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At first it was all a blur, a painful amalgam of feelings Spencer couldn’t even begin to comprehend, let alone name. He was having a hard time remembering what happened after the loud bang that had resonated in the room that night, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know more than the bits and pieces his mind replayed over and over.
He remembered his knees hitting the floor, and feeling like his lungs had been emptied of an oxygen that would never come back.
The echo of the gunshot taking up all the place in his head, ringing endlessly.
Someone grabs his elbow from behind, and a sharp pain shoots through his shoulder and arm. He ignores it in his attempt to move away. There is something on the floor, not that far. Something that looks like two bodies lying still, a dark pool of blood seeping from underneath them. A flash of black hair. Somehow he knows he needs to get closer. He needs to see.
He fights to get away from the grip on his arm, and it’s a struggle that seems to go on forever, until a voice snaps something that sounds like an order and the person holding him back gives up.
Closed eyes, eyelashes casting their shadow on a cheekbone, and a mouth opened on a silent word. Matted hair, crimson stained cardigan, tear tracks still fresh enough to be glistening on the skin.
He realizes he’s holding a hand in his own, light and frail. A dead bird in the palm of his hand, still warm from the life that left it seconds ago.
There is a metallic taste in his mouth, sitting heavy on his tongue.
Now a pair of hands is on his shoulders, under his elbows, making him get up.
He lets them manipulate him, move him around like a broken doll. He’s tripping over his own feet.
Another hand, on his back this time, gently pushing him forward, leading him to a place he can’t see — why can’t he see anything?
The moonlight is coming from a window, coloring the steps under his feet with an icy pallor.
Cold air hits him, and now comes the distant realization that he is being led outside the building, and that if his vision is blurred, it’s because his eyes are filled with burning tears.
Faces are surrounding him, spinning around and speaking words he’s having a hard time discerning over the white noise in his head.
Spencer. Spence.
… in shock
… okay?
Reid… Look at me.
But he doesn’t know where to look, what to do, blinks under the beam of a flashlight someone shoves in his face. What happens after, he doesn’t remember.
Standing beside white walls, white plastic curtains, a white sink, with no recollection of how he ended up here. Bright porcelain and white silence all around, and the urge to leave the room running, to cry or shout, anything but this, anything but standing here frozen in time and unable to get a whisper out.
He’s bent in half, throwing up into Dave‘s beautiful porcelain sink until his knees are shaking and his head spinning, until he collapses on the floor gasping and fighting for air.
And there is an image imprinted on the back of his eyelids, that he can’t erase no matter how hard he tries; her eyes when she realized that it was going to be over before it even began.
After the funeral, even if it went against everything he knew —in theory— about grief, Spencer couldn’t help but think that something should have felt different. That something in the air should have shifted, at the very least. But nothing had changed.
There was no feeling of peace, no closure, not the smallest hint of acceptance waiting around the corner. He spent his days staring into empty space, not even bothering to wipe the tears from his cheeks anymore. He spent his nights trying to find reasons not to give in to the thrumming in his veins that promised him it would dry his tears.
Oh, he knew that would be a mistake on which Hotch wouldn't close his eyes a second time. The unit chief in him would prevail on the friend, and Spencer couldn’t blame him, not really.
And he was sure Rossi would come to some obvious conclusions, eventually. A profiler oblivious to the telltales signs of an opiates addiction wouldn’t be really good at his job, now, would he?
Spencer could also picture with acute clarity the disappointment on Morgan’s face. It should have been one more reason to hold on, but it only served as a reminder of how weak Spencer really was.
Garcia was a whole other story. Her personality was so blunt and frank that Spencer had always half expected her to drop the act one day, to put her hands on his shoulders and very seriously order him to put his shit together. But she had never said anything. She watched him instead, her eyes brimming with unsaid pleas.
Those sad eyes, she still cast them on him sometimes, when she thought he wasn’t paying attention. But he was, always had been, even during that hazy period of time he came to work every morning still coming down from the drugs, and sat in the meeting room barely aware of the six people eyeing him warily. Even then, through the fog that clouded his perception, he could feel her gaze weighing on him heavily, less easy to ignore than the ones he got from his teammates.
The devastated, shocked expression of J.J. that came to life by itself in his mind was the hardest to bear — sweet J.J. underneath her own armor, who wanted so desperately to have faith in him, who refused to even think about the possibility of a slip, a relapse, a stain on the image of the innocent little brother he was to her. He couldn’t shake out of his head the image of his friend, hurt and stunned, looking up at him in bewilderment and fear in the police station, on that awful day they had spent biting each other’s heads off.
And with that memory came Emily. She had left him, just like everyone else… Only she had left twice. Would she come back? And, more importantly: would it be enough to stop him?
He could not even think about his mother. Diana and the soft, pensive smile that she gave him every time he came to her for advice. He couldn’t.
Each and every member of this made up, precarious family would suffer from his actions. None of them would approve of the thoughts he was entertaining. He knew all of this, and yet the need was here, digging a hole in his chest.
Grief, guilt, shame, heartbreak — he wanted it all washed away, he wanted the world to turn quiet, he wanted nothing more than crash into sweet oblivion. The feeling left him curled up on his couch, arms around his knees, shaking and trying to find his breath. Sometimes he would stay in the same place for hours, sunrise succeeding to sunset, days and nights all blurring together. Even when his breathing had calmed down he would stay there, unmoving, concentrating on watching the dust fly in the rays of light in front of him. Losing himself in the contemplation of a splinter of wood protruding from the floorboard.
On one of those days —he knew it was daytime because of the sun rays filtering through his curtains—, in between two ragged breaths, Spencer gave up.
He did not try to get up from his couch, preferring to let himself slide to the ground.
He realized he was still clutching the book —their book— in both hands, and without looking he pushed it under the table, ignoring the side of his mind that immediately started to profile this instinctive movement.
When he got what he needed he went back to his living room and sat back on the couch. He couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. He took a deep breath, and brought a trembling hand to his face in a nervous movement, wiping away beads of sweat accumulated above his eyebrows. Then he looked down at his other hand, sitting on his lap.
His focus shifted. Anything that wasn’t directly related to the vial in the palm of his hand had now been relegated to the background.
He tied the tourniquet around his bicep.
Cotton, swipe, coldness of the alcohol on his skin.
The needle sank smoothly inside of his flesh, pinching and stinging on its way.
He pulled the plunger and watched in near-fascination as a small portion of his blood rushed inside the syringe.
He pushed the plunger back.
His mind started racing, as if wanting to make good use of its last seconds of clarity, not sinking under that easily. But it was too late, his heart was already pumping a steady flow of blood inside his system.
Warmth crept up along his skin, filled his head. Then his entire body seized up in a rush of pleasure, and his fingers curled around the armchair.
His mind gave one last valiant try at a coherent thought. But already the outlines of his surroundings were going blurry, the sounds started to fade away. His body felt warm, light as a feather. Spencer sighed, face going slack, body sinking further into the couch.
Faces, places, pictures started to swirl around in his mind but he didn’t fight them, knowing that they wouldn’t last long against the sweet poison in his veins. So he listened to the voices echoing inside his head, watched the images that were flashing before his eyes in sync.
The first vision, always the same.
A wooden chair.
A lightbulb slowly swinging before his eyes.
The acrid, potent smell of burning fish liver.
You're weak, boy.
Then came the image of his smiling best friend, baseball in hand, ready to throw and clearly amused by Spencer's reluctance to swing the bat.
Don't think. Just feel it.* The words sounded vaguely ironic now. It wasn’t feelings that he sought, but their absence. And he did not want to think either. What did that leave him? What advice would Morgan give to him then?
His mother, looking younger but tired, always so tired.
You’re weak.
His father, giving up on his own family. Turning away and crossing the door for the last time.
I know.
Diana again, talking to people who were not there, crying, forgetting her name. Forgetting his name.
I'm not weak…
I know, honey.
Light bulb, burning liver, splinters of wood stabbing the pulp of his fingers.
Tell me it doesn't help.
All these thoughts rapidly succeeded to one another, his mind flipping the pages of his eidetic memory far quicker than any other would have. The onslaught of images and sounds lasted only a few seconds, Spencer noted absently, not once feeling the need to calculate the exact amount of time down to the thousandth of a second. That, on its own, was blissful.
Another memory popped up in his mind, and this one felt like a hot brand pressed against his brain.
"Do you let that gray matter rest?" And then his own voice, sounding soft and amused even through the speaker of a cabin phone. "I'm working on it."
The memory brought back feelings of grief and agony, but another wave of calmness and bliss washed over him and finally, finally, his mind shut down.
“Knock twice if you’re okay.”
One more lie wasn’t going to make much difference.
He knocked twice.