rising to his feet. He can feel the tendrils of pain beneath his skin, the pins and needles— not unlike when you accidentally grab a rose by its thorns.
This is the beginning of a chapter, he thinks, one that is going to be one of the most painful in his little book of life.
And as he trudges forwards to his bedroom, he realises that he’s just signed, sealed, and post marked his letter of fate.