Archive of Our Own

There is an inherent soullessness to his bedding this morning. It is a textile; nothing more: cotton woven into a large piece of fabric, lifelessly crumpled atop a mattress. It serves no other purpose, failing to offer any warmth or comfort as is usually expected.

Not this morning.

Within a reluctant pocket of the cotton bedsheets, Spencer’s curled form lies naively expectant of another to hold him close: parallel by his side, draping their arm over his waist, welcoming his back into the warmth of their chest and steady heartbeat. Ensconced in these sheets, they maliciously smother him with a pathetic mould of what he’s been stripped of. He’s been denied the opportunity to truthfully understand what it must feel like to be swaddled by someone. To be clung to. To be embraced. To synchronise heartbeats and breaths. To grow as a single organism only to shrink again, and then again, and then again.

But he’s merely a cold foetal lump, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, formlessly through a black hole. He feels like he’s starting to lose oxygen and dizzies as he curls inward tighter on himself. Clenching his eyes shut, he struggles through the nauseating journey, flinching every time sparks of warmth streak past him. Each streak is like searing shrapnel soaring past his face, thrust from an explosion of thoughts and memories. Of hypotheticals and what-ifs. The concept of being held. The idea of touch. Concepts, theories, ideas. But nothing tangible flew past, nothing actually buried into the soft skin of his cheeks. Bearing only somatic scars, each streak of heat skated off his cheek as he plummeted further.

The assault of shrapnel ceases once he enters the depths of the black hole. There’s a distinct and familiar lack of warmth here as the ammunition of thoughts and memories have long escaped the suffocating vacuum. He’s floating aimlessly in the bone-chilling cold, body wound tight with shaky hands clutching at his chest. When he slowly blinks open his eyes, the void clears to reveal his true confinement: a simple sheet of cloth. Unlike the black hole, it’s bright now, and he can see a relentless brightness looming just through the blanket’s fibres.

He sighs.

A hand slinks out from his chest to scratch at his scalp, only for his fingers to pull and catch on his knotted and unkempt curls. Yanking his hand away, he hisses in frustration and goes to reach his arm out, fingertips blindly feeling for an edge to the blanket. Lifting the veil reveals the window beside his bed, and the dominant sun thrusting itself into his room.

Squinting, he roughly drops the sheet as he’s overcome with an uncharacteristic fury at the crevasse in his curtains actively encouraging the sun to spear through his apartment. He shoves an involuntary scream back down deep into his chest as his hands come up to cover his face. After allowing a few seconds to regain his composure, he drags his palms down his cheeks before hastily grabbing the blanket and throwing it across the room. He’s seething when it catches on itself and tangles around his hand and wrist. Furiously shaking it off with a grunt, he goes to cross his arms over his chest and shoves his hands under his armpits. Grimacing, static starts to sharpen and scream through his temples, as the radiation of the sun pulsates through his window.

He never thought it was possible to escape a black hole, but every time he’s removed his blanket, the light’s always been there. He’s never really thought too deeply about how he feels about that. He’s not sure if he’s pleased that his tumultuous journey is over and he’s reached the light, or that he mourns the nothingness offered by the perceived eternity. No matter, because he’s out now, and his body is again exposed to the musty air of his bedroom.

Exhausted, slow and methodical, he unfreezes himself from his foetal position and haphazardly levers his stiff body to sit at the edge of his bed, planting his feet onto the warm wood below. He takes his time looking down there for a moment, taking in the malicious heat infecting his socked feet and metastasising into his legs. He makes a face in disgust, just shy of spitting at the floor, before going to stand.

Now upright, feet rooted deep into the floorboards, the static persists. Behind his eyes and now just audible in both ears, he firmly presses the heel of his right hand just below his brow bone in an attempt to counter the buzz. With a breath, he painfully blinks forward, and as he now looks back across the room, he feels himself ease back into his body. It’s as if he were a mere passenger situated firmly in a seat nestled within the confines of his mind, passively waiting for some sort of inertia. He’s observing, passively surveying the scenery as if he were on a train chugging through mountainous terrain: beyond his reach and behind thick glass, he sees the mountains and grass beneath the sun out there. But here, no such things exist. Instead, he’s exploring a generous one-bedroom apartment, where grass is ageing wooden planks and mountains are bedding, clothes, and miscellaneous belongings littered around the space. There is sun here, though, albeit unwelcome and selfish; bright and invasive as it is, it’s failing its duty to provide true comforting warmth.

In this moment, he is a mere passenger confined to a hollow vessel, one that is cold and still and stiff. It’s just here. It just exists. Stationary. No indication of any momentum anytime soon. And it’s bearing witness to a devastatingly neglected bedroom strewn with once-valued belongings.

And then he remembers.

Ah.

Right.

Oh, but of course.

That’s right.

She’s not here anymore.

She’s gone now.

He drops his head, nodding his chin down a few times before slowly closing his eyes, shutting out the bleak scenery before him. A heavy breath wheezes out of his lungs.

That’s right, she’s gone now.

No longer with us.

Dead.

Maeve is dead.

Ceasing his nodding, he feels a dam of tears welling in each of his eyes and throws his head backwards. Looking up at the mouldy ceiling without really seeing anything, he sighs shakily, both hands mirroring the movement. He blinks the tears away, shrinking the dam’s reserves.

Maeve is dead now.

And he won’t be seeing her again.

Ever.

That reinforced thought wallops him breathless. His insides sink down until he’s too heavy to move. It’s not always been like this, though. Every Sunday for the past ten months, he’d been giddily breezing around his apartment, not daring to quash the bubbling variants of idealistic hypothetical futures dancing around his thoughts as he eased himself to sleep. He liked Sundays; he always slept particularly well.

But these Sunday evenings served as the primary ammunition for the explosions at the centre of his personal black hole. These memories made up each piece of shrapnel that sparked the brief heat that never quite latched on as he tumbled by them. Falling, falling, falling- each time he swore his face would wind up covered in thick, grizzly scars when he emerged from his sheets. But no such evidence ever actualised. On the rare occasion he’d catch his reflection in the mirror- only mistakenly looking up when washing his hands- nothing but untidy scruff and blemish-free cheeks met his gaze. He never looked any higher than his cheekbones, so much so that it’s unlikely he could even remember what colour his eyes were now. But just before he stops looking, there is no scarring. There was never any shrapnel, there were no sparks, no actual black hole. Just death.

Looking straight ahead, fixating on a slight tear in his wallpaper directly across the room, he feels an extremely vivid albeit brief memory pierce through one cheek.

She’s on the floor and she’s not moving and there’s blood so she’s not moving because she’s on the floor in blood. Nobody is doing anything because there’s blood and she’s lying in it on the floor and she’s not moving. She’s dead. There’s a gun on the floor and blood on her body which isn’t moving because she’s dead. She’s dead. Maeve is dead. She was killed. There’s blood. So she’s not moving because she’s dead lying on the floor in blood.

The memory slices through his other cheek and dissipates into the distance. Instinctively, he brings his hand to his cheek- there’s nothing there. No exit wound on this one, nor an entry one on the other side. There will never be any scarring, despite how painful both the optimistic hypotheticals and devastatingly realistic memories that pierce his skin will be. No matter how often he’s sucked down that black hole, there won’t ever be any physical evidence of the ferocious onslaught.

The static in his head is interrupted by a real sound: of a rhythmic, syncopated clicking echoing up the stairwell outside. His posture overcorrects itself and his head shoots toward the sound, vision clearing enough to practically see through the wall. Eyebrows furrowing and eyes fixed, his body moves forward before his head even registers there’s any intention to leave where he’s standing, and his knee meets the edge of the bed. With an agitated huff, he ungracefully hunches over and rubs at his knee.

The clicking outside stops, and muffled voices reverberate through the walls, so he sends his feet backwards, reorienting himself before making his way around the bed. He drunkenly saunters toward the door, licking his dry lips and raising his shaky, clammy hands to loosely shift the bulk of matted hair behind his ears. As he closes in on the door, he slows a little, as voices emerge from the generalised amalgamation of sound. A twinge of recognition creases at his forehead, but it only makes him slump down on himself. Stopping where he stands, he folds his dressing gown across his body correctly in anticipation of a shiver. His head drops to his feet as the wooden floorboards below cordially invite him to sit. He can’t help but begrudgingly accept, so he slides his aching body down against his front door.

He feels quite drowsy sitting here, his spine leaning on the door and his tailbone boring into the wood where his feet once stood. He doesn’t even react when the doorbell rings. No flinch. He doesn’t blink.

His eyebrows do raise, though, when a clear voice cuts through the thick slab of wood,

“Spence, listen, if you’re in there, we just want to know that you’re alright.”

It’s JJ. And her voice is kind and drenched with understanding.

A brief pause before—

“Knock twice if you’re conscious.” Garcia hastily interjects.

This sentence gets to him. He hears it and seriously ponders it. A brief moment of clarity instigates an efficient- though unenthusiastic- series of movements: his right hand is thrown behind his right shoulder and his knuckles rap twice.

He doesn’t let himself do much beyond that, and he convinces himself that they’re satisfied. But they continue, and his ears do work, even if he’s not completely up to cooperating with them.

“Is he ever gonna be okay?” Garcia softly murmurs, presumably toward JJ.

He can hear JJ’s pause: “Eventually.” Another breath and with emphasis, this time explicitly to Spencer, “And he knows we’re all here for him, no matter what.”

“Yeah! What she said!” Garcia is quick to contribute.

Spencer purses his lips: he hears them, but that’s all he’s willing and able to do right now. As he pushes air through his mouth, he interprets the silence on the other side as an indication that the two members of his team have acknowledged his departure from this conversation. Evidently, he feels the decrease in volume as they turn the conversation back between them.

“Come on.” JJ quietly urges.

And in response, Garcia mutters an unconvinced “okay”.

The interaction is officially over now, as he hears two pairs of heels clicking away, journeying down the stairwell and off to, presumably, the BAU. Once he’s completely out of earshot, he audibly grimaces as he commences the slow ascent to standing. Right now, his aim is to reach his couch, which he is certain lacks anything cosmic- no constellations, galaxies, or otherwise. One consolation he realises along his journey is that he had the decency to keep his sheer curtains drawn, shutting down the sun’s enthusiasm and muddying its brightness so that he can only see just well enough to move around.

Though fortunately shrouded in shadows, the similar mountainous terrain of discarded belongings extends to his main living space too. He’s not looking, but he knows they’re all there. He has a distant memory of himself throwing, chucking, tossing. Carelessly separating himself from priceless first edition books and pages of vital research and literature. He couldn’t care less- not then and not now. Fortunately, it’s not bright enough for him to even consider caring- as far as he’s aware, nothing exists below eye level.

He trods onward until he turns to plop onto the couch, locking eyes with the only valuable object he owns right now on his way down: The Narrative of John Smith. It’s just sitting there, neatly, calmly, unassuming, among the disorganised paraphernalia, reluctantly sharing space on the coffee table.

For the first time this morning, he actually feels a semblance of warmth emanating from this single object hidden in the nondescript mess. Once his hand reaches it, a sorrowful heat trickles up his forearms. His lips quiver as he picks it up and throws himself into foetal position on his couch. He’s clutching it so close to him now that the quote thoughtfully written inside is being carved into his chest:

Well-intentioned as it was, he watches each syllable of ‘Thomas Merton’ fall from her mouth and ignite the iron hot poker brandishing the letters below his clavicle so precisely. He doesn’t mind, though, because this is the first honest, true, and genuine heat he’s felt in some time. He’ll allow it, for her: he’ll allow the brief pain for the feeble warmth that follows, circulates from his chest and further out to his extremities. Feeble but genuine. And that source is in his arms, so he curls in tighter, wrapping as much of himself as he can around it, soaking in every inch of himself to the glorious reprieve.

She’s not here with him- not really. He knows this. But as he’s lying here, dozing off, clutching onto as much of her as he can, he thinks he might be feeling it.

He’s got something to hold.

She’s right here- in his arms.

He’s swaddling her, holding her in an embrace.

His heart beats, and lungs breathe for two, and for now, that’s enough for him to convince himself that they are coexisting together- he, as a truly single organism, but whole nonetheless.

‘Thomas Merton’, she said.

The words caress his cheeks as he lets himself go just a little further. Soft fingers, lips, the back of a palm- he can’t be sure. But he lets them fly past, he knows they won’t scar- though he won’t forget the touches. As they continue, he feels them sharpen slightly: teeth, fingernails, knuckles. He frowns as the true sequence of memories threaten to trickle through.

Thomas Merton: she closes her eyes.

Thomas Merton: she starts to fall.

Thomas Merton: the last thing he saw.

And so, he must say, ‘goodbye’.