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Spencer isn’t supposed to be quiet. His face isn’t meant to be blank. He was a mannequin, a doll. A one-to-one recreation of an original, perfect at first glance but missing the texture. The wrinkles, the rambling, the darting glances as he realised he’d stared at one eye for a while and moved to the other, or to the middle of their nose. It succeeded in capturing likeness but not feeling. Yet Derek knew, sitting by the bed, that he wasn’t looking at someone’s hard work after studying his friend for years to capture every intimate detail. The body covered by a white sheet with an oxygen mask’s strings cutting into its cheeks was Spencer’s.
Derek should’ve joined him. He should’ve said fuck it, turned around to give Spencer some privacy as they tried to clean him of contaminants, then followed after him. Nothing would’ve changed. Spencer would’ve still deteriorated. His life still would’ve hung in the balance. There’s a big difference between knowing someone trusted you with their life and actually having to save them. It sat heavier on Derek’s shoulders, whispering all the awful things that would follow if they failed. Sharing that burden amongst the team did nothing to alleviate it. If anything, it made it worse to have to depend on everyone, hoping they cared just as deeply as you did.
He wished he’d been there for the last moments of consciousness. He didn’t know what he’d say as his friend slipped into a sleep he may never wake up from, but he knew that he wanted to have the opportunity to feel that panic of saying the right thing. He wanted to sit there, cringing for making a bad joke to lighten the mood or kicking himself for not saying everything he wanted to. There’s a familiar sting for not getting the potentially final words in.
They all wanted to be here, but Derek had been given the privilege of waiting by Spencer’s bedside as they continued to work. He took his job seriously, giving them updates whenever a nurse spoke to him and sometimes when they didn’t. No news could be the best thing you could ask for at times. When he didn’t have anything to say on Spencer’s condition, he asked for updates on their side since he knew once Spencer was cognitive enough, he’d start asking what he’d missed.
He didn’t look forward to the genius apologising. It’s not like he could do anything to prevent it either. Spencer took everything that took him out of the field as a personal failing. Even taking the time off he was entitled to made him apologetic for the extra work. He didn’t complain when their absence left his desk a mess of papers. He held himself on a pedestal that stood on dangerously flimsy supports. One hard glance knocked him right off, and he’d claw his way back to the top despite there being no need to.
Derek had watched his chest rise and fall for the first hour of being there. The busy hospital goings-on in the hallway had faded into the background once he’d stepped inside the room, although the door had been left open. His eyes had flicked up when there was a particularly loud noise, but that was training for you. You were meant to stay aware of your surroundings even when there was nothing to look out for. He would watch the fall, sit anxiously through the pause and feel a rush of relief when he saw the rise. His own breath would stutter when Spencer’s did and catch when the fall lasted a tad bit too long.
The others would kill him for not updating during that hour, but he just needed to sit and watch to convince himself Spencer was fighting. It’s not hard to think of Spencer as weak in many ways, but the one area he would never think that was in matters of will. He knew Spencer was just too damn stubborn to not force his lungs to inflate and deflate, unwavering when the rhythm was disrupted.
Derek did not doubt that Spencer would fight. More of him was convinced the kid would pull through than anything else. Still, the fear remained swirling around his mind. It struck out occasionally to stab his brain with thoughts of coffins and gravestones. He’d suddenly think of a good line to say at a eulogy before telling himself to forget it because he wouldn’t have to come up with a speech. Spencer wasn’t going to die. At the very least, he was going before Derek. That was the natural order of things. Oldest gets first dibs on the afterlife.
Even though he’d been desperate to see any signs of life from Spencer, it was pretty boring to watch someone breathe. His attention eventually drifted to something more visually stimulating, whether that was his phone, the various machines crowding Spencer’s bed, or whatever drama he could half-hear from the nurse’s station. He’d tried starting to talk to Penelope, but she wasn’t playing along, which shouldn’t have been all that surprising, and kept reminding him just how terrible this all was. Usually he could handle her catastrophising without it spreading onto him, but he was currently sat next to the all-too-still body of Spencer Reid, so he did what he did best and ignored her texts.
A soft groan had him regretting ever looking away, as he couldn’t get his eyes to move fast enough to finally see evidence Spencer wouldn’t be lying still for the rest of his life. Spencer’s head lolled to one side, his eyes screwing up tight. He groaned again at a higher, more frustrated pitch, prompting Derek to announce his presence. It probably wouldn’t do anything, but he didn’t feel right watching Spencer battle for consciousness without piping up from the sidelines.
“You’re alright, Reid.”
He caught the carefulness in his voice right away, uncomfortable with its direction. He talked to victims that way. Whilst he had empathy for the victims of crimes, he expected there to be more emotion when it came to one of his own. He’d been able to hear it when Spencer was kidnapped, but it was strangely absent here. Maybe because he hadn’t been forced to watch him die, instead being left with the knowledge that he could die, but he was in the best place to have a near-death experience.
“Give yourself a minute.”
Ever the overachiever (and ever a pain in Derek’s ass), Spencer forced his eyes to open. His gaze was unfocused, travelling around the room, looking but not seeing. He pressed his face against the pillow and another frustrated noise left him. His right hand twitched and made it about an inch off the bed before it flopped back down. It took a second for Derek to connect the dots. The mask was sitting tightly on his face, and whilst he was a big fan of pressure, this wasn’t ideal.
“You’ve gotta keep it on,” Derek informed him. He finally seemed to hit the sweet spot of concern, sympathy and care. “I’ll get them to take it off as soon as you’re allowed to take it off, but you need it right now.” Whether Spencer heard him or not, his fussing died down the longer he stayed awake.
Derek hated that his first thought was to complain about how slow the process was. He should be happy for anything right now, but he’s too eager to get the Spencer he knows back that he wanted to skip there without all the work. He wanted to switch out the IV for coffee, the caffeine spurring on an explanation of how that wouldn’t work and would likely kill anyone on the receiving end.
Spencer finally acknowledged Derek’s presence beyond being the voice lightly chiding him for trying to get comfortable.
“Want,” he stopped before he got it out. His fingers twisted the thin bedsheets around themselves as if to wrap up the thought tight and shove it back where it came from. His eyes, half-lidded with a mix of natural exhaustion and synthetic sleepiness, focused somewhere in the corner of the room.
“You want water?” he suggested. He kept his voice soft and quiet as if he were coaxing a stray into petting distance. Spencer’s face pinched like the act of thinking was a chore in itself, but he didn’t try to articulate any. He supposed he shouldn’t be trying to talk anyway. His throat must’ve been shredded from the breathing tube that’d been unceremoniously shoved down there at some point but had thankfully been removed before he woke up. “You want your chart?” he tried, thinking he’d been staring at the board by his feet. He wouldn’t put it past him, even in this state, to want to look over the medical documents. Maybe he’d get a mostly mumbled fun fact for his troubles.
“Mum,” he said slowly, careful to get every syllable. “Want Mum.”
“She’s uh- She’s not here.” His eyes flicked to him, and he reeled away as if he’d been hit. “She’s back in Vegas,” Derek added just to make sure he understood properly. The last thing they needed was miscommunication on what ‘she’s not here’ meant.
“M..’s no Vegas.” As much of a good sign as that was, it didn’t feel like anything worth celebrating.
“No, you’re not.”
“Comin?” He sounded so hopeful that Derek considered lying.
“Maybe in a little bit.” It was a white lie, sue him! You try looking at those big, blurry brown eyes and say his mum wasn’t here and wasn’t going to be here anytime soon.
"Miss 'er."
"I know you do."
He smoothed out the sheets in lieu of being able to hold Spencer’s hand for comfort. It’s strange how lost he felt trying to think of ways to provide comfort that didn’t involve his hands somehow. He wasn’t sure Spencer was in the space to grasp the emotion he put behind it.
Suddenly, he got an idea and rooted through Spencer’s messenger bag that he’d been tasked with guarding. There wasn’t much to guard. Mostly just empty wrappers in Ziploc bags and about five different notebooks with pens attached that Derek wasn’t going to touch, just in case they were journals. They probably weren’t. He’d put money on them being a place to jot down the statistics he didn’t get the chance to list off before the conversation moved on. He ignored those for one specific thing he had in mind.
Derek pulled out the book that had been roaming at the bottom of Spencer’s bag and flipped through to find the bookmark. He made note of the page number so he could put it back in the right spot when they were done. The text was tiny and, through sleep deprivation, he was bound to say something wrong, but surely it was the thought that mattered. He cleared his throat dramatically and started reading. When Spencer began drifting off, clearly calmed by Derek’s voice, he was tempted to stop. The young genius had only just woken up, and now he was going to sleep again? He didn’t. Just felt a bit of regret as every blink lasted longer than the last until his eyes stayed shut.