Chapter 1: I used to see the future and now I see nothing
Chapter Text
The blistering heat hits him like a physical wall as Spencer steps off the plane. He can see the waves of it shimmering off the tarmac.
He should have expected no less from May in Texas, a place and time where the temperature routinely tests the upper limits of human heat tolerance.
He readjusts his leather satchel strap across his shoulders, and despite the heat that is now smothering him, he instinctively and anxiously tugs down the long sleeves of his shirt. A new, necessary habit.
They have been moving nonstop with several cases back to back and without even a single night spent at home at Quantico in over 2 weeks. The old him would have been fine. The old him would have been able to easily adapt.
He isn’t that person anymore.
He needs to go home. He had foolishly only brought enough supplies to last him 5 days, and there is no way he is going to be able to get any more of what he needs in a place like this.
He feels himself unraveling at the seams, and it is obvious enough that even Gideon will eventually have to say something.
He adjusts with shaky fingers his glasses, which have already slipped down his sweaty nose. His contacts have been irritating him. Everything irritates him. He knows he has deteriorated into the worst version of himself. The first 3 days after he ran out, he had been an absolute torment of shakes, vomiting, and body aches, but he has reached a new equilibrium by now. It was tolerable.
The incessant stream of his thoughts, more fractured and disorganized than usual, finally quiets down as he turns to give Hotch his full attention.
It is already late into the evening when they arrive, and they are all exhausted, but this isn’t a case that can wait until morning.
On its surface, your town seems like a typical small, rustic American town, with slow main roads, one traffic light, practically mandatory attendance at Sunday mass, and a devotion to Friday night football, but it is more than that. It is the kind of town that seemed to teeter precariously on the edge of its own secrets. One wrong move would have the whole place crumbling down.
He knows they were only called into this case because the nephew of the Texas governor was killed. Even though he seemed to be just collateral damage in the way of the unsub getting what he really wanted, his girlfriend. If it hadn’t been for his death, Spencer is certain that the BAU would never have gotten involved at all.
He should feel moved by the injustice of it all, but he really is struggling to find the energy to care. About anything.
The world is a never-ending cascade of misfortune. Most of it he will never be able to intervene in. He can’t even help himself. So the specifics of why they were called here feel irrelevant. The only thing that matters to him right now is making it home as soon as possible to the quiet nothingness of his empty apartment—mostly empty except for the vials underneath his bathroom sink.
The facts as Spencer currently knows them are that 4 women had been strangled and one man had been bludgeoned to death with a blunt object. Other than that, they have surprisingly little information to go on.
The Sheriff was supposed to send JJ over their case files, but if what they sent over truly was all they had, then they are in bigger trouble than Spencer had originally thought. The police are in over their heads, and either they are intentionally overlooking evidence and cutting corners, or they are just inept and incompetent. He isn't sure which option is worse.
Hotch directs Reid and Prentiss to the morgue to look at the two most recent bodies— Spencer struggles to hold in a sigh at this pairing—while the rest of the team sets up at the local precinct.
Spencer begrudgingly buckles into the passenger seat as Emily drives, and an uncomfortable silence settles between them.
At the morgue, Spencer examines the woman’s body, Nina, and notes an odd pattern to the bruising around her neck.
“Excuse me,” he calls over to the medical examiner, “what do you make of this? It looks like the bruises are inconsistent, and there are too many of them. The rings of petechia around the bruising are also odd. This looks similar to how the other victims' injuries looked, as far as I could gather from the pictures, but it actually looks even more extensive than those.”
“Ah, yes,” the ME responds, “it looks like whoever did this had a hard time; he struggled to get ahold of her.” Spencer was not convinced.
“Really? Based on the bruising and damage he inflicted elsewhere, it’s a little surprising that he struggled so hard with this. Yes, it takes about 30 pounds of pressure to compress and crush the trachea, but it requires far less force to simply cut off the blood supply to the brain. He should have been able to easily render her unconscious at least.”
The ME looks irritated at being questioned.
Emily interjects and tries to further explain, “It's just surprising that he would continue with manual strangulation now on the fourth victim if he continues to struggle so much. Why not switch to a ligature? Most killers learn to adapt and evolve as their kills progress. It doesn’t make sense that he would continue with something that was so difficult for him.”
Spencer doesn’t acknowledge her input or that she was agreeing with him, and pointedly avoids her gaze as she talks.
Oblivious to the tension between the two agents, the ME defends himself, “Do you have any other explanations then?”
“Well,” Spencer pauses to organize his thoughts, “It could have been intentional. He could have been intentionally starting and stopping to prolong their deaths. What else did you find?”
“Cause of death, as you know, was strangulation. With the trachea being crushed, and all had extensive bruising across their heads and torsos, including broken ribs, and defensive wounds.”
He mentions, as if to give more credence to his purported theory, that the bruising was just due to a struggle.
Spencer ignores him and continues on, “Where were the ribs broken exactly?”
The ME replies that it had been almost consistently always the sternum, and bilaterally the anterior aspect of ribs 2-7.
“Hm,” Reid hums to himself.
He doesn’t share his latest theory, that these wounds are very clearly consistent injuries one would find after CPR.
“Thanks, doctor,” he settles on instead.
“Any signs of sexual assault?” Emily presses.
“No, no, nothing of that awful sort,” The ME grumbles. His immediate dismissal and tone of voice worried Spencer that he wasn’t telling the truth. Or that he hadn’t even checked.
They regroup with the rest of the team at the police precinct. It was small, stuffy, and mostly empty except for the team and the Sheriff in his office.
“What did you find?” Hotch questions without any pleasantries.
Emily clears her throat to speak, but before she can respond, Spencer rushed out, “All of the female victims appeared to have been strangled, resuscitated, and strangled again. He clearly liked to spend time with them. The male was just a threat that had to be removed. He was killed with efficiency. It doesn’t seem that any of the victims were sexually assaulted, although I can’t say for sure, so the strangulation is his form of release. These features in their murders very clearly point to a pattern of sadism, with the unsub prolonging these victims’ deaths as long as possible. I think we are looking at an anger excitation offender.”
Hotch nods
“What have you guys learned here at the station?” Spencer asks in return.
“Not a whole lot,” JJ says with disdain. “The files are sparse, and the investigation seems quite haphazard,” she lowers her voice, as the sheriff is still nearby.
“Odd,” Spencer ponders out loud. “Do we think this is intentional? And if so, why?” He continues.
“I think it has to be purposeful,” Gideon speaks up. “They should have called us in after the second woman, but clearly we are only here because the relative of someone they view as important was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he continued, stating out loud what they all were thinking.
Hotch commands everyone back to the hotel to get a few hours of sleep before continuing in the morning. Spencer doubts he will be getting much sleep.
After a fitful few hours of sleep for everyone, they are right back at the police precinct. Spencer feels as if he had scarcely laid his head upon the scratchy motel pillow before his alarm is jolting him awake.
He allows himself to take a quiet moment of gratitude that he was able to wake up today without vomiting and without finding himself in a pool of his own cold sweat.
In their makeshift headquarters in the police conference room, JJ finishes taping up the five victim’s photos to their bulletin board. Hotch directs Morgan and Reid to focus on victimology first, and Prentiss and Gideon were to go look at the most recent crime scene.
JJ walks over to the Sheriff and politely catches his attention. He is an imposing, gruff man. Spencer didn’t have a full read on him yet, but he made him uncomfortable.
“Sheriff,” JJ begins, “what has the communication with the local press looked like up until now? I couldn’t see much about these murders, up until the last pair, in the papers. I want to know where we are starting from so I can work out how we are going to communicate with them from here on out.”
“Speak with the press?” The sheriff asks incredulously, “I need you to make sure they know as little about this mess as possible,” he firmly demands.
“Unfortunately, that is impossible. We don’t have an actionable profile or any information at this time that will be useful for warning potential targets, but that time is going to come, and we will be releasing that information to the press,” she clarified without room for argument.
The sheriff looks like he wanted to push back, but he makes a dismissive sound of acknowledgement.
JJ was worried about how political this case is becoming. The governor had promised full, unfettered access to anything the BAU could possibly need to catch his nephew's killer, but they clearly weren’t wanted here by the local police.
JJ and Spencer rifle through their bare files and eventually give up, realizing they wouldn’t learn anything more about these people through the information the police had gathered.
Spencer pulls out his cell phone and dials Garcia.
“All-knowing Oracle, how can I help?” Garcia chirps.
“Hey, Garcia, we need some help getting some background information on our victims. Can you start with the latest, Nina Giles, and give us anything you have on her?” Spencer asks.
“Copy that, crime fighters!”Garcia replies and perfunctorily hangs up. JJ and Spencer shared an incredulous look over her silliness.
Yesterday, her chipper attitude would have frayed the last of his fractured nerves. Today, he is doing a bit better.
“Well,” Derek begins, I could start with the sorority house that Nina belonged to?”
“Take Reid with you,” Hotch directs.
Spencer pales. “Sure, of course,” he replies.
This always happened even though Spencer thought everyone should have learned by now. Just because he was the youngest of the team, he had next to nothing in common with most people around his age.
He feels that familiar wave of unreasonable irritability rising within him, and he struggles to push it down before it bursts out again on some unlucky victim, the way it consistently had with Emily lately.
Derek grins at his discomfort, oblivious to the deeper issues he was struggling with, “What, are you nervous to be in a house filled with college girls? They’re practically your age!” He laughs.
“And yet we are worlds apart,” he mutters with disdain.
Most of his anxiety isn’t him just being awkward around women, as he has improved significantly on that front. Despite what his teammates may think…However, it was still a factor.
He would rather have him believe it was just that, instead of knowing the true reason.
It brought up bad memories of his own time in college, being alone in a new state by himself at a young age, far away from his mother, who he felt he had abandoned, and never fitting in himself, but being forced to see young adults quickly form a community with one another. A community he would never grow to be a part of.
Added to that, despite how bad he had thought college, and really his childhood as a whole had been, he would never have imagined back then that his adult life could be even worse. Even more painful.
It had been just a few months since he was kidnapped, drugged, and tortured by Tobias Hankel, and he was resigned to the fact that he would never be the same again.
Derek and Spencer pull up to Alpha Omega Zeta in their regulation black SUV and make their way to the front door, where the House Director, Sarah, greets them.
“Hello, hello, come on in. Wonderful to have you. Your agent Jareau called ahead, and we are all ready for you. The girls are all in the living room waiting,” she chirps. Derek and Spencer share a look at her perky attitude and rapid-fire speech.
He’s officially irritable. Increasingly nauseated. Restless. His whole body is aching, and this woman is causing all of that pain to shoot to his head and take form in an impressive migraine.
Spencer habitually scratches inside the crook of his left elbow and repeatedly tugs the sleeve down.
He looks around the common room and catches your eye as you descend the staircase.
He would reflect on this moment for years to come. What would his life have been like if he hadn’t looked over at you? Worse. He is certain of that. But how different would your life be? With how things unfolded, he was never able to break this endless cycle of his thoughts. Would you have been better off if the two of you had never crossed paths? Undoubtedly. If Derek had gone alone to the sorority house, could everything that followed have changed? He would never know.
You briefly lock eyes with him before your eyes drift down to where he is picking at his left arm, and an unreadable expression crosses your face. Your gaze feels piercing.
You then immediately blush and tug down your t-shirt. Apparently, the only thing you had on.
“What the f- hell,” you catch yourself, “I thought this was an update meeting just for us. I didn’t know there would be,” you gesture over at the agents and try to find a word other than ‘men,’ “well, them here!” You exclaim at the house director, and look ruefully at your best friend and roommate, Maddie, for support.
Sarah’s eyes beam daggers at the latecomer. “Well, if you could find it in yourself to wake up at a reasonable hour—or open your door—you would be more informed,” she brushes you off.
Maddie exchanges a look with you and rolls her eyes over how insufferable she is being, as always, and quickly shrugs out of her robe so you can save a shred of your dignity.
Spencer can’t look away from you even as the house director continues her tirade.
He had been briefed on the basics of the sorority hierarchy. Maddie was the President and you were the vice president. But you were not what he expected from a conservative Texas Sorority leader. Or from the daughter of the local sheriff.
Sarah implied that you had just rolled out of bed, and your beautifully wild hair supported that assertion, but in contrast to your bedhead, your makeup was meticulous, with glitter dusted across your eyelids and cheeks. You gently cradled your left wrist, bound in a brace, against your chest.
Most surprising was the fact that you were (apparently only) wearing a Doctor Who T-shirt, which seemed entirely out of place amongst the pink silk two-piece pajamas everyone else sported.
While crosses adorned the necks of almost every girl in that room, yours was the only one that wasn’t made of a flashy gold or encrusted with diamonds, and it didn’t appear to be merely a status symbol. It was old and dented, and clearly, the slightly mismatched chain you wore it on was not the original.
Your head is throbbing. Despite the fact that you refuse to open your eyes or make any attempt at moving, you can’t deny for much longer that you are now entirely awake.
You impressively ignore the incessant knocking on your door, and ignore the threats of disciplinary action when the would-be intruder realizes the door was locked.
Maddie must have locked it behind her.
You were getting used to waking up alone.
It’s your need to grab a drink to counteract your uncomfortably dry throat that finally drives you out of your empty bed. And your desire to grab some ibuprofen to soothe your still-aching left wrist. You readjust your brace.
You slip on some shorts, if they can even be called that, and try to wake up while struggling to do your makeup one-handed.
Every moment of this month has been a never-ending nightmare. But hiding in bed won’t keep you, any of you, safe.
Is this your fault? Yes, of course it is. Should you have done more? You only did what you thought was right. These self-loathing thoughts roll around your head as you begrudgingly make your way downstairs, still blearily blinking the sleep from your eyes and pressing your fingers to your temples.
You had expected to see your roommate—girlfriend—whatever, and your other sorority sisters in the common area, but are stopped short by the sight of two men.
Still half asleep and without a filter, you blurt out your surprise and awkwardly tug at your shirt, which is really too short to do much of anything.
As soon as the profanity slips out, you realize you are soon to experience the wrath of your “sorority mom,” as is only unleashed when she feels she has been embarrassed in front of strangers.
Thankfully, Maddie saves you from any further embarrassment and allows you to cover up with her robe. Sarah admonishes you, spewing your name with unrestrained vitriol, and turns to the visitors to apologize and continues, “so uncouth. You’ll just have to ignore her.”
The full power of her glare returns to you, “if you had managed to open your door for once this morning, you would know the very serious situation we are in right now. The FBI,” she tilts her head towards the men, “are here to help with those awful…tragedies.” Murders.
You know you should cool off. Maddie shoots you a warning look. But there is something wild in you that always wants to see how far you can escalate a situation.
“Oh, hello,” you say brightly, sarcastically. You draw your attention to the taller, thinner FBI agent and extend your hand.
Derek is preparing to make a disarming joke and tell you that Spencer doesn’t shake, and not to take it personally, when he surprises you by firmly grasping your hand.
“So glad to have you,” you quip, while still shaking his hand, “would have been nice to get a little help after the first…or second…or even third girl was murdered. But thank you for gracing us with your presence after the fourth girl!”
Nina, the last victim, wasn’t necessarily a very close friend of yours, although she was part of your sorority. But you know she was one of the only people here who fully understood you. Even now, you could imagine the weight of her quiet looks whenever it was the two of you alone in the house, studying, or at the library. And the pointed glances she would throw you whenever you were out with Maddie.
“Oh, right,” you dramatically pause, “actually, it was really her boyfriend who was murdered alongside her that finally drew some attention. Bad for him, of course, but very helpful for us, I guess.”
Spencer quickly recalibrates and adjusts to the situation as he uncomfortably withdraws his hand from your protracted handshake. He knows your anger wasn’t truly directed towards him but at the situation as a whole.
He contemplates what tactic he should take, how he could possibly disarm you, but settles on genuinely apologizing for your loss.
“I’m so sorry you lost your friend. We are going to do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Acknowledging the awkward fact that the two of you had not been properly introduced, and growing nervous under your piercing stare, he pushes ahead, “I’m Spencer. Spencer Reid. Doctor Reid, but you can call me Spencer,” he rambled, and ended with a grimacing smile.
It was reminiscent of all of his many social missteps from when he was his old self.
You completely ignore his borderline social ineptitude and give him a look, sizing him up, “great,” you respond in a clipped voice.
You almost feel bad for how rude you are being, you know you should just be grateful the FBI was involved at all, but you are brimming with rage and you really can't control how it spilled out of you.
Maddie grabs your hand and rubs soothing circles on your palm with her thumb. She doesn’t let go. The house director admonishes you and tells you that you are being incorrigibly rude, and she asks Spencer and Derek to ignore you, that you have an impossible attitude at the best of times.
Derek says they’ve heard worse and asks if they can speak to you and Maddie in private, since you are both sorority leadership.
Sarah hesitates and looks like she is going to refuse, when Derek reminds her that the governor would be really disappointed if he heard they didn’t have everyone's full cooperation.
“Well, of course,” she quickly responds, “I just didn’t want to leave you defenseless,” and shoots you a glare, which you promptly return.
You feel proud of yourself for resisting the urge to stick out your tongue.
You, Maddie, and the agents silently move to your shared bedroom. While you and Maddie finally let go of one another’s hands to take a seat on your respective beds, Spencer and Derek sit uncomfortably, and hilariously, squished on the loveseat across from you both.
They rightfully inferred that it would be difficult to get any information out of you and decided it wouldn’t help to be looming over you.
Spencer finally addresses what you said downstairs. He takes your anger in stride and doesn’t diminish your feelings. “You’re right,” he says to you.
“Right about what? I’m right about a lot of things,” you mutter, prompting Maddie to roll her eyes and beg you to behave for once.
“We are mainly here because he died. I won’t make excuses. I don’t know why we weren’t called in sooner, but we can’t deny that his death seems to have been the tipping point, prompting the local authorities to ask for our help.”
He leaves out the fact that it was not the local authorities, most certainly not your father, who actually invited them in.
“But I want to assure you that we operate differently from them,” he pauses, realizing he is essentially disparaging your father, but continues, “and we want to catch this guy regardless of who he is targeting.”
Spencer hopes you can tell he is being sincere, and tries to maintain eye contact with you, but you quickly break it, flushing. With anger?
His eyes then wander around your room.
Maddie’s side is neat and organized. It isn’t that she has no personality, but that it seems as if she is actively working to make sure her personality doesn’t show. She has a few tasteful, framed photos, but otherwise, the room honestly doesn’t look like a sorority room. It’s too neat. Devoid of color. It feels staged.
Your side of the room, however, is a different story. It is cluttered with the things you clearly love, on open display, and littered with markers of your numerous achievements. He wonders again at the things you have expressed interest in, which, at least from his own personal experience, should have been dubbed nerdy or weird.
He marvels at how you can confidently show all this off, yet maintain what appears to be a decent social standing if your position in the sorority means anything. While he’s been taking in your room, he has also taken note of the glances you and Maddie have been sharing, and how they seem to hold more than a history of friendship.
“Thank you,” Maddie starts, “we are so grateful to have your help. You can imagine how horrible it has been here. Everyone has been so scared. We are all doing the buddy system here now, trying to stick together, but no one feels safe, and I don’t think we should.”
You feel chastised. You are still angry, but now you feel doubly upset because you know you can’t keep lashing out at these FBI agents, even though they feel like a safe target for your anger.
“Okay,” you concede, “what can we do to help?”
Derek asks you to tell them as much as possible about Nina, the last victim, but also all of the victims.
Spencer notes how Maddie shoots you a cautious look before you tentatively outline what appears to be on the surface a detailed history for most of the victims, but he can immediately tell it isn’t the full story.
He also marks how you have been doing most of the speaking. Maddie is the president, yet she’s more than content to let you speak, even though you look more uncomfortable than she does.
Maddie almost seems to be silently conveying what you should say, with obvious but brief pointed glances in your direction.
Then why not talk herself?
You, on the other hand, seem to be frustrated, and restraining yourself.
What are you holding yourself back from? Maddie isn’t making eye contact with anyone as you speak, and she is intently focused on picking at the cuticles of her perfectly manicured hand.
“Is there anything you can think of that connects any of the victims?”
At your baleful glare, he immediately understands your perceived slight and revises his statement, “Sorry. Of your classmates?”
After his mistake is corrected, you finally seem to register his actual question and briefly tense up. You seem too effortfully casual in denying any connection, and this is the first time your words have sounded tentative and quiet.
He also notes that you seem to be working intentionally hard to maintain eye contact with him, whereas before you would easily and readily break it, looking up and away or down at the floor as you quickly rambled off seemingly truthful facts about your classmates.
Oddly enough, good eye contact with you seemed to be more of a tell that you were hiding something. He just wasn’t sure what it was yet, or what you could possibly be hiding when he could tell you were genuinely distraught over your friend’s death and presumably should want to do everything to bring her killer to justice.
He takes a break and realizes that he isn’t going to get anything else from you this time.
This time? He shakes the thought from his head. How is he so certain that you will ever interact again?
Derek receives a phone call and excuses himself from your room, shooting a meaningful glance over at Spencer, silently calling out his disastrous inability to connect with someone his age.
Theoretically, the two of you are just a few years apart, and it shouldn’t be this hard to hold a conversation. He wishes Derek would stay. He doesn’t care how things should be; he knows that Derek has a better chance of breaking through to you than he does.
Or maybe the look meant none of that.
Or maybe it's a deeper acknowledgement. Of how broken he has become this year and how he can’t seem to get anything right.
He tries a different approach to prove to himself that he at least attempted to build rapport with you.
Maddie’s side of the room offers little in the way of conversation, so he focuses on your side.
He picks up your birthday card from last week, the one that references Star Trek.
“Big fan?” He attempts to open up a conversation.
“Yeah, sure, I guess,” you attempt to deflect him, instinctively refusing to engage.
But now that you are thinking of the show, you can’t help yourself, and you continue, “I mean, considering when it was made, it's pretty impressive. There are basically no actual scientific inaccuracies. More like just some improbabilities.”
A small smile crosses Spencer’s face. He’s restraining himself from launching into an episode-by-episode analysis and asking you to share specifically what you thought was questionable.
He looks at your Taylor Swift poster on the wall and continues rifling through your stack of abundant birthday cards splayed across your desk.
“I’m surprised with your musical taste, no one got you a card about feeling 22.” At your confused look, he falters, “You know, ‘I don't know about you, but I'm feeling twenty-two’?” He had been proud for a moment that he knew something that should have been relatable to a college kid, but with your blank face, he realized he was doomed to just keep failing with you.
“Oh!” You laugh, and a genuine smile crosses your face. “Well, I’m not 22, I just turned 20, so there’s that.”
Now it’s Spencer’s turn to be confused. “But I thought you were a senior in college?”
Maddie looks proud and explains how our little genius skipped a few grades.
“Oh, whatever,” you attempt to minimize, your face flushing, “it was elementary school grades, nothing that mattered.”
It did matter though. As you continued to grow up and move through grades despite being younger than all your peers you not only kept up with them but you excelled. Apparently both academically as well as socially.
“Well if I’m such a genius, why am I about to fail this philosophy class?” you genuinely question. It was the bane of your existence and you were beyond frustrated with yourself for taking it.
“Well, I don’t know, I guess you’re the kind of genius who already had enough credits to graduate by the beginning of her junior year, but decided to complete a second major, ‘just for fun,’ and this was the only elective class that fulfilled those requirements and was empty?” Maddie helpfully supplies.
Derek pops his head back in.
“Hey, her boyfriend is downstairs asking if he can come up. Do you need any more time with them? Hotch wants us back at the precinct soon anyway, so we should start going.”
Spencer furrows his eyebrows, puzzled.
He was certain the two of you were more than roommates, but maybe he was mistaken.
He is reminded yet again of how much he has been struggling lately. That now he can’t even accurately gauge the dynamics between two college kids anymore.
“Prince Charming awaits, Maddie, don’t keep him waiting,” you click your tongue, and clarifying for Spencer that this is Maddie’s boyfriend, not yours.
There’s a flicker in your tone, in the look you send her, a nuance Spencer could have interpreted easily once. Now he doesn’t trust his read on anything. He can’t rely on his instincts. Whatever it signifies is beyond him.
Why does he feel relieved? Either you were in a relationship with Maddie, or you had a boyfriend, neither of which affected him, and it certainly wasn’t relevant to this investigation.
Maddie rolls her eyes at you, and directs her attention back to Spencer and Derek, thanking them for their efforts at keeping you all safe, and telling them to “please reach out if you think of anything else I can help with,” empty promises, and she ducks out of the room with Derek following behind her to finish his conversation with Hotch.
Leaving you and Spencer alone for the first time.
Chapter 2: Being clever never got me very far
Notes:
All they do is yap this chapter
Extensive TW remain the same!
Chapter Text
“Well,” you start, feeling awkward being alone with him, “I hope you got what you wanted.”
Spencer fails to hold back a laugh, “I mean you didn’t give me much to work with. Or honestly really anything at all to work with.”
You have been nothing but difficult with him, so he can’t fully rationalize why he wasn’t upset with you.
Smaller, far more insignificant things than being obstructed in a murder investigation have caused him to so easily snap before. But he is just intrigued by you.
You, who like science fiction. Who skipped grades and is the youngest in her year. Who takes extra classes for fun. And yet somehow did not draw the ire of her peers. More than that, they truly seemed to like you.
He should be jealous of you. Bitter. Angry that your life here was so far from the reality he had experienced. But he was happy for you. Impressed.
“What did you even need from me anyway?” You halt his train of thought, “I have no idea who is doing this and I don’t know how I could help,” you grumble.
He can sense the fear underneath your anger.
“We just need an idea of who your friends were. People,” he very carefully does not use the word ‘victims’, “can be targeted for a variety of reasons, and learning about who they were could help us figure out if they shared anything in common, which we could then backtrack to find out not only why the killer chose them, how he found them, and maybe even who he is going to target next,” he explains.
His words reignite the guilt curling like dark smoke inside your chest. This was your fault. You could have stopped this.
The accusations clanged around your head.
You take a deep breath and steel yourself for what you are about to offer when really you should be rushing him out of your bedroom.
“Would it help you to stay here longer talking with just me? I could drive you back there later if your partner has to go now. I have cheer practice later on anyway and the station isn’t too far from the field.”
Spencer is surprised by your offer, and tries not to be too excited by the prospect of spending more time with you, alone, a totally inappropriate feeling, when he accepts your offer to stay back at the sorority house.
After explaining to Derek, he carefully props your bedroom door open as he leaves for good. This leaves the both of you blushing like teenagers. You are finally alone—really alone. But this time it doesn’t take long for the conversation to move past awkward and into comfortable.
He could still sense that you were holding something back, he just couldn’t even pick up a real hint what it was about.
But you seemingly shared an in-depth description of all of the victim’s lives. Better than before.
You only really knew one of the women personally, the most recent one, but due to your involvement in the sorority you knew a decent amount about the second one who was also in a different sorority, Samantha, and still knew about the other two due to the small nature of your college.
You don’t open up easily, not without getting something in return first. He isn’t like the law enforcement officers you know—your father—and you find yourself wanting to understand what he did. What he really did.
Spencer delivers his explanation in record time, falling back on Gideon’s familiar description of the job as being part cop, part psychologist.
To his delight, and his shame that he found delight in this, you don’t spend the whole time talking about the case. He felt like the two of you talked about everything. And nothing. He could barely follow the spontaneous path of your conversation.
You somehow end up talking about philosophy, and you explained why you hate it so much.
“It is just ridiculous!” You start, “It made sense in the time before electricity and when people thought the earth was flat and the configurations of the stars at your birth determined who you are—“ “and some people still believe that,” Spencer points out, to which you roll your eyes and continue your rant as if you weren’t interrupted.
“But here and now in the real world where we know that thoughts are just the summation of neuronal firing in different parts of your brain— that feelings and emotions are just your amygdala, hippocampus, and multiple prefrontal cortex regions working in tandem, and memories are just the entorhinal cortex along with the hippocampus encoding information and storing it in its respective locations throughout the cortex, and the different regions of the frontal lobe all working together are what really forms your personality. There is no reason to subscribe to this woo woo.”
“Woo woo?” Spencer questions with a smile.
“Is mumbo jumbo better?” You ask.
“Sorry I just don’t ascribe to this cartesian dualism separating the mind from the body. The mind is the brain. The brain is the body. That’s it. ‘I think, therefore I am?’ More like ‘I think therefore I am alive with a functioning brain.”
“Is that really all you think we are? Electrical activity?” He questions honestly.
“I’m surprised someone like you doesn’t agree with me on that?”
“And what am I like?” he presses, slightly pleased that you may feel you know him. See him.
“You know..” You vaguely gesture at him.
“Ah ok, yes, that explains it. I hope your papers are filled with better arguments,” he jokes lightly.
Spencer feels more invigorated by your conversation than he has in a very long time. Recently it feels like everyday is a constant struggle, and that every moment of everyday he has to work tirelessly to not think about dilaudid. When he even tries. Which is rarely. But it hasn’t crossed his mind even once since he started talking to you.
“Well, I guess that’s why you are going to fail this class,” he continues.
“Ugh!” You groan, covering your face with your hands. “You’re right. I’m totally screwed.”
“I’m guessing you could fail this class and still graduate with a 4.0, am I right?”
You try, and fail, to hide your smile.
“I could help if you wanted? With your final paper?” He gestures over to your draft laying out in the open on your desk, quickly scanning it.
“I’m not a cheater, and I don’t need any help,” you kindly dismiss him without any venom in your voice.
“Well, it wouldn’t be cheating, I’m definitely not offering to write it for you,” he laughs, “but I could help edit it, and hopefully convince you out of these long tangents attacking the merits of philosophy, which will most certainly make you fail,” he smiles.
You love your friends here. It had been hard adjusting at first, but this time around, you feel like you have crafted the perfect version of yourself. It isn’t fully a lie, and you aren’t hiding too much, and you truly aren’t faking a lot either, but you are just putting forth the best, most acceptable, version of yourself. But that has left a nearly imperceptible barrier between you and the outside world.
And sometimes you feel like even Maddie is on the other side. She has been more successful in this borderline deception and sometimes you envy her for it. But in the past 3 hours, you’ve grown not to feel this way around Spencer.
Has it really been 3 hours?
But then again, maybe you just feel like he knows you because he has a problem with boundaries.
He doesn’t give you a chance to reply, and starts rifling through your desk before you can remember what he might find in there. He pulls out an envelope with Johns Hopkins lettering.
“What’s this?” He muses.
“Give it back!” You quickly snatch it out of your hands, but you don’t realize just how fast he can read.
“You’re going to Johns Hopkins for medical school next year? That’s really impressive,” he genuinely beams at you.
“Can you just keep your voice down, it’s kind of a secret,” you deflect his praise, flushing with embarrassment.
“Why would you have to keep this a secret?” He honestly wonders, confusion creasing his brow.
“You just don’t get how things work here..” You trail off.
“And that’s part of figuring out what’s going on now. Who is doing this. Having a better understanding of this community,” he points out, “and I was hoping you were going to continue helping me with this?”
He knows he is essentially manipulating you. While everything he said was true, he knows deep down that’s not why he wants to know. He just wants to know more about you.
You sigh. “Listen, my…family, would not be supportive of this. On numerous fronts. Leaving. Going to medical school at all. It might not even happen. There’s no way they’ll help me pay for it. It’s only if I truly almost get a full ride that I can go. It’s a major long-shot. I’m not going to be going,” you say with finality.
You chide yourself for your dishonesty. Why are you implying that your family is anything more than you, your father, and the distant memory of your long dead mother?
Spencer can hear how disappointed you are, even though you attempt to cover it with irritation. Another one of your habits.
“Well, it honestly already was a long-shot for you to get in,” you shoot him a glare at this, insecurity barely held back at the best of times and interpreting his statement as questioning your intelligence, but he continues, “I mean seriously! Nothing against you. But you are in an extremely small college, in an extremely small town, deep in Texas, but you got in. Do you know how many applications they get in a year?”
When you shake your head he continues, “well last year there were 5,958 applicants and they only accepted 2%.”
Your eyes widen, “how did you just know that off the top of your head?”
He ignores your question and continues, “so believe me when I’m telling you, the odds already weren’t in your favor, but you made it. So what’s to say that won’t happen again?”
You size him up again. He barely knows you, but he is already more supportive and believes in you more than anyone else you know. Your friends supported you, in their own ways, but they don’t understand how important this was to you. Don’t understand how you could possibly want to leave and not set up roots here with a husband, 2.5 kids, and a dog.
His gaze flickers back to your left wrist, and he decides to test his luck.
“What happened there?” He asks in a way that he hopes is entirely nonthreatening.
Your face becomes guarded again while you tug at the velcro straps of your wrist brace.
“Sprained it. Cheerleading is a lot more dangerous than you might think!” Your smile falls flat and looks more like a grimace.
He hopes that by not pressing you and accepting your obvious lie that he can buy back some of the goodwill he had lost with you by intruding in your space and snooping around your desk.
“Actually,” Spencer begins, “injuries such as sprains are fairly common, accounting for over 65% of cheer-related pediatric office visits, and more serious injuries such as concussions account for almost a third of all cheerleading injuries.”
You give him another appraising look.
You weren’t simple yourself, but you prefer people who were consistent. Who made sense. You still don’t know what to make of him. Unless all of this was part of some elaborate profiling strategy, a long manipulation he hadn’t bothered to disguise, you couldn’t get a read on him at all. One moment he felt like he could be just another classmate in a study group. The next, he was prying open old wounds, pressing for answers he wasn’t prepared for and seemingly oblivious to how dangerous that could be.
He knew he couldn’t stay here with you forever, but when he receives the call from Hotch, summoning him back to the precinct, a wave of disappointment rushes over him.
What is wrong with him?
“No worries, I’ll take you back, and I promise I’m a decent driver” you jokingly reassure him.
As the two of you exit your bedroom, you pass by several of your sorority sisters. Most of them just puffy eyed and flushed, but your cheerleading flyer is still actively crying.
“I’m just freaked out. Sorry” she hurriedly wipes the tears from her face when she meets your gaze.
You pull her into your arms, “don’t be sorry! We’re all freaked out. I’m freaked out.” Spencer is surprised to hear you admit this.
“But everything is going to be okay?” You look at Spencer expectantly, clearly wanting him to reassure you all, but to his dismay he finds he is incapable of sharing any false platitudes with you.
He wishes everything will be okay. That you will all be alright. But he knows that’s not a promise he can be certain of keeping.
He instead pointedly avoids directly answering your question and rambles off statistics about the probability of violent offenders staying in a location after law enforcement has gotten involved, how often and in what time intervals serial killers tend to murder, and how often him and his team are successful in apprehending them before they strike again.
He’s sorry for the disappointed look in your eyes, but the last time he told someone—Tobias Hankel—that his team could save him, could save both of them, it couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Chapter 3: Holy water could not save you now
Notes:
Going through and posting each chapter and making edits is making me realize this is probably going to be longer than 9 chapters...
Chapter Text
The drive over to the police station in your 20 year old jeep was the most peaceful car ride Spencer has had in ages.
For once it wasn’t a car chase going after a murderer or a 2am drive back home from the airfield to an empty apartment after a late flight. It was just some quiet time with some pop star playing softly in the background as you pointed out notable landmarks in your small town.
You are too distracted while driving to heavily edit and censor yourself.
You pull into the parking lot of the police station.
“Alright,” you say with finality, “take care then, I guess?”
Could you possibly be regretting leaving him as well? No, he’s just projecting. He reminds himself about transference and countertransference and how this is unequivocally the latter.
He hears himself say, “or you could come in?” before he even fully processes the thought.
You know for sure that you will not be coming in. The parking lot is already pushing it. What is it about him that makes you throw caution to the wind?
“I’m fairly certain I gained more insight into this town and these people in the few hours I spent with you than my team did this whole day from everyone they spoke to” he continues with honesty.
See? He reassures himself it’s just to help the investigation. Nothing to do with you, not really, or at least not in that way.
“And who did they speak with?”
“Well, the whole police department, campus security, professors, the friends and family of the people murdered, other students.”
“I mean of course they got nowhere. If people here really shared the truth about everything, who knows what you might uncover,” you muse out loud, knowing silence is a virtue here. Spencer has made you reckless.
“What exactly might that be?” Spencer asks, and you shift uneasily in your seat.
“You’ve been an extraordinary help, but I can still feel that there’s more to tell. That there’s more you want to tell,” he continues, hoping it’s true.
At that moment JJ steps out of the precinct and gently waves to Spencer, urging him inside.
“Come with me?” He asks again.
You know you really can’t, but you almost genuinely consider it until you see him walk out of the station behind JJ. Your father.
He looks tall and imposing with a carefully constructed blank face, which of course means he is undeniably angry with you.
For what? Who knows. Your existence is enough.
Of course you knew you might run into him at his own station, but to be honest he rarely spent his time there.
But obviously, you chided yourself, with the FBI in town he wouldn’t be straying too far.
Your whole body goes numb, “I guess I don’t have a choice,” you tell him in a hollow voice, knowing you can’t just drive away now, that you had to go over and speak with him.
Spencer’s gaze flicks between the two of you, and he quickly realizes that calling this relationship strained would be generous.
You stumble out of your Jeep and slowly make your way over to your father, the sheriff. You feel like you’ve been doused in ice water.
“What are you doing here?” He questions. Clipped. Cold and restrained.
“I was just—“ he interrupts you, “look at me when you’re speaking to me,” he demands.
“Sorry, yes, sir” you stammer, shaking.
You start again, clasping your hands together and digging your nails into your hands so hard that Spencer is certain you’ve broken the skin, and gathering the courage to look at him, “I was—“
“She was just giving me a ride,” Spencer jumps in.
You look at him, scared, and he tries to convey that you need to trust him.
“I was over at the sorority house talking to the other girls, my partner had to leave early, and your daughter was kind enough to give me a ride back. I had always heard they had better manners down here, and I think your daughter proves that.”
He would think he was laying it on too thick, ridiculously so, but he judged your father right and it’s working. Appealing to southern hospitality. Repeatedly calling you his daughter and acknowledging ownership over you and making it so your kindness really belonged to him.
Your father still needs to be sure though, and he presses on, “you were talking to the other girls, not her?”
Spencer needs to make a quick assessment. Based on all of your insinuations he hopes he is right and that expressing you didn’t offer up anything is the safest course of action.
“No, not really,” he frowns, putting on a show, “I mean she was helpful, of course,” he has to delicately convey that you were respectful of law enforcement while also not giving away any potential secrets, “but we didn’t talk much, I really already got all I needed from everyone else.”
He knows he is right when your father’s posture relaxes a little. “Well, good,” he says, pointedly turning away from you and summarily dismissing you.
You want to thank Spencer for his quick save but you are too scared to even look at him.
You silently walk back to your Jeep, berating yourself for getting into this situation, and drive away.
JJ shoots a questioning look at Spencer which he pointedly ignores, and she asks them both to come back inside so they can talk over the case files.
Back at the precinct, Spencer continues to size your father up. Classic alpha male behavior, domineering every conversation, demanding everything from everyone. Your interaction with him shed more insight on his character.
Just as Spencer begins to think he is slowly getting a grasp on the town, on its dynamics, things shift again for him.
It wasn’t just that he was strict. Your shift from being almost brash with how loud and confident you were, to FBI agents nonetheless, to trembling in your own father’s presence, told Spencer everything he needed to know about him.
The sheriff closes himself off in his office to return a call to the governor’s office.
The secretary, a kind, older woman, notes Spencer’s poorly hidden baleful glares in your father’s direction.
“He isn’t that bad,” she quietly says, seemingly out of nowhere. Spencer is surprised at her comment, and embarrassed that he has been so transparent.
“She’s the real problem,” a nearby deputy, Liam, interjects, clearly referring to you.
“How so?” Hotch questions him.
“Listen, I don’t know what you folks up in the city find acceptable behavior for a young woman, but here, she doesn’t even come close to cutting it,” he continues.
“I’m finding it incredibly hard to believe that the sorority sister with a 4.0 GPA who spends her free time tutoring her classmates in between cheer practice somehow isn’t living up to your standards” Spencer retorts.
Deputy Liam laughs. “She’s good at that. Playing the role and on the surface making it look like she is Miss Perfect. But we have had the…pleasure of knowing her all her life. And we know what she’s done. So we know that’s not the truth.”
Hotch doesn’t want to get involved in any of this small town’s gossip, but he needs to better understand the social structure here, to figure out what they’re all dealing with. That’s why he presses on and asks, “and what exactly has she done?”
Spencer shoots him a look, frustrated to be engaging with these people with their disparaging comments regarding you.
It’s the secretary that responds, trying to minimize the situation that she accidentally created, “she’s just different, that’s all. Not bad.”
The deputy cuts in, “well I wouldn’t exactly call her form of different good, that’s for sure.”
The secretary presses on, “it’s really nothing that bad. She’s just strange. And kids these days are all getting mixed up by what they see on the TV, so they don’t much notice her strangeness. But the rest of us…” she trails off.
This is the reaction Spencer had expected the town to have towards someone like you. Your college’s open acceptance of you was the oddity.
The deputy wasn’t as restrained and he continues on to name all of the things he has deemed aberrant about you, from being a vegetarian. Dyeing your hair purple once in high school. Always being stuck with your nose in a book. And ending with his certainty that you are responsible for feeding every stray cat they have in this county.
At seeing the look that Hotch and Spencer share at hearing such ridiculous infractions, he goes on to expose the real problem.
“And I don’t like spreading rumors, especially since she is a sheriff’s daughter, and the other girl in question is the daughter of our pastor—”
“What other girl involved?” Spencer cuts him off, having a sinking feeling he knows exactly what is being implied.
“There were rumors—,“ he begins before the secretary interrupts him, feeling protective, “nothing ever verified—“ “But enough that the two of them had to go away for 3 months over summer break in middle school to separate…camps,” he finishes.
Spencer doesn’t even attempt to hide his disgust as he realizes the big secret, the big problem with you.
“Listen,” the deputy tries to argue, “I know what you people nowadays find acceptable, but it’s just not right.And all of this isn’t even taking into account what happened with her mother,” he trails off.
Before Spencer’s barely restrained rage can be let loose, Hotch reels him in, telling him to wait in the conference room.
When Hotch follows in after him, Spencer immediately starts, “this isn’t right. You know what they do there—,” “I do,” Hotch affirms, “but there’s nothing we can do about that right now. Unfortunately, those places aren’t even illegal here. If you want to help her, the best thing you can do for her is help catch who is hurting her friends,” Hotch states with finality. Spencer begrudgingly concedes, and promises to steer clear of the station staff to avoid a confrontation.
“Alright, let’s recap,” Hotch begins. The BAU team was alone in the conference room, the locals milling about with their own tasks and assignments. “Gideon, what did you all learn from the last crime scene?”
Gideon goes on to explain what they had all suspected, that it looked like the unsub was startled by the male victim’s appearance, and quickly subdued him with a weapon of convenience.
Spencer repeats that this makes sense with what they already learned at the ME’s, recounting again how the unsub went on to take his time with the woman, and based on the appearance of the bruising around her neck, and the pattern of her broken ribs, it looked like he was repeatedly strangling her, then resuscitating her, then continuing.
“Prolonging her death for his enjoyment,” Spencer concludes, his voice heavy with the weight of the revelation. “He’s methodical, but the male victim's appearance threw him off. It disrupted his ritual. But he meant nothing to him”
Hotch nodded. “So he’s organized and ritualistic, but can adapt. That means he’ll be even more dangerous if we don’t catch him soon. He’s escalating.”
Morgan chimes in. “If he’s this methodical, he should have a specific type. But other than the obvious, that they all went to the same small school, do we have anything linking the victims beyond their surface demographics?”
JJ flips through her notes. “That’s the problem—on the surface, they don’t seem connected at all, except for the sororities in two cases. But they were belonged to different ones. And the others weren’t affiliated with sororities at all, or even seemingly with each other.”
Gideon frowns. “The connection could be subtle. It could be something they didn’t even realize they shared—an event, a location, a person.”
Spencer hesitates. “There is something else. When Derek and I spoke to the girls at the sorority, one of them seemed… reluctant to share everything. I think she knows more than she let on.”
“Who?” Hotch asks sharply, already knowing that he meant you.
Spencer hesitates, wanting to protect you, but knowing his duty and obligation is beyond just you. “The vice president of the sorority. She was guarded, but it wasn’t just grief. It felt like she was protecting something, or someone. I’m not quite sure yet.”
“Could be worth pressing her further,” Hotch said. “But if she’s hiding something, we’ll need to tread carefully. Especially given who her father is. Do you feel like she’s opening up to you?”
Derek makes a mocking, yet playful face. Of course he had caught on to how Spencer looked at you. His only assurance was in the fact that he was certain he wouldn’t share with the others.
“Yes,” Spencer tries to infuse the statement with confidence he didn’t feel like he had, “she took a while to warm up to me, but I feel like I have a shot at breaking through to her.”
Morgan interjects, “Speaking of breaking through, I talked to the Sheriff earlier. He’s still stonewalling us. Says they’ve done all they can and that we’re ‘overcomplicating things.’ I think he’s either hiding something or doesn’t want us poking too deep.”
Gideon’s voice is calm but laced with steel. “We’ve seen this before. Small towns have secrets, and when outsiders come in, they close ranks. But if the sheriff is covering for someone, it’s only a matter of time before it slips.”
Hotch folds his arms. “Then we apply pressure. Morgan, stay close to the Sheriff and see if you can find any cracks. Reid, take JJ and circle back with the sorority girl,” Spencer winces at what he reduces you to, but Hotch continues “ Focus on what’s beneath the surface—social circles, shared locations, anything unusual.”
“Prentiss, coordinate with Garcia, dig deeper into the history of the town, any other reported crimes,” Hotch directed, “and I’m going to follow up on campus security and see if there’s any footage or reports that didn’t make it to the case file.”
Spencer lingers a moment after the others had dispersed to their respective tasks, the weight of urgency pressing on each of them.
He couldn’t shake that last image of you from his mind.
Not just because of what you might know, but because of the way you had looked at him. Distrustful, yes—but also desperate, like you wanted to tell him everything but couldn’t. Like you were asking him for help.
Spencer closed his eyes, letting out a frustrated huff, already noting how every permutation he ran of this situation seemed to end in unacceptable risk—to you.
Whatever you were hiding, he was determined to uncover it.
He just isn’t sure if he can protect you in the process.
Chapter 4: Wound so tightly I can hardly breathe
Notes:
No actual smut, but allusions to intimacy (and not between Spencer and reader...yet...sorry!)
Chapter Text
The next two days passed by in a flurry of disappointing dead-end leads.
Spencer found excuses—alternative angles, secondary hypotheses, peripheral threads to tug on—before exhausting every other option and finally accepting Hotch’s directive to circle back to you.
It wasn’t until Wednesday morning that, out of necessity rather than choice, JJ and Spencer found themselves standing outside the gates enclosing the football field, silently watching one of the final cheer practices before this week’s big game.
They watch as you throw one-handed back handsprings across the grass as the three pyramid formations behind you perform basket tosses, shooting their flyers up to dizzying heights.
Spencer’s jaw slackens, “wow.”
JJ wants to laugh at him, but she can’t hide how impressed she is as well.
One of the freshman sitting on the sidelines, excited to finally see the FBI agents everyone has been talking about, sidles up to them to get in on the action.
“Cool, huh? And this is just them warming up. You should see their actual routines!” she continues, chipper, “well I guess you can, if you come to the game Friday night!”
Spencer eagerly grasps this opportunity to ask more questions about you.
“Surprising that no one has taken her place,” he gestures at you, “for tumbling, when she’s injured.”
“Oh but she’s really the best at it. Even one handed!” She continues, “it’s actually kind of crazy. In cheerleading she is able to do the craziest stunts and tumbles without a problem, but in the real world she’s the biggest klutz, always getting injured” she laughs , walking off as the captain signals to her.
Confirmation of what Spencer already knew, that you definitely did not hurt your wrist cheerleading.
This time, JJ approaches you and Spencer lingers back behind her.
You feel every ounce of gratitude for his quick thinking in front of your father earlier this week shrivel away into nothing as they approach. You break away from Maddie and storm over to them.
“Are you actually stalking me now?” You snap under your breath, cognizant of your audience as you see Maddie’s back stiffen as you approach them, lashing out before they can get a word in and not bothering to let JJ introduce herself.
If everyone in town saw you continually associating with the FBI, assumptions would be made and rumors would fly.
You find yourself anxiously pulling on the dented cross around your neck.
Spencer’s cheeks flush pink. “No! Of course not.” He begins, ashamed by how disappointed he is that you are upset to see him again.
“We just have a few questions for your teammates,” JJ changes tactics on the fly once she realizes their mistake and that they would get nowhere with you, flawlessly slipping into damage control.
“Right. Okay.” You turn around, heated now not with anger but with embarrassment that you had made everything about you, as always, and walk away to call the rest of the girls over.
“Warming up to you, huh?” JJ teases Spencer under her breath.
Spencer quickly shakes his head, as if trying to dislodge the weight of your anger.
At JJ’s direction, the team splits into two smaller groups. JJ leads one aside while Spencer takes the other. You drift immediately toward JJ’s group. Maddie stays with Spencer.
JJ softly begins, questioning their practice schedules and travel routes. Not leaning on any pressure points just yet.
You have to make a conscious effort not to focus on what Spencer is saying to the other group.
“Well, after what happened, we don’t really stay late unless,” one of the freshman voices cuts through the background noise.
“Unless what?” JJ asks, her tone careful.
“Unless someone walks us.”
“Have any of you had uncomfortable encounters recently?” JJ tries to grasp onto this opening.
Before anyone can answer, you pointedly interject, “since all of the murders have happened.” Not a question. A directive.
A look is passed around the group as everyone emphatically agrees they haven’t.
JJ’s eyes flick briefly to Spencer and he answers with an almost imperceptible nod.
Back at the sorority house later that night, you can’t sleep.
You lie awake, feeling on edge, just waiting for the tragedy to continue unfolding.
It feels inevitable, like you have no choice but to watch it happen. A passive observer in your own life. Doomed to remain silently on the sidelines as events move forward without you and indifferent to anything you might do.
Hopeless and without a chance of altering the outcome.
You can’t remember the last time you felt like an active participant in your own life. Like you were really living. You drift through each day on autopilot just going through the motions.
It was like you were an actor playing the role of you. None of it felt real. As if you’re not truly inside your own body. As if you aren’t real.
But Spencer’s perceptive gaze lingers in your mind.
He had seen through you.
Particularly when he saw your interaction with your father earlier that week, and how he knew exactly how to intervene.
Not only did you feel he saw who you were as a person, that he actually thought of you as an individual, but he also saw your reluctance, your hesitation.
The way you were holding something back.
Instead of comforting you, instead of making you feel seen, the realization terrifies you.
Because you’re certain he won’t stop there.
And sooner or later, he’ll dig deep enough to uncover everything you’re being forced to keep buried.
Maddie slipped into your shared room.“You okay?”
You sighed and gestured for her to come in. “No. I keep thinking about seeing him earlier this week.” You didn’t need to say who ‘he’ was for Maddie to immediately understand.
“I’m sorry” Maddie sat on the edge of your bed, her face filled with concern.
“You have to stay strong though,” Maddie implored.
Guilt twisted in your stomach. Two mutually exclusive actions. Trying to stop this murderer from hurting someone else while also protecting those who he targeted.
You really didn’t know what to do or where your allegiances should lie. Except with Maddie. You had to protect her first and always.
No one could ever know that she had been attacked.
Maddie’s eyes widened, mistaking your silence as a confession. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
You shook your head. “No. But that FBI agent Spencer Reid,” you pause, “he’s …different. And if he keeps asking questions, I don’t know how much longer I can hide anything from him.”
You hesitate, “And I don’t know that I want to,” you let out the truth quietly.
Maddie grasped your hands. “Please. For me. You have to.”
Your heart clenched at her begging. Maddie had always meant everything to you. You had been friends since childhood, then roommates and sorority sisters, then even more. Even if what you were now, given your circumstances, couldn’t really be defined.
But this was bigger than either of you.
“I’m sorry Mads, I just… I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
She pulled away from you.
“This isn’t like last time,” she begins bitterly, “If they find this out., they won’t just send us away. They’ll ruin us here.”
Your shoulders draw inwards, heavy under the weight of her request.
Was it really worse to tell the FBI what was really going on? Or to risk letting more people die.
You were beginning to trust Spencer. As ridiculous as that sounded. You had only just met him, but maybe it was out of desperation. You didn’t have anyone else to turn to. You were truly so alone.
You perched on the edge of her bed and slowly tucked one of the tendrils of her hair that framed her face behind her ear, moving on instinct.
Your eyes searched her gaze questioningly, and when you saw what she needed you softly moved in to touch her, slowly guiding the straps of her tank top down her shoulder and sinking to your knees in between her legs.
You worked to reposition yourself within the warmth of her affection the only way you knew how.
At the precinct, Spencer was piecing together the broken shards of the victims’ lives.
He stared at the bulletin board, cross-referencing timelines and locations. Tracing the path of red string from campus to off-campus housing, from well-lit areas to darker stretches of road. There were too many gaps. Entire hours unaccounted for. Reports that stopped abruptly, details that should have been routine but were conspicuously absent.
Something wasn’t adding up.
The victims didn’t share a class. Or a professor. Or even a social circle, beyond the vague proximity of a small town that forced overlap whether people wanted it or not.
And yet, when he overlaid the dates, a pattern almost emerged. Just to dissolve into smoke the moment he tried to capture it.
“Spencer,” JJ said softly, interrupting his train of thought. “You’ve been staring at that board for hours.”
He blinked, realizing his eyes were burning. “There’s a pattern,” he said, more to himself than to her. “I just don’t see it yet. I can’t.”
“Maybe you’re too close,” JJ suggested. “Take a step back. What’s bothering you the most?”
Spencer sighed. “Other than everything?” He huffed dramatically, frustrated. But he restrained himself and continued at JJ’s raised eyebrows.
“Have we ever been to a town this secretive? This unwilling to help?”
He thought of you. He didn’t say your name out loud, but the image of you at the field, how quickly you’d intervened, how decisively you’d redirected the question, flickered through his mind.
He frowned, stepping closer to the board again. “It’s not just that they’re not talking. It’s that they know how not to talk.”
JJ followed his gaze. “You think they’ve done this before.”
“I think they’ve had practice,” he concluded quietly.
JJ glanced at the clock. “It’s late. Let’s get some rest and pick this up in the morning. You’ll think more clearly after some sleep. We all will” Spencer reluctantly agreed, though his mind raced with more possibilities.
As he lay down that night, your face lingered in his thoughts.
Not just the way you looked at him, but the way you’d spoken. Measured. Careful. Like someone used to navigating invisible tripwires.
He had the unsettling sense that whatever was missing from the board wasn’t something he’d overlooked.
It was something no one had been allowed to leave behind.
And for the first time since arriving in town, Spencer wondered if finding the truth wouldn’t put a target on just the killer’s back.
Afterwards, with Maddie securely tucked into your side, you tried to find comfort in the steady rhythm of her breathing. You slowed your own, counting each rise and fall, willing your body to follow. But it didn’t work. Sleep refused to come.
Spencer kept intruding into your thoughts. His careful questions, his attention, the unsettling sense that he was already circling the truth.
If he could just figure out this wasn’t the first time the town had been targeted, you were certain he could piece it all together.
Trusting Spencer might bring the truth to light, but it might also endanger you. All of you.
There was no real paper trail for what happened two years ago. No official reports. Just robberies that hadn’t quite been robberies, incidents quietly reframed once the right people were notified. If no one spoke there was nothing for him to find.
He couldn’t uncover it by questioning the police or combing through the carefully thinned and edited case files, records designed not to document the truth, but to erase it. They couldn’t admit women had been attacked on campus. It would stain the school. It would stain the town.
Justice wouldn’t come for the man who had assaulted them if anyone even wanted to know who he was. The cost would be paid by the women instead. Marked. Whispered about. Ruined. Especially if the reason they had been targeted in the first place ever surfaced.
And then there was the thought you tried hardest to suppress: the possibility that someone connected to the sheriff’s department had been involved from the start. You had no proof. Only instinct. Only the certainty that this kind of silence required help. They got away with it too easily for you to not at least consider this as a possibility.
You lay awake in the dark, listening to Maddie breathe, understanding with a sick clarity what Spencer was just beginning to sense.
The truth wouldn’t just expose a killer—it would expose everyone who had survived him.
Chapter 5: I would feel better just lightly sedated
Summary:
cw: disordered eating, alcoholism
Chapter Text
Morning arrived with an unwelcome abruptness, the harsh buzz of Spencer’s phone dragging him from a restless sleep.
He fumbled for it on the nightstand, blinking at the screen.
Hotch’s name flashed before him. “We’ve got another one,” Hotch said, his voice clipped. “Campus security found her this morning. Meet us at the scene.”
Spencer’s stomach sank as he ended the call and hurriedly dressed with trembling hands.
The news was grim but not unexpected. But now he experienced a new kind of fear. Were you safe?
The unsub was escalating, just as they had anticipated. He grabbed his satchel and headed out, replaying fragments of prior conversations in his mind. The tension between you and your father, the unease Maddie radiated, and your veiled warnings. There was something there. He just hadn’t pieced it together yet.
By the time he arrived at the scene, the rest of the team was already there.
The victim, a junior named Abigail, had been found in the campus library. Her body was sprawled between the bookshelves, her neck showing the now-familiar bruising pattern. Books were scattered around her as though she had fought desperately in her final moments. Spencer crouched next to her, his analytical mind struggling to push aside the horror of the scene.
“The unsub’s pattern is holding,” Spencer murmured. “Strangulation, resuscitation, and repeated strangulation. But this location is different. It’s more public, risky.”
He hated himself for feeling relieved it wasn’t you.
As if he had instead doomed Abigail himself.
Like he was choosing again who lives and who dies.
He harshly shook his head, trying to forcefully push that desolate cabin in Georgia back out of his mind.
Gideon joined him, nodding grimly. “A clear escalation. He’s becoming bolder. This wasn’t a controlled environment like the previous ones,” he began to list them off, “A soundproof music rehearsal space. Dorm rooms. A stairwell. Either he’s overconfident, or he’s sending a message.”
Hotch’s voice broke through their conversation. “Emily, JJ—canvas the area. See if anyone saw or heard anything. Reid, Morgan—follow up with the students who were in the library last night. Let’s find out if anyone noticed anything unusual.”
As the team dispersed, Spencer pulled out his phone and dialed Garcia. “Good morning, my genius profiler! What can I do for you?” Garcia chirped.
“Garcia, where are you on looking into campus incidents from the past few years? Anything that might suggest a pattern. This town is hiding something, and it feels like they have experience with that.”
“This town is unfortunately retro,” Garcia replied, her voice softening as she caught the urgency in his tone. “Many of their case files haven’t been digitized. But I’ll have something for you ASAP.”
Back at the sorority house, you stared blankly at your reflection in the bathroom mirror.
The news of Abigail’s death spread quickly, saturating the house until the air itself felt unbreathable.
Maddie was downstairs, trying to keep the other girls calm, but you couldn’t bring yourself to join them. Guilt gnawed at you.
You had seen this coming. The signs had been there. The outcome felt inevitable now, obvious in hindsight in the way only tragedies ever were.
You could have done more to stop it. You knew with such painful certainty that you could have helped
You lay immobile in bed all day, cataloging everything you should have said, every moment you might have intervened if you had been smarter, faster, less afraid.
Maddie never came back to your room that night. You suspected she was giving you space. You were grateful for it. Solitude meant no explanations were required. No hollow reassurances that you were okay, no flat reassurances that any of this was okay
You refused to get up to eat, as usual finding a strange sense of order in the emptiness gnawing at your stomach.
Hunger was precise. Predictable. Your oldest and most effective coping mechanism.It made sense in a way nothing else did.
And it was reassuring to feel you had control over at least one thing in your life.
When you rolled onto your side and reached for the bedside drawer, the familiar clanging of too many half-empty bottles was soothing, proof that relief was available, close at hand.
You left them there. You didn’t deserve that numbness either. This wasn’t something to be escaped or softened. You were going to carry this and you should carry all of it.
Instead, you let curiosity guide you, and you finally gave into the impulse to Google Spencer Reid.
By the following morning, exhaustion had hardened into resolve. You showered, dressed, and drove to the police precinct on autopilot, following procedure the way you always did when emotion threatened to overwhelm you. There was safety in rules. In fluorescent lights. In places where feelings were secondary to facts.
You didn’t know what you were dreading more, whatever you were walking into now at the station, or whatever lay in store for you tonight at the football game.
When you stepped inside and realized your father wasn’t there, relief washed over you quick and sharp, like a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding.
Maybe things wouldn’t unravel completely.
Maybe, for now, you could keep going.
You already had your ruse formulated. You stole (“borrowed”) one of your House directors ridiculously fancy pens and were going to pretend you thought it was Spencer’s and you were just returning it.
A flimsy excuse but you doubted your father would care enough to even bother to question it.
You nodded to the secretary, who was more than familiar with you and your family, and wandered over into the small space the precinct had set aside for the FBI agents.
You looked over the map pinned to the wall with the crime scenes marked. You picked up a marker and twirled it between your fingers. Without clearly thinking it through, you began to mark up the map. You don’t know how long you stood there, your fingertips blackening with ink, until a voice cut through your trance.
“Hey, this is an active investigation, what do you think you’re doing messing around here?” Gideon questioned.
You balked, but as usual, when your father wasn’t around, you sublimated your fear into anger.
“I was just trying to help,” you huffed, irritated, harshly putting the cap on the marker and dramatically dropping it on the table and watching it roll off the edge.
You began hurriedly collecting your things and prepared for an explosive exit.
“Oh hey!” Spencer rushed forward, brushing past Gideon, “wait, don’t go! It’s fine, I can always fix the map,” he said quickly.
Then he took a step back to really take in your work. “Wait, this is good. This is really good,” he mutters more to himself.
“It seemed like we didn’t even have enough for a good geographical profile, these locations all overlapped too much, and we were limited with it all happening on this one college campus, but this is interesting,” he continued.
You had added in all of the victim’s dorms, as well as actual home addresses as most of them were local, and even got so detailed as to add in their class locations, and other social venues they frequented that the team hadn’t even been aware of, and used that to create your model.
“Well,” you started, still miffed at being called out by Gideon who had slowly backed off and given the space to you and Spencer. Even though rationally you knew he was certainly right to be upset by your disturbance.
“Everyone knows everyone here, and if this isn’t the work of a stranger,” which you all knew it wasn’t, “it’s not like these are just crimes of opportunity, right? He knows these people, he’s watching them, and these are the places he’d have to look,” you stumbled to explain yourself under Spencer’s scrutinizing gaze.
“But how did you know how to incorporate and analyze this data?” Spencer pressed.
“I mean it wasn’t that hard, your paper ‘identifying non obvious relationship factors using cluster weighted modeling and geographic regression’ explained it all,” you answered simply.
He blankly stared at you for a moment.
“You read my dissertation?” He blinked, and your flush was answer enough. “When did you have the time?” It was a fair enough question, it was 80 pages of math.
“Last night? I mean I couldn’t sleep. It had more numbers and equations than I would like, and I’ve never loved geometry or statistics , but in the end it was all really just spatial reasoning.”
Spencer stared at you, his mind racing to keep up with what you’d just said. You’d read his dissertation. All 80 pages. Overnight. And understood it well enough to apply it to the investigation.
He felt a strange mixture of admiration and disbelief.
“Spatial reasoning,” he repeated slowly, his voice almost tinged with amusement. “Most people wouldn’t describe advanced statistical modeling as just ‘spatial reasoning.’”
“Look, I didn’t mean to overstep. I just thought... I thought maybe it could help.”
Spencer physically waved off your concern with a gesture of his hand. “It does help. A lot. Actually, I think it might be the breakthrough we need.”
He turned back to the map, his eyes darting across the locations you’d marked. The pattern you’d sketched out started to come into sharper focus.
“Wait a second,” he murmured, pulling a notebook from his satchel and scribbling furiously. “If we overlay this with the timeline of the victims’ routines, it’s not random. You’re right, he’s not just choosing his targets based on opportunity. He’s tracking them. Following a deliberate route.”
You watched as Spencer worked, his mind clearly leaping ahead in ways you struggled to follow.
There were several convergence points, paths that all the victims crossed, and seemingly around the same times. Some were obvious but others had not been that clear. An old humanities building which had been mostly destroyed by a fire decades ago. An area behind the science building that is technically not open for foot traffic but it is still the fastest way between certain dorms and academic buildings.
Then there was the most obvious and expected ones. The quad between the upperclassmen dorms. The library. The cafeteria.
Despite everything, you felt a surge of pride that your insight might have been useful.
It was quickly replaced by fear. Did that mean the unsub might already be watching someone else? And could it be Maddie next?
“Do you think...” you started, hesitating. Spencer looked up, his eyes softening as he caught the uncertainty in your expression. “Do you think he already has his next victim picked out?”
Spencer didn’t answer right away. Instead, he studied you for a moment, as if weighing how much to say. Finally, he replied, “If he’s following this pattern, it’s possible. But this gives us a chance to get ahead of him. To predict his movements.”
You nodded, but your stomach churned. What if you’d waited too long to speak up?
You wanted to tell Spencer everything. You wanted to tell him about the sexual assaults on campus from 2 years ago and how everyone who had been murdered so far, to your knowledge, had been a part of that original group of people who had been assaulted.
Of course, you didn’t know everything. Was this the same offender doubling back on his victims? Was it someone else who knew and for some reason decided to target them for what had happened to them?
What if someone else had to die because you hadn’t said more? Abigail’s death already hung heavy on you.
You opened your mouth to tell Spencer everything, about the previous attacks, the real connection between the women, but the door to the room swung open, and Hotch walked in, pausing to look between you and Spencer.
“This is good work,” he said after a moment, directed towards you as he recognized the handwriting on the map was not Spencer’s.
“Reid, see if you can refine the model further. And you,” he turned to you, his tone not unkind but firm, “if you have more information that could help, now is the time to share it.”
You swallowed hard, feeling the weight of both their gazes.
This was it. The moment you’d been dreading. But before you could say anything, your phone buzzed in your pocket. You pulled it out, glancing at the screen. Maddie.
“I—I have to go,” you stammered, already backing toward the door. Spencer called after you, but you were already gone.
Spencer stared at the door as it closed behind you, disappointment sinking in his chest.
Hotch raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment, instead redirecting Spencer’s attention to the map “Let’s work with what we have for now.”
Spencer nodded, trying to push aside his worry. He needed to figure out what you knew before it was too late.
He tried not to examine too hard the protective feelings he was developing towards you.
You walked far enough away from the precinct that you felt confident you wouldn’t be overheard. “Maddie?” You answered.
“Are you back at the precinct now?” She questioned you. It was clear she already had the answer to her question.
“Yes, why?”
“What are you doing? What are you telling them?”
“Nothing about you,” you promised, trying to calm her down. She angrily hung up, not even bothering with a response.
Back inside the precinct, Spencer’s phone buzzed with a text from Garcia. He glanced at the screen and felt his heart skip a beat.
Garcia: “Got something for you. A cluster of “incidents reports” from two years ago at the same campus. All of them dismissed. Apparent robberies, but cross referencing with hospital records it seems some were violent. Not much official information online. Most of I got was from scouring social media and cross referencing with these flimsy police reports. Call me for details.”
“Hotch,” Spencer said urgently, handing over his phone. “This might be the connection we’ve been looking for.”
Hotch read the message, his expression hardening. He stormed over to the Sheriff, who had finally rejoined them, thrusting his phone in his face. “Why are we just finding out this?”
The Sheriff bristled, still unused to having to answer to someone else, but quickly recovered, “you wanted to hear about a string of…robberies?” He settled on that description. “I didn’t realize petty crime was in your jurisdiction” he tried to counter.
Hotch didn’t back down. He knew they had stumbled onto something important. “I want to see everything you have on these robberies and I want it now, or I’ll run this up the chain of command for obstruction.”
Spencer was shocked. Usually they bent over backwards to play nice with the locals. But he understood why Hotch had taken this approach. The cooling off period between kills was rapidly shortening, and they were running out of time. And the people here had something to hide and they weren’t going to give it up that easily.
They still didn’t have all the information. Couldn’t make the connection yet. Garcia’s search had only revealed one current victim having been involved in the prior attacks.
They didn’t fully understand the nature of those attacks.
You didn’t go back to the sorority house.
You didn’t want to head to the game early.
Instead, you drove aimlessly, trying to clear your head. Your thoughts were interrupted by the sound of your phone buzzing again. This time, it was a text from Maddie.
Maddie: “Where are you? I’m sorry about before. I was scared. It’s getting late. Please come back.”
You hesitated. You wanted to be there for Maddie, but you couldn’t shake the seemingly baseless feeling that going back to the house might put her, and perhaps you, in more danger.
You: “I’m not mad at you. Really. I’ll see you at the game tonight. And just go stay with Jason afterwards. I’m fine.”
As much as you hated to admit it, the safest place for her right now was with him.
You practiced smiling in the rearview mirror, forcing the muscles into place.
You wished you had a pencil to bite into, something to hold between your teeth and fool your brain into thinking the smile was real.
Trying to reconstruct that carefully composed facade just long enough to survive the big game tonight.
Chapter 6: A heavy choice to make
Chapter Text
Back at the precinct, Spencer sits alone in the conference room, staring at the map you had drawn and willing it to give up the elusive piece of the puzzle that still refused to fall into place.
It was becoming unbearable now that he finally has confirmation that the answers are right there. Just out of reach and buried with the secrets you were too afraid to share
These days he rarely extended grace to anyone, least of all himself, but he felt for you. For the predicament you were in, even if he didn’t fully understand the complexities of it just yet. But it wasn’t difficult to see why someone like you, with a father like yours, would find trust elusive.
Morgan sidles up to him. “Hey kid, I don’t think we are making any more headway with any of this tonight. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. The bags under your eyes have bags under them. And you know your pretty face is your best asset,” he teases.
Spencer rolls his eyes, sparing a disdainful look towards his police precinct issued sad excuse for coffee which has long since gone cold and nearly solidified into sludge.
“Yeah, yeah, let’s call it a night I guess,” he seemingly acquiesces, knowing that he would just continue the work alone from his motel room.
He knows he isn’t just exhausted by their string of back to back cases lately. He couldn’t sleep. Or when he did, it was restless, and he more often than not woke up gasping, still choking on the smell of burning fish hearts and livers.
What he doesn’t know is that he is going to run into you—literally—in the motel lobby on the way to his room with the whole team beside him.
He quickly and instinctively reaches out to your shoulders and steadies you before you topple over from your accidental and surprisingly forceful impact.
“I—sorry, this was a mistake,” you balk when faced with the whole team. You had hoped to speak to Spencer alone, and the team’s presence was imposing and overwhelming
“What are you doing here?” He bluntly questions, immediately wincing at how unintentionally harsh the question came out.
You hesitate, glancing around the nearly empty lobby. Filled with only the owner, and a local couple who was staying at the motel while their house repairs finished up.
“I couldn’t stay at the football game. Too many people. Too many questions. I left after the halftime show. I just needed... space. That’s it.”
You back up, longingly glancing at the exit, and with it your escape.
Spencer nods slowly, understanding your conflicting instincts for self preservation but also your obvious desire to help that kept pulling you back in.
“Sometimes space helps. But sometimes... talking does too.”
You let out a mirthless laugh, shaking your head. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“Not when we know you have something important to say,” Emily interjects, her tone gentle but firm.
You nearly jump at the sound of her voice.
You had forgotten for a moment that the rest of the team was still there. Watching the two of you. Why is it that every time you found yourself in Spencer’s presence it felt like the rest of the world simply faded away?
Spencer faces you fully, his hands shoved into his pockets, trying to make himself appear as disarming as possible.
“Whatever it is, you can tell me. I promise, I just want to help.”
You study him for a long moment, weighing your options.
There was something different about him, different than what you are used to. He wasn’t demanding and he never tried to intimidate you. He just seems so sincere and so determined to understand.
Still, you shake your head, looking only at Spencer, now having to effortfully try and block out the whole team although the weight of their stares still succeeds in making you feel anxious and sweaty.
“You don’t understand,” you start quietly.
“I don’t know what I was thinking, it will be so bad if anyone sees me here with you guys,” you try to explain.
“Like you said, everyone is over at the football game. And why would it look bad that you came to see me to continue our philosophy debate?” His voice increased in volume until he was awkwardly projecting the end of his second sentence.
“What?”
You were genuinely at a loss and more confused than you have ever been before in his presence. And honestly a little uncomfortable with how loudly he was speaking, now easily gaining the open attention of the few people in the lobby who had previously just been casting surreptitious glances in your direction.
He gestures at your book bag, which of course you brought in with you instead of leaving in your car. You didn’t know anything about anyone anymore and you couldn’t risk it getting stolen in your open Jeep.
“..Oh” you slowly caught on. “Yeah.”
He replied quietly, “And you’re exactly the kind of person who would be so focused on getting an ‘A’ on a paper that you would come by and talk to the FBI late at night, in the middle of a serial murder investigation, once you learned one of them—“ he then continued louder “is working on his masters in Philosophy right now.” He ended with a small smile, clearly pleased with himself
“Oh no, I think I made a mistake. A masters? No PhD? I don’t know how helpful this is actually going to be,” you laughed.
In spite of the situation, the circumstances you had met under, and the fact that his whole team was behind him, he couldn’t control the wide smile that broke out across his face at the refreshingly and unexpected lightness in your tone.
For once he felt like the joke wasn’t being made at his expense. He refrains from telling you about the three PhD’s he does have, not wanting to seem boastful, but then realizing maybe he did want to brag a little bit. Maybe he did want to impress you. He couldn’t stop himself from looking you up and down.
“Hey,” he starts, distracted, “did your nail polish just change colors?”
You laugh, relieved it wasn’t anything serious for once. “oh yeah, it does that.”
“How?” JJ asks, genuinely interested.
“I don’t know, I guess it’s thermochromic, maybe?” Your voice raising at the end in a question, “but I’m not totally sure,” you continue before launching into a Reid- level ramble, barely pausing to take a breath, about the properties of leuco dyes, weak acids, and solvents. Explaining how different temperatures cause the solvent to transition between solid and liquid states—changing the interaction between the weak acid and the dye, and determining whether the acid can protonate the dye, stabilize its colored form, and enable a reversible color change…
“Kid,” Morgan jokes, gently interrupting you, “I thought you said you didn’t know?”
“Oh, but I don’t know,” you respond seriously, “I just got this as a gift for my birthday and I haven’t paid enough attention to see if it’s actually light activated instead.”
Morgan laughs at your earnestness, and looked back and forth you and Spencer.
Spencer just beamed at you.
“Watch out pretty boy, her little brainiac rants might be even better than yours,” Morgan said and he waggled his eyebrows, and silently walked around you, leading the rest of the team with him and giving you and Spencer some privacy.
You silently follow Spencer to his room as he navigates ahead, your pulse pounding in your ears as you feel the damp, mildewy motel walls closing in around you.
He immediately offers you “water, or tea?” But you decline in favor of pacing a hole in the floor.
He gratefully seizes the opportunity while your back is turned to quietly shuffle the many empty mini alcohol bottles out of sight. An inventory he is keenly aware he had exhausted far too quickly.
He moves to take a seat on the small ottoman, feeling uncomfortable sitting on his bed in front of you. It felt inappropriate. And he was actively working to shut down any of those thoughts. Not that he had any inappropriate thoughts, he tried to reassure himself. He then realizes that this left you with no other place to sit but the bed—his bed, and he immediately jumps up and awkwardly perches on the windowsill.
This whole dilemma went completely unnoticed by you.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” you began, your voice low. “But it’s not just about the murders. It’s bigger than that. It’s about what happened here... two years ago.”
Spencer leaned forward, his attention fully on you. “I’m listening.”
You take a deep breath, your fingers twisting nervously in your lap and then settling on the cross dangling from your neck. In moments like this it felt more like a noose.
“There was a series of assaults on campus— women only…?”
You cringed at yourself as you struggled to explicitly say it. But he knew what you were getting at, what kind of assaults they had been.
“It wasn’t reported the way it should’ve been,” you start resolutely.
“Most of the cases were brushed off, classified as robberies or misunderstandings. But we all knew what was really happening. There just wasn’t anyone who would listen.”
Spencer’s brow furrowed. “And the police?” he asked, his focus fixed on you, not on who your father was and unwilling to let your his position as sheriff stop him from hearing the full truth.
“They did nothing,” you choke out bitterly. “Or worse, they covered it up? The victims were scared. Some left school. Others stayed quiet, afraid of what would happen if they spoke out. Not only because, they were attacked, but for fear that people might figure out what they all had in common. Their secret. The reason, it seems, that they had been targeted.”
He doesn’t press you to explain.
Based on his conversation at the police station about you, and what people suspected about you and how they reacted, he has a pretty good idea of what this secret could entail. But he will wait for you to say it.
“Why do you think this is connected to the murders?” Spencer finally settles on asking, doing a poor job at reining himself in from prematurely leaping ahead with all the possibilities.
“Because the women now… the women who are being killed?”
You pause and take a shaky breath.
“They are all part of that group. They were all attacked back then.”
Chapter 7: This will be my last confession
Chapter Text
“You’re saying the unsub is targeting the same people from two years ago.”
It isn’t a question, but an acknowledgement.
You nod. “It’s like he’s finishing what he started? I don’t know. Who knows if it's even the same guy? What if it's just someone else who knew about what happened?”
Spencer lets your words sink in, processing the implications of the unsub having a history with all the victims, and the sharp and unforgiving realization that the remaining survivors are all in grave danger.
“Does your father know about this?” Spencer questions, his voice deliberately even.
Your expression hardens at the mention of him. “Yes. Well, I think so. I don’t have any proof.”
“Thank you for telling me,” he says softly. “This helps. A lot. I know you’ve already done so much, but I need to ask for more.”
At your raised eyebrows, Spencer pauses, knowing how delicate his next question was. But realizing there was nothing delicate about this whole situation he instead settles on being blunt and hopes he isn’t about to ruin everything and shatter whatever trust you had found in him.
“Were you attacked before?” His tone gentle, but probing.
“No,” you say almost too quickly, then amend, “really I wasn’t. If I knew who was doing this, if I had any firsthand information, I really would tell you.”
Spencer accepts this for now, “do you know any names of the rest of the women who were initially attacked?”
You reluctantly admit that you have a few more names, but you can’t be sure it’s all of them. You intentionally withhold Maddie’s name.
You tell yourself it's okay, since she knows she’s in danger by now, and she’s staying with her boyfriend. You cringe at the label. You knew him as her shield, her protection from anyone really knowing who she was. He wasn’t a bad guy, though. Really. Maddie just didn’t love him, and you couldn’t stand her splitting her time and affection between the two of you.
You think about how different Maddie is from you. How she, unlike you, truly had zero interest in men whatsoever. Even if your interest was purely theoretical and never acted upon, it felt possible. You could feel warm inside when watching the male protagonist of a movie. When reading a book.
“There’s more,” you take a leap of faith, and hope you are doing the right thing. You steel yourself with a deep breath, and Spencer patiently waits for you to continue without pushing.
You reassure yourself with the simple truth that Spencer isn’t from here. Nothing he has done has made you suspect he is as cold and close-minded as the people who have surrounded you.
You mumble, “as far as I can tell, with the information I have about them, it looks like,” you stall, making far too many qualifications, “all of them were gay. Or queer. Or whatever,” you stammer, struggling to get it out.
“But the fourth woman, she had a boyfriend?” Spencer gently questions.
“It’s called being bi,” you snap, trying and failing to say it without any venom.
Knowing logically it was just a question and he wasn’t trying to invalidate your entire existence.
Not knowing that he understood more than he could say right now.
As if he were still maintaining the pretense of professionalism with you and restricting himself from crossing a line.
Spencer briefly thought about Ethan. About running into him in New Orleans last month and his sharp and perceptive gaze… now was not the time.
With this information, he again questions to himself if you are really being truthful about not being part of the original group of women attacked. Nevertheless, he thanks you again.
“I just hope it’s not too late,” you frown.
“I know this wasn’t easy for you. Not with your father…” he trails off as you reflexively tug on the cross around your neck.
His eyes briefly flick to the well-worn cross resting against your collarbone, following your motion. He had questioned its meaning before. From your earlier conversations back in your dorm room he easily gathered that you were not in fact deeply religious.
But you touched it when nervous as if it were a talisman that could protect you.
It seemed too small to belong to an adult. He could believe you wore it to keep up appearances if it was a childhood gift from your father, the same reason he would have given it to you in the first place, but it didn’t make sense that you would seemingly derive comfort from it.
Patterns, context, it all mattered. Family dynamics and histories had a way of cumulatively shaping small towns.
He is struck by the intrusive desire to ask about your mother.
He isn’t sure he can justify it and say it's all for the investigation, to better understand the town and its perception and treatment of women. To examine its social norms and expectations.
How many times can he use that excuse? Does he even believe it’s true anymore? He knows the real reason is that he wants to understand you better.
He realizes he’s being selfish. That this is unfair and painful to ask.
Yet, he asks you anyway.
“What happened with your mom?”
You recoil like you’ve been slapped in the face and instinctively reach again for your cross—her cross.
“What does that have to do with anything?” You manage to breathe out.
“I don’t know. You’re right. I’m sorry I shouldn’t have asked. I was wrong,” the apologies come tumbling out of him, hating himself for doing something he knew would hurt you just to satisfy his own curiosity under the guise of somehow helping the investigation.
Silence settles between you two. Heavy and unresolved.
“She’s dead. It was a long time ago. It’s fine,” you say with finality, even though it clearly isn’t fine.
“At the station before, they said it in a way—” he trails off. “Sorry for asking. I’m really sorry” he cuts himself off, finally succeeding in censoring himself for once, his heart aching at the pain in your voice and disgusted with himself for pushing.
He lets his apology hang in the air. Doesn’t try to push you to accept it when he knows he doesn’t deserve that.
You’ve never been the forgiving type, believing people to be truly incapable of remorse, and that if someone was really sorry they wouldn’t have done it in the first place.
You don’t acknowledge his apology. Instead, you derail the conversation entirely.
“What is even wrong with this guy? Why is he doing this to us,” you demand.
“And how are you planning to catch him?” You finally ask the real question that has been weighing on you.
Spencer sighs, grateful to be seemingly let off the hook for now.
“He’s…complicated. If our current murderer is the same rapist from two years ago, that changes everything,” he begins, hands folded, eyes flicking between your face and down at the floor. Trying to compose his thoughts instead of letting them fall out in a chaotic and tangled mess as usual.
“He fits the anger-excitation category. They’re primarily driven by aggression, not true anger. And not even fully by pure arousal or sexual gratification. The assault is always linked to domination and control,” he swallows, then continues, “It’s not impulsive. They are fantasy-driven. For years everything happens in their head first. It’s rehearsed mentally long before they choose to act. When the real situation doesn’t match the fantasy, which it never does, they escalate. They’re trying to force reality to conform to the narrative they have created in their mind. Something they will never succeed at.”
“So if it is the same person, circling back to the original women, this is just another way of psychologically torturing them?”
Spencer nods in confirmation and shifts his weight, voice softening, as he continues.
“It could be. In order to become,” he pauses a beat, struggling to meet your eye, “aroused, he needs to see the victim’s fear. Their suffering is their prime motivation. Coming back like this is the perfect way to instill terror. Those women piecing it together, realizing they are at risk, but still being afraid to seek help.”
“They don’t see their targets as individuals. They’re following a script. Anything that contradicts that script tends to increase the danger. The person they are targeting is merely an actress they have cast—” he shakes his head, “forced into this role. ”
He becomes more academic, continuing his description in a detached way.
“It’s important to understand that these offenders don’t respond to confrontation the way other violent offenders do. They aren’t necessarily emotionally volatile. They respond better to predictability. Anything that makes them feel like their control is slipping, anything that contradicts them, can push them further into violence. Will escalate it even more. Challenging their fantasy is dangerous. ”
He isn’t intending to give advice. He doesn’t realize he’s just told you something potentially life‑saving.
Then, catching himself, that he’s been rambling, and has possibly succeeded in frightening you even more than you were before, he starts to conclude, “of course, that varies significantly amongst cases. It’s not something anyone should rely on.”
But not wanting you to feel hopeless, he finally finishes, “but understanding how they think gives us something to work with.”
He hopes you heard the comfort he was trying to offer.
That they weren’t helpless. They had a plan. They understood him… to an extent.
Before you could even begin to formulate a response to all of this, his phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out, his eyes narrowing as he read the message from Hotch.
Hotch: “New lead. Head back to the police station ASAP.”
“I have to go,” Spencer says, standing, drenched in regret.
He didn’t realize you had been talking for over an hour already.
Again, time doesn’t seem to exist in the liminal space between you two.
“But I need—you need to stay safe. If anything feels wrong, anything at all, you call me, okay?” He paused, scribbling his cellphone number on the back, and then handed you his card.
You nodded, accepting his card, though your shaky hand betrayed your lingering fear. “Okay,” you echo back.
You start to walk out of his room when he instinctively reaches out to gently touch your shoulder, “hey, wait up,” he insists, quickly retracting his hand as if he has been burned when he realizes what he was doing, invading boundaries as usual.
You try not to read too much into how his touch sends goosebumps across your skin for the second time tonight.
“I thought you said you had to go…you don’t expect me to stay here in your motel room, waiting for you, do you?”
You feel unmoored, shaken by your discussion, like you had to get back control over the situation. You had been too vulnerable, shared far too much. So you continue on, “what would people think?”
An easy way to feel reassured that you had regained the upper hand.
You had read him right and you felt extremely satisfied watching the flush spread up Spencer’s neck as he stammers out, “I just meant— I need to walk you to your car—you shouldn’t be by yourself,” he finally huffs out.
The area was quiet, and the streetlights cast long shadows over the parking lot as the two of you walk towards your car.
“But really,” Spencer begins, thinking better of it, “it’s not safe for you to be alone. You should let us drop you off at the game. Or back at the sorority house—” he hesitates already anticipating your refusal, “or even the station.”
“Nope. No way,” you respond immediately.
“I’m telling you, I wasn’t attacked two years ago. He isn’t interested in me. This will be fine. And really, if he wanted to come after me, he would’ve done it already” you decline his offer.
Spencer’s stomach churns at your insistence. He wants to believe you aren’t in immediate danger, but everything about this case screams otherwise.
“Text me when you get back” Spencer frowns. He is glad the rest of the team didn’t hear his offer to voluntarily engage in texting.
You nod your assent.
After Spencer ensures you safely get into your car and drive off, he enters his own SUV, carpooling with Morgan and Prentiss to the precinct. His mind spinning with the new information.
He recognized how significant it was that you had chosen to confide in him, and he didn’t fully understand, or he didn’t want to fully examine, the warm feeling it elicited in him.
He was already dreading the inevitable conversation he was about to have with the rest of his team
Spencer stares blankly out the window of the SUV as Morgan drove back to the station, running over in his mind the revelations you had shared.
The list you had provided of women who were attacked two years ago was a crucial start, but you both knew it was incomplete. You told him you hadn’t known that the second woman who was killed had been previously attacked until her roommate shared this with you after her murder.
His mind snags on a different thought.
How awful it must have been to think you had survived the most awful thing that was ever going to happen in your life, just to learn it can always get worse.
Unlike him, these women must have thought they were in the clear. That they were safe now.
He understands all too well now that there is no such thing as rock bottom. It's a misnomer, both geologically and metaphorically. Every time you are sure you have reached the lowest point in your life, that you are at ‘rock bottom’, you find there’s another stratum waiting underneath for you to sink down into. And another one after that. It's an endless descent through fault lines until you end up burning at the core of the earth.
You shouldn’t wonder if things will get worse, you should just question when they will.
“Kid, you’ve been quiet,” Morgan said, glancing at him from the driver’s seat. “What’s going on in that big brain of yours? Daydreaming about your new friend?” He jokes.
Spencer doesn’t even acknowledge his last statement. He hesitated. He trusts Morgan, but he isn’t sure how much he could share without breaking your trust. But he knows he will have to share it all.
“It’s just... something doesn’t add up,” he finally says. “The unsub’s focus is too deliberate. It’s not random. He’s targeting women who were part of something traumatic a couple of years ago, and he’s using that as his foundation.”
Emily frowns. “Something traumatic, like what?”
Spencer hesitates again, but he knew they needed to act quickly.
“There was a series of sexual assaults on campus two years ago. Those robberies Garcia told Hotch about which had been all but scrubbed from the police system? They were much more than that. Most of them were dismissed or misclassified. The women who were attacked kept it quiet, either out of intimidation, fear, or because they didn’t think anyone would listen.”
Morgan’s grip on the steering wheel tightens, immediately understanding the true nature of the attacks. “And you think the victims in our case were part of that group?”
Spencer nods. “That’s what I’m trying to confirm. But if it’s true, it means this unsub has a history with them—or, at the very least, he’s someone who knew what happened and saw it as an opportunity.”
Morgan lets out a low whistle. “Damn. And you think the local PD just swept it under the rug?”
“Seems that way,” Spencer replies.
Emily mutters something under her breath about small-town bullshit.
When they arrive back at the station, it is empty of the locals, and Hotch is already waiting, his expression grim.
“We’ve got a problem,” he starts without preamble.
“Garcia dug deeper into the campus murders. It turns out actually two of the victims made prior police reports, from the string of robberies two years ago. One for a stolen purse out of her car, another for some jewelry out of her apartment. It seems trivial, but this is the most viable lead we have so far on a connection. ” Hotch’s lips pressed into a thin line.
Morgan and Emily look expectantly at Spencer as he steeled his resolve. He starts sharing most of what you had told him. About the true assaults on women two years ago. How everyone who was murdered so far was part of that original group.
He doesn’t yet share the information about their sexuality. For once, no one even tries to interrupt him. None of the team can mask the shock on their faces.
Gideon fixes Spencer with a look of quiet disappointment. The insinuation was clear enough without being spoken, and it stung.
“She just told me!” Spencer exclaims, before Gideon could even formulate it into words.
Morgan sidesteps this outburst and shakes his head, his frustration evident. “So not only are we dealing with a killer and a rapist, we’re also fighting a cover-up.”
Hotch nods. “And it gets worse. The cooling-off period is shortening. If we don’t stop him now, he’ll strike again—and soon.”
“Okay,” Emily starts, joining the group with a stack of files in hand, “but is it even the same guy? Usually when unsubs make the jump from rapist to killer, it’s because they’ve learned not to leave behind any witnesses.”
“And if it’s someone else,” she continues, “How did he even get this information about them? what made him target them for this? We need to start building a second concurrent profile for the rapist and figure out why he chose who he did. ”
Spencer glances at the map you had drawn, still pinned to the wall.
He feels like he was betraying you when he has to share, “All of the students who have been murdered, and the ones we know were previously assaulted, identify as LGBTQ+. Members of the campus’s queer community,” he barely takes a breath before continuing ahead, not letting anyone react to this additional revelation.
“But you are right, I have no idea how he knows all of this, or if it's the same unsub coming back to clean up his original crimes. Was he afraid these women could, or would, identify him 2 years later? What changed to suddenly make him think this now? ”
Hotch steps forward, his tone sharp. “We need to reassess victimology. JJ, coordinate with Garcia to identify any other possible assault survivors. See if they’re willing to talk.”
As you drive back to the sorority house, your thoughts are a chaotic swirl of fear and guilt for not speaking up earlier.
You are happy Maddie was at the fraternity house, protected by her boyfriend, but you have never felt so alone.
And you truly are alone.
It is almost midnight but everyone is still out partying after the football game. Even in the midst of murders and assaults, Friday night football takes precedence over everything. The streets are empty.
You needed to clear your head, so you take the long way home and park your car by the lake to sit in silence.
You thought you were out of the killer’s “comfort zone,” as Spencer had called it in his paper. All the other attacks had happened physically on campus.
Despite Spencer’s clear disbelief, you obviously knew you hadn’t been attacked two years ago, so you didn’t think he was interested in you.
You never considered that you were connected in a way to the original attacks, even if indirectly, through Maddie. That he was escalating, becoming bolder.
And you never knew that you actually had been a target in those first attacks.
You were supposed to be his last victim
Chapter 8: Who's the killer in the crowd?
Notes:
Bigger warnings for this chapter, read with care
Suicide, rape, homophobia, child abuse
Chapter Text
Eight years ago
Life isn’t just pieces falling perfectly into place. For better or worse, it isn’t that random
Not that you felt as if you had much agency at all, that you would ever be so lucky as to single handedly get the opportunity to decide your own fate, but you could take responsibility when it was warranted .
And this? This was all your fault.
At least that is what had been told to you enough times throughout your life that it must be true
It has been spoken with only the unshakeable confidence of someone who is certain they are right
So your parents—well, now just your father— must be right.
Your mom’s death? Also your fault.
Your accidental existence was the final nail in the coffin for your mom who had always found every day to be a struggle. Being inextricably chained to your father was truly the tipping point in a life that had always been hard to live.
Maybe the one place you would acknowledge a bit of chance, a bit of luck if you chose to view it that way, was the fact that you didn’t die alongside her as she had planned.
You never knew if you felt more betrayed by the fact that she abandoned you here or by her abandoned intention to bring you along with her.
You remember hearing once that brevity is a sign of intelligence, but you wholeheartedly disagreed with that assessment. You had seemingly inherited your propensity for rambling from her, so you were very disappointed by the conciseness of the letter she left behind in the end. More a hastily scribbled note. Hardly explaining the bare minimum behind her decision, but surprisingly divulging that had you not decided last minute to go home with Maddie after school, she was planning on taking you with her. But she had reached the end of her rope, and she couldn’t wait for another opportunity.
And so, at 12 years old, you were the one who found her.
And now at 13 years old, your father had exhausted his already short supply of patience for you, for the rumors your behavior caused to swirl throughout the town, and he had arranged for your reeducation.
Leading you to here.
A damp and cold basement floor in an undisclosed location which had been your home now for too many days.
All you ever did seemed to result in more pain for everyone else, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to feel guilty for refusing to comply. Even when your resistance didn’t just affect you, but also the 17 year old boy they tried to force upon you. To “correct” both of you. But your aggressive refusal was met with reluctant acceptance. They could, and did, drug you to try and make you submit, but anything more explicitly violent wasn’t pursued. They felt anything more forceful would not lead to optimal results. Lucky you.
You only learned much later on what they did to the boy.
You had been immediately put in solitary for two weeks straight to ensure your defiant conduct didn’t influence anyone else
You felt you had been spared from the worst of it. That you made it out safe, in one piece.
But you have never been safe. Not really
You had just been afforded a stay in execution. Your fate delayed.
You were always just next in line
Present day
At the station, Spencer stares at the timeline he’s been working on. The pieces are coming together, but something still felt off. He taps his pen against the table, his mind racing.
Sitting in the precinct conference room, surrounded by crime scene photos and hastily scrawled notes, his mind keeps drifting back to you.
He physically shook off the impulse to call you. To check in.
His skin feels like it is crawling. But this time it isn’t his painfully familiar opioid induced pruritus. It was you. It feels like you are underneath his skin
Hotch enters the room, his expression unreadable. “Reid, anything new?”
Spencer snaps back to reality, quickly reviewing the notes in front of him.
“The geographical profile is narrowing his comfort zone, I know we increased surveillance on all the identified victims of the initial assaults, as well as at the points of convergence we identified earlier, but it’s still all too broad. However,” he hesitated, “I think we need to re-examine those original survivor’s routines. Their connections…there’s something we’re missing about how he found out their secrets.”
Hotch nods. “JJ and Garcia are already working on that angle. You think there’s more?”
“I do,” Spencer says firmly. “There has to be something we are missing. He’s not just opportunistic. He’s meticulous. We need to figure out his ritual and how he’s finding them. How he knew about them in the first place. That’s our only hope of predicting his next move.”
JJ walks in with purpose, “hey, guys? We might have a problem.”
Spencer raises his eyebrows expectantly.
“I just finished meeting with the one prior survivor who agreed to speak with me. I think she mainly came in because she’s understandably terrified and wanted protective custody. But she was helpful,” JJ pauses.
“These weren’t very aggressive assaults, not like what he is doing now. He hurt them, but it was a means to an ends. There wasn’t excessive force used. It wasn’t the goal, like it is now. And before, without that violence, it sounds like he struggled to get aroused.”
“Okay?” Spencer begins, confused. “Why is that surprising? Or problematic? We profiled him as a sadist. It wouldn’t be unexpected that without violence he couldn’t experience release. Although—“ Spencer pauses, organizing his thoughts.
“Why even rape in the first place? The rape is secondary to his desire to inflict pain on others. Or more accurately it’s just a part of that. Why would he even try to rape without extreme violence?”
The sexual assaults before served another purpose for him, Spencer knew it, but he struggled to understand what that purpose was. And the longer he failed to grasp this, the more danger those women would continue to be in. He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
“What else did she say? What other details could she remember?”
“She never got a good look at his face. He grabbed her from behind and forced her down. When he struggled, he resorted to,” she paused, never truly habituating to the depths of depravity that humans can sink to, “he resorted to objects at first. And he kept blaming her.”
“That’s not uncommon, for sadists to taunt their victims,” Prentiss interjected.
“No,” JJ shook her head, “it was more than that. Different than that. He sounded detached. Almost clinical. She said he acted like this was unavoidable and he himself was powerless to stop it.”
None of them knew what to make of that.
JJ walked away to settle her into protective custody, leaving Hotch, Prentiss, and Spencer to mull over this new information.
Spencer continued to fidget with his pen, his eyes flicking around the room, struggling to put this confusing case into a cohesive package.
“This might be a leap,” Spencer begins, “no this definitely is a leap, but what if…what if our unsub is gay?”
All eyes turned towards him, surprised.
“Just stick with me. Not to oversimplify, but if we look at the behavioral patterns with projection, displaced self-loathing, ritualistic control, it conceptually aligns with what we’ve seen in Dahmer.”
“Framing it within that archetype, he was a closeted gay man who was incapable of reconciling his sexual identity. He targeted young men, in part, because they represented aspects of himself he couldn’t integrate. The murders were a form of displaced self-loathing and an attempt to exert control over the parts of himself that terrified him.”
He paused for a moment, ensuring he hadn’t allowed his thoughts to spiral on ahead before even he could process them.
“Now looking at our unsub, what if he is just expressing his internalized homophobia? That conflict might manifest as aggression toward individuals who are openly embracing their sexuality. Well,” he halted, “Openly for a place like this.”
“His victims may represent a version of sexual freedom or authenticity that he cannot accept in himself. In other words, it’s not necessarily sexual desire driving the killings. It’s projection of internal conflict and self-directed shame onto an external target.”
“If we are saying this is the same unsub, how else can we reconcile raping without extreme violence, and then extremely violent murders without rape?”
Hotch studied him for a moment, considering his words, which shifted their whole profile, then nodded in acceptance.
“Good work. Keep at it. But Reid, keep an eye on yourself. You’ve been pushing hard.”
Spencer nodded absently, his focus already returning to the case.
What if they are all wrong. What if the rapist and murderer are two entirely different people. Or what if in fact was the same person, but he has still failed to understand him entirely.
Today was difficult, and he is craving.
He absentmindedly thinks about attending a Narcotics Anonymous meeting when he gets back home, but yet again fear of professional repercussions quickly convinces him out of that.
As he scans the timeline on the whiteboard, a thought strikes him like a bolt of lightning.
People struggling often seek refuge amongst each other.
On the surface, none of these women really ran in the same social circle, and sure, they were all queer, but they had no evidence any of them had been romantically involved with each other (not that he expected that to be easily evident) but what if there was more to it than that?
This clearly isn’t the most welcoming environment. What if they had all sought each other out as just support?
He grabs his phone and dials Garcia.
“Garcia, I need you to cross-reference all the victims—both those who were murdered and the ones who survived the prior assaults. Look for anything else that connects them beyond the campus. Clubs, classes, events, anything.”
“Already on it, my favorite genius,” Garcia chirps, her voice bright despite the grim task, and despite the fact that they had truly exhausted this line of inquiry.
“No,” Spencer pushes, “you have to look beyond the surface, beyond the obvious. Please.”
Garcia could sense his desperation, “fret not, boy wonder, I won’t let you down.”
Spencer lowers the phone from his ear while letting Garcia work, and turns back to the map.
He stares at the overlapping circles you’d drawn, your careful handwriting marking each point of interest. His eyes landed on a spot that had been circled multiple times—the campus library.
The library had been the scene of Abigail’s murder, but it is also a central hub for the campus. The unsub surely is familiar with it, and might have used it as a place to observe his victims.
“Reid!” Garcia’s voice burst through his phone. “I’ve got something. Almost all of the women routinely went to the library every Wednesday evening.”
“That’s not much of a connection,” Reid notes sullenly, even though he had begun to suspect the library was somehow the key, “surely they went there to study all the time?
“Au contraire,” Garcia retorts, “not everyone is as studious as you, and some of these women didn’t step foot in the library any other day than Wednesday night. And they would only stay an hour. None of them have so much as entered the library since the killings started. They stopped even before Abigail was found there. The only library events I was able to find for that night is a poorly advertised bookclub, formed—you guessed it—a little over two years ago.”
Spencer’s mind races. Garcia was right, this was much more than a coincidence. This was the connection they had been looking for.
If the unsub knew about the group, he might have used the meetings to identify and then stalk his victims. But still, how could he really know what they were doing? On the surface, the group read as a bookclub, even if it was clearly more than that. It must have just been a safe space for these women.
He steps out to share the information with the team, but before he can start Hotch interrupts him.
“Reid.” Hotch’s voice broke through his thoughts. “We need to talk.”
Spencer followed him into the supply room, not bothering to hide his questioning look, as Hotch closed the door behind them.
“JJ just found something else out while speaking to the victim who came forwards,” he starts quietly.
“The sheriff’s daughter. Her roommate, Maddie? She was involved in the assaults two years ago. There’s no way she didn’t know about this, you saw how close they are.”
Spencer’s jaw drops. He understood why you had hid this, that you had to protect your friend, and he begins to think his initial impression of your relationship as being more than friends and actually romantic, had been spot on.
“We need to go back to her,” Hotch demands.
But before they even stepped out of the station, Spencer’s phone lit up with your name.
You shouldn’t have done it. You should have gone straight home. You should have accepted Spencer’s offer for help, for protection.
But you had vastly underestimated the danger you were in.
As you finally drive away from the lake and back to the sorority house, the night feels heavier than usual.
The roads are quiet, the only sound the steady hum of your tires on the asphalt.
You glance at your phone mounted on the dashboard, noting the time. Just past midnight.
Everyone should be coming back from the frat house soon enough; the sorority house wouldn’t be empty.
You were both reassured that you would be safe while also dreading the intrusion into your peace and quiet.
You absentmindedly flicked on the radio to both keep you company and keep you awake, humming along to the familiar tune.
You aren’t sure when you really noticed the headlights behind you.
At first, you didn’t think much of it. The town was small, and it wasn’t uncommon for cars to travel the same route.
But as you made turn after turn, the car stayed behind you, always at the same careful distance.
Your grip on the steering wheel tightened, your heartbeat quickening.
Was it a coincidence? Or was someone following you?
You shake your head, trying to dispel the paranoia. This case was getting to you.
Still, you can’t help but test your theory. You turn down an unfamiliar side street, one you never used.
The headlights follow.
Real, paralyzing panic finally begins to creep in.
You reach for your phone, fumbling as you dial Spencer’s number. The line barely rang once before he picked up.
“Hey,” he answered, his voice carefully soft, “are you okay?”
“I think I’m being followed,” your voice shakes.
“There’s a car. It’s been behind me for a while.”
“Where are you now?” Spencer asks, his tone sharp, immediately alert.
You give him the name of the street, your voice trembling as you glance in the rearview mirror.
The headlights were still there, closer now.
“Keep driving,” Spencer instructed, forcing down his own fear so he can help you.
He visualizes your location and runs the calculations on where you should go. Factoring in time of night, population density, and distance, he instantly isolates the safest nearby location you could realistically reach. In time. Before it was too late.
“Don’t stop for anything. Get to the church. You are .4 miles away. We’re coming for you.”
Suddenly, the car behind you surges forward, ramming into the back of your Jeep.
You scream, gripping the wheel as the impact jolted you forward. The phone slips from your hand, falling to the floor.
“Spencer!” you cry out, unsure if he can even still hear you.
The car hits you again, harder this time, sending your Jeep skidding off the road. You fight for control, but the vehicle swerves, tires screeching as it finally rolls over.
The impact slams your head against the steering wheel, leaving you dazed.
Everything feels blurry, distant.
You dangle upside down, watching as your blood drips to the roof of the car.
You struggle to lift your head, your ears ringing.
Through the cracked rearview mirror, you see the other car finally pull up alongside you.
A figure steps out, silhouetted by the headlights.
“No,” you whisper, trying to move. You reach for your glovebox. For something to protect yourself with. But your body feels sluggish, your movements uncoordinated. You fumble with the latch.
The figure reaches your Jeep, yanking the door open.
A swirl of emotions crashed through you as the truth settled in.
His familiar uniform. The red light from your taillights glinting mockingly off his badge.
You recognized your attacker.
A hand grabs your arm, dragging you out. You kick and scream, but injured as you are, your strength was no match for his. You certainly have a concussion. Your previously sprained wrist now really felt broken. It hurt to breathe.
“Let go of me!” you scream, your voice hoarse.
He pins you against the side of the car, a sharp pain stabbing your side as you struggle.
“Wait please, why are you doing this? You don’t have to do this,” you raise your open palms in supplication. To show you aren’t a threat.
The man doesn’t speak. He simply began to hit your head against the frame of your jeep until you lost consciousness.
Darkness begins to creep in at the edges of your vision.
The last thing you see is the man’s cold, emotionless eyes before everything went black.
No longer the scared, desperate young 17 year old boy you once knew him as.
The deputy. Liam.
Spencer’s heart races as he holds his phone crushed against his ear long after the call is disconnected.
We’re too late.
He turns towards Morgan, who was driving their SUV, and directs him in a detached voice, “head to East Oak Street.”
Morgan doesn’t waste a second, flipping on the sirens and accelerating down the dark road.
“Do you know what kind of car he was in?”
“No,” Spencer says, frustration lacing his voice. “She didn’t have time to say before he hit her. She screamed, and then the line went dead. Hurry!”
Spencer clutches his phone in his sweaty palm, willing it to ring again, willing you to be okay.
But deep down, he knows the worst has come to pass
When they reach the street, Spencer quickly spots your Jeep upside down in the ditch.
“There!” he shouts.
Morgan skids to a stop, and both agents leap from the car, their weapons drawn.
Spencer’s heart sinks as he takes in the scene: your driver’s side door open, the interior empty. The passenger side window shattered, bloodstained glass sparkling in the headlights.
“She’s gone.”
Morgan scans the area, his expression grim. “Tire tracks leading away from here,” he points to the road.
Spencer’s mind finally quiets, overwhelmed by the painful sensation of his chest tightening with fear.
He failed. He had lost again.
Chapter 9: I'll be dead before the day is done
Notes:
this chapter specifically has allusion to rape (nothing graphic), homophobia, references to child abuse, parental abuse of children , death and resuscitation, drowning
Chapter Text
The drive back to the precinct is silent, save for the hum of the tires and Morgan’s fingers tightening and loosening in inconsistent intervals on the steering wheel.
Spencer sits rigid in the passenger seat in stark contrast to how his knee had bounced uncontrollably on the drive to you. When he still had hope.
Morgan is talking but Spencer can’t make out the words. His hearing feels muffled, drowned out by the high-pitched ringing echoing through his head.
He helplessly replays the last words he heard from you. The fear in your voice. The hopelessness.
“I should’ve kept her with me,” Spencer says abruptly, his voice tight. “I knew she wasn’t safe.”
Morgan keeps his eyes on the road. “We couldn’t have predicted this, Reid. You offered protection. She said no. That’s not on you. And we didn’t even know for certain she was in danger. Thinking like this won’t help her.”
Spencer doesn’t argue. He just stares out the window.
This wasn’t an escalation. It was a complete break from the unsub’s pattern, and that terrified him.
He had no idea what fate awaited you.
The precinct is a flurry of activity. Hotch standing at the head of the conference room issuing orders with his usual calm precision, JJ coordinating with local law enforcement to set up roadblocks, and Garcia’s voice floating through on speakerphone.
“I’ve been combing through traffic cam footage,” Garcia continues, “It’s slow going, and this is not exactly a tech-y town, but I’ve got eyes on every major road out of it.”
“We need to move faster,” Hotch replies, his tone clipped. “Why change his MO? He’s never taken someone to a secondary location before.”
Gideon leans forward, his face dark. “Why take her out of his usual comfort zone? What’s different about her?”
Spencer nods, forcing his racing thoughts forward along that line of inquiry instead of letting them paralyze him. He needs clarity. Focus.
“He’s getting bolder,” he starts, “but this isn’t impulsive—it’s still calculated—“ he pauses, questioning aloud now, “there could be a relationship…some kind of connection between her and him?”
He hesitates, struggling to slow his thoughts before they fracture completely.
Did he see her talking to the FBI? To him?
Did he do this?
Spencer swallows and forces himself back onto steadier ground, working only with what he knows before he gets distracted catastrophizing.
“He’s targeting LGBTQ+ women who were part of the same group on campus,” he continues, voice more even now. “But she wasn’t attacked two years ago.”
That much he believes is true.
He hopes it is.
He isn’t certain of anything anymore.
“It’s possible he views her differently, either as a symbol of the group, or as someone he’s been fixated on for a long time. This must be more than the fact that she is in a relationship with Maddie. Although it’s possible he’s going after her because he can’t access Maddie right now. But I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”
Morgan chimes in, “we need to figure out where he feels safe enough to finish what he’s started.”
Garcia’s voice breaks in again. “Wait! I’ve got something—a traffic cam picked up a truck headed away from the car crash. And I have enough to run a plate.”
“It’s—it’s Liam—the deputy—it’s his personal car,” she mutters, shocked.
“Where is the truck headed?” Hotch seeks to refocus the stunned group.
“It’s heading West, out of town.”
Hotch’s eyes narrow. “What’s West?”
“Not much,” Garcia replies. “Desert, mostly. A few abandoned buildings.”
Spencer’s stomach drops.
The desert gives him privacy. No one to hear you scream, no one to intervene. He’s isolating you completely.
He brutally tortured his victims without abandon when they were essentially in public.
What is he going to do to you when he gets you completely alone?
You wake to the smell of dust and the sharp sting of an open wound on your temple.
Your wrists are raw where they’re bound tightly together with rope, and you struggle to reorient yourself, taking in the back seat of the truck you’re slumped in.
The hum of the engine pounds in your head, punctuated by the occasional bump in the road that jolts your skull against the seat.
White-hot fear sears through you as you slowly—then all at once—piece together what happened.
The crash. The man dragging you from your Jeep. The moment you realized who he was…it all comes flooding back with a fresh wave of panic.
You try to move, but it only forces your bindings to cut deeper into your skin.
“You’re awake.”
You jump at the voice which cuts in from the driver’s seat. Cold, detached.
You crane your neck to see his face, to confirm that he really is Deputy Liam, but the angle makes it difficult.
It doesn’t make any sense for him to be doing this, not when you know what you do about him.
You have no angle. No plan. No scheme to get out of this. So when you ask him, “why are you doing this?” too terrified to be humiliated by how your voice trembles, you are honestly asking him without any hidden agenda.
He doesn’t answer immediately, letting the question hang quietly in the air, simply driving further into nothingness, the landscape outside turning more desolate with every passing mile.
Eventually, he forcefully exhales through his nose, like the question mildly amuses him.
“You ever notice,” he says finally, eyes still fixed on the road, as if he can’t be bothered to spare you a glance, “how some people always seem to end up in the same kind of trouble?”
Your stomach drops.
“Doesn’t matter where they go. Or who’s around. It finds them anyway.”
He finally looks at you in the rearview mirror then. Brief. Assessing.
“People like you don’t learn,” he adds. “Someone has to teach them. That’s why you keep ending up here. You just don’t get it. None of you ever did.”
“Get what?” you press, grasping for anything, any avenue that might help you, trying to keep him talking.
His knuckles tighten on the steering wheel. “You ruined everything. You—you thought you were untouchable. But you’re not.” He pauses, “you thought you were better than everyone else. You were—are— so selfish it's disgusting,” he turns his head to spit out the window before continuing, “What you are? It’s wrong.”
What we are, you think bitterly.
In a desperate attempt to convince him not to do this, to not continue with whatever horrible plan he has in store for you, you begin to plead with him.
“I have no idea what you are talking about. Please just let me go. I won’t tell anyone.”
You both know that’s a lie.
Your head is still too foggy with pain to recall anything Spencer had told you about him. That pleading won’t work. That it only serves to excite him more.
The car jerks to a stop, throwing you forward slightly.
He jumps out of the truck, slamming his door before roughly throwing open yours.
The moon is your only guide as he drags you out. Your feet scraping against the rocky ground, stumbling and struggling to remain upright.
With your father, when he got into those moods, crying and begging only served to further spur him on, disgusted by how weak you were.
You had quickly become skilled at suffering quietly in order to survive. You were able to keep swallowing the pain doled out to you in heaps with a stoic, empty calm. But this was different.
You had never truly believed your father would kill you. You’d feared it, of course, but the pattern had always seemed to be the same. He wanted you to hurt, not to disappear. Pain was the point, and the pain was endless.
It was easier then to not let yourself be consumed by the pain, and to not even put on a brave front, but to become so hardened, so numb, that it no longer really got to you.
But now?
Now you understood, with a terrifying clarity, that the pain would end.
That was the part that frightened you most.
You weren’t so certain you were going to survive this.
“Please, don’t do this,” you beg your voice cracking. “You don’t have to do this,” you repeat endlessly. Hopelessly.
He doesn’t respond, hauling you, really dragging you at this point, as you try and dig your feet into the ground.
You find yourself waiting for nature, for the Earth, to take you in as one of its own and protect you. No such respite is afforded to you, and he continues to pull you toward a dilapidated structure looming in the distance.
An abandoned shack, tin roof partially collapsed and rattling in the wind, half-buried by the shifting sands.
Garcia, her voice carrying over speakerphone, continues to command the attention of the room. An omniscient presence controlling the chaos in the precinct.
“The car just passed the last major intersection heading west. There’s nothing but open desert beyond that point. And before you ask, yes, I already did a search on Liam, and he owns no properties out there.”
Hotch turns to Spencer. “Where would he take her?”
Spencer shakes his head, attempting to unravel the tangled braid of thoughts twisting through his mind. But focus remains elusive, slipping frustratingly through his fingers. Each attempted calculation crumbles under the weight of his worry for you before he can reach a conclusion.
He pauses, silently cataloging his perceived failures, a litany of “what ifs” looping relentlessly.
He wasn’t good enough. At one point he believed he had been. Good.
He wishes he had met you then. He would give anything to have that version of himself here to help you. That’s who you needed. Not…this. Not him. Not now.
But that man died on the floor in a freezing cabin in Georgia.
Eyes weighing shut, he draws in a shaky breath, gathering the remnants of his strength and courage to funnel them into a single, unwavering purpose. Finding you.
Fear had its moment. Panic and desperation too. But now he had to silence it all.
“Pull up a satellite map of the area”
He frowns, eyes scanning the screen.
“An abandoned structure would make the most sense, of course. Somewhere he’s scouted before. He wouldn’t risk being exposed. He must be familiar with it.”
Silence weighs heavy in the room as they wait for Spencer to turn it all around as he so often has.
He can feel their belief in him starting to falter, he’s not who he used to be, he doesn’t have all the answers, when he spots it.
“That’s it,” Spencer says with certainty, pointing to a mining shack, “He’s taking her there.”
JJ looks it up and confirms, “it's been out of use for at least 20 years. It’s isolated. No cell service even. It’s about an hour out from us here.”
“How can you be sure?” Prentiss questions, “There are plenty of abandoned structures out there—defunct roadside motels, gas stations, rest stops, ranch outbuildings—why this one?”
Spencer flushes with frustration and a non-negligible degree of panicked uncertainty.
They don’t have any time to spare, and he fears he will have to spend time convincing everyone until Garcia cuts in, “Boy Genius is right. Liam’s grandfather used to work there before they shut it down.”
“Let’s go,” Hotch orders.
The heat is oppressive as you stumble your way into the shack, the unsub continuing to shove you forward.
You try to catalogue your injuries. Just to give yourself something, anything, to do other than just thinking about what he was about to do to you.
Your wrists throb, and your vision swims both from your concussion as much as from fear. Your side hurts so deeply every time you breathe in that you wonder what he must have broken.
He grabs your hair and fists it into a makeshift ponytail, ignoring your cries of pain, and throws you down on the ground on top of the rusted tools scattered inside.
Tears blur your vision, and you finally let them fall. Despondent now that you have given him the satisfaction of breaking you.
You have finally reckoned with the certainty that help will not come. No one is going to save you. Not in time.
“You think this will fix anything?” you mutter lowly, barely processing the words before they tumble out.
“That this will make you feel better?” You don’t necessarily want to antagonize him, but you realize with a sharp clarity that your only chance is to do something different than what the women before you had done.
You’d like to believe that is the sole explanation for your resistance. That you were still holding onto a semblance of hope that you could maneuver yourself out of this.
But you knew the truth. This was the end. Nothing you said or did was going to change your fate. It wasn’t up to you, and really it never had been.
At the very least, you wouldn’t make it easy for him. You’d shove the truth in his face while you still had the chance.
He pauses, his eyes narrowing.
“It’s not about me.”
“Of course this is about you. You think I don’t remember you from that summer?” You gasp, your breath coming in short, pained pants. “That awful, awful camp we were both at? You were older but I know it was not the same for you—it was worse. I remember your baptism. When they held your head under water just a little too long. That you almost died and they had to do CPR,” you pause trying to catch your breath, “over and over again until they finally got you back.”
“Do you still see what they made us do when you close your eyes? Because I do. Trust me, this won’t fix you. There’s nothing to fix, we aren’t broken,” you finish, weakly.
Your words cut him like a knife.
He roughly grabs your face, pulling it closer to him, “and whose fault is that?” He snarls at you.
“You never made it easy. You never even tried. It was only ever about you. All of this—All of this—is because of you. You couldn’t just play along. That would be too simple. And you never cared about who got caught in your wreckage.”
By this point you are sobbing so hard it becomes even exponentially harder to catch your breath.
“But I couldn’t face you. Not yet,” he continues.
“I wasn’t ready two years ago. I had to work my way up to you. But now? I heard your great news. I knew you were leaving here forever. I couldn’t let you slip out of my fingers. It was time to clean up this filth once and for all,” he grunts out
He settles his weight on top of you, pinning your arms above your head against the wooden post at your back.
The last thing you note is how the rough wood splinters against your back.
You try not to remember what happened after that.
Chapter 10: This is as good a place to fall as any
Notes:
this is really the last chapter to this story! the next one will be more an epilogue
specific warning for this chapter: (not explicit) sexual assault, death, gun use, suicidal thoughts kind of
Chapter Text
When you wake up again, you have no idea how long you’ve been out. Half-unconscious. Repeatedly ripped out of peaceful nothingness. Forced back to life over and over again until he finally decides to end it all for good.
Your hands are still tied. You are in a state of undress. He is lying next to you, motionless.
You know he’s just asleep but you fantasize, just for a moment, that he’s dead. You feel like the smoldering hatred bursting out of you should be powerful enough to kill him with just your mind. You have never felt hatred like this before. It feels like it should be physical. A tangible thing to grip onto and wield. Not an invisible, meaningless force of energy.
You again take stock of your injuries. Updating the inventory. At least the ones you are willing to acknowledge, even just to yourself.
It hurts to swallow from how he’s strangled you, but at least you can still swallow at all. He didn’t crush anything there.
Your ribs, if there were just contusions before from the crash, are definitely fractured by now from when he brought you back…at least 3 times now? You’ve lost count. But you can still breathe, albeit with more difficulty than before, so you don’t believe anything has punctured your lungs.
You don’t know how much longer you have until he finally wakes up. At this point, you are starting to hope this will be the last time and he won’t force you back, gasping through a throat that feels shredded from the inside.
Your breathing is wheezy. Too loud. With great effort, you manage to slow down your breaths so you can listen to the desert life around you. Your mom, when she had the energy, would often take you out hiking. You were never sure if the bigger draw was actually getting to be with you, or if it was just an excuse to get out of the house away from your father. You recounted scorpions, vultures, and too many snakes to remember. Where were they now? What you wouldn’t give for one scorpion sting to set you free.
In the silence, you finally recall your last conversation with Spencer. You cling to his words like a lifeline. Even if they won’t save you, even if he can’t save you, at least you could be comforted by his words. By the memory of someone who saw you, who knew you, and who didn’t seem to think you were wrong. Or broken. Who treated you like what you had to say was important. Like you were important.
You aren’t afraid to die. Not anymore. But you refuse to let him be the one to kill you.
When he rolls towards you, you are ready.
With Spencer’s words from his hotel room guiding you, you become the perfect actress. You slot yourself so neatly into the role he has written for you. You say what you need to say to trick him. To convince him that you understand why he’s done the terrible things he’s done. That he was right to do them. That he is entirely in control of the situation. That you are fixed now, thanks to him. And he is just desperate enough to believe you. Too grateful and astonished that this has finally gone right, after so many attempts and with so many other women, to question it.
Just desperate enough to loosen your bindings to move you into a better position before he starts in with you again.
He’s left you lying on the dirty floor.
You wish you were outside. You wish you could see the stars.
Anything other than the wood-slatted walls of this shed, warped by the desert heat.
You aren’t sure where he’s gone, or what he’s doing, but you know this is your only chance. Or maybe you’ve been deprived of oxygen for so long you’ve been able to delude yourself into thinking you even have a chance.
You flatten your hand, thumb pressing tight against your palm, and twist your wrist against the loosened rope. The rope scrapes your skin raw as it barely shifts. You do it again. And again. Until your wrists are bleeding, raw, and your arms are trembling with exertion. Finally, a small space opens up, big enough for you to push your thumb through. You force your thumb joint inward, pain shooting from your thumb up your arm, and shove your whole hand through. The loop slips free in a rough, burning slide. You grab the rope with your freed hand, yank downward, and twist until your other wrist slips out.
You slowly get up, adding to your running list of growing injuries a broken ankle.
Everywhere on and inside your body hurts. But you have to try.
You certainly can’t run, so you know you have to hide. But to what end? You quickly staunch that traitorous hopelessness before it can take hold of you.
You look around for a weapon, any weapon. You glance over at the rusty tools and see a wrench in the corner. It isn’t great, but it’s all you’ve got.
With it clenched tightly in your fist, you hobble out of the shack, anxiously scanning your surroundings for him. You hear his movements on the other side of the shed.
Where can you even hide here? It’s a desert truly in the middle of nowhere.
There are mountains and trees out in the distance, but they are much too far. Forget about getting there in time before he discovers you are gone; you aren’t sure if, in this state, you could make it there at all.
You feel like you are being insane for choosing this spot, and it takes all of your courage to do it, but you willingly get back into his truck. You crawl into the truck bed and cover yourself with the tarp you find inside. You wait. How long has it been? It feels like hours, but you know your sense of time is hopelessly distorted.
Then you hear it. His yell of anger when he re-enters to find you gone.
“I’ll kill you for good this time!” He promises. He stalks around the truck, moving to get into the cab.
It was an okay plan. It was the only plan you could think of other than ambushing him and fighting back, but you knew that was a fight you were not strong enough to win.
You might have gotten away with it if he hadn’t noticed your blood on the back of the truck bed, shining black in the moonlight.
He grabs your ankle, your broken one, and pulls you towards him.
You scream in agonizing pain. You don’t think you have any fight left in you, and every muscle in your body aches and is screaming for relief. For this to finally end.
The faint sound of sirens reaches your ears. Salvation is so close. His head snaps up, and for the first time, you see uncertainty flicker across his face.
You seize this opportunity to smack him across the face with your concealed wrench, satisfied at the crunch it makes as it breaks his nose. Even if this is the last thing you ever do, you are proud of yourself.
You barely register the pain when he throws himself on you, choking you one last time.
Unconsciousness threatens to pull you under yet again when you defiantly tighten your grip around the wrench and thrust it into his side, finally succeeding in knocking him off balance and forcing some distance between you two.
The reassuringly familiar black SUV skids to a stop outside the truck, seeing the fight going on, dust kicking up in a cloud around the tires.
Spencer was jumping out of the door before it fully stopped, his gun already drawn as he and Morgan approached the truck.
“FBI!” Morgan commands. “Stop! Put your hands up!”
You look up at your monster and can see into his whole life through the expressions that flicker across his face. He had already decided this was where his story would end. He had always wanted it to end with you.
He shifts to launch himself back on top of you when Spencer, unblinking, empties almost half his magazine into him.
Finally, it all stops.
Spencer rushes towards you as Morgan pulls the unsub’s slumped body off of you.
“You’re okay,” Spencer says, his hands shaking uncontrollably as he moves to hold you. “You’re okay. You’re safe now.”
Tears spill down your cheeks as you collapse into his arms, your body trembling with relief and exhaustion, his arms tightly encircling you, soothingly rocking you.
But Spencer’s grip tightens slightly as he whispers, “I promise. It’s over. You’re safe now.”
For the first time, you believe him.
When the ambulance finally reaches you, Spencer’s face shifts, his expression tightening in worry and confusion. What was he supposed to do now? Protocol dictated he should step back. He had already thrown protocol to the wind. You were no longer in danger, but he realized with a pang that he desperately did not want to leave your side. Panic and insecurity whispered in his ear that you may not even want him around at all.
He hovers above you, feeling insane. Out of control. Nothing new for him as of late.
He directs a searching look at you.
“Don’t go,” you mouth to him. Unable to speak due to the swelling around your larynx.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he immediately promises you.
Spencer stays by your side as the EMTs assess your injuries. You flinch when they touch the raw marks on your neck, and he murmurs softly, “You’re okay. You’re strong. Let them help. You’re doing such a good job.”
He doesn’t know how he’d found the words, or the calm to speak them. His mind was a cacophony of guilt, fear, and anger, not at you, but at himself for not preventing this, and at the man who had done this to you. That man was gone now, but the damage and destruction he left behind lingered in every shiver of your body and in every shallow breath you took.
The EMTs loaded you onto the gurney, careful of your broken ankle, wrist, as well as the deep bruises across your torso, concerning for numerous broken ribs.
Spencer climbs into the ambulance without hesitation, ignoring the questioning look the paramedic shot him. How could he hope to explain his actions to anyone else when he already couldn’t explain them to himself.
He settles on the narrow bench beside you, his knees brushing the stretcher as he leans forward, his face etched with concern. You open your mouth as if to speak, but nothing comes out but a hoarse breath.
Spencer leans closer, his hand hovering over yours as if unsure whether to hold it. “I’m here,” he says softly. “I’m not leaving.”
Your lips twitch, as if trying to form a smile, but it quickly dissolves into a grimace as a wave of pain ripples through you. He reaches out instinctively, his fingers wrapping gently around yours. It wasn’t a gesture of pity but one of reassurance, of connection.
“You saved me,” you mouth, your gaze locked onto his.
“No,” he says firmly, shaking his head. “You saved yourself. You fought him, and you survived.” His words were steady, but his throat tightened as he spoke. He meant every word, but it felt like he was trying to convince himself as much as you.
The ambulance lurches slightly as it turns, and the paramedic begins taking your vitals again. Spencer’s hand stays in yours, his thumb absently tracing circles on the back of your hand.
A tear slips down your cheek. Spencer gently wipes it away with his free hand, his touch featherlight and cautious.
“I’m sorry,” you mouth, your breath hitching.
“Don’t,” his response is immediate, his tone firm but kind. “You have nothing to apologize for. You’ve been through so much, and you still found the courage to help us. You’ve done more than anyone could have asked.”
Spencer bites back the plethora of apologies of his own that he knows he eventually needs to lay bare at your feet. But he knows how you would receive them now, and he refuses to hear you telling him that it's ok when it’s not. Or trying to make him feel better when he doesn’t deserve it.
The ambulance slows as it approaches the hospital, and Spencer feels a pang of dread. This was the moment where he’d have to let you go, to trust that the doctors would take care of you, that the team would protect you. But as the gurney rolls toward the emergency room doors, you cling to his hand, your grip surprisingly strong.
Spencer doesn’t hesitate. He steps out of the ambulance, matching the pace of the gurney. As they wheel you into the hospital, he doesn’t let go of your hand, anchoring you to the one constant you felt you could trust in that moment.
You close your eyes to block out the bright lights blinding you from overhead and finally allow yourself to rest.
The ICU room is quiet, save for the steady beeping of the monitors attached to you.
Spencer sits by your bedside, his hands fidgeting with the hem of his sweater. His eyes track the thin strip of light that filters through the curtain, the heavy clouds drifting outside, slow and indifferent. Shadows move across the walls. He catalogues every feature of your room.
Anything to distract himself from you. But still, his gaze lingers on your face. Taking in every bruise and abrasion with a mixture of guilt and relief.
He would not be making the same mistake he did with Elle.
He knows now, far too well, from his own experience with Tobias Hankel, that there is no winning. There is no gratitude to be had for things not being even worse. The injuries are proof you survived, but long after they heal, you will still feel their mark upon you. Just because your monster is dead, it doesn’t mean you are safe. Not really.
When the doctors questioned you, you refused to acknowledge the extent of what had happened to you. Spencer had to beg you to allow them to do a full exam. To see the extent of the damage. The medical staff only stopped trying to kick him out, over your objections, when he finally succeeded. He held your hand the whole time.
You hated the C-collar they had forced you into, and barely allowed them to finish clinically clearing you before you began pulling at the velcro straps with your good hand. You end up only needing surgical fixation of your ankle and wrist. Your rib fractures, although you had several, were all anterior and non-displaced. Small blessings. You begrudgingly but faithfully use your incentive spirometer at Spencer’s behest.
He tries to push down the information he inadvertently gains from the nurses. He really didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help but overhear them discuss how on your x-rays, you had many new fractures, of course, but you also had almost the same number of old fractures and in various stages of healing, dating back to your childhood. Asymmetric closure of the epiphyseal plate. Malunion. Signs of being improperly healed. Obvious evidence of the abuse he already gathered you had obviously suffered.
Spencer spirals again into self loathing. He was wrong. So wrong. His profile far off base. He hadn’t been a clear cut anger excitation rapist. He didn’t just want to torture his victims for the sake of sadistic pleasure. He specifically wanted to punish them. And absolve himself of the same “crimes”. If you hadn’t understood that, hadn’t made that connection, you would already be dead.
You stir, groaning softly as your eyes flutter open. Spencer immediately straightens, leaning forward. “Hey,” he murmurs, his voice laced with concern. “How are you feeling?”
Your lips part, and you wince at your efforts to talk.
He quickly hands you a whiteboard, and you write, “like I got hit by a truck.”
Spencer cracks a small smile, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
You try to sit up, but Spencer gently places a hand on your shoulder, stopping you. “Take it easy,” he urges. “The doctors said you need to rest.”
You hurriedly erase your whiteboard.
“Is it over?”
Your concussion is blessedly blurring some of your memories of what had happened, but it certainly wasn’t erasing as much as you would later pretend it had. You would eventually find yourself able to partially share your story, not pretending nothing had happened, the way you currently were for the official police reports, simply to protect yourself. A fruitless attempt to regain some agency. But you would still maintain a fiction that while you knew it had happened, you mercifully didn’t really remember any of it.
There was no mercy.
Spencer responds without hesitation, his jaw tightening. “Yes,” his tone firm. “He’s gone. He can’t hurt you or anyone else ever again.”
You let the weight of his words sink in. Relief washes over you, but it is tinged with the haunting memories of everything you’d endured. You nod your head, closing your eyes briefly before they shot open again.
You don’t think it matters anymore. He was dead. Case closed. But you wanted to tell him everything now. You didn’t want to feel like you were still holding back any secrets. You began to frantically write, your handwriting almost illegible.
“He knew us. Mustve been watching when picking up extra security shifts at the library.”
Spencer nods in acknowledgement.
You then finally begin to tell him the tale of how you first met Deputy Liam, all those years ago.
What they did to him. What they did to you.
The door creaks open, and JJ steps inside, her expression soft but serious as you scramble to erase the whiteboard.
“Hey,” she greets, her gaze flicking over to Spencer with an indecipherable look before settling on you. “How are you holding up?”
You manage a weak smile, not even attempting to speak.
JJ nods, stepping closer. “I just wanted to let you know we’ve contacted Maddie. She’s safe and on her way to see you.”
Your eyes fill with grateful tears at the mention of your closest friend. “Thank you,” you mouth.
“She’s been worried about you,” JJ adds, her tone gentle.
“We have all been worried about you,” she continues, sharply, but not unkindly, looking over to Spencer again.
Spencer’s jaw clenches, his hands tightening around the edge of his chair.
JJ’s words carried unspoken yet obvious truths. How close they’d come to losing you and how Spencer had barely held it together during the search. How he had burned through every notion of professional propriety with how close, how invested, he had gotten with you.
As JJ leaves, silence fills the room again, save for the still steady music of the machines. Spencer leans back, his gaze fixed on the floor.
Spencer meets your gaze, his eyes filling with an emotion you can’t quite place.
“You’re incredibly brave,” he starts, his voice thick. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as strong as you.”
What was left unsaid was that you had already survived so much, even before this nightmare began.
A faint flush rises to your cheeks, and you look away, unsure how to respond.
Strong? You think derisively. That is the last word you would use to characterize yourself right now.
You scribble hastily, “Not strong. Broken.”
“You’re not broken,” Spencer says without hesitation, leaning forward.
“What happened to you, any of it, it’s not your fault. And it doesn’t define who you are.”
Tears sting your eyes, but you blink them away to finish telling him what Liam told you. The blame he had cast upon you for all of this. The knowledge that if you had yielded back then, been easy for once in your life and just accepted things without pushing back, 6 people would still be alive.
“But it’s not true,” he begins softly. “It’s his fault. And he's alone. He chose to do this. What happened that summer happened to both of you… That’s no excuse. And you don’t have to face this alone. We’re here for you. I—I’m here for you.”
The sincerity in his voice catches you off guard, and you find yourself nodding despite the doubts that linger in your mind, settling into the deepest crevices of your psyche.
Before Spencer can continue, the door opens again, and Maddie rushes in, her eyes red and swollen from crying. “Oh my God,” she breathes, hurrying to your side.
You smile weakly, reaching out to her.
She envelopes you in a careful but firm hug, her tears spilling onto your shoulder. “I was so scared,” she chokes out. “I thought—”
“I’m okay,” you hurriedly write, reassuring her.
Spencer stands, giving you and Maddie some space. “I’ll give you two a moment,” he says gently, his gaze lingering on you for just a second longer before he steps out of the room.
With Maddie here, he feels out of place. Extraneous. He doesn’t belong with you.
As he leans against the wall in the hallway, he lets out a shaky breath. The image of you, bruised and battered but alive, replays on a tormenting loop in his perfect, unforgiving mind.
Six days later, Spencer is finally forced to say goodbye.
The rest of the team had left on the jet the day before. He should have already left by now. Instead, he was taking personal time and a commercial flight back on his own.
Mercifully, no one mentioned the almost shockingly absurd boundaries he was blurring by staying with you.
He has no idea how Hotch is planning on explaining away the whopping 6 shots he fired off, but he suspects he will be leaning into his failure last year to pass his firearms proficiency examination….they’re going to take his gun away.
Gideon’s disapproving looks said more than a chastising reprimand ever could.
Maddie still had to keep up appearances. To your clear dismay, that hadn’t changed. She hadn’t changed. She couldn’t—wouldn’t— stay by your side 24/7.
Spencer reasons with himself that in her absence, he couldn’t leave you alone.
But in all honesty, you still had no shortage of visitors.
When the revolving door of your sorority sisters, classmates, and cheer team would all leave for the day, Spencer would stay up late reciting, at your request, Crime and Punishment to you from memory until you fell asleep.
He tried to entice you with more pleasant options, The Hobbit, A Wrinkle in Time—he even offered up Wuthering Heights as a barely improved alternative— but you were insistent, and he wasn’t going to police you. Even if allowing you to wallow in thoughts about guilt and moral responsibility felt reckless.
This is how he had avoided you breaking down into tears when you became frustrated you couldn’t read because of your concussion. You couldn’t focus, and the words on the page floated away into blurry obscurity.
But that moment in time had come to an end. He finally had to leave.
It felt heavier than it should have, the weight of unsaid things filling the space between you.
The morning was crisp, sunlight streaming through the hospital room window as you sat propped up against the pillows, watching him pack his few belongings.
“You’ll be okay,” he declares, glancing over his shoulder, his hands folding a sweater with meticulous, almost obsessively precise, care.
You nod, your throat tight. “I’ll try,” you manage to croak out. A massive improvement.
He fully turns to you then, his expression a mixture of encouragement and something softer, something he wasn’t ready to put into words. Something he wasn’t sure he ever could.
He knows the road ahead will be difficult for you, but he also knows one thing for certain. Even if it is wrong, he’ll be there for you every step of the way, if you’ll let him. For now, though, he’ll give you the space you needed, even as he struggles to ignore the pull to stay by your side.
“I’ll check in,” he promises, knowing you were used to being let down. Afraid you would see his leaving as just another one of your inevitable abandonments.
“Anytime you need me, just call… Or text,” he offers up, “Anything. Whatever works.”
You manage a small smile at the thought of him texting, though your chest ached, for reasons you refused to examine at the thought of him leaving.
You knew he couldn’t stay forever. This couldn’t last forever. Whatever this was.
“It doesn’t even have to be a need necessarily. Just in case you want to argue philosophy. Or discuss the latest Doctor Who episode…” he continues, almost shyly.
Always feeling like he was still treading the delicate line of professionalism with you. As if he hadn’t long blurred, crossed, and now entirely lost sight of that line and intentionally demolished it into dust.
He lingers at the doorway, his hand gripping the frame.
“Take care of yourself.”
“You too,” you reply, trying to sound steadier than you feel, but miserably failing. Both of you are choosing to pretend that the way your voice shook was just from residual swelling and misuse.
“I’ll see you when you make it to Baltimore,” he says with a certainty about your future which you most definitely did not share.
And then he was gone.
The final click of the door closing behind him marked his absence and left the room far too quiet.
Chapter 11: I'm not giving up
Notes:
The epilogue!
This has been super fun. I do have more ideas for future stories with them down the line spanning all the seasons although that may be too ambitious.
Warnings this chapter: alcoholism, drug use, references to eating disorders, cadaver lab mention...
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Baltimore greeted you with the sharp bite of early fall. The air was an unfamiliar but refreshingly brisk cold, and the bright colors of the drifting leaves seemed to promise better days ahead.
Stepping out of your car, you pause to gaze up at the towering buildings of the medical school campus. Their domineering height felt less intimidating and more invigorating.
Your decision to see this through—to actually pursue medicine—hadn’t come lightly. It had often seemed like a daydream. A delusion. Some unachievable future you had conjured up to dissociate from your miserable life and pretend you could be someone who could make a difference. But now it was real, and it had been fueled by a newfound determination to reclaim your life and to find a purpose beyond the lingering, open wounds of your past.
The first few weeks were overwhelming. Lectures, labs, and endless studying left little time for anything else. But there were moments, fleeting and profound, when you felt like you were exactly where you were meant to be.
You never thought you would find a home amongst people the way you had in college with your sorority, confusing as your sense of self had been back then, but the group of residents from the hospital that you found yourself living with proved you wrong.
Late one night, as you sat at your desk surrounded by textbooks and empty coffee cups, your phone buzzed. You glanced at the screen, and a small smile tugged at your lips when you saw Spencer’s name.
He had kept his promise, and he frequently checked in on you as you wrapped up your senior year.
Sending you encouraging texts as you fumbled your way through balancing your finals along with your physical therapy to regain the strength you had lost.
Single-handedly ensuring you didn’t fail your philosophy course.
What you didn’t fully understand was how much you had helped him in turn.
You quickly deduced he had some kind of addiction. Alcohol, drugs, you weren’t quite certain at first. Years of proximity to someone who substituted dinner with whiskey had trained you to notice the traces it left on a person. From the moment he met your gaze during your first meetin, you clocked them in him. The tremor. Irritability. Fidgeting. You didn’t know how that worked, an FBI agent with an addiction, but you supposed it was similar to a sheriff with alcoholism. You knew you couldn’t just ask him about it.
He had seen you at your worst, both physically and mentally, but those first few months he still felt distant from you. Elusive. A part of him locked away somewhere solid and controlled. You didn’t know how to reach him without overstepping. It felt as if he had unfettered access to you, to your thoughts, but this was not reciprocated. You still had to tread carefully with him in return.
Until that night when he called you in the midst of his worst withdrawal.
He had tried again and again to stop, only to relapse each time. And every time, the withdrawals felt more brutal than the time before.
He had called you out of desperation. His team let this carry on in silence. Gideon had vanished, leaving behind a note far too reminiscent of the one left by his father over a decade before. He never heard from Elle again after she left.
He had no one else and he was dialing your number with shaking, sweaty fingers before he could convince himself out of it.
You instantly knew what was going on. That he didn’t have the stomach flu as he claimed. He said he was egregiously ill, had thought of you, and thought your voice might help. That he was giving you a jumpstart on your medical education. When it came down to it, none of this was really a lie.
You stayed on the phone with him all night. Talking about anything and everything. You learned more about him in that single night than you had over the 6 days he spent at your side in the hospital.
Part of you felt guilty, like you were taking advantage of him, taking in all his secrets, but you hadn’t been the one to call him. Sometimes you worried how much of that conversation he even remembered. If he knew how much he had told you about his family, his childhood, what it was like going to college in another state by himself at 12 years old, having to institutionalize his mother.
He never brought any of it up again, after that night, and he had kept enough secrets for you that you didn’t hesitate to hold a few of his.
As the sun rose for both of you, he sincerely thanked you and apologized for keeping you up all night.
“That’s what friends are for,” you had said earnestly. “I’m only sorry I’m not there in person to help.”
“You’ve done more than you could ever believe,” he said gratefully, with the certainty that he would have given in and used that night if he had tried to suffer through it alone.
You believed him.
That was months ago. Just before you moved to Baltimore and started medical school.
Neither of you addressed the fact that you now lived just an hour apart and still hadn’t seen each other in person yet.
While it was an oddity for more than a couple of days to go by without hearing from Spencer, you hadn’t heard a thing from Maddie since the day you finally fled Texas
You were used to people leaving. You knew it had been your fault. you were too much, too loud, too difficult to love for long. People could handle you in small doses. They liked it when they just saw your perfectly polished veneer. But when they had to interface with your rough interior, when they got an unfiltered glimpse of who you really were, well it was only a matter of time before they realized they had to abandon a sinking ship.
This was always going to be the way your story with her ended. That nebulous relationship between the two of you had always been doomed to dissipate into nothing. As if you had never known each other at all.
You aren’t surprised, but you can’t deny you are disappointed, when the save the date card is delivered. Maybe you actually are surprised that you were invited. Valentine’s Day. And not even for the upcoming year, but for the one after. Great. You get to have Maddie and Jason’s perfect day looming over you for a year and a half.
You don’t allow yourself to dwell on a relationship that barely was, and you find Spencer more than willing to fill that Maddie-shaped hole in your life. You weren’t going to make the same mistake twice.
If to be known is to be seen, whatever people see in you must be monstrous.
Spencer:
How’s Baltimore? Have they inducted you yet into the esoteric mysteries of medicine? Am I correct in presuming that if you had cured cancer, you would have let me know by now?
You huff a laugh, smiling to yourself as you quickly typed a reply.
You often felt like you had to edit yourself with other people. Meticulously crafting responses to their messages in the notes app on your phone before risking accidentally sending a message before you are ready. Waiting an appropriate amount of time to respond. Not too fast or you’ll seem desperate, like you don’t have a real life and are just tied to your phone. Not too delayed, or the conversation will fizzle out. You didn’t feel that with Spencer.
You:
No, not quite yet. Still working on basic survival first before tackling glioblastomas. Unfortunately for me I don’t have ur skill of reading 20k words a minute and still retaining every last one. I’m lucky if I can get 5 hours of sleep a night w the amount of material I have to study </3.
The reply comes almost instantly. No one would have guessed that Spencer had never texted before meeting you. You tried to keep the “text-speak” to a minimum with him, but, as expected, he adapted quickly.
Spencer:
That sounds about right. I can send you some research on the long-term effects of sleep deprivation if it helps.
You:
Thanks, but I think I’m living it firsthand. Feel free to use me as a case report.
The conversation flows easily, as it always does with Spencer. He updates you on his work with the BAU, careful not to divulge specific details, not wanting to fill your head with more monsters, but offering enough to let you know he was okay.
In turn, you share snippets of your life in medical school, your classes, the room you were renting, and the ridiculous number of acronyms you were expected to memorize. Your wild new housemates and how they accepted you into their group.
It became a routine. Late-night texts frequently turned into phone calls, each one a small reminder of the bond you’d forged after the chaos that had introduced him into your orbit, of what you had once thought was the wreckage of your life.
Spencer’s encouragement became a steady presence in your life, his belief in you bolstering your resolve even on the toughest days.
The months passed by, and Baltimore truly began to feel like home. You found a rhythm, juggling the demands of medical school with moments of quiet reflection. Realizing how lucky you truly were. Spencer’s name remained a fixture in your phone, his messages a bright spot in your day.
One evening, as you walk through the icy city after a long day in the cadaver lab preparing for finals, your phone buzzes with an incoming call. Spencer’s name lights up the screen, and you answer with a smile.
“Hey,” you start, your shaky breath visible in the chilly air.
“Hey,” Spencer replies, his tender voice reaching across the distance. “How’s are you?”
“Exhausted but good,” you say honestly. “I think I’ve spent more time in the library than in my apartment this week.”
“That’s how you know you’re doing it right,” Spencer says, a hint of amusement in his tone. “Anything interesting happen?”
You hesitate, then decide to share the moment that had been on your mind all day.
One of your classmates, barely even an acquaintance, as she was known for her unforgiving razor-sharp tongue, had passed out in your anatomy class. You had been close by and were one of the ones to help catch her as she slumped over.
Afterwards, in the hallway outside the lab, the two of you sat silently on the floor as she sipped from the cool water bottle your instructor had conjured up for her. You reached into your scrub pocket and retrieved your small container of Vick’s vapor-rub with a chagrin smile.
“Seriously, it's the only way I don’t throw up from all the formaldehyde,” you offered up, knowing this admission risked painting you as fragile. “I definitely would have ended up on the floor a good five times by now without it.”
She then burst into tears, sharing that her grandmother had just passed away last weekend, and tomorrow was the funeral she was planning on skipping so she wouldn’t fall behind, feeling unable to ask for any leeway during midterm week and not wanting to seem weak. Coming in today felt less like a study session and more like a brutal reminder of death.
You were the first person she was able to talk to about this, as she had made the mistake of falling in with a bunch of gunners who would definitely capitalize on this chink in her armor.
Spencer is quiet for a moment, and when he speaks, his voice is soft, reverent, “That’s because you have a way of making people feel safe. It’s one of your greatest strengths.”
His words settle over you, warming the cold edges of your insecurities.
“Thanks,” you murmur quietly. “That means a lot” coming from you.
As the conversation drifts to lighter topics, you feel a sense of peace you hadn’t known in a long time. Spencer is miles away, but his presence remains a constant, a thread that connects your past to your present…and maybe to your future.
When you hang up, you tuck your phone into your pocket, warmed by the sound of his voice with a smile still lingering on your lips.——————————————————————————————————————
Unlike every other major holiday which dredges up complicated emotions and seems to serve the sole purpose of forcing various religion associated traumas onto you—Halloween feels magical.
Sure, as Spencer would animatedly remind you over the phone, Halloween does have its roots in religion, but that has nothing to do with you. You have no negative memories associated with the Celts. To you, it had always been a safe holiday. Simple.
It was freeing, really. You already are hiding behind a mask in your every day life, but on Halloween it just becomes a bit more literal.
You wouldn’t say that you found horror movies soothing, but they just weren’t as scary to you as they were to everyone else. Maybe you had experienced enough horror in your day to day life, even before last spring, that ghosts just can’t compete.
You aren’t surprised that Spencer shares the same love of Halloween, although he was more hesitant to be as introspective as you had been regarding the whys. He focuses on the interesting historical and sociological implications of the holiday.
You acknowledge that as someone with a baseline higher level of anxiety you experience reduced emotional reactivity to fearful stimuli—emotional blunting—and can enjoy a good scare in a safe environment.
Spencer is spending this Halloween back in your home state of Texas, but in Dallas, nowhere near your minuscule town out in the west. You wonder if he was able to find a moment of spooky fun with his team.
You never really needed an excuse to set yourself free with the colorful liquid that resides in tiny plastic bottles, but Halloween at least made it socially acceptable. You were young, and it wasn’t a problem as long as everyone else was also drinking. Even if you were solidly drinking them all under the table.
Your peers who frequently had to duck into the bushes to empty out their stomachs after a night along frat row normalized it enough.
This year, you were definitely ready to numb the sharp edges, and maybe bolster yourself enough to find someone safe to reassure you that you weren't as odious as you knew you were. But to your dismay, and maybe relief, your new housemates were not having it. They were the only people you were even somewhat close with here, and they were surprisingly uptight about the fact that you weren’t 21 yet. All leaning into the same worn out excuse about how they would face professionalism consequences if as medical doctors they encouraged illegal debauchery in one of their medical students.
You thought you would be able to get them to acquiesce to at least one drink, but you suspected they somehow knew with you that you only clocked out once you were either vomiting too much to reliably hold any more down or were sprawled unconscious in a bathtub. There was no in between.
Which is how you find yourself sipping on a Shirley temple, surprisingly refreshing, and readjusting the hood of your little red riding-hood costume, swaying to the beat of some pop song while an endless stream of hospital personnel filed into the living room.
You weren’t used to these situations without a little liquid courage, so you were happy when an incoming call from Spencer gives you an excuse to slip outside and regroup.
“Hello?” You try to call out over the thumping of the bass as you make your way to the backyard.
“Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt a serious study session,” You can hear the smile in his voice
“Ha,” you dryly laugh, “sorry to disappoint. No schoolwork tonight. And I had to find some other way to bide my time instead of watching old movies.” You hope he realizes you are teasing and aren’t really trying to make him feel bad for blowing off your plans to rewatch “Wait Until Dark” together…remotely… to instead catch what ever new monster had resurfaced in the hell that is Texas.
He snorts. “I actually have some interesting news, but really I don’t want to tear you away from a bunch of doctors dressed up as doctors.”
You hope he can feel your eye roll through the phone.
“Go on,” you encourage
“We got a new team member!” His voice rises in pitch as he starts listing off the accolades of one David Rossi at whirlwind speed.
You know how painful Gideon’s abandonment has been, and you are grateful he is so enamored of his replacement.
Winter in Baltimore is alive with holiday market lights and the soft hum of bustling streets. The city is a patchwork of old-world charm and modern energy, and you find easy comfort in its vibrant rhythm. Yet, one thought begins to nudge at the corners of your mind.
You miss Spencer. You aren’t sure if you are allowed to admit that, but you hadn’t actually seen him in over six months.
The near daily texts and phone calls aren’t enough anymore.
It isn’t enough to watch Doctor Who episodes at the same time while having him on speakerphone.
You miss his quiet presence, the way his mind worked, and the unspoken understanding that had grown between you. So, one evening after finishing your last final exam, you send him a message.
You try not to think too hard about it. What if everything is different now? It felt safe keeping him at arm’s length, protected by the screen of your phone. You don’t have the courage to call and ask.
You:
Hey, I was thinking… Any chance you’re not off on the other side of the country and would want to have a genuine ‘Doctor Who’ watch party together tomorrow night?
Feeling the anxious need to clarify the obvious, you quickly followed with
Like, in person.
You triple-texted, feeling the need to justify this.
I need a distraction while I wait for my final exam scores to come in.
You weren’t forced to cringe over your awkwardness for long, as his reply came back instantly.
Spencer:
Yes, definitely.
You smile, feeling a flutter of anticipation.
You:
My place?
You offer up, even though you were a little worried about him meeting your new group of friends. You had all trauma bonded quite quickly, and you loved them, but you know they are a lot.
And they have all taken to calling Spencer ‘Doctor FBI,’ and relentlessly tease you every time a smile crosses your face after a text from him lights up your phone screen. They don’t understand that you were just really good friends.
Most of them had no idea of the circumstances you came from. Not just about your home life, but the attacks at your college. On you. Some—Stephanie and Beth—easily guessed it. Not with any real specificity, but they grasped that something had happened, and they vaguely understood what that was. Their constant support and understanding meant everything to you.
Stephanie was your closest friend, and Beth felt like a wise but sometimes reckless older sister. She protected you fiercely. You hadn’t considered yourself exactly sheltered before, but you realized fairly quickly how much of the real world you hadn’t been exposed to back in your small Texas town.
Spencer:
Deal.
The next day arrived both too soon and dreadfully fast. You sit by the door awaiting his arrival. Then you realize how pathetic that looks, and you quickly move to the couch. Still watching the door. Nerves overflowing with equal parts excitement and anxiety, tipping from one into the other in rapid succession.
When Spencer rings your doorbell, you rush to the door to greet him before you can chastise yourself for being over-eager.
You swing open the door and took a good look at him.
He looks the same as you remembered. His lanky frame is wrapped in a light sweater, layered with a winter jacket, his trusty messenger bag is slung over one shoulder, and his honeyed curls fall softly over his face. But there was something different, too. Not just the length of his hair, or the surprisingly fashionable sunglasses perched delicately on his nose. A subtle confidence in the way he carries himself that definitely wasn’t there before. He seems less fractured, more sure.
“Hey,” you greet quietly, your breath catching in your throat.
“Hey,” he echoes, his smile soft but genuine.
You both stand awkwardly for a minute, rocking back on your heels, until you catch Stephanie doing a bad job of spying on you. It was enough to snap the two of you to your senses.
Flustered, you call her over to introduce them.
She thankfully behaves herself when talking to Spencer, only saying that she’s heard so much about him, and what a shame Beth isn’t here to meet you too.
“And…that’s enough of all that! We have some TV to watch!” You all but yank him away before she can embarrass you.
“My room?” You question, and Spencer tries to ignore the implications of going to your bedroom. Alone. With you. He nods.
“Sorry, I didn’t really think this through,” you frown as you realize you had no seats, just your bed. “That’s fine though, we can share!”
Spencer nearly chokes on his own spit.
You misunderstand his hesitation, and reassure him, “What? I don’t mind the street clothes. I don’t sleep with the comforter anyway. Make yourself comfy!”
Eventually, the awkwardness subsides, and finally, the conversation starts easily, flowing through updates about your lives. He talks about recent cases (vaguely, as always) and his colleagues, the exciting addition to his team with Rossi, and he trips over his words as he explains his involvement in the creation of the BAU.
You share stories from everything from path to cadaver lab, your insane gunner classmates, laughing over the absurdity of med school life.
At one point, you realize you’d been talking for several hours without pause. Spencer’s gaze is fixed on you, his expression warm and attentive.
You both knew the invitation to watch TV was just an excuse to see each other again.
“What?” you ask, a touch self-conscious under his scrutiny.
“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “It’s just…you seem happier. Lighter, maybe. It’s good to see. I—I’m proud of you.”
Your face warms with the praise. You hesitate and fight against the urge to say something sarcastic or snarky in return, to diminish the weight of what he’d said.
“I think I am,” you admit slowly as you let his words sink in.
“It’s been hard, but… I feel like I’m finally moving forward.”
His smile widens, and for a moment, the world outside your bedroom fades away.
“After everything,” he begins quietly, “ I wasn’t sure how you’d bounce back. But you have. And it’s incredible… You—you’re incredible.”
You look at him, the sincerity in his voice catching you off guard, further spreading warmth throughout your body.
“I don’t think I could have done it without you,” you say honestly. “You were there when I needed someone the most.”
Spencer fully turns to meet your gaze, his eyes soft but intense.
The moment stretches, unspoken words hanging in the air. Then, as if by unspoken agreement, you both slowly turn back to the TV, letting the comfortable silence settle between you.
You are too distracted in each other’s presence to notice the snow beginning to fall.
It is 9 pm when the episode ends, and you both are regretting his imminent departure and wishing you had more time. Little did you know there was a near blizzard ongoing outside.
“I’ll walk you out to your car!” You promise, wanting to extend your time in his presence.
He softly calls your name, pointing to the window.
“What?” You say, worried, until you turn your head and see that it had begun to “Snow!” You exclaim with a childlike glee.
Of course, this is the first real snow you have ever experienced. The first time it has been more than a soft dusting that refused to stick. It far exceeds what you had seen on TV.
“Come on!” You exclaim, yanking him hard to the front door.
“What? No. You can’t possibly go out in this!” He tries to reel you in.
“Spence,” you pout, “you are being a major downer on my first snow day!”
He rolls his eyes, fighting to cover the warmth that had spread across his face at the nickname, “Okay, well, bundle up! And don’t say I didn’t tell you so if you get sick. You are going to freeze.”
Your grin splits your face. You ignore the question of how he is going to possibly get home to D.C. in this blizzard in favor of hurling snowballs at each other.
“Ow!” He gripes as one pelts him straight in the face.
“Oh, please,” you tease, until he all but tackles you into the snow.
He obviously isn’t thinking clearly and didn’t anticipate how his actions would leave him lying on top of you. His face deeply flushes, and you both know it isn’t frostbite.
“Sorry,” he clamors to get off of you. “I—sorry.”
You laugh, carefree, dismissing his apologies, and spread your wings out, making a snow angel. Finally, the two of you trudge back inside.
“Hot chocolate?” You offer.
“Yes, please,” he eagerly accepts.
You try to ignore how domestic this felt, you preparing your hot chocolates, as he scrapes together a meal.
“How are you even surviving here! Don’t you eat?” He realizes his misstep at the look that flashes across your face. Another secret he had guessed, that you had hinted at, but he wasn’t sure if it was true.
He quickly redirects, “not—not that I’m much better! My fridge is much worse off than yours, I guess in our line of work, a fridge full of groceries would just go to waste.” his smile is tight, and you avoid his gaze.
You sit on the couch downstairs together, pointedly ignoring your nosy housemates, who must have been extremely dehydrated based on how many times they come downstairs for a glass of water.
“Well,” you carefully broach the predicament you both were in, “you obviously can’t go back home tonight.”
He starts to stammer out reassurances that he would be fine, that the snow was slowing down, despite the fact that he doesn’t even like driving in ideal weather conditions, and he had only braved the open road for you.
You give him a sharp look that cuts him off.
“Spencer. How many people die a year from driving in inclement weather?” You arch an eyebrow at him.
“Well,” he slowly begins before the facts start tumbling out of him, “according to the Federal Highway Administration, an average of 1,836 deaths and 136,309 injuries occur annually due to snowy and icy roads. But that’s just in America.”
You can’t stifle your laugh. Of course, he knew.
“And you want to join them? I know how much you love statistics, but I don’t want you to become just another number.”
“Fine,” he relents. “I’ll take the couch.”
“Uh, I don’t think you realize how dangerous that is, that you will be subjecting yourself to the whims of my housemates, and their….various bed partners?” You awkwardly squeak out. “You don’t want that, trust me. You can stay in my room,” you offer.
“Okay,” he accepted. “I can take the floor.” He decides.
“I’m more than okay sharing a bed, but if you’re more comfortable with that, sure!” Your face warms as you make the offer.
Just as when he first met you, he would go on to debate this decision in the difficult years to come. Was it now? Where he abandoned all pretense of boundaries and you became inextricably intertwined? He hadn’t been acting professionally with you. Not for a long time, if ever. It was undoubtedly inappropriate for the friendship you both had cultivated. Transference. He tried to remind himself daily. But this was a new level. A new boundary you were going to cross that he just knew you couldn’t come back from.
For once, he ignored the cacophony of guilt-laden thoughts bouncing around his head and allowed himself to do what he wanted. He deserves that.
“I mean, if you can promise to at least try to share the blankets,” he jokes, reluctantly accepting.
You silently moved through your nighttime routines, after Spencer retrieved his go-bag from the trunk of his snowed-in car.
He had seen you at your worst, back at the hospital. This was the first time he had seen you stripped of all your layers of protection, but safe and healthy instead of battered and bruised.
He is abruptly reminded of the first morning he met you. Hair bedraggled, wrinkled ‘Doctor Who’ t-shirt, a riot of glitter. It hadn’t even been a year, but so much had changed.
As he settles into bed next to you, not so subtly placing two of your throw pillows strategically between you, and is greeted with a soft, “goodnight,” he wonders how he ever got so lucky.
The following morning, you both are reluctant again to say goodbye.
Your final housemate, Beth, returns home from the hospital in the morning from an overnight shift just as you were both trudging downstairs to scrounge up a rudimentary breakfast before parting.
You are glad to finally get the chance to introduce them. As it stands, they are the two most important people in your life right now.
She doesn’t make any teasing comments to either of you, but smiles to herself quietly. She knows she had judged the situation correctly from your prior discussions about him. Despite your fierce protestations on the matter.
She saw not only how you look at Spencer, but mainly how he looks at you.
She catches Spencer’s arm before he can follow you into the kitchen.
“Is everything alright?” Spencer questions in a high-pitched voice.
“Sure, sure. I just wanted to say something before you head out. And I trust you can keep this to yourself. Don’t bother trying to deny anything; it’s easier if you just listen to me,” she hurries out.
“I might have only met her earlier this year, but she is very important to me. She’s become very important to all of us.”
She pauses a moment, allowing Spencer a second to feel gratitude that you had found a good group of people here who clearly care for you.
“But,” she continues, allowing a sense of dread to build in the pit of his stomach, “it's clear that she is a bit naive. Too trusting for her own good.”
Spencer begins to frown. He deeply disagrees with that characterization of you.
“And if anyone tries to take advantage of her, they are going to have to answer to me.”
He tries to speak, to refute her assertion, but she only continues on louder, “I’m not even saying it would be intentional. You just have to realize how vulnerable she is. She isn’t like us,” she ends.
Spencer doesn’t know how to respond. What were we like? Had he been that obvious?
She was right, though. You aren’t like most people. Your experiences opened you up to the darkest corners of the world, but that doesn’t mean you were any more prepared to face them.
He doesn’t think he expected too much of you, or believed in you too much, but was there a selfish part of him that had overestimated what you were capable of just to reassure himself that this was a possibility?
You pause from dutifully attending the toaster to peek your head out of the kitchen doorway.
“Are you guys coming in, or what?”
“No, I’m going to crash. Brutal night. Get home safe, Spencer,” she shoots him a pointed look.
He rapidly nods, thoughts running in a clouded tangle over what she had said.
Finally, after eating a slightly sad breakfast of toast (no butter), a granola bar, but truly excellent coffee, Spencer knows it is time to go. Hotch had already called, telling him to make his way back into DC as soon as the roads were cleared.
“Thanks for coming this weekend,” you say, your voice warm. “It was… really good to see you.”
You struggle to convey how much it had meant to you. How much he means to you.
“Anytime,” Spencer replies, his smile small but genuine. “I mean that.”
For a moment, neither of you moves.
Then, before you can second-guess yourself, you step forward and tightly hug him. Engulfed in the scent that was purely Spencer. Coffee. Wool. Weathered book pages.
It was brief, but the warmth of his embrace lingers long after you pull away.
“Goodbye, Spencer,” you say softly, stepping back inside.
“Goodbye,” he echoes, his voice steady, though his gaze remains on you until the door closes.
You lean back against it, your heart beating just a little faster than before, aware that something has shifted between you and Spencer. You just couldn’t—or wouldn’t— name it yet.
But you feel free, safe, as you allow yourself to imagine where this might lead. Hope is dangerous. But with him, it feels less reckless. Simply inevitable. He makes the darkness a little lighter. Less absolute.
For the first time in a long while, you allow yourself to believe that better days are ahead and that healing isn’t something you have to blindly stumble through on your own.
Notes:
Let me know if you have any ideas for future stories with them!
Also the situation with living with the residents is modeled after grey's anatomy, but I wanted to have new and different characters that I could control