reidful

[reidful]

The Impossibility of Not Communicating

to be loved is to be known

Pairing: Spencer Reid x reader

Word Count: 5.1k

Content Index: indirect angst & grief, fluff, kind of written as a character analysis, graphic descriptions of human anatomy & blood, so many allusions to Hozier and some to Mitski, reader is referred to as a woman/girl twice but no gendered pronouns, specific skin tone, or physical descriptors are used, one suggestive little paragraph but not explicit, mention of passive suicidality, original team mentioned, a whole lot of run-on sentences, pet names, definitely not the best dialogue you'll ever read Author Notes: This is my first ever completed piece of writing, dedicated entirely, with love, to one of my closest friends, Kiki :) @ltgubler Happiest of birthdays, you are so, so loved and seen and cherished. You've been such a good friend to me, and I can't express how much you and your friendship mean to me. Have the most special day filled with light and joy, my eviler twin <3 Yes, I am aware there are an obscene amount of em dashes. No, I did not use any form of generative AI to write this. This went through many months of many drafts, so enjoy! If you don't like it, don't read it!

For a lot of Spencer Reid's life, he was certain he was plain bad. Limbs too gangly, hair too long, back too slouched, ties perpetually crooked. Those were the easy things, the ones on the surface. Someone not as vainly and cruelly as he saw himself might not even notice. But then, upon a look within, Spencer Reid was certain he was just plain rotten. From his past to his present, and maybe even the path to his future, there was no chance he could have of retribution. Had he not committed the worst sins? Seen the worst of humanity's depravity? Had he not felt the touch of evil, down into his veins and across previously innocent memories he wished remained untainted?

Still, Spencer Reid longed. He longed for goodness, for forgiveness, for mercy. He longed to be deserving, to be, just once in his life, good. Wouldn't someone come and hold his face in their hands, tell him everything would be okay, and mean it? Wouldn't someone, somewhere, come and see past his outside bruises and scrapes down to his soft, oozing middle, and be kind to him? Because he certainly didn't know how to.

Like a seesaw, he had grown to be almost disgusted with what a person could do—to themselves, to others, to those they claimed to love the most—yet there he was, craving a person's touch nonetheless. Because, as Sylvia Plath had said: "Something in me wants more. I can't rest." Just once, he wanted someone to save him, to feel worthy of saving, to be capable of taking it—just once, wouldn't someone notice he was suffocating? Gasping for air as saltwater burns his lungs? Crumbling beneath the pressure of expectation, of reputation, of his very own mind. He figured he’d learned long ago after disappointments and abandonments innumerable just as Plath had lamented, “If you expect nothing from somebody, you are never disappointed.” Still, then in Margaret Atwood's words: "Having experienced both, I am not sure which is worse: intense feeling or the absence of it."

And so, he took a chance. He looked up from his books more often, tried to be more “conversational,” though Emily had told him it wasn’t working. He wondered if it was a mistake, if he would come to regret it, recollected all the most vivid, most painful, most humiliating of times he’d been vulnerable before, allowed others in only to ache and bruise and bleed. He’d spent maybe more time than socially acceptable calculating possible outcomes like his ability to love and be loved was a research study, and no matter how much he worked at it, at himself, he’d remain unchangeably, cursedly so, in the control group. Still, he trusted in the words of Anaïs Nin, “The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” As she’d said, he believed that, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

So when you had first stumbled into his life, not unlike a fawn on newborn legs down a winding path to inevitable ruin, he'd thought of Friedrich Nietzsche: "You have always approached everything terrible trustfully. You have wanted to pet every monster." You were so naively curious, so innocently tender in the way you asked about his day and peered within like whatever you found couldn't possibly keep you awake at night in horror, couldn't sour the very innate sweetness of you. As bright as a morning, as soft as rain, pretty as a vine, as sweet as a grape—he didn't want to soil you, wouldn't dare to.

But then, upon your unending kindness, persistent to a fault in its itch to get under his skin and light up all the darkness he'd hidden within, he'd thought of Georges Bataille: "I don't want your love unless you know I am repulsive, and love me even as you know it." And of course, of Neil Hilborn: "Yes, there is a place where someone loves you both before and after they learn what you are." He wanted it to be true, desperate like a heart is to beat, a pair of lungs are to breathe—if you, so incessantly, undeniably, frustratingly kind you, couldn't love the creature within, the darkness, the revolting… who could?

You were so confusingly selfless, so compassionately merciful with each of his flaws and every gross, scabbing ugliness, so easy to lov- But then he'd thought of Clive Barker: "You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it." God, he was petrified. What if he ruined you? Broke you? Stained, blemished, smeared, poisoned, contaminated you? Tore you apart in that obsessive, meddling habit of his to understand, only to be left with the carnage of your entrails dried into the crevices of his skin and dug under his fingernails? He would never forgive himself. As Arthur Miller professed: “I may think of you softly from time to time. But I’ll cut off my hand before I ever reach for you again.”

And it would have been easy. Easy to say he didn't want you, didn't need you, didn't survive off of your blinding positivity like you are the very life-sustaining marrow in his bones. And yet, like an all-consuming ocean, waves rose above his head until the whole sky was taken up with them, with you. But he was glad to be drowned in you, to wear the scars of you, the softest fire to have ever burned him. He couldn't pretend to not feel whatever it is between you, couldn't pretend to not want to love you.

Because, in the time he’s known you, he’s learned he doesn’t know how to be himself around anyone but you.

You, in the simplest terms, are his identity, his truest self. You, in the simplest terms, are in the tattered old cardigan and sweatpants he wears at home, but never anywhere else and around nobody else, but you. You, in the simplest terms, are in the mug labeled with his name that he has never let anyone else drink out of but you—the first time you stayed over, you had snuck a sip even after teasing he had put in far too much sugar, “enough to kill a small child,” you joked. And he pretended not to see, not to notice the slightest bit of surface tension where a single drop had dripped where your lips once laid, pretended not to press his mouth to the same place long before he had gotten the privilege to taste you firsthand.

You, in the simplest terms, are in the two toothbrushes side by side in his bathroom; in the matching pairs of Converse by the front door; in the half, which is really more three fourths, of his closet you have taken up; in the countertop space and medicine cabinet shelves you have monopolized with your cleansers, and your hair ties, and your retainer case, and your medication—not that he ever minded having a little less space if it meant a whole lot more of you.

You, in the simplest terms, are in the concavities of his mattress where he lies and where you lie, where his and your scents are injected and worn into silk sheets you lovingly remarked were strangely sensual for someone like him to own—really, he just runs hot at night.

You, in the simplest, sincerest, most vulnerable terms, are in the gasped breaths and reassurances in the dark, in the murmured confessions of love between groans and moans, in the downright musical pleadings of his name against sweat dampened sheets… a name he has never loved more until it slipped from your lips.

So he rationalized it. He thought, maybe, just maybe, he deserved this for once, deserved the light, the good. So he thought of Fyodor Dostoevsky: "I tell you plainly and openly, dear boy, every decent man ought to be under some woman's thumb." So why shouldn't you be that woman? Why shouldn't you be the one to open him up, see him for all he is? Why shouldn’t you be the one he would worship for like a dog at the shrine of your love, the one whose knife is sharpened by his uttered sins? He trusted you, after all, and after the confessional, he remembered Albert Camus, for until you, so wonderfully knowing and observant and intelligent you, he had been looked at, but was not seen. Then, romantically, sappily, saccharinely enough, he'd thought of Dostoevsky once more: "You know, we thank some people for merely living at the same time as we do. I thank you for the fact that I met you, that I will remember you for all my life." Then, of Franz Kafka: "Now I'm even losing my name—it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: yours."

In a way, you have made him soft. Or rather, softer around rough edges worn and battered down by years of hurt and abandonment and darkness and evil. You have smoothed it all down into something comfortable and known and understood, something reassuring and committed, something light and good. Something that keeps nightmares at bay, makes it easier to fall asleep at night. In a way, you have introduced Spencer Reid to himself, and he’s more than enchanted to make his acquaintance with someone loved and softened by you.

And that’s why he’s lying here now on this cold, hard pavement, and he thinks of you.

Even as his ears ring and his vision blurs shadows around the edges, even as he stares blankly up at a gauzy, dusty sky still bruised with early grey, he thinks of you. Even as the air fills with thick smoke, pungent in its strength, charring his lungs, he thinks of you. It’s almost strange how, when faced with the cruel inevitability of human vulnerabilities and mortality before, he used to picture his mother.

He would picture her confused for a mere short while, lonely, then watched as the absence of his daily letters no longer phased her, as the memory of him became nothing more than another bittersweet victim of her dementia. He had accepted long ago the fact that, to her, he would no longer exist outside of the briefness of her lucidity.

But now? Now, he’s even hallucinating you. And had he not already passed the age of manifestation of schizophrenia, he would vindicate it so easily. But he has, and yet there you are above him, eyes so soft, smile so careful, tending to him with hands far too rough to belong to you. That’s how he knows it’s a mere expression of shock, perhaps a crash too hard of his skull against the ground once he’d been blown back by the… what was it? There was quiet, then smoke, then fire, then… Right, an explosion.

“Agent?” The voice registers so unevenly, and he can’t help but turn away from the light shining into his sensitive, smoke stung eyes, bat a weak, clumsy hand at the offending shadow of a person he figures could be a paramedic.

His head throbs and his heartbeat echoes in places unusual—behind his optic nerves, between his false ribs, down every limb, even pulsing in his bum knee. At least he knows he still has them. And yet it feels so easy to surrender to the welcoming darkness that pulls at the corners of his consciousness, to ignore the insisting, aching, pulsing pull of life, of organs desperate to function, of survival instincts that roar, scream, cry, whimper, whisper… It would be so easy.

But he sees you again, right there. Indignant, stubborn, almost laughably so, as if you live somewhere between his pericranium and his dura mater and have front row seats to every intrusive, insisting, weak, self-sacrificing, downright passively suicidal thought he has ever had. You’re right there, so close he could almost reach out and touch you, and he thinks, so faintly, so offhandedly… what would you look like in grief?

What would it look like for someone to show up at his door to greet you with the news? Would you be wearing one of his cardigans, or maybe a pair of his mismatched socks? Or rather an old Doctor Who t-shirt with an unfortunate toothpaste stain by the collar shaped like Argentina? To tell you he’s gone, that he died a hero (though he’d never felt like one)?

What would you look like crumbling on weak knees onto the threshold of a door you had crossed so many times with him? Would the uneven scuffs of his shoes scratched across the wood still bother you? Would you cry? Would you scream? Would you laugh, say it can’t possibly be so? Would you plainly tell them you understand, close the door a little too early in their face, if only not to let them see your consuming devastation?

What would you look like laid up in his bed on unchanged silk sheets, so his smell never ceases, staring into a nothingness that used to be him sleeping so soundly, so peacefully beside you? Would you be able to still hear the echoes of the soft whistling of his breath, the soft mumbling of chemical compositions in his sleep? Would you imagine all the summer nights he would kick the sheets out of the way, still reaching for you unconsciously, greedily, even as sweat beads along his hairline and between furrowed brows?

What would you look like at his funeral surrounded by his team who had no idea you even existed, let alone that you loved him and that he loved you?

Would you know them by name even though you’d never met them, purely based on the way they wept for him, the way he’d talked about them? Recognize Hotch by the stern frown worn into handsome features, yet secretly kind, soul-searching eyes? Recognize Rossi by the frayed yet almost accepting look on his weathered face like he’s already seen so much loss himself, the glint in his eye as he considers you as if he knew all along? Recognize Morgan by the heavy hand he sets on the coffin just before it lowers into the ground, almost like a final clap onto his shoulder? Recognize Emily by the way she looks anywhere else, like she had never imagined she would outlive him? Recognize JJ by the distant look in her eye, like she’s imagining a reality in which her best friend hadn’t passed so early, so tragically young? Recognize Penelope by her innately colorful persona even under all the black, the way she tries to smile through his eulogy, think of all the times he had made her day?

Would you wonder if, had he survived, he would still stay up with you when you’re sick and too congested to sleep to read you Proust just like his mother used to do? Had he survived, would he still leave you notes to find scattered around your shared apartment while away for work? Had he survived, would he still keep that old purple scarf, drenched in grief and loss and moth holes? Had he survived, would he still keep all the promises he had made? That he would retire, maybe teach, that you would settle down together, that he would give you the family you both had always dreamed of?

Would you move on? Would you internalize the grief until it reaped you of any last joy and motivation and dreams and aspirations, pretend it doesn’t ache just for the sake of being able to breathe again? Would you wish he would be around solely so you could ask just how long this is going to hurt? If it will ever stop hurting? Would you wear his coat out sometimes, just to feel him nearby, stick your hands in the pockets only to find the little bottle of hand sanitizer he would keep in there? Would you wake in the too-early mornings and bask in those first few merciful moments of forgetfulness? Imagine he’s just in the bathroom washing up, or in the kitchen making coffee, or in the living room rereading whatever text has his beautiful mind currently captivated? Would you hallucinate his presence in the sounds of the building settling, in the patter of rain against the windows? Would the sound of keys late at night always bring you right back to all the times he had gotten back late from a case, fill you with a kind of sad acceptance that he will never unlock that door again? Would you, on sunny days, go out walking only to end up on a tree-lined street, look up at the gaps of sunlight, and miss him more than anything?

Of course, these sorts of thoughts don’t last very long. The interruption comes like a shock when his sense of hearing returns suddenly like being dropped into the deep end of the ocean without any knowledge of how to tread, and all he can fathom around him are sirens and chatter so loud, he wishes he could turn it all off again, return to the masochistic, self-torturing lamentations of moments prior. But it’s for the better, he thinks, because now he can stop imagining you right there and thinking it so painful and unfair that he can’t touch you the way he truly wants to, turn his bloodied face into the warm forgiveness of your palms, twist numb fingers into the wool of your coat.

When he comes to, you are his first thought once more. He reaches out to his left, where you usually lie in bed beside him—closest to his heart, he’d reasoned when you asked why you couldn’t have the right side—but you’re not there. He blinks in the dimness of the hospital room—the consistent beeping is the dead give-away—and realizes belatedly that no one would have known to call you. It aches that you don’t know, that you’re at home without a worry in the world because you’ve gotten used to the unknowing silence. You know he’s busy, and though you wish he would be better at checking in, you have never blamed him for it. That alone only feeds the guilt gnawing on him like an animal starving to scrape bones clean. He wishes he could apologize to you like he wouldn’t end up doing it again, selfishly wishes you could be here to hold his hand and tell him off in that adorably indulgent way of yours that’s meant to sound like scolding but fails spectacularly.

Instead, he will close his eyes and imagine it, imagine you in that perfect way he has pictured you in his head so many times, upon that pedestal he swore he wouldn’t put you up upon but still did because, if the heavens ever did speak, he’s sure you are the last true mouthpiece. He imagines you as if sunlight through stained glass, a chime on a windy day, a newborn’s downy lanugo, magnolia of the perfume on a passing stranger, and coffee so sweet, multiple children may just die.

Finally, the moment comes when he no longer has to imagine it.

Beavin, Jackson, and Watzlawick define human communication as behavior with no opposite: “There is no such thing as nonbehavior or, to put it even more simply: one cannot not behave.”

And he knows that’s true for the way that, when he shoulders the door open only for it to click behind him at dawn, you’re not in the doorway to greet him like always, no matter the time, no matter the task. He knows it’s true for, when he toes off his shoes and sets them beside yours, you’re not there to stomp your feet petulantly, needy for his arms around you already after a whiny “I missed you” resounds.

It’s that absence in an air too stagnant, too thick, too cloying without you that tells him all he needs to know in its unfamiliarity, in its break from routine. It’s the silence too dense, so that he can hear the whistle of his stuttered breath, so that he can physically feel the thrum of his heart within his chest, that makes him feel truly alone.

Whatever happened between your last phone call and his arrival to keep you from bouncing over like always? Had he said the wrong thing? Tested the bounds of your patience to their limit? Had he left the “I” out of his earlier profession of love the way you’d once mentioned disliking?

So, with careful steps across the groaning, scuffed floor in case psychology has in fact failed him, he makes his way through the apartment, the melamine bedroom door creaking softly in the glow of morning light.

And there you are.

Faced away towards the window, seemingly asleep with your hair like the branch of a tree laid across the pillow—his pillow—with the comforter tucked around you and under your arm. Sunlight spills across the duvet, gilding lazily drifting dust motes in melted, glowing gold, and the sheer curtains, paper thin, do little against said warmth of the rising sun, with your ribs continuing to rise and fall in a telling rhythm he’s studied for what’s felt like eternities of loving you.

See, he knows you.

How could he not when he’s ingrained in you as you are in him, when he’s in the wrinkles of your knuckles, in the grain of your fingerprints, in the scabs of the raw skin around your chewed cuticles? When you’re in the depths of his scars, the reason for his kindness still—despite, despite, despite—the very alveoli of his lungs? How could he not when he’s sure you have been felled of the same tree, two halves of one knot splitting wood? It simply cannot be unlearned how easy you are to need, too long he’s known the warmth of your doorways, the peace of your embrace, the way you yield to him. From the way your hair curls at the nape of your neck, to the way your perpetually socked toes peek from beneath too-warm sheets, he knows.

So, with a tired hand, he reaches up to undo the knot of his tie—one of many you’ve gifted him over the course of knowing him, this one patterned with little honeybees—while his knees find the edge of the mattress and sunken eyes watch the way your shoulders, predictably, tense just so as his weight settles into it. “I know you’re awake,” he mumbles, voice like distant thunder through bruised ribs you don’t know about yet. “You’re a bad liar.”

You don’t move still, though that’s only another tell. The heat of his palm finds the span of your waist and slips beneath the softness worn into your—his—shirt, fingertips grazing silken skin he knows to be ticklish. And still, you don’t move, like you know the game and have mastered the rules.

With an exhale, he settles in behind you, biting back a sound against your nape as his sore side presses into the mattress. Watching, knowing, your skin goosebumps under the closeness of his breath, and he can’t help but smile to himself. “Come on, angel,” voice cracking like dry kindling, low brush untouched by rain, his hand snakes further up your side, floating, grazing until his fingernails scrape lightly over your ribs. “What’s wrong?”

When he had first read about human communicative behavior all those years ago, he had imagined it to be about everyone, every human in this world. Since meeting you though, he is convinced you have been the inspiration, the dedication, the footnotes at the bottom of each page. In fact, every book and novel and manual has been about you since his heart began to beat for you and only you, as if each text has your name, your face, the sound of your breath echoed between its lines. And that is why, when you finally sigh in stubborn defeat, his smile widens victoriously as you roll over, behaviorally honest for the first time since he’d come home. Perhaps psychology hadn’t failed him after all, with it in the slowness of your fluttering lids, the violet fatigue under your lidded eyes, the chapped part of your lips, the honeyed depth of your voice as you murmur, “How’d you know?”

Once more, he smiles, lifting a calloused hand to curl around your jaw, thumb brushing over sleep-creased skin, “You, darling, cannot not behave.” You roll your eyes expectedly, lips pouted even as your cheeks flush under the knowledge that you are known, loved. “What is it? Hm?” he hums indulgently, fingertips finding an errant strand of hair to wrap around like silk around a spindle. “I missed you.”

He watches the way your eyes soften as they graze over the bandaged scrapes along his face. Brows previously furrowed now tilt upwards as his words, meant to tease, instead draw up an expression of regret. “‘m sorry,” you rush out with a voice still soft, still untouched by the wakefulness of day, “I was… upset.”

He hums again, having never known sleep like the slumber that creeps to him now under the ache of cuts and bruises you’re still mostly oblivious to, under the soothing lull of your voice unlike any other for his frayed nerves. “Yeah?” he manages after a moment, still messing with your hair, so familiarly soft against skin hardened with violence. “Whatever about?”

When you shift closer, sheets rustling beneath sleep-warmed skin, curling and tangling into your rightful place around him, atop him, within him, the corner of his mouth lifts indolently—he knew it. “I just missed you,” is your only explanation, the words languid across your tongue and out from between your teeth and lips. “You were gone too long. ‘nd you promised you’d call me two days ago and you didn’t. I was worried.”

Nodding, he drapes his arm over your waist, unhurried and heavy, the weight of him welcome, “Oh, I’m sorry, honey,” he coos with a sigh, like the words themselves press the breath from his lungs and into sounds only you can understand. “I would’ve called, you know that.” I was just busy being blown up.

But he doesn’t say that. Doesn’t say you’re pressed up against a bruised rib either, or that the comforter is stuck and tangled uncomfortably beneath and between the two of you, doesn’t say that the fabric of his sweater is scratchy and uncomfortable and he wishes he could pull it off and throw it aside for a future Spencer to worry about. Not when you look so comfortable and at peace snuggled up into his side like it is the only place you have ever belonged. For you, he would bear more than a little discomfort. A thousand violences couldn’t tear him from your side. “Things got a little… out of control. That’s all.” He leaves it at that.

You blink up at him from beneath lashes stuck together with sleep, and even like this, he swears you’re the most beautiful girl in the world to him. “Are you okay?” you ask after a long moment of just watching him. You know better than to ask for details, have long learned he refuses to bring work home, to bring work to you. “You didn’t get hurt too bad, right?”

He shakes his head a bit too fast, his tell that you haven’t mentioned for the sake of equality—if he gets to read you so well, you should have an upper hand too. “No, angel, not too bad,” He breathes, the faintest twitch of a grimace across his features saying otherwise. “My ribs are a bit sore, but I’ll live.”

If it were anybody else, you might have hated that they are lying to you. But it’s Spencer Reid, and you have found your feminist morals often quiet to a mere whisper in his presence. You know better than to take it personally—he just doesn’t want you to worry. “Okay. That’s good.”

He only hums in response, though even the vibrating rumble of it seems to hurt. Instead, he turns onto his side, holding back another wince, maybe a curse, to face you. His eyes trace the soft edges of you, each beloved, memorized feature, each rise and fall of your sloped shoulders as you breathe. And you can’t help but stare back, convinced that his eyes glow in this early sunrise light as though he is moon eyed.

“I had a bad dream,” you mumble eventually, reaching a hand out to further loosen the collar of his button up shirt, further undo the knot of his bee tie. You manage to get it up and over his head with minimal protest, setting it aside for when he’s alert enough to care about it wrinkling. “You were hurt. Really hurt.”

He only continues to watch you through exhausted, heavy-lidded eyes, though still nodding in an encouragement to continue—even on the verge of death itself, already half buried and rotting, he would listen to whatever honeyed words wish to pour from your lips, your voice his favorite symphony.

“And then I was thinking about how we met,” you whisper faintly, lips pursed and cheeks squished where your face presses into his pillow, nose dug into it just so to smell him, while your fingers busy themselves with the first few buttons you can reach of his shirt beneath the scratchy sweater you know must be bugging him out of his mind. “Y’know, at the Chinese place? You’d asked for a fork, and- well, you remember. Duh.”

He thinks it’s endearing that you roll your eyes at the irony of it all, and offers you a little smile as he nods, “Yeah. I remember,” he lets out, shifting ever closer until there’s no space between you at all—forehead to forehead, nose to nose, mouth to mouth in an almost kiss, palming your thigh over his hip. Even if he’s sore and bruised and cut up and probably oozing through some of his bandages, he’ll only ever want you close, close, close. Maybe he could figure out a way someday to crawl up within your ribs, maybe make home of your chest cavity and write compositions to the rhythms of your heartbeat. “You remember too?”

Your expression softens adoringly as you look up at him, watch the sunlight play and bounce off his features as though refracting across the clearest water. “How could I ever forget?"