nerdforreid

[nerdforreid]

Prologue - Burnt out

Authors note - Hi! This is a teaser for what will hopefully be either a long one shot or a multi-part depending on whether it’s enjoyed or not but I’ve never written before and wanted to put out a teaser before releasing anything else. Please let me know if there’s anything I should change/ include.

Summary - Spencer Reid x reader. Although this is only a prologue the fic is going to be about the readers struggles with burn out and pushing her concerned coworkers away as a consequence. Despite this there is one of her coworkers who has been watching her throughout her time at the BAU and has recognised the patterns in her behaviour. However, will Spencer’s interference cause more harm than good?

Genre - hurt/comfort, heavy angst, fluff at the end

Warnings - fem!Reader, she/her pronouns used for the reader, allusions to depression, mentions of a difficult childhood, allusions to childhood trauma, possible lack of commas and proper grammar

Word count - very short but don’t get used to it x

While your childhood had been a blurry array of mismatched memories, there were a couple lessons your parents unconsciously taught you that you carried with you every day, like a form of sacred scripture. For example, you learnt at a young age how to ‘predict’ or anticipate the ways in which someone may act; some may call this walking on eggshells, but you preferred to view it as an early sign of the life ahead of you as a member of the BAU. Because of this, you liked to view yourself as very emotionally intelligent and empathetic, and you were even praised for this by your fellow team members. However, despite the highly valued benefits, it could definitely be a hurdle in itself sometimes, considering what you did for work.

It wasn’t a rare occurrence that there would be times when you would lie awake at night plagued by questions about the victim's friends and family and what came next for them. Despite your better judgement, you’d constantly torture yourself with the question, “What if things were different?”. But they weren’t different, and they never would be.

 

Burnout was something you ran from in the fear that showing the slightest weakness would prove to yourself and your coworkers that you weren’t cut out for this. You could even go months before the exhaustion and pain finally caught up, but when they did, it was all consuming.

 

Out of your two years and three months working at the BAU, there had been four separate occasions where you had sent emails in the early hours of the morning pleading with Hotch to let you take time off, each time only stating it was due to personal problems. You knew it was stupid to not just lie and say you were ill, but you also knew it would be naive of you to try to lie to one of the best profilers you knew.

 

You tried to keep occasions like this rare and would take any precautions necessary to limit the worries of your BAU family. You would force yourself to reply to each and every one of the cat memes that Penelope would forward you, and you would even reply to the long and thoughtful messages from JJ confirming that, despite her probably valid worries, you were in fact completely okay. However, there was one member of the team who could see through your perfectly crafted mirage with ease, and it was none other than your best friend, Spencer Reid.

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Hi again! I hope you enjoyed this despite it being so short! Please let me know if you’d like me to continue :)