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Chapter Text

The Unsub you are looking for is a white male in his mid to late twenties. He is fanatically religious and suffers from a delusion that he has been chosen by God to complete his personal mission of defending this town from all those whom he sees as 'trespassers'. He sees anyone coming into the community, whether an immigrant to the country or simply a person from out of town moving to a new neighbourhood, as an intruder. The man we are looking for is not the kind whose neighbours would be shocked to learn what he's done - he will be known to his community for his harsh religious views and uncompromising criticism of those around him who are not living up to his own beliefs.

The nature of the video footage sent to your precinct is important because it indicates not only a lack of remorse but an assumption of aligned goals; in speaking directly of his 'holy mission', the Unsub has revealed that he believes the local police are aware of the divine nature of his crusade and are seeking privately to help him. This makes it unlikely that he is taking extensive forensic countermeasures, as he does not believe that you are actually attempting to stop him. The lack of forensic evidence found on the bodies and at the dump sites, and the concealment of the original murder locations, therefore leads us to believe that the Unsub is not working alone. The torture and killing is personal and the videos confirm that only one man has been directly responsible for the deaths, but we believe that the Unsub's tracks are being covered by anywhere from three to six accomplices after the fact - 'disciples', if you will, who have accepted his delusion of a mission from God and are attempting to protect him while he carries out his work.

This Unsub will not stop on his own, and the clock is ticking until he kills again. We need to find him, and all of his accomplices, to bring this to an end.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The splash of holy water stung the cuts on Spencer's face.

"Awake, trespasser, and face your judgement!"

The eyes of the man in the priest's robes were wild as he swung the aspergillum again, with such force he barely kept hold of it.

"And what cause soever shall come to you of your brethren that dwell in your cities, between blood and blood, between law and commandment-"

The air was thick with heavy incense, choked by the smoke of the dozens of candles that formed a blazing spread beneath the massive crucifix hung on one wall. Swimming gradually up from the black depths of unconsciousness and fighting what was surely a severe concussion, Spencer could only take in his surroundings in disconnected flashes, details devoid of context; the scrubbed flagstone floor beneath his knees, the red-brown splatter of old blood on the hem of the otherwise snow-white robe of the man standing before him, the fanatic tremor of the killer's voice as he proclaimed chapter and verse.

"-statutes and judgments, ye shall even warn them that they trespass not against the Lord, and so wrath come upon you, and upon your brethren: this do, and ye shall not trespass!"

The unforgiving bite of wood and steel around Spencer's wrists and neck was all that was keeping him upright in his unsteady state, but it also held him trapped on his knees, a supplicant's posture. A modified pillory, his hazy brain provided, to keep him in the position that this self-proclaimed warrior of God saw fit.

Spencer had always hated cases with religiously motivated Unsubs - the senselessness of it all was sickening, the way that the killers were anything but ashamed; were proud of their deeds, in fact, and would proclaim their actions with a twisted smile from behind the shield of their own self-righteousness - but this case had been even worse than most. A family of refugees slaughtered, the youngest child only six. A newlywed couple who had moved into the neighborhood with the intention of starting a family, executed and left on the steps of their own home. Other victims, equally innocent, killed with equal brutality and displayed with equal contempt for the simple crime of setting foot in a town that this killer considered his.

The revulsion in Spencer's gut for the case at hand had mingled badly with the bone-deep weariness still dragging down his heart since his release from prison, and the combination was what had led him here.

"And I will make the land desolate, because they have committed a trespass, saith the Lord God! When the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity-"

Even with his head ringing in the aftermath of being hit hard enough to knock him out, Spencer knew he didn't have much time. His team would be looking for him, but it wouldn't be an easy search.

Luke had gone with him to interview the staff at a local Catholic community center several of the victims had frequented, but the doors had been locked when they arrived, despite it being the middle of the afternoon. They had separated for only a moment - Luke checking around the side of the building to see if there was another door that might be open, Spencer stepping back from the front door to call Emily and let her know what they'd found. The phone had only been on its second ring when a weight had come down on the back of Spencer's head and everything had gone black.

Just a moment of inattention. Perfectly human, perfectly understandable. Yet Spencer knew he wouldn't have been so distracted, wouldn't have let his guard down at that critical moment, if he hadn't been half lost in the past since they first took this damned case.

Spencer didn't know what had happened to Luke, but even if his fellow agent had escaped unscathed, the odds were not in Spencer's favour here; he was currently looking directly at the Unsub's face and didn't recognize him, which meant he wasn't any of the local figures whose profiles they had already reviewed. They hadn't had any luck identifying the location where any of the victims had been killed, and even now Spencer couldn't put together much; the flagstone floor suggested a public building of some kind rather than a private residence, but with the room lit only by candle-glow and his head still spinning from recent trauma, there was little else he could make out through the shadows that reeled around him. There were no windows he could see, the walls themselves obscured by drapes of dark cloth; the room was empty of furniture save for the pillory that held Spencer, the white-draped altar strewn with candles, and the massive crucifix that loomed over everything.

The setting was alien, but also horrifically familiar, an echo of a different time and place - a floor of rough wood instead of flagstone, then, and the acrid scent of burning fish heads instead of the cloying waft of incense. The claustrophobic darkness, the fevered recitation of Biblical vitriol… Spencer tried to squash it down, but the thought rose despite himself, coalescing out of the depths of his aching heart.

I wish Hotch was here.

Not here, in this dark and reeking room - here on the team, here on the other end of a video screen, here where Spencer could reach out to him and pray for rescue as he'd once done while being held captive by Tobias Hankel. Spencer had never believed in God, but he'd always had faith in Aaron Hotchner… but Aaron was long gone from his life, like so many of his oldest and dearest friends, and Spencer was mostly glad of it. If anyone deserved a quiet retirement with his family, it was their former unit chief, who had been through so much hell over the course of his career with the BAU. Most days, the thought that Aaron was out there, safe and hopefully happy, was enough to warm Spencer against the chill of loneliness in his bones; it was only now, facing dire odds once again, that Spencer allowed himself to admit just how deep the ache of missing Aaron had pierced into his heart.

But he couldn't let that distract him any more than it already had. There was no one waiting in the wings with a heroic rescue this time; he couldn't assume that his team knew where to find him, and so it was up to Spencer to rescue himself.

"-and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live?"

The man in the bloodstained robe drew a breath, and Spencer seized his chance.

"Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness." The Unsub faltered, a look of shock flashing across his face as he looked directly down at Spencer for the first time, who swallowed hard against the dryness in his throat before he went on.

"That's - that's what you want to do, right? Correct the faults that you see around you?" Spencer's lips were so dry he could feel them cracking as he spoke, the taste of bloody metallic and sickening on his equally parched tongue. "You don't have to do it this way. I'm not here to trespass against you. I'm an FBI agent-"

"I know who you are, trespasser," the Unsub cut him off. His heavy brow pulled down in a scowl, the man stepped closer, one hand disappearing into a pocket of his clerical robe. "Do you intend to confess your sins? To beg the Lord's forgiveness?"

The taste of bile mixing with the blood in Spencer's mouth.

Confess your sins, boy!

The ghost of Charles Hankel roared in Spencer's ears, and this time he didn't try to cling to his pride, to reality; there was no stalling for time here, his only chance was to somehow appease the Unsub's delusions enough to find his own window of escape, and the words spilled out of him.

"Yes. Yes, I've sinned, and I confess it freely - I repent of the evils I've done, I pray for the Lord's forgiveness-"

The Unsub's hand withdrew from the folds of stained cloth, now clutching a heavy revolver. Spencer felt a flash of cold across his whole body, like he'd plunged into a freezing river. A Colt Python, chambered for .357 Magnum - the same calibre that had killed all the other victims.

Sneering, the Unsub pressed the barrel to Spencer's temple, the steel cold and cruel against his fever-hot skin.

"All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die!"

This is God's will.

Somehow, Spencer's dehydrated body still had water enough left for a few, precious tears.

"Please," he whispered. Not to the Unsub, but to someone far away, someone who would never hear.

The Unsub's finger tightened on the trigger.

A bang loud enough to shatter the world

And then

Silence.

Chapter Text

Ever so slowly, the darkness gave way to glowing light, like the gradual incandescence of dawn.

Spencer was conscious of himself, of the space his body should occupy; yet when he directed his attention downwards, he saw nothing, only the lightening void. Though he could not see his own body, he was aware of a gentle sensation of rising upward, as if perhaps it was not that his surroundings were grower brighter so much as that he was being lifted from darkness into light.

Given the last events he could remember, and his previous brushes with death, it wasn't difficult to deduce what this meant. For a moment, though, any grief or regret was buried under a perverse sense of relief.

Finally, it was over.

Since his release from prison, every day had felt like a war for Spencer Reid. Coming to terms with everything he had seen and done behind bars was a battle all its own; worse, the isolation had torn open all his carefully-covered wounds from a lifetime of being left behind by those he cared for most. Every night that he lay awake, trying and failing to sleep, he would see their faces passing by - his father, Elle, Gideon, Emily, Alex, Derek, Aaron. All had left him at different times, for different reasons; some walked away forever, some returned, but every loss reminded him that nothing was permanent. Sooner or later, everyone he loved would leave, and Spencer would always end up alone.

Now, the endless parade was over. Finally, it was Spencer leaving, and not him being left behind.

That thought was tinged with guilt. The Unsub had recorded the deaths of the other victims and sent the files to the local police department; he'd likely done the same with Spencer's death, and Spencer hoped that his team wouldn't blame themselves too heavily. Especially Luke, who had been with Spencer at the community centre, and who always took too much of the blame on himself. The guilt of that thought was muffled, though, as if the endless grayness around Spencer had seeped inside him and blanketed his emotions - or, perhaps, it was just the weariness that dragged at his soul that was dulling the edge of his regrets. Spencer didn't want to cause his family any more pain than he already had, he truly didn't; he was just so, so tired of forever being the one hurting.

-You have suffered greatly.-

From the pale void above, a greater brightness appeared, descending to meet Spencer. An entity composed utterly of brilliant light, its features obscured by their own dazzling glow, one appendage outstretched in seeming welcome. A gentler, more diffuse light enwrapped its blazing core like a robe, shaping its silhouette into something more recognizably human. Spencer watched in a kind of detached, disbelieving wonder as great beams of radiance flared behind the glowing shape's core and shafted outward, piercing through the halflight.

Like the feathers of vast, incorporeal wings.

He felt the sensation of his mouth moving, though he knew he had left his body far behind him now.

"Are you an angel?"

-I have been called by many Names, and none of them are the Truth.- The entity drifted down until it seemed to hover right in front of Spencer, and only with its closeness did Spencer begin to comprehend its size; humanoid it might be, but it was vast, its presence dwarfing his sense of self despite the lack of any scale in the featureless realm around them. -I am of the Will, and I am here to offer you Justice, Spencer Reid.-

He had no body to be chilled, no chemical impulses to dump adrenaline into his veins in primal mammalian terror, but Spencer felt himself recoil nonetheless.

"Don't send me back," he pleaded. His voice seemed so small, so fragile next to the entity's, which seemed to form in his mind without sound yet resonated with weight and power. "I don't… I can't go back to that. Please. I don't want that life anymore."

-Not that Life, but another.- The entity's hand reached out once more, and it seemed to encompass Spencer, enveloping him in blinding light that chased away the grey of the void. -This was not the Will. There must be an Accounting, and recompense.-

Spencer stared helplessly up at the vast, inscrutable glow of the entity's face.

"I don't understand," he whispered.

-For each Soul there is a Fate, for each Life a foretold Price.- The entity seemed to lean in over him, the brightness looming ever closer. -This is not in Balance, a cost too great has been exacted. The Will demands rectification. You shall live again, and you shall carry Knowledge with you, and with this Knowledge your feet shall tread the proper Path. So it is Said, and so it shall Be.-

Spencer felt as if his intellect must finally be failing, some crucial part of his mind dissolving as his last tethers to life faded, because the words that settled so clearly in his mind made no sense. It sounded… almost as if this entity was repeating what Spencer had told himself so bitterly in the dead of night, so many times; that it wasn't fair, that his life should not have turned out like this. That was absurd, though. In the grand scheme of the world and all existence, Spencer Reid was not someone who mattered; he was one man, who had tried to do good with his life, and hoped that he had succeeded more often than he had failed. He was no prophet or messiah, to have an angel appear to him on the threshold of death and apologize for how the world had failed him.

Looking up at the luminous being, Spencer said softly, "I still don't understand."

-You shall, in time. The Will decrees it so.-

Then those great shafts of light that formed the entity's wings blazed brighter, flared wider, and there was a sound like a thousand bells ringing together in one perfect, harmonious note - and for the second time in a span that no human unit of chronology could measure, everything around Spencer Reid went black.

Chapter Text

Spencer slammed back into his body under an avalanche of sensory input.

Rough wooden floorboards, unforgiving under his back. A heavy stench in the air; old earth, mildew, and the acrid reek of burning fish. Pain radiating throughout his whole body, caught like barbed wire under his skin. Over it all, a heady blanket, a thick haze of floating warmth that soothed everything else even as Spencer's mind recoiled in horror; the unmistakeable veil of a Dilaudid high, comforting as a mother's arms yet deadly in its embrace.

Disoriented, drugged and terrified, Spencer tried to reconcile what his senses were telling him and failed.

This can't be real. It can't be happening again.

"You came back to life."

Spencer opened his eyes, and stared up into the face of Tobias Hankel - or, at this moment, the coldly emotionless face of the Archangel Raphael.

"There can be only one of two reasons."

And Spencer knew it wasn't his line - had lived with every word of this conversation burned into his memory for over a decade, knew exactly what he was going to say next - but the words formed in the back of his mind regardless, almost smothered under the Dilaudid haze, sharp and jagged and teetering on the edge of madness.

Wrong. Third reason: because somehow, living this nightmare once wasn't enough.

But Spencer pushed those words away, and followed the script.

"I was given CPR."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He continued following the script, as the hellish memory unfolded.

Spencer didn't know what purpose this was meant to serve, if any purpose at all; perhaps this was all simply a pre-death hallucination, a single broken moment dragged out to eternity inside his mind. Regardless, he didn't want to try to change the course of events and discover what new horrors his mind might conjure. He spoke the same words he'd spoken so long ago, and watched the same events unfold; the message from Gideon, the demand to choose one of his teammates to die, the desperate grasp at hope by choosing Hotch and weaving a vital clue into his message. As Hankel ranted about the seven angels of the Apocalypse and the cleansing of the world's sin, Spencer allowed his mind to wander, just for a moment, to how this would end.

Would his mind play the scenario out to its real-world conclusion, allow him to be found by his team once more? Spencer couldn't tell how accurate this scenario was, beyond the words he and Hankel had said; the rest of his memory of that night had always been a bit blurry and unreliable, distorted by fear and pain and the warping effects of the Dilaudid running through his veins. He didn't know if the air had smelled exactly like this, if the chair had been precisely this uncomfortable. He doubted that even his brain could recall exactly what every member of his team looked and sounded like at this precise moment in time; perhaps the memory would fracture at the moment he was found, dissolving under the swinging lights of approaching flashlight beams. Perhaps it wouldn't even get that far - maybe in this hallucination, Spencer's gambit wouldn't work, and he wouldn't be found at all. Perhaps this uncanny revisitation would end with Spencer being pushed into the grave he'd been forced to dig, and everything would finally go black.

Maybe there was no comfort to be found here, and the point was simply to relive the moment when everything in his life had begun its irrevocable trajectory into darkness, one more time.

Then Hankel's hands were undoing his restraints, wrenching Spencer to his feet, and the moment for reflection was over. One way or another, this play was drawing to its close, and Spencer couldn't quite shake the feeling that he ought to at least try to be prepared for whatever would follow.

Out into the cold night, and a shovel pressed into his hands; Spencer dug while Hankel proclaimed, words of failure and punishment washing over him like a tide. Unbidden, Spencer found himself contemplating the previous… vision? Fantasy? Hallucination?… that he had experienced before waking into this relived nightmare. Had it meant anything at all? Or was it simply the result of his frantically working brain, piecing together the lingering threads of Christian dogma and his impending death into some kind of picture that his mind could make sense of? What had it meant, when it spoke of recompense?

He was shaken from his thoughts by the sight of flashlight beams through the darkness, and despite everything, he felt a surge of relief and elation.

Maybe I'll get to see them one more time. To say a proper goodbye.

Spencer was running almost on autopilot now; climbing out of the grave, wrestling the gun away from Hankel, pulling the trigger - it all happened by rote, actions he'd already relived a thousand times in his memory. It was these moments that had lingered most clearly in his mind, and a part of him still expected the memory to fade now that the climax had come and gone - but as the shouts of his team drew closer and he saw them come into view from between the distant gravestones, running toward him, that fear finally loosened.

He would get to see his team after all.

He would get to say goodbye to his family.

Hotch reached him first, just as Spencer remembered, his dark eyes wild with fear and adrenaline as he crouched down next to Spencer. He was asking if Spencer was alright, running careful hands along his arms and chest to check for injuries, and Spencer felt something deep inside himself crack; a hairline fracture, thin but terrifyingly deep, along the wall he'd built over the years to keep his own emotions contained. This was a moment he hadn't remembered, not clearly - lost to the blur of drugs and adrenaline, to the crushing guilt of killing Tobias - but it felt so real, now, and so right.

"I knew you'd understand," he whispered, and felt that crack inside himself split a little wider.

When Hotch pulled him gently to his feet, Spencer reached for him without a second thought, a sliver of memory surfacing - and Hotch pulled him into a hug without hestitation, wrapping his arms around Spencer and holding on like he never meant to let him go. It felt so vivid, so grounded in a way that nothing else had since Spencer had awakened on that cabin floor; Hotch's embrace was strong and steady, but Spencer could feel the thunder of his heartbeat even through the tac vest, feel the minute tremor in Hotch's arms where they encircled him. He could feel the bite of the cold air on his skin contrasted against the blazing warmth of Hotch's body, and hear the soft murmurs of the team around them, and suddenly it all felt real. Like a veil being torn away, the immediacy of the moment pierced the haze of the Dilaudid, and suddenly Spencer's conviction wavered.

Was this all a dying hallucination? A moment of peace woven out of the ruins of the past? Or, somehow, impossibly - even though he knew all too well that it couldn't be - was it, perhaps…

"Is this real?" he whispered.

He hadn't even meant to say it out loud, but he heard Hotch's breath catch, felt the older man's arms tighten just a little in their hold.

"It's real," Hotch said, his low voice rumbling through Spencer's torso where they were pressed so close together. "You're safe now, I promise."

And that -

The crack tore into a chasm, and Spencer broke.

The tears welled up so suddenly, like the eruption of a bursting dam, and he was powerless to stop them. It was against the script, the hug wasn't even supposed to have lasted this long; he was supposed to pull away, talk to the rest of the team, reassure JJ that his capture by Hankel wasn't her fault - but once he started crying he couldn't hold it in, the sobs wracking his body and stealing any steadiness he had found, and he couldn't make himself let go of Hotch. It seemed like the older agent's arms were the only thing holding Spencer's fragile body together, and as he buried his face in Hotch's shoulder and sobbed until it tore at his throat, he felt one of Hotch's hands come up and smooth ever so gently over his hair.

"It's alright," Hotch was repeating, that low, steady murmur the only thing that Spencer could hear over his own muffled wails and the agonized hammering of his heart. "You're safe, we've got you, you're going to be alright."

And in that moment, Spencer could only cling to him and hope desperately that Hotch was right, because if this was real -

If this was real, Spencer had no idea what he was going to do.

Chapter Text

Facts.

1. I died.

There was no other explanation that could account for what had followed. Spencer Reid had died on March 15th, 2018, in an unknown location at the hands of a religiously motivated spree killer. He had been abducted by the UnSub during the course of the investigation, taken to the secondary location used to hold and torture the killer's prior victims, and killed by a single gunshot wound to the head. That was how his life had ended; murdered in the line of duty, the footage of his death likely used to further emotionally punish his teammates.

And yet, impossibly, that had not been the end.

2. I encountered a supernatural entity after death.

Spencer was reluctant to call the being an angel - he had asked it if that was what it was, after all, and it had neither confirmed nor denied the label. He wasn't sure if that meant that it was something else entirely, or only that the human conception of an 'angel' did not accurately define it, but either way; he would not assign it that designation when it seemed inaccurate. Whatever it had been, the mysterious entity had imparted a sentiment that, while confusing at the time, seemed much more straightforward - though in other ways, even more confusing - taken in the context of later events. Because the third fact, the one that made sense of some of the entity's words, was the hardest to accept.

3. I have traveled back in time, and am now reliving the events of my own life, beginning on February 7th, 2007.

Though all the known laws of science said it was impossible, Spencer had to accept the objective reality in front of him; impossible or not, he was currently experiencing it. He had considered and dismissed all other possible explanations - this was not a hallucination, nor had the future he had lived been an invention of his beleaguered mind. He had encountered Tobias Hankel on that fateful night once before, and gone on to live a further eleven years of life - and now he was back, facing down those long years again.

He had his memories, but nothing was set in stone; even if by accident, he had proven that on the very first night, when he had broken down crying in Hotch's arms. The older agent had held him until the worst had passed, then guided him into the waiting hands of the medics; even then, he had stayed close by, watching Spencer with undisguised worry in his dark eyes. The exchange with JJ that Spencer remembered had not happened; by the time Hotch had let him go, JJ had already disappeared, helping the other agents process the scene at Hankel's cabin. Derek had been there to give Spencer a clap on the shoulder and a heartfelt reassurance that he was going to be fine, and Emily had given him a kind smile and some encouraging words, but Gideon had also been conspicuously absent - an absence that Spencer had been guiltily glad for.

He knew that at this point in time, he had still idolized Gideon, looking up to the man like a second father. He couldn't forget the truth he had learned at great cost, though - that eventually, Gideon had proven himself little better than the first father who had abandoned Spencer.

Which led him here, on his list.

4. Jason Gideon cannot be relied upon.

Most people would assume that Gideon would be Spencer's best option to go to for help. He was Spencer's mentor, and he was also the most openly spiritual person on the team, most likely to believe a wild tale of angels and resurrection. Yet, he was also stubborn, prideful, and hot-tempered. Spencer was afraid that he might be dismissed out of hand, his experiences chalked up as the wild fantasies of a mind under extreme duress, because his experiences would not fit the paradigm through which Gideon viewed the world and his faith - and if it did not fit Gideon's personal views, then it was false. He desperately wanted to think that Gideon would believe him, but he couldn't take that risk, not yet.

No, his choice of confidante would likely have stunned anyone with a passing familiarity with the team.

He was going to tell Hotch.

For all his outward sternness, Hotch was fair and open-minded; he would listen to Spencer, and when he heard the conviction in Spencer's voice, he wouldn't simply dismiss him. He would hear Spencer out, and he would understand that this was of critical importance to Spencer, and he would give Spencer enough time to prove that his story was true. Spencer didn't need Hotch to believe him instantly - he just needed enough time to present the evidence, because he needed someone other than himself to understand what was going on, someone he could confide in. Because there were further facts on that list.

5. I am terrified.

Spencer had, with no exaggeration, barely survived his life the first time around. So many times he had escaped death by sheer determination, by a sudden moment of clarity, or by absolute blind luck. He didn't want to go into those situations unprepared, but there was no chance that he would be able to manage this all alone - he'd never been good at keeping secrets, and he would need at least one person in his corner, to cover for him when he slipped up and to give him a different perspective on things. Something which tied in closely with the sixth point on his life.

6. There are things that I have to change.

There were tragedies in his life, and in the lives of those closest to him, that Spencer would not - could not - allow to unfold again. There are many moments that he would prefer not to live through a second time, but would endure if it meant preserving some greater sequence of events that would have benefits later on; however, there were hard lines that he would not cross, critical events that he refused to allow to come to pass. Deaths and losses that were unacceptable, if he had even the slightest chance of preventing them.

Those situations were the ones where he would need help most of all, because he could not rely on his own brain to consider every possible angle. And so, he was going to seek the help of one of the most capable men he'd ever known.

It had taken two weeks and three mandatory counseling sessions before Spencer was even allowed to set foot in Quantico again, but the first morning that he was officially cleared for access, he was in the elevator and heading up to their department. Almost immediately upon stepping off the elevator, he was spotted by Derek, who veered off course from his path toward the coffee machine and intercepted Spencer just inside the bullpen doors.

"I know you are not cleared to be back at work, so what exactly do you think you're doing here, Pretty Boy?" Derek asked, his directness pulling a half-smile to Spencer's face. Even with all the worries currently piling up in his mind, it was wonderful to be back in this place, with these people - the team he had loved most, felt closest to, right back at his side where they belonged. Before the years had pulled them all in different directions, and left Spencer behind.

"I'm not here trying to work," Spencer replied, tapping the visitor's badge pinned to his vest - he wouldn't get his own badge back until he passed his final psych eval and was cleared for field work. "I just need to talk to Hotch."

Rather than relaxing, Derek's eyes only sharpened more with worry.

"You know you didn't do anything wrong, yeah?" he said quietly, his expression turning serious. "You were following your instincts and shit went sideways, but that's not your fault, and it doesn't mean you could have done anything different."

For a moment, Spencer didn't understand the connection - then it clicked all at once, and he grimaced, remembering the Elle-shaped void still haunting the team.

"That's not - I'm not quitting or anything, I promise," he said, and watched some of the tension leave Derek's shoulders. "I wouldn't - I'd never walk away from the team like that." I'll be here until the day it kills me. Literally. "I just need to talk to him about something else, but it's fine, it's nothing bad."

"Alright, if you're sure." Derek gave him another lingering, considering look, but in the end just rested his hand on Spencer's shoulder. "You know where to find me if you need to talk, yeah?"

"Yeah." Spencer felt warmth spread through his chest, and nodded. "Yeah, I know."

Derek nodded back, then dropped his hand and finally headed off to grab his coffee, while Spencer drew a deep breath and climbed the stairs up to the office level.

Time to put his beliefs to the test.

He knocked at Hotch's door, and at the low response to come in, stepped inside.

"Sorry to bother you, sir, but I need to talk to you about something…"

"Reid," Hotch looked up from his paperwork instantly, his stern expression softening into something warmer, almost fond. He studied Spencer for a moment, as if searching for some physical sign of the emotional injuries they both knew that Spencer was still carrying, before gesturing him in. "It's no bother, come in, please."

Heart in his throat, Spencer shut the door and took the seat in front of the desk. Hotch shut the case file he'd been working on and folded his hands on top it, his full attention on Spencer.

"How are you holding up?"

"I'm… coping, sir." Spencer said, truthfully enough. He was still on the medications that had been prescribed to bring his body down gently off the massive dose of Dilaudid he'd received at Hankel's hands - medications he hadn't asked for the first time around, knowing full well he'd intended to keep using, but which he'd received this time after being much more forthcoming with the medics about what Hankel had done - and the emotional turmoil, while still present, was much less raw considering he'd already lived through and made peace with these events once before. All in all, he was in a lot better shape than he had been the first time he'd dealt with this.

"Actually, it's… something else that I wanted to talk to you about." Spencer drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, trying to slow the rapid thrum of his heartbeat. "Something… happened, while Hankel was holding me captive. And I know it's going to sound absurd at first, but I need you to hear me out, because I don't know who else I can trust with this and I need to tell someone."

"Alright," Hotch said softly. His gaze was like a physical weight on Spencer, solid and grounding. "Tell me."

So Spencer drew another deep breath, and told him.

Not everything; not even most of it. Not the specific events that had transpired over the years, not the losses the team had suffered, nothing that could likely affect the course of events by being shared. Spencer still wasn't sure if it was even safe to confide that sort of information, or if he was the only one who could safely carry that knowledge, being the one who had - through some strange, twisted miracle - been transported through time. So he kept to the basics, and he spoke about the length of time he'd lived, and that he had died (under circumstances which he carefully did not describe), and that he had been sent back. He detailed only a bit of his encounter with the mysterious entity, and some of what it said, and his own disbelief at waking up on the floor of Hankel's cabin once more. He finished with a brief listing of the basic facts he had established, and that he had determined he had to tell someone, because he would need help in managing this strange new position he'd found himself in.

Then he waited.

Hotch was quiet for a while, considering everything he'd just been told. At some point during Spencer's recounting, he had picked up a pen and was still fidgeting with it now - a tell of his own anxiety, which sent a splinter through Spencer's heart, because he hated adding to Hotch's stress for any reason. Finally, the older man looked up at Spencer again, his unreadable poker face firmly in place.

"You didn't tell any of this to the mandated counselor."

Spencer couldn't help his soft, disbelieving laugh.

"Of course not," he said. "They never would have let me back in the building."

The corner of Hotch's mouth twitched, just a little.

"You're aware of how incredible your story sounds."

"Of course I am, and I'm not expecting you to just believe me immediately," Spencer said honestly. "I'll figure out a way to prove it, I just… I needed someone who would listen to me, without immediately putting me in a padded room."

Hotch sighed.

"Alright," he said, setting the pen down and folding his hands again. "Thank you for trusting me with this. I'm sure you understand that I can't clear you for field work again until this is… resolved, even if you pass your other evaluations."

"I know, and I wouldn't ask you to," Spencer said firmly. Aware of how much time he had taken out of Hotch's morning already, he stood up, grabbing his bookbag from beside the chair. "I'll let you know when I've worked out a reasonable way of verifying my story, I just wanted to let you know right away in case anyone raises any concerns about my demeanor. It's still… jarring, being here again suddenly."

"I would imagine so." Hotch's expression flickered again, this time with something that was there and gone again too fast for Spencer to identify. "You have my cell number. Call me if you need me. Anytime."

The warmth in his chest this time was almost an inferno, and Spencer basked in it, even knowing he should be careful of getting burned.

"I will. Thanks, Hotch."

On his way out of the office, Spencer tried his very best to turn his mind toward ideas for how to prove his story of time travel and resurrection, but his thoughts kept stubbornly circling back to the final point on his list. One he had no intention of sharing, and that seemed almost too obvious to state, given that it had been true for more than a decade - a fact that long predated the rest of the list and its reason for creation.

7. I am still in love with Aaron Hotchner.

Chapter Text

The medications were supposed to prevent this.

Spencer had read what sometimes felt like every medical journal in existence. He had poured endless hours into researching addiction, its causes and its effects, the patterns that it formed and how to break them. He knew every statistic, knew that addiction science was still a young field and that results were never guaranteed; he knew that the medications to treat opioid addiction were new at this point in time, inadequately tested, and part of a wider complex treatment plan.

He knew all of this, yet the stab of the cravings still felt like a personal betrayal.

I wasn't supposed to have to deal with this again.

His dose had tapered down across the week; he was at the end of his treatment plan, he shouldn't have needed it anymore. Although the amount of Dilaudid forced into his veins by Hankel had been massive, it had only been a couple of injections, taken over the course of a single night - he wasn't a chronic addict (not yet, not in this timeline) and his body shouldn't have had time to develop a serious dependency. Yet, here he was; awake at two in the morning, shaking like a leaf, his blood on fire in his veins with a need as horrific as it was intimately familiar.

His old friend, Addiction, knocking at the door.

It was too late to find a meeting - Spencer still had the schedule for the DC area memorized, and none of the support groups met at this hour. There was other information he had memorized, but he refused to let himself think about it. He'd fought this war before, and won it at a terrible cost; he was not going to go out there looking to score. Even if his sobriety coin was lost in a future that, hopefully, would never come to pass, he wasn't going to walk down that road again.

But the pull was real, and Spencer wasn't sure he could fight it alone.

Your support network is everything, his sponsor had told him once. You have friends, and they want to help; let them. We don't reach out, because we don't want to hurt the people we love, but we hurt them more with our silence. When you feel like you're lost in the dark, reach out - you'll be surprised how often there's a hand reaching back.

Spencer's phone was in his hand before he could talk himself out of it, and he found himself running words frantically through his mind as it rang, almost a prayer.

Please answer. I'm sorry. Please answer.

"Hotchner."

The relief mixed with guilt tasted like bile at the back of Spencer's throat.

"Hotch," he choked out. "I'm sorry, I know it's late-"

"Reid?" There was some shuffling on the other end of the phone, and a muffled murmur that Spencer couldn't decipher, before Hotch's voice came through clearly again. "What's wrong?"

"I-" Spencer could feel his throat closing up. That murmur had sounded like a woman's voice. Haley, of course, because Haley was still alive - because Hotch had been asleep, in bed next to his wife, because Hotch wasn't a walking disaster like Spencer at this point, but a functional human being who went to bed at a reasonable hour and didn't stay up until the dark of the morning wrestling with his demons. That point wouldn't come for years yet - never, if Spencer could help it. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-"

"Don't do that." Hotch's voice was stilted, sleep-rough, but still warm. "I told you to call me if you needed help. What's going on?"

"It's-" For a moment, it felt like there was a vice around Spencer's throat, closing it and trapping the words - then he forced through the pressure, and they spilled out in a torrent. "It's the Dilaudid. The craving. I finished my prescription for the withdrawal medication but I can still feel it, it's all I can think about, and I just-"

"Take a deep breath, Reid," Hotch said, and Spencer realized he was hyperventilating. He forced himself to breathe slower, measured inhales through his mouth, as Hotch continued. "Your apartment is about twenty minutes away, I can be there in twenty five, I just need you to stay calm until then, alright?"

Spencer's insides twisted, the guilt biting so much deeper.

"Hotch, no. It's two in the morning, I can't ask you to-"

"You don't need to. I'm not going to leave you to deal with this alone."

Spencer bit his tongue, feeling tears sting his eyes.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

The twenty minutes after Hotch hung up didn't feel quite real. Spencer went into his kitchen and put the kettle on, set out two mugs on the counter; he was chilled to the bone despite the burning in his veins, so he wrapped a throw blanket from the couch around his shoulders like an oversized shawl. All familiar rituals of comfort, all rendered alien by the knowledge that they didn't have to work for long, because the cavalry was already on the way.

Part of Spencer was in agony, wondering if it had always been this easy - if he could have had this the first time, if he'd just been brave enough to reach out.

The rest of him was just profoundly, almost pathetically grateful.

I didn't have the courage to do this the first time, and there's no point in grieving that. We move forward - even when some unknown force has thrown us into the past.

The bleak humour of that thought was enough to distract him until the knock came at his door.

Hotch was wearing a dark maroon pullover and jeans instead of his usual suit, and his dark eyes were weary, but he smiled at Spencer when he answered the door and accepted the offer of tea readily, as if there were nothing unusual about being at his subordinate's apartment at two thirty in the morning for an intervention. As Spencer poured the tea with shaking hands, he plucked up the courage to ask what Hotch had told Haley; the answer was simple.

"I told her a friend needed my help and that it couldn't wait," Hotch said softly, accepting his mug from Spencer's unsteady hands. Spencer bit his tongue and refused to let more tears come.

And to think, the first time around, he'd been terrified of Hotch finding out about his struggle with addiction because he thought he'd be fired.

If there was one thing Spencer did regret, it was how long it had taken him, the first time, to realize how much Hotch cared about the team. How far he was willing to bend the rules for the people that he saw as family, the same way Spencer did. At least this time around, even if he did still have to keep himself in check and make sure he didn't overstep the boundaries, he could call Hotch a friend much sooner.

When they were settled in the living room, Spencer curled up in the couch and Hotch seated in the single squashy armchair that he kept for guests, the older man asked a question that caught Spencer wholly off guard.

"Is this… something that happened before?"

Spencer stilled. He hadn't expected Hotch to ask him about that, not when his wild account of time travel was still unproven, and the answer was… not one he was particularly proud to give. Still, he had promised himself that he would be as honest as he could be without revealing potentially dangerous information when this sort of thing came up, so he took a deep breath and answered as steadily as he could.

"Not exactly. I - I didn't handle it well, the first time." He swallowed, hyperconscious of Hotch's attention on him but unable to look up and meet his gaze, fiddling with the edge of the his blanket shawl instead. "I stole the Dilaudid vials off Hankel's body, the first time. Didn't tell the medics I'd been injected. I hid the dependency for a couple of months before the team realized something was wrong; Gideon eventually intervened, got me going to support meetings. It was a long time before I got clean, longer before it wasn't a constant tightrope." Spencer's fingers curled tightly into the blanket as the shame burned through him. "I was almost ten years sober before… all of this happened."

"Jesus." Hotch sounded shaken, but when Spencer finally dared to look up at him, his expression was pained, not disgusted. "Reid, that's… I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

There was no judgement in his voice, and no doubt either; even if Spencer's story was still unproven and nearly unbelievable, Hotch was choosing to focus on his pain and extend comfort, regardless. Spencer managed to summon up a tiny, shaky smile.

"At least I know better than to try to hide it and deal with it alone, now," he said quietly. "It took a long time for that lesson to stick, and I wish it hadn't been so painful to learn, but… it's priceless."

Hotch's expression shifted a little, a strange look entering his eyes as he gazed at Spencer; when Spencer raised a questioning eyebrow, Hotch shook his head.

"Sorry," he said. "I just… I hadn't really thought about it when we talked it my office. I was distracted by everything else. But you said ten years sober… you're not as young as you look anymore, are you?"

Spencer blinked, then smiled wryly. The face in the mirror had been a shock to him, too, at first glance; he'd forgotten just how fragile he looked, at this point in his life, the shorter wilder hair and the eyes haunted by fear of the future and not yet regrets for the past.

"Not even close," he replied, "And yes, it's weird for me too. I had just turned thirty six before - this."

Unexpectedly, Hotch's stern expression cracked into a real, honest grin; as it always did on the precious occasions when it occurred, the sight knocked the breath out of Spencer's chest.

"That can't be right," Hotch said, a rare teasing note creeping into his voice. "That would mean you're only a year younger than me. I'm pretty sure that's breaking more laws of the universe than time travel."

Spencer couldn't help the laughter that burst out of him at that.

"Of course, that's your great objection," he said, grinning from ear to ear in spite of himself, the burn in his veins and chill on his skin forgotten in the comforting warmth of the moment. "Not that some strange glowing entity rewrote the laws of time and physics just to fuck with me - but that I'm not the baby of the team anymore."

Hotch's eyebrows jumped.

"I don't think I've ever heard you swear," he said, looking genuinely surprised.

Spencer snorted.

"I do a lot of things now that I didn't when I was actually twenty five," he said dryly. "Including, apparently, swearing in front of my boss when he's at my apartment in the middle of the night to stop me from doing something stupid."

Hotch's expression went soft again. He seemed to debate himself internally for a moment, before speaking with careful, deliberate casualness.

"I'm not your boss while I'm here, you know."

And just like that, the clenching was back in Spencer's chest.

God damn it, this man…

"I know," Spencer said softly. "I wouldn't have actually called my boss in the middle of the night for help, either. Only a friend." He risked a glance at Hotch, at the warmth in his eyes, and before he could take himself out of it took a bigger chance still. "You know, if this is all so off the record… you could call me Spencer."

Hotch smiled.

"I could," he agreed. "But only if you're going to call me Aaron. I'm not using your first name if you're still going to address me as sir."

Spencer laughed.

"I think I can manage that."

And sometime later, as he and Aaron continued their banter over mugs of tea long since grown cold, Spencer realized that his hands had stopped shaking entirely.

Chapter Text

"Why did you come to me, and not Gideon?"

Spencer still wasn't cleared for field work, since Aaron hadn't signed off on it, but his psych evaluations had all come back clean and so he was back at work on restricted duties. He'd spent the day catching up on paperwork and enjoying the quiet camaraderie of the team around him, even though it was somewhat strange to see how young they all were.

It was dark outside now, rain pattering against the windows; the rest of the team had left the bull pen over an hour ago, and once the last of them had departed, Spencer had made his way up to Aaron's office. He had seen the intense, thoughtful looks the older man had been directing at him periodically throughout the day, and suspected that there was a question Aaron wanted to ask him but didn't want to risk alluding to in front of the team.

That wasn't the one of the potential questions Spencer had been expecting, though.

Biting his lip, Spencer leaned back in his chair, considering for a long moment how he wanted to answer. Aaron didn't rush him, though his gaze flicked from Spencer's face to his fingers, fidgeting with his tie, and Spencer knew full well he was being profiled. It seemed fair, under the circumstances, so rather than call him on it Spencer just sighed and decided to be blunt. Aaron had always appreciated honesty more than diplomacy when it came to the team.

"I would have thought you, of all people, would know why. You know him better than most of us. How do you think he would have reacted?"

Aaron frowned.

"You said he was the one who intervened, last time, when you were struggling after Hankel," he said slowly, still studying Spencer intently. "I assumed…"

"That I still saw him as a mentor? As a father figure?" Spencer knew his smile was unmistakably bitter. "He was also the reason I never came clean to anyone else on the team. You and I talked about it, years later - I asked you why you never said anything, when you must have seen that I was losing it, and you told me that you had asked Gideon. Apparently he told you that he 'had it handled' and not to bother me about it." He watched Aaron's expression darken with every word, and couldn't help but add, "He never told me about that conversation, of course. I had no idea why no one had reached out."

"I can see how that would have damaged your trust," Aaron said quietly, "But wouldn't he still have been the one most likely to believe you? Given the… spiritual nature of your experience?"

In spite of himself, Spencer laughed. The jagged sound hurt his throat on the way out.

"Asking Gideon to believe me would be asking him to change his understanding of his own faith, because nothing in his existing framework would account for what happened to me," he said. "Even if he did manage that, he would expect me to be grateful, because I experienced a miracle."

There was a world of pain in those words that Spencer hadn't necessarily meant to show, but it was too late now. Aaron looked taken aback, and Spencer couldn't quite bear to meet his gaze; the younger agent turned his head, staring out the window instead, watching the way the lamplight caught the streams of rain on the glass and turned them to golden threads.

After a long moment, Aaron spoke again, more quietly this time.

"I understand this must have been incredibly stressful for you, Spencer, but wouldn't the alternative be simply having died?"

Spencer shut his eyes for a moment, even the rain too much as his emotions churned inside him.

"Do you know what Johnny Cash said, years later, about the night when he almost died in Nickajack Cave and found religion again?" Spencer asked softly. "He said, 'I hadn’t prayed over my decision to seek death in the cave, but that hadn’t stopped God from intervening'. For him, that was a blessing, because he had so much better in life to look forward to." Swallowing hard against the lump of emotions in his throat, Spencer opened his eyes again and looked directly at Aaron, who was watching him with considerably more concern now. "I didn't ask for a miracle, Aaron. And given what I know is coming, I'm not sure this is better than dying."

"Spencer."

Aaron had too much control to show his own turmoil openly, but Spencer could still read the devastation in the tight lines around his mouth, the minute slump of his shoulders. It was the first time Spencer had allowed the sentiment to fully form in his mind, certainly the first time he had said it out loud, and it stung him too; he shook his head quickly, trying to clarify.

"I'm not - I'm not suicidal, Aaron." He remembered some of his own thoughts during those endless moments floating in the void, before the entity's arrival, and grimaced. "Not now. I'm not going to do anything reckless, I just…" Spencer sighed, reaching up to rake his hand through his hair in frustration; never in his life had the right words been so hard to find. "I was so tired, and now I'm being asked to go on indefinitely. And I don't know how much power I actually have to change things, and if I can't fix some of the things I lived through the first time… I'm not looking forward to the next few years."

"Then we will find a way to change those things," Aaron said, and the firmness in his voice was more reassuring than it had any right to be. When he spoke with that calm, matter-of-fact resolution, Spencer had always found it impossible to doubt him. "You won't be doing this alone. And we're starting now.'

As he spoke, Aaron reached for one of the folders on his desk and pulled it closer. Flipping the cover open, he wrote something on the first page, then moved his pen to sign at the bottom; as he did so, Spencer caught sight of a small photo of himself paper-clipped to the top of the page, and his stomach flipped a little.

"Is that-"

"Your final evaluation form," Aaron said calmly, setting the pen down and flipping the folder closed again. "I'll hand it in to Strauss in the morning. You're cleared."

Spencer stared at him, stunned.

"But - I didn't figure out how to-"

"You don't need to prove your story, Spencer." The corners of Aaron's mouth twitched, just a little, the ghost of a smile just for the two of them. "You're honest, almost to a fault, and despite the worries I know you sometimes have, you're one of the sanest people on this team." The smile faded. "I also know what trauma looks like, and the kind of exhaustion and long-term burnout I'm seeing in you can't be faked, even if you had a reason to do so. I don't need any more than that. I believe you."

Spencer was amazed at just how much metaphorical weight lifted off his shoulders at those words. As someone who prided himself so much on facts and logic, it had been quietly killing Spencer to have to ask Aaron to simply accept such an unbelievably, unverifiable story; knowing that Aaron believed him anyway, simply because he knew Spencer would never lie about something so important, was a balm on many of the wounds on his heart.

"Thank you," he said quietly, hoping Aaron could hear the depth of his sincerity. "I think getting back out there - getting used to the team again - is going to help, more than anything else would right now."

Aaron nodded at him.

"Then be here bright and early tomorrow - but for now, go home and get some sleep," he said firmly. "I think we've both been here more than long enough."

Spencer smiled, and agreed, and left the office… knowing full well that he wasn't going to sleep until he'd put in a few more hours of work on the list he'd been compiling, since the day he got out of the hospital, of every case the team had worked from now until the moment of his death.

Even with his eidetic memory, he was taking no chances. Every detail he could remember was being recorded, now, while the memories of his first time through this life were still sharp.

Conflicted emotions about his own survival or not, he wasn't going to waste a moment of this chance to keep his family safe.

Chapter Text

For a few months, it was almost too easy.

Spencer, with Aaron's authority to help where needed, managed to leverage his knowledge of the future to prevent dozens of tragedies both large and small. Cases closed faster, victims recovered alive; Spencer had to careful not to intervene too early, lest the situation change enough to render his knowledge useless, but he could make a hundred little tweaks to better the outcomes and sleep easier at night knowing that he had helped someone.

His most significant victory so far had been in the case of Frank Breitkopf. No matter how complicated Spencer's feelings about his old mentor now were, he would never willing put anyone through what Gideon had suffered at Frank's hands - nor would he allow Sarah Jacobs and Rebecca Bryant to be murdered, or little Tracy Belle to be abducted and terrorized. With foreknowledge of Frank's real identity and plans, Spencer had been able to circumvent almost the entire sequence of events with a simple proactive decision; a few weeks before Frank would have reentered Gideon's life in a whirlwind of gore and devastation, Spencer had called in an anonymous tip for a wellness check at the address of Frank's mother's Manhatten apartment. The discovery of Mary Louise Breitkopf's dessicated corpse had launched an investigation, and it was easy for Spencer to 'accidentally' run across the article in the New York Times and put the pieces together between her case and the story that Frank had told Gideon in the diner. He made sure the information landed on Gideon's desk, the manhunt for Frank was reinvigorated with new information, and when Jane made her way to DC in search of help, Frank Breitkopf was apprehended hours later at a state line checkpoint by alert officers who recognized him from the wanted broadcasts.

With Frank under arrest and awaiting trial, Jane was taken into custody as well and whisked away into witness protection; Spencer could only hope that she would receive the psychological help she so desperately needed while in the program, but the most important outcome was that no one had died. Sarah Jacobs was alive to continue her medical and charitable work. Rebecca Bryant was alive to continue recovering from her captivity. Tracy Belle was safe to continue living a normal life, untroubled by the ghosts of someone else's past. And Gideon…

Gideon was the same as he ever was, basking in the success of apprehending the worst serial killer the Bureau had ever seen, blissfully unaware of how close he had come to the manifestation of his own personal Hell. He'd been more sociable with the team than usual, in the wake of their victory, arranging a few more team movie nights and actually making an effort to engage in conversations on the jet instead of brooding in a corner. Spencer didn't want to get his own hopes too far up, but it was admittedly nice, in a melancholic way - for so long, he'd wished that he could have had more time like this with this mentor, but that wish was only coming true after Spencer had already experienced a reality which nearly destroyed his ability to trust or enjoy these times. Part of him was still on edge, waiting for Gideon to walk away - to abandon the team, just as Spencer's father had abandoned his family. Spencer didn't know how long it would take for that wariness to lose its sharp edge, but for now he could only keep it to himself, and nurture alongside it a tiny sprout of hope that maybe this time things would truly be different.

Maybe, if Spencer could prevent enough of the tragedy that had weighed them all down, the team could stay together.

There was another blow coming, though, one that Spencer couldn't prevent. For all his knowledge of what events would precipitate what outcomes, there were some things he simply couldn't change, because they were beyond a handful of direct and obvious causes. How could he change something he had no ability to control? How could he save a marriage he wasn't part of, that had been in the process of dying long before he became aware of it?

He'd seen the change in Aaron over the course of a few weeks; the less frequent smiles, the more frequent brooding frowns, the way he got quieter at the end of cases and tended to spend the flight back on the jet obsessively checking his phone messages, his face a mask of emotionlessness tightly clamped over sadness and stress. Spencer ached for him, but he couldn't - wouldn't - broach that topic until Aaron did. Part of it was a desire to respect Aaron's privay, to allow him some sense of control despite Spencer's knowledge of so much of their lives to come; part of it was shame, because despite dreading the heartbreak that was rapidly coming for Aaron, part of Spencer was also relieved. The same part of him that he had despised, the first time around, for being quietly elated that Haley was leaving.

Those feelings were something he never intended to admit to anyone, though, much less Aaron himself - and so Spencer held his tongue, and waited for Aaron to be ready to talk. He could only hope that this time, with the increased trust and closeness between them due to the secrets they already shared, Aaron would reach out sooner - before the weight of his struggles came so close to crushing him.

Spencer's hope would be answered sooner than he had anticipated.

It happened on a warm spring day that Spencer remembered well; the day that he and Aaron were called out to a Connecticut prison to interview a death row inmate by the name of Chester Hardwick. The situation spiralled out of control just as fast as Spencer remembered; Hardwick's strangely reticent behaviour despite him being the one who had requested the interview, Aaron pressing the button to summon the prison guards, the realization that the guards weren't coming and that Hardwick intended to kill them. Aaron tugging off his jacket in preparation to square off with Hardwick was a memory that had been burned into Spencer's mind for years, but he only allowed himself a split second to catalogue the moment anew before he intervened, distracting Hardwick thoroughly enough that the crucial time window elapsed without the killer's notice.

Talking his way through a profile conjured from thin air was a lot easier when he knew the trick was actually going to work, and that he wasn't about to get his skull fractured at any moment.

The whole scenario had played out so smoothly that Spencer wasn't expecting any part of it to deviate from the script. Which left him all the more surprised when, as they climbed into their SUV after leaving the prison, Aaron abruptly apolgized.

"I'm sorry."

Spencer paused halfway through pulling on his seatbelt and looked over at Aaron, surprised. Aaron wasn't looking at him, though; he was staring out the windshield, jaw tight, hands clenched hard on the steering wheel. Taken aback, Spencer let go of the seatbelt and twisted a little in his seat to better face Aaron.

"What for?" he asked, baffled.

"For not realizing sooner what Hardwick was up to. For putting you in danger," Aaron said tightly. "I should have realized as soon as we walked into that room that something was wrong, his behaviour was totally off-"

"Aaron, it's not your fault," Spencer broke in quickly, heart sinking. He remembered Aaron being shaken after this encounter before, quiet and more distant than usual, but Spencer hadn't known he was blaming himself for it - though maybe he should have guessed, given Aaron's propensity for taking the blame for anything and everything that went wrong and laying it on his own shoulders. "He's an extremely intelligent psycopath and he planned that trap very carefully, you couldn't have known."

"But I could have, if I'd been paying more attention," Aaron growled, and he sounded furious in a way that might once have made Spencer recoil, when he was younger and hadn't yet learned to recognize that tone as Aaron being angry at himself. "If I hadn't been so distracted and had my head in the game-"

"You're allowed to be human sometimes, Aaron," Spencer said, and mustering nerve he didn't know he still had after the stresses of the day, he reached out and rested his hand gently on Aaron's tightly wound shoulder. "You were the one who taught me that. None of us can be at the top of our game 100% of the time, and you can't blame yourself for every slip."

Aaron's gaze had dropped from the windshield to the center of the steering wheel, and he was staring at it with an intensity that suggested if he glared any harder, the plastic might start to melt. Spencer was still resting a hand on his shoulder, and he could feel a very fine tremor in the muscle, as if Aaron was physically shaking with the force of whatever he was holding in. Spencer was just wondering if he should pull away, if he was making it worse by invading Aaron's personal space, when the older agent spoke abruptly.

"Haley wants a divorce."

Oh.

They hadn't ever talked much about it, before - Spencer had found out most of what he'd known about the impending divorce from Emily, who had heard it from Rossi, who had originally joined the team by this point after Gideon's sudden departure. Spencer wasn't sure when they would see Rossi with the way events were currently unfolding - or if he would even join the team at all, if Gideon actually stayed, a thought that was startlingly bitter to contemplate - but given that the author was still conspicuously absent at this juncture, Spencer supposed it shouldn't have been that surprising that Aaron was confiding in him instead. It still hit him like a kick to the chest, though, to realize that in the absence of his old friend and closest confidante, Aaron's very next choice was him.

"I'm so sorry," he said softly, and meant it - no matter how much he resented Haley's place in Aaron's life deep down, he had never wished her ill, and he would never wish for Aaron to go through the kind of pain that he knew the divorce had caused him. Would yet cause him, here and now.

"I should have seen that coming too," Aaron said, and the self-loathing in his voice was biting. "This job, the time away from home, the cases I can't quite shake… She can't understand what we do, and I wouldn't want her to know what kind of evil is out there, but it means she can't understand why I can't just walk away. And now she wants to leave, and I don't… I don't know what to do next."

"I can't tell you what to do," Spencer murmured, his heart in his throat. "But I hope you know I'm here for you, no matter what happens."

For a moment the words just hung in the air between them, painfully honest, horribly exposed - then Aaron finally looked over at Spencer, and even though his dark brown eyes were shadowed with profound sadness, there was an expression that was almost a smile on his face.

"I know," he said softly. "And it means a lot, Spencer."

They didn't talk more than that on the drive back to the airport, but the silence between them was easier, no longer weighted by secrets. Spencer turned the conversation over in his head, again and again, and allowed himself to wonder just how much more was going to change - just how wide the ripple effect would spread, of making the choice to trust Aaron with the truth, of forging this new connection unlike anything they'd shared before.

Only time would tell.

Chapter Text

Never before in his adult life had Aaron Hotchner felt so lost.

His marriage was more than just the primary relationship in his life; it was a milestone, a symbol, a mark of a success that he had fought tooth and nail to achieve. It was a triumph he had wrenched, bloodied but unbowed, from the jaws of the monsters that haunted his childhood - a wife who looked at him with love instead of fear and hatred, a child who ran to his arms instead of flinching from his hand. In his darkest moments, when the horrors that they faced every day on the job threatened to drag those monsters from the shadows of the past back into the light, Aaron could look down at his wedding ring and hold it like a talisman against the darkness; I am not him. I did what he could not.

But now that talisman was crumbling away.

He knew it was his own fault, in many ways. His dedication to the job was one point of pressure; his dishonesty was another, the lies he had told both himself and Haley over the years. Aaron knew that most people who knew him in a professional capacity would swear he was an honest man, and in many ways he was - too honest not to admit, to himself and to his wife, when he hadn't been honest. If his job with the BAU had taught him any fundamental truth of humanity, it was that everyone lied sometimes, to cope with the pain of reality; owning up to those lies, puncturing the comforting bubble of illusion and facing the hard truths underneath, was a choice that many people never made.

It was a small comfort that his wife still had enough faith in his honesty to believe his answers to the hard questions. It hadn't shocked Aaron when she asked him if he'd been unfaithful; it was a natural fear for a wife in her position to hold, given the reality of behaviour amongst men in positions of authority like his, given the amount of time he spent away from home for work and the distance both physical and emotional that it had forced between himself and Haley. It was the specificity of her accusation that had stung him, piercing through a layer of comforting lies he hadn't quite been ready to remove yet, striking somewhere deep and vulnerable and honest.

Are you having an affair with Spencer Reid?

He'd denied it immediately, firmly, and truthfully. He'd told her that Spencer had been struggling after his abduction by Hankel, and that he'd had no one outside the team to turn to for support. He told her that he'd been there for Spencer as a friend, and nothing more. He told her that he'd never once stepped outside the bounds of their marriage - and Haley had accepted his answer with surprising readiness, but there had been a shadow behind her eyes as she'd done so, as if his answer hadn't relieved her at all. She did believe him, it was obvious in her words and tone, and yet…

And yet the truth hung between them, unacknowledged and unspeakable. The reason for why Haley had suspected Spencer in particular. The reason the foundation of Aaron's marriage had crumbled beneath his feet before he noticed.

The oldest, most well-woven lie, that neither of them was quite ready to tear away.

Telling Spencer about the crisis in his marriage had been a relief, some of the crushing weight sliding off his shoulders at knowing that someone understood - and he had to wonder if Spencer had felt the same when he confided in Aaron about his unbelievable experience, if that was the real reason why Spencer had chosen to confide his impossible story of resurrection and time travel. Not simply because he needed someone's help in changing the future, as he claimed, but because that kind of truth was a weight that simply could not be borne alone. The relief of the confession, however, didn't last long; three weeks after that day in Connecticut, Aaron returned to the office after a grueling case to find a manila envelope sitting on his desk that hadn't come from anywhere within the Bureau. He didn't need to open it to know what it contained; the return address of the office where one of Haley's school friends now worked as a lawyer was proof enough.

In another timeline, Aaron might have opened the envelope and read its contents without really accepting what they meant. He might have fought again, just as hard as he once had, to refuse this defeat; to keep his marriage, his image, this comforting lie that he had woven into the fabric of his life. He might have stalled as long as he could, hoping desperately that he could somehow convince Haley to come back to him, that as long as he hadn't signed these papers then he could somehow reverse the damage that had been done.

In this life, he left the envelope unopened for the time being, and stepped back out onto the mezzanine long enough to ask Spencer to come to his office once he was done filing his reports.

The team finished their work and filed out one by one, all of them run ragged after the case that had kept them chasing an UnSub across half of Texas for the last three days; their exhaustion was a blessing, in this instance, since it meant none of them bothered to question Spencer about why he was being called up to their Unit Chief's office. When he was the last one left in the bull pen, Spencer made his way up to Aaron's office, carrying the folder of his reports for the day; the moment his eyes landed on the envelope on Aaron's desk, his whole expression softened in understanding and sympathy.

"Is that…"

"From Haley," Aaron confirmed, his throat tight. "Or rather, Haley's lawyer."

"I'm sorry, Aaron." Spencer's brilliant hazel eyes were soft, and Aaron couldn't hold his gaze. He looked down at the envelope instead, heart heavy, searching for the right words.

Finally, he found some that were close enough to what he wanted.

"I just need to know… is there any point in fighting this? Is there any chance I get her back? Or is refusing to sign these just dragging things out, and causing us both more pain?"

He looked back up - just in time to see a worrying transformation cross Spencer's face. The younger agent paled visibly, biting his lip as the line of his shoulders tightened; he ducked his head a little, hunching in on himself, and his hand clenched so tightly on the folder he was clutching against his chest that his knuckles went white, the folder bending under his suddenly crushing grip.

Alarmed, Aaron leaned forward, suppressing the urge to leap out of his chair altogether.

"Spencer-"

"Sorry," Spencer cut him off, shaking his head rapidly. "Sorry, I just-" He visibly forced himself to draw a deep breath, jaw working around the words he was holding back. "You did try to fight it, last time," he said finally, voice quiet and hoarse. "And Haley… resented it. Neither of you were happy, and the tension between you was difficult for Jack to deal with."

The intent behind the statement was so utterly transparent that it hardly counted as manipulation anymore, and Aaron couldn't hold it against Spencer; everyone on the team knew damn well that the best way to get Aaron to do anything was to convince him it was in Jack's best interests, and as Aaron wrote his signature on what had earlier felt so much like a death warrant, he thought it might even be kinder this way. Spencer was offering him a chance to accept this for Jack's sake, instead of having to accept it purely in its own right. That wasn't an excuse that Aaron would let himself hide behind for long, though. The time for allowing himself to hide behind illusions of security was over.

Which is why, after he'd signed the papers, he allowed himself another question.

"Spencer… every time I talk about Haley, you look like you're seeing a ghost." Spencer winced, and Aaron made sure his voice stayed soft, balancing his desperate need for answers with his desire not to make his friend too uncomfortable. "I know you're worried about telling me too much about what's coming, and changing things unintentionally, but I need to know if my family is in danger."

The absolutely haunted look on Spencer's face was an answer in its own right, and Aaron's chest tightened with budding panic before the younger agent hastily replied.

"Not Jack." The knot in Aaron's chest loosened just slightly, and Spencer gave him a helpless, apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I just - I can't risk changing things, or I might not know how to intervene when I need to. But I promise, Jack's going to be fine. And I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that everyone else is, too."

So. In the future that hadn't yet come to pass, something terrible had happened to Haley. And knowing their line of work, it had likely happened because of Aaron - because of something dark and monstrous that he had encountered on a case, that had followed him home and struck where he was most vulnerable.

The thought alone was almost more than he could bear.

To live with the memories of that inside his head - no wonder Spencer looked haunted.

"I won't ask you for more than that now," he said quietly. "But Spencer - when the time comes, you have to tell me. I have to know what's at stake."

"I will," Spencer said, just as quietly, the weight of a promise in his voice. And that was enough, for now.

Aaron might doubt himself, but he'd never once had reason to doubt Spencer.

Chapter Text

Spencer was going to die again, and it was going to be his own fault.

His idiotic, irrational heart was going to give out on him right in the middle of investigating a case or during a briefing at the BAU office, and it was all going to be because he simply couldn't process the fact that Aaron Hotchner had seemingly abandoned the concept of personal space.

It wasn't actually that profound of a change; he was fairly certain that the rest of the team hadn't even noticed, and for a group of trained profilers to miss a shift in behaviour usually meant that the shift was genuinely minimal. Yet, to Spencer, it was all-consuming. Aaron, who usually maintained a careful and extremely deliberate separation from the rest of the team - a subtle but wholly intentional choice, to reinforce the professional boundary between his role as the Unit Chief and the rest of the team, a line that protected the team's freedom and privacy as well as Aaron's plausible deniability - had apparently decided that Spencer was now an exception to this self imposed rule. An exception that manifested in Aaron touching him all the time.

It was mostly brief, even incidental; a brief touch on his shoulder in passing, a light brush against his arm to gain his attention during a discussion, a faint tap against his knee on the jet to let him know he was getting too off topic. Nothing that anyone would ever class as remotely inappropriate - merely the casual touches of two coworkers who were comfortable enough in each other's space to not guard against such contact. And yet, every time it happened, Spencer's skin burned like Aaron's fingertips were a brand and his ridiculous heart threatened to beat its way out of his chest.

No matter how many times Spencer tried to tell himself rationally that it meant nothing beyond being a sign of Aaron's growing comfort around him, due to their shared secrets building a sense of intimacy separate from the rest of the team, his emotions refused to cooperate.

He wanted, so desperately, for it to mean more than that.

He'd dreamed of something like this, the first time around - that after separating from Haley, Aaron would finally see Spencer's admiration and fondness for what it was; devotion that went far beyond professional boundaries, an inappropriate but irresistible emotional attachment that Spencer had been hopelessly nursing since his first days on the team. Back then, a younger and more naive Spencer had thought that once the wounds of the bitter divorce had healed, he might finally have a chance to confess his feelings to Aaron; even if he'd been rejected, he'd thought it would be such a relief to finally be honest, to not have to work so hard to hide his abject pining anymore.

That dream had died brutally the day that Haley was murdered by George Foyet. Shattered by grief and struggling desperately to cope with continuing to function at work while raising his equally devastated son, Aaron had needed a friend, not a subordinate with a crush. Spencer had shoved his own more selfish grief away to be there for Aaron, and even long after Haley's death, the dream of someday telling Aaron how he felt had faded; it no longer felt like something Aaron might welcome, but rather like another burden Spencer would be placing on his shoulders, another expectation to weigh him down. Spencer refused to add to the weight that Aaron already carried, and so he held his silence, even to the day that broke his own heart. The day that Emily told the team that even with the threat of Mr Scratch ended, Aaron wouldn't be returning to the team.

Spencer had never blamed Aaron for walking away - choosing to stay in WitSec with Jack, to raise his son in safety instead of throwing himself back into the line of fire, was the right choice. The exact kind of choice, putting the welfare of others above his own desires, that had made Spencer fall for Aaron in the first place. He had grieved for the final loss of his tenuous connection with Aaron, but he had made his peace with it; that peace was absolutely shattering apart inside him, though, in the face of these new developments.

Because this no longer felt like an inevitable tragedy in the making. Aaron wasn't pulling away from Spencer in his pain over the divorce. Instead he was reaching out, figuratively and literally, seeking connection in a way that Spencer couldn't remember him ever doing before. Even Rossi, one of Aaron's oldest friends and a mentor figure to the Unit Chief, had struggled to get him to open up about his feelings; yet, Aaron was actively confiding in Spencer, admitting his own struggles and asking for Spencer's guidance. Spencer was certain that it had started because of the knowledge of his situation - the fact that Spencer was mentally nearly the same age as Aaron, and that he had lived through uncountable losses and traumas already, breaking down barriers between them as Aaron realized and accepted that he didn't need to try to protect Spencer in that way - but it had clearly grown beyond that now. And every time Aaron touched him in passing, Spencer felt that treacherous hope inside him unfurl a little further; that maybe this time, this would also be different.

Maybe this time, Aaron wouldn't need to grieve, and something else could grow between them.

Chapter Text

"Reid, I'd like you to join me in my office for a moment."

It was supposed to be an ordinary Thursday. More of the endless paperwork that came with a government job, broken only by lighthearted banter between the team. Spencer had been splitting his attention between the report he was typing and the quiet argument over soccer teams that Morgan and JJ were having a few feet away, and the statement from Gideon caught him completely off guard. He tried his best to keep the alarm off his face, though, as he stood.

"Of course, sir."

As he followed Gideon toward the senior agent's office, he caught the brief but concerned glances from his teammates; none of them said anything, but they had all clearly registered the abrupt request as unusual. Shrugging a little, Spencer could only hope it was nothing serious, though something like dread was beginning to pool in his gut.

Gideon acting out of character never boded well for anyone.

The older man didn't seem particularly stressed or upset, though, as he opened his office door and gestured Spencer toward a chair. Spencer sat as directed, his anxiety ratcheting a little higher as he did so; this was the first time he'd been in Gideon's office since his return, and the memories it brought back weren't all pleasant. The framed photos on the desk, the colourful bird prints on the walls… Spencer caught himself twisting the leather strap of his satchel around his fingers, but didn't try to stop the nervous gesture. He would have been nervous in this situation anyway, the first time around - it just would have been born out of nerves over possibly disappointing Gideon, and not the complicated emotions swirling through him now.

"What did you want to speak to me about, sir?"

"I just thought it might be a good time to check in," Gideon said mildly as he took his own seat behind the desk.

Spencer stared at him.

"Sir?"

Gideon gave him a look that was… kind, in a way, softer than the senior agent's usual expression. But there was something patronizing, too, in the half-smile that he wore as he leaned forward.

"You've had a very difficult year, Reid, and anyone in your situation might be having difficulty making peace with that. I just wanted to catch up, and see how you're doing."

As Spencer processed those words and realized what they meant, one emotion began to crowd out the others that had been churning through him - and the one overtaking the others was rage.

"Sorry, sir, I just want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly," he said, unable to keep his tone from growing tight and cool, the words emerging clipped as he fought to maintain his professionalism. "You're asking me now, how I'm feeling about having been abducted, held captive, and tortured… six months ago?"

Gideon leaned back in his seat, looking genuinely taken aback at the hostility in Spencer's tone.

"I suppose I am," he said after a moment, frowning a little as his gaze dropped to his desk. "I thought… well. I suppose, with our case load and all the excitement around Frank resurfacing, I didn't realize how long it's been." He looked back up at Spencer, and he looked so damnably earnest, as if he'd really only just recognized the amount of time that had passed once Spencer pointed it out. "I'm sorry, Reid, I should have done this sooner. I'll make it up to you."

The words, which should have been a reassurance, cracked something deep inside Spencer instead.

No you won't.

One of the photos on the desk was of Stephen - the son that Gideon hadn't spoken to for years, the son he might never have spoken to again if Aaron hadn't all but ordered the man to call him. The son who, ten years from now, would have stood over his father's body at an isolated cabin and told the team that I don't know who might have had a grudge against my father. We never really stayed in touch. The son that Gideon loved in concept enough to keep a photo front and center where he would see it every day - the son he had never loved enough in practice to swallow his pride and try to make amends.

Spencer knew men like Gideon, and no matter what they promised, they never made it up to the people that they hurt the most.

The realisation felt oddly freeing. For weeks, Spencer had been agonizing over whether or not he should reach out to Gideon, if he should try to push past his own hesitations and trust the man again; now, sitting here in this office where Gideon had reached out first, Spencer realized he didn't want to. He didn't want to rebuild a relationship that he knew was doomed to fall apart, he didn't want to rely on someone he knew would disappoint him. Gideon meant well, and he always had - but it was better for everyone, Gideon included, if Spencer didn't let them go down that road again.

He could appreciate that, given all the time in the world, Gideon had eventually reached out. But that didn't mean that Spencer had to take the offered hand.

"That's alright, sir," he said, doing his best to exhale the tension from his shoulders, trying to let the chaotic emotions in his chest subside. "The team's been very supportive, and it's been easier since I've been back at work."

He offered nothing else; none of the rambling he might normally have indulged in during a casual conversation, no statistics on grief processing, no meaningful analysis of his own reactions. Something uncertain crept into Gideon's expression for the first time, and he tilted his head a little.

"That's it?" he asked, gesturing absently with one hand, clearly waiting for more. Spencer just gave him the blandest smile he could muster.

"That's all I can really say, sir. It's in the past now, isn't it?"

Gideon's mouth flattened a little, but no matter how unhappy he clearly was with the answer, Spencer knew perfectly well he'd left the older agent very little room to pry; Spencer had gone through all his mandatory counseling sessions and been cleared to rejoin the team weeks ago, now, the time for raising any concern about how he was coping with his experiences was long past. Without any kind of behavioural transgression on Spencer's part, this was nothing more than a senior agent checking in on a younger colleague, and Gideon couldn't force Spencer to divulge anything more than he'd already said.

Visibly reluctant, Gideon conceded, as if their conversation had turned into one of the chess matches that Spencer had once cherished so much.

"Well, I'm glad to hear it. My door is always open, if you need someone to talk to."

"Of course, sir," Spencer said, standing and swinging his bag back onto his shoulder. As he stepped out of the office and pulled the door shut behind himself, the click of the latch had the ring of finality to it.

He would never willingly reach out to Gideon for support again.

He had a whole team to rely on, who had proven themselves infinitely more worthy of that trust.

Chapter Text

JJ had never thought of herself as a particularly envious person.

It wasn't that she'd never wanted for anything; her family had been comfortable growing up, but not wealthy, and they'd faced their share of hardships. Roslyn's death had been the most difficult, but far from the only challenge in her childhood. However, JJ had always been a practical person, thorough in her planning and quick to adapt when needed; when she wanted something, she didn't sit around pining over it. She made a plan on how to get it. That approach had carried her through high school, her athletic scholarship, and her time at Georgetown, but it was failing her now. The problem wasn't that she had suddenly lost her ability to form an actionable plan; the problem was that she was struggling to admit to herself exactly what she wanted, and was entirely unsure if she even deserved it.

She wanted Spencer Reid's attention back, and she was agonizingly aware that she had no right to demand it.

Things had been… strange since the Hankel case, since that terrifying night where they had almost lost Spencer for good. In the initial aftermath, Spencer had been a mess, as they had all expected - no one would have simply bounced back after such a horrific experience, and JJ had spent the weeks that he was on leave to recover from his ordeal nearly sleepless herself, her attempts at rest wracked with guilt-born nightmares about their decision to split up that night. Everyone on the team had expected Spencer to be fragile when he returned to work, and JJ had been braced to support him as a best friend should, to do whatever she could to make up for failing to protect him that night on Hankel's farm… but to the surprise of all of them, Spencer didn't seem to need their support very much at all.

He'd returned to work calm and clear-eyed, his hands steady and his mind razor-sharp as ever. If anything, he seemed more confident in some ways now than he had before his abduction - he flinched away from strangers less, spoke with more authority when he interacted with local law enforcement during cases, offered his opinion more readily in profile discussions and with less of a preemptive flurry of facts to justify his reasoning. He seemed to have somehow settled into his own skin, in the wake of a trauma that should have had the opposite effect, and no one on the team was quite sure how much of that unexpected maturity was connected with the other strange occurrence - the reason why JJ hadn't had a chance to actually talk directly to Spencer about any of this.

The only person on the team who Spencer seemed to spend time with now, at least on a one-on-one basis, was Hotch.

He still joined them for team nights - more frequently now, in fact, another jarring change from how he used to need to be coaxed into an evening at a bar or club - but when there was a quiet moment on the jet or a slow day on the office, it was always Hotch that he seemed to gravitate toward. JJ missed the quiet conversations she'd grown accustomed to, the discussions of Spencer's latest reading choice or current topics in the news; she missed her friend, but even with the guilt still hanging over her, she knew it wasn't just her that Spencer had pulled away from. His avoidance of Gideon was glaring, with the two of them barely interacting outside of case profiles, the chessboard sitting untouched in a corner of the jet like a silent reminder that it hadn't always been this way. Clearly, whatever had changed in Spencer, it was affecting his relationships with everyone.

But when she looked at him sitting next to Hotch on the plane back to Quantico, Hotch working his way through a crossword in the day's paper while Spencer playfully fed him hints and rattled on about the etymology of certain words, JJ couldn't help but feel a stab of deeply personal unhappiness.

Why won't you talk to me? If you're angry, I understand, but why won't you say it? Why does it feel sometimes like you're looking right through me?

Spencer hadn't given any indication that he was upset with her, or that he blamed her for what had happened at Hankel's that night. He didn't ever mention it, he hadn't made any pointed remarks - he had barely spoken to her at all in fact, outside of cases, but when he did it was just as warm and friendly as ever. Spencer's anger had always been a sharp, biting thing, his displeasure expressed openly if not always directly; this didn't fit the pattern of that kind of anger at all, and yet JJ couldn't figure out why else he had withdrawn so suddenly and so completely. Why there was a distance between them now, unspoken but undeniable, that she couldn't seem to reach across.

There was no plan of action that she could make, though, no practical fix for a broken friendship. She knew that pushing could very well drive Spencer further away, and that was the last thing that she wanted.

So all she could do was wait, and watch, and pretend that something inside her wasn't hurting like hell as Hotch actually laughed aloud at one of Spencer's remarks.

This isn't forever. He must still be healing, just, not in the way I expected.

It's okay. I can still fix this.

I haven't lost him.

Chapter Text

It was a painful case the first time, and it was a painful case now.

Spencer had remembered the bare facts - a thirteen year old boy in Phoenix, Arizona, abused by his father, snapping and lashing out with fatal consequences at the schoolmates who bullied him - but he had forgotten just how bitter it felt, arresting a child who had been driven to extremity by the abject cruelty of a man who should have protected him instead. Even uncovering evidence of the father's abuse and cuffing him as well didn't fully alleviate the sour taste at the back of Spencer's throat. Arresting the father now was too little, too late; his son's life would still be forever shadowed by what he'd done, three other boys were still dead. Only intervention years ago could have saved them, and nobody had taken that step.

As the local police led the father to a cruiser, his weeping wife had exclaimed that she wished she could have done something, that she could have protected her son better from her husband's wrath. Spencer thought he might have been the only one who had heard Aaron's response, spoken low and quiet and all the more vicious for it.

"You could have. You chose not to."

That had been a few hours ago, though - and as he and the rest of the team finished up the paperwork and prepared to head to their hotel and turn in for the night, Spencer realised that Aaron wasn't with them. That, in fact, he didn't remember seeing their Unit Chief since they'd arrived back at the police station.

As soon as the realisation hit, Spencer's heart rate spiked.

That's not right. I don't remember this.

"JJ, have you seen Hotch?" he asked, struggling to keep his sudden anxiety out of his voice.

JJ looked up from the last few files she was boxing up for transport, eyes wide. For a second, there was a look on her face that Spencer hadn't expected - something startled, something almost hurt. Then it was gone, and she responded in her usual, soft tone.

"Not for a while now, I last spoke to him just after we got back, he said he was stepping out for some air."

Part of Spencer wanted to immediately bolt out of the room, start looking for Aaron - but he forced himself to stop. That look…

"Are you okay?" he asked, letting some of the worry bleed into his voice now. JJ smiled, but it was weak, tired in a way that instantly set alarm bells ringing in his mind.

"I'm fine, Spence," she said softly, glancing down as she settled the lid on the box. "I just… haven't been sleeping well lately." She looked at him again, and the edge of her smile twisted, wry. "Nightmares, still."

For a moment, Spencer didn't understand. It had been months, it hadn't haunted her this long before, why -

And then his stomach plummeted with the realisation.

He'd been so busy, so swept up in planning for the future, balancing his new closer relationship with Aaron and trying to sort out his conflicted feelings about Gideon… he'd completely forgotten that he'd never actually spoken to JJ about Hankel. He'd missed the moment at the graveyard, when he had said it the first time, and he'd never remembered to follow up afterward. Spencer was used to a JJ who was all but unshakeable, who trusted her instincts and followed them unwaveringly, but this wasn't the woman he'd worked with all those years; this was her before she found that confidence, when she still took every failure to heart. When she still blamed herself for things she couldn't possibly have stopped.

And this time, Spencer had never told her that he didn't blame her.

"Hey," he said, stepping forward. "You know nothing that happened was your fault, right?"

From JJ's wide-eyed look, he suspected no one else had told her that either.

"We split up," she said softly, haltingly. "If we hadn't - if I'd stayed with you-"

"JJ, Hotch sent us out there, and it was my idea to split up," Spencer interrupted her gently. "None of us knew how dangerous Hankel was. You couldn't have done anything to stop what happened."

JJ's eyes abruptly welled with tears, and she flung her arms around him. Spencer tensed for a second - he still struggled with physical contact without warning, no amount of time would ever change that - but he forced himself to breathe through the initial discomfort and hugged her back. His heart twinged a little as he heard her muffle a sob against his shoulder. No matter how much the years had strained their friendship - no matter that they'd never quite recovered wholly from Emily's feigned death, and the way it had shattered the trust between them - this JJ had never wronged him, and he hadn't meant to leave her feeling like she had. He'd have to remind himself to check in with the team a little more often going forward.

Focusing on safeguarding his friends against external threats wasn't worth ignoring everything else to the point that he ended up hurting them in other ways.

When Spencer gingerly pulled back, JJ's eyes were wet, but her smile this time was real.

"I'm sorry, Spence, I know you're not big on hugs, I just - God, I'm so relieved," she said, wiping carefully at her eyes, trying to brush away the tear tracks without smearing her makeup. "The last few months it feels like I've barely seen you, and I thought.."

"I promise I wasn't mad at you," Spencer said, managing a sincere smile. "I've just - I've had a lot on my plate, you know? I've been… figuring some stuff out." He glanced at his watch, heart clenching again as he realized exactly how late it was - past midnight, which meant Hotch had been gone for at least two hours. "Listen, there's something I need to do right now, but let's make some time to catch up soon, alright?"

JJ's smile faded, but she nodded. "Yeah, that - that sounds nice." She bit her lip, something complicated flashing across her face. "Are you - going to look for Hotch?"

"Yeah. I don't think any of us should be alone after that case," Spencer said honestly. JJ sighed.

"You're probably right. Let me know if you find him?"

Spencer agreed, then left JJ to the last of the cleanup as he hurried toward the front of the police station. On the way, he tapped out a quick text, hoping it might be as easy as asking.

'Where are you?'

To his surprise, he had barely stepped out of the front doors into the chill night air when his phone buzzed with a reply. He checked the screen.

'St George's. Two blocks south.'

Spencer looked up, and even from the station he could see the warm glow of light from the cathedral, a tall and elegant white building rising above the lower adjacent structures. The prompt answer alleviated one anxiety, but the location sparked a new one. Aaron had never been religious, not like Gideon; indeed, he shared Spencer's open disgust for the UnSubs who used faith to justify their deeds. A church was a strange choice of refuge… but speculation would get Spencer nowhere, so he tucked his phone back into his pocket and started walking instead.

There was a sign with elegant calligraphic script in front of the building, proclaiming the Cathedral of St George the Martyr open to all comers at all hours. Spencer tapped out a quick text to let JJ know he'd found their wayward Unit Chief, then slipped inside, and even he had to acknowledge that the atmosphere was welcoming; the air was warm and lightly fragrant with incense, the soaring cathedral hall lit both by candles on ornate metal stands and gently glowing wall sconces. Even in the soft lighting, the stained glass windows were vibrant, their colours darker and richer with the night's blackness behind them.

Aaron was the only person there, sitting in a pew near the back, dark head bowed. As Spencer approached, Aaron looked up at him; his expression was as reserved as ever, but his eyes were faintly red-rimmed, and Spencer's heart instantly twisted at the sight.

Spencer wasn't sure what to say, where to start, but Aaron slid over a little on the pew to make room, and the silent invitation was extremely welcome. Spencer sat next to him, and for a moment they were both silent, simply existing in the shared space.

Eventually, Spencer decided to start where they were both most comfortable; the practicalities.

"All the paperwork is handled, and we're ready for the jet in the morning once it's refueled. The rest of the team is headed to the hotel."

He glanced over in time to catch the grimace on Aaron's face.

"I'm sorry, I meant to help with that," Aaron said quietly. His voice was hoarse. "I must have lost track of time."

"It's alright, there wasn't all that much to deal with this time; it was a clean enough resolution," Spencer murmured. He hesitated briefly, then decided to leave it in Aaron's hands to draw the line; there was a quiet tension in the air that suggested this was not a time to be reckless. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Aaron was quiet for a moment. Consideration, not rejection.

"How much did I ever tell you about my family?"

Spencer's heart sank.

Officially, he knew almost nothing. Unofficially… Spencer had never been good at following the rule against profiling within the team, and Aaron had naturally been the most frequent subject of his theorising. It was impossible for Spencer not to want to tease apart that stoic facade, figure out exactly what lay behind it.

None of his speculations had hinted at anything good in Aaron's past, though.

"Not very much," he offered aloud. "I've met your brother twice, and you've mentioned a few things over the years. Your mother was old money, concerned with appearances. Your father was unfaithful, and…" Spencer had to swallow, his throat going a little dry, "You mentioned once that he drank too much."

Aaron was staring down at his clasped hands, but after a moment he looked up at Spencer, a frown now creasing his brow.

"That's really it?" he asked, his gaze searching. "I never told you…"

He trailed off, but Spencer could only shake his head.

"We never talked very much about the past," he said softly, and tried to keep the grief from his voice.

I would have listened if you had. I'm listening now. I want to know everything about you, even the worst of it, and I promise I'll keep it safe.

Aaron exhaled heavily, and his gaze dropped back to his hands. He hesitated for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was stiffer - more formal. It was his presentation voice, Spencer recognised with a pang. The same tone he would deliver a profile in when they worked a case.

"My father was a functioning alcoholic who drank to cope with the stresses of his job. He was a lawyer, and a good one most of the time, but he'd never made it as far up the ladder of power as he always thought he was owed, and what he saw as a failure ate him inside. My mother was a God-fearing woman who feared the opinions of the neighbours more than she feared the final judgement; she would never have left him, no matter what he did, because the rumours of his infidelity could be managed but the scandal of divorce would have killed her." His hands clenched tighter together, knuckles paling. "And when the alcohol and the affairs weren't enough to soothe my father's ego, he used his fists instead."

Spencer couldn't speak. It felt as if he couldn't even breathe. He could only sit there, stunned, as the worst of his fears crystallized into reality.

Oh, Aaron.

"He finally drank himself to death a few years after I finally got out of the house," Aaron forged on, still with that horrible, professional detachment. "Heart attack at forty seven. Mother was furious that neither Sean nor I came to the funeral, because the neighbours asked questions, and how does it look when a man's sons don't come to his funeral?" A low, rough sound escaped him; not a laugh, but something darker, something pained and furious and broken. "The last time I believed in God was ten years before he died. Does it count as a prayer being answered, if it takes ten years for it to happen?"

There were a million things that Spencer wanted to say, all crowding onto his tongue, but he held them back and reached out for Aaron instead. Laying his hand over both of Aaron's where they were still clenched painfully tight, he squeezed gently and waited; he could feel that there was more that Aaron needed to say, and he'd wait for him to find the words.

Slowly, Aaron's hands unclenched, loosening from their white-knuckle grip. When he finally let go altogether and turned his hand over, lacing his fingers with Spencer's instead, Spencer could have cried.

"I never talk about this," Aaron said, barely above a whisper now, "Not even to Haley, and she was there for some of it. But I thought, if I'd ever worked up the nerve to tell someone, it must have been you."

Spencer's heart thudded against his ribs.

"We weren't… close, like this, last time," he breathed, struggling to find the right words - terrified of saying too much. "I was the youngest person on the team, and I think… maybe you were trying to shield me, from some of the ugliness we see out there everyday. But we never talked like this, before."

Aaron looked at him for a moment, and Spencer could only pray that his feelings weren't written all over his face. Whatever Aaron found in his expression, it seemed to satisfy him, because he looked back down to the floor and squeezed Spencer's hand a little where they were still holding on to each other.

"I'm sorry for what you had to go through, Spencer, but… I'm glad I get to know this version of you."

Spencer tried not to let himself tear up.

"Me too," he whispered, squeezing back.

They didn't talk anymore after that, but Aaron didn't pull his hand away either, and they simply sat together for a while. Silent, but not alone.

It was a long time before they finally made it to the hotel.

Chapter Text

Penelope was a worrier; always had been, always would be. If she cared about someone, she worried about them, and would do anything in her power to make their lives easier. That might mean making cupcakes to lift their spirits, or it might mean illegally hacking a government database, but either way - Penelope Garcia would figure out what needed to be done, and get it done with style.

Her darling Doctor Reid was a worrier too. She had clocked it almost immediately when he joined the team, the way he'd always check if anyone else wanted coffee before making his own, the way he zeroed in on any of the other team members who mentioned a problem they were having, the way he soaked up reassurance or praise like a bright-eyed sponge.

She saw the way it hurt him, when any member of the team was suffering, and she ached for him because it was like no one else could see it. She wished that she could protect him from it somehow, but she knew she couldn't - it was his nature, and no matter how much Penelope teased him sometimes about being the baby of the team, she didn't actually want to hurt his feelings further by coddling him. He was young, but he was wiser than his years, and he deserved respect for that.

Penelope understood, better than some of the team might have guessed, how much trauma could age you beyond your time. She surrounded herself with colour and joy not because she was innocent enough to think that the world was really all kittens and rainbows, but because it was the only way she could ward off the horrors that she knew full well were lurking out there in the darkness; the only way she could keep herself smiling, at the end of the day, after delving into some of the worst that humanity had to offer. She knew Spencer was the same, in some ways. His love of literature and science, his fascination with all things ancient and beautiful - he was searching for wonder, the same as Penelope was, consciously choosing to fill his mind with pleasant things when it would have been all too easy to dwell on the ugliness. It didn't make him naive, it made him resilient, and Penelope had every confidence that her boy genius would succeed someday in saving the world.

The horror show of his abduction by Tobias Hankel, though, had scared Penelope out of years of her life.

For all his resilience and his clever mind, Spencer wasn't indestructible, and what he'd been through… she'd been so scared that it would break him for good, that even after he came back to the team, he wouldn't be the same. Her bright-eyed good doctor, out to save the world; if he had lost that shine, that optimism that kept the rest of the team going whether they acknowledged it or not, Penelope didn't know what she would do. None of them ever talked about it, but they all knew that Spencer was a big portion of the team's heart. If they lost him, none of them would be the same.

She'd been so scared that nothing would be enough to block out the darkness from his mind, now. That he would never find something bright or beautiful enough to block out that horror.

And yet…

It seemed, miraculously, like he had.

He had come back from his mandated leave steady and clear-eyed, still smiling, still laughing. He'd had deep shadows under his eyes and he'd been skinnier than ever, but there was still life in him. And that hadn't faded over the following weeks; if anything, it had seemed to strengthen. Spencer Reid, it seemed, was happier now than he'd been in a long time - and Penelope had some very strong, very specific suspicions as to why.

The cameras were her eyes, and they were everywhere in the Bureau. It hadn't taken her long to notice just how much time Spencer seemed to be spending, all of a sudden, with their tall dark and handsome Unit Chief.

She hadn't quite known what to make of it, at first. Hotch was supportive of everyone on the team, of course, but he didn't socialise much with any of them one-on-one; he usually confined himself to shared team outings, and maintained a professional distance outside of group settings. Now, though, it seemed he spent more time near Spencer than away from him. Talking to him, joking with him, simply sitting near him in the conference room or on the jet; he'd even memorized Spencer's absurdly sweet and complicated coffee preferences and started bringing the younger agent coffee whenever he replenished his own caffeine. Penelope had puzzled at it for a while, wondering when they got so close - and then one day, she'd seen something that made her do a double take.

They'd been in the kitchenette at the same time, Spencer digging through the cupboards for a snack (probably having skipped a meal again, distractable creature that he was) and Hotch grabbing coffee for both of them. Hotch said something to Spencer that she sadly couldn't hear, since that camera lacked audio, but Spencer had laughed; Hotch had leaned forward, reaching past Spencer to grab a bowl from the counter - and for a moment, his hand had landed on the small of Spencer's back, steadying them both as Hotch reached around the younger man. Even when Hotch had the bowl in hand, he'd lingered for a moment in Spencer's space, the two of them exchanging quiet words - and when Hotch finally took his hand off Spencer's waist and stepped back, Penelope found herself exhaling abruptly, realising only then that she'd been holding her breath.

She'd been engaged in an escalating battle of playfully inappropriate banter with Derek Morgan for years, and that was still quite possibly the single most sexually charged interaction she'd ever seen in their workplace.

She wasn't sure they were actually sleeping with each other; Hotch had only announced that he and Haley were separating a couple of weeks ago, and she couldn't imagine he'd have moved on quite that fast. The idea that he'd started something with Spencer before the separation was just absurd. The day that Aaron Hotchner cheated on a partner would be the day Penelope spotted pigs flying past the Bureau windows. Still… she knew what her eyes were telling her, and they were currently informing her that there was nothing platonic about that interaction whatsoever. And Spencer hadn't looked remotely opposed, leaning into the touch as if it was a commonplace occurrence, as if he was used to Hotch's hands on him. 

Well. If that was what had put the sparkle back in their resident genius's eyes, Penelope would be the last person to complain. Clearly, whatever was going on, they were keeping it off the team's radar for now; she wasn't going to intrude. If, by sheer coincidence, that was also the moment that she started booking them into the same room, anytime that the team had to double up on hotel rooms and the hotel's booking software allowed her to specify room occupants…

That could stay her little secret, for now.

Chapter Text

"What the hell were you thinking?"

Spencer couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Aaron this furious - probably, his brain offered hazily, the last time someone had threatened Jack. Aaron's voice was low, out of deference to their current location in a hospital, but his dark eyes were blazing with barely restrained emotion and his jaw was clenched so tightly that it was almost worrying.

"Shouldn't clench your jaw. 'S bad for your teeth."

Oh, and he'd said that out loud. Oops.

"My teeth are not what I'm worried about right now, Spencer!" Aaron had definitely not appreciated the information, judging by his blistering glare. "You could have died! Why in God's name would you go charging into an unsecured lab like that?"

Spencer blinked and tried to rally himself. The non-narcotic sedative the nurses had given him really wasn't that powerful, but his body was currently weakened both from anthrax exposure and the antidote he'd promptly pumped into his system, and the combined effects of all those foreign substances swirling around his body were messing with his head to a surprising degree.

Finally, he managed to articulate a reassurance.

"Was okay. I remembered. Already did it once, so I knew it would be fine."

The words did not have the intended reassuring effect.

"Spencer." Aaron looked like was seconds away from punching a wall, but he dropped heavily into the chair beside Spencer's hospital bed instead. When he grabbed Spencer's closest hand with both of his own, Spencer was shocked to realize that Aaron's hands were shaking. "That is not a good enough safety net, do you understand me? I don't care how well you remember a case or how sure you are of what's coming next, you cannot put yourself at risk like that. We've already had situations that have varied wildly from your experiences, events that you can't predict because they're not the same. You said yourself that you were surprised this case was happening now, because you remembered it being later! What if they hadn't made the antidote yet? What if it wasn't where you remembered?" Aaron's voice cracked a little, and as he ducked his head and struggled to draw in deep breaths, Spencer finally realized that the older agent was on the verge of tears.

Guilt roared to life in Spencer's chest, and he squeezed Aaron's hand, chest aching.

"I'm sorry," he breathed, his voice weak even in his own ears. "I didn't think… I was just focused on keeping everyone else out, Aaron, I didn't even consider what else I could do. I wasn't really thinking about myself, just…"

"I know you want to keep the team safe, Spencer," Aaron said, looking up at him, stress and unhappiness still etched into every line of his face. "But you need to keep yourself safe, too. I can't have you throwing yourself into danger like this. You're not expendable, and for the team to be safe and happy, we need you safe and happy too, alright?"

Spencer's heart missed a beat.

Aaron had said we, but with the look in his eyes and the heavy tone in his voice… it had sounded a lot more like I.

The hope unfurling through his chest felt more dangerous than the anthrax.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and this time his voice was stronger. Steadier. "I can't - I can't promise I'm never going to do it again, Aaron. If I have to risk myself to make sure something much worse doesn't happen, I'm going to do that." Spencer drew a deep breath, exhaled long and slow. "But I'll try to only resort to that if it's absolutely necessary. You're right - there's a lot of things I could have done differently today, that I just didn't, because… I wasn't thinking of my own safety as a priority." He squeezed Aaron's hand again, and tried a tentative smile. "I'll try to do better about that, at least."

"I suppose that's the best that I can ask for," Aaron said quietly, sighing heavily. "It's not like I don't take risks for the team as well. I just… the team can't lose you."

"You won't," Spencer promised.

You. Not they.

Aaron didn't correct his wording.

And once again, Spencer felt the reckless hope inside himself stretch a little farther.

Chapter Text

"Everyone in the conference room in five minutes, please, we've got a case," Aaron called as he stepped out of his office and strode along the mezzanine. In the bull pen, the team perked up, Spencer most of all; this was another new occurrence, a phenomenon that seemed to be happening ever more frequently as time went on. Gut clenching with the usual anxiety that accompanied an unexpected event these days, Spencer stood and swung his bag over his shoulder hurriedly; the faster he could get to the briefing, the faster he could find out how nervous he actually needed to be.

As the team trickled into the room, JJ paused just inside the door, giving Aaron a curious look.

"Hotch, I didn't approve any files-"

"I know, this one came directly to me," he said, handing folders around to the team members who were already sitting. "It's a special request from an old friend."

Taking the folder from Aaron, Spencer flipped it open - and nearly stopped breathing. He recognised the first photo instantly, a young girl with tear-filled eyes staring into the camera, pale and haunted. Connie Galen.

As his conscious mind caught up with what his instincts already knew, Spencer's heart rate began to accelerate.

This is the case. This is Rossi's case!

"A request from an old friend?" Morgan asked, his voice heavy with skepticism. "We're not exactly a bar band, Hotch. Since when do we take requests?"

"Since this particular request came from former SSA David Rossi," Aaron said dryly. "This case has been cold for twenty years, but there's been a new development in the last couple of days, and the Indianapolis police are reopening the case. Dave reached out to me yesterday to ask that our team help out on the investigation as a personal favour, and after reviewing the files I believe our involvement is warranted. The lead detective on the case is faxing over the official invitation as we speak."

"Dave was fixated on this case nearly his whole career, it was his white whale," Gideon said, eyes scanning consideringly across the first page of the file. "Are we sure that this 'new development' gives us anything to go on? Or is it just leverage for Dave to pry this can of worms open again?"

Spencer bit his tongue almost to blood.

How dare you.

He couldn't let himself say it, but he'd flipped through the whole file at his top reading speed - not just the first page that Gideon was still lazily skimming - and so he said something else instead.

"They've discovered that the UnSub has been maintaining active contact with the children of the victims, marking the anniversaries of the crime with gifts delivered to their doors even though they're now adults living outside the family home where the murders took place. I'd call that fairly significant new information, sir."

A pin drop would have shattered the silence that descended over the conference room.

Aaron, blessedly, stepped into the widening void in the conversation immediately. "The gifts weren't reported immediately because the children initially assumed that they were from Dave," he said, pulling up photos of some rather cheap-looking stuffed animals on the screen. "He'd taken a personal interest in the case and gotten quite close with the three orphaned children of the victims, Richard and Diana Galen, and so the idea that the stuffed animals were from him seemed reasonable when they were still children. This year, the younger daughter, Connie Galen, found a stuffed animal inside her car when she left work on the anniversary of her parents' deaths. She reached out to Dave and told him that the reminders were upsetting for her and her siblings, and it was only then that it was realised that Dave was not sending the gifts, and that they were most likely being left by the UnSub instead."

"That's a sign of considerable remorse," Prentiss said thoughtfully, looking down at the file. "Leaving gifts every year for two decades… whoever is doing this feels extreme guilt for taking this couple away from their children."

"It also means they're still active in the area, since the last round of gifts was left with the Galen children just two weeks ago," Aaron said. "Wheels up in thirty, we're going to head down there and see if we can pick up a trail. Reid, stay a moment?"

Spencer stayed in his seat as the others filed out, Gideon still looking like he'd bitten into a lemon. Once the door shut behind JJ, Aaron crossed the room and leaned against the edge of the table next to Spencer's chair, looking down at him with concern.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Spencer sighed, running one hand through his hair, frustration edging his words. "I just - I couldn't sit there and let Gideon talk shit about Rossi. Rossi's a better profiler and a better friend than Gideon will ever be."

He realised his mistake a second too late, as Aaron's eyebrows darted upwards, the beginnings of a smile tugging at his mouth.

"Wait. You know Dave?"

"Ugh." Spencer flopped back in his chair, grinning reluctantly. "I'm not giving you details, so don't even bother asking, but - yeah. I'm well acquainted." A memory floated to the surface of his mind; one of a hundred team dinners at Rossi's mansion, the team chatting happily around the dining room table, Rossi taking the opportunity to ruffle Spencer's hair teasingly as he set down a plate of pasta. "I miss him. I know it's bad, because the Galen family has been through hell, but I was so excited when I opened the case file; I knew this was his case, and with some of the things that have changed… I wasn't sure it would come our way, this time."

Aaron's smile softened, and he reached out and put his hand on Spencer's shoulder.

"If whatever happened for you two to meet the first time doesn't happen this time, I'll personally make sure to introduce you to him," he promised. "He was always insistent that people needed to be joining the BAU for the right reasons, not to chase glory but to help people; he'll love you." He straightened then and moved back around the table, starting to gather up the case files spread across the surface. "Now go get your things together for the jet, and try to look properly scolded when you walk out - god knows at least one of us needs to pretend at professionalism around here."

"Yes, sir!" Spencer said crisply, then ducked away with a burst of laughter as Aaron tossed a pen at him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Spencer hadn't worked this case himself, the first time; Gideon had been only a bitter memory by then, and the rest of the team had helped Rossi chase his ghosts while Spencer and Aaron were tied up with the Hardwick interview. He knew how it was supposed to go, though, from the story that Morgan had told him afterward and the case file he had read out of curiosity - and he knew that things were going to be different, because one major factor had already changed.

The traveling carnival had already left town.

Spencer knew he might have his work cut out for him on this one, steering the team toward the correct conclusion when the most obvious clue - the carnival's actual presence - was long gone. Even so, he hadn't anticipated that there would be an even greater complicating factor to hinder their investigation.

That factor being Gideon.

The senior profiler was in a foul mood, and it was obvious to everyone on the team, and to the Indianapolis police as well. Whether because it was a case he didn't think they should be involved in or because of Spencer's needling earlier, Gideon was snappish and hostile, curtly dismissing ideas from the team and making critical remarks about the local police force's handling of the original case twenty years ago. The team at least were all somewhat used to Gideon's moments of temper, but as the day stretched on and the atmosphere deteriorated further instead of improving, Spencer found himself watching Aaron's ever-deepening scowl and wondering which of them would be the first to snap and actually deck Gideon for his obnoxious behaviour.

Thankfully, as the morning rolled toward midday, Morgan noticed a leftover flyer for the carnival pinned up on a bulletin board at the local coffee shop and the wheels started to turn. He came back from the caffeine run with the flyer and a theory, and Aaron set Garcia to tracing the travel schedule of the carnival.

The realisation that the carnival moved around Indiana relatively unpredictably, never taking quite the same route twice, yet somehow ended up back in Indianapolis right about the time of the anniversary every year was enough. Garcia also found a comment on an online message board, mentioning that the carnival was setting up outside Plainfield. While she dug into the scant information available about the owners and staff of the carnival, the rest of the team piled into requisitioned police SUVs and headed for Plainfield.

Morgan and Prentiss immediately called dibs on one of the three SUVs, and Spencer felt a dawning sense of absolute horror before Aaron called out across the room.

"Reid, with me."

Spencer could have kissed him for that alone. He shot a swift, apologetic grimace at JJ - who was paling rapidly as she realised that left her as Gideon's passenger - before grabbing his messenger bag and speed-walking over to Aaron's side. Only once they were safely enclosed in the vehicle did Spencer allow himself a deep, heartfelt sigh and a grateful glance at Aaron.

"Thank you for that."

"If I'd put you in a car with Gideon for three hours, I'd have a new homicide to investigate," Aaron replied dryly.

Spencer grinned.

"Justifiable homicide, though. I saw the look on your face when he told the police chief that any competent investigation would have followed up with the kids better and found out about the gifts."

"Yes, well." The corners of Aaron's mouth twitched. "Better to save everyone the paperwork, regardless."

The drive to Plainfield was downright pleasant, and Spencer forgot his earlier worries in the enjoyment of just chatting with Aaron. It was late afternoon by the time they neared the location where Garcia had said the carnival was setting up; as they approached it became obvious that the carnival was nearly ready to open. The Ferris wheel was already erected, various other rides and temporary structures popping up all around it, even many of the lights and finishing decorations operational. From the bustle of staff all around the site, Spencer guessed they were probably trying to finish last minute preparations for opening the next day.

Morgan's driving speed had gotten himself and Prentiss there first, and their dark SUV was parked on the side of the highway, far enough back from the carnival to be non-threatening while they waited for the others. Gideon and JJ were still behind Aaron and Spencer, though Spencer could just see the black dot of their vehicle in the sideview mirror when he checked.

Aaron engaged the radio channel between the police SUVs.

"Let's take it easy here," he said, eyeing the congestion of beat-up pickups and panel vans clustered around the entrance of the carnival grounds, slowing down as he approached where Morgan had parked. "Carnies are a tight-knit group and until we know exactly who we're looking for, the last thing we want to do is tip them off that we suspect one of their own."

"No spooking the locals, copy that," Morgan replied over the radio. "Prentiss and I can start with-"

He was cut off by an abrupt mechanical wail, as the SUV behind Aaron and Spencer - not having slowed down in the slightest - swung out and passed them, accelerating toward the carnival, siren briefly blaring. The activity around the entrance dissolved as the staff scattered in alarm, allowing the SUV to roll straight through into the carnival grounds. Spencer realised after a second that his jaw was hanging open in shock.

"Did Gideon just-" he started, genuinely astonished.

"Motherfucker." Morgan's voice came over the radio again. "Hotch-"

"I know," Aaron snapped, picking up speed again himself. "First priority is now damage control. You and Prentiss smooth over what you can, I'll handle Gideon."

Spencer kept his mouth shut this time, his stomach sinking in sudden dread. He might not have had firsthand experience of this case, but he knew enough to know this couldn't end well. Their UnSub was no criminal mastermind; he was a scared man with the mental and emotional development of a child, whose simple desire to make a friend had once gone horrifically wrong, so wracked by guilt that he was still trying twenty years later to make amends in his own simple way. If Gideon went charging in on a witch hunt, there was no telling how their UnSub - or the father who'd covered up for him - might react.

Aaron pulled their SUV to a stop a few feet behind Gideon's. The doors of the first SUV were open, and JJ was standing next to the vehicle, looking shellshocked; as Aaron and Spencer scrambled out of their own vehicle, she turned to them with wide eyes.

"Hotch, I'm so sorry, I had no idea - we heard you on the radio, and I was about to reply when Gideon just gunned it-"

"It's fine, JJ," Aaron said firmly.

Gideon was standing a few yards away near one of the freshly erected carnival booths, arguing heatedly with two men - one of whom, Spencer realised with a jolt, was their UnSub's father, Landon Williams. Aaron was already striding toward them, his expression murderous; the third SUV pulled up and stopped as well, and as Morgan and Prentiss jumped out and headed after Aaron, Spencer turned to JJ.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just - wasn't expecting that," JJ said, shaking her head in disbelief. "What the hell was he thinking?"

"I'm sure we're about to hear his reasoning," Spencer said ruefully.

Before he could join the others, though, his phone rang.

"Okay, get this," Garcia said the moment he answered, skipping her usual opening banter entirely. "You said that these weird 'presents' from our guilt-ridden murderer were all plushie animals and things like that, right? Kid stuff. The kind of stuff you'd give a kid, but also the kind of stuff that a kid would think might cheer someone else up. I've pulled all the info I can find on everyone associated with this carnival, and one thing stuck out to me - the head carnie, Landon Williams, he's got a son with severe mental handicaps. Early school records are a mess, and it looks like the boy dropped out altogether at some point because the trail just stops when he was twelve, but he's listed with the carnival general staff on their income filings. Joe Landon. He would have been twenty one when the Galens were murdered."

"Got it, Garcia," Spencer said, relief flooding through him; finally, actionable information. "You're a miracle worker, you know that?"

Garcia giggled.

"I absolutely do but the acknowledgement is always appreciated, my good doctor," she chirped, before hanging up.

Spencer hurried toward the increasingly heated discussion happening by the booth. Morgan and Prentiss were talking quietly to a couple of other carnival staff nearby, but the two men that Gideon had been talking to looked furious; Gideon himself had only broken off arguing with them in favour of arguing with Aaron instead, who looked even more livid than the carnies but was still stubbornly holding himself in check and trying to defuse the situation.

"Gideon, I understand that, but you-"

"It's been twenty damn years, Hotch, I want this done with-"

"Mr Williams?" Spencer interrupted, cutting straight across Gideon's petulant reply.

Landon's eyes snapped to Spencer immediately, and he tensed visibly, shifting awkwardly on his feet as some of his frustration faded into worry.

"That's me," he said slowly. "What can I do for you, Agent…?"

"My name's Doctor Reid," Spencer replied. "We'd like to talk to your son Joe."

The change was immediate. Landon's expression fell, the redness in his face fading away, leaving him pale and sick-looking. He glanced at the ground for a moment, and when he looked up again, his expression was pleading.

"He's… he's a good boy, Doctor."

"I'm sure he is, Mr Williams," Spencer said, as gently as he could. "I'm sure it was all a misunderstanding, but we still need to talk to him."

Landon hesitated for a long, long moment, the whole team watching him now - and Spencer saw the moment that the man's eyes flicked from Spencer to Gideon, and narrowed, and knew instantly that the situation had just tipped out of control.

"Joe, run!" Landon suddenly bellowed.

There was a crash nearby, and a sudden sound of running footsteps: Morgan swore, and he and Emily both took off down the nearest alley between carnival booths, shouting after their quarry. Spencer bolted after them, heart in his throat, and behind him he heard Aaron shout for Gideon to detain Landon Williams before racing after Spencer.

All that Spencer could think was that this was not how this was supposed to happen.

The carnival was a maze, and Joe's familiarity with it should have put them at a tremendous disadvantage - but Joe wasn't capable of leveraging that advantage. He wasn't trying to outwit the FBI, he was a child running from the strangers who had scared him, because his father had told him he should. When Spencer skidded out from the rows of half-constructed booths, he found Morgan and Prentiss standing at the base of the Ferris wheel - staring up at where Joe, despite his size and seeming lack of grace, had managed to scale a significant way up the structure and was now clinging to one of the carriages, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Don't take me away!" he yelled down at them, his tears audible in his voice even from the height he'd climbed to. "Papa said if you found me you'd take me away, and put me in a dark room, and I won't get to see my Papa no more! I don't wanna go!"

"Joe, it's alright!" Prentiss called up to him; her gun was in her hands, but pointed down at the ground, safety still on. It was obvious by now that Joe wasn't going to willingly attack any of them. "We're not going to hurt you, okay? We just want to talk to you!"

"No! No, you're lying!" Joe screamed back, scrambling up another few feet to the next carriage; Spencer's heart was in his throat, watching the clumsy movements, the way Joe's hands slipped wildly as he grappled along the steel beams of the wheel's framework. "I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go!"

"Can you turn the wheel on and bring him down?" Aaron was asking urgently somewhere behind Spencer, his voice hushed. Another man, likely one of the carnival staff, responded.

"No, I'm sorry sir, we don't have it fully wired up yet - we weren't planning on opening until tomorrow afternoon."

If they couldn't turn the wheel on, it meant they had to convince him to come down willingly - and Spencer wanted, badly, to succeed at that. He had always had empathy for the UnSubs who didn't want to commit their crimes, the victims of circumstance who didn't know what they were doing or didn't see another choice, and there couldn't be a clearer example of that than Joe. All he had wanted for the last twenty years was to take back what he'd done - and as that thought crossed his mind, Spencer got an idea.

"Joe!" Spencer yelled up, voice urgent. "Joe, do you remember Connie?"

There was a pause in Joe's frantic sobbing, and after a moment he peered down at them. His rudimentary clown makeup was smeared everywhere, half dissolved by tears, and the mix of fear and sadness on his face was painful.

"I know Connie," Joe finally said, his voice weaker now. "I wanted to be her friend. I didn't mean to scare her. I just wanted to play."

"If you come down, you can tell her that," Spencer called up, heart pounding. "You can tell her that you're sorry, and that you didn't mean to hurt anyone. That's why you've been leaving the stuffed animals, right? Because you wanted to apologise?"

"Yeah." Joe made a soft, wounded sound. "I didn't mean to hurt her Mama and Papa. I was sorry right away. I just wanted to be her friend."

"Then come down, Joe, and you can tell her that," Spencer pleaded.

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by Joe's quiet sniffling. Spencer could practically feel his teammates holding their breaths - Joe was at least fifty feet in the air, Spencer couldn't even imagine how he'd climbed that far so fast, other than that he was desperate and completely unhindered by the fear most people would have experienced at trying to scale a slippery metal structure unsupported. Finally, Joe's shaky voice reached them again.

"Okay. I'll come down. I wanna say sorry to Connie."

He twisted himself around, loosening his grip on the carriage he'd been clinging to as he reached for the wheel's frame instead - but as he let go of the carriage and reached for a beam, his sneakered foot slipped against the slick painted metal.

He fell so fast, he didn't even scream.

Spencer jerked his eyes away instinctively, not wanting the sight imprinted on his memory, but the sickening thud of Joe's body hitting the ground still made his stomach turn over. Prentiss cried out, and Morgan was suddenly shouting over the hubbub on the carnival.

"Medic! We need a medic!"

Several people with first aid equipment appeared out of the crowd, running to where Morgan was kneeling next to the huddled mass on the ground at the Ferris wheel's foot. Spencer could only stare, frozen in place, until a gentle touch on his shoulder blade nearly made him jump out of his skin; he jerked around, heart pounding, to find Aaron gazing at him apologetically.

"Are you alright?"

"I…" Spencer felt like his head was full of static, his brain's usual processing power absolutely buried under white noise. Through strangely numb lips, he managed to whisper, "This wasn't supposed to happen. This should have been a quiet arrest, he didn't resist, he didn't… he didn't run before, not like this."

Aaron sighed, and his grip firmed on Spencer's shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Spencer," he said softly. "I need to deal with this, right now, but we'll talk about it later. Figure out what went wrong."

As Aaron walked away, though, one thought made its way through the buzzing static in Spencer's brain. He already knew what had changed, this time - what had started the cascade of alterations and errors that had led to the crumpled form lying below the Ferris wheel, the carnival first responders already reluctantly packing away their gear as they admitted there was nothing they could do.

Gideon.

Chapter Text

"This is getting out of hand," Aaron said.

It was late in the evening, the last rays of light painting burnt-orange streaks across the skies of DC as the sun slipped below the horizon. Their flight back from Indianapolis had landed in the mid afternoon; the silence on the jet had been thick enough to choke on, no one bantering the way they usually would, no one even really making eye contact. The awkwardness had followed them back to the office, the post-case paperwork getting done quicker than usual as everyone kept their heads down with laser focus. One by one, the others had finished and left, hurrying out of the building with visible relief; only Spencer was left in the bull pen when Aaron stepped out of his office, looking like his nerves were strung as tight as piano wire.

Aaron had asked if Spencer wanted to get dinner, and Spencer had leaped at the offer. Gideon's office lights were still on when they left, the only sign of life remaining in the quiet building, but neither of them acknowledged his presence.

The senior profiler had been utterly withdrawn the entire flight home, ignoring the entire team as they tiptoed around him. If he wanted to sit and sulk some more in his office, they would leave him to it.

Now, Spencer and Aaron were seated at Spencer's favourite ramen place. Aaron had waited until they had mostly finished eating before he brought up the subject on both of their minds, and Spencer was grateful; discussing this particular issue during their meal would only have killed his appetite, no matter how delicious the food was.

"I know," he replied to Aaron's statement, sighing. "I don't know what to do. This is completely new to me."

Aaron leaned back in his chair, regarding Spencer with a thoughtful frown.

"What happened last time?"

Spencer chewed his lip for a moment, debating himself. There was a lot of information tied up in this explanation, but most of it was regarding events that, for better or worse, were already past in this timeline - it couldn't hurt much to share it. Moreover, Spencer had no idea how to sort out this particular problem on his own, and he was going to have to give Aaron something to work with if he was going to help.

"Gideon had already left the team the first time we worked that case," he finally said.

Aaron's eyebrows shot up.

"He left?" He repeated, almost disbelieving. "What the hell made him quit the team?"

"Frank," Spencer sighed. He looked down at his bowl, listlessly stirring the dregs of his ramen. "The first time… none of us knew that Jane had left Frank or that he believed she was in DC until it was too late. Frank broke into Gideon's apartment and murdered Sarah, then he stole Gideon's casebook and started hunting down people that Gideon had helped save."

"Fuck." The quiet, unusual curse from Aaron made Spencer look up, meeting Aaron's intense gaze. "So you were the one who called in the anonymous tip about Frank's mother."

"It was the easiest way I could think of to strengthen the manhunt," Spencer admitted. "I was tracking the dates, so if they hadn't caught him, I would have tried something else before the night Frank would have killed Sarah - but fortunately, the identifying information was enough." He tried for a smile, though it came out lopsided and bitter. "Gideon only worked a single case with the team after that. That case went sour too, and he just - he cracked. We thought he was staying at his cabin for a while to recover, but when I went there to check on him, the place was gutted and he was gone. He'd left me a letter, explaining why he had to go."

Aaron groaned.

"Of course he did," he muttered, bringing a hand up to massage his brow, looking utterly exhausted. "No wonder you don't trust him."

Spencer barked a short, sharp laugh.

"Yeah, exactly."

He hesitated for a moment, warring with himself, before he finally decided to voice his thought - no matter how much it made him cringe, to admit his own naivety.

"You know, at first, I thought maybe this time it would work out. That even if we'd never be as close as we were before, at least he could stay with the team, and we could be… friends, at least, even if I couldn't really rely on him as a mentor anymore." Spencer's eyes burned a little, and he quickly brushed at them, trying to pass it off as a casual movement even though he knew Aaron's eyes were too sharp for that. "But now he's losing it anyway, and I don't even know why."

"Gideon's been doing this job for a very long time, and he's gotten used to having things a certain way," Aaron said slowly, his tone suddenly measured, cautious in a way that Spencer hadn't expected. "I've seen him act recklessly before, and it's always been when he felt he was losing control of a situation."

Spencer looked up at him, frowning.

"Why would he feel out of control, though? We caught Frank. We won."

Aaron's expression was wry.

"We did catch Frank. From what you told me, it sounds like you also shut him down pretty hard shortly after that."

Spencer straightened up, eyes widening.

"You think-" His mind flashed back, and he nearly groaned aloud as the pieces started falling into place. That day in Gideon's office, when the older profiler had reached out and Spencer had rebuffed him so bluntly…

"That doesn't make it your fault," Aaron said firmly, cutting off Spencer's train of thought before he could even get that far. "Gideon's a senior agent and he should be able to handle a subordinate setting a boundary without having a meltdown - don't take that on yourself. I just think that may have been the inciting incident for his current behaviour, especially since he obviously took exception to you defending Dave's view of the case as well."

Spencer couldn't stop himself from rolling his eyes.

"I wasn't even defending Rossi's view, I was pointing out obvious facts of the case that Gideon would have already known if he'd bothered to actually read the file before he started disparaging people," he muttered, and Aaron actually chuckled.

"I don't think that's quite how Gideon saw it, unfortunately," he said. "There was friction between he and Dave for a long time, they often didn't see eye to eye on how to handle a case."

"Yeah, well," Spencer said, before he could think better of it, "Rossi is basically the only person in my life who didn't abandon me at some point."

As soon as he said it, Spencer instantly wished he could take it back.

He had tried so, so hard not to think about it, but his own words had forced it into the front of his mind. A shiver of nausea crawled through him, a soft, hateful voice whispering in the back of his mind.

Including you.

He squashed the thought flat as soon as it formed, sickened with himself. That had never - it wasn't fair, he knew that. The Aaron of his first life hadn't owed him anything, he hadn't, and Spencer had no right to be upset that he left. Most of the time, he was genuinely glad of it, glad that Aaron was safe and happy with Jack somewhere, building a better life. He wanted Aaron to be happy, more than anything, and if leaving the FBI was what that took then so be it.

The part of him that wailed in grief at being left behind, yet again, wasn't rational, and Spencer refused to give it ground.

But what if he still leaves, that awful little voice hissed in his head. What if this doesn't change anything, and he still doesn't care enough to stay, and he doesn't even say goodbye-

"Spencer?"

A warm touch on his hand jerked Spencer out of bleak haze that had descended over his mind, and his gaze snapped back into focus on Aaron, who was staring at him with undisguised concern. He'd put his hand over Spencer's where it rested on the table, and was still holding on to it, his warm touch sturdy and grounding.

"Are you alright?"

Spencer hated the part of himself that wanted to say no.

What is wrong with me? This is more than I ever had before, more than I ever thought I'd get. Why can't I just be happy with this, and stop being afraid of the future for one minute?

"I'm fine," he made himself say. Aaron studied him for a moment, with that piercing stare that made Spencer feel like he was being peeled part, then shook his head.

"No, you're not," he said quietly. "If you don't want to talk about it right now, that's fine, but please don't lie."

Spencer winced.

"Sorry," he said quietly. "I just… this is my issue to sort out, and I don't want you to worry about it."

"I care about you, Spencer. If something's bothering you, I'm always going to worry about it," Aaron replied. It was sincerely said, but it was also so completely honest that Spencer found himself grinning a little.

"Fair enough," he admitted. "I guess I should know that by now." With a heavy sigh, he met Aaron's gaze again. "I'll tell you soon, alright? I just need a little more time to put my thoughts in order."

"Take as long as you need," Aaron said warmly, squeezing his hand before letting go, and Spencer was struck by an odd thought - normally, he hated touching hands. The thought of the germs that people carried was extremely offputting, but he also just found the contact uncomfortably intense, too much familiarity for anyone he didn't trust without question. And yet, with Aaron, none of that bothered Spencer. He'd never once had to fight the urge to flinch away when Aaron touched him, on the hands or anywhere else; it just felt natural, in a way it never seemed to with anyone else.

Spencer's heart fluttered a little at the thought.

I really am going to have to tell him. Just like I thought the first time, before everything with Foyet. Even if it changes how he sees me, I have to be honest with him, because I can't keep hiding this for much longer.

Aaron was giving him an encouraging smile.

"Whenever you're ready, I'll be here," he said, and Spencer smiled weakly back.

This might take more courage than anything else he'd done since finding himself in the past.

Chapter Text

"Haley has Jack all through this weekend. Would you like to come over for dinner on Saturday? My cooking skills are a little rusty but I promise I can manage something decent."

The invitation had come on Thursday, a week after the disastrous Galen case, and it had set Spencer's heart racing. Part of it was excitement - there was no timeline in which he would ever turn down the chance to have Aaron to himself for a whole evening - but part of it was also dread, because the private setting of Aaron's new apartment would be perfect for the conversation that Spencer knew they needed to have. The confession that he needed to make.

Which meant he had no excuse to put it off any longer.

Of course, he still agreed immediately. He spent all of Friday working on autopilot, though, allowing the sliver of his brain that was still functioning normally to take care of the tedium of federal agency paperwork while the rest of his mind spun in useless circles of anxiety. It wasn't that Spencer was afraid of the outcome of his confession, per se. He knew Aaron would never hurt him, would almost certainly not think less of him. It was just that… as long as Spencer kept silent, there was a glimmer of hope. The slimmest of possibilities that maybe his feelings weren't unrequited, maybe it wasn't a lost cause - as long as Spencer had never been rejected, he could keep telling himself that it just wasn't the right time, that perhaps, someday, something would change.

It was a fool's hope, but it was the only hope he'd had for years, and Spencer had been clinging to it like a lifeline all that time.

When Aaron left the bureau, in that first lifetime, that tiny flame of hope had guttered out. It had rekindled now, and Spencer wanted nothing more than to shield it, keep it close and safe and flickering - but there was too much at stake, and he knew that his turmoil over Aaron was consuming a dangerous amount of his focus, making it infinitely harder to manage the increasingly complicated variables of the unraveling timeline. If Spencer was going to have any chance of figuring out what to do about Gideon, he needed a clear head, and the only path forward he could see was finally coming clean to Aaron.

If he received the gentle rejection he expected, so be it. He'd lived one life already knowing he'd never have what he wanted; he could do it again, or so he firmly told himself.

Saturday evening found Spencer at the door of Aaron's apartment, heart beating so loud he could hardly hear himself knock on the door. Despite knowing full well it was likely all for nothing, he'd put a bit of extra effort into his appearance. He was wearing black corduroys and his favourite purple button down, with a dark grey vest over top that hugged the lean lines of his torso in a way that Penelope had, in another lifetime, assured him was very flattering. His hair, which he'd been growing out since his return to the past, was nearly to his shoulders now in soft, loose curls; Spencer remembered that around this time in his first life, he'd been experimenting with shorter cuts, but he'd never really felt like it suited him and missed the length he'd had later in life. Properly hydrated and left to curl naturally, his longer hair had a kind of stylized dishevelment that he knew some people found very appealing, and he could only hope wistfully that Aaron was one of them.

When Aaron answered the door, though, all thoughts of his own appearance flew out of Spencer's head.

Aaron was wearing a gorgeous deep blue dress shirt that Spencer had never seen him in before, tucked neatly into dark slacks. He'd forgone a tie, and the top two buttons were undone, giving him a subtly relaxed look that might not have been so striking on another man, but was leagues away from the rigid professionalism he wore like armor at the office. He was smiling widely, and Spencer knew he wasn't just imagining the way that Aaron's dark eyes swept over him with what seemed like appreciation.

"Spencer, punctual as ever. Come on in."

As Spencer stepped inside and toed his shoes off, Aaron cleared his throat and commented in a tone that seemed uncharacteristically hesitant, almost shy.

"You look really good."

Spencer's heart thumped, hard, and launched itself directly up into the back of his throat.

"Um. Thank you," he managed, knowing his face was rapidly flushing as he glanced at Aaron, forcing himself to meet his intent gaze steadily. "You look pretty great yourself."

Aaron smiled, that wide, brilliant smile that Spencer had never seen when they were at work - one that he'd been privileged to see more and more often, lately, but which still never failed to make his breath catch.

"I'm just putting the finishing touches on dinner," Aaron said warmly. "Feel free to profile my living room if you like."

Spencer laughed, but as Aaron disappeared back into the kitchen, he couldn't keep himself from glancing around in real curiosity. Last time, when he had finally seen Aaron's new residence, it had been sparse and strictly functional - the bare, impersonal dwelling of a man struggling to find his sense of self in the wake of a difficult divorce and a tragic bereavement. Even though Aaron and Haley had only been separated for two months now, though, this apartment was nothing of the sort.

The walls were an inoffensive beige that had probably predated the apartment's purchase, but they were enlivened by a variety of landscape paintings; the largest hung on the interior wall of the living room, its vivid colours nearly glowing in the evening sunlight. Spencer identified it at a glance as an excellent reproduction of Richard Norris Brooke's The Bend of the Stream, and wondered at its significance to Aaron. Had he simply chosen it because of its visual appeal? Or was it something more like local pride? A survey of the other paintings tipped the scales heavily to one side of that debate; in addition to another of Brooke's paintings, there were four of David Heath's works hung on various walls. Spencer knew that Aaron's mother was from Manassas, and it couldn't be a coincidence that all the artwork on display was from two of Virginia's most famous painters.

The expected flat screen TV stood on an entertainment unit on the wall across from a dark faux-leather couch, and there were two bookcases with the various legal and criminology books that Spencer would have guessed at, but in the far corner of the room, he found a surprise. He had heard the quiet strains of music as soon as he stepped in the door, and assumed that Aaron had a stereo playing somewhere; instead, to his delight, he found that Aaron had a record player. It was a beautiful vintage piece, resting in a freestanding cabinet of rich orange-brown wood that looked like it very well might have been hand-carved, the rich sound of an original Eagles vinyl drifting softly through the room. Spencer found himself humming along a little to New Kid in Town, immeasurably charmed.

He'd known that Aaron shared some of his own fondness for old-fashioned quality, but he hadn't expected all of this. It was almost eerie, how immediately at ease he felt in this space, and he found himself wondering - half guilty for his own thoughts - if the house that Aaron had shared with Haley would have felt the same, or if this was something different, a part of Aaron that was free to breathe now that he was living alone.

Certainly, it felt nothing like his apartment had in Spencer's first life, the memory of those hollow walls filled by little other than grief seeming even starker when held up against this warm and welcoming space. What had changed so drastically? Surely it couldn't simply be Spencer's presence - something truly fundamental must have shifted between Aaron and Haley, for Aaron to be coping so much better with the fallout of their separation.

Not that said fallout seemed to be as severe, either. Spencer had scoured his memories as closely as he could, and he was dead certain that Aaron was getting far more days with Jack this time than he had before - Haley didn't seem to be fighting the shared custody anywhere near as hard, didn't seem to be punishing Aaron for the times he couldn't make it because of his job. The bitterness that had poisoned every interaction between Aaron and Haley last time seemed absent now, and even as Spencer wondered what had made the difference, he was mostly just grateful. He never wanted to see Aaron go through that kind of misery again.

"I figured you of all people would appreciate the record player," Aaron's deep voice roused Spencer from his drifting thoughts.

Smiling, Spencer turned to face Aaron, who was leaning against the doorway with his arms folded and a grin on his face.

"It's beautiful. Antique?"

"It used to be my grandfather's," Aaron confirmed, pushing himself off the frame and moving closer to Spencer. "He paid a small fortune to have it shipped here from Virginia after Haley and I bought our first house. Called it a housewarming gift, but it was obvious he'd just been waiting for an opportunity to get it to me." A hint of melancholy worked its way into his smile. "I was so worried what he'd say when I told him Haley and I had separated, and all he said was 'she better not have tried to keep that record player'."

Spencer was surprised; given the horrors that lurked in Aaron's family history, he'd expected there to be a more severe estrangement, and yet there was nothing but wistful fondness in Aaron's voice.

"The two of you are still close?"

"He was my only lifeline, growing up," Aaron said quietly. "Our house was in Manassas, but every summer when school let out, our mother would send Sean and I to stay with Granddad on his property in Middleburg. For two months, I was free - I could go riding in the fields, or fishing in the brook, or curl up on the couch with a book while Granddad played bluegrass on this old record player, and just… exist. Without having to worry about Sean, or Mother, or anything else."

"He knew, then," Spencer said softly, not quite a question. "About your father."

Aaron sighed.

"He knew. Maybe not everything, but enough that I once overheard him tell a neighbour that he cursed the day his daughter married 'that savage of a man'," he said. "I know he would have taken Sean and I in, but… my father would never allow that, and mother would never have challenged him, so there was nothing Granddad could really do besides giving us a refuge every summer. You know what would have happened if he had tried to get the law involved."

Spencer knew too well; they'd seen it play out too many times in their line of work. If both parents held the line and swore that all was well, after a member of the extended family made a report, CPS would never intervene in time. And with a man like Aaron's father, driven by a rage birthed from scorned pride, drunk on whiskey and his own sense of power… if an investigation was launched and Aaron's mother wasn't prepared to tell the truth, the backlash might well have gotten Aaron and Sean killed.

"Once I didn't turn up for my father's funeral, most of the family stopped speaking to me, but Granddad never even asked about it," Aaron said. "I don't get down to Middleburg to see him as often as I'd like, these days, but we talk on the phone often enough. I don't know if he's still in contact with my mother - we don't talk about the past." His smile turned wry. "Something I've made a habit of, I suppose. More than I even thought, considering I never told you any of this before."

Something in Spencer's chest shifted, almost unnoticeable, like a puzzle piece clicking into place, and suddenly his nerves calmed. He couldn't say what made the difference, why his head suddenly felt calm and clear, but the feeling was real - and he wasn't going to let it slip away.

"Aaron, there's… something I need to tell you too, actually."

Instantly, Aaron's gaze snapped to Spencer's face, brow furrowing lightly in concern.

"It's not anything bad," Spencer quickly assured him, knowing that Aaron would always anticipate the worst case scenario. "Just something that I thought you should know." He took a careful breath, actually closing his eyes; he couldn't look meet Aaron's dark, piercing gaze while he said his next words.

"I… I'm in love with you. And I have been for a very, very long time."

He heard Aaron's swift, soft intake of breath, and Spencer's heart fluttered - but Aaron didn't interrupt, and now that those first, heaviest words were out, it was as though a floodgate had been opened. The rest tumbled out, entirely beyond his control, a sudden flood of honesty.

"I thought it was just a crush, at first - I was brand new to the BAU and everything was so overwhelming, and you were so confident and charismatic, and it was - it was absurd. You were older than me, you were my superior, you were married; you were out of reach in every possible way and I told myself I would just ignore the attraction until it went away, but… it never did. Over the years it all just got stronger, but I learned to hide it. You were already dealing with so much, and I didn't want to add to that by burdening you with my feelings, not when I knew there was no way you'd ever feel the same." Spencer swallowed hard, his throat feeling as dry as the Nevada desert where he'd been raised. "I just… everything's different, now, and I don't know where the lines are anymore. I don't want to overstep your boundaries or ask for more than you're comfortable giving, but I don't know how to hold myself back, and it's driving me mad trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do while everything else is going on. I need - I need you to know how I feel. And I need to know if that changes things."

For a moment, there was silence, and all Spencer could hear was the heavy thump of his own heart.

Finally, the truth was out there. For better or worse, he wouldn't have to carry that secret anymore.

"Spencer," Aaron's voice was achingly gentle. "Look at me, please?"

Spencer opened his eyes, and lost his breath all over again.

Aaron's eyes were bright with unshed tears as he reached up with his left hand to cup the side of Spencer's jaw, thumb brushing gently over his cheek.

"You call me confident," he said softly, "But you are so much braver than me. I have been hiding from who I am for most of my life, and I cannot even imagine the courage it took for you to say all of that just now."

Spencer blinked at him, dazed, his usually razor-sharp mind feeling strangely sluggish.

"Hiding? I don't…"

Aaron huffed out a strange, strangled little sound and glanced down for a moment, but his hand didn't move from Spencer's face. When he looked back up, his jaw was tight, but his gaze was firm with resolve.

"I've always been attracted to men, Spencer. But I couldn't admit it. I never had a problem with it for others, but for myself… the only thing I could think, for so many years, was that I'd be proving my father right. That I'd be admitting that I was every horrible thing he called me."

Spencer's breath hitched, but Aaron kept going, voice low and steady.

"I finally had to face it, though, because I couldn't run from it anymore. I could pretend it didn't exist when it was all theoretical, something that I'd never really let myself feel at all; I couldn't ignore it anymore when I was being drawn to a coworker, a friend, who I care very deeply for."

A wave of dizziness swept over Spencer, and he swayed slightly before Aaron caught hold of Spencer's left hand with his right and steadied him. Staring at Aaron, awestruck, Spencer finally managed to find a handful of words.

"You… you really…"

"I can't promise you anything right away, Spencer," Aaron said softly, an apologetic look crossing his face. "I'm still… there's a lot of things I need to sort out, and I'm still working on letting go of Haley and finding a new balance in my life." His hand squeezed Spencer's, tight and reassuring. "But I care for you so deeply, and I know that… having you here, in my life, feels right. More right than anything has felt in a long, long time. I don't know how long it's going to take for me to be ready, and I know it's not fair to ask of you when you've already waited so long…"

But Spencer was already shaking his head as firmly as he could without dislodging Aaron's hand.

"Don't," he said, his voice finally finding some firmness again. "Don't say that. It doesn't matter if it's fair or not, you need whatever time you need and I wouldn't ask you to push yourself into something you're not comfortable with." Drawing a breath to steady himself, he tried to draw on a little bit more of that courage that Aaron seemed to see in him. "It doesn't matter how long, Aaron. I would wait forever for you. Even just what we have, right now, without having to hide how I feel - that's enough. If this is all you're ever comfortable with, I don't need more." There were tears stinging his own eyes now, from the sheer strength of the emotions coursing through him. "I just couldn't bear the thought that you might leave if you found out how I really felt. If I'm allowed to love you… that's all I need."

"Oh, Spencer," Aaron breathed, and pulled him into a hug.

Spencer buried his face against Aaron's shoulder, reveling in the feeling of those warm, strong arms around him - this time, without one of them almost having died. This time, just because they both found comfort in the embrace.

This time, when Aaron spoke, Spencer could feel that beloved deep voice reverberating through his own chest.

"I do want more, Spencer. I just need time to figure out what that looks like," he said. "But I promise you, no matter what happens - I won't leave you. I will never be one of the people that abandons you."

And with this new lease on life - with Aaron's arms around him, and his promise murmured so close against Spencer's ear - Spencer had no choice but to believe him.

They stayed there for a long time, just holding each other. Eventually, they had to separate and carry on with the evening; Aaron had to reheat the food he'd made, and Spencer flustered all over again at the reminder of just how long they'd lingered in the living room embracing, but neither of them regretted a moment of it.

Whatever was coming next, they'd figure it out. Together.

Chapter Text

The week after that fateful dinner flowed by like a dream.

Spencer knew that he was living up to every cliche ever written, but he just couldn't help himself; the world felt like a brighter place now that he knew his love wasn't unwanted. He tried to hide the giddiness, and thought he was succeeding pretty well - or, at least well enough that his teammates didn't know why he was deliriously happy. Morgan had cracked a few jokes, ruffling his hair and teasing that his Pretty Boy must have finally gotten some action; Prentiss had chimed in that it was more likely due to the new deluxe edition box set of Star Trek: the Original Series that had been announced in honour of the show's anniversary. Spencer had laughed along with both of their suggestions, and hoped that they took his fiery blush as his usual awkwardness whenever Morgan joked about his dating life, and not the fact that he was a little too close to the truth for once.

The upside of the team's view of him was that for all their teasing, none of them actually thought that Spencer had a love life to investigate, so he was safe from the more invasive prying that others might have been subject to.

It was hard to keep his eyes off Aaron, hard to keep from breaking out into a grin any time Spencer saw him; the only reason that he succeeded at all was the long years of pretending that he wasn't gazing longingly at the same man. For his part, Aaron seemed to be struggling a bit as well, which was immensely flattering as well as surprising; he smiled just a little more often at Spencer, spoke to him in tones just a shade warmer. Fortunately, the team was already used to their newfound closeness after the Hankel case, and nobody seemed to notice that they had once again taken a significant step in that direction.

Or at least, that was what Spencer thought, until that Friday.

It was late, and the rest of the team had gone home only about half an hour before. Spencer and Aaron were sitting in Aaron's office, quietly discussing the latest case that JJ had passed along for review, when the door abruptly banged open and Gideon stepped in.

"Oh, good," he said shortly, when he saw that Spencer was also in the room and staring at him in disbelief. "You're both still here, that'll make this quicker."

"By all means, Gideon, come in," Aaron drawled, eyes narrowed in irritation as he gestured at the door. Gideon snorted, shutting the door behind himself and taking a step forward.

"You wouldn't have wanted to talk to me if I asked ahead of time, so I decided to take matters into my own hands," he said, glancing between the two of them, a frown settling across his features. "This needs to be said, though. Hotch… this has to stop."

Spencer's heart missed a beat.

Aaron's frown deepened, but his face was otherwise impassive as he stared at Gideon, giving nothing away.

"And what would you be referring to, exactly?"

"You know damn well what I'm referring to," Gideon said, an unpleasant glitter in his eyes as he gestured between the two of them. "The favouritism on cases? The constant hovering? The hours holed up in here? I may be getting on in years, Hotch, but I'm not blind. You're taking advantage of Reid, and I'm not going to stand by and watch it happen."

The tension in the room rose so sharply, the air almost crackled with it. Aaron's whole body had gone tense, and there was a rage in his eyes that reminded Spencer sharply of that day in Connecticut, the showdown with Hardwick.

"Jason, if you're accusing me of impropriety-"

"Damn right I am," Gideon said, a hard, mean smile flickering across his face.

And Spencer's speechlessness evaporated in a surge of his own, boiling rage.

"Excuse me," he snapped, his heart hammering as Gideon turned to face him, "I'm sitting right here. Maybe you could ask me what's going on, before you start throwing baseless accusations at Hotch."

"Baseless?" Gideon said, that hateful, smug glint still in his eyes. "I think this is basis enough. You've changed, Reid, it's blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention and it all started after Hotch started singling you out. It's not your fault, I understand. You're still so young, we forget that sometimes because of your intellect, but you're too inexperienced and too close to this to see it for what it is. For God's sake, you're only twenty six. Agent Hotchner, on the other hand, is more than old enough to understand that an abuse of authority like this is not acceptable."

Aaron stood up, and if looks could kill, Gideon would have been dead on the floor before he drew another breath.

"I am not abusing my authority," he snarled. "I am offering guidance to a younger agent, guidance that you should have offered and repeatedly failed to provide. If one of us in this room is ignoring Reid's wellbeing and taking advantage of him, Jason, it's not me."

"This passed the point of guidance long ago, and if it wasn't inappropriate, you wouldn't be hiding up here in your office," Gideon snapped back. "I want you to stay away from Reid."

Aaron's response was instantaneous and firm as stone.

"That's not going to happen."

"Then I'll make it happen," Gideon said, anger finally starting to drown out the smugness in his voice. "If I have to I'll go to the Section Chief-"

"Like hell you will."

Spencer was on his feet, though he didn't remember deciding to stand: his whole body had gone numb and cool, his mind blessedly clear, his every sense heightened and laser-focused on this moment. He had no idea what expression was on his face, but Gideon had gone utterly still, staring at Spencer as if he'd never seen him before.

"You're going to keep your mouth shut," Spencer said, his voice low and steady and sharp as a blade, "And you're going to stay the fuck out of my life going forward, or I will ruin you."

Gideon's eyes were very, very wide, and he had his hands raised, palms displayed as if to show his lack of weapons - or, the way someone might try to soothe a wild animal.

"Spencer, I'm doing this out of concern-"

"No, you're not." Spencer could hear his own breathing, disproportionately loud - he didn't know if it was because he was breathing harder, or because his mind was so utterly, uncharacteristically silent. "You're doing this because you're obsessed with control. You're doing this because you're angry, because I'm your pet genius you've been leading around on a leash since that goddamn profiling seminar and you're furious that I'm not listening to you anymore."

Spencer had always known he had the capability to weaponise his insight, to turn his skills from a microscope into a scalpel, to cut into his subjects with the intent to hurt. When he was still younger and more idealistic, the thought had horrified him. Over the years, though, he had been forced to make that choice over and over again - and though it still brought him no joy, he was better at it now than he'd ever been before. And there was no weapon that Spencer wouldn't have wielded in this moment, under these circumstances.

Gideon was threatening Aaron. Nothing was off the table.

"Frank was right, in that diner," Spencer said, and watched the colour drain from Gideon's face. "You're not that different from the people we hunt. You're driven, obsessive - you can't be at peace with an unsolved case, every escaped UnSub isn't just a black mark on the Bureau's record but a personal insult to your pride. You claim you do this work to help people, but you'll trample the emotions and wellbeing of anyone standing in your way to the target. You feed people the words you know they want to hear as long as they're useful to you, and you abandon them the instant they stop being useful." Spencer realised he was advancing, slowly, backing Gideon further toward the door. "You keep trophies; your little book of people you've saved - you don't care about them as actual people, you keep them because they're reminders, living proof of the times you won. Something you can take out and look at when your pride is too bruised from a defeat, when we haven't had a win in a long time, when the itch under your skin gets too much."

There was rage warring with the fear in Gideon's eyes, but the fear was starting to win.

"Spencer-"

"If you bring this to Strauss, or try to get either of us in trouble in any way, I will destroy your life," Spencer could hear the cutting edge in his own voice as he hissed the words. "I will drag your reputation through the mud, and I will make certain that Sarah never speaks to you again. I owe you nothing, Jason Gideon, and if you don't stay the hell away from Aaron and I, you will regret it."

For a long moment, the office was silent.

Finally, Gideon spoke. His voice had gone soft, conciliatory.

"I see I've misunderstood." He hesitated for a long moment, looking at Spencer searchingly, his brow furrowed - but in the end, he just sighed.

"My apologies, gentlemen, for the interruption."

And with nothing more than that he turned, walked out of the office, and shut the door behind him.

Spencer inhaled deeply, the vice grip around his chest finally loosening so that he could breathe again-

"Jesus, Spencer."

Oh fuck.

The realization finally sank in that he had just absolutely lost control in front of his … in front of Aaron, who had definitely not seen the full extent of Spencer's temper before. Swallowing hard, he turned to face Aaron, smiling sheepishly.

"Do you think I went too far?"

Rather than censoring, though, Aaron's look was almost awestruck.

"I've never seen you threaten someone before," he said, gaze flitting over the details of Spencer's face. "I'm fairly certain that, as your boss, I should disapprove… but if I'm being honest, that was spectacular."

Spencer could feel his cheeks turning red, even as a wide, involuntary grin broke out on his face. He ducked his head, tucking a stray curl behind his ear as he shrugged.

"I um… it's a skill I eventually had to pick up," he said, grinning helplessly for a moment longer before he managed to wrestle his facial expression back under control. "What do we do now? Technically, we haven't done anything wrong, but if he does go to Strauss…"

"We can worry about that tomorrow," Aaron said firmly. Spencer could hear him moving around the desk, and looked up - just in time for Aaron's hand to catch his jaw and guide him gently into a kiss.

Spencer's brain shut off so abruptly that he thought he might have heard the 'click' of it deactivating.

The kiss was light, chaste, and Aaron kept it brief, but it was still the best thing Spencer had ever felt in his life. When Aaron pulled away, Spencer blinked his eyes back open feeling as dazed as if he'd been hit over the head - though none of his past near-concussions had ever made him feel like an entire swarm of butterflies was fluttering around his abdominal cavity the way that kiss had.

Aaron was smiling at him, warm and soft and impossibly fond.

"Thank you."

"If that's the reaction it gets me," Spencer said, his mouth on absolute autopilot while his brain was still lost in the blissful fugue state of he kissed me!, "I'll threaten Gideon any day of the week."

Aaron just smiled and shook his head.

"The offer is appreciated," he said wryly, "But hopefully, that won't be necessary."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Even with the looming question of what was going to happen the following day, Spencer slept well that night, dreaming about Aaron. When he headed into work in the morning, he felt braced, ready for whatever the day might bring - even if that was further conflict. Even if he was going to have to fight for his career, or Aaron's, if Gideon hadn't taken the warning and had made good on his threat to involve Strauss.

Spencer was only the second person from their team to arrive, the bull pen still deserted as he dropped his messenger bag by his chair and all but jogged up to Aaron's office. When he gave a cursory knock and swung the door open, he found Aaron sitting at his desk, staring at his laptop screen, looking like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing.

"What is it?" Spencer asked, steeling himself for all the possible kinds of bad news that Aaron could be about to give him.

Aaron looked up, his dark eyes wide with shock.

"Gideon resigned from the Bureau last night."

Chapter Text

"I had an interesting conversation with Strauss earlier today," Aaron said as he flipped the pancakes.

They were at Aaron's apartment again, in the wake of a long day spent mostly dealing with the absolute hurricane of paperwork that was apparently generated when an agent resigned so abruptly. Spencer had mentioned the concept of 'breakfast for dinner' in passing a few days ago, and that he was a fan of the idea because he so rarely got the time for elaborate breakfasts in their line of work, usually having to head into the office too early. It had just been an offhanded comment, peppered into the middle of one of his longer tangents about the case they were working at the time; when Aaron invited him for dinner tonight and casually mentioned pancakes and bacon, Spencer thought he fell a little bit more in love.

He had to frown a little now, though, where he was seated at Aaron's kitchen table and watching him cook.

"That's not usually an encouraging statement."

"Fair enough," Aaron conceded, chuckling, "But I think you'll like this." He glanced over at Spencer, dark eyes warm and amused. "She talked to Dave Rossi today. Apparently he's expressed an interest in coming out of retirement and rejoining the BAU, to take Gideon's spot."

"Oh thank fuck," Spencer blurted out, heart soaring. "Please say you told her that you were on board."

"Of course I did," Aaron said, grinning. "As soon as she mentioned it, everything made sense - how you'd know Dave so well, why you said he was a better profiler as well as friend than Gideon. It wasn't just a theoretical comparison, you actually worked with both of them." He started laying strips of bacon into the pan, their energetic sizzle forcing him to raise his voice a little. "Dave's starting on Monday."

"Excellent," Spencer said fervently, leaning back in his chair with a relieved sigh. "I really wasn't sure if things would still fall into place for that. It was the Galen case that brought him back originally - he just couldn't let it go."

"I think it was still the Galen case, in a way," Aaron said thoughtfully. "I could hear it in his voice when I called to tell him it was done - he got the old rush again." He didn't need to elaborate on that; anyone on their team would have understood, the heady thrill of victory, the surge of satisfaction in knowing that an UnSub was off the streets and a family had been given closure. "He's been retired for a long time, but he wouldn't have gotten that feeling from any of his bestsellers. I think it was his final confirmation of what he's been missing, and that's what pulled him back in."

"Well, the team is better off for it," Spencer said. Aaron was smirking as he started plating the pancakes.

"Better off than with Gideon is not the highest bar to clear, these days," he said, and Spencer could only laugh.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"-and this is Doctor Spencer Reid," Aaron introduced him to Rossi, a gleam in his eye. Spencer was helpless against the wide, bright grin that had overtaken his face at the sight of Rossi, so much younger than he remembered yet just the same.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Agent Rossi," he said earnestly, reining in the urge to babble quite as excitedly as he had the first time they met. "I'm a huge fan of your work, it was actually your book on Dahmer that first inspired my interest in criminal psychology."

"Really?" Rossi looked openly smug, and Spencer had to bite his lip a little to suppress the urge to laugh; he hadn't forgotten how much Rossi's ego had been on display when he first returned to the Bureau, but it was still amusing to see again in person, having grown used to the much softer version of Rossi that had been revealed to the team over the years. "Well, I'd be happy to discuss it at some point, Doctor."

And that - that was the real core of Rossi, shining through. Even on his first day back, riding the high of accolades over his writing and trying his hardest to impress his competency on everyone around him, Rossi had still respected him enough to use his proper title when so few people did.

When Aaron called them all to the conference room, Spencer wasn't thinking too deeply about what case they would be working; with the way the sequence of events seemed to be blurring lately, it could be any one of several different cases he remembered from around this time, and most of his brain was still caught up on the buzz of how right it felt to have Rossi settling down at the conference table with them.

Then JJ began summarizing a recent string of serial shootings in New York City, and all of Spencer's giddiness tipped over and dropped like a lead weight into his stomach.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They hit the ground running and didn't stop for two days.

The case was every bit of the hell that Spencer remembered, New York City gripped in the terror of a repeat of Son of Sam, no one yet realizing that the crimes were a sign of something even more deadly unfolding before their eyes. It was infuriating, trying to find concrete clues that Spencer could use to justify his conclusions, trying to figure out how to display the completed puzzle before the pieces had even fallen into their laps; he had a pounding headache by the end of the first day, his brain throbbing in protest of the ordeal he was putting it through. The whole team was feeling the strain, the pressure of the media and FBI higher-ups bearing down on them to make this problem go away.

The worst part for Spencer personally, though, was SSA Kate Joyner.

He hadn't forgotten how painful it was, the first time, to watch her flirtations with Aaron; it was a whole new kind of hell, though, to have to watch it unfold now that he and Aaron were actually something. To Aaron's credit, he wasn't encouraging her. Last time, it had been obvious that the fondness was mutual, Aaron opening up and dropping his usual mask a little in her presence. This time, Aaron had his 'stern leader' poker face firmly in place, responding pleasantly but reservedly to her comments, never taking the bait anytime that Joyner tried to joke with him or lead him into a discussion that veered more personal than professional.

Spencer trusted Aaron implicitly, and he knew that his jealousy was irrational and petty. There was still a portion of his brain that wanted to get in Joyner's face the way he'd gotten in Gideon's.

Back the hell off, he's mine.

But Spencer was an adult who could control his impulses, so he worked the case, and he stayed focused, and he made sure he was civil to Agent Joyner any time they spoke. Besides, the woman had died on this case the first time around. It felt particularly pathetic to be stewing in his jealousy when Spencer knew full well what would happen without his intervention.

The problem was, he still didn't know how to make that intervention happen.

As time ticked closer and closer to the moment when he knew that they would disperse to their borrowed SUVs, Spencer's stress ratcheted higher and higher; try as he might, even with the full knowledge of the what the terrorist cell was actually up to, he simply couldn't find a scrap of evidence that would reasonably lead him to believe that the team was being targeted. In every case he'd meddled with so far, Spencer had been able to find the evidence to back his conclusions by virtue of knowing what he needed to look for, but here - all they had was Rossi's theory, yet unproven, that this might be a terrorist cell using unconventional tactics. The pattern of the crimes indicated that there was a possibility of them targeting first responders, but there was just no evidence at all currently available to the team that implied that they themselves were at risk. The attack had truly come without warning, and that left Spencer frantic, trying to reason out a way to justify his knowledge.

He had felt Aaron's increasingly worried gaze on him throughout the day, his team leader obviously aware that Spencer was starting to lose his grip on the situation, though not aware of exactly what was going wrong. Finally, as afternoon slid into evening on the fateful day, Spencer broke and asked to speak to Aaron privately.

"You can't send the team back to the hotel tonight," he spilled out in a rush, the moment that the door of the office that Aaron had commandeered was shut behind them.

"Spencer, breathe," Aaron said firmly, stepping forward to put a hand on his shoulder. "You've had me worried all day. What's going on?" he asked, more gently, once Spencer had taken a few deep breaths and slowed his frantic heart rate a little.

Spencer sighed heavily, bringing one hand up to rake through his tangled curls.

"I can't find anything to justify to the others how I know this," he said tightly, "But the cell is going to strike at our team. Their ultimate target is a governmental official who's currently undergoing surgery at the closest hospital, and the whole place is on lockdown; they know that the only way to get past that lockdown is by injuring a federal agent severely enough that emergency treatment is the only option." He looked up at Aaron, watching the blood drain from the older agent's face. "When we split up to head back to the hotel for the night, there's going to be a bomb under your SUV. You walk away with severe contusions, head trauma and some hearing loss, but Joyner dies."

Aaron inhaled sharply, but his shock was almost immediately replaced by resolve, that familiar look of determination settling into place like armour.

"Well, we're not going to let that happen," he said firmly. "And I think I know exactly what to do."

Fortunately, the federal government's paranoia was working in their favour for once. With domestic terrorism now a possible motive in the case, Aaron was able to request that the local law enforcement perform an anti-surveillance sweep of all resources that had been dedicated to the FBI investigation, a precautionary measure that the Bureau had added into procedure as fears grew about hostile infiltration of American defense systems. Aaron's faith in the NYPD's counterintelligence unit was borne out, as one of the technicians performing a bug sweep on the FBI's assigned vehicles detected the transponder for the explosives placed under the chassis. The bomb squad had the device safely dismantled within half an hour, and the team finally had the missing piece of the puzzle to figure out the motivation and target of the terrorist cell.

As Garcia put together the full list of suspected members of the cell, Rossi joked that Aaron had finally developed the proper level of paranoia for a Unit Chief, and just in time to save their asses. The rest of the team laughed along, but Spencer could see the tension that lingered in everyone, the hovering awareness of just how close they had come to disaster. It was terrifying, to realize only after the fact that they had been in the crosshairs.

Spencer was profoundly glad that this time, none of them had learned that the even harder way.

They were all given the option of finally going to the hotel and getting some sleep once the local task force had breached the cell's headquarters and successfully rounded up the participants. Aaron was the only one who had to stay behind, as the team leader, wrapping up the last of the details with the local PD liaison; Spencer opted to stay as well, citing his desire to get everything packed up so that they could simply head straight to the airport in the morning. In reality, he was almost as shaken by the near miss as everyone else; he didn't particularly want to let Aaron out of his sight any time soon, and decided to linger so they could head back to the hotel together once Aaron was finally free. They were sharing a room - something that had happened more and more often lately, a rather odd coincidence but also a blessing that Spencer absolutely wasn't going to question - which meant that if they headed back together, they would have a chance to talk and decompress together before they both passed out from the sheer exhaustion of the last few days.

All of which meant that Spencer was still in the team's temporary command center, sorting quietly through files with the lights on their lowest setting, when he heard voices approaching from down the hall.

"Really, Aaron, I can't thank you enough-"

Of course. Kate fucking Joyner. Spencer barely resisted the urge to groan aloud. He had saved her life a few hours ago, but that was all the compassion he had for the woman; at this point, he just wanted her to stay the hell away from Aaron.

"The credit goes to my whole team, Kate," Aaron said, warm but firm. It sounded as if they had stopped in the hall near the door to the conference room, just out of Spencer's line of sight. "I wouldn't be able to do this without any one of them."

"You always were such a stickler for fairness," Joyner said, and Spencer wanted to gag at the sugary affection in her voice. "Listen, now that the case is wrapped up, I was thinking-"

"You already know what my answer is going to be."

Even Spencer winced a little at the flat exhaustion in Aaron's voice. He was in no mood to feel sorry for Joyner, but he knew that had to have stung.

"Oh." Joyner sounded rattled, finally, as if she really hadn't picked up on any of the signals that Aaron had been sending her for two days straight. "I thought - since we were working, I thought maybe it was just…"

"I'm flattered, Kate, but I'm already seeing someone," Aaron said, and there was absolutely no room for debate in his voice; that was the tone he used when he was staring down recalcitrant local law enforcement, when he was drawing the line for an uncertain UnSub.

"Oh." There was a bit of shuffling, then Joyner awkwardly clearing her throat. "Well, um, that's - great, Aaron. Thanks again for everything, I'll - I'll see you around, I guess."

The sound of her hurried, retreating footsteps was the second best thing he'd heard all day. Second only to that matter-of-fact declaration that Aaron had just voiced.

I'm already seeing someone.

Aaron finally stepped into the room, and came to a halt upon seeing Spencer, sitting by the now-blank whiteboard and boxing up the last of the files. He sighed heavily, his mouth twisting wryly.

"I suppose you heard all of that, then,"

"Sorry," Spencer offered, smiling sheepishly. "I wanted to wait for you, so we could head back to the hotel together."

Aaron nodded slowly, and the stoic mask finally slipped off his face, leaving him looking bone-tired and still fond.

"I would have been more clear with her sooner, but I didn't want to distract her or make it difficult to work together while we were still on the case," he said softly, sounding almost apologetic. Spencer shook his head.

"It's fine, Aaron, I knew I didn't need to worry," he said. "I was a little jealous, yes, but - I think that might just be how I am, about this. It was always hard to watch other people flirt with you, but in some ways it was easier to ignore when I knew I had no right to feel that way. Now… I think I might be discovering a bit of a possessive streak in myself, and I'm not sure how to feel about it."

He was watching Aaron carefully, but Aaron only smiled at the admission.

"Don't feel too badly about it," he said. "As long as it doesn't get out of hand… I don't mind."

There was the slightest flush on his cheeks with those last words, and Spencer made a very interested mental note to pursue that discussion a little further at another time - but it was late, and they were exhausted, and for now he just smiled back and let it go.

"Shall we get back to the hotel?"

"Absolutely," Aaron said fervently. "You know," he added, as Spencer stood and grabbed his messenger bag, "I'm starting to think Garcia is double-booking us on purpose."

Spencer paused, running the numbers quickly in his head. In the last few months, he and Aaron had ended up sharing a room with each other… 83% of the time that the team doubled up for cost or availability reasons. That was, in fact, a much higher percentage than he had even realised.

Absolutely high enough to be suspicious.

"You think she knows something?" he asked, mildly concerned.

Aaron just smiled and shook his head.

"If she does, I'm not worried," he said easily. "It would be a guess at most, and no matter how much she professes to love gossip, she's careful when it matters. And if she is doing it on purpose, I can't say I don't appreciate the results."

Spencer breathed a soft laugh.

"Me neither," he admitted, warmth bubbling in his chest. "Now let's get out of here."

Chapter Text

"Do you think we need to be worried about this?" Morgan asked suddenly.

Emily was deep in her notes on the New York case, making a final few revisions before she submitted her final report; she resurfaced and blinked at Morgan, discombobulated by the unexpected question.

"What are we maybe worrying about?" she asked, registering the seriousness of his expression.

"That," he said quietly, nodding toward the kitchenette.

Emily glanced over, and realized immediately what Morgan was talking about. Hotch had come down from his office to make coffee a few minutes ago, and sometime while Emily had been distracted with her notes, Reid had gotten up from his desk and wandered over as well. They were standing very close together near the coffee maker, talking in low tones; as she watched, Hotch raised his hand in what Emily was dead certain was originally a motion to touch Reid's hair, redirected at the last second into a light clasp on his shoulder. As if some part of Hotch's brain, at least, was still vaguely aware that they were in plain view of half the bull pen.

Reid seemed too enthralled with whatever Hotch was saying to have noticed the obviousness of the gesture, either, and honestly Emily wondered how two objectively excellent profilers could be so incredibly blind to their own glaring behavioural signals. It would have been painful to watch if it wasn't so damn cute; they reminded Emily of the rabbits from Bambi, so wrapped up in each other they consistently forgot that anyone else existed.

Except that Morgan looked genuinely troubled, not charmed. And Emily had picked up enough from his own hints, and JJ's subtle comments, to understand why it might not seem so innocent to him.

So, respecting the seriousness of his concern, Emily put down her notes and tried to wipe the fond grin off her face.

"Reid doesn't seem distressed," she opened, understating the point by a mile in an effort not to feel like she was dismissing Morgan's worry. "I didn't exactly get to know him well before that disaster with Hankel, but honestly, it seems to me like he's only gotten more confident since then."

"That's true," Morgan said, frowning. "Still… there's twelve years between them. And Hotch is our boss. Don't you think that's a little fucked up, even if Reid doesn't see it that way?"

Emily gave that the consideration it deserved, choosing her words carefully before she replied.

"I think that Reid's an unusual person, who has never fit in with the people who, demographically, should have been his peers," she said slowly. "It's hard enough for any of us to form relationships outside the Bureau, thanks to the nature of the work we do, and that's compounded by all the other factors that set Reid apart. God knows, Hotch's wife put him through the wringer for that exact thing."

Morgan's jaw tightened visibly.

"Yeah. Not sure the recent divorce is working in Hotch's favour here either, Prentiss."

Emily sighed, trying to find the right explanation that would sum up why she had never felt an instant of concern when she had come to the same conclusion as Morgan, about what was transpiring between their Unit Chief and resident genius.

"Alright, look at it this way," she finally said. "I mean… even if it doesn't fully make sense to us, you saw all the shit that went down with Gideon before he left. I don't know what happened there, but Reid was pissed at him, and he made sure everyone on the team knew it. Gideon was his mentor, he got Reid into the Bureau - if there was anyone that Reid should have felt intimidated by or indebted to, it should have been Gideon. But Reid went after him in front of the whole team during the briefing on that Galen case. If he's sure enough of himself to speak up like that, I think we have to trust that he'd let us know if he was unhappy about this situation too. And if he's happy, then we should trust his judgement that this is okay."

Morgan sighed, and ran his hand down his face.

"You're right," he muttered, grimacing. "I know you're right. I know Reid's not a kid, no matter how often I call him that, and I need to let him make his own decisions. I just… I'm really struggling to pretend that I don't see what's happening here."

Emily risked another glance at the kitchenette, in time to see Hotch handing Reid a whipped cream-topped coffee before turning to fix his own. She had to bite her lip to hold back a smile.

"Well, that's something too. If Hotch thought he was doing anything wrong, don't you think he'd be a hell of a lot more subtle about it? He's not exactly acting like someone with something to hide."

To her relief, Morgan's brow smoothed out a little at that, and he made a considering noise.

"That's a good point, actually," he said. Emily grinned.

"Well you don't have to sound so surprised," she teased.

"Cut it out," Morgan said, rolling his eyes at her, but he was grinning too. "For real though - Hotch has a poker face to beat all of us, he doesn't have to be out here making moon eyes at Pretty Boy right now. For how subtle they're being, it's almost like they're trying to get caught."

"I think it's just not that important to them," Emily said honestly. "They're keeping it… relatively low-key, because they don't want to start trouble with Strauss and - honestly - probably because they're not ready for us to tease them to hell and back. But they're not hiding that they're close."

"Yeah, well, if they get any more PDA than that I'm going to suggest that they hide it a little more, I don't need to see my boss making out with our coworker," Morgan said, but he was grinning openly now, and Emily knew he'd gotten her point.

They had to drop it there, as Spencer wandered back over to his desk finally, smiling from ear to ear and sipping at his over-sweet coffee. Watching him settle back into his work with that smile lingering on his face, and catching the fond look that Hotch shot at the younger man before slipping back into his office to return to his own work, Emily really couldn't find it in herself to muster an ounce of concern. Those two were so obviously gone on each other that she couldn't imagine any kind of power imbalance ever becoming an issue.

If Hotch ever willingly hurt Reid, she would eat her badge.

Chapter Text

With Aaron uninjured from the New York case and no mandated leave time for the team, they dealt with a flurry of cases; some that Spencer remembered, some that were new ones that had never crossed their desks before. Spencer didn't think much of it, until a sunny Thursday morning. The team were sitting at their desks, finishing the reports from their latest case, when Spencer caught a flurry of conversation around the television that hung near the kitchenette, normally running a steady stream of muted news while everyone worked.

"Holy shit, put the volume on, man!" a support technician was saying, grabbing for the remote from another agent. Spencer looked up at the screen, and for a moment, he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.

A hauntingly familiar building. A white-walled compound, out in the desert, its deceptively peaceful structure hiding the horrors within.

As Spencer stared, uncomprehending, the words of the TV reporter finally made their way past the blood suddenly roaring in his ears.

"-Liberty Ranch in La Plata County, Colorado. However, this is the scene today."

The footage cut to a sight already burned into Spencer's memories; the compound under full government siege. Armoured vehicles rolling up to the edge of the road, special response units in full body armor and carrying automatic rifles, crisis negotiators in their bulletproof vests with bullhorns in hand. For a moment, it felt like a nightmare, like Spencer was watching from somewhere outside of his own body - because surely, this couldn't be real.

He couldn't have missed his chance to change this.

"Earlier today, three federal agents infiltrated the Separatarian Sect compound to investigate accusations that Benjamin Cyrus, leader of the sect, had engaged in misconduct involving underage girls," the news reporter carried on, her words rapid-fire and vibrating with the tension of the story. "One of those agents is already known to be deceased, and the other two are being held hostage by the members of the Sect, though their identities are not yet confirmed."

And Spencer -

He couldn't breathe.

Distantly, he was aware of what must have happened; with Aaron not laid up from the New York City bombing, the team had had a full caseload, and the request for two agents to go undercover in the cult compound must have gone to another team. Two other agents had been chosen, not Spencer and Emily, to walk into that lion's den and face Benjamin Cyrus and his mania. Those thoughts slid off Spencer's brain like water off a duck's back, though, as a torrent of panic crashed into him.

Memories cascaded through his mind, fragmented and mixing like a kaleidoscope. Benjamin Cyrus, preaching to his congregation about loyalty and faithfulness as they drank wine he would later tell them was poisoned. Tobias Hankel, in the persona of Charles, screaming about sin. A man whose name Spencer had never even known, garbed in the stolen robes of a priest, decrying trespassers upon his land. Jessica Evanson, just fifteen, raising a detonator in her hand with tears streaming down her face.

So much suffering, so much death, so many people driven to their knees not out of faith but out of terror -

"Reid, are you okay?"

Spencer jolted back into his body like he'd been hit with an electric shock. A quick, instinctive glance around told him no one had noticed the quiet question, every eye riveted on the unfolding drama on the TV screen; swallowing hard, he looked up into Rossi's worried face, but he couldn't find the words for a reassurance.

For all his usual denial, even Spencer was horribly aware in that moment that he was not, in fact, okay.

Whatever Rossi read on his face seemed to do the speaking for him, because the senior profiler's face softened, and he nodded toward the mezzanine.

"Hotch is in his office," he said, quiet but matter of fact, not the kind of harried whisper that would draw attention. "Go on. I'll cover for you if anyone asks."

Spencer didn't have the wherewithal to address whatever conclusion Rossi had come to, or why he'd offered that particular solution. He just bolted to his feet and hurried toward the stairs. Absorbed by the repeat of Waco playing out in front of them, no one even glanced his way as he reached Aaron's office, opening the door and slipping inside without knocking for once.

Aaron glanced up as he entered, and Spencer must have looked as much of a wreck as he felt, because the curiosity on Aaron's face shifted instantly to alarm.

"Spencer, what happened?" he asked, rising immediately and stepping around the desk. Still unable to speak, Spencer all but collapsed into the chair in front of Aaron's desk, his whole body shaking. Stopping only to tilt the blinds so that no one on the bull pen floor could see into the office, Aaron hurried over and knelt down in front of Spencer, reaching out to take Spencer's trembling hands in his own.

"Talk to me, sweetheart," he said, achingly gentle.

At the tender endearment, something inside of Spencer gave way, and he spilled out the whole story.

Not just the conclusion of the debacle currently playing out on national television, not just that he and Emily had been the agents trapped inside the first time around; he told Aaron about the case that they had worked so many years in the future, of a man who was so hell bent on guarding his community from trespassers that he was willing to kill anyone who set foot in the neighbourhood. He told Aaron about being abducted outside of the community center, about waking up on his knees in a makeshift pillory, the UnSub ranting wildly and reciting quotes picked from a half-dozen different books of the Bible and stitched together to support his madness. He told Aaron about the moment the UnSub had pulled out his gun, and how Spencer had begged for his life, even though - by that point - he hadn't been sure he even wanted to live.

How all those people in Liberty Ranch were going to die much the same way, on their knees and terrified, and Spencer hadn't been able to stop it.

Aaron let him talk until the words ran dry, tears glistening in his own eyes - and when Spencer finally ran out of words and devolved into sobbing, Aaron tugged gently at his hands. Spencer slid out of the chair and onto the floor, and Aaron pulled him immediately into his arms, one hand finding its way into Spencer's curls and cradling him close as Aaron murmured quiet, meaningless reassurances.

They knelt there for a long time, on the floor of Aaron's office, holding each other while Spencer cried out years worth of fear and loss.

Eventually, when even the tears were gone and Spencer just felt hollow, Aaron's deep voice murmured gently against his ear.

"What happened today at Liberty Ranch is not your fault, Spencer. Just because you knew it might happen doesn't make you responsible for it, any more than being profilers and understanding the minds of the UnSubs we chase makes us responsible for the crimes they commit." He drew a slightly shaky breath, and his arms tightened around Spencer. "I'm so sorry you had to go through that. When you told me you'd died before you woke up again in Hankel's cabin, I thought… I hoped it was something gentler than that. I knew the odds, in our line of work, but I still hoped. Thank you for telling me, though, sweetheart; you should never have had to carry that alone."

A last few, weak tears squeezed themselves out from under Spencer's eyelids, and he pressed his face more tightly against Aaron's shoulder.

After a little while longer spent in silence, Spencer finally started to feel like himself again, like his spirit was settling back into his body and he was no longer a helpless passenger, watching events unfold from a distance.

"Thank you," he finally managed to murmur, his voice rough from speaking for so long through his tears.

"Anything for you, Spencer," Aaron told him, and maybe it should have sounded like a cliche, but it just sounded like the truth. "Do you want to take the rest of the day? No one on the team will judge you if you need the time."

Spencer's knee-jerk reaction was to put on a brave face, to insist that he could handle it, but… the idea of curling up with a good book and a warm cup of tea sounded a lot more comforting than trying to work on files while the horror show played out on the news screens. It would be hours yet until the standoff at Liberty Ranch was resolved, and Spencer already knew it would end in gunfire and blood; it wasn't their case, the matter was out of his hands, and he was tired down to his bones.

Maybe, just this once, he could let himself take the offered grace.

"I think I'd prefer that," he admitted softly, and got a feather-light kiss on his cheek for his honesty.

"Then go get your things, sweetheart, and I'll drive you home."

On another day, Spencer might have protested that indulgence as well - but the last thing in the world he wanted right now was to deal with the crowds on the metro, so he conceded that point as well and simply nodded.

When he stepped out of Aaron's office, he found that while there was still a large cluster of staff around the TV screen, his own team was standing in a smaller group near their desks instead; not only was Rossi still part of the huddle, but sometime while Spencer had been shut up in Aaron's office, Garcia had joined them as well. From their worried faces, and the way their gazes all snapped to him as he started down the stairs, he was the subject of their conversation.

"You alright, kid?" Morgan asked gently as he reached them.

Spencer shrugged a little, knowing there was no way he could possibly hide the redness of his eyes after how hard he'd cried in Aaron's arms.

"I've been better," he admitted quietly. "I um… I had a flashback. Hotch is going to give me a ride home."

The understanding washed over all of their faces; while it wasn't the only trauma that Spencer had actually been grappling with, it wasn't hard for any of them to make the connection between the FBI agents being held hostage in a cult compound and Spencer's own experience at Hankel's hands. Rossi nodded somberly.

"I think that's a good idea, Reid," he said. "It sounds like you've had one hell of a year. There's no shame in needing a minute to breathe."

Spencer managed a wan little smile. Rossi didn't even know the half of it, but the sentiment was appreciated anyway.

"Thanks, Rossi," he said quietly, and when Garcia sidled up to him in uncharacteristic silence and held her arms out hopefully in invitation for a hug, Spencer accepted it gladly.

For all the hell this year had put him through, it was more than worth it to have his family back.

Chapter Text

The letter came to the BAU instead of his apartment.

Spencer wasn't entirely unused to receiving traditional mail at work - some inter-agency correspondence was still handled on paper rather than email, thanks to the usual outdated government systems, and some of the academic institutions he occasionally consulted with still preferred physical communication as well. A personal letter was more out of the ordinary, but not unheard of, as it wasn't entirely uncommon for witnesses or victims in past cases to reach out to members of the team with questions or expressions of gratitude. The elegant, looping cursive of the address made Spencer's blood run cold, though; he knew that handwriting too well.

Gideon.

As the team chattered around him, discussing some popular TV show that Derek and Emily had recently taken up and were trying to convince JJ and Rossi to start watching as well, Spencer slit open the envelope and unfolded the letter. He skimmed down the page, wishing for once that he could stop the words from instantly imprinting into his memory as key phrases seemed to leap at him off the page.

Wanted to reach out… concerned about you… ever need a safe place… happy to offer you a place to land… worried that you may feel trapped…

The chill in Spencer's veins turned to fire.

How dare he.

Spencer had been worried about Gideon, when he first vanished - Frank was still alive in this timeline, after all, and if any criminal the team had hunted would be clever enough to slip out of his prison cell, Frank would be high on the list of candidates. Even if Frank remained safely under lock and key, Gideon had accrued a lot of enemies over the course of his career; his ultimate fate in Spencer's first life was proof of that. Spencer had been worried, even with the extreme bitterness of their parting, about what might happen to the older man now that he was out in the world alone - but as he read the message that Gideon had deemed important enough to write down and send to him, when the first time around he hadn't even bothered to let Spencer know he was alive for a decade, all of the sympathy and compassion that Spencer had ever felt for Gideon evaporated like liquid nitrogen.

Because Gideon still hadn't reached out to ask how Spencer was coping, or apologize for vanishing and letting the team down, or explain anything about his own choices.

He had reached out to express his concerns that Spencer might feel trapped with Aaron, and to offer to help him get away from Aaron if he ever wanted to leave.

As if Spencer hadn't made his feelings on the matter inescapably clear during their last conversation...

Spencer had already been methodically shredding paper for several minutes when there was a lull in the conversation around him, and Derek's voice broke into his awareness.

"What exactly are you up to over there, Pretty Boy?"

"Dealing with a letter," Spencer said crisply, his words clipped with annoyance as he continued ripping Gideon's letter into thin strips and then ripping them again crosswise, creating what was essentially rough-edged confetti that he was dumping into an upturned tin thermos lid he had found in one of his desk drawers. He didn't look up from his task, even as the ensuing silence stretched around him. After a few long, awkward moments, Rossi spoke.

"I assume, based on the available evidence, that the writer of this letter has managed to offend you quite considerably."

"Brilliantly deduced," Spencer shot back. Holding the last thin strip of unshredded letter, he pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicked it, held it under the strip until the end of the paper scrap caught fire, then dropped the burning strip into the tin cup and watched the whole mess begin to smoulder with a petty, vicious satisfaction.

"Why are we testing the limits of the smoke alarms this morning?"

Spencer finally looked up; Aaron had just walked into the bull pen and was making his way toward them, eyebrows lifted, looking between Spencer and the flaming cup on his desk. There was an amused quirk to the edges of his mouth, but concern in his dark brown eyes as well. Spencer sighed and leaned back a little in his chair, gesturing at the cup of paper shreds which were now crackling merrily.

"Gideon decided he was concerned enough to write," he bit out, not trying to hide the hurt and anger in his voice.

"I see." The amusement vanished from Aaron's face, and he frowned at the cup of burning scraps. "With more of the same sentiments from the last time we spoke, I assume."

"Yes." Spencer folded his arms across his chest, tilting his head up a little, defiant. "And no, you didn't need to read it, because it's complete fucking bullshit and not worth our time."

A few stifled intakes of breath reminded Spencer abruptly the rest of the team was still present, and he risked a quick glance around the group; Rossi was watching the unfolding events with a mix of surprise and amusement, Derek looked mildly scandalized and reluctantly impressed by Spencer's unexpectedly strong language, and Emily looked like this conversation had replaced whatever TV show she and Derek had been touting as her new favourite entertainment. Only JJ looked genuinely uncomfortable, shying away from meeting Spencer's gaze, but Spencer didn't have time to wonder much about her reaction before Aaron pulled his attention back with a heavy sigh.

"Please make sure you put that out before it sets off the smoke alarms," he said dryly, nodding at the cup, which had already consumed most of the paper scraps and was settling into a low smoulder over the remnants. Reaching out, he briefly rested his hand on Spencer's shoulder, and the look in his eyes was clear; we'll talk about this later. Then, without further comment, he headed off toward his office.

The team was left in silence for a moment.

"Did he just…" Emily started, her tone almost awed.

"Casually shrug off our resident genius setting a shredded letter on fire in a cup?" Rossi supplied, smirking. "He certainly did. I guess he agrees with the assessment that its contents were, as Dr Reid said, complete bullshit."

"That's because I'm always correct," Spencer said, pulling a laugh from the rest of the group that diffused the last of the tension. While they were all still laughing, he tipped a bit of water into the cup to put out the last smouldering fragments, allowing himself a satisfied little smirk.

Message received, and rejected.

Chapter Text

"JJ, is everything alright?"

Spencer had been trying not to push, not wanting to invade his friend's privacy or to tip his hand on knowledge that he shouldn't have had - but he was getting worried. JJ still hadn't said anything to the team about Will, or about a baby, and there was a real fear starting to stir in Spencer's chest that maybe something was wrong. If his actions had somehow shifted events in such a way as to prevent his godson from being born, he'd never forgive himself.

It wasn't just the lack of news that was bothering him, though: JJ had been acting strangely the last few weeks. Quieter than usual, with a look in her eyes that lingered somewhere between thoughtfulness and sorrow. She'd been practically silent today, once they wrapped up their case in Cleveland and got on the jet back to DC. Which is why Spencer had, with a quiet comment about checking in on JJ and a reluctance that was probably visible at least to Aaron, left his seat next to his boyfriend and made his way to the back of the jet instead.

JJ glanced up in surprise at his question, and for just a moment her expression looked caught.

"I - I'm fine, Spence," she said, a smile quickly erasing that vaguely guilty look. "I'm just… thinking about a lot of things, you know?"

"You've been thinking a lot, lately," he said quietly, taking her lack of protest as an invitation to sit down across from her. "You know you can talk to me if something's bothering you, right?"

JJ's smile faded, and she sighed.

"I know," she said softly, turning her gaze out the window, watching the fluffy white clouds rolling by beneath the plane's wings. "I guess I'm just thinking about the future. I know life is just one long series of changes, so this feels sort of silly to say, but… it seems like so much has happened this past year, you know? Everything's different, and I just - I'm trying to decide how I feel about that."

Spencer felt a pang of sympathy at her words. Though it hadn't been by his own volition, he knew he himself had probably contributed significantly to that feeling of overwhelm; he couldn't help but be different after the Hankel case, with his mid-thirties mind shoved into his mid-twenties body, and he knew the rest of the team had noticed it even if none of them but Aaron knew exactly why he'd seemingly changed so much literally overnight. Add in Aaron's divorce, Gideon's outrageous behaviour and abrupt departure, and Rossi's addition to the team, and it wasn't at all strange for JJ to feel like their shared world had been turned a little upside down.

"I guess things have been pretty crazy," he said, keeping his tone low and gentle. "Is there anything in particular?"

JJ visibly bit her lip, worrying at it for a moment before she replied quietly, still not looking at him.

"I don't think I should say."

"JJ," a wave of fond exasperation swept over Spencer. "If it's about Hankel, you can say it. I'm not going to have a breakdown just because someone mentions his name."

JJ gave him an apologetic look.

"No, I know that, it's just… this sounds selfish, even in my own head," she explained. Spencer shook his head, heart twinging.

"You're allowed to feel however you feel, JJ. Talk to me," he urged gently.

She hesitated a moment longer, then gave in.

"I just - you're so different, now," she said, so quiet now that she was barely audible as she glanced at him, her blue eyes dark with guilt. "I know that's a terrible thing to be upset about, nobody would be the same after what you went through, but… Gideon had been doing this job longer than any of us, and it obviously took its toll - I know none of us know exactly why he just snapped and disappeared overnight like he did, but it must have been something to do with the job. Hotch's wife left him because of what this job demands from us. You went through a nightmare with Hankel, and you got through it - and please don't take this as a criticism, Spence, you're so strong for surviving that and being able to walk away at all, but you're… you're different now. And I just…" There were tears welling in her eyes now, and she dabbed a little at her eyes, trying to save her makeup from running. "I just can't help wondering how much this job is going to take from me, someday, and if it's going to be worth it."

"Oh, JJ," Spencer breathed. He wanted to reassure her, to offer some kind of comfort, but - what could he say? Even though he himself had been the catalyst for Gideon's departure in this timeline, it was true that the job would have broken Gideon anyway if not for Spencer's own intervention. He couldn't argue with the remark about Haley. And as for himself… was it really fair to argue that his changes weren't because of Hankel? He couldn't tell her about the time travel, but even beyond that - if not for the time travel, her comments would still have been warranted, because the Spencer Reid she would have been talking to then would have only recently pried himself out of the jaws of active Dilaudid use. Would be even more broken, more withdrawn, than the Spencer she was talking to now. In the privacy of his own mind, he could equivocate about whether the worst of his trauma stemmed from Hankel, or from Cat Adams, or from his time in Milburn Correctional - but at the end of the day, those semantics didn't matter to the truth of what JJ was saying. It had been the job and its consequences that had made Spencer what he was today, and he couldn't lie to her about that.

There was so much that he wanted to say, but couldn't, so instead he gave her the only thing he could offer.

"I think you're the only one who can decide whether it's worth it or not," he said, holding her tear-bright gaze. "I know I could have walked away after Hankel, and no one would have blamed me… much." A tiny smile flickered over JJ's face at the acknowledgement that the team wouldn't have taken it too easily if he'd tried to leave. "But I know this is where I need to be. The work we do, the people we help, the team we're part of - that's worth it, to me, no matter what happens. And if that ever stops being true, then I'll have to reevaluate." He paused, drew a steadying breath. "But I can't tell you if it's worth it to you, JJ. Only you can do that."

"Thank you, Spence," she said softly, smiling despite the tears still glittering in her eyes. "I guess I'll need to think about that a little bit more, but… when I figure it out, you'll be the first to know."

Chapter Text

JJ's words lingered in Spencer's mind all through that day and into the next, no matter how much he tried not to overthink them.

You've changed so much.

It touched a fear that had haunted him upon his release from Milburn; that the things he'd seen while inside, the things he'd done, had permanently altered him. That he'd never be free of the darkness that had crept inside him during those terrible days. That fear had been mostly buried since his return to the past - it was much easier not to think about when he was surrounded by his family who had no idea what had happened, what he'd been through. Who didn't look at him like he might be damaged, as if they were searching for the cracks they were certain must be there. JJ's words had brought that insecurity roaring back, though, and Spencer couldn't even blame her for it; he'd specifically urged her not to hold back on her true thoughts, after all, even when she tried to censor herself.

That didn't take the sting away.

Is it really that obvious? Can they all tell that there's something wrong with me?

Spencer knew that he could ask Aaron, and that his boyfriend would be more than happy to reassure him, but… he also knew that he couldn't trust Aaron's opinion to be objective. Not in this. Aaron not only knew too much of the truth about Spencer's journey, which would alter his perspective on the matter because he was expecting Spencer to be different, but he would also be viewing the situation through the lens of his own affection for Spencer. Aaron was too honest to lie intentionally, but he couldn't distance himself enough to be fully truthful either, and what Spencer wanted right now wasn't comfort but honesty.

And if blunt honesty was what was called for, Spencer knew exactly which of his friends to ask for it.

He waited until the end of the day, when everyone was already packing up to head home, before he asked.

"Hey, Morgan, do you have a minute to talk?"

"Anything for you, Pretty Boy," Morgan said easily, turning from his trajectory toward the door and perching on the edge of Spencer's desk instead. He waited until the rest of the team had filed out of the bullpen before looking at down Spencer, eyebrows raised. "What's on your mind?"

"Something that JJ said yesterday, on the plane," Spencer said, twiddling a pen anxiously in his hands, hoping the tightness in his chest wasn't obvious on his face. "About how much I've changed, since… since Georgia."

From the shock on Morgan's face, that was not what he'd been expecting.

"She wasn't trying to be mean," Spencer rushed to say, feeling instantly defensive in the face of Morgan's visible incredulity. "She just - it's bothering her, thinking about how much this job asks from all of us, and I guess that got me thinking about how much the stuff we go through changes us." His gaze dropped back to the pen he'd been fiddling with, not quite able to keep looking Morgan in the eye. "…how we know, when we've changed too much."

Morgan sighed.

"Reid," he said, gentle enough that Spencer glanced back up at him. "You haven't changed that much."

Spencer tried not to let his immediate, knee-jerk relief sweep him away.

"But I have changed," he argued. "You've noticed it too."

"Of course you've changed, and of course I noticed," Morgan said, a little incredulous now. "You went through a living nightmare, you don't come out of something like that without a few scars, but - it's not like you're suddenly a completely different person." He shrugged. "You're a little quieter, maybe. You think a little longer before you talk sometimes. But you're still just as polite to little old ladies in coffee shops, and you're still a goddamn genius on the job, and you're still the biggest nerd I've ever met. You're still you. And it's gonna take more than some homicidal nutjob to change that."

Spencer couldn't help but smile. Even if Morgan didn't know the full story, it was incredibly reassuring to know that one of his closest friends thought he hadn't actually changed that much at all.

"Though," Morgan added, a dangerous glint of mischief in his eyes, "The thing with Hotch is new."

Spencer nearly choked on air.

"Morgan!"

Morgan cracked up instantly. Spencer couldn't even imagine what his expression looked like, but he could feel the heat burning in his cheeks. After a moment of trying to get himself under control, Morgan waved his hand in a conciliatory gesture, still chuckling.

"Sorry, kid, I couldn't help myself. I'm not gonna ask any questions, and I'm not gonna say anything to anyone else; your incredibly obvious secret is safe with me," he said, grinning when Spencer swatted his shoulder in retaliation for the jab. "I'm just curious; why are you having this philosophical chat with me, and not our fearless leader?"

Spencer's cheeks were still burning as he looked away, muttering, "I was afraid he'd just try to make me feel better." He shot a narrow-eyed, suspicious glance at Morgan. "You're taking this a lot better than I was expecting."

"I was pretty freaked out for a while, but Prentiss knocked some sense into me," Morgan said, his expression finally growing serious again. Spencer groaned, letting his head loll against the back of his chair.

"She knows too?"

Morgan had the audacity to laugh at him again.

"I think everyone on the team knows, Pretty Boy," he said. "You two are not as subtle as you think you are. None of us are gonna say anything until you're ready to talk about it, though. Privacy's in short supply in a room full of profilers, but you know we've all got your backs."

Spencer smiled.

"Thanks, Derek," he said softly, and got his hair ruffled in return.

"Anytime, kid." Morgan said, before standing up. Spencer watched him go with a warm glow in his chest.

So their whole team had figured out that something was going on between him and Aaron, and they were all okay with it. Even Morgan, who had the most reason out of any of them to be wary, had accepted it. Spencer hadn't expected any of them to take the news as badly as Gideon had, but it was doubly reassuring to know that it would be less a matter of informing the team that he and Aaron were together, and more a matter of simply making it official.

Worries eased even more than he had hoped, Spencer finally stood from his desk and grabbed his messenger bag before starting toward the upper offices - only Aaron's still lit.

Time to see if their fearless leader, as Morgan had called him, wanted to go for dinner.

Chapter Text

Two days later, as the team were wrapping up a satisfyingly clear-cut consultation in the conference room, JJ stood up and cleared her throat.

"While everyone's here," she said, glancing around the room, "There's a couple of things I'd like to say."

Spencer's heart leapt.

Finally!

"Is this good news?" Prentiss asked cautiously. JJ grinned at her.

"It really, really is," she said. "I'm pregnant."

There was a flurry of joy and excitement as everyone on the team crowded around to hug and congratulate her, and Garcia and Prentiss quickly pried out the information that Will LaMontagne was the father - that they'd been seeing each other since that fateful case in New Orleans, and were deliriously happy together, and now they were having a baby. Spencer was nearly crying with relief when he got his turn to give JJ a hug; finally, he could let go of the worry that had been pressing down ever more heavily on him for weeks.

Finally, he could relax, another hurdle safely passed.

Then, JJ gestured to quiet down the last of the commotion with a sheepish smile.

"I don't think you're all going to like the second part of this as much, but it's directly related. I'm resigning from the BAU."

The shocked silence that descended over the room was nothing compared to the one ringing inside Spencer's head.

She's leaving. She's leaving.

"You're leaving?" Garcia breathed, sounding nearly as shattered as Spencer felt.

"I am," JJ said gently, reaching out to take Garcia's hand and squeeze it reassuringly as she looked around at the team. "I know this probably feels sudden, but… I've been thinking about it for a while. As soon as I realized Will and I were going to have a baby, I started thinking about the future differently. The work that this team does is so important, and I wanted so badly to be a part of that, but - we all know the toll it takes. This year has felt like nothing but a long string of reminders of that. And that's not a price I'm willing to pay, anymore, if I've got a family waiting for me at home."

Her words were enough to rally the team into something like acceptance, and more congratulations were uttered, though more subdued now. Aaron told her, serious and earnest as ever, that the door would always be open if she changed her mind. Rossi made a sly comment about the suitability of his mansion as a wedding venue, which made JJ swat at him and tell him sternly that that was a whole different conversation.

Spencer could only watch, feeling frozen, like he'd somehow gotten stuck in a single moment while the room moved on around him.

He had thought, naively it seemed, that it would be different this time. If he could use his knowledge of the future to prevent the tragedies that had shattered the team, surely, it would mean that the team would remain whole - if the greatest forces driving them apart dissipated, why wouldn't they stay together? If no one was broken and grieving, then surely, no one would be lost.

It had quickly become apparent that Gideon's departure was inevitable, and Spencer had braced himself for it as best he could. By the time his mentor actually left, after all the bitterness that had built between them, Spencer was actually glad to see him go. But this… he had never seen this coming. Through everything that his first life had thrown at the team, JJ had strayed strong and kept her head up, always forging ahead. The idea of her stepping away from the team permanently had been unthinkable.

And yet, here they were.

And if Spencer couldn't prevent his teammates from slipping away… it terrified him to the core, to think of what else he might not be able to prevent.

Chapter Text

As soon as the team gathering in the conference room began to wind down, Spencer fled.

He wasn't particularly proud of the reaction, but he also knew his own limits, and keeping a smile on his face if JJ tried to talk to him directly about her decision to leave was beyond him. When Prentiss started suggesting they all go out for a team dinner to celebrate the news that JJ was having a baby, Spencer used the renewed hubbub to slip out of the room; he had grabbed his messenger bag and was in the elevator before anyone had come after him, so he assumed he had gotten away unnoticed.

He had barely hit the sidewalk in front of the building before his phone buzzed with an incoming text.

Aaron: Strauss wants a last minute meeting but I'll be free by six, if you want me to come over.

Spencer tried to breathe around the tightness in his chest. Of course Aaron had noticed. And of course he was going to offer, without pushing, to be there for him.

There was a dull, throbbing pain nestled in Spencer's temples, growing more intense by the minute; it felt, disconcertingly, like the beginnings of one of the crippling migraines he had dealt with after Emily's feigned death at the hands of Doyle. Spencer felt like it would take only the slightest nudge, now, to make him unravel at the seams completely - but even if he was going to have a complete breakdown, not for the first time, he'd rather have Aaron there than not.

He texted back before he could second-guess himself.

Spencer: Please.

The journey back to his apartment felt surreal, the faces of people around him passing in a blur. Spencer let it all slide by him, focusing on maintaining his composure; if any well-meaning stranger asked him if everything was alright, he might shatter then and there. Only when he was safely inside his apartment, door shut and locked behind him, did he really allow himself to breathe again.

The afternoon sunlight streaming through his window felt like a direct assault against the throbbing in his head, so Spencer shifted directly into damage control mode. He closed the blinds and pulled the curtains across every window in the place, casting the whole apartment into shadow; a single lamp in the living room, its low-wattage bulb a soft yellow shade, was the only light that he turned on to compensate. In the safety of that artificial gloom, the sharpness of his threatening migraine subsided back into a low, persistent throb - dull enough to be more or less ignored while Spencer went through the motions of making tea, his body moving almost on autopilot as his mind spun in circles.

Maybe I could have - don't think about it now. If I'd just - don't think about it now. I should've said - don't think about it now.

With his tea made, Spencer retreated to the couch. He curled up against one arm, his favourite throw blanket tucked around his shoulders, and shut his eyes.

Soothing darkness or not, the tears, when they inevitably came, made his head flare with pain.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Spencer?"

A gentle hand on his shoulder stirred him awake, and Spencer blinked up at Aaron's concerned expression. It took a moment before everything rushed back to him - the meeting, JJ's announcement, the aftermath.

Crying himself to sleep, alone in his dark apartment.

"Sorry," he rasped, throat dry as he pushed himself back up into a full sitting position; he'd slumped sideways at some point, curling in on himself under the throw blanket. Aaron sat down next to Spencer and handed him the mug of tea from the coffee table; although it had gone cold a while ago, Spencer sipped at it anyway, grateful for the fluid. He was grateful, as well, that he and Aaron had given each other keys to their apartments shortly after that fateful dinner when they'd confessed their true feelings - being awakened by Aaron's authoritative knock on the front door might have startled Spencer straight into an anxiety attack, in this state.

"How are you feeling?" Aaron asked gently.

"Like shit," Spencer said honestly. "My head hurts, and I just feel… hollow." He stared down into his cup, seeing his own murky reflection silhouetted in the surface of the tea. "I just thought, that if I kept enough bad things from happening to the team... maybe nobody would leave."

He could feel fresh tears stinging the backs of his eyes, and heard Aaron sigh heavily.

"Oh, sweetheart."

Then Aaron's arm was around his shoulders, tugging him gently sideways; Spencer went with the pressure gladly, leaning into Aaron's side and resting his head on Aaron's shoulder, pulling his feet up onto the couch as he curled into his boyfriend's side. When Aaron spoke again, Spencer could feel his deep voice rumbling against his ear where it was pressed against Aaron's collarbone.

"That's not how these things work, Spencer," he murmured, his tone gentle but his words blunt. "You can't know all of a person's reasons for the choices that they make, and you can't control the variables of someone else's life. I know this hasn't been your experience, but someone leaving doesn't have to be a tragedy - sometimes it's just time for them to move on to the next chapter of their life."

"But it's JJ," Spencer said helplessly. He could feel Aaron press a soft kiss to the top of his head.

"I know, sweetheart, I know," he said. "But she's just leaving the team; she's not moving away. You can still keep in touch with her. It'll be different, it always is once someone isn't caught up in the FBI lifestyle anymore, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing."

Spencer exhaled shakily, trying to force his brain to picture what Aaron was describing. It was hard, at first; the people who left his life, in the past, didn't linger at all. They were simply gone, one day, as if they had walked through a door and vanished off the face of the earth - his father, Gideon, even Aaron in the future that once was. But if JJ truly wasn't leaving altogether, was just stepping away from the team… they could still meet up for lunch. They could still continue the tradition they had started with Penelope, the three of them gathering at JJ's house for movie nights, picking deliberately terrible horror films and laughing together at the silliness of it all. They could still be friends, even if JJ was no longer part of the team.

In his anxiety over protecting his family, Spencer had been subconsciously treating it as black and white - either the team stayed whole, or he lost people he cared about. But Aaron was right; it wasn't that simple. He had to trust that, at least sometimes, the people who drifted a little further away weren't lost forever.

As his own anxiety eased, Spencer felt a flicker of guilt.

"I hope I didn't make too much of a scene," he said softly. "I don't want JJ to feel bad."

"She knew you were going to take it pretty hard, I think," Aaron said. "She came to my office, after you had left, and asked me to make sure you were alright."

Spencer couldn't help the quiet, disbelieving laugh that escaped him.

"Do you think we had any of them fooled for any time at all?" he asked, rueful. Aaron chuckled.

"I think we work with a team of incredibly perceptive people, and they probably realized that something had changed pretty quickly," he conceded, shifting the arm wrapped around Spencer a little so that he could stroke his hand soothingly down Spencer's arm. "But they also could see that we weren't trying to advertise it, and have been - more or less graciously - giving us space. With the exception of Morgan, who could never have passed up the opportunity to tease you about something."

"Yeah." Spencer smile, remembering that conversation. "It's kind of nice, honestly. That they all seem to be okay with it."

"If only they could have seen what you did to the one person who wasn't so accepting," Aaron said, and Spencer could hear his grin. "I doubt anyone on the team would ever challenge you again if they'd seen the verbal flaying you gave Jason."

"He deserved it," Spencer defended, and got another kiss pressed to his curls for it.

"He most certainly did, sweetheart. Now, how about you finish your tea, and I get started on dinner, alright?"

Rather reluctantly disentangling himself from Aaron, Spencer tucked his blanket back around himself more neatly and leaned back to sip on his tea with a smile, marveling to himself at how much his mood had shifted.

As long as Aaron was around, it seemed, all the rest of life's storm could be weathered.

Chapter Text

As the days on the calendar slid by, Spencer found it harder and harder to focus on cases, to stay in the present moment. The whole team had noticed, and he could feel them all watching him, worried; Aaron was less subtle about his concern, asking Spencer outright several times if there was something he needed to know. Spencer could only deflect, though, telling the team that it was something personal and Aaron that it was something he couldn't share yet. And that was all true, but it didn't make Spencer feel any better about keeping silent, not when the living nightmare pressing on his mind would have the greatest fallout for Aaron out of all of them if Spencer messed up.

The Boston Reaper.

There was a date marked on Spencer's mental calendar in heavy black ink, circled in blazing red; March 17, 2009. The date that Tom Shaunessy would call Aaron and ask him to come to Boston. The date that they would all learn about the Reaper's deal, the day before the first new victims would be found. The date that was scarred into Spencer's psyche as the beginning of the end.

Spencer wasn't unaware of his own disproportionate terror of Foyet; if the Reaper had succeeded in anything, it was his resolve to strike at Aaron's family. Not only had the man killed Haley, he had very nearly broken the entire BAU team. Aaron was their leader, their anchor, the rock that kept all the rest of them steady - seeing him so devastated, so shattered by grief in wake of Haley's loss, had sent cracks spiderwebbing through the foundations of all the rest of the team as well. Emily's purported death at Ian Doyle's hands had shattered those cracks into gaping chasms that never fully healed, even after her return, but it was Haley's death that had left them so vulnerable in the first place.

For Spencer personally, the Reaper's attack on Aaron had been devastating, because it was the first time that Spencer had confronted the reality that he could lose Aaron permanently. To a younger, more naive Spencer, Aaron had always seemed untouchable, almost superhuman in his confidence and capability; it was only after Foyet left him bloodied and unconscious in a hospital bed that Spencer realized Aaron was just as fragile as the rest of them, just as mortal. It was a sobering, terrifying realization, and it had haunted him ever since.

As the 17th crept closer and the stress mounted, Spencer found himself struggling to sleep; most times he closed his eyes, he was jolted awake in short order by nightmares of all the scenarios that might play out if he failed to outsmart Foyet. The fatigue itself was a new source of stress - knowing full well he would need to be at his best by the 17th - creating a feedback loop of ever mounting anxiety and ever depleting energy. The only sleep he managed to get was on the jet on the way back from cases; surrounded by his team, he could let himself nod off, trusting that all of them were safe. At home, alone in his apartment, there was no such reassurance.

Aaron lost patience on the 10th.

"Spencer, you can't keep going like this," he said firmly, the two of them once again alone in Aaron's office after the rest of the team had left. "You look like the walking dead, you have to let yourself rest."

"I can't," Spencer said plaintively. "I'm trying, I swear, but I just can't sleep."

"You've been sleeping on the jet," Aaron pointed out. "What's different there?"

"You're there," Spencer said, a hint of frustration bleeding into his tone even as he flushed at the admission. "I'm sorry that I can't tell you more right now, Aaron, but this case - you're the one most at risk. On the jet, I can sleep because you're right there and no one could possibly get to you when we're at cruising altitude. Down here, that's not true… and my nightmares aren't letting me forget that."

Aaron considered that for a moment.

"Do you want to spend the night at my place?"

Spencer's breath caught a little.

"I don't want to keep you awake as well with my nightmares," he said, but it was a weak rebuttal. Aaron gave him a look that was half fondness, half exasperation.

"At this rate, I'm going to lose more sleep worrying about you not sleeping." He paused, then said more softly, "I don't like the idea of you spending the night alone and terrified, sweetheart. Please."

Spencer had never in his life stood a chance against Aaron Hotchner asking anything of him in that tone, especially not when it was something he wanted as well.

"If you're sure," he said, trying not to smile too widely at the prospect.

"Positive," Aaron said, in that no-nonsense tone Spencer loved so much. "I know you don't want to give me specifics, but… roughly how long, now, until whatever it is that's stressing you out so much?"

Spencer sighed heavily, his mental clock ticking steadily down toward the precise moment - six days, ten hours, and forty three minutes - until his best estimate of when Aaron would receive the call from Shaunessy, factoring in time zones and hospital schedules.

"About a week," is what he actually said.

"I don't have Jack until next weekend. You're welcome to stay the whole time, if you want to," Aaron said. There was a rare hint of something that might have been insecurity in his expression, and it spurred Spencer to answer immediately and honestly.

"I'd love that."

Chapter Text

The morning of March 17th, 2009, began far before dawn.

Spencer woke to the shrill ringing of a phone; Aaron's ringtone, not his, so he merely grumbled and burrowed his face further into the pillow. It was still dark out, which meant it was almost certainly a call about a case. With his mind still foggy from sleep and the pleasant dream he'd been having, Spencer's only thought was that he desperately wanted the call to be a false alarm so that he could curl up with Aaron and go back to sleep.

Then, the words that Aaron was saying quietly into the phone registered in Spencer's brain.

"Don't understand… You can't tell me over the phone?… Alright… I can be in Boston this afternoon."

Boston.

Shaunessy.

The Reaper.

Spencer jolted into full wakefulness, his heart rate accelerating in bounds like a horse working up to a gallop. He pushed himself upright, struggling to keep his breathing steady; Aaron had just hung up the phone and was now staring at him, concern obvious even in the darkness.

"Spencer, are you-"

"That was Detective Tom Shaunessy," Spencer interrupted him, his tone not really a question. He heard Aaron's breath catch a little.

"Yes. He said he needs me to come to Boston, that it can't wait even a day." Aaron exhaled heavily. "He sounded genuine in his urgency, afraid even, but if you tell me I shouldn't go…"

"You not going won't stop what's coming," Spencer whispered, drawing his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them; for a moment he swore he could feel cold fingers on the back of his neck, sinister laughter echoing in the shadows at the corners of the room. "Shaunessy's the warning, not the threat."

"Sweetheart, you're shaking." Aaron reached out, taking one of Spencer's trembling hands in his own. "What is it about this case?"

Spencer had to swallow a few times before he could make himself speak.

"You remember when you asked me why I looked like I was seeing a ghost every time you mentioned Haley?" he finally whispered, and even in the pre-dawn gloom, he saw the way Aaron's eyes widened. "The UnSub on this case… he's so dangerous, Aaron, and he's fixated on you. He was always two steps ahead of us, and he'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. The things he's going to do, if I can't stop him…"

"But you don't have to stop him alone," Aaron said firmly, squeezing Spencer's hand reassuringly. "You've got the whole team behind you, Spencer. Tell me as much as you think it's safe to, and we'll figure out how to communicate what we can to the rest of the team - he won't be two steps ahead when you already know what he's planning. We can do this, sweetheart. Together."

Spencer could only nod, and pray to a God he'd never believed in that Aaron was right.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"And you took this deal?" Aaron asked. There was a restrained rage lurking under his words that Spencer had heard before; the sound of Aaron's unyielding morals, railing against a world that so rarely measured up. "That's why you sent our team away?"

"I waited two weeks, to be sure he'd stopped," Shaunessy wheezed. Spencer couldn't help but pity him, no matter the choices he'd made; an old man, haunted by regret, confessing on his deathbed to a shame that had haunted him for ten years. "It was the only way… but the deal's about to expire. He's watching me, I know it, and when I'm gone… he'll kill again."

Back outside the hospital, standing on the sidewalk in the warm spring sun, Aaron turned to Spencer with a hard look in his eyes.

"You know I won't take that deal, if the Reaper offers it to me."

"I know," Spencer said quietly, heart in his throat. "I don't think he would even keep it if you did. Shaunessy was another victim, someone the Reaper could control… he sees you as an equal, and a threat. He wouldn't be content just watching from the shadows while you went about your life."

Aaron exhaled heavily and nodded.

"How long should I wait before I brief the team?"

"Don't wait," Spencer said immediately, shaking his head. "Shaunessy dies tonight. The Reaper kills tomorrow. We need to be ready."

Aaron muttered a low curse under his breath, reaching up to rub his temples.

"We can't get ahead of him, can we? How soon can we intervene?"

How many people have to die? were the words Aaron didn't say, but Spencer heard them loud and clear.

"I don't think we can save the first two couples he targets," Spencer said softly, forcing himself to take a mental step back from the case, trying to look at it with the painful objectivity he'd been treating most cases with since his return to the past. "He moves too fast. Once the trail starts and I get my hands on the case files, though… I should be able to turn up information to set the team on the right track fairly fast. He's smart, but there's a hole in his story and I know where it is, I just need to find evidence of it."

Spencer desperately hoped that he could set the team on Foyet's trail before the bus attack. It was seven lives that he didn't want on Aaron's conscience, not to mention that if Spencer hadn't stopped it by then, Morgan would be in real danger if the team split up to check Foyet's safehouses. It couldn't be allowed to get that far.

Aaron just nodded, accepting Spencer's assessment.

"I'll call JJ and tell her to gather the team at Quantico."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Somebody tell me we've got something to go on," Morgan said, tossing a case file down on the table in disgust.

Evan Harvey and Nina Hale had died in the morning, Arthur and Diane Lanessa just a few hours ago. Spencer had been buried in the case files ever since. He had nearly had a heart attack when Aaron announced his intention to take Rossi with him to interview George Foyet, the Reaper's only surviving 'victim', but Spencer had swallowed his terror and forced himself to focus; he knew Foyet suspected nothing so far, believing his cover to be perfect, and Spencer's presence would only tip their hand if he wasn't able to hide his terror from their seemingly harmless witness. Though it was one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his life, he let Aaron go without protesting, and forced himself to focus on the case files harder than he ever had before.

He knew the information about Amanda Bertram was in here somewhere, buried in dozens upon dozens of statements from the friends and relatives of the victims. He just had to find it, and then get Aaron or Rossi to mention Foyet's slip-up during the interview.

Just as Morgan voiced his impatience, Spencer finally found what he was looking for.

"I've been going through every file we have on the victims, trying to see if we missed anything in the victimology, but there's no connections," he said in a rush, struggling to keep from speaking too fast and revealing his anxiety; he couldn't fumble this, he needed the team to be able to follow him and catch the hints he was laying down. "Some of them didn't even have much connection to each other. Our survivor, George Foyet, had only been seeing Amanda Bertram for four weeks."

"What?" Rossi's head snapped up instantly from where he had been slumped in his chair, gazing almost meditatively at the crime scene photos. "Did you say four weeks?"

Spencer blinked at him, feigning surprise with every ounce of skill in his body. "Yeah, why?"

Aaron was frowning.

"Wait, didn't Foyet say that he's never gotten over Bertram?"

"He did," Rossi said, consulting the little notebook that he still carried religiously on every case. "He said, in fact, that she was 'the love of his life'. That's a very strong descriptor for a girl he'd been dating for only four weeks."

Aaron's gaze flashed to Spencer, his dark eyes widening, and Spencer only barely managed to restrain himself to a pointed look and a subtle nod in return.

Chase this. It matters.

Aaron reached for his phone immediately, dialing a number they all knew by heart.

"Garcia," he said as soon as she had picked up, "I need you to look into something for me. There's a discrepancy between the statement that Foyet gave us earlier today and the information we have on file, can you pull up all the information you can find on Amanda Bertram and see how she and Foyet met?"

"It looks like… ooh, naughty boy," Garcia said, the rapid click-clack of her typing filtering down the line. "He was the TA in her computer science class. Which makes sense, because I ran that list of aliases that you sent me after you interviewed him, and several of them were… oh."

Spencer sat bolt upright in his chair, heart thumping.

She had found it. Thank all the powers that be, she had found it early.

"What does 'oh' mean, goddess of information?" Morgan prompted her wryly.

"In this case, 'oh' means that my search turned up a red flag, Chocolate Thunder," Garcia said. "A whole bunch of his identities are in various school systems as TAs, almost all in computer sciences, and almost all of them were voluntary departures - probably when he felt like he'd been in one place too long, the longest period of employment seems to be six months - but one of them was suspended. Allegations of sexual misconduct with a student."

For a moment, there was silence in the room as the team processed that information.

"We did profile that he'd want to insert himself into the investigation," Prentiss said softly.

"Yeah, but the guy was stabbed so many times he was on death's door," Morgan protested. "Are we really thinking he did that to himself?"

"He wouldn't be the first perpetrator to impersonate a victim," Spencer pointed out. "It's a ruse frequently used in cases where murders are staged to look like home invasions or random assaults, the ruse simply fails in most cases because the perpetrator's injuries aren't severe enough to pass as genuine harm."

"But the Reaper is compulsive, highly intelligent, and obsessively driven," Aaron said, digging through the photos spread across the table until he unearthed the crime scene shots of the location where Amanda Bertram was killed and Foyet allegedly attacked. "All of Foyet's wounds were in non-fatal locations. The doctors who treated him called it a miracle that he survived."

"But maybe it was less a miracle, and more careful planning," Rossi said. "Sixty seven stab wounds, and not one of them hits an artery or a vital organ? What are the odds on something like that?"

"Infinitesimally small," Spencer said flatly. Morgan let out a disbelieving huff.

"No wonder they never caught the son of a bitch," he said, shaking his head. "The only description of the Reaper they had to work with back then was the one that Foyet gave them. Completely bogus."

"And Shaunessy would never have suspected a thing, because that level of self-mutilation is something no sane man would contemplate," Aaron said, his voice low. "But the Reaper isn't sane. He's utterly dedicated to winning this power struggle against law enforcement, and he'll do anything to achieve that."

There was just a hint of dread in his voice, as if Spencer's warnings were finally sinking in.

Now you see it. Now you understand why I'm so afraid. This isn't a man we're chasing - he's a monster.

At that moment, Aaron's phone rang.

Spencer watched him flip open the device and answer it as if in slow motion, a horrible sense of deja vu washing over him. If this was the call he thought it was -

"Hotchner," Aaron said crisply.

Then his face changed, his usual professional demeanor hardening into an absolute mask of stoicism.

"May I assume I am speaking with the Boston Reaper?"

Spencer felt bile rising in his throat, only barely managed to swallow it back down.

We're out of time.

"You know I'm not going to take that deal," Aaron was saying now, his voice stiff with anger. "The FBI does not negotiate with murderers."

Spencer cast his eyes frantically down the timetable of the city bus line that Foyet used for his daily commute, then checked the clock on the wall. They had forty seven minutes until the Reaper's retaliatory attack. Barely enough time to intervene if they mobilized immediately - not anywhere near enough time to reason it through and then act.

Seven lives in the balance, and all that would follow. The safehouses. The attack on Morgan. The theft of his ID, and all the doors it would later open for Foyet. The tiny, dislodged rocks that would start an avalanche.

If Spencer failed to act now, he might never be able to stop it in time.

Aaron hung up the phone.

"The Reaper's going to retaliate," he said, his voice reaching Spencer only slow and wavering, as if from far underwater. "We need to get in front of him."

We need to get in front of him.

"I know where he's going to strike."

The words were out before Spencer knew his mouth was moving.

Everyone was looking at him. Aaron looked more shocked than the others, realizing what Spencer was doing; the others just looked surprised, confused.

"Kid, how-" Morgan started, but Spencer cut him off.

"Don't ask me how I know, I can't explain right now," he blurted out. He could barely hear himself over the thunder of his own heartbeat. "I just know, and I need you to trust me. Foyet takes the same bus from his work back to his apartment every day, and his last stop is at this intersection here." Spencer circled it on the city map lying in front of him on the table. "He's livid that Hotch turned him down, he's going to change his MO - killing another random couple isn't enough, he wants to make a statement, to say this is what happens when you don't play along. He's going to kill everyone on that bus, and we need to get there ahead of him."

He looked up, directed his gaze at Aaron. Tried to convey his plea through eye contact alone.

This is worth it. We HAVE to stop him.

"I'll call the local PD, have them meet us there," Aaron said abruptly, rising to his feet. "Morgan, Prentiss, get the SUVs running. Everyone in full gear, this is probably going to get ugly."

As everyone jolted into motion, Rossi caught Spencer's eye across the table, the older profiler's brow furrowed.

"Reid, you're sure about this?"

"Absolutely," Spencer said honestly. Rossi looked at him for a moment longer, calculating, then nodded.

"Then let's go."

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There were a dozen plainclothes officers on the sidewalk near the bus stop by the time the 8:15 pm bus pulled up to the curb, and three dozen more uniforms within a two-block radius, ready to respond at a moment's notice. The BAU were stationed just around the corner, barely out of eyeline of the bus stop, ready to spring into action at the first sign of Foyet executing his plan. The area had been totally cleared of actual civilians, providing minimum opportunities for collateral damage.

It still wasn't enough to save everyone.

The bus's tires had barely rolled to a stop, the massive vehicle still sinking on its hydraulics with a mechanical sigh, when Foyet stood up from the first seat in the left-hand row and shot the bus driver through the back of the head. The driver pitched forward over his steering wheel, a spray of crimson decorating the inside of the windshield. Before Foyet could turn his gun on the rest of the screaming passengers, though, carefully targeted shots rang out; all the wheels of the bus deflated with ragged hisses, and one of the urgent response team officers whipped out a bullhorn.

"GEORGE FOYET. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON AND COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS RAISED."

For a moment, Foyet just stared, genuinely astounded; his head whipped back and forth, taking in the lack of panicking civilians, the weapons that every person outside the bus suddenly had drawn and trained on the vehicle. As the passengers on the bus whimpered and cringed into their seats, trying to avoid the wavering trajectory of his gun, Foyet struggled to catch up to the events unfolding around him.

Then, abruptly, he started to laugh.

It started as a low chuckle, but pitched up quickly into a mad cackle; in the span of a few breaths, he was howling, the sound raking down Spencer's spine like claws.

"Oh, this is too good!" Foyet shouted, breathless. "HOTCHNER! I know you're out there - come out and enjoy your moment of victory!"

Shoulders stiffening at the taunt, Aaron glanced at Spencer; it took every bit of willpower he possessed, but after a moment, Spencer managed to jerk his head in a tiny nod. As much as he never wanted Aaron in Foyet's line of sight again, he knew Foyet wouldn't simply shoot him - his pathology wouldn't accept such a simple, relatively painless end, and if Aaron didn't confront him, Foyet might well kill most of the passengers on the bus before the police could bring him down.

Aaron nodded back, then stepped around the corner.

"Put your gun down and come out, Foyet!" he yelled, keeping his own weapon up as he stepped cautiously toward the bus. "Your game's over, but your story doesn't have to be. I know you read Roy Colson's book, you enjoyed the fame he gave you. If you surrender, you'll get to see how much more famous the sequel makes you."

Peering around the corner, Spencer felt his stomach rebel at the look that Foyet gave Aaron in response to his words; it was pure, unfettered madness, a mixture of hatred and obsession so intense that it transformed his features into something inhuman, his expression contorted in a way that would have been more at home on a rabid coyote's face than a human man's.

But after a moment, that horrific snarl faded back into the familiar, manic grin. That grin never wavered, even as Foyet slowly set his gun down on the dash, raised his hands, and stepped down the bus's stairs.

A swarm of uniformed officers converged, slamming Foyet up against the side of the bus and cuffing him. Spencer started forward instantly, needing to be back at Aaron's side, but he hadn't even covered half the distance when Foyet called out in a mocking voice.

"This game's far from over, Hotchner. You want to play rough? Be careful what you wish for."

Spencer felt a chill shiver over his whole body. He had already told the head of the task force to make sure that Foyet was transferred to a holding facility with on-site medical facilities, to circumvent the method he had used to escape last time, but he made a mental note to follow up just to be sure. If Foyet had been angered the first time by Aaron's refusal of the deal, Spencer couldn't imagine what kind of rage had to be boiling inside him now, having his plans so swiftly and definitively thwarted.

Finally reaching Aaron's side, Spencer gave him a quick, worried once-over, despite the fact that he'd been in the team's line of sight the whole time.

"You're alright?"

"I'm fine," Aaron said softly, his gaze still following Foyet as the killer was finally dragged off toward a squad car. "I can see why…"

He trailed off, aware of the rest of the team quickly approaching, but Spencer knew what he had been about to say. That he could see, now, why Foyet had left such a dreadful imprint on Spencer that he had almost had a nervous breakdown at the mere thought of confronting the man again.

Terrified passengers were still being helped off the bus, one woman breaking down in tears as she stepped in the pool of blood spreading from the bus driver's corpse. Looking at the scene, though, Spencer could only be grateful it hadn't been worse.

There was a fine tremor running through his body, something that felt a lot like shock. It was surreal, watching Foyet be loaded into the back of a police vehicle, watching the survivors be herded off the bus and toward the waiting ambulances; despite the terror and stress of the last few days, Spencer almost couldn't believe they'd gotten off so easy. His own fear had built Foyet up to be an opponent of nearly mythical proportions in his mind; it seemed impossible that they had won so simply.

Given enough time, Spencer knew, the reality would sink in. For now, he could only fold his arms across his chest and hope that the shaking wasn't too visible.

As the rest of the team joined them, Morgan didn't hold back.

"So is someone gonna explain when the hell Pretty Boy became a goddamn psychic?" he asked bluntly, glancing between Spencer and Aaron. "Because that was one hell of a 'hunch' to pin down the exact time, place, and methodology."

Spencer drew in a slow breath, scrambling for words, wondering where the hell to even begin - then lost his train of thought entirely when Aaron wrapped his arm around Spencer's waist, pulling him in close and steadying him from the way he'd been unknowingly swaying a little on his feet.

"That conversation can wait," Aaron said firmly. "We will discuss it, but right now we're all exhausted. We can revisit that topic after we've all had a good night's sleep."

Spencer certainly wasn't going to argue with that.

Finally, after months of worrying about Foyet, he might actually sleep without nightmares tonight.

Chapter Text

March 19th dawned clear and warm.

It was Saturday, which meant that barring a top priority case, they wouldn't have to work. Spencer had the unparalleled joy of waking up, after a night of uninterrupted sleep, in his boyfriend's arms; Aaron made pancakes for breakfast, then they parted ways for a while so that Aaron could go on his ludicrously long weekend run while Spencer headed back to his apartment to restock his go bag, water his house plants, and make certain nothing in his fridge was growing mold. They would reconvene at Aaron's that night for dinner, and Spencer couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so light, so free.

It was like the realization that Foyet was behind bars had sunk in while he slept, and he'd woken to a brilliant new world full of promise.

He spent a bit of time reading through the week's newspapers - which had been accumulating on his front hall rug, since he'd been sleeping at Aaron's all week - and snipped the crossword out of each paper, saving them to complete with Aaron next time they were stuck on the jet for hours on end. He checked the soil dampness on his plants, threw out a few suspiciously fuzzy slices of cheese he'd forgotten at the back of the fridge, and packed some more clothes that were just as likely to end up hanging in Aaron's closet as they were to ever see the inside of this apartment again. They hadn't formally discussed moving in together yet, but considering that Aaron seemed to also sleep much better with Spencer next to him, Spencer thought the conversation probably wasn't far off.

It made Spencer almost giddy to think about how naturally, little by little, their personal lives were intertwining. He hadn't seen Jack since the divorce - Aaron thought it was a little too soon to reintroduce "Uncle Spencer" as his father's new boyfriend, and Spencer would never rush him on something so important - but he could envision a future where that day would come, and it made his heart ache with joy. Some part of Spencer had always wanted to be a father, but he'd forced himself not to feel that longing, because the risk of having his own children and passing along the schizophrenic gene was one he wouldn't take; he'd loved Jack from the moment that Haley first brought the ever-smiling little boy to Quantico to meet the team, though, and the chance to be in his life as not merely Uncle Spencer with the cool magic tricks but Aaron's partner was one that Spencer would never pass up.

As the afternoon lengthened, the sunlight dimmed, grey storm clouds rolling in across the sky. Spencer wondered wryly if Aaron was going to get rained on before he made it home. Deciding he wanted to minimize the chance of himself getting rained on, he opted to drive his car for once instead of taking the metro as he headed back to Aaron's place, stopping along the way for takeout from the ramen shop where they'd had their first dinner together - a place they'd both grown deeply fond of.

There was an ancient TV in the corner of the shop, the text scroll on the news almost illegible on its fuzzy screen. While Spencer was waiting for their food, though, he caught a fragment of the the news anchor's patter.

"..escaped just after seven o'clock this morning, after overpowering the guards and driver of his prison transport…"

Spencer's heart missed a beat.

He whipped around to stare at the screen. For an instant he thought he must be having a nightmare; despite the heavy pixelation of the screen, there was no mistaking the face leering at him from the mug shot they had put up on the broadcast. The anchor's words washed over him like a tsunami wave.

"George Foyet, chief suspect in the gruesome so-called Boston Reaper murders, is at large."

Spencer was aware that he should be feeling a great many things in that moment - dismay, anger, fear more than anything, but it was as if his emotions had simply… shut off, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of input. In the clarity of their wake, his brain began fitting the pieces together.

Foyet's words to Aaron when he was arrested.

You want to play rough?

The drive time from Boston to Quantico.

The Reaper's familiarity with computer science, more than enough to dig up any information that he wanted.

Haley and Jack, not in WitSec hiding from a known threat, but going about their lives at the former Hotchner family home, blissfully unaware that they were in danger.

Foyet wasn't going to go to ground, not this time - he was too angry for the long game.

He was going to strike where it hurt.

Spencer turned and bolted for his car.

Even as he yanked his seat belt into place and shoved the keys into the ignition, his mind was racing, doing the math. The house was twenty five minutes away from Aaron's new apartment, but only thirteen from Spencer's current location. If he took the optimal route and went over the speed limit, he could be there faster than even the local police.

Spencer was already flooring it as he listened to his phone ring.

Pick up, pick up, pick up-

"Speak and be heard, oh-" Garcia started in her cheerful singsong. Spencer cut across her without hesitation, his words coming out so strained and urgent that he hardly recognized his own voice.

"Garcia you need to call the whole team and get everyone to Hotch's old address now, Foyet is loose and he's going after Haley and Jack!"

"Oh my god, what? Oh my god!" Garcia was already typing, keys clicking frantically over the phone line. "Okay, I'm alerting 911 and I'm patching everyone into the call, just hang on a second-"

"Garcia?" Aaron's concerned tone nearly cracked something deep inside Spencer, something wound painfully tight with fear and dread.

"One moment, sir," Garcia said breathlessly. "I'm connecting the others-"

"This better be good, babygirl," Morgan's familiar tones joined the line. Garcia made a strained sound.

"Sorry, sugar, it's actually very bad - okay, just waiting on - there, that's everyone, Reid, go!"

"Foyet escaped custody at seven this morning, I just saw a bulletin on the news," Spencer bit out, most of his attention on the road as he drove faster than he ever had in his life on a residential street, swerving around the occasional honking driver as he cut down the side roads his mental map informed him would be less congested at this hour. "I don't know why we weren't notified but it doesn't matter, he's been loose long enough that he's in DC by now, and he's going after Haley and Jack."

There were cries of shock from Morgan, Prentiss, and Rossi, but Spencer barrelled over them.

"Aaron, do not call Haley. Foyet's likely there already and the only thing he's waiting for is an audience, if you are on the line he will kill her, you all need to get to the house as soon as possible-"

"Spencer, where are you?" Aaron's voice was terrified, and Spencer knew that he had already guessed the answer, but the words still burned in Spencer's throat when he answered.

"I'm halfway there already."

"Kid, do not go in there alone!" Morgan roared into the phone. Aaron's voice was shakier, and the desperation in it came much closer to breaking Spencer's resolve.

"Spencer, please, wait for backup-"

"I can't, Aaron," he said tightly. "There's no time." He hesitated for an instant, knowing the whole team was on the line, but-

"I love you."

Then he hung up. Even when his phone immediately lit up again and started buzzing on the passenger seat, Spencer kept his eyes fixed on the road, refusing to let tears blur his vision.

He had a job to do.

When Spencer screeched around the corner onto the correct block, he saw immediately that there was an unfamiliar sedan parked in the driveway next to Haley's car. Spencer swerved around them both and brought his own car to a halt on the front lawn, barely throwing it in park before he was out and running toward the house, his gun in hand and the car engine still rumbling behind him.

Stealth didn't matter right now; Foyet was acting recklessly, but he was still too smart not to know that the cavalry was coming. He was likely expecting Aaron, not Spencer, but he was expecting someone regardless.

The half-open front door, no effort made to hide where the frame had splintered from the kick that had broken the lock, confirmed that.

The foyer was a mess, a side table knocked over and one of its legs broken, the shards of a vase and rose petals scattered across the floor like drops of blood. Spencer swung around the corner into the living room, gun raised, and felt time grind to a halt.

Foyet was standing in the middle of the living room, facing toward Spencer, the couch between them. He had Haley pressed against him by an arm around her throat, his other hand holding a gun against her temple; Haley's face was bone-white, her eyes shining with tears she refused to shed, her whole body rigid with terror. Foyet was smiling, that gaunt, death's head grin that had haunted Spencer's nightmares for weeks, but as he took in the sight of Spencer that grin faltered a little.

"Well, this is interesting," the Reaper drawled, the smugness of impending victory mixing with bemusement in his tone. "You're not who I was expecting at all."

"Uncle Spencer!"

Jack had apparently been tucked away in the corner of the room, just out of sight behind a small table; he barreled across the room and threw his arms around Spencer's leg, and Spencer could have cried from the relief that swept over him at the little boy's greeting.

Not too late. Not too late.

"Hey, buddy," he said, barely able to choke out the words around the lump in his throat; he wanted desperately to be able to look at Jack, to drop down to his level and reassure the terrified little boy who clearly knew something was horribly wrong, but he didn't dare take his eyes off Foyet for even a second. "Listen, I need you to do something for me, alright? Your dad said he needs you to help him work the case. Can you do that?"

"Okay," Jack said, and his death grip on Spencer's leg loosened a little. "Are you gonna help Mommy?"

"I'm going to do my best," Spencer said softly, and the vice around his heart loosened just a little as he heard Jack's footsteps pattering away without further hesitation.

"Well isn't that sweet," Foyet said, dark eyes glittering maniacally. "Doctor Reid, isn't it?" His gaze left Spencer, sliding down to Haley where she was still rigid in his grip, barely breathing in her terror. "Funny how your devoted ex-husband isn't even the first of his own team to get here."

Foyet was still too focused on Haley. If Spencer was going to get her out of the line of fire, he needed to get the Reaper's attention on himself instead - and he thought he might know exactly how to do that.

The Reaper was obsessed with control, and obsessed with Aaron. The implication that he'd made a significant mistake in his profile of Aaron would infuriate him.

"Funny how you missed the obvious," Spencer said, forcing his voice into a steadiness he didn't feel, with just a hint of condescension. He needed Foyet off balance, needed him angry, needed him focused wholly on Spencer and not the potential victim literally in his grasp.

Foyet's gaze snapped back to Spencer, honing in like a hawk on its prey, the beginnings of a snarl twisting his mouth.

"What did you just say?"

"You pride yourself on your intellect. Always two steps ahead of law enforcement, keeping the wool pulled over everyone's eyes for a decade," Spencer said, trying to find that cold, clear space in his mind where this kind of profiling came easy - the space where his own emotions didn't matter, only the linking of one piece of information to another, only the chain of logic that constructed order out of chaos. "Yet you haven't figured out why I'm here instead of Aaron. You're making shallow jabs at Haley because it's what you do, you needle every insecurity you can find in those around you because you live for the feeling that you've gotten under someone's skin, but the truth is you have no idea what's happening - even though it should have been plain to see."

Spencer's arms were locked in place, his hands absolutely steady; even though he couldn't fire, with Haley in danger, his aim had never once wavered from Foyet.

"I'm here because I've been two steps ahead of you, this whole time… and because this is my family, too."

He saw the moment that Foyet understood, saw the emotions that flashed across the Reaper's face; realization, shock, cruel glee.

"Oh, I see it now," Foyet breathed. "Agent Hotchner's been a very naughty boy, hasn't he? And the homewrecker comes charging in to save the day…" The hand gripping his gun moved, the barrel leaving Haley's temple finally, swinging around to aim at Spencer instead. "But really, I'm just getting a two for one special."

No longer held at gunpoint, Haley unfroze, and Spencer saw her leg move to hook behind Foyet's, pulling him off balance at the same time that her head snapped to the side and she bit hard into the arm that had loosened around her throat as Foyet's focus shifted.

Foyet howled.

The second that Haley had twisted free and out of his line of fire, Spencer pulled the trigger; he got off two shots, but although they hit Foyet in the torso, the killer only staggered for a split second before he turned and lunged. As Foyet vaulted the couch and barreled straight at Spencer, the agent had the fleeting realization that the Reaper must be wearing kevlar under his loose hoodie - then Foyet was on him, and there was no more time for deductions.

There was only time for survival.

Foyet had dropped his own gun when he lunged, and as he slammed into Spencer with his full body weight he grabbed Spencer's wrist, twisting viciously; Spencer lost his own grip on his weapon as the Reaper's weight slammed him back into the wall, his head hitting the drywall hard enough for stars to explode across his vision. Despite the pain and disorientation, Spencer managed to brace himself against the wall, using the support to bring his leg up and kick Foyet back; Foyet staggered back, catching himself against the back of the couch - then his hand moved, and there was a knife suddenly in his grip, the blade glittering as bright as the killer's mad grin.

Spencer had only a moment to experience the jolt of pure terror that went through him, then Foyet sprang at him again.

The knife sinking into Spencer's side felt so cold it burned, like razor-edged ice piercing his flesh. The pain was immediate and immense. Spencer screamed, unable to stifle his reaction to the sudden agony - but as he felt Foyet's arm relax slightly, the Reaper gloating in the moment, he kicked out hard again at Foyet's knee.

It was Foyet's turn to howl in pain as his knee popped audibly under the sideways pressure of Spencer's kick. They crashed to the floor together, half entangled, Foyet's knife still buried in Spencer's side. Spencer struggled to pull himself free from the Reaper, dragging himself only a few inches across the carpet before Foyet was on top of him, the killer wrenching Spencer over onto his back.

"You've got more fight than I expected," Foyet panted, grinning maniacally as he reached for the handle of the knife. "You scream real pretty, though."

Spencer didn't bother with a quip in return.

He just raised his gun, which he'd managed to grab in those precious few seconds before Foyet pinned him again, and shot the Reaper directly through the throat.

Foyet lurched a little then went rigid, his eyes very wide. A thick, wet gurgle emanated from the dark hole that had appeared in his neck, spurting sluggish crimson.

Spencer adjusted his aim up a little and fired again.

Most of Foyet's face disappeared in a spray of scarlet, and his body tipped to the side, slumping half off of Spencer.

Spencer dragged himself the rest of the way out from the under the Reaper's slack weight, whimpering a little at the pain of the knife jostling in his side, and only then did he let himself start breathing again - breathing that almost immediately started to tip into hyperventilation as reality sank in past the adrenaline that had flooded his system during the fight.

Everything hurt so much.

"Oh my god, Dr Reid, are you - you're not okay, you've still got a knife in your side," Haley gasped, visibly trembling with shock as she edged back into Spencer's line of view; Spencer was relieved to see she had no apparent injuries, having gotten herself out of the way during the extremely brief but intense scuffle. "What - what can I do?"

"Grab a clean towel or something like that, I need to keep the blade still and put pressure on the wound around it," Spencer said, gritting his teeth against the waves of pain now radiating through his abdomen as his body demanded all attention on the injury. Haley disappeared for a moment, then returned with the requested towel, kneeling down to help Spencer position it around the knife handle and pressing it down firmly into his side. She didn't even seem to notice that she was kneeling in the spreading pool of blood seeping from Foyet's corpse. Which made it all the more shocking when Spencer looked up, finally satisfied with the positioning of the towel, to realize that there were tears running down her cheeks.

"Are you alright?" he asked, his mind going immediately to the worst case scenario, but Haley only choked out a wet laugh.

"I'm not hurt," she said, unable to wipe the tears away with both hands putting pressure on Spencer's wound, the positioning too awkward for him to get proper leverage himself. "I just feel like a horrible person right now."

Spencer's mind, sluggish with pain and fading adrenaline, couldn't quite figure out why she would be blaming herself for anything about their current scenario. Despite his confusion, though, he couldn't help his immediate reflex to reassure.

"This wasn't your fault, Foyet-"

"Not that," Haley said, voice hitching on a sob. "I - I was absolutely certain, at one point, that Aaron was having an affair with you."

The abrupt confession shocked Spencer speechless. Haley seemed to take his silence as an invitation, more words spilling out of her in a sudden rush, her tone tinged with a shrill edge of hysteria.

"Even when I realized he wasn't, I was so angry, he talked about you all the time and he had that look in his eye and I just - I was so jealous, and I said some very unkind things about you, and I never told Aaron but I was furious at you because it felt like you were the reason we couldn't pretend anymore." Haley's expression crumpled, her tears flowing harder. "But I know that's not fair to you, and it wasn't fair to Aaron to expect him to pretend to be someone he's not, and you just saved mine and Jack's lives and I feel like the worst person in the world for everything I thought-"

"Haley, it's okay," Spencer finally cut her off, his exhausted mind catching up at last to her torrent of words. It took him a few tries, clumsy with blood loss and fatigue, but he managed to put his hand over one of hers where she was pressing the towel down onto his wounded side. "This year has been hell on all of us." Too tired to filter himself, the next words fell out of his mouth without a second thought. "I haven't always had the kindest thoughts about you either. I'm alright with just… leaving that in the past, if you are."

Haley managed a weak smile through her tears.

"Okay," she said. "I think I can work with that."

Spencer blinked as a thought filtered through the fog in his mind.

"Shouldn't you go check on Jack?" he asked, voice slurring a little. The part of his brain that was still focused on making sense out of the circumstances was distantly aware that despite the knife remaining in the wound, it had been jostled quite a bit in the fight, and he was losing rather a lot of blood despite Haley's best efforts.

"Jack is safely hiding wherever you sent him," Haley said, though her voice trembled a little, "And someone needs to keep pressure on your wound. I'll go get him as soon as the ambulance gets here."

As if conjured by her words, Spencer could hear the distant wail of a siren. He sighed, head lolling a little against the floor as a wave of dizziness swept over him.

"Okay," he mumbled. "He's in Aaron's study. In the trunk."

"Hey, no, no, stay with me! You need to stay awake, okay, open your eyes Dr Reid!" Haley said, urgency creeping back into her voice. Spencer tried to obey, but his eyelids felt glued shut; there was a heavy grey fog descending over him, hauntingly familiar, and it was taking all his effort just to hold it back.

He wasn't going to give in without a fight. Not this time.

The sirens had grown so much louder, and then there were screeching tires and slamming doors, pounding footsteps on the front walk of the house.

"Spencer!" Aaron's voice cut through that grey fog like a lighthouse beam slicing through the night. "Haley!"

"Aaron, get the paramedics in here!" Haley screamed back.

After that there was chaos, too many voices and movements to track, and Spencer still couldn't open his eyes. He was aware of fragments of medical terminology being thrown around, gentle but efficient touches that must have been the paramedics assessing his wound. At one point he was fairly certain he heard Aaron's voice reach him through the hubbub, the words hold on, please, sweetheart settling over him like a warm blanket.

Eventually, though, everything simply faded into blackness.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Spencer knew he was in a hospital before any other awareness came back to him, before he'd even opened his eyes.

He had woken up in a hospital bed too many times in his life; the soft beeping of machines, the distant bustle of activity, and the distinctive stale medicinal smell were all too familiar. This time, though, there were other sounds as well; soft sounds of movement much closer by, and the low rumble of a familiar, beloved voice.

"…what we're going to tell Strauss."

"Don't worry about it, Hotch." That was Morgan's voice, just as familiar, pitched low and soft. "Just tell us what the line is, and we'll all back you. Doesn't matter how curious we are - and trust me, I am very goddamn curious - but none of us want the higher-ups looking too closely at this. It stays within the team."

"Thank you." Aaron said, his sincerity heavy in those two words.

Spencer finally managed to pry his eyes open. Morgan was sitting in a spare chair that had obviously been dragged into the room, near the foot of the hospital bed, looking exhausted but otherwise unharmed. Aaron was sitting much closer, within arm's length of where Spencer lay, and he looked like hell - his normally neat hair disheveled, heavy lines of fatigue around his eyes, and a few dark stains of what was unquestionably blood on his wrinkled dress shirt. Probably Spencer's own blood, which was not a terribly comforting thought.

Spencer licked his lips, and despite their extraordinary dryness, managed to croak out a few coherent words.

"What are we hiding now?"

"Spencer!" Aaron whipped around to face him, abject relief washing the exhaustion and stress from his expression as he reached for Spencer's nearest hand, cradling it in both of his own. "You're awake… how are you feeling? How bad is the pain?"

"I've had worse," Spencer said honestly, with a wincing smile. "Is everyone else alright?"

"Other than the fact that you scared the living daylights out of all of us? Yeah, we're fine, kid," Morgan said, though his broad grin of relief was rather undermining his scolding tone. "Nice job on Foyet, too, that bastard's never getting up again."

Finally, finally, the hard knot in Spencer's chest unraveled.

"He's really dead, then?" he asked softly, glancing up at Aaron. Despite the exhaustion and stress of the day, Aaron's smile was warm and proud.

"You made very sure of that, sweetheart," he said. "We were just discussing how we're going to explain to Strauss how we knew to respond to the scene so fast.. but don't worry about that right now. We'll handle that, all you need to focus on right now is resting."

Spencer huffed out a soft laugh. As much as he would normally be demanding to be included in the plan… his whole body ached, and he was weary down to the bone, and his eyelids were already starting to droop again.

Foyet was gone. Dead. Truly and completely neutralized, once and for all.

Some rest sounded very good right now.

Chapter Text

Spencer took three weeks off work entirely to recover from his stab wound, and he didn't go home to his own apartment once in all that time. The team took it upon themselves to pick up a wide variety of new reading material whenever they could to help alleviate Spencer's boredom while bedridden, sending it all home with Aaron, none of them under any illusion about where Spencer was staying; Aaron stopped at Spencer's apartment every so often to keep the houseplants alive, and other than that, he spent nearly every moment not at work with Spencer.

Despite the throbbing pain in his gut every time he moved and the slow creep of boredom during the hours when Aaron was at work, it was three of the happiest weeks of Spencer's life.

He could so easily imagine the rest of their lives almost like this; going to work as usual, doing what they needed to do to make the world a little safer, and then coming home together to this haven of warmth and affection that they were building. Aaron's thoughts were clearly running along the same lines, because during the second week of Spencer's leave, he mentioned - with a feigned casualness that was entirely undermined by the flush on his cheeks - that he had talked to Haley about how they wanted to approach introducing Jack to the concept of his parents moving on with new partners. Haley had apparently been entirely supportive of the idea of explaining to Jack that his Uncle Spencer was more than just his father's friend from work now, which was a surprise to Spencer but a very welcome one. He had sort of expected that Haley would be fighting every step of the way to keep him out of Jack's life, based on how the divorce had unfolded originally, but he wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. He knew Haley would always be an important part of Aaron's life, not just because she was Jack's mother, but because she was one of the people Aaron cared for deeply even though they were no longer husband and wife. Spencer would never try to take that away from Aaron, and if Haley was willing to accept his presence in Aaron's life as well, it would only make things far easier.

Perhaps, with this different timeline shaping them into different people, he and Haley could coexist more harmoniously than he'd thought.

The weekend before Spencer was scheduled to return to work (though he'd be confined to light duties for a while yet), Rossi invited everyone to his mansion for a team dinner. When he heard, Spencer couldn't help but be overjoyed. Team dinners at Rossi's had become a beloved tradition of his first life, and he could only hope that this would be the first of many to come in this timeline as well.

He was also, however, more than a little terrified.

The team had graciously refrained from questioning Aaron about what had happened on the Foyet case while they sorted through the mess of paperwork it created and satisfied the curiosity of the FBI higher-ups, but Spencer knew that grace period was coming to an end. At Rossi's house, in a social setting with no risk of being overheard by the wrong person, there would be no more holding back; the whole team would be demanding answers as to how Spencer had known, in seemingly impossible detail, every move that Foyet was going to make. He didn't regret his decisions made in the heat of the moment - the outcome had been more than worth it - but Spencer knew that there was certainly going to be a reckoning for those choices.

Aaron didn't let him stew in his own anxiety for long.

"Sweetheart, you did say you wanted to be able to tell the whole team the truth eventually," he said gently, as Spencer fiddled with the buttons on his vest for the third time, stalling the moment they needed to leave as hard as he could. "This is the best opportunity you could have for that. They saw what you did in Boston - there's no better explanation for how that was possible than the truth."

"I know," Spencer said miserably. "But it's so absurd - Aaron, it happened to me and I still barely believe it. I certainly don't understand it. How am I supposed to explain it to all of them?"

Aaron sighed and stepped closer, laying his hands gently over Spencer's to still his fidgeting for a moment.

"We work with the darkest, most convoluted fringes of humankind on a daily basis, Spencer," he said. "If anyone understands that there are things in this world that lie outside normal understanding, it's this team. You know better than anyone that science is always discovering new phenomena, uncovering new information that challenges old models - you experienced something that isn't documented or understood yet, but that in no way makes it not real." His smile turned a little wry. "And if your concern is about this mysterious entity that you mentioned seeing, and the strange things it said to you… you don't have to share that part if you don't want to, sweetheart. Telling them the truth doesn't have to mean every detail."

Spencer bit his lip, thinking about it.

"That might help, a lot," he admitted. "I just… I don't want them to think I'm crazy."

The last few words emerged in a whisper, the weight of the honesty still disconcerting no matter how much he trusted Aaron. Aaron, who knew better than most why that particular fear ran so deeply in Spencer - who knew that, thanks to his family history, it was perhaps the single accusation that could hurt Spencer the most.

"They won't think that, sweetheart," Aaron said firmly. "Everyone on the team knows that you wouldn't make this kind of claim unless you'd researched it to death from every angle, and backed up your conclusions as well as you possibly could."

Spencer smiled wanly at him, as reassured as he could be at this moment, but still thrumming with nerves.

"I hope you're right."

Thanks to Aaron's compulsive punctuality they were the first to arrive at Rossi's house, and were welcomed enthusiastically inside. Rossi pressed a glass of very expensive whiskey on Aaron, accepted Spencer's deferral of alcohol with a sparkling water instead, and had them comfortably settled in the living room on a loveseat that seemed to have been specifically picked out for the two of them before the doorbell rang again.

Over the next half hour, the rest of the team trickled in by ones and twos; nearly everyone made a point of fussing over Spencer, since most of them hadn't seen him in person since his release from the hospital, and Spencer tolerated the attention with only mild embarrassment. He would probably never be fully comfortable being the center of attention, but at least these days he knew and could accept that it was coming from a place of love, and that he didn't need to hide his emotions from his family. He was genuinely delighted by Garcia's brand of fussing, which involved first hugging him then presenting him with a small Dalek plushie, informing him that he was to keep it with him going forward so that it could exterminate anyone else who tried to hurt him.

Once everyone had been plied with their drink of choice and settled comfortably, Rossi stood up, and Spencer braced himself.

Here it comes.

"So," Rossi began, looking around the gathering with a twinkle of mischief in his eyes. "As we are all aware, there has been a mystery afoot in the BAU these last few months."

Spencer bravely resisted the urge to slide off the loveseat and hide underneath it, instead just leaning a little harder into Aaron's side.

"What some of you," Rossi continued, shooting a pointed glance at Aaron and Spencer, "May not have been aware of, is that because we are all reasonable, professional adults… we made a betting pool."

"You what?" Aaron said, incredulous. Spencer could only close his eyes for a moment in fond despair.

God, of course they did.

"We made a betting pool," Rossi repeated, comfortably smug as ever. "It was all theoretical at first, but once our good Doctor put on his little show in Boston, we all stepped up and put our money where our mouths were. We all have our theories recorded," he pulled his notebook from his pocket and held it up, "And there is a respectable amount of money riding on this, so if you would kindly indulge us in determining who got closest to the truth… we'd like to know which one of us is walking away a richer man, or woman, this evening."

"JJ, did you know about this?" Spencer asked, casting a glance over at his friend - she had been invited by mass consensus, all of them agreeing that she was absolutely still part of the team when it came to these gatherings. She gave him a sheepish smile in response.

"Sorry, Spence, my bet's in there too. Penelope sent me the audio recording of the conversation in Boston so I knew what you said and had a fair playing field."

"Wow," Spencer said, unable to contain his laughter even as he shook his head. "You are all horrible traitors."

"Guilty as charged," Morgan said, grinning as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. "The only reason we excluded Hotch was because we figured he was probably in on whatever was actually going on. Now out with it, Pretty Boy - what's the deal with you calling all the shots before they happen?"

The prospect that had seemed so terrifying on the drive to Rossi's, the looming spectre of telling them the truth, was rapidly deflating under a wave of exasperated affection. While he'd been agonizing over them thinking he was insane, they were taking bets on their own ludicrous speculations. How had he ever been afraid of this?

It was that fading anxiety and rising fondness that let Spencer banter back.

"Shouldn't I get to hear your theories first?"

"Now wait a minute!" Prentiss shot upright from where she had been sprawled lazily on the couch, eyes wide. "Wait a minute, we did not have that in the terms when we all submitted our bets-"

"And yet, it seems an eminently reasonable request," Rossi said cheerfully. "After all, these are all serious and reasonable theories, are they not?"

By the width of his grin, he knew damn well he was lying through his teeth.

"I was drunk," Prentiss said miserably. JJ, sitting next to her on the couch, smiled and patted her on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, Em, it's barely any more ridiculous than Rossi's theory and he was stone cold sober when he wrote his down."

"I feel like I should be making some updates to the Bureau policies around gambling in the workplace," Aaron interjected dryly. Rossi made a shooing motion at him.

"You can play the stern Unit Chief on Monday when we are at work, you are not fooling anyone tonight," the senior profiler said. "Now; the theories!"

He flipped open the notebook with a flourish.

"First, we have the conjecture of our esteemed profiler Emily Prentiss, who ventured the theory that Doctor Spencer Reid is possessed by the ghost of an ancient Greek seer which attached themselves to him from a haunted artifact in a museum, and that he is able to take advantage of the spirit's foresight!"

Spencer gave up any semblance of disapproval or dignity, turned his head, and tried to at least muffle his uncontrollable giggles in Aaron's shoulder.

"JJ, Penelope and I did ours on girl's night, I was drunk!" Prentiss reiterated, though even she was grinning widely at the amusement of the others.

"And on that note, the prediction from Jennifer Jareau!" Rossi announced grandly. "Who put forward the theory that Doctor Spencer Reid was in fact born psychic, and is simply very good at 'being sneaky about it' when not under extreme duress!"

Aaron snorted at that one.

"Not the worst guess I've ever heard," he said dryly, earning a delighted laugh from JJ.

"From Penelope Garcia, we have the conjecture that Doctor Spencer Reid has made the acquaintance of a Time Lord and has used his conversations with said Time Lord exclusively to grill them for information on twenty-first centuries crimes!" Rossi continued.

"I would definitely be asking about a lot of other things as well," Spencer protested. Garcia pointed dramatically at him.

"But you would be asking about twenty first century crimes."

"Yeah, I probably would," Spencer conceded, grinning.

"Next we have the speculations of Derek Morgan, who postulated that Doctor Spencer Reid has upgraded his Volvo Amazon into a functioning time traveling device, but has neglected to inform the team of this fact because he considers it an unremarkable accomplishment!"

Spencer laughed so hard at that one that it made his stab wound ache, and even Aaron was chuckling along. Morgan leaned back in his seat, hands spread.

"Hey man, don't say it's not accurate. I swear one of these days you're gonna figure out how to rewrite a law of physics and we won't hear about it until the evening news."

When the laughter had finally wound down, Aaron gestured at Rossi.

"Let's have the worst of it then, Dave. What was your guess?"

"I do not guess, my good man," Rossi said dryly. "My well-honed theory, built on careful observation and sound extrapolation of available evidence, is that… Doctor Spencer Reid is not looking ahead in time at all, but is in fact a time traveller from either the future or some parallel timeline, who has prior knowledge of these events through lived experience."

Spencer's jaw dropped.

Aaron tensed beside him, the arm he had wrapped around Spencer's waist tightening a little in reflex.

The beginnings of laughter from the rest of the team died quickly back into silence, as they looked between Spencer's stunned expression and Rossi, who was watching him like a hawk.

After a moment, Rossi grinned.

"How'd I do, Doc?"

"How the fuck did you figure that out?" Spencer blurted.

Multiple people gasped around the room, but Rossi held up a hand to forestall the outburst of questions, taking the time to respond first.

"Prodigy or not, you're not twenty six," he said, still smiling but more serious now, some of the joking mischief gone from his demeanour. "Jason talked endlessly about you when he was recruiting you, and I did what I've done for most of my life - I profiled. I walked into the BAU expecting a very intelligent but anxious and socially awkward kid, and instead I met a young man with the maturity to handle some extraordinarily difficult circumstances and the kind of shadows in his eyes that I last saw in the guys who came home from 'Nam." He raised his notebook in a sort of toasting gesture to Aaron. "He helped confirm my theories, though. Aaron's one of the most overprotective people I've ever met, and he was protective enough to be sure, but he wasn't trying to shield you the way I think he would have if you were actually as young as you look. Once I got a fuller picture, it seemed obvious that he knew something we didn't, something that was significantly bolstering his estimation of what you could handle."

For a rare occasion, Spencer was genuinely speechless. With Rossi having said his piece, Morgan jumped into the conversational gap.

"Now hold the phone just a damn minute," he said, raising one hand as he looked around in disbelief. "Are we… are we doing this? Are we doubling down on the "Reid's a time traveler" thing?"

Spencer drew a deep breath.

"Yeah," he said quietly, but his words were more than audible in the sudden silence. "Rossi got it right."

The confusion and tension in the room was palpable; none of his teammates looked like they knew what to do with his statement, but there was none of the hostility that Spencer had feared, just bewilderment. Spencer swallowed hard against his nerves and sat fully upright, bracing himself. Aaron's arm slid off his shoulders with the movement, but a moment later, he felt Aaron take his hand instead. Reassured, Spencer shot him a grateful glance before squaring his shoulders.

"I'll do my best to explain."

Chapter Text

Once Spencer started talking, the words flowed easily.

He told them the broad strokes of his first life, the age he'd lived to and his untimely end at the hands of a deranged UnSub. He told them about waking up on the floor of Hankel's cabin again, and being absolutely and unshakably sure that it was some kind of dying hallucination until the moment that the team arrived to save him and the sheer tangibility of it all finally convinced him that it was real. He told them about the months of stress and secrecy, trying to use his knowledge of the future to steer unfolding situations in a better direction, constantly being caught off guard and forced to adapt as his own interference changed the course of events.

He told them that he was afraid of saying too much and changing the future unintentionally, which was why he'd kept the truth from them for so long, but that the threat posed by Foyet was so great that he'd thrown caution to the wind. Now, he was sharing the truth of what had happened to him, but he still wasn't going to divulge details about what was coming in any of their lives. He would warn them if they were in danger, he would step in directly if he needed to, but he wasn't going to play oracle for them on every decision; their choices still had to be their own.

And then he waited for their responses, trying not to grip Aaron's hand too painfully tight.

"Shit, man," Morgan said finally, rubbing his hand across his face before giving Spencer a long, serious look. "Reid… that is one hell of a thing to go through. You should have told us sooner, we could have helped - that's way too much to be trying to do all on your own."

All the tension unraveled out of Spencer's shoulders at once. He'd been most worried about Morgan not believing him, the man's extreme practicality making him the least likely to accept a wild story of death and resurrection and time travel - if he was taking it at face value, then maybe this wasn't going to be too painful after all.

"I wasn't trying to do it completely alone," he couldn't keep himself from pointing out. "I told Aaron right away."

"Yeah, speaking of that," Prentiss interjected, grinning, as she gestured at Spencer and Aaron's joined hands. "Are we still ignoring the elephant in the room or can we talk about this too?"

Aaron sighed.

"If I find out that you have all been betting on this too…"

"Of course not, Aaron," Rossi drawled. "There has to actually be uncertainty about what's going on to make a bet exciting."

Aaron made a decent attempt at glaring at him, but his expression loosened into a small smile as he looked around at the group.

"Yes, fine. As you have all clearly long since figured out, Spencer and I are in a relationship. We didn't want to advertise it until we were more settled - that was mostly due to my reservations, but also the fact that we would like to put off the scrutiny from the Bureau higher-ups."

"Congratulations to you both, and don't worry about the brass, I have all of the dirt on everyone in that building," Rossi said, toasting them.

"I absolutely figured it out first, some profilers you all are," Garcia said, grinning triumphantly at the others. Spencer snorted, casting his mind back to when her surreptitious double-booking of the hotel rooms had started.

"Technically I think Gideon figured it out first, but you can have the figurative trophy because he definitely doesn't deserve it," he said dryly.

There was a pause, considerably more weighted than Spencer was expecting, and he frowned around at them.

"What?"

"Gideon figured it out?" Prentiss repeated, her eyes wide. "Wait, does that have anything to do with - whatever the hell was going on with you two at the end there?"

"It had everything do with it," Spencer said, scowling at the reminder. "He figured out that something weird was going on, except that he only half paid attention to the team on a good day, so the most he came up with was that Aaron and I were spending a lot of time together. He kept trying to get me to talk to him, and when I wouldn't confide in him - because frankly, after the first time, I learned my lesson about trying to rely on him - he cornered us in Aaron's office one evening and basically accused Aaron of taking advantage and me of being too naive to know better."

"He did what?" Morgan's voice had dropped to a low, dangerous growl. Spencer blinked at him, surprised by the level of hostility on his face.

"He didn't have any idea about the time travel, so he thought-"

"Yeah, no, I got that," Morgan said, his expression absolutely thunderous. "No offense, Hotch, but I had some doubts myself when I first noticed what was up - but if I had thought there was real cause for concern or I'd seen any signs that something wrong, I would have gone to HR about it! Not cornered Hotch and confronted him about it, and then left you there with him! What the fuck was Gideon thinking?!"

Spencer quailed back a little, genuinely shocked, as Morgan thumped his fist into the couch cushions in frustration. Aaron squeezed his hand a little, understanding his confusion.

"Sweetheart, think about it. If Jason's reading of the situation had been correct, he could have been putting you in quite a lot of danger by confronting me directly and then backing down."

"Oh." Spencer had never even considered it in that light, but with Morgan still cursing under his breath, he made himself think about it. If Gideon's warped view had been correct, then Aaron would have been a man abusing his power over a vulnerable younger subordinate - the kind of man who would not have taken kindly to being challenged, and might very well have taken that out on Spencer in various ways after Gideon failed to intimidate him. The fact that it had actually been Spencer who chased Gideon off with his tail between his legs was irrelevant - Gideon had walked into that office thinking that Aaron was an abuser, and fully intending to confront him in front of his perceived victim.

For a professional profiler, that was a shocking level of recklessness.

"Wow. I didn't think I could hate him any more for that," Spencer said aloud. Aaron smiled.

"Well, at least you got to say your piece," he said wryly.

"Please tell me you gave Gideon one hell of a dressing-down for that," JJ said to Aaron, visibly fuming. Aaron just chuckled.

"I didn't have to," he said, casting a sidelong glance at Spencer. "Someone beat me to it."

"I told him he was an obsessive narcissist who didn't give a damn about what happened to me, just that he wasn't in control anymore," Spencer said matter-of-factly. "Oh, and I also may have told him that Frank was right about him caring more about the thrill of catching killers than the people who got hurt along the way."

Around the room, jaws dropped.

"Don't forget the part where you threatened to ruin his life if he didn't leave us alone," Aaron said, smirking. "I think that was my favourite part of the speech."

"Remind me, Doc, never to get on your bad side," Rossi said, tipping his head in a slow nod to Spencer, looking genuinely impressed.

"I think that might actually be the most romantic thing I have ever heard," Garcia said, looking a little starry-eyed.

"I guess someone should have warned Foyet that he was getting in over his head," JJ said, a wry tilt to her smile. "Don't mess with Aaron Hotchner, or you'll have to answer to Doctor Spencer Reid."

"A toast to that!" Rossi exclaimed, and they did in fact toast to it. Amidst the laughter, Spencer was smiling so widely that his cheeks ached.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

On the drive back to Aaron's apartment from Rossi's, Aaron was unusually quiet. Spencer let it be for the moment - he preferred not to talk about anything serious while he was driving anyway, it caused too many potential distractions - but once they had arrived, gone through their respective nightly routines, and were settled into bed, he asked Aaron softly if everything was alright.

"Just… thinking," Aaron said softly. They were tucked together, Spencer's back against Aaron's chest with Aaron's arms around his waist, and he could feel Aaron's deep voice rumbling against his spine. "I know things were different before, and I'm sure there were many reasons why it took us until now to end up here, but it's… humbling, knowing that you waited so long. That you wanted me, for so long."

Spencer's heart ached at the hint of guilt he could hear under the warmth in Aaron's voice.

"You know you have nothing to feel bad for, right?" he asked softly, feeling Aaron's arm tighten a little around him in response. "It wasn't just you. I never reached out before either - I was too afraid, or there were too many risks, or the time wasn't right. I never…"

Spencer paused for a moment, considering his words.

"I never really thought we'd be together," he finally said softly. "I don't experience romantic attraction the same way I'm told most people do - I've never bothered with a label for myself, but I always knew I was different in that regard. I don't feel attraction often, and when I do, it's less about physical desire and more about an emotional connection. I didn't really have any expectation attached to my feelings for you, I just wanted to be close to you." He sighed a little, thinking again about Aaron's devastation after Haley's death, easier to contemplate now that he knew that piece of history would not repeat itself. "There was a point where I thought about telling you, just because I thought it might be nice if you knew, but… the time was never right for that either, and eventually I just accepted it as a fact of life. It was my choice, too, not to say anything."

"I'm very, very glad that you said something this time," Aaron said, and if his voice was a little choked, Spencer chose not to comment on it.

Instead, he simply reached down to where Aaron's hand was resting over his abdomen, lacing their fingers together.

"Me too."