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Every day just felt the same. Every. Single. Day.
He woke up, wished he hadn’t, went to work, somehow got through the day, went back home, downed a bottle of Wine, went to sleep. He knew it wasn’t right. That he shouldn’t be doing this. He didn’t really have a reason to be drinking this much, he had a good life…
Better than the life of many others anyway. He knew his life wasn’t perfect whatsoever, but he still had it better than so many other people. And he really wanted to stop, he really did…
Or so he told himself. But he knew – deep down – that he didn’t want to stop. He wanted help. He wanted someone to notice, to save him from this never-ending Nightmare he had found himself in.
It had started young, when he was… 11? Younger even, maybe. He just couldn’t find any joy in life anymore. He had been angry at his mother as well as his father – mostly at his father – and he felt guilty every time he realized that he was.
He didn’t deserve to be angry at his mother, she had done everything in her power to make his life good. His father… he had left them, yes, had left him at ten years old with a mother that suffered paranoid schizophrenia and could barely take care of herself, let alone a kid that was as overwhelming as he had been.
But he also understood his father, he could – theoretically – understand why he had left. So he really didn’t have any right to be angry. But he was.
He had thought that once he would get accepted into CalTech it would get better. That he would finally be recognized for his strengths, his abilities. That the bullying would finally stop. But it hadn’t.
When he had seen Gideon at that first lecture, he thought that it would get better once he had managed to get into the FBI, that he’d finally have a purpose in life – a purpose to live – then.
And for a while it had gotten better, he’d finally felt more understood, more seen. But it wore off soon. Once he realized that he was not magically perfect at everything he had to do at the BAU, that he was still different, and that everyone else was still so much better than him.
Old habits came back – he still sometimes let his fingers drift over the scars on his upper arm and his thighs, relishing in the feeling wishing he could do it again – and they even got a little worse. But still, he managed.
He didn’t pick up a blade again, – with a few exceptions, but they weren’t that bad, so they didn’t even count – he didn’t watch as water turned a shade of red when he took a shower afterwards, didn’t watch with fascination as his skin split open and went from a white line – sometimes it seemed like a crater – to a red waterfall. A small waterfall, but that didn’t matter.
When Tobias had happened, he thought that everything would get better once he survived this, then he thought that everything would get better once he managed to get clean and get his head back in the game.
But he’d just switched one drug for another, less obvious one. He only drank in the evenings, never during the day. He couldn’t risk losing this job and his friends there. Sure, he drank a lot – 1000 ml of rosé wine every evening – but there were people that were worse off, that drank more.
He didn’t have any right to feel the way he did, and he knew it. He wasn’t sick enough to justify him drinking that much, to justify that he did, in fact, sometimes pick a blade and ran it over his upper arms, his shoulders, his torso, his thighs. Never his forearms though. He couldn’t stand the feeling of wearing a long sleeve and not rolling up the sleeves and people could see the scars there. Like this he could even wear short sleeves in summer.
The first time had been when he was 13… it didn’t count though, it didn’t even really hurt, much less kill him. He had told his mom that he would take a walk and went into the nearest woods, there he had laid for god knows how many hours, a letter opener right above his heart. He had pressed it in a little, but he just couldn’t get himself to do it. It hadn’t even left a scar.
And he couldn’t bear the thought of his mom noticing that he hadn’t come home and calling the police only to find out that her cowardly son had left her all alone, just like her husband once had.
Sure, after that he may have not paid that much attention when crossing streets or similar things. But that didn’t count either, nothing had ever happened.
Other than those instances he hadn’t really tried anything. Until he changed psychologists at 16, because his other one had quit. During a conversation with him he’d accidentally let slip that he wanted to kill himself, but quickly took it back, saying he didn’t actually want to die and that he just didn’t really see another way out for him.
The new psychologist had looked at him for a long time. Then he told him, his voice stern and unfriendly, that he should never say something like that if he didn’t mean it – and that he knew that Spencer didn’t mean it – because he saw it in the eyes of people when they wanted to kill himself and that Spencer would never actually do it.
Three days later Spencer took two blisters of ibuprofen, thinking it would actually do something, he woke up with a bad stomach ache and went to school like nothing had happened.
He didn’t go to anymore psychologists after that.
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Over the course of the next two years he tried different ways. Also at 16: drinking alcohol – as much as he could anyway, because he couldn’t take the burning feeling in his throat back then – mixed with soap, perfume, toothpaste, nose spray and other soapy things that he couldn’t all remember. He threw up bubbles the next day in school, no one noticed.
He tried all kinds of different pills, also mixed with alcohol, but never enough to actually kill him, he always fucked up. And wasn’t that ironic? Trying to kill himself because he had the feeling that he just failed at everything he did, and failing. He almost laughed.
At seventeen he bought a bottle of wine and some sleeping pills. His mom found the pills in his room and took them, not because she was afraid that he would try to kill himself, but because she thought he might get an addiction. He drank the entire bottle of wine that night, hoping that somehow that would do the trick. It didn’t. But he drank a bottle of wine every evening since then.
Two times when he was still 17 and one time when he was 18, he tried to slit his wrists, but he never managed to cut deep enough, most of the time having to stop because the pain was too much. The scars from that weren’t long, but they were broad. He hadn’t just done one deep cut, knowing it would be too painful for him. Instead, he’d leaned over the toilet – he didn’t want to leave too big of a mess behind in case it worked – and just hacking violently at his inner wrists. The fact that the scars weren’t long made them easy to cover with watches and bracelets though.
He hadn’t actively tried to kill himself anymore after that, but the drinking habit stayed. He refused to get help, because he knew that he wouldn’t be taken seriously, he just wasn’t sick enough to justify his behavior. He just wanted attention.
He had decided that if he did try to kill himself again, he would do it on his birthday, that way his mother – and later on the team – would only have to grieve one day of the year, if they even did. Until then he got through with self-harm, drinking and – on the few occasions that he actually had the discipline to pull it off – starving himself for four or five days, eating only when strictly necessary.
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Today had been a meaningless day. Actually it had even been kind of good. They had successfully solved a case with as little victims as possible and they went out to eat afterwards, it had been a nice evening. Maybe that was just it, he wanted his last day to be nice. He felt like it couldn’t get any better than this, that after today there was nothing he could miss out on, nothing he hadn’t experienced yet and – most importantly – the teams his friends last memory of him would be associated with something positive.
He hadn’t even planned it. Not at all. He’d gotten a cheap, 2 liter tetra pack of white wine, having forgotten that he still had a liter of rosé wine at home – which he hadn’t gotten around to drinking when they were suddenly called in for the case – and had barricaded himself in his bedroom. He’d originally planned to just drink the rosé because it was older and less, so he would be able to go to sleep a little earlier.
But when he had gotten through the bottle he wasn’t tired… and he just didn’t feel drunk enough, so he opened the white wine as well. He got through about half the bottle before he had to go to the toilet, where he ran by his little first aid cabinet – it was right in front of his bedroom door – and decided then and there to take whatever pills he could still find in there.
He hadn’t planned on it, really. He didn’t even particularly want to die that night, he just wanted to take something, anything, and if it killed him… win-win. So he went to the bathroom, took a piss and then got the rest of the wine and sat on the floor, in front of the little cabinet.
He took out three bottles of pills, he didn’t read the labels, just took about… what? Five or seven of each and downed them with the wine – which was disgusting, by the way, he definitely preferred the rosé.
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The wine was empty and he didn’t feel like getting up, so instead he sat there. Until his doorbell rang. He panicked and threw the empty tetra pack into his bedroom, scrambling to get up – he almost fell over because of how dizzy and disorientated he was – and running to the door.
Aaron Hotchner was the last person he had expected to see on a Tuesday night, at about 2:30 a.m. standing in front of his door.
“Uh… Hotch… c’n I- can I help you?” He asked, trying his best not to sway on his feet or slur his speech. Yes, he was a grown man over the age of 21, theoretically no one could say anything if he drank something. It was, however, a different story if you drink alone – and clearly too much – when you had work the next day. Then again, Hotch wasn’t thattttt much better, because why was he still awake at 2:30 a.m. on a Tuesday night, when they had work the next day.
Hotch eyed him suspiciously and then reached out his hand towards Spencer. He looked down to see that Hotch had his Phone – he hadn’t even realized that it was gone – in it.
“I found this in my bag, it must have somehow dropped off the table and into it. I thought it would be best if I brought it back right away.” He explained, seeing Spencer’s confused face.
“Ooooohhh. Okay, yeah, uh- thank you for bringing it, that r’lly wsnt- rea’y wa’n’t- Jesus christ!” He took a deep breath and tried again. “That. really. wasn’t. necessary. though.” He finally managed to get the sentence out, pronouncing each word slowly.
Hotch’s face, though barely noticeable, scrunched up. “You smell like a bar, Reid. Just how much did you drink?” He asked as Reid – with some difficulty – took his phone out of his bosses’ hands.
He could feel himself sweating profusely at the question, embarrassed that it was this clear. He nervously cleared his throat and looked over his shoulder into his apartment as to not have to look into the other’s eyes. “J’st… I don’t know, like four glasses of wine, a lil’ less probably. I’m just not that g’d with alc’h’l.” He tried to play it off. The world was dangerously swaying around him by this point.
He looked back at Hotch and suddenly he was being pushed into his apartment, Hotch closing the door after him and getting out his own phone. Before Spencer could say or ask anything the phone’s flashlight was in his eyes. He tried to look away but Hotch grabbed his chin to make him hold still.
He put his phone away. His face was filled with disappointment and anger and the fact that Reid noticed even though he was heavily intoxicated and Hotch was a master at concealing his emotions, told him a lot.
“You’re using again.” The older man said, and it wasn’t a question, but now Reid was angry. “I’m not fuckng usin’ Hotch!” He yelled, surprised by his own outburst. “Oh you’re not?” Hotch also raised his voice and walked towards Reid’s bathroom. “Explain to me why your pupils are almost as big as your irises and barely react to light!?”
Reid knew what he was doing when he started looking through the drawers in his bathroom. He tried to stop him but Hotch wouldn’t have it.
“Reid if you don’t let me search this fucking apartment right now I’m going to fire you on the spot. I mean it.” Panic coursed through him, he could feel his face get hot. He swayed but stayed still, frozen, not knowing what to do. He knew that if Hotch went through the cabinet and found the pills and then went through his bedroom and found the booze he’d put one and one together and he’d probably end up in a psych ward, but if he stopped him he would lose his friends and his job.
He didn’t know what to do. He just froze.
When Aaron didn’t find anything in the bathroom he went into his bedroom instead, not yet seeing the open medicine cabinet. He saw the empty wine bottles and turned to face Reid, his face unreadable.
“Is all of this just from today?” He asked, and when the other just looked away ashamed, he knew the answer. “Reid this is… three liters. What the hell were you thinking?” Reid still didn’t answer, he hoped that Hotch would think that it had just been the booze and stopped looking, but of course he didn’t. He’d seen his pupils.
He stepped out of the room again and almost, almost overlooked the cabinet again. Of only Reid hadn’t forgotten to close the damned thing, then his foot wouldn’t have gotten caught in the door. He looked down, and then up at Reid again.
“Is there something you want to tell me before I look at this?” He asked before bowing down. Reid looked away again. “I’m not using.” He just mumbled and Hotch sighed heavily before he knelt in front it.
There were several bottles of pills, all of them sealed, except for three. He took them out, - thinking that he knew what the label would say – and got up again. “What is this?” He asked and Reid just shrugged.
“I don’t know.” He said.
“You don’t know?” Hotch repeated, clearly not believing him. “I’m serious, Hotch. I don’t know. I just… took them.” Hotch sighed again and read the labels, his face growing continuously more confused. “Since when did you take Adderall? This is just Tylenol…” He mumbled to himself, “And this… Reid… where and why did you get Haldol?”
It just had to be that bottle that he had grabbed. It couldn’t have been anything else, Reid thought. Now Hotch is just convinced that he’s crazy. Great. He didn’t answer, his eyes cast to the floor as he tried not to pass out. Sure, he’d taken the pills with the thought that they might kill him, but now he really wanted them to, so he couldn’t pass out now. Hotch would without question call an ambulance if he did.
But he didn’t even have to pass out, because after a few seconds of silence Hotch’s eyes widened a fraction as he realized something.
“Reid…” He said, all anger suddenly gone out of his voice, though he was still serious, maybe even more than before. “Please tell me that these weren’t all sealed before tonight.” He sounded almost desperate. He subtly glanced over his shoulder as he remembered the wine and realized how grave the situation really was.
“Reid, this-“
“I’m sorry!” Spencer interrupted him and finally looked him in the eyes – he tried to at least – but his vision wouldn’t quite focus.
“I’m sorry…” He said again, his voice barely a whisper as his vision swam – from tears or from the pills, he didn’t know – and he stumbled a little.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
He got out his phone and Spencer was sure that Hotch was just as pale as he probably was and… was he tearing up? No. He had to be hallucinating at this point.
“You can’t!” Reid begged and he knew for a fact that he was crying at this point.
“Reid I’m not gonna just-“ His voice broke and he took a shaky breath as he dialed, “I can’t just let you die. I can’t.”
He really was crying, Spencer realized and guilt washed over him. His legs gave out and black dots appeared in his vision, Hotch was by his side in an instant, checking his pulse while talking to the dispatcher in a panicked voice. Reid couldn’t make out what he was saying, his conscience drifting away slowly.
He hadn’t even written any letters, he realized. Was that bad? Did that make him a bad person? That he hadn’t even thought of his friends before he tried to kill himself?
“Stay with me Reid, Please-“
Something warm hit Reid’s arm and his last thought before everything went black was: he shouldn’t be crying because of you. Look what you did.
______________
He remembered walking through an ER he thought he recognized as one somewhere in Las Vegas, though he wasn’t sure which one exactly though. The next time he came to he was alone, at least as far as he could tell. He didn’t really know where he was, but he felt calm, like he was just in his bedroom. He thought he remembered little figures climbing around on the clothing rack on the wall, he thought he remembered whispering something to them and them answering, he couldn’t be too sure though.
When he woke up for the third time he was still really out of it, but at least he could just about recognize certain things now. For example, he was pretty sure that he was not in fact in LA, but rather in a hospital in DC, which he supposed made sense.
He looked to his left and noticed that Hotch was sitting in a chair, watching him with tired eyes. When he noticed that Reid was awake he managed a strained smile. “Hi…” He whispered.
“Hi.” Reid whispered back, his throat dry. He had a headache and his stomach had had better days as well. There was a long silence before Reid sighed and looked at the ceiling.
“I’m sor-“ he started, but didn’t get far as he was interrupted by another voice.
“Don’t you dare apologize, boy genius.” Garcias voice was quiet and hoarse, it was clear that she’d been crying. Spencer looked around, trying to figure out where Garcia was and how he hadn’t noticed her before.
She stood in the doorframe to his room, clearly having only just come in. Just like the rest of the team. They were all here. A clump formed in Spencer throat and he couldn’t help the tears that fell.
They were by his side in a second, hugging him tightly.
Yayyyyy :D happy end!
(It’s 2:17 a.m. and I genuinely don’t know how to end this without it being at least 500 words more that I can’t write because my back and head are killing me, ngl.)