Chapter Text
Wet-blanket bottom-feeder with a gun, bang-bang
I'm hungry, let me in
It always happened with cases involving narcotics now.
They sit in the briefing room as such a case is introduced to them, and like clockwork, Spencer's stomach starts to fill with lead. The weight spreads through his body, dragging at his organs, his mind tunnelling into something frantic and uncontrolled. His chest tightens with the realisation that it's happening again, the voices around him starting to grow dull and distant in his ears.
It's a now-familiar route that he races down. His thoughts start to crowd with awful, ragged memories, closely followed by slick what-ifs and weaselling bargains. He stares at the file in front of him and pretends to read the words on the paper, tries to refocus himself on the facts of the case still being read out loud to him.
It disappoints him every time, this feeling. He can sense the eyes of the team on him as he goes quiet, and it's all he can do to stare harder at the file, occasionally turning pages as the others do.
It’s been 6 months now, and it still happens.
It doesn't get better as the case goes on. The feeling just stays there, boiling beneath the surface as Spencer grows more and more exhausted beating back the circuitous thoughts, the darkening urges to scratch at his arms, to dig for his phone. He trails himself around with various members of the team, going from interview to interview, medical examiner's office to police station.
He's never left on his own, on cases like these. He can't decide if he appreciates it or not.
This time they're in Oklahoma, somewhere to the west, and the air's hot and muggy and the sun's endless and dizzying above them. They’re storming a property they think the unsub has used as a back-up residence, a run-down farm house on an abandoned plot of prairie and dirt.
They run through their manoeuvres, surrounding the house formulaically. When they get no answer from their yelled demands they crash the doors down, shouts going out as they split up and moved to canvas the house.
Spencer peels off to cover his rooms, his hands slick and clammy against his gun. An addict has been living here, he recognises it immediately: the lack of furniture, the belongings stacked in corners and scattered across the floor, the mess and the paraphernalia and the blood spots on the carpet. It sends his heartbeat jumping in his throat, his grip on his gun tightening.
But he keeps clearing rooms. He keeps himself steady. It’s okay, he tells himself roughly. He’s a professional. He can do this.
He reaches the back of the house, making it through most of the bedrooms without issue. There's just one more room leading off of the hallway ahead of him, and Spencer skirts along the wall towards it, knocking on the closed door.
“FBI,” he calls loudly, waiting for a moment to listen for any movement inside.
None. He tries the handle, finding it unlocked, and he shoulders in quickly, scanning the room.
There’s a body in the corner.
Time stops.
It's a man, laid out flat on the ground, thin and dirty and alone. He's wearing stained sweats, the sleeve of his left arm rolled up to his elbow. There’s a loop of elastic tubing tied around his arm, a needle abandoned at his side.
The house is silent around him. Reid’s ears ring with the sudden emptiness of it; he can't hear the team, the banging of feet and doors, the crackling of voices in his comms.
He stands in the doorway, gun still held out uselessly in front of him, and he stares. He stares at the body, at the arm, at the track marks peppering the blue-purple skin. He stares at the stiffness of the man's limbs, locked in unnatural torsion, the pooling of his blood in the back of his body.
Dead for approximately 12 hours, his brain provides distantly.
Morgan's retracing Reid’s route, trying not to let panic claw at him. They can’t get him on the mics, and they hadn’t heard his final clear. Something's wrong.
“Reid!” he calls as he runs down the hallway, cursing when it gets him no response. The door to the final bedroom's open ahead of him, and beside it he pauses for a moment, listening hard, his ears strained for the sound of a struggle inside.
Nothing.
He takes a breath, gun at the ready, and flips around the corner.
Reid’s lanky frame fills the doorway, standing just inside the room. Morgan makes a loose noise of surprise and relief, quickly lowering his gun. Assuming a false alarm, and that he's currently lost in Reid-specific thoughts, Morgan gives word to the team that he's found him and that the room is clear.
“Hey, Reid," he prompts then, eyeing his still turned back. "Anything you wanna share with the class?"
Spencer doesn't respond. He doesn't make any sign that he's even heard Morgan. Morgan's eyes narrow, his concern building again.
"Hey-" he says again, softer this time, moving into the room fully. "You okay, kid?”
He sees the body in his periphery. Morgan jumps, reaching for his holstered gun out of instinct before registering the obvious overdose. The situation snaps brutally into frame around him, and he looks again to Reid.
And oh god, his face.
He's staring straight at it, wide-eyed and distant, his face collapsed in heartbreak, pinched in hurt. He doesn’t move as Morgan steps swiftly in front of him, blocking the body from view.
“Hotch,” Morgan says into his lapel, voice gone sharp and orderly as he scrambles to take control of the room. In front of him Reid continues to stare, unseeing, at the spot on his shoulder where the body had been. Morgan talks simply, aware of the extended personnel also on the lines. “Final bedroom, we got a body. Come quick. Team only.”
With that sorted he focusses back on Reid. He raises his hand to his upper arm, touching him gingerly. When he doesn't startle Morgan moves both of his hands to his shoulders, giving him a small shake, trying to get him back to the present.
“Reid,” he says firmly, ducking his head to try and get in his eyeline. “You're okay. Stay with me, buddy.”
It works in some small way. Spencer’s eyes flicker shut at the words, his mouth closing, throat bobbing as he swallows convulsively. Morgan makes a vague plea to no one in particular for him not to throw up, then he continues to ramble steady platitudes for him to listen to. He tries to move him towards the door but Reid resists the movement, staying stiff and frozen where he is, and Morgan doesn't try again.
Before long Hotch's footsteps thump in the hallway outside and Morgan lets out another short breath of relief. He watches as he enters, brain working similarly to Morgan's as he processes the body, processes Reid standing stock-still looking at it. Then he’s stepping in front of Reid too, pushing at Morgan.
“Get him out of here. Go.”