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Spencer knew about soulmates. He, like most people, learned all about them as a young child. His mom liked to read to him classic stories of famous historical soulmates, and she told him multiple times the story of when she found out who her soulmate was. Her soulmate was her childhood best friend. She told him about the joy of finding her soulmate, and the happy times they enjoyed together, but she also told him of the unimaginable pain she felt when her soulmate died in a car accident.
Spencer never really expected to get his own soulmate. The chances of having a soulmate were 46.3%, which meant less than half the population. That plus his terrible luck, meant he wasn’t at all surprised when his 16th birthday arrived and he didn’t feel a soulmate connection. Of course there still was a chance it would happened later, neither soulmate would feel the connection until they were both 16, but Reid didn’t have his hopes very high.
When he turned 19, and still felt no magical connection, he knew he’d never have a romantic soulmate. Those were never more than 3 years apart in age, but platonic soulmates could be up to ten years apart.
So when Spencer woke up feeling not only a soulmate connection, but also the phantom pains that could sometimes be felt through a soulmate connection, one bright morning when he was 20, to say he was surprised would be an understatement. But he was also concerned.
The pain was intense. Spencer knew that soulmates could feel each other’s pain, but it was a well known fact you never felt more than one fourth of your soulmate’s pain, with the possible exception of the pain of their death.
So Spencer was concerned about his soulmate. He wrote on his forearm, as soulmates could see anything their soulmate wrote on their forearm,(but only what their soulmate wrote, if you wrote something on your friend’s arm and that friend had a soulmate, your friend’s soulmate would not see it.) asking if his soulmate was alright. His soulmate was definitely not alright, Spencer had been beaten by bullies enough that he could recognize the phantom pain was probably the result of some kind beating, but Spencer had never been beaten this bad.
He wait a few anxious hours, but didn’t receive a message back. Then he felt a constricting phantom pain along his forearms. His heart stuttered in his chest. He’d heard horror stories of this kind of thing before. Sometimes abusive parents and kidnappers put metal plates called soul guards around the forearms of their victims. They were extremely difficult to removed, and the victim couldn’t write to their soulmate, or see anything their soulmate wrote to them.
Spencer hoped that the pain was something else, anything else, but when hours passed with no reply, and the phantom pains got worse, he knew something was wrong.
He went to the nearest FBI SID(Soulmate Investigations Devision) to report it, but while the agents were sympathetic, and made notes of what little he could tell them, they told him that there wasn’t much they could do. There simply wasn’t enough information. They would open a case file, but the chances of the case going anywhere were slim.
Spencer went home, and hoped that this was some kind of one time event, that his soulmate would heal, and send him a message with a reasonable explanation for the pain and lack of communication. Maybe there was an accident or something, and his soulmate was unable to reply due to injuries.
A few months went by, and his soulmate’s injuries healed, but before they were even fully healed, they were replaced with new injuries.
His soulmate was injured so often, that Spencer had to learn not to flinch when he was in public. He didn’t like to looks people gave him. It was difficult sometimes, some of the injuries felt pretty serious, like knife slashes and even stab wounds. Oddly, the wounds seemed to heal a bit quicker than Spencer thought was normal. That, or since soulmate pain was only a fourth of the strength, once the wounds healed somewhat, Spencer just didn’t feel them anymore.
When Spencer got an opportunity to join the FBI a few months later, he jumped at it. He hoped he could one day save his soulmate from the situation he was in(he knew it was a he because some of his injuries including kicks and/or punches between the legs). He knew that the chances of saving his own soulmate were low, but maybe if he could save other people’s soulmates, it would be worth it. If he could prevent anyone else from feeling this pain, he would.
Working in the BAU was not an easy job. The horrible things he witnessed would stick with him forever, some of them so bad he would remember them even if he didn’t have an eidetic memory. Like the screams and wails of people who, while waiting at the police station for their kidnapped soulmate to be rescued, felt their soulmate die.
Sometimes Reid couldn’t help but wonder how he would react if his soulmate died. It was morbid, but he couldn’t help but entertain the thought when it crossed his mind. Would he would scream? Wail? Faint? Go catatonic?
Reid enjoyed working in the FBI’s Behavioural Analysis Unit. But it was certainly difficult work. The first time he saw a victim who had been forced to wear soul guards, he felt physically ill. He cried himself to sleep that night, and woke up to nightmares of his soulmate being one of the bodies they found. Despite the difficultly, it was worth it to see the reunions between soulmates(and family members and friends and significant others, but especially soulmates.).
Reid’s team didn’t know he had a soulmate. It wasn’t something you asked people as you got to know them. Lots of people were sore that they never got a soulmate, and it was extremely uncomfortable if you asked someone who’s soulmate died, so people just didn’t ask. If you wanted to know, you waited for the person to tell you, or you waited until you saw their arms. People who had soulmates frequently wrote to each other, so you would see messages, or wrinkled sleeves.
Hotch rarely showed his arms, he was one of those people who considered having messages from your soulmate visible as unprofessional, but his sleeves were always wrinkled.
Morgan liked to have his sleeves up, but Garcia often send him flirty messages that were not appropriate for the workplace, so he frequently had to pull his sleeves down.
Garcia on the other hand didn’t care at all about what was proper for the workplace and what wasn’t, so whether her sleeves were up or down depended entirely on which way her outfit looked better. Also unless you use something like a pen to write your messages, it wouldn’t appear on your own skin, just your soulmates, so when Garcia traced messages on her arms with just a finger for Morgan, they only appeared on Morgan’s arms, and he usually sent her slightly more appropriate messages than she sent him.
Reid never rolled up his sleeves, and on the rare occasions he wore a short sleeve shirt, there were no messages on his arms, so everyone assumed he didn’t have a soulmate.
As time went on, Reid never corrected people’s assumptions. He usually hid his flinches at the phantom pain pretty well, and when he couldn’t, he played it off as tripping over nothing. He was known to be clumsy after all, might as well take advantage of it.
The pain was there nearly constantly from the moment his soulmate turned 16, but at one point it changed. Slashes and stabs were exchanged for bullets and grazes.
Reid tried many times throughout the years to contact his soulmate, but he never replied. Reid knew that it was probably because of the soul guard, at least at first, but at some point after about a two years, his soulmate started getting injuries to his arms that had previously been prevented by the soul guards.
Reid couldn’t help but wonder why his soulmate didn’t contact him. Many thoughts passed his mind, none of them good. Did his soulmate even care about him? Did his soulmate not understand how soulmates worked? Had his soulmate been so injured he couldn’t or didn’t know how to respond? He had suffered numerous injuries to the head, and sometimes the phantom head pain Reid felt was to severe to hide from his teammates, so he taken to claiming migraines as an explanation.
That last option worried Reid the most. He loved his mother very much, but it was difficult, and painful to love someone who wasn’t mentally well. He was sure he would love his soulmate no matter what, be he wasn’t looking forward to the pain and difficulty there would be if he was also mentally unwell. It would be just his luck if that was the case.
Reid was pretty used to the phantom pain by now. Some days were more difficult than others, but he had learned how to ignore it. However one day Reid felt pain he could not hide his reaction to.
He had felt numerous slashes and stabs before, in numerous locations, but he had never felt one is this location before.
He was walking with Hotch towards the conference room, in the police station of the week, after stopping in their kitchen to grab a few coffees when he felt it.
He had shown his legendary clumsiness when he had started walking towards the kitchen, his soulmate was in a fight and getting injured. As a result, Hotch didn’t trust him to bring back the coffee without spilling it. Reid took offence to that, but then…
He couldn’t stop his coffee mug from slipping out of his hand, and crashing onto the floor as he gasped, and brought his hands to his neck.
Some had slit his soulmate’s throat.
He barely registered Hotch worriedly steering him into the conference room and onto a chair, he was to focused on the phantom pain. He brought a hand in front of his face and looked at it, half expecting to see blood on it, but there was none. He wasn’t the one who’s throat got slit, it was his soulmate.
Reid was a smart man. A certifiable genius in fact. That often came in handy, but not today. He new the statistics. He knew how few people could survive their throat being sliced open.
But his soulmate wasn’t dead yet. Reid felt a glimmer of hope, which he tried desperately not to cling to. He also knew that death wouldn’t necessarily be immediate. It could take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to bleed out.
A few minutes came and went, and his soulmate was still alive. The pain was still there, but his soulmate was still there as well, still alive. That means one of two things, either his soulmate is just taking longer than usual to die, or he’s not actually dying.
Reid is shaken out of his thoughts, literally, by Morgan shaking his shoulders. “Reid? Reid? Talk to me man, what’s going on? Do we need to call an ambulance?”
“Huh?”
“Reid? You with us? Are you ok?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
Morgan looks at him skeptically. “You are not fine my man, you really scared us. What happened?”
Reid takes a deep breath and considers his options. His team has no idea about his soulmate, maybe he could lie about this. One look at his team’s worried faces and he knows he can’t do that. They would be able to tell if he lies, the only reason he was able to keep this a secret for so long was because no one directly asked him, they just assumed. Maybe, just maybe it would be nice to finally tell someone about his soulmate. He’s talked to his mom about him of course, but maybe it would be good to talk to his teammates, his friends. His thoughts are interrupted by JJ.
“Reid? You still with us?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
He lets out a breath, and glances at his team’s worried faces, then looks at the floor. “I umm.”
He fidgets a bit and then lowers his voice to almost a whisper. “My soulmate. Someone…” he takes a shuddering breath. “Someone slit his throat.”
His statement is met with several gasps. Reid glances up, and can see their horrified faces. Morgan and Hotch are especially horrified, as they have soulmates.
“Is…” Prentiss can’t bring herself to finish the question.
“He’s alive right now.”
Reid’s voice shakes. “But I have no idea idea if he’s gonna stay that way.”
“I’m so sorry Reid. I can’t imagine if that happened to Garcia.”
Reid continues looking at the floor. His eyes start to get blurry, and then tears start to fall from them.
“Do you know who he is?” Hotch asks.
Reid shakes his head and whispers. “I don’t know anything about him. Anything except…” He trails off, thinking about the horrifyingly constant phantom pains.
“Hey.” Morgan kneels down in front of Reid so he can make eye contact. “We find him. Tell us what you know about him, and Garcia can find him. You know how she is, she can find anyone.”
Reid starts crying harder. Morgan sits on the chair next to him, and pulls him into an awkward hug. The rest of the team move to the other side of the room to give them some privacy.
“I know this is hard, but talk to me, please. We won’t stop trying until we find him. I promise.”
After a few more sobs, Reid turns his pale, tear filled face to Morgan. He hesitates, but he opens his mouth, and the dam breaks. Through sobs he tells Morgan everything, how his soulmate is always in pain, how he never sends messages to him. His theories why, and how he just wants his soulmate to be safe.
After that, Morgan has a whispered conversation with Hotch, and then brings Reid back to their hotel. He falls asleep surprisingly quickly, the exhaustion of his emotions and crying catching up to him.
The next day Reid can still feel his soulmate’s pain, and knows he’s still alive.
Hotch refuses to let him work on their current case, and his teammates take turns keeping him company. All of them are upset that he never told them about his soulmate, but that is overshadowed by their being concerned and horrified at what his soulmate has been though. They reassure him that Garcia is searching for him, and won’t stop until she finds him, but they all know it might be futile. Reid simply doesn’t have enough information about him to give her.
After the case, they head home, and Reid convinces Hotch to let him back to work in time for their next case. He manages this by telling him that he needs something to distract him from the pain his soulmate is in.
After that, life goes back to normal. Reid sends messages to his soulmate, but doesn’t receive any back, and the BAU travels the country, solving cases.
He hopes that he’ll meet his soulmate one day, but he’s accepted that the chances are slim. For now, he continues spending time with his team, his friends. He tells them when the pain gets bad, and they comfort him. They, especially Garcia, never stop searching for his soulmate.