Chapter Text
Cat isn’t a fan of therapy.
Unfortunately for her, attending weekly sessions is a part of Cooper’s deal. She works as a part of his team helping them take down human traffickers and assassins, she lives somewhere she can easily be checked in on, she keeps her phone on her and answers every text, call, or other notification, and she deals with her shit. In exchange she stays out of prison, and if she is good enough for long enough then maybe someday she can negotiate the leash she is on.
The first thing she plans on negotiating is therapy.
Dr. Hunter is patient with her, Cat will credit the woman that. For the most part, Cat has been sidestepping her questions ever since their first meeting. She rehashed plenty of her old wounds during her prison meetings with Spencer, and she has had no desire to open them up again to a stranger.
“You’re quiet today.” Hunter observes sixteen minutes into their session.
Cat cuts her eyes away from the stain on the carpet she has been staring at, and up to the woman.
“I’m usually quiet.” She reminds Hunter, who smirks in that little, half-amused way, the one which screams to Cat that she can very clearly see how little effort she is actually putting into hiding her turmoil today.
How she wants to talk today.
She just has no fucking idea what to say.
“I did hear about your eventful weekend.” Hunter broaches, and Cat scoffs.
It’s part of the deal. She doesn’t ever have to talk about the team’s cases or anything else which happens on the clock, but Cooper does send Hunter all of their debriefing reports in the name of transparency.
Personally, Cat thinks it’s a thinly veiled excuse for making it that much harder for her to have any secrets.
Whatever the official reason, she is usually able to ignore that particular stipulation of her contract. Hunter almost never brings up anything which is detailed in the reports, and on the rare occasions when Cat decides to share just for the sake of filling the silence, she reacts to things as though they are new information.
“I hear it was quite a… quite a personal, case.”
Cat huffs.
“It was.” She admits, nothing more, nothing less.
Even if “personal” is the understatement of the century.
Truth be told, she’s known since the day she signed on to Cooper’s “reformation” deal that, sooner or later, she would come across her own past. She assumed it would be in hunting down an old contact of hers, or an old client. The worst-case scenario she envisioned was hunting down someone she worked with more than once, and then having to process that, and potentially have to face a test of how far beyond her old ways she really has come.
She never predicted they would have to rescue the only decent foster parent she ever had, and from the hands of Lindsey Vaughn.
She should have.
She should have known better than to tell Juliette all the things she and Spencer talked about. She should have realized it was dangerous to mock his persistence to her cellmate. At the time, she was confident it was going to play to her own benefit. She knew Juliette would be getting out of prison sooner rather than later, and when she did, Cat’s intentions were to send her on her way with some sort of instructions to show Spencer Reid just what he was dealing with in her; how wrong he was about her.
She never thought things would turn out so different.
“Have you spoken to Spencer at all?” Hunter asks, pulling her from her reverie. “Since the case?”
Cat frowns. Images flash through her mind of her last few days, and Spencer. She plays back kissing him outside of the hospital, and then again in his kitchen. She’d left his apartment after that, and while she did see him last night they didn’t talk about much of what happened.
Not after Saturday, and not with the promise of today looming over them. It was an unspoken agreement; they wanted one night to just talk about normal things.
Well… As normal as the two of them can manage anyway. Things like her team, and his team, and the family of geese he and Addie saw occupying a parking space when the two of them went out shopping for some clothes and toiletries for her.
“He’s meeting with the social worker today.” She sighs, deciding this is probably the easiest way to begin discussing the situation. “In an hour.”
Hunter nods, and makes a note in her booklet.
“To discuss Addison?”
Cat nods, her eyes downcast. She didn’t ask Spencer what exactly the meeting is going to entail; she is already well aware. It’s supposed to be the end of his emergency custody of the poor little girl who got mixed up in all this. It’s supposed to be her social worker from New Jersey coming simply to take her back.
But… Cat knows Spencer.
“He’s going to fight to keep her.” She says aloud, and Hunter raises her eyebrow.
“He told you that?”
Cat shakes her head, and it’s quiet, until Hunter sighs.
“Then how can you be sure?”
Cat frowns, and Hunter purses her lips, waiting for an argument Cat has no intentions of wasting her breath on.
“Ask him.” Hunter eventually advises, “You might plan for everything, Cat, but I think even you would be surprised to learn just how capable your mind is at playing tricks on you.”
It’s been a long day.
Ever since he was released from prison, Spencer has been acutely aware of the silence of his apartment. That silence didn’t exactly go away having Addie here the past two days – he never was able to fully draw her out of her shell – but it seemed to be less. Addie may not have spoken much, and she watched less TV than he would have expected a ten-year-old in a strange place to, but she seemed to bring a liveliness to his apartment which Spencer feels has been missing since his mom moved into the facility.
Existing by himself in the quiet, Spencer stirs around his leftover Lo Mein from last night. Sitting alone at the breakfast bar of his kitchen, he begins to wonder for the first time in a long time about his future and if maybe he lied down and accepted his fate too early.
If maybe he still has a chance.
A knock on his door pulls him from his trance, which is likely for the best.
He quashes down the fantasy which jumps into his mind as he crosses the apartment.
The rest of the team left on a case this morning. So, his imagination conjures a daydream for him where he opens the door and finds Robin – the social worker from New Jersey - and Addie standing on the other side. Addie would now have her backpack of belongings from Jim Murphy’s house, and Robin would have exhausted bags under her eyes, and tell him the group home changed their minds at the last minute. They didn’t have room, or they weren’t as well equipped for trauma as they had led her to believe. It isn’t going to work, and Addie’s school can be worked out, so the best thing for her would be to come back to him if he is still willing to take her.
He would take her in a heartbeat.
But when he opens the front door he knows that isn’t the scene he will be greeted by. He’s grateful, then, that it’s Cat standing there instead.
For five seconds, the two of them simply look at each other. They haven’t exactly talked about whatever it is they are now. Only that it’s something.
He sighs.
“They took Addie back to New Jersey.”
Cat’s shoulders deflate in time with his confession, in time with his own shoulders as well.
He ushers her inside, and he doesn’t so much direct her to the leftover Chinese food as she spots it on the counter and when he nods to the fridge she goes and finds her own.
Literally her own; she ate with him and Addie last night and then left the remaining half of her General Tso’s chicken in his fridge because it was somehow unspoken that - despite them not having seen one another in months – she would be back for it before it went bad.
After she’s microwaved her leftovers the two of them move from the kitchen to his couch. They settle close to one another, though still with half a cushion between them. Cat it’s sideways with her knees curled up and her bowl hugged in her lap.
“It wasn’t a long meeting.” He begins explaining this morning, digging around at his Lo Mein. “I don’t know why I expected it would be.”
“How long was it?”
He shrugs, “Half an hour?”
She raises her brows, her lips pausing around a piece of chicken, and he twirls his fork around his noodles again; losing most of them in the process.
“The social worker came, and she told Addie to pack anything she had while she sat down with me.”
“She didn’t even give you a chance?”
Spencer shakes his head, “Why would she?”
It’s a question he’s asked himself all weekend in preparation for the visit, and beforehand, he supposes he had convinced himself there was an answer. He would be given a chance because Addie doesn’t have anyone else. Reunification with her biological family isn’t the goal of her care and it hasn’t been in a long time, if it everwas. He would be given a chance because he is willing to say he wants one, for her, and he will do whatever he has to to prove that he is worthy of it.
“She has school in New Jersey.” He says as if he is telling Cat this fact, when really, he is reminding himself. “She has friends.”
“She’s ten.” Cat deadpans, “She can use a phone.”
At that, Spencer glances up at her, ready to tell her that might not be as simple nowadays as it was when they were young.
“Course.” She self-corrects with a smirk. “Your landline is a lost art.”
He rolls his eyes, and for another minute the two of them are quiet, simply eating their dinners.
“She could make new friends.” Cat suggests, and Spencer frowns, and then Cat gives a sigh. “Or, you could go to her.”
He frowns deeper.
He’d thought of that, if he’s being honest. On and off his mind has been entertaining the possibility. He could put in for a transfer to a field office in New Jersey, and rent a little house with two bedrooms and a yard. Somewhere close enough to Addie’s school district that even if she did have to transfer, it would still be easier to keep in touch with her friends.
He thinks this through again, though with Cat watching him it’s easier to push the images away.
“It wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?”
He sighs, “My mom is here.” He says, and with a final conviction he leans forward and sets his bowl onto the coffee table.
He stares at it. His eyes are locked light brown noodles which Addie had very plainly informed him looked too much like worms for her to have any interest in eating them.
“I can’t move my mom again.” He says, “And besides… I did…. ask, but the social worker told me that without a proper support system my chances of being approved even as a foster parent are slim; and adoption would be even harder.”
Internally, Cat is cataloging this moment.
Not that she came here hoping to hear that Addie is gone and Spencer put zero effort into fighting to keep her; of course she didn’t. But, she did come here with the possibility in her head, and she will be making very certain to share all of this information with her therapist the next time the woman suggests she isn’t as good at reading people as she thinks she is.
“So your chances are better here.” She observes for now, putting what’s left of her chicken on the coffee table alongside his bowl.
He doesn’t look at her. He gives this very minute nod, but not much else. She frowns, and nudges his knee with her foot until he looks up.
“If Addie isn’t an option, what do you want to do?”
He sighs, leaning back with his arms crossed over himself.
“I don’t know.”
Cat frowns, “Spencie.”
He blinks, and scrunches his nose. Surprise and annoyance wash over his face ever so briefly before he adjusts his position so that he is facing her properly.
He doesn’t answer her right away. Half-curled into himself on the couch, he props his chin against his hand and stares down at his lap. Cat wants nothing more than to reach out, to run her hand along his shoulder and pull him into her. It isn’t a new feeling for her, exactly, but for the first time in her life she doesn’t think such an action would be rejected, or have him wondering what it is she is trying to get out of him. He would just… accept it.
She’s not sure what she’s supposed to do after that, if she could be any good at that part. So, instead, she ignores the urge and waits him out.
“What I want to do and what I can do are too different things.”
She frowns, though she’d expected an answer along those lines.
It occurs to her that any normal “girlfriend” would probably encourage him to take the leap. A normal girlfriend would promise she will help him in any way that she can. A normal girlfriend would be on the same page as him and tell him that if staying in D.C. is really what’s best, then they will take the leap here together.
Cat can’t bring herself to form any words like that.
She sighs, running a hand through her hair before she winds up using it to hold her own head up, her elbow balanced against the couch.
“Don’t sell yourself short.” She settles for telling him. “If you’re ready for this, at least put in the paperwork.”
He looks at her, a silent question in his eyes, and she sighs again.
“I have a lot of shit to work through.” She reminds him, “Legally and personally.”
He chuckles, for a fraction of a second, and it’s enough that she is able to settle her mind just long enough to see a path forward where – maybe – everything works out.
“But I don’t live here.” She says, “And I’m sure you wouldn’t be the first foster parent in history to date somebody. Maybe the first to date a psychopath.”
He chuckles, and it’s enough to make her smile softly, just enough
“So fill out the paperwork.” She instructs again, “If someone needs something from me, call me, and we can go from there. Sound good?”
It sounds good to her, which is a surprise even to herself. Still, she is well aware of this nagging feeling in her chest telling her it won’t be so simple, and they will both be better off if she just cuts and runs now.
Thankfully, Spencer smiles, and she is able to shove that feeling into a dark crevice where hopefully she will never see it again.
She would much rather focus on the warm feeling his smile brings her.
“Yeah.” He agrees, “That sounds good.”