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The sweet jazz of Billie Holiday’s voice drifted through the relatively empty bar, and for once, Spencer’s mind was quiet. Ever since Maeve he found himself visiting the Devil’s Nest, a bar mixed with jazz club with strong New Orleans originations in an almost obsessive fashion. Go to work, get a case, finish the case, get sad, get a drink, repeat. When Emily ‘died’ he had found solace in the shooting range, but once his aim was steady and shot clean he lost the joy in berating his own failures and striving to do better. So, like any other sane adult, he drank. Never enough to be completely inebriated, or drunk. If anything the atmosphere is what tipped him off the most. At most he would leave slightly tipsy and call a cab, but more often than not Spencer found himself wedged in the corner of the establishment with what in his opinion was the best view in the house.
His back was to the wall and after years on the field that was the only way he felt remotely safe, the stage where musicians came to play was blocked by the bar but that was fine because the real reason Spencer came here was to watch the people. Never did he strike up a conversation, but for years he sat there and watched. He watched as hundreds of people came and went. And with a mind like his, it was impossible to forget. He remembered every word and every painful look that stared down into their alcoholic beverages, cataloguing them to be stored away in his infinite depths of knowledge.
But, unlike his profession, Spencer didn’t profile them. He just watched as they told the bartender stories ranging from drunken one night stands to the loss of a child, and without a word he watched. The regular drunks and hookers, sad businessman with unhappy marriages, the bankrupt stock broker who had to give up custody of his child, the waitress with dreams of grandeur, and finally him. Sitting in the corner at 12 PM on a Sunday, nursing a glass of Bourbon and contemplating the latest tragedy life had spit at him.
Derek Morgan.
Distantly he thought of the foggy nights he spent detoxing in his best friend’s bachelor flat, shaking and sobbing into his arms that ‘Everyone leaves me, why does everyone leave me? I didn’t even get to say goodbye.’
Weeks later he had thought back to that night and remembered the safety he felt in Derek’s arms, the solid warmth he brought to his shattering soul teetering on the edge of giving up and giving in, and he remembered the words he had whispered reassuringly in his ear as he stroked the sweaty hair from his face.
“I won’t leave you, I’ll never leave you pretty boy. Shh, it’s okay, I’m right here. Never without saying goodbye.”
‘Well,’ Spencer thought, ‘he didn’t lie.’ At first, in that house, when he had no clue that Derek would get out of it alive he had repeated over and over in his mind that Derek would never lie. He wouldn’t do that to Spencer, so he had to be okay.
And then he was okay, but then he wasn’t. Watching his best friend break down and lash out in anger after his wife was shot gave him bitter nostalgia, because he had acted the same way when Diana took Maeve. He listened to Hotch tell Morgan why he couldn’t take the case, and listened to him fail to talk him out of it and turn to Spencer for help.
Because like Hotch, Spencer knew exactly how he felt. Of course, that didn’t deter him. Desperately he wanted to tell Derek that ‘It’s okay, I’m here, I understand. Maeve and I were going to start a family, I know what it’s like to worry- to despair’, but instead he rattled off cold facts and spoke with a professional detachment to the situation. It hurt like hell, but it’s what he needed to say. To help, because if he had said those words Derek would have realized even in the panic of the person you love in danger, that Doctor Spencer William Reid was in love with him.
Of course, it had been like that for years. But for all his faults the one thing Spencer could rely on was his poker face and he suffered in silence. Ever since that time spent alone with Derek, he had harboured feelings for him that he promptly stomped down and crushed behind some half assed reassurance that it was just his mind latching onto something stable in a moment of disaster. For years he held strong and said nothing, he even fell in love again- but fate was cruel and everything always ended back to him seeking Derek out for comfort after another person left him, uprooted his life and tore a piece of his heart away without something as simple as a goodbye.
But this time it was different. This time, Derek was leaving and Spencer couldn’t be mad because he understood, and he was so happy that the man he was in love with had found a wife and had a son, and that he could put behind work to embrace his new life and give his child what his father never gave him.
And so SSA Derek Morgan said goodbye.
Reid wasn’t angry. No, he was speechless. Even after Hankel, Adam, his father, hell even after Maeve his mind replayed the events like a broken record. Taunting him over and over on what he could have done differently to save them. To be able to say goodbye.
This time, finally, he was able to say goodbye. He was able to whisper the words ‘I love you’, to have the promise of seeing him again and the comfort of Derek’s own flesh and blood was named after him. But even after all of that, he felt numb. His mind was quiet and for once he knew there would be no sleepless nights of trying to dissect his memories to come up with solutions to the eventual abandonment of everyone that ever loved him. No, all that he could hear was the soft jazz and clink of glass on table.
So like the selfish man he was, Spencer Reid wished he never had to say goodbye.