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He never wanted to do this. He never wanted the team to look at him differently, but right now Spencer isn’t worried for his reputation, he’s worried for the life of the seventeen year old boy in front of him, an officer’s gun in his hands.
“This isn’t going to help,” Spencer tries to tell him.
“It is,” the boy, Jacob, replies, “It is. I know it is.”
“It’s going to end things, sure, but nothing good will come from killing yourself, Jacob.”
“Says you.”
“Yes,” Spencer says, a breath catching. “Yes, I do, and do you want to know why? Because I have spent my entire life feeling fundamentally different from everyone I know. Every single day, Jacob, I have felt like I don’t belong in this world.”
“You—” The sob that’s been catching itself in the boy’s throat escapes. His grip on the gun is shaky. “You do?”
He takes a shaky breath; anything else feels like it’ll break his fragile state. “I was sixteen. My mom, she was sick and I’d been taking care of her since I was a kid. She got admitted to the hospital once, and suddenly I was alone on my bathroom floor with a razor blade and a bottle of pills. I wasn’t going to wake up the next morning if I had any say in the matter.”
He doesn't see the team behind him, but honestly, Spencer’s too far into this conversation to care whether they're there or not. Jacob asks quietly, “What stopped you?”
“A phone call from a mentor. He called me right before I was about to slit my wrists. I was so ready to die, but he called and asked if I wanted to go get coffee with him the next day and discuss my college path. I couldn’t say no, and I felt too bad to leave him at that coffee shop, alone, wondering why I didn’t show up.”
The boy’s hands are still shaking. Spencer takes a step forward, now just feet from him. “You went?” he asks.
“I went. I put the blade and the pills back and I went to bed, and the next day I went to coffee with him and he asked if I wanted to join the FBI. After that I kept finding one more reason not to kill myself every day.” He swallows back his own bout of tears. “I regret a lot of things, Jacob, but putting back the razorblade and the pills, that’s not one of them. I’ve never regretted choosing to live that day.”
A sob escapes the boy’s throat, and Spencer finds himself lunging forward, grabbing the gun out of his hands, flicking the safety on and throwing it far away. Jacob leans into the touch and Spencer can’t help but wrap his arms around him, pulling him close, shushing him as the tears come. He runs his hand through his dark, matted hair, wondering if this is what Gideon felt like that day he finally admitted why he went to coffee with him.
More than that, he wonders if this is how the other side of evading death feels. After you’ve chosen. He’s never felt this far away and yet teetered so close to that sixteen year old.
Hotch shuffles past him, picking up the gun. “Ambulance is five minutes out,” he says under his breath, and Spencer nods, still holding tightly to the boy. He feels so small in his arms.
His arms. There’s blood staining his sleeves, and Spencer knows there are fresh injuries there. He does his best to keep the hitch of his breath quiet, squeezing his eyes shut, knowing that ten years ago this was him. This boy in his arms was Spencer, terrified of living and burdened with being an outlier. Told he could never be good enough no matter how much he could recite. Sick of existing.
He lowers the two of them to the ground, Spencer keeping a tight grip on the crying boy. He’s going to get help, help Spencer never got, because no one ever knew. He still wears long sleeves even though the scars are barely raised lines still, hardly noticeable, but so obvious to Spencer himself that he never could make himself forget. Forgive himself, he supposes. He doesn’t think he ever did that either.
Holding the boy that could have been himself, Spencer thinks, I forgive you, to the sixteen year old kid on his bathroom floor. I forgive you.
He imagines that kid on his bathroom floor, remembers the feeling of the cold tile and seeing the renovations they’d been doing on the bathroom since he was ten. He remembers what the blade felt like. Chlorpromazine, the label on the pills read. One of his mother’s. She hasn’t been on it consistently for a few weeks, and though he’d tried to get her to take it, she wouldn’t. She’s on a twenty four hour hold now.
Now. No, not now. Spencer’s holding Jacob, a boy not unlike himself, but not himself. He holds on tighter.
A paramedic kneels by the two of them, a sweet older woman with graying hair asking if she can see Jacob.
“Sweetheart, I just want to see your arms,” she asks.
Jacob still tucks himself into Spencer’s side as he nods. “I’m not leaving,” Spencer whispers. “Promise.” He settles his hand on the back of the boy’s neck, still playing with the matted tufts there. The paramedic pulls up his loose sleeves, finding a series of cuts, small, but clear. She cleans them carefully, stating she won’t have to stitch them, just bandage.
All three of them know he’ll be going to the hospital anyway.
As they finally stand, Spencer catches sight of the rest of the team hanging back, Hotch on the edge of the scene, refusing to intrude. The three of them stand. Spencer keeps one hand on Jacob at all times, the paramedic just a foot behind. Hotch eyes him carefully but he doesn't know what it’s supposed to mean.
“Is my mom going to be at the hospital?” Jacob whispers as he stares down the ambulance.
Hotch tells him, “She’ll meet you there.” They didn’t want her on the scene. Spencer can understand why, seeing the blood staining his own shirt. It’s a sight a mother should never have to see.
“Okay.” Jacob nods, staring back into the vehicle. “I’ll be okay on my own.”
“You sure?” Spencer asks. “I don’t mind going with you.”
“I’m sure.”
He feels he shouldn’t argue. Still, Jacob climbs in the ambulance, and Spencer wonders distantly if he can watch this happen. If he can watch a boy that looks like him in some sad twisted way, and let go of the thought that he could have shot himself ten minutes prior and they all would have been too late.
He watches the doors shut and the ambulance drives away. He’s so afraid.
Spencer’s still at the scene, sitting on the curb, gripping his upper arm where he knows scars still reside. He knows it’s psychosomatic, but it stings.
He doesn’t crave the pain anymore, but on days like these he can remember what it was like.
For the first time in a while he doesn’t like the feeling of his gun on his hip. He unclips it from his belt and sets it beside his bullet proof vest, which he just stripped. Hotch, vest still on, grunts slightly as he sits down beside Spencer. Both of their eyes are pointed straight at the horizon.
“You did well,” Hotch says simply. “Situations like these are never easy ones.”
Spencer nods, swallowing back the emotion. “Sometimes it feels like talking down a psychopath would be easier than a suicidal teenager. It’s devastating.”
“It always is.”
“He reminded me of myself,” Spencer finds himself saying against his will. “Absent dad, mom who can’t care for him, genius, be it artistic genius.” It looks like me. It feels like me. I think it might be me.
Hotch adds quietly, “It can’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You’re going to make it, Spencer,” he says suddenly. “Jacob’s getting the help he needs, and you’re not who you were when you were in his position. You’ve gotten better, at least I’d like to think so.”
“It doesn’t always feel like it.”
“I care about you, you know. We all do. Please tell one of us if you think you’re… a danger to yourself.”
He shakes his head, because as much as the scars seem to sting and he’s afraid of his weapon, he also knows that when he goes home tonight he’ll eat a meal and go to bed. He won’t be finding a blade. “I’m not. I haven’t cut since I was… Nineteen, I think. I’m on meds. Even went to therapy for a while.” He wants to believe he won’t think about that blade, but he will, even if he doesn’t reach for it. Being clean doesn't mean it’s anywhere near easy. “It’s just so easy to look at him and see myself. It’s so easy to think I never really got better.”
“You did. You’re still here.”
He’s still here, and it’s not the pain that convinces him. He’s still alive, and true to his word, he doesn’t regret that.
JJ hugs him after the case. It feels nice; he also knows what happened to her sister, how much she’s grieved, how hurt she is because of someone’s desperation. He knows that this hug is just as much for her as it is him.
It feels nice.