#snap and lose his mind after the prentiss attack

[mcwebby]

mods are asleep! post archivist tim and girlfriend sasha!

[moon-light-jukebox]

Learning Styles - [Reid x Reader]

Summary: Reader has worked hard to get to the FBI, but a misunderstanding has her feeling insecure. 

Pairing: Spencer Reid / Fem!Reader

Word Count: 2.5k

Genre: Fluff

Rating: PG

Content Warning: Mention of normal criminal minds stuff briefly. 

A/n: I got these two requests and they were so similar I decided to combine them. I hope that’s okay, but I feel like the stories would have been almost identical. 

Requests:  - I have a fic suggestion. Reader pretends to be dumb but is actually really smart. I’m thinking of that quote about marilyn ”you have to be really smart to pretend to be dumb”. One day spencer realizes that reader is smarter than she lets people know.

- Hi! Can I request a spencer reid x reader fic where reader isn't great with numbers but brilliant with behaviour and humanities (i.e. literature, history, sociology, up to you)? Maybe a dash of insecurity to spice things up?

-- Learning Styles -- 

My favorite professor in college told me that everyone learns differently; what works for one person won’t work in the same way for another. We are all different human beings that are shaped in different ways.

I had always been oddly insecure about my intelligence level. One of my earliest memories was my mother yelling at me while I sat at the kitchen table when I was in first grade. I was the only kid in my class who still hadn’t learned how to read. I just didn’t understand. All of my friends were progressing so much quicker than me and my mother was losing patience.

It wasn’t until my grandmother stepped in that everything changed. My elementary school teacher was training children to read by memorizing sight words, a concept I didn’t understand. When my grandmother sat down and taught me phonics. I distinctly remember everything snapping into place.

I was in 1st grade and reading at a 7th-grade level by Christmas. Once I finally understood my learning style, I really began to thrive.

But no matter what I did, I could still hear my mother yelling at me, telling me I was stupid.

In my line of work, I see just how much the throw away comments that parents make can shape a child’s development. Luckily, those comments just made me a bit insecure, not a murderer.

Up until I was 22, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do beyond this desire I had to help people. SSA David Rossi had come to guest lecture in one of my abnormal psych classes during undergrad. After I heard him speak, I was done. I couldn’t have done anything else with my life. I had obtained my master’s in psychology before I joined the FBI.

It took some time, but I was finally assigned to the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico. I was so excited on my first day that I remember my hands physically shaking.

Until they weren’t.

I can still remember my first day so clearly. SSA Hotchner had introduced me to the team, saving the “best” for last.

“And this is Dr. Spencer Reid,” he had said. “He’s our expert on…well, everything.”

Reid was my age and he had his Ph.D. I remember feeling awed by him.

Until I didn’t.

"I hold 3 Ph.D.'s in Chemistry, Engineering, and Mathematics. I also have BAs in psychology and sociology."

I remember my jaw almost hitting the floor. While I was impressed by him, I wasn’t insecure about my place on the team.

Until I was.

My grandmother may have helped me master reading, which opened the door to me mastering anything else I put my mind to…except math.

I was fine at statistics, luckily. You couldn’t get a psych degree without a ton of statistics work. But statistics was different, I could see the practical use of statistics. I just couldn’t wrap my head around calculus or algebra.

On my first case with the team, Reid had calculated some insane mathematical equations on the whiteboard, running down the probabilities and applying a mathematical formula to the unsub’s behavior.

It wasn't until later, after the case was solved when I was standing in front of the whiteboard that my confidence was hit. Reid had come into the room and saw me looking at his work.

“Don’t bother trying to understand it,” he had said. “You’d have to be a genius to understand what I do.”

I didn’t have a word to describe the feeling that settled in my stomach at his words, I wasn’t sure such a word existed. The feeling was cold and heavy, but also made my body burn with shame.

I had just offered him a tight smile before I left the room.

On the plane home I had made a decision. I was no match for Dr. Reid, I doubt anyone was. So, I would take myself out of the competition. I couldn’t get hurt if I wasn’t playing the game.

And that is how the next year of my life went. I allowed Dr. Reid to explain things to me that I was an expert in, never saying a word. I acted like I didn't understand concepts that I had written papers on. The only thing I didn't dumb down was my profiling skills. Those were necessary for my job and for saving lives.

I don’t think anyone realized what I was doing.

Until they did.

--

The team had been called to Colorado to assist in capturing a serial rapist.

All of our cases bothered me, every last one…but something about ones with this vile element really struck me.

We had the unsub’s name, Tyler Childress. He had spent time in prison for sexual assault and burglary. It seems while he was in prison, he spent time perfecting his methods; it was only by pure luck that we found his fingerprint inside the victim’s house, making him the main suspect.

When we paid Mr. Childress a visit, he had managed to get the drop on Prentiss and Morgan, allowing them to escape. Morgan was furious.

All of us were sitting around a conference table in the local prescient while we let Dr. Reid talk.

I was trying to be calm, I was, but my nails were digging into my palm so deeply I was worried I was about to draw blood.

“Guys,” the expert on everything said. “He has to have some sort of accomplice.”

Rossi just sighed. “But the profile doesn’t point to him being the sort to do well with others; he’s a narcissist.”

Reid wouldn’t budge. “I know that, but he isn’t intelligent enough to pull this off alone. He’s just not. He had an IQ test done when he was 20. He scored in the mentally handicapped range. I’m telling you he has to have help.”

“Are you sure, Reid?” Hotch asked.

“Positive. I have his results right here.”

“IQ tests aren’t a good measure of intelligence on their own.”

I was so startled that someone had contradicted Dr. Reid that it took me a second to realize it was me who had contradicted him.

He turned to face me; his brown eyes wide. “What?”

Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “IQ tests aren’t a good measure of intelligence.”

Dr. Reid laughed. He laughed at me like my comment was funny. “I don’t know where you heard that,” he began.

But I interrupted him. "IQ tests are classist and oftentimes racist. The man who invented the IQ test never intended for it to be used as a complete measure of intelligence. He regretted making the test.”

Reid sputtered. “You…it’s not racist!”

“Yes. It. Is.” I ground out. “If it wasn’t it wouldn’t be illegal to administer an IQ test to a black child in the state of California.”

"Wait, it's illegal to do that?" JJ asked, her brows drawn together.

"Yes. There was a court case in the 1970s over it. Teachers were using tests to separate white children from black children. The black children were put into special education classes they didn’t need to be in. Just because the teachers didn’t want those children in their classrooms.”

I should have stopped, but I was on a role. “They’re also inherently classist. How can you expect a child to answer a question about Romeo and Juliet if they haven’t heard of it?”

That had Dr. Reid scoffing. “Everyone has heard of it.”

I shot to my feet, unable to hold back anymore. “No, they haven’t. Children in underfunded schools that don’t have access to resources might not have heard about the most famous play in history because their school wasn’t able to provide the materials to teach them about it. There was a study done in a remote part of Russia right after the IQ test was invented. Every. Single. Person. Scored in the mentally handicapped range. Because they didn’t understand.”

I knew my voice was rising but I couldn’t stop myself. “Once the researcher took the questions and applied them to things they understood, they all scored as above average. They didn’t understand math as an abstract concept, but they understood it when it was applied to their businesses, to something they actually knew about.”

I cleared my throat. “The test isn’t fair, it’s not equal. Tyler Childress didn’t go to a good school and he didn’t have a stable home life. You can’t use one measure to calculate his intelligence. He’s gotten away with 7 assaults so far that we know of. He’s not stupid.”

The entire room was silent once I had stopped speaking. I couldn’t bring myself to regret it though. What kind of person was I if I played dumb because I was afraid of being mocked when a monster was out there attacking women? No, those women deserved to have me at my best.

And I’ll be damned if I wouldn’t give it to them.

Rossi spoke first, his eyes twinkling when he looked at me. “Took you long enough,” he said. “But y/n is right. We trust the profile; we don’t let personal bias cloud the way. That’s how we catch this bastard.”

--

Later that day, we were cleaning up the conference room while the local police processed Tyler Childress.

Pathological narcissism is a complex disorder, but we followed the profile and Rossi was right. Hotch set up a press conference in which JJ and Prentiss took center stage. They tore Childress’s ego to shreds on live television.

His narcissism wouldn’t allow that to slide. He got angry, he made a mistake, and we got him before anyone else got hurt.  

While the cat was out of the bag about my intelligence and that made me nervous, I couldn't regret any of it. I got to be the one to tell our last victim that we got him. I got to hug her while she cried because now that he was locked up, she felt like her healing could begin. I wasn’t sure if my rant about structural racism and the classism of IQ tests actually helped anything, but that didn’t really matter. There was one less monster in the shadows.

Today was a good day.

I was alone in the conference room, untacking photos from the evidence board when I heard someone clear their throat from behind me. I turned my head to meet the wide, honey brown eyes of Dr. Spencer Reid.

Oh boy, I thought. “What’s up, Reid?”

He shifted from foot to foot, his hands twisting in front of him before he crossed his arms over his chest. “I asked Garcia to look into you.”

My eyebrows drew together. “I’m pretty sure any nefarious things I had done would have popped up on my initial background check.”

“Right, I didn’t mean like that,” he mumbled, the apples of his cheeks turning pink. “I asked her to look into you academically.”

Shit.

He went on. “You double majored in psychology and sociology before you got a master’s in cultural psychology. She pulled your thesis. I just read it.”

“I see.” I turned my attention back to the board.

“You also guest lecture on cross-cultural psychology at Georgetown several times a year. And you’ve co-authored two papers since I’ve known you.”

Meh, it’s three. But that doesn’t matter. “Did you read those too?”

I took his silence as confirmation.

He was so quiet I almost thought he had left, but the crackle of energy I felt in the air told me he hadn’t. “Do you need something, Dr. Reid?”

"Why didn't you get your Ph.D.?"

I had answered that question many, many times. “I didn’t need a doctorate to do what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to waste time. Once I figured out what I wanted, I charged at it.” Which was a far more honest answer than most people got about that from me.

“W-why did you pretend to be dumb?” he rasped out, causing me to look back at him. “32 days ago, you let me explain the long-term effects of gerrymandering and the complex causes of poverty.”

“Of course, I did,” I said, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“One of the papers you authored was about generational poverty.”

“Just because I know a lot about something doesn’t mean I can stop listening to information. That sort of thinking breeds ignorance.” I smiled, unable to not tease him just a little bit.

Reid took a step closer to me. “You didn’t answer my question.”

I just shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t have a good answer.”

In all the months I had known him, Spencer Reid had never touched me, not even so much as a finger brushing against mine when he handed me something. That fact is why I was so startled when I felt his hand on my upper arm, turning me towards him.

He licked his lips, his eyes darting around. “Did everyone else know?”

I shook my head, my teasing mood long gone. "No. I mean, clearly, Rossi suspected but…No, I didn't tell anyone else."

“I just don’t understand. You’re brilliant.”

I scoffed. “No, I’m not. I’m decent a psychology, sociology, stuff like that. I can’t apply math to behavior to find patterns. I can’t even calculate how much something is gonna cost when it’s on sale without a calculator half the time.”

‘What do you…” Reid trailed off. “Wait. The very first case. You were looking at the evidence board.”

Goddamn eidetic memory.

The boy wonder was on a roll now. “I told you that you’d have to…is that why you didn’t tell me?”

What else could I do? I just nodded.

Those brown eyes closed, and he let out a groan. “I said that because I thought you were going to…I was worried…” He huffed out a breath and opened his eyes. “I wanted you to like me. I didn’t want you to think I was just a nerd.”  

Now I was confused. “Why?”

Spencer Reid’s blush went all the way down his neck. “Well…I just…Morgan said I should just talk to you. But I’m not…I’m not good at that. I panic, then I start to ramble. Like I’m doing now…”

“Reid,” I interrupted. “I’m not playing dumb now. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I like you,” he blurted out right before he smacked both of his hands over his face. “Oh my god. I sound like a child.” I thought I heard him mutter idiot under his breath. “Emily says that my IQ gets slashed to 60 whenever I see a pretty girl.”

Much like that moment all those years ago when I was a child, I felt everything click into place. Oh.

I couldn't suppress my smile any longer. I rose up on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Well, we've already gone over how IQ tests aren't a good measure of overall intelligence."  

With that, I quickly stepped away and hurried out of the conference room, leaving a stunned genius in my wake. When I turned back to look at him, I saw his fingers brushing over the place where my lips had just been.  

--

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[suttttton]

Growing Pains

Febuwhump Day 1: Mind Control

***

“You knew what you would find here, didn’t you?” Annabelle asks, leaning back against her kitchen counter, looking over Jon with eyes far too predatory for his liking.

“To be honest, I expected more spiders,” Jon says. He’s seated at Annabelle Cane’s table, in Annabelle Cane’s flat. Annabelle Cane is making him tea. He came here of his own accord, and even though he can feel his heart in his throat, he refuses to regret this decision. Hadn’t he long ago decided that answers were worth the fear? Isn’t that how he’s made every decision, since Jane Prentiss attacked the Archives? Since he read the wrong book and narrowly escaped being devoured by a monster?

Annabelle smiles, crosses her arms. “Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t here, Jon.”

Jon swallows. “Right.” His voice is faint.

“And yet you came anyway,” Annabelle says. “Do you know why?”

“I, uh… I thought I’d ask you—something. For a statement. Maybe.”

“And you thought I was likely to give you one?”

“Well, you invited me here, didn’t you?” Jon snaps, stiff politeness finally giving way to trembling anger.

“I did,” Annabelle says. She comes closer to Jon, and it’s all he can do not to flinch away from her. “Give me your hand,” she says, holding out her own to take it.

“Why?” Jon manages, even as he’s already extending his bandaged hand toward her.

She gives him a flat look, closes her eyes, takes a breath. His hand is trembling slightly, caged between her two hands. She opens her eyes. “Because our patron is worried about you,” she says. And then, her voice low with anger. “You will not compel me again.”

“Our patron?” Jon says.

Annabelle nods, her attention occupied examining the bandages on his hand. He tries to pull away, but he can’t. He can’t move his hand at all. She runs three fingers over the surface of his palm, and Jon holds back a squeak of pain at the gentle contact. “Jude did a wonderful job,” she murmurs, more to herself than to Jon. Then she looks at him, smiling. “And Martin did a wonderful job with the bandages.”

She releases him, and Jon jerks his hand back, cradling it to his chest. She steps even closer, and he’s frozen in place as one of her hands goes to his throat. Even over the bandages, she traces a line exactly where Daisy’s knife punctured his flesh. “Daisy’s is more impressive, though.”

The kettle screams, and she steps away to finish preparing the tea. Jon can suddenly move again, and he curls his arms around himself. This isn’t like meeting Jude Perry or Mike Crew. He wasn’t on even footing with them, either, but with Annabelle, it isn’t even close. He considers running, but he’s terrified that he’ll find himself unable to move if he tries to act on that thought.  

“Why am I here?” he asks. He’d grown used to the small sliver of power his questions gave him. It’s terrifying to lose that.

Annabelle sets a mug of tea in front of him. He picks it up, takes a sip. He didn’t decide to do that, but it’s happening anyway. She sits down across from him, takes a sip from her own mug. “The Mother of Puppets is fond of you,” she says. Like that explains anything.

“You mean, the—spiders?” Jon asks, dread growing in his stomach.

“Knock, knock,” Annabelle says, smiling at him over her mug.

A jolt of fear rushes through Jon, and he takes a deep breath, steadying himself. “But that isn’t—I belong to the Institute, the, the Eye.” Jon still has so many questions about the Entities, so many things that he doesn’t know, puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together. But he knows that he doesn’t belong to the spiders. He escaped them. 

“Sure,” Annabelle says. “But the Web claimed you first. You’ve been running around, collecting your marks like a good little Archivist, all inspired by your desperate curiosity, your gnawing fear that you won’t be able to put all the pieces together in time. It’s all very Beholding-flavored.” She wrinkles her nose, and looks at Jon, still with that sly smile. “Much better for you to strengthen your connection to the Web. Your fear will feed us. You’ll have our gifts.”

“So this is, what, an invitation?”

“Sure,” Annabelle says. “If you want to think of it that way.” She pauses. “Of course, invitations presume that you can deny them, and free will isn’t exactly the Web’s strong suit. The Mother of Puppets wants you to be ours, so you will be.”

Jon opens his mouth, to ask what the hell that means, but Annabelle cuts him off. “You should probably be going now.”

Jon stands up, not of his own accord, and starts toward the door. Annabelle follows. Before he leaves, she plants a hand on his shoulder, and he just barely manages to not flinch away. “Jon,” she says, and there’s something different in her eyes now, replacing the sly teasing tone she’d taken before. She looks… concerned. Sad, even. “There will be some growing pains,” she says. “Just do what the Mother wants. It’ll be alright.” She squeezes his wrist, and then shuts the door.

He doesn’t decide to go back to the Archives. The Web decides for him.

***

“Good morning,” Martin says, bringing in tea, as he does every morning.

Jon smiles at him. “Good morning, Martin.”

Martin looks at him for long enough that Jon starts to frown. “Martin? Did you need something?”

“What?” Martin blinks. “No, sorry, I—You just look… really good. Better than you have since—Well, since you got back from your… vacation, I guess.”

“I suppose there’s no snappy way to say, ‘time when you weren’t coming into work because your boss framed you for murder and the cops wanted to kill you,’” Jon quips. “But yes. I feel better.” He lifts the statement on his desk. “Feels like we’re finally making progress towards something.”

“And your hand, and—It’s all healing well?” Martin asks.

Jon nods, flexing his hand slightly beneath the bandages. “I think I’m starting to get a bit of feeling back? Which is probably a good sign.”

“Probably,” Martin agrees. “I still think you should’ve gone to A&E.”

Jon nods, a little embarrassed. “Yes, well… if it gets worse, I’ll take your advice.”

“Alright,” Martin says. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it.” And then he leaves, smiling because, for the first time in recent memory, Jon actually seems as fine as he claims to be.

Jon wants to scream. He wants to curl up beneath his desk, arms wrapped around himself in some semblance of comfort. He wants to be held—Martin or Georgie or Tim, or someone. He wants the release of it, warm arms grounding him as he shakes apart entirely. He wants to beg the others to please, please help him.

Instead, he smiles at them when he sees them in the break room, when he asks them to look into certain details for him. He sits in his office, calmly reading statement after statement, finding as much information about the Unknowing as possible. He goes home and watches movies with Georgie, and laughs at all the right parts. None of it is his choice, and he is so, so scared. Scared of what the Web is planning. Scared that he will be nothing but a puppet for the rest of his life.

It’s strange, being so constantly terrified, but showing no physical symptoms of fear. His heart rate is normal. His hands and voice are steady.

It doesn’t escape his notice that they all like him better, like this. Unburdened by the weight he carries with him. He desperately wishes for one of them to notice that it’s wrong, that he’s wrong, but he knows they won’t. Even if they did notice, he isn’t certain they would want him to go back to what he was before.

It’s almost a relief when Breekon and Hope grab him. He chooses to fight them, kick out his legs uselessly as they tie him up and toss him in the back of their van. His heart is hammering, adrenaline firing. It’s exhilarating, but there’s no room to rejoice in his newfound freedom. He has to find a way out of this, but—

There is no way out. Nikola delights in reminding him of this, whenever she comes to see him. They tie him up in a dimly lit room, surrounded by horrifying mannequins that sometimes move. His binds are tight, as is the gag in his mouth, and though he can struggle against them, it’s clear he’ll never manage to wriggle out of them.

For a while, he expects someone to come rescue him. Maybe Annabelle, although if he really thinks about it, it’s more likely that the Web would simply manipulate someone else into coming. Maybe his assistants would come, if they can find him. (If they decide he’s worth rescuing.) He’s wanted by the Eye and the Web, and clearly that counts for something. Surely they wouldn’t just abandon him to be skinned alive by the Stranger.

But no one comes. It’s hard to keep track of time, but Jon knows it’s been a few weeks, at least. Long enough by far for a rescue party to come, if they ever planned on coming. He wonders if the Web is enjoying this, if this fear is Web-flavored enough for it. Maybe it set him up for this. Maybe it’s actively preventing him from escaping.

He’s allowed to cry now. He can even scream, if he wanted to, although the gag makes it kind of pointless. Nikola enjoys when he cries.

Michael comes, and then Helen replaces him, and Jon can see the spidercracks of the Web behind it. Helen opens her door to him, and even if he wanted to take his chances with the Stranger, the webs in his mind give him no choice but to accept her offer.

At least Helen only toys with him a little bit before depositing him back in his office.

He lays on the floor for a long time, staring at the ceiling, expecting at any moment for the vise-like grip of the Web to take hold of him once more. It keeps not happening. His breath starts to come faster and faster, so he forces himself to take deep breaths, but that only makes his shaky breathing sound louder in his ears. It’s all so loud, his breathing, his heartbeat. Even the electricity humming in the walls, the soft rattle of the air conditioner.

He brings a hand to his face, and his eyes are filled with tears that immediately start tumbling over his cheeks. A sob hitches in his chest, and he almost smiles. He’s wanted to have a breakdown for so long, and now—it’s almost pleasant, losing control of his emotions in the safety of his office. No one around to jeer and laugh at him. No spiderwebs forcing him to keep smiling.

Another sob hitches, and he suddenly feels much too exposed. He pulls himself under his desk, relishing the darkness, the smallness. He brings his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around himself. Lets himself cry, burying the sound as much as he can. He doesn’t want the others to hear.

The door opens, and he lets out a soft gasp, biting down on his sobs. He holds his breath, willing himself to be quiet, to not be heard, not be found. He’s petrified that being found will mean his break is over, will mean the Web comes back, invading his mind.

It’s Martin. He comes in, humming quietly, and sets something on Jon’s desk. He starts to leave, and then—

Jon suddenly takes a sharp inhale, unable to hold his breath any longer.

Martin’s footsteps pause, hesitantly.

Something in Jon’s brain—the spiderwebs, he knows—pulls at him to be quiet, to let Martin leave, to not bother him with this. But it’s been so long since Jon’s seen Martin, and he just—He just wants to see him. Even if it means he has to smile. Surely, surely Martin will see that something is wrong, won’t he? The thought brings fresh tears to his eyes, and he says, “Martin?” His voice is thick with tears and rough from disuse. 

“Wha—Jon?” Martin says. His footsteps move quickly to the other side of the desk, and he crouches down. “Oh my god, Jon! What happened? Where have you been?”

“Circus got me,” Jon says with a watery smile. The Web hasn’t taken hold yet. And it’s so nice to see Martin, soft and warm and safe.

“This—this whole time, you’ve been with the Circus?” Martin says, sounding horrified.

Jon nods. “How long have I been gone?”

“A month,” Martin says. “Christ, are you alright?”

The spiderwebs tell Jon to send Martin away, to claim that he’s fine. But the compulsion isn’t as strong as it was before. It’s a request, not an order. And Jon is… He isn’t fine. He hasn’t been fine in a long time.

Besides, it’s not like Martin somehow missed the dirty tear tracks on his face.

“No,” he whispers, curling up tighter into himself. The shaking is back now. A month. A month of intruding hands rubbing lotion into his skin, constantly reminding him of their plans for him, telling him how much it would hurt, letting him hear the horrible screams of their other victims.

“Can I touch you?” Martin asks, and Jon nods.

Martin pulls Jon into his arms, both of them still partially under the desk. He’s warm, and his words are soft as he runs a soothing hand up and down Jon’s back. Jon buries his head in his chest, crying until he’s all wrung out, until nothing remains inside of him.

“Sorry,” Jon says, still sniffling slightly, his voice thick. There’s a damp patch on Martin’s shirt now, and Jon flushes a bit, looking at it.

“It’s alright, Jon,” Martin says, still holding on to him. He isn’t shifting impatiently, or acting like Jon should move away, so Jon doesn’t. He rests his head on Martin’s shoulder, exhausted, and Martin continues rubbing soothing circles into his back.

***

Jon wakes up on the cot in document storage, tucked in under several blankets. He spends a hazy moment wishing Martin were there with him, and then the spiderwebs re-exert themselves in full force and he is getting out of bed. Well. He hardly expected the break to last forever. He was lucky to get this much, really. The terror has lessened, and it feels like he can think in a straight line for once.

He heads out of document storage and towards the break room. It’s dark in the Archives. Everyone has left for the day, except for Martin, who didn’t want to leave Jon alone. He’s run out to fetch them both dinner, and will be back shortly.

The Web steers him to the utensil drawer, which is a disorganized mess, as always. He thinks about his feelings for Martin as he digs through it, the deep fondness he feels for him. He’s still holding on to a bit of hope that Martin will save him from this, he realizes.

He finds a knife, and pulls it from the drawer, and suddenly he is very focused on what the Web wants from him. He sets the knife on the counter, and then rolls up his left shirt sleeve. With horror sinking into his gut, he sets his arm on the edge of the sink, picks up the knife again in his right hand. He holds it firmly, tight enough that it makes his newly-healed scar ache.

He knows what’s about to happen. He tries to stop it, but it’s like trying to stop gravity. His hand doesn’t so much as tremble as he slices into the soft skin just below his elbow.

He lets out a cry of pain, or fear, but continues to carve into his arm with the tip of the knife. He’s cutting deep into his flesh, and he doesn’t want to look as blood pours out of him. But he can’t look away.

After an eternity, Jon is finally allowed to drop the knife. It clatters into the sink, leaving a trail of blood droplets behind it. He stares at the wound for a second. Even obscured as it is by blood, he can tell it’s a spiderweb. A message. A punishment.

He feels suddenly nauseous, salt flooding his mouth, and he sinks to the floor, breathing deeply, trying not to be sick. There is so much blood.

A soft pull at his mind, almost gentle. Don’t let Martin see.

He doesn’t want to know what the Web will do to him, if he refuses. There isn’t much time before Martin gets back, so he has to hurry.

He’s still dripping blood everywhere, so that’s the first step. Stop the bleeding. The first aid kit is nearby, well-stocked as always. He grabs it down from the shelf, and then wets a few napkins, which he uses to clean off as much of the blood as possible. It hurts, and he has to sit down before he finishes. It’s a bit tricky, wrapping his own arm in gauze, especially with his right hand injured as well, but he manages, adding layer after layer until he can no longer see the blood soaking through.

He rolls his sleeve down. The bulk of the gauze is visible through his shirt, but hopefully Martin won’t notice something he isn’t looking for.

Jon wipes down the table, the floor, the sink, until he can no longer see any blood anywhere. He washes the knife and drops it back in the drawer. And then he sits down, taking deep, even breaths. He should probably go lay down again, but he doesn’t think he can make it all the way back there. Not on his own.

He puts his head down, and a few minutes later, he hears the stairs creaking with Martin’s return. He hears his footsteps receding as he heads towards document storage, hears the soft creak of the door. And then the steps get louder, until Martin pokes his head into the break room.

“Oh, there you are,” he says, a relieved smile on his face. “Sorry for leaving you. I didn’t think you would wake up. I brought dinner,” he says, holding up the bag of takeout clutched in his hands.

Jon smiles in return. “The Eye told me,” he says.

“Oh, that’s—creepy,” Martin says.

“Sorry,” Jon says, his eyes flicking back to the table.

“It’s fine,” Martin says, sitting down across from him. “How are you feeling?”

The Web isn’t controlling him, but it hardly matters. “I’m fine,” he says. “Feeling better.”

***

They finish eating, and Martin insists on staying the night with Jon in the Archives. He insists that Jon sleep on the cot, even though the break room couch is much too small for Martin to sleep on comfortably.

Jon wakes up, and the fresh wound on his forearm has bled through the gauze, staining not only his shirt sleeve, but also the rest of his shirt. He’s covered in blood, so much that he can’t possibly hide it.

And he can hear Martin, already awake and moving around in the Archive.

Jon stands up, trying to decide what to do. If Martin sees the blood, he will ask questions, and there is no good way to explain the design so intricately carved into Jon’s arm. He needs fresh gauze, and a fresh shirt, but his extra clothes are in his office, and the first aid kit is in the break room.

He decides to make a break for his office, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders to hide any blood Martin might spot. Before he can move, however, the door to document storage opens, and Jon freezes.

“Hey Jon, I wanted to ask—” Martin stops, and for a moment they’re just staring at each other. Martin opens his mouth again, panic writ large on his face. “Jon, is that blood? What happened?”

“I—um—”

“Was it the Circus?” Martin asks, stepping closer. Jon flinches away from him, and he stops. “Okay, just—Jon, that looks really bad.”

“Yeah,” Jon manages, his voice coming out in an almost-laugh. Martin’s look of concern only grows deeper.

There’s no way for Jon to salvage this, no explanation that Martin will accept. Martin can’t know about this, can’t know about any of this. The Web might hurt him, if he becomes a danger to it.

And then—

He suddenly can see the exact strings he needs to pull in Martin’s mind, to make him ignore this. It’ll be easy. Martin won’t even know he’s done anything.

It’s the only option.

For the first time, Jon uses the spiderwebs. Martin’s eyes go blank and glassy for a single horrifying moment. And then he blinks, and looks at Jon. Jon is still covered with his own blood, but Martin doesn’t notice it at all. He looks vaguely confused for a second, before he gathers himself. “Sorry, lost my train of thought,” he says with a small laugh. “I was going to ask if you wanted to go get something for breakfast. I know you usually just skip it, but there’s a nice cafe not to far from here, and I thought it would be… good.”

Jon wants to cry. He wants to tell Martin everything, ask for his help. But Martin can’t help him. Asking will do nothing but hurt both of them.

Instead, Jon smiles. “Sounds wonderful,” he says.

[aubreyprc]

In My Veins Final 2

part one part two part three part four part five(happy) 

Find the first half of this here

Again... very sorry. also i know i said tomorrow but... oh well lol😀✋

once again, tagging those who have read from the start, yall really🥰😎 hell yeah besties @hotchnisscardigan @florenceremingtonthethird @olivinesea @eprcntiss @jetaime-jespere @petit97

another big shoutout of course to @suckerforhotchniss. this was all her idea and actually if you’re going to come for anyone come for her okay?:)

TW! for/ mentions of depression, drugs, death and suicide. please read with caution if these things could trigger you, but they are only mentions. nothing graphic.

-

They bury her on a warm day in the fall. Jack stands in front of his father, the man’s hands over his shoulder as she’s lowered down. There are tears down his face but Hotch remains standing straight, holding back his emotions, watching with a broken heart as she lowered to the ground for the second, but final time.

JJ grips Will’s hand tightly as she closes her eyes, taking a deep breath, Garcia then loops her hand in hers and the woman faces her and nods, before turning back.

Penelope has tears streaming down her face as she watches, she looks over to the Hotchner’s and just wishes there was something she could do for them, but the only thing they want is her back and that is something she just can not do, no matter how much she wishes she could. She wants to hug Hotch and tell him it’s okay, that she forgives him but she can’t. All she can think about is the fact that her friend died and he didnt let her say goodbye. Again.

Spencer is standing a few feet away from her, staring at the casket being lowered into the ground as he holds his breath. He can feel Morgan inches from him and all he wants is to reach out and grab his hand but he doesn't know if he can. Ever since Emily died they’ve been… different. Spencer knows that Morgan blames him and he accepts that. It’s his fault anyway.

As the casket lowers into the ground, Hotch feels the grief for two, because along side Emily in that casket is their baby, their baby that will never be. The baby they will never hold, or name or watch grow up. He will never tell anyone about them. They don’t deserve the right, simply due to the fact that she never knew. Emily will never, ever know that they had created a life together before hers was taken, alongside theirs.

As the casket reaches the bottom with a small thud, as he and jack place some mud into the grave, along with some flowers, as he watches his team do the same, he can’t help but feel like his future is buried right there with her, and he doesn't see a way through it.

-

One month after Emily dies, he goes back to work. Jack’s started sleeping through the night again and there are no more nightmares.

Every Sunday night it’s no longer one candle the young boy lights, it’s two. Haley and Emily.

He and Aaron will sit on the floor in the living room, place the candles on the table and Jack tells them both about his week, about school, he’ll tell them he still misses them everyday and that he is still so sad but that he’s going to be strong for them. He tells them he loves them and he looks to his Dad, who will then do the same.

He’ll share a funny, but PG story about something one of the team did at work for Emily and then a funny story about Jack or Jessica for Haley. He’ll tell them he misses and loves them and Jack will blow the candles out and smile at the smoke.

Jack will go to bed then and like every other night previously, Aaron will sit on the couch, grab Emily’s jumper he keeps under it, bring it too his face and he will cry for her. For their baby. For them.

Everything in the apartment reminded him of her. Her smell still lingered in their bed, her shampoo and body wash remained exactly where she had left them, her clothes remained in his draws, unmoved. The coat she'd left still hung up next to his, her shoes still on the stand.

He knows JJ and Penelope had cleaned out her apartment weeks ago because they’d handed Dave the clothes he had scattered around there and with a sad look in his eyes, he gave them back to him.

Those clothes remained in the laundry room of his apartment. He won’t wash them. He won’t wear them again.

The mug she had drank out of the morning they had left for North Carolina still stood unwashed and untouched in his sink. Her lipstick still on the rim of the mug and he remembers the way she had smiled at him from under it as he spoke to her that morning. The way she chuckled lightly when he winked at her before trying to get Jack ready for school.

He remembers that he’d kissed her quickly before he left like he would do it for the rest of his life. He remembers it all. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget. He doesn’t want too.

Two months after Emily dies Hotch is no better. His smiles, however rare they were in the first place, are now non existent. The team brings up depression and they talk about how he should see someone about his grief but he pushes them away with a single “I'm fine” and ends the conversation.

Jack struggles to bring his father out of his grief, he spends most of his time with Jessica, but every now and then Aaron will take his son to the park, or to the beach and they will smile, they will laugh and everything would feel like it was before.

Sometimes Jack can hear his father crying, so he jumps from his bed and walks into his bedroom, jumping onto the bed and laying next to him. Hotch will take a breath and hold back the remainder of his tears and Jack will lean over to wipe them.

“You did this for me when I was having my nightmares,” He whispers to him when he wipes a tear from his face and Aaron chuckles.

“Thank you, buddy.” He whispers back and the boy smiles.

Aaron’s grief consumes him. It’s overwhelming the way he loves her and it’s overbearing the way he misses her. Grief is all he feels. Grief, heartbreak, loss, emptiness and anger.

He wants to get over this for the sake of his son and he tries but he just can’t. It’s overtaken him and he can not get out of the pit the loss of her has put him in. He feels like he can’t even breathe without her. Everything feels harder than it should and he just can’t do it. He’s trying for Jack but it’s starting to eat him alive, the guilt, the loss, the memories, everything.

It’s a Thursday night as he stares at the bottom of an empty bottle with tears running down his face, a picture of him and Emily in his hands that he becomes haunted by the thought that his own son might not even be enough to get him through this.

Three months after Emily Prentiss died a man named Peter Lewis enters his life and from the moment the killer sets eyes on Agent Hotchner he knows that’s the one whose mind he can break easily. That’s the one who he can snap in half. With a grim smile he watches, and plans his attack.

Three weeks and two days later Aaron Hotchner is walking from the parking lot towards his car when there is a sharp needle in his neck and a voice behind him. He’s falling to the floor slowly as his mind clouds over and all he can think about is that the whole thing is sort of...peaceful.

Peter Lewis places the mask over Hotch’s mouth and let’s the drugs do their job, leaning over him and whispering..

“When you wake up.. Your precious son will be dead, you watched me kill him before I brought you here.” He smiles to himself, “You will see the person you love the most and when they hand you the gun.. you’ll know what you have to do.”

What he thinks will happen is he will see Jack’s mother, he thinks she will tell him to kill his team when they walk through the doors and that he’ll do it, before his brain snaps like everyone else’s and he’ll become Mr Scratch, leaving Peter Lewis to roam free.

What he doesn’t expect is for Aaron Hotchner to be depressed and in love with a dead woman named Emily Prentiss. What he doesn’t expect is for the man to be suicidal, the grief of losing the woman he loves and their baby almost too much for him to handle.

What he doesn’t is expect that his son was the last thing keeping him holding on.

He doesn’t expect a lot of things that he should have.

Aaron wakes with a gasp and looks around the room. He sits up and feels for his gun to find himself without it.

Looking around again he notices that he’s in a house he does not recognise and doesn’t know how he got to. He feels a slight twinge in his neck and it jolts something inside of his mind. He sees flashes of a man breaking into his house, he can hear his son screaming for him and he… he remembers fighting a man who was going after his little boy. He closes his eyes as he tries to force himself to remember more when there’s a loud sound from another room. He stands up and walks towards it, only to freeze when he’s met with the man he sees in his flashes.

“Where is my son?” Aaron asks the man, who laughs in response.

“You don’t remember?” He asks, “Think.” He tells him, and Hotch looks around his unfamiliar surroundings again.

“What have you done with him?” Aaron asks, his heart beating rapidly in his chest.

“You really don’t remember?” Peter Lewis questions and he steps towards him. Hotch watches every move the man takes but he won’t step back. Not until he finds his son. “He’s dead Agent Hotchner.” He smiles and Aaron didn’t think he could ever, ever, feel anymore pain but he was wrong. Those words slash through him like a knife. He steps backwards and takes a breath, shaking his head and looking around the room.

“You were there, remember?” Peter Lewis pushes, Hotch looks around. “A bullet.. right between his eyes. You watched…” As he hears the words Hotch’s mind starts to piece it together and… he can see his son lay on the floor, his eyes open, staring blankly at him and he remembers trying to get to him before being pulled under by whatever was put into his neck.

“You.. you killed my son?” Hotch asks, tears running down his face.

Peter Lewis just smiles before walking off slowly and Hotch wants to go after him but he can’t. His mind is foggy and it’s putting pieces together, sending him dizzy. He hits the floor with a thud as his mind clouds over once again.  

The team realise he’s missing an hour and a half after he left that night after a call from Jessica to Rossi, asking if Hotch had left yet because Jack can’t sleep unless Aaron puts him to bed.

The CCTV footage from the parking garage tells them all they need to know and they’re working immediately.

“This is bad, Rossi.” Morgan tells them as they stare at the board, “The man’s mind is already…” He pauses, “Whatever happens to him, whatever Peter Lewis does to him.. I don’t see him coming back from it. He still hasn’t come back from losing Emily.”

-

Aaron comes to again a few moments later and with a foggy mind, dizzy and confused he sits up and stands. In his mind all he can see is Peter Lewis in his apartment, Peter Lewis holding a gun up to his screaming little boy and firing. He can see Jack staring blankly at him before he sees nothing.

His phone rings then and he frowns in confusion about how he still has it.

“Answer it,” He hears Peter Lewis say from somewhere.

“Hello?” He says down the phone, looking around the room he’s in.

“Aaron?” The voice says and Aaron stops, “It’s Dave.”

“Dave?” He questions, “What-“

“Tell us where you are.” Dave commands and Aaron looks around once again, searching for windows, maybe a front door but there is nothing.

“I don’t know…” He mumbles, “He...he killed Jack.” His voice cracks and he wants to scream.

“What?” Dave questions, “Who did?”

“Peter Lewis. He’s here.. somewhere. I don’t know. But I saw it… I saw him…”

“Aaron.. listen to me.” Dave tells him sternly, “Listen.”

“Okay…” He whispers, sinking down onto the floor.

“Mr Scratch did not kill your son. Jack is not dead.”

“What?” He says, confused and shaking his head. “But-”

“But you saw it, I know. That’s what he does. He drugs people into seeing whatever he wants them to. You know this, Aaron. Fight it.”

Hotch doesn’t say anything, just remains silent while his mind shatters to pieces. Imagines of him and Emily flash before him, her laughing, smiling then her under a car. Then it’s him and Jack and they’re smiling and laughing but then… but then Peter Lewis kills his son. He see’s it happen and it looks so real.

“Aaron!” Dave shouts again, “Fight it. Fight it.”

Aaron goes to speak when theres a noise from somewhere infront of him and when he opens his eyes.. he see’s her.

“Emily?” He questions, almost as if he doesn’t believe his own eyes. She smiles and bends down in front of him. His breath catches in his throat as she looks at him.

“Hi.” She says softly, “Don’t listen to them. They’re lying.” She tells him. He just stares at her and reaches out to touch her, and when his fingers touch her skin he quickly pulls them back.

“How.. what?”

“Aaron!” Rossi shouts down the phone again and Hotch puts it back to his ear.

“Yeah..” He says but it’s obvious in the way he says it that the hallucination of Emily has his complete attention, not that they blame him, some of them even wish it was them seeing her.

“Listen to me, okay? Listen.”

“I am..” He says, still looking at Emily as she sits in front of him, a smile on her lips and he reaches out to touch her once again before freezing just before his fingers reach her cheek.

“That is not Emily.” Are the words that freeze him, “Jack isn’t dead and that is not Emily and you need to find a way out of there.” Rossi shouts.

“Why?” He whispers, “It’s her. She’s here. I can see her…”

“It’s not her, Aaron. Emily is dead, Aaron. She isn’t there. You know that.”

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t know that. He was already so broken before Peter Lewis drugged him that his mind had now shattered completely and to him what he was seeing was true. It was true and she was here. His son was dead and she was here. He had nothing left to fight for.

“Emily..” Aaron whispers again, before putting the phone down.

“Aaron you need to get out of there,” Rossi tells his sternly, “Even though the thought of a life without Emily is heart breaking and I know how much pain you’re in, there is a six year old waiting for you at home who’s going through the same thing. He needs you, Aaron.” He says, “Jack isnt dead and that is not Emily.”

There is silence for a few moments before Hotch ends the call, as as the beep of the loss of singal echos around the room, Rossi stands.

“Track that call!”

-

She smiles as he ends the call and puts the phone of the floor, his eyes transfixed on her.

“I’ve missed you.” She tells him, reaching for his hand and when she takes it and he feels it on his own, tears fall from his eyes because she’s here. she’s back.

“I missed you too.” He whispers, smiling at her. He looks at her and tilts his head into her hand when she cups his cheek and he can’t help but notice just how cold she is. He intertwines her fingers with his as they rest of his cheek and he sighs.

“Jack’s dead?” He whispers, and Emily nods softly.

“Yeah…” She replies, “I’m sorry, honey”

“He killed him..” He says and Emily nods her head again. She pulls her hand from her cheek slowly, but keeps their fingers locked together as she starts to stand. He follows her actions and when they’re stood, he stares at her.

“Do you trust me?” She asks with a smile while she locks their hands together, he nods.

“Always.” He tells her and she smiles.

“Follow me.” She says and leads him into a different room. They stand in front of a closed door and before she opens it she looks back at him.

“What’s this?” He asks her and she smiles, opening it and he looks inside. “Is that-”

“That’s our daughter.” She tells him, unlocking her fingers from his and walking towards the little girl sat on the floor. Emily crouches down next to her and they both stare at him.

“How?” He whispers, he walks in and bends down in front of them both. “They said you didn’t know..”

“I didn’t..” She says, “But I know now.”

“She looks just like you.” He tells her with a smile and she nods.

“Come on,” She says and grabs his hand again, pulling him away from the little girl who waves goodbye to him, he’s still looking behind him as they leave the room.

“Emily.. what is going on?”

“What do you mean?” She questions, standing in front of him in what looks to be a living room. It’s not one he recognises.

“How are you here?” He whispers, “You’re.. you’re dead.”

Emily stands in front of him and rests both her cold hands on his face and nods.

“Yeah.” She whispers, “But I really missed you.”

“I miss you too, god.. you have no idea.” He tells her but she’s pulling away and he wants to follow her but he can’t move.

“It’s so cold, Aaron.” She tells him, there’s tears in her eyes, “It’s so cold, and it’s so dark.” She whispers, “I’m cold…” She says again, looking at him.

“Emily-” He starts to say but he can’t finish it because he remembers her saying this the first time. How when she coded in the ambulance all she felt was darkness and cold and it’s been haunting him for months thinking what if she’s cold where she is? What if it’s dark? And to have her say the words to him breaks his already shattered heart.

“Aaron,” She whispers and he looks at her, there’s blood down her face and coming from her mouth and he’s seeing flashes of her once again pinned under a car. “I need you.” She tells him, “You’re the only place I feel safe. I don’t feel safe here. Its so cold. It’s so dark. It’s so lonely.”

He loves her so much that this is torture for him to hear this. To hear that this whole time she has been in the dark, cold and alone. He reaches out for her but he can’t reach her.

“Let me help you. Please.”

She walks towards him and presses something heavy in his hard and he looks down to find a gun. His eyes snap up to hers and she’s smiling, nodding her head.

“I love you.” She tells him, “Please. Help me.”

“But-” He wants to say what about Jack but then he remembers that his little boy was dead. His son was gone, taken by the man who’d brought him here and he had nothing left now.

He loved her so much and she’s cold, she’s scared and she’s alone. There is a gun in his hand and in one click it’s all over he can join Emily where she is and she won’t have to be cold and alone anymore. He can join Jack.. and Haley and they can all be together.

“It’s okay,” She nods as she lifts the gun for him, it’s balanced against his temples and her hands are on his cheeks and she’s so cold, he can feel it on his skin and it makes him shiver. He’s starting at her but he’s not afraid, he smiles at her and she’s smiling right back. “We’re waiting for you.” She says and then there’s people behind her. Not just people but, Jack, his little boy, he’s in his mother’s arms, who’s nodding her head in his direction and then there’s the little girl with dark hair that looked much like him and Emily he could not believe it.

He stares at Emily once more and she smiles at him.

“I love you.” She whispers to him, he sighs, nodding his head and the gun goes off.

His hallucinations fade away just as he does.

He dies instantly.

-

The team rush into the building to find Peter Lewis waiting from them on a chair in the middle of the abandoned building, laughing.  

“He was more broken than I thought.” He laughs, “I can’t even be angry that I’ve been caught. Watching him so..shattered, was better than I could have imagined.”

“Where is he?” Rossi shouts as Morgan picks the guy of the chair and handcuffs him.

Peter Lewis laughs and looks at him, “If you thought everybody you loved was dead, and the one person you loved more than anything was telling you how cold they were.. where would you go?”

Everyone freezes, before taking off in a run. Peter Lewis is handed to local PD as they search the house.

JJ runs into an empty room and spots his legs, he’s lay on the floor and for a moment she lets out a sigh of relief until she realises he isn’t moving. She walks slowly towards him, her heart hammering against her chest and she can’t breathe because surely, surely this isn’t happening. It can’t be.

“Hotch?” She calls, taking slow steps, “Hotch..” She says again when she reaches him and at first glance it just looks like he’s lay there, but then she spots the gun in his hand and the bullet hole is his head and he’s staring so blankly at her she feels like she might throw up. All she can do is scream.

It’s JJ’s scream that gives them all his location and as the blonde woman falls backwards into Morgan’s arms, they all see the sight she had.

Aaron Hotchner lay dead, a bullet hole in his temple, a gun in his hand in the middle of the floor of an abandoned building.

Rossi walks over and bends down, closing the man’s eye while he ignores the cries of JJ as Morgan holds her tightly.

“It’s okay,” He whispers to the dead man, “You rest now.”

-

They all arrive back at the BAU and the first person they break news to is Garcia.

Morgan is the one to tell her and when the words leave his mouth all Garcia can do is scream before almost dropping to the floor, collapsing in Morgan’s arms as he holds her up and brings her into his chest, wrapping his arms tightly around her.

“He can’t be dead!” She cries, “He can’t be…he can’t die thinking I hated him.” She's sobbing into his chest and Morgan holds back his own tears as he holds her close.

“He didn’t think that.” He whispers, rubbing a hand down her back.

“He did!” She cries, “He died thinking that I couldn’t forgive but I did.”

“He knows, Penelope.” Morgan reassures her, “He knows.”

Jessica and Jack walk into the BAU with no idea what to expect.

Dave guides Jessica into his office while JJ sits with Jack. They have no idea how to break the news to the six year old who is now an orphan. Every parental figure he has gone.

“He’s dead, isn’t he.” Jessica says, looking at Dave. The man nods slowly, swallowing the lump in his throat.

“His name was Peter Lewis. He.. he drugged Aaron and-”

“I don’t need to know the specifics.” She tells him, shaking her head and looking at Jack as he talks to JJ.

“What do I tell him?” She whispers, “How are they all dead?”

“Life is cruel.” He says to her, “I find peace in that he’s with Emily.”

“Where’s Jack’s peace?” She questions, looking at the older man, “He lost three parents in two years. How does a little boy get through that?”

“With time.” Rossi says softly, “With help.”

Jessica and Dave look back to the boy who sits and waits for them, not knowing that his dad had joined his mother and Emily. Not knowing he was alone.

-

In the end it’s Dave who breaks the news to him because Jessica just can’t do it. She tries, but as the boy’s eyes stare into hers she just can’t.

Dave takes over and crouch’s down in front of the boy, smiling sadly at him.

“Hey Jack.” He whispers and Jack just looks at him and he already knows what is coming. He’s been through this twice now.

“Is Daddy gone?” He asks, “Did he join Emmy?”

“Yeah, buddy.” Dave says after a few moments, “I’m sorry.”

Jack looks down, tears burning in his eyes. He leans forward and wraps his arms around Dave.

“He promised me.. Uncle Dave. He promised me he wouldn’t go away like everyone else. Why did he lie?” Jack cries into his neck and Dave just holds the boy tighter.

“He tried very hard to stay for you, Jack. Really really hard.” He lies to the boy because he doesn’t need the truth. He wouldn’t understand it. He’s better without it. There’s movement behind Dave and Jack looks up to find JJ standing there. He slowly pulls away from him and heads towards the woman. Looking at her with wide eyes and she smiles, bending down to be eye level with him.

“He lied, Miss Jennifer..” He whispers to her and she shakes her head, wiping his tears with her thumb.

“Come here,” She whispers and scoops the boy into her, holding him tightly as she stands. The boy cries into her neck because what she forgot was that she was wearing Emily’s perfume and all the boy could smell while he rested in her arms was Emily.

“You smell like her.” Jack whispers as he rests his head on her shoulder. “I miss them.”

“Me too, baby.” She says, kissing his head.

-

Jessica takes the boy home an hour later and as they lay in her bed, him resting softly next to her, he asks her a question that breaks her in half.

“Is it just me and you now Aunt Jess?” He asks her. She turns to face him and runs a hand through his hair.

“Yeah baby,” She tells him, “Just me and you.”

“You’re not going to leave?”

“No.” She shakes her head, “I’m right here.”

The two candles turn into three and as he tells his parents about his day, Jessica watches with a sad smile and just hopes that the young boy makes it through this.

They bury Hotch next to Emily four months and two days after her funeral. Jack stands in front of Jessica, watching as another casket is lowered to the ground. Spencer and Morgan stand two feet away, hands grasped together and they hold back their tears, Penelope’s hand wrapped in Morgan’s other, tears falling freely from her face. JJ and Will stand two feet away from them, Will holds her close as they watch. JJ can’t take her eyes away from Jack, the little boy who lost so much so quickly.

As the boy places a rose on each grave, the team cry silently.

“Let’s go give the other rose to mommy.” They hear Jessica whisper to him after a few moments and the boy nods, taking her hand and letting her guide him through the small walk of the cemetery to where his Mother was buried in the Brookes plot.

-

The team come by and visit Jack for a few months after Aaron and Emily’s deaths. They go to as many of  his soccer games that they can, they try to take him on days out and make him feel as though he’s still a part of their family. He has play dates with Henry and for a few months they’re doing what they know Aaron and Emily would have done for them and try and help Jack through the process.

Yet, one by one the team just stopped coming over to see him. It’s too hard. He has Haley’s eyes and Hotch’s face but he also has Emily’s mannerisms and it’s too hard for them to see it. He reminds them of all they’ve lost and soon no one comes to see him anymore and he’s never understood why everyone always leaves him.

Why didn’t anybody ever stay?

So when Jack snaps at sixteen because everybody he loves is dead and everybody else left him alone to deal with the repercussions,  it’s the team he goes after.

He manages to get all of them apart from one before they catch him.

Rossi is first because.. that was Uncle Dave. That was Uncle Dave and why didn’t he stay? Why did he leave?

He shoots him in the chest because it’s his first one and he hasn’t quite got the hang of it yet. Dave looks at him and takes a hollow breath,

“It’s okay, kid. I get it. I’m sorry I left you. I forgive you..” and he won’t stop talking. Jack shoots him in the head and just like that there’s silence. He bends down and looks at the older man. “It didn’t have to be this way Dave, but you didn’t stay. Why didn’t you stay? Why didn’t anybody just stay?”

Spencer is next because he was like a brother to Emily and a man his own father treated more of like a son than he did him and it has always upset him that after just two months without them he put them and him in the past and moved on. When he’s done Spencer, a gun shot to the chest, he moves onto Morgan because he was supposed to be the protector of the group and he had promised him he would be there but then once again had chosen Spencer. Just like he had done with his father, like he had Emily.

As they're both dying, gripping each other’s hand as they take their final breaths he scoffs because “Why should you get to die together when they didn’t?” They bring Emily and Aaron. They being him and his family.

It’s JJ next because he can’t believe that after everything Emily did for her she just left him when he was just a child with no parents. She even has a child herself and Henry was his friend and so why did no one help him?

He doesn’t make it to Penelope before he’s caught. When he’s asked by detectives and Agents why he did what he did he looks them straight in the eye before answering.

“Because they made promises they couldn’t keep, and they left me. My parents died for them and they couldn’t keep their promises.”

Garcia buries all of her friends in the fall and when a leaf falls over the middle of where Emily and Aaron have lay for the last ten years, she thinks maybe Jack sparing her what their way of saying they forgive her for not being there for him and takes it as a sign to be there for him now.

Penelope visits Jack in prison every week for five years. She bumps into Jessica every now and then and they talk about their lost friends. About Jack.

Jack spends the rest of his life in prison. Forever missing his parents and forever holding a grudge against those who left him on their own accord. He doesn’t forgive those he killed and he doesn’t think he ever will.

He has a picture of him and his mother on the wall, as well as a picture of him, his father and Emily.

“I miss you,” He whispers to their pictures one night three years later, “I’ll see you soon.”

fin

[bluejayblueskies]

portrait of shattered glass

Words: 1.9k

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Relationship: Jonathan Sims & Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Tim Stoker (minorly)

Character: Jonathan Sims

Additional Tags: Whump, Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Canon-Typical Worms, Blood and Injury, Post-MAG40

Summary:

When Jon opens his eyes again, there’s only him, staring back at himself in the mirror. He barely recognizes himself beneath all of the bandages and the bags under his eyes and the exhaustion that pulls every part of him down until he’s hunched in on himself, the only thing keeping him up being his palms where they’re placed flat against his sink.

----

Jon goes home for the first time after Jane Prentiss’s attack on the Institute and finally sees himself in a mirror.

Read on Ao3

Or read below (content warnings will be listed immediately following the readmore):

Content warnings for:

- nausea/vomiting (non-graphic, brief) - graphic depiction of injury - blood - trypophobia - canon-typical worm content (the aftermath of said worms) - use of opioid painkillers (in the appropriate manner) - mentions of gun violence/death - paranoia - mild dissociation - picking at scabs

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Jon aches. He barely makes it up the stairs to his flat, every muscle screaming as the copious amounts of pain medicine he’d been given by the EMTs begins to truly wear off. The process of taking everyone’s statements, hearing about the worms again and again and again, had been agonizing, but he’d grit his teeth and pushed through it because it was important to get it all on tape. He couldn’t let anything fall through the cracks, couldn’t let anything get lost—couldn’t let himself get lost. Forgotten.

 Martin had looked at him with cloying concern and said, “Are you sure you’re okay, Jon?” after the tape had clicked off and Jon had become, once again, quite aware of the fact that his skin was peppered with holes.

 He had dozens. Gertrude Robinson had three. And he wasn’t sure which scared him more.

 “I’m fine,” he’d snapped, and he hadn’t been coherent enough to feel bad about it. “Please, just- just leave, Martin.”

 And for once, Martin had listened. Just given him a quiet, If you need anything, please call, before leaving Jon alone in his office.

 Alone, with the musty scent of worms and that same oppressive feeling of being watched.

 Fear and anxiety had driven Jon out of the archives more quickly than he thought he was capable of, swiping statements and tapes into his satchel at random and trying desperately to escape the smell that made his skin itch and crawl until he was blocks from the Institute, his free hand clenching and unclenching reflexively as he desperately tried not to itch the throbbing wounds on his arms and face.

 He’d intended to take the tube. He made it halfway there before the pain in his leg became too much to walk, even with his new cane, and he reluctantly called a cab.

 The driver said nothing at his bandaged face and shaking hands. Which was something, at least.

 The moment Jon finally, finally makes it into his flat, his stomach twists sharply in time with the click of his front door locking, and he barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s retching, the cloying taste of earth and salt on his tongue as his body desperately tries to rid itself of something it no longer has inside it. His hands grasp the edge of the toilet with white knuckles and he sees red blossom against the bandages wrapped around his hands, wounds reopening from the pressure of his grip. It sends agony, sharp and piercing, through his hands and up his arms, and he can’t help the whimper that slips free from his lips.

 He doesn’t move for a very, very long while.

 At some point, his hands find his satchel—strewn across the floor of the bathroom, still halfway tangled around his shoulders—and he withdraws the opioid pain medication he’d been given. It takes him five tries to get a solid enough grip on the plastic lid to unscrew the bottle, and he doesn’t think, just takes three pills dry. The scrape of the pills against the rubbed-raw flesh of his throat barely registers against the hazy red backdrop of pain that’s turned his vision blurry. He rests his head against the cool tile floor and tries to ignore the way that it puts pressure on the bandage that sits just above his temple. Or the one just shy of his left eye.

 If he had opened his mouth to scream, would they have burrowed into his tongue too, into his gums, into the softness of his throat?

 Jon closes his eyes tight and tries very hard to think of nothing at all.

 Eventually, the opioids dull his pain enough that he can stand without shaking, can make his way to the kitchen and drink a glass of water without spilling it, though his fingers still struggle to maintain their grip, too much muscle having been consumed and left hollow. His flat is almost entirely devoid of food, only a few canned goods and several packages of biscuits being something one could consider ‘edible.’

 He forces a biscuit past his lips and is just thankful that he’s able to keep it down.

 Days turn into nights turn into days turn into nights, and now Jon’s standing in front of his bathroom mirror, staring into brown eyes framed with dark bags that speak of many sleepless nights spent trying and failing to find a position that didn’t place pressure on a bandage, that didn’t reopen a wound. The plasters on his face are stained with dried blood, curling around the edges, and he considers the new, pristine white bandages sitting on the counter in front of him.

 Every two to three days, they’d said as they pressed bandages and pain killers and discharge papers into his hands, either not seeing the glassy look to his eyes that spoke of a mind a million miles away or just not caring. Get someone to help you if you can. Wash your hands to avoid infection. Be careful to avoid re-opening wounds, as this will delay healing.

 They’d said a lot of things, he thinks. None of them had been about whether or not Jane Prentiss was actually dead, or who killed Gertrude Robinson, or if he was going to be next. None of them were important.

 But his arms are beginning to itch, his hands going to them absently as he lies in bed and tries to poke through the statements he’d brought home—all meaningless drivel, none of them important, none of them real, he’d need to go into the Institute soon and pick out some better ones—and so he needs to do this.

 Rationally, he knows he’s just healing. That this is part of the process, the itching, and that scratching will only make it worse, more prone to scarring. But he can’t shake the feeling that the worms are still in him, that the ECDC missed some, that Jane Prentiss is still alive and so the worms are too and he’s becoming just like her, he’s becoming a monster just like her—

 His hands find a plaster on his cheek, a large one stained in several places, and he pulls it away too-quickly.

 There are holes in his cheek. He knows this, of course, of course he knows this, but knowing that your body is riddled with holes and actually seeing them are two different things entirely. There are holes in his cheek, red, aching holes, and even though they’re closed over with scabs and halfway to healing by now, he can’t stop looking at them and seeing the worms burrowing into his skin, like he’d seen for a long, agonizing moment before the carbon dioxide fire suppression system had kicked in and his brain had finally given him the small mercy of unconsciousness. His fingers are at his cheek before he can stop them, his nails finding the edges of the scabs and scratching, like he can somehow remove the memory if he just scrubs hard enough at his skin.

 All he gets instead are red-tipped fingers and a new, visceral wave of nausea at the sight of the newly-opened sores. He runs his hands under the tap with a numb efficiency before affixing a new plaster over the wound, feeling the knot in his stomach loosen slightly as the holes are once again hidden.

 Red colours the bandage immediately, a persistent reminder of what lies underneath, and Jon has to look away from the mirror.

 It takes him several hours to get through the rest of the bandages. He manages to keep himself from scratching all but a few. One on the inside of his wrist, before he can stop himself; another on the side of his hip, deeper than the others, the itch coming from within his bone and nearly consuming him with the need to rid himself of it. The one on his leg, messy from the corkscrew and with lasting damage that has him leaning on his newly-acquired cane when he walks. It places an unfortunate amount of pressure on the hole that lies in the centre of his right hand, nearly emerging through to the other side. That one—the one on his leg—itches the most, though of all the wounds now covered by bandages, that’s the one he’s most certain is simply a hole, devoid of anything that may be lurking beneath.

 Thoughts of corkscrews and tapes and a strong arm around his shoulders, guiding him through the dark, flash behind his eyes like stop-motion pictures. He closes his eyes and tries to lose himself in them, to remember what it felt like to not know.

 To not know that one of the people he’s spent months working with and getting tea from and eating cake and wine and ice cream with is a murderer. And that he’s probably next.

 When Jon opens his eyes again, there’s only him, staring back at himself in the mirror. He barely recognizes himself beneath all of the bandages and the bags under his eyes and the exhaustion that pulls every part of him down until he’s hunched in on himself, the only thing keeping him up being his palms where they’re placed flat against the countertop.

 They’re going to scar, he thinks numbly. A living reminder of the way the worms felt as they squirmed beneath his skin. A constant mark of terror.

 He considers, for a moment, calling Tim. Tim would understand. Tim had been there. They could sit on Tim’s couch and watch some horrible movie that Tim had picked because Jon, you chose the movie last time, don’t you remember? and eat greasy pizza that always upset Jon’s stomach if he had more than a few slices.

 Someone killed Gertrude Robinson.

 Or Sasha, Jon thinks. Sasha had always been reliable; he could trust Sasha to get the job done, even when he didn’t quite understand how to get it done himself. Sasha could sit him down and they could talk and he could finally unravel the dark, twisted knot of anxiety and fear that’s been building in his stomach since he woke up with half his body encased in bandages. Sasha could help him.

 Gertrude Robinson was shot, three times in the chest, in the tunnels beneath the Institute.

 Even Martin. Martin, who brings Jon tea even though Jon doesn’t ask for it and who wields a corkscrew more adeptly than he wields his university degree. Martin, who apologises for such little, insignificant things but who still gets that sharp, demanding tone to his voice when he’s scared or frustrated or both. Martin, who offered to help Jon, who asked if he was okay despite Jon’s increasingly sharp retorts as the painkillers worked their way out of his system.

 Martin, who found Gertrude Robinson’s body in the tunnels, surrounded by tapes and with three metal bullets buried in her chest, put there by someone in the Institute.

 Jon turns away from the mirror, retrieves his cane, and leaves the bathroom. He doesn’t look in the mirror for the rest of his required bed rest, only catching his reflection once as he’s preparing to return to the Institute, his suit jacket too-tight against the healing wounds on his arms.

 His face is still peppered with bandages, hair pulled back to reveal another sitting just behind his ear, and he looks tired. So, so tired.

 He looks away. The click of the front door closing behind him as he leaves his flat sounds identical to the safety of a gun, clicking off.

[whump-town]

Breathe In Breathe Out

Delayed Drowningc • Chemical Pneumonia • Oxygen Mask

He’s slept roughly four hours in the last two days. It occurs to him that today is Saturday and he’s got the weekend to catch up on that sleep. The thought washes over him like a calming wave and then a tight knot of shame forms in the back of his mind, a nasty voice sneering that he shouldn’t be so happy. His son is going to be gone the whole weekend. Jack’s going to enjoy being away from him. 

The apartment is going to be empty. 

Trudging through the living room, leaving the lights off, he manages to catch his shin on the stupid coffee table, knocking the remote onto the floor. “Fuck,” he curses, bending over to grab at his throbbing shin. His other hand rubs over the carpet, failing to find the remote where he’d managed to lose it onto the floor. With a roll of his eyes, he abandons the mission. 

Finding that damn thing can wait to tell he’s had some sleep. 

Standing, his knees give audible protest and he grunts at the pain spiking up his back. He’s old. Shaking his head, he rubs at his lower back, heading back to his room. He just needs to get some sleep. 

Nose diving into the duvet, he doesn’t so much as kick his shoes off. Getting to sleep is easy, he’s out the second he curls into his side. He’ll have to remember to thank Jessica for turning on the heat. The dropping September temperature hadn’t been on his mind when he’d stumbled out the door four days previously. 

But he comes home to a toasty apartment, a nice contrast to the fall chill in the air just outside his bedroom’s window. 

Groggily, stomach aching with a strange vengeance, he wakes some hour or so later. Time is a concept his fuzzy mind can’t grasp. With hands that feel twice their size and a body that feels too heavy to be his own, he pushes himself upright. Fumbling, he tears off his clothes. Simply letting his suit jacket and pants land in a heap on the floor. The buttons make his head throb but it’s muscle memory to work them apart. By the time the final one snaps out of place, he lands back on the bed. Too tired to hold himself upright but at least his clothes aren’t trapping him in anymore.

It feels like he’s just closed his eyes when he wakes with a startle, his entire body trembling. 

He rolls over onto his back, sweating lightly. He’s still bone-tired and when he turns his head to see the alarm clock on the nightstand he finds he can’t really see the numbers. Somewhere, on the floor, maybe, his phone vibrates where it’d fallen. His chest is tight, painfully so— his father had died of a heart attack not much older than he is now.

Is this how he’ll go?

Not with a bang?

He’d always expected to find himself looking down the barrel of a gun, as he had some many times before, and been unable to walk away. To crumble where he stood. Leaving his son and ex-sister-in-law to bury him in a closed casket. Forcing his team to carry him through the graveyard one last time. 

But…

He’d always hoped someone would be there. So his last thought would be of his family and not… not this painful coil of fear. 

Against his will, a tear falls down his face. He feels miserable. The back of his throat feels tight with nausea but he’s not sure he can stand. He wants so desperately for someone to come. He doesn’t care if it’s Dave with his frustrating muttered Italian or even JJ, who he knows would wrap the blanket at the end of his bed around his shoulders.

He misses them. Shivering and crying softly in his confusion, he wants so desperately for comfort. Eyes sliding shut against his will, the darkness and his anxiety overtaking him, he knows something is so desperately wrong but… he doesn’t know what.

Monday comes around without a hitch for the others.

In fact, for once, Emily Prentiss is ahead of schedule. She’s set to arrive at the office before JJ, not to toot her own horn or anything. When the elevator comes to a stop on the floor, she frowns. She’s used to the soft wafting smell of coffee greeting her and the lights up and down the hall being turned on. 

But it’s seven in the morning and she supposes maybe Hotch isn’t here yet. He always makes coffee in the morning. By the time she normally gets there, he’s got all three coffee pots going and the bullpen slowly coming to life under his nurturing hand. The man’s got the green thumb equivalent of whatever paperwork and federal agents are to plants.

This morning, it seems he’s slacking in his watering of the plants. 

JJ comes in ten minutes later, a bagel in one hand and a newspaper in the other. She’s scowling at the later, too busy to observe the too-quiet office and lack of Hotch going on. She does manage to stop her brisk walk the second time Emily calls out for her. “Yeah?” she shakes her head, she hasn’t had any coffee yet. “Emily,” she says shocked. “You’re here early.”

Emily nods her head, “I am.” Pointing up to Hotch’s dark office she deduces, “but Hotch isn’t.”

JJ glances up at the office and tries to stifle the immediate worry that consumes her. “Uh,” she shakes it away. “Jack gives Hotch some trouble on Monday mornings,” she rationalizes. Hotch had said something once about it but she’s just hoping, clinging to that idea. “Besides,” she adds, recalling this detail. “Sometimes they stop for a muffin or donuts. That’s probably just taking some time this morning.” 

Right, both women think as they go their separate ways, that has to be it. 

For esteemed members of the A team of the BAU, Reid and Morgan don’t notice Hotch’s absence until around lunchtime. Morgan realizes Hotch hasn’t been down to the bullpen for his second and third cup of coffee. Which he customary drinks leaning against one of their desks and arguing with Reid about whatever niche subject he’s devoted his time to this week. Morgan didn’t think that was something his day needed until…  

“I forgot Hotch isn’t here to make any more coffee,” Reid complains. He’s standing in front of Emily’s desk, his mug in his hands. She gives him only a second of her time, looking him up and down and shaking her head. He’ll grumble all day about how she and Morgan treat him like a baby and then he’ll stand here and pout because Hotch didn’t make coffee. 

Hotch has no personal obligation to make the coffee. They’re all adults who can make coffee. 

Reid shuffles his weight between his left and right foot. “Do you think something’s wrong?”

Yeah, she feels like snapping, the thought has occurred to her. First of all, Dave can preach all day about how it’s good Hotch has taken the day off, but in the years she’s known Aaron Hotchner he’s done that once. Once. And even then he’d left them an objective— a damn warning! 

“He’s fine, kid,” Morgan speaks up but he doesn’t look up from his file. A dead give away. He’d joked when he’d first noticed Hotch’s lights off but the light of his tone never met his eyes. It doesn’t help that he hasn’t said much of anything to any of them. Just sat and did his paperwork.

Derek Morgan never does paperwork.

Reid nods, glancing at Emily, but she’s lowered her head to her own paperwork. Okay, he thinks understands. With a nod, he goes back to the break room and makes his own coffee. Hotch will be back tomorrow, he convinces himself. It’ll all be fine… tomorrow. Hotch will make them coffee. Hotch will be here...

Tuesday comes with a southern downpour. The temperature drops dramatically and that chill follows it’s way into the building. 

“He’s not here,” Reid greets Emily. 

She’s running her fingers through her wet hair, glad that no one’s around to hear her cursing up a storm worse than the one blowing outside--- and by anyone, she means Hotch and his disappointed but not surprised frown. “What do you mean,” she grumbles, resigning herself to the fact that she wasted an hour in front of the mirror this morning getting her hair straight. 

Reid watches her with a mix of awe and curiosity but answers none-the-less. “Hotch,” he says, motioning behind them to the dark office. 

Emily’s fingers are caught in her hair, her arms twisting her damp hair back into a bun. “What,” she asks, having heard him but too surprised to say anything else. With the ease that comes from muscle memory, she snaps the hair tie around her messy excuse of a bun and discards her belongings on the floor. Headed for Hotch’s office.

Reid already knows what she’s going to find. 

He’d come bearing the book he’d been telling Hotch about last week. The plan was to surprise Hotch with the hand translated version. Reid had read both the version in its original Russian and the translated English version. After finding it less than adequate, he’d translated it himself. Today, he was going to give it to Hotch.

Only Reid had thrown his boss’s office door open and taken the cold chill of the empty room like a punch to the gut. Anxiety bubbling its ugly head up at the familiar, usually comforting, scent of Hotch’s cologne but his general absence being… terrifying. 

Seeing Emily react to the same anomaly, he’s glad this isn’t just some demonstration of his tendency to establish unhealthy attachments (it still kind of is but that’s not the point). The twist to her lips makes his heart rise to his throat and he shakily points to Hotch’s desk and the absence of any proof that Hotch might simply be elsewhere in the building. 

“What are we doing, my loves?”

Garcia’s on her own mission. 

It’s Tuesday, bright and early, and Hotch promised to revise and look into her eco-friendly idea about the jet and the paperwork. She’d given him an entire week to review it--- he could do it in a day but she knows he’s busy and stressed and she hates the idea of adding unnecessarily to that. 

She’s been looking forward to today since last week. It seems as if she never really gets to hang out with her boss anymore and the thought has made her so sad. Contrary to what he might convince himself, her love for that grumpy man knows no bounds. Just because he’s not as darkly striking as Emily or whimsical like Dave doesn’t mean he doesn’t bring his own things to the table. She’s really excited to hear him grumble about Strauss in that humorous, sarcasm so dry it cracks way only he manages.

Seeing his empty office upsets her beyond words. He’s the dependable person she knows. He wouldn’t just… “He promised,” she says, not even attempting to hide the fear. “Hotch doesn’t break promises.”

Yeah, that’s what they were afraid of.

Hotch could never see the similarities within himself reflecting into his son. Even now, as they stare so blankly back at him, he doesn’t recognize it. That eerie calm— Haley had always said he was like still water. A danger you never know is there until it’s too late. He could never wrap his mind around figuring out if that was a compliment or not. 

“I’ll come back after school,” Jack promises, the shaky undertone of his soft voice making Hotch’s chest tight. He’s afraid. Reasonably so. The poor kid goes away for a weekend with his cousins. He sets up a campfire with his grandparents. Listens to Aunt Jessica tell him about how his parents fell in love--- leaving out the bits about Aaron’s father and the way the entire town hated the idea of sweet little Haley Brookes getting with that troublemaker Aaron Hotchner.

He has so much fun and comes home to this...

Thinking about his father so young and his mother… for a moment he felt no different than the other kids. 

But he’s always been too much like his father for that.

Jack thinks the world will fall apart if he’s not there to catch it. Just as it had this weekend.

Jessica prays she can teach Jack the lesson Haley could never convince Aaron of, he doesn’t have to save the world. “Come on, baby.” Jessica pats Jack’s shoulder, it’s breaking her heart to have to tear father and son apart. “We’ll be here around three, Aaron,” she promises. 

Her words are lost to him. He’s watching them behind heavily lidded eyes. A nurse had said something about him not sleeping but Jessica had discouraged the idea of sedation. Aaron’s not sleeping for a reason and whatever that reason is, whatever he’s afraid of seeing, is worse than what’s going to happen if he keeps himself awake. They’d rejected her idea of intravenously giving him the medication he’d been prescribed to take as needed for his anxiety— so they have this unhappy medium. 

Where Aaron doesn’t sleep but he’s not losing it either. 

She presses a kiss to his sweaty forehead, “get some sleep, Aaron.” Pushing back some of his unruly hair from his face she can better see the sleepy eyes looking back at her. “I love you.”

Jack squirms uncomfortably. They’re pushing it for school. Another habit picked up of his fathers: the obsessive need to be places earlier than the required time. Jessica can forgive him easily for this but the teachers and the school have already expressed their understanding if Jack is late a few days. 

Not that Jack can extend himself that same courtesy— yet, another habit of his father’s.

She squeezes Aaron’s hand one final time in goodbye and takes Jack’s, leading him from the room. There’s no benefit in sending him to school right now. He’s not paying attention in class, anxious to get back here and make sure Aaron hasn’t died without someone here to constantly remind him what he’s fighting for.

They share a similar fear that in that room by himself Aaron will allow the world to consume him and he’ll just stop fighting. He’ll just die and leave them both. And Jessica had hated him once upon a time but he’s really the only family she has too. She loves Jack to pieces but she has no desire to raise her sister and brother’s son. 

She has no desire to bury Aaron. Not today, not tomorrow--- she’s done burying family. 

All she can hope is that Aaron understands that.

He watches them leave. Jack glances back only once, today he doesn’t silently sob as they make their exit. Hotch’s heart thanks the small boy for that, he can’t handle his son’s tears. It hurts so much more to know that he’s the reason his little boy is so sad. That fear of losing Hotch hasn’t gone away in the years since his mother’s death. It won’t ever really go away. 

Tuesday passes as slowly as Monday. 

He doesn’t eat the breakfast they bring him. Just as he hadn’t eaten the dinner or the lunch they brought him yesterday. While most of the symptoms have died down, like the headache and vertigo, but the trouble breathing and nausea have not abated. Giving him a nasty aversion to the food that already looks unappealing.

He can’t remember much of what happened. After falling asleep to the sound of his phone frantically buzzing he hadn’t woken back up for hours. He has a distant memory of a man in grey—a firefighter— pulling him upright. His legs and body limp and the whole world shifting as he’s lifted and carried out of his bedroom. 

He’d been one of the more severe cases. Exhausted from working for so long, he hadn’t so much as left the building for hours. Meaning while the rest of the building occupants went on about their days-- leaving for church or groceries or dinner plans-- he’d been left to succumb to the symptoms of carbon monoxide alone. 

A boiler in the basement had some malfunction, one of the nurses had told him. Hotch didn’t really care how it happened or why, he just knew he was glad Jack was nowhere near any of this. Even if Jack being home meant things not escalating to this point. Hotch can take the tight feeling in his chest and the difficulty breathing over anything if it means keeping Jack safe… Jack’s all he has.

At least, Jack is all he thinks he has.

The nurse’s face spreads into the softest, happiest smile David Rossi thinks he’s seen in days. The woman, hardly twenty-five, beams and clasps her hands together in her excitement. “You’re here for Aaron?” She motions for them to follow her. “He’s a sweetheart,” she tells them. He really is. Aside from giving her a hard time about his pain level and eating, he’s been her best patient. Never once rude or anything but the picture of calm. 

Well, he’s almost always the picture of calm…

“He’s had a bad day,” she explains simply, stopping in the doorway. She’d come in for what she was quickly learning to be her daily ritual of fighting with the man to eat something and found him sobbing. From there, the nerves he couldn’t control, lack of sleep, and anxiety going unchecked had bubbled into an anxiety attack. The end result—

Dave clears his throat, “is he okay?”

The nurse nods her head, “I stayed with him for a while. He’s just a little groggy. The doctor ordered some sedatives.” He hadn’t lasted long under their heavy influence and she’d checked in on him as many times as she could but he still wasn’t up yet. 

Maybe with his friends here though…

“Thank you,” JJ says, reaching out and squeezing the other woman’s hand. There’s a sad smile on her lips as she says, “we can’t thank you enough for taking care of him.” JJ has to look away before the tears pooling in her eyes spill over. “He’s a very stubborn man but--but we love him dearly.”

The nurse nods her head, sympathetic tears threatening to fall. “He talked about you guys,” so much so she’s fairly certain she knows each of them far more than she should. JJ is the soft blonde, stronger than she knows and still gentle. There’s Dave whose hardened scowl had thrown her off but now she sees the curious brow Aaron had told her about. The stick and bones genius Doctor Reid hadn’t been a hard one to figure out, just like the bright and dazzlingly beautiful Penelope Garcia. Leaving only Emily Prentiss, dark and serious. 

His family. 

“But really,” she says, excusing herself with one last glance at her friend in the room. “He’ll be very pleased you’re here. He never said it but he missed you.” 

Yeah, JJ smiles, that sounds about right.

They enter the room with a soft knock, as to not disturb him if he is sleeping. 

“Good morning, sunshine.” 

It takes hours. By the time that Aaron wakes up, Dave has already called and got the rest of them today and tomorrow off. Derek’s made two trips out for food-- lunch and then the snack that Reid was getting antsy about. Reid’s consumed three Poptarts and if not for Hotch’s eyes cracking open he’d be making for a fourth. However, Reid knows Hotch’s mood will flip like a switch and the last thing he needs is Hotch’s frustration being taken out on him. 

“Ach,” Dave swats at Hotch’s hand. His fingers failing to form a strong enough grasp around the flimsy plastic fo the mask to pull it away from his face. However, the idea is in his head and Dave doesn’t want him to just find that strength. “Something tells me that’s not there for decorations,” Dave says, pulling Hotch’s hand down to his chest. 

Hotch grumbles something, pale lips cashing in words that his lungs can’t check-out. Whatever is lost to his rasps or drowning by the mask is made up for by the eye-roll of angst he sends Dave. Which also loses it’s flavor when he starts hacking up a lung.

“Easy--”

Dave’s soft soothes go unheard and Morgan steps in, pulling Hotch up by his shoulders. There’s a split second where Hotch gags, the sudden movement causing intense nausea, but nothing comes up and he’s left coughing painfully into Morgan’s side. Needing the other man to keep him upright.

“You good,” Morgan asks. He’d picked up a soothing rub of Hotch’s back, moving his large palm in circles until the coughing died down. Until now, as Hotch just leans limply into his side. 

Hotch nods, “thanks.”

Morgan doesn’t go far, he stays close enough to help Hotch lay back down. His dark brows furrowed as his eyes move over Hotch’s strained face. He’s in obvious discomfort and it bothers Morgan to see him like this. “How are you feeling,” Morgan pushes, fidgeting with the blankets bunched up around Hotch’s waist. “You cold?”

Hotch turns his head into the pillows, nodding.

Morgan pulls the blankets up and fixes the mask half pushed off Hotch’s face. He smiles when Hotch just scowls but submits to the movement. Morgan bites back whatever comment he might make about Hotch being particularly grumpy today. It’s hard to believe that you could miss something as simple as someone’s grumpy mumbling but at the thought of losing Hotch… 

“You good,” Morgan asks, one of his hands on Hotch’s shoulder. “You need anything?”

Hotch’s glazed over eyes move over Morgan as if he’s uncertain if he’s really there. Hotch is still fairly under the influence of the sedative working its way through his system. So, his lazy, uncoordinated movement to dislodge the oxygen mask over his face is futile. “Itches,” he slurs, under his breath. 

It’s easier than it should be for Dave to pin Hotch’s hands to his chest once again, just pushing his wrist down. Hotch grunts a little, giving only a little resistance to hold. “Aaron,” Dave chides. “The carbon monoxide in your blood is still elevated so you have to leave the mask alone.” 

The doctor had told them that when Aaron was emitted he’d stopped breathing on his own. The percentage of carbon monoxide in his blood a 48%— one of the highest out of the patients brought in from the incident at the apartment complex. High enough to kill him, as it should have. As it still could.

They’d been assured, upon arrival, that he’s doing exceptionally well considering. But it will take time for his blood to return to normal as it will take time for him to recover. Which he will, recovery that is. He has to. 

He always does.

[ontheoddoccasioniwritestuff]

Bare Oneself and One’s Soul (Bi!Spencer Reid x Male!Reader)

Summary: Sex workers and strippers are being killed in Portland, Maine. The BAU team investigates the fourth and attempts to build a profile. But with part of the puzzle still missing, the reader contemplates offering to revisit a previous profession of theirs - the oldest in the business - to draw out the unsub.

AN: My first fic for Criminal Minds! I started watching the show about two weeks ago and I cannot stop. I’m on series 4 so no spoilers for me please! I would like to open requests soon, still wanna write more diverse readers hence why this is my first entry into this fandom. 

Thank you @imagining-in-the-margins​ for inspiring me with your Bi The Way fic and answering my queries! You’re the bee’s knees!

Feedback and requests to be tagged in specific fics are welcome

Word count: 6.9k words

Content Warnings: Descriptions of violence, descriptions of dead bodies, homophobia, threats of outing, stripping, lap dances (mild NSFW), Gone Girl spoilers. Please let me know if I have missed anything!

Your name: submit What is this?

“Dancing, at its best, is independence and intimacy in balance.” ― Donna Goddard, The Love of Devotion

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

It was already hard enough with this job. But someone targeting sex workers and the like, that was going to make things harder. The victims were anonymous in the eyes of the general public, subhuman, not worthy of being reported to warn others in their profession. Furthermore, the associates of the victims were not likely to talk to law enforcement.

Emily, Derek and Y/N returned to the temporary base of operations, having already faced this reality with the limited responses garnered from very few witnesses.

Only the recycling guy who found the latest body was willing and that was a stretch on the definition.

In the police station, Hotch was sifting through the security tapes he had access to, JJ at his side trying to spot the unsub. Spencer was building up a geographical profile and Rossi was out speaking to the family of the latest victim.

Y/N helped Morgan hand out the coffees they’d picked up, dropping a hefty amount of sugar packets and a disposable stirrer on the desk beside where Spencer was working. He stared up at the map and tried to clear his mind in case an epiphany decided to pass by.

The fourth victim was exactly like the three previous. The body was found down the back alley of a local nightclub, this one called Red Effort, and it was sat up daintily in the corner made of the building and a dumpster. A plastic bag was over the head. An expensive silk tie for a gag left in the mouth. Evidence of another used to tie the wrists together but that tie was gone. Other than that, the body was stripped naked.

“The bag wasn’t used in the suffocation; it was put on after death. The unsub couldn’t look at the victim after he’d killed him,” Y/N theorised, “But the nudity has a statement of sadism.”

Derek pointed to the photograph of the fourth victim’s neck, “Bruises around his neck show that strangulation killed him. Some kind of rope, possibly a belt about inch and a half wide, just like the others. But the tie is what gets me. Why leave one in the mouth but not the other around the hands? And why not leave the belt?”

“Hermès is an expensive brand,” JJ said, “But if it was cost the unsub was worried about, they wouldn’t leave the other behind. It must be something sentimental about that tie but not the other items used.”

Moving on, Spencer’s geographical profile highlighted the clubs’ connections. Utopia, Pulse Point, Move, and now Red Effort had tacks in them, standing out over the map. His “colouring in” highlighted clearly the MO of the killer they were after: it was someone local stalking the clubs over the last two weeks.

“The previous attacks show that they are only in the city and the unsub doesn’t hit the same club twice - at least so far. The next target is likely to be one of these three clubs in the radius: Focus, Potential, or Encore.”

“Anything in the CCTV?” Rossi asked.

JJ pinched the bridge of her nose, “Nothing so far from Garcia.”

“Well, I think we’re ready to present the profile to your officers, so if you could get everyone together, we can begin.”

When the group of officers had their notebooks at the ready, Hotch began:

“We’re looking for a man in his mid-thirties to late forties. When he’s in these clubs, he will seem confident and charming, even if he is a lone man amidst multiple women.”

Then Prentiss took over, “He is voyeuristic, hence why he is targeting strip clubs instead of approaching a prostitute. He likes to watch his victims perform, see them with other men before he makes his move.

“Outside of the club, he is less confident,” said Y/N, “He may present himself as heterosexual, probably married which is why he can’t target these men during the day. Going into the city likely means that he lives in the suburbs.”

Morgan continued, “His sexuality is warped; violence is what produces sexual release in his mind. The strangulation method, using a belt, shows that he doesn’t have enough strength themselves to take out their victims. He has to get their complete vulnerability before he can strike.”

Spencer turned away from his map to point to the evidence board, “He is targeting young men, strippers. Some of his victims were prostitutes. They were all brunettes, slim build, all performed on a stage in a nightclub the night they died, and witnesses have confirmed that they gave dances to men and women.”

“This unsub is escalating,” Rossi concluded, “The first attack was five days apart; the last was only two days. These are vulnerable people who need our help. Let’s catch this guy before he hurts any more people.”

A few hours later and Y/N was paired up with Emily at Focus. Drinking water in opaque glasses, they moved subtly to the music with their eyes steady across the club’s topography. The debrief played over and over in Y/N’s mind.

Although, his mind did stray to the fact that it was odd being in one of these clubs again. Being on the other end too, as a “customer”. Not disconcerting, just odd.

“Leather jacket, three o’clock.”

Over the rim of his glass, Y/N followed Emily’s direction and found their suspect. He was looking at a woman who was giddily on the receiving end of a lap dance.

No.

He was looking at the dancer. The man who was sporting some body paint that blended well with his tiger print shorts.

“You got eyes on him?” Emily spoke under her breath.

“I do.”

The suspect passed the dancer gradually, sauntering whilst making steady eye contact. Then his head snapped in the other direction and he walked right out of the club, still unhurried. The dancer’s stare lingered after him before he finished up his routine, flirtatiously thanked the ladies for their generous tip. He walked in the direction the suspect had gone.

Without speaking, Emily and Y/N were next to leave after the suspect. Their guns were drawn once the cool air of the night hit them through the back exit. A streetlamp’s light threw the two men’s identities into silhouettes. Emily and Y/N approached with as much stealth as the bare alleyway would give them before Emily made the call.

The suspect reached out to the dancer and Emily shouted, “FBI! Hands where I can see ‘em!”

The suspect looked more annoyed than surprised or scared of the guns pointed at him, “Hey, woah, what’s going on?”

“Hands up!” Y/N repeated sternly.

Y/N got the suspect in handcuffs not seconds after complying, Emily moving over to the dancer to check that he was alright.

“Derek?” The suspect screwed his features up, straining to turn and look Y/N in the eye.

Y/N cut him off, “Shut up.”

But still, as the suspect was dragged over to the cop car parked at the kerb, he remarked, “You’ve grown into your big boy pants.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

Rossi unlinked his fingers and pressed them into the case file, pushing the photograph across the table to where Fabian O’Conner was sitting. The Encore club’s new manager had kept up his act of being more irked with the officers than intimidated. He was sloppy in his body language, especially after only five hours sleep in a cell and another hour in that uncomfortable chair, not taking any of Rossi’s questions seriously. All Fabian talked about was his club and how shit things were for him in the last fortnight.

“I’ve had three cancellations alone this week!”

Behind the glass, Emily looked to Y/N, “Why’d he call you Derek?”

Y/N was about to lie through his teeth when Hotch’s mobile trilled on the desk.

“Hotchner… OK… alright, we’ll be on the scene right away.” Hotch hung up and looked grimly at his team, “There’s been another murder, at Potential.”

JJ pointed at Fabian who was swinging on the chair’s back legs, “Well, it wasn’t him, so either he has an accomplice or we got something wrong in the profile that meant the unsub slipped past unnoticed.”

“Prentiss, JJ, Morgan, let’s get to the scene,” Hotch instructed, “Reid, Y/N, stay here, keep us updated on what Rossi gets out of this guy.”

As he watched his colleagues exit the building, Y/N wiped his cheek with the back of his left hand, “I’m gonna make more coffee, Spencer, you want any?”

“Please,” Spencer replied, looking over his shoulder with that white people smile he’d nailed over the years. Tossing a thumb’s up in his direction, Y/N headed off to get them their drinks.

“Why would he kill at the risk of losing business himself?” Reid asked him when he returned, sliding the paper cups onto the desk.

“That’s what doesn’t make sense to me,” said Y/N, “Fabian’s all about business. Plus, he’s the straightest guy I’ve ever met, don’t think he’d be within fifty miles of comfortable leaving these bodies naked.”

Before Spencer could ask how Y/N would know something like that, his phone rang out and he placed it on speaker phone.

“Garcia, whatcha got?”

“An update on that evidence of yours yesterday,” She spoke, “The tie is a very specific kind. Limited edition at Hermès, bought recently online. The paper trail leads us to a Mr Andrew Lowenthal who lives not a mile away from the city. Prentiss and Morgan went to go check out his home.”

“Brilliant, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, boy genius.”

She hung up before Spencer could but Spencer was already off on a tangent: “Limited collection, they’d stand out to the owner, so maybe they’re left as a message for someone.”

“But who?” Y/N asked the obvious.

He tapped his pen against the post mortem report that hid the corpse’s photographs. Something about those ties just stick in Y/N’s head. They kept reminding him of the ex-boyfriend in Gone Girl, his aversion for all the ties Amy bought him. The same ties Amy used to ruin his life, and that same ex-boyfriend couldn’t say anything at all about it.

Unfortunately, Rossi couldn’t get much more out of Fabian and he was let go. The alibi he’d given was checked out and found to be watertight. Apparently he was just looking in his competitor’s club for a dancer who had left Encore a week ago.

The investigation proved to be more fruitful outside of the station however when, a few hours later, JJ appeared with her notebook, “This girl Emily and I interviewed yesterday, she won’t tell me her real name, but she was there today at Focus. Says she saw a woman this time, a woman walking with Daniel into the alleyway behind the club.”

Hotch’s phone was heard entering the building before he was, buzzing in his palm before he promptly answered once in the room, “Emily, you’re on speaker.”

“So Andrew Lowenthal was home. Get this: he’s gay.”

“What?”

“We caught him packing his things to move out. Andrew came out to his wife Marcie recently and she reacted badly, threw a fit, accused him of cheating. Andrew says he’s been meeting with a man, a stripper, he won’t name him but he says they’ve been working through understanding his sexuality. Who can say if he’s really cheating or not, but this all came out a fortnight ago.”

Morgan continued, “Right when the killings started. Marcie won’t ask for a divorce, she’s threatened to out him though. She’s been staying out late as well on the nights the murders happened.”

Hotch looked at the case file in front of him, up at the geographical profile up on the board.

“Alright, thank you. Come back to the station.”

“The reason the unsub got away is because we thought the unsub was a man,” Y/N sighed as Hotch hung up.

Hotch was quick on the contradiction, “We can’t rule out Andrew yet. All the witnesses so far have said the victims were seen a man.”

“Yes, while they were at the club, but they were killed after work in the alley, not in the private rooms they rented!” Spencer pointed out the security tracking the movements of the victims next to his map, “After she, the unsub, had confirmed that these men would dance and, in her mind, sleep with other men!”

“He’s right,” Y/N supported, “It’s how the unsub would verify that her next victims were involved in homosexual activities. I should have thought of that sooner.”

Garcia was up on the phone immediately, searching for Marcie Lowenthal amidst the security footage. The genius that she was, it only took her a minute to find the new suspect at every single crime scene. The clips appeared on the laptop screen and played, this time with a box around the woman’s face to bring her out against the rest of the image.

“Marcie Lowenthal,” JJ pointed to her image on the screen. Garcia was correct, she had been right there, at the corner of each photo printed off from the other clubs

JJ carried on as the conversation between Daniel and Marcie unfolded onscreen, “Around the middle of the night, approaches Daniel, arranges to meet him outside in the alley once he’s finished work.”

“And we thought she was just too nervous to instigate a dance with them,” Derek bit his lip hard, “So what do we do now? She’s not at work, she’s in the air until she kills again. She’s been escalating, so she’ll kill again tonight.”

It was then that Y/N decided to jump in with the idea he had been brewing since his second cup of coffee:

“I could go undercover in one of the clubs.”

Hotch stared for a moment at Y/N, clearly caught off guard by the outburst, before speaking in that collected drone of his, “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. Each club is hit once, Encore is one of two potential spots left, the unsub is escalating so they will be at one tonight. It’s “Boys in the Buff’ at Encore tonight, so likelihood of them being there is high compared to Potential’s ‘Dollar a Drink’ gimmick, OK? It’s just a suggestion. If we have another plan, I’m all ears.”

“You fit the MO, but how would you even blend in?” Spencer asked.

The next bit came out a lot easier than when Y/N had expected.

“When I was here during college, I used to be a stripper at Encore, before I worked in the FBI. ‘Derek’ was my pseudonym. Fabian was a bouncer at Encore before he became manager.”

The wave of expressions changing throughout the room were significant: jaws slacking; a little lift in an eyebrow; most notably, silence.

Rossi walked into the room, completely ignorant to the tone set by Y/N’s revelation, “Marcie Lowenthal’s next move is at Encore. She’s building up to Focus where her husband has been going. Garcia tracked his car’s GPS to that club five times in the last month.”

“So, what you’re saying is that Encore is the next step and then Focus,” Y/N fidgeted with his pen.

Hotch turned back at Y/N and in his usual calm and collected tone he spoke, “Tell us what you need for this.”

“I’ll need an hour to warm up, a slot on stage, and a guy to dance with then take to a private room. And some hot pants.”

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

Encore was empty, the stage free from dancers, the bar barren.

It was always weird to look at a club when it was empty and all the normal lights were on. Even more so that it had been redecorated in Y/N’s hiatus from Portland, highlighting how surreal it was to be back.

Y/N climbed up onto the stage and surveyed the empty seats. Then he began to warm himself up. A grunt escaped him every now and again, fighting against his stiff joints. Thankfully, the BAU was another job that kept fitness levels high as a necessity.

Humming his chosen song, Y/N began to test his flexibility against the pole. Muscle memory brought back his techniques one after the other. He repeated one of his old routines in broken segments, saving the transitions for last before he was ready to properly rehearse it. With a sigh, he took off his button up, leaving only the tight spandex that wrapped his crotch in a deep cherry red.

“Nice package.”

Mimi was watching from the side of the stage, her heels dangling by the straps on the tips of two fingers. A fond smile played on her lips, one that grew into a toothy grin filled with genuine glee as she approached him.

“Hey!” Y/N finally retorted, though there was that same playfulness in his voice that meant he didn’t take the comment on his junk to heart.

“Hello,” Mimi gave him a warm embrace, “What are you doing back here, you idiot?”

Y/N settled for the excuse of needing a few extra bucks and figured it would be nice to join in the gender equality of male strippers. Mimi didn’t seem convinced.

“You choose that now? When all those guys in the other clubs are getting murdered?”

“I’ll be sure not to follow anyone the alley. Are you doing ok?”

“All good.”

“Really? I’ve seen you at some of the crime scenes, talking with the FBI.”

“I’m safe, especially with my girls.”

“Speaking of, it’s ladies’ night, what are you doing here?”

“Just picking up something I forgot,” and she poked him in the centre of his chest, “Good luck tonight.”

Y/N rubbed that spot as she left the club, “Thanks.”

Not much else happened between Y/N finishing up his rehearsal and the club opening. The conversations in the dressing room was soon drowned out by the din of eager customers waiting.

To say that Y/N was more nervous about dancing in front of his co-workers – his actual co-workers, not the other dancers – than performing in front of a serial killer would be an understatement. He had gone to the toilet three times in the last ten minutes. And that was saying something; the men’s loos were beyond disgusting.

On the steps up, he could see Emily was at the bar with JJ. They looked normal enough. Two gals on a night out to a strip club. A quick scan found Derek near the door with one of the bouncers. Hotch and Rossi were hidden in the security room, and the other agents at their aid were outside with civvies over protective gear. Everyone was watching as the announcer introduced him as “Derek” for his walk across the stage. Whoops and whistles followed him as he preened for the women in the seats down below.

Then he found Spencer. For once, he was dressed like he was from Las Vegas. Loud colours splashed across his shirt, clashing with the strobe lights. But he definitely stood out as one man amongst tens of women.

And thus began behaving “normally”. Y/N’s head space allowed him to move with ease throughout the groups of women to make it towards Spencer, who had already locked eyes on him.

His hand was shaking a little as he touched Spencer’s shoulder going past. It was a repeat of an action he’d seen on one of the tapes: keeping eye contact with a potential wallet he could dance for before pretending to drop interest.

The look between them was another matter. Eye contact was something that made the both of Y/N and Spencer nervous, but not when it was with each other. That comfort that was oft shared across the table at a meeting still comforted Y/N as his hand fell from Spencer and back to his side. The warmth of it spread through his body and gave new life to his confidence. He was safe. His team were all here. He was going to be fine. He was going to be brilliant.

The first up on the stage to perform was a man, taller and buffer than Y/N, dressed as a fireman. He swept a woman from the audience off her chair in the middle of the routine.

The second was a trio of oiled up men, weaving in and out the front row between exaggerated erotic dance moves. It was a bit of a laugh, goofy with the hen do at the front egging them on.

And now it was his turn.

“Should we just search romantic comedies on Netflix and then see what we find?”

Y/N took his time stepping up to the pole, using the sultry slow beat of the music to his best advantage. Knowing most of the club had their eyes on him was horrendous and enthralling simultaneously. The next four minutes were crucial for attracting the unsub.

He performed a reverse grab to face his audience dead on.  Hung gracefully upside down, still moving around the pole.

The murmurs of awe were appreciated but not what the unsub was looking for.

Time to up the ante.

Dismounting the pole, Y/N dragged a chair into the centre of the walkway. He pretended to survey everyone at the front of the stage before landing on Spencer. There, he knelt forward and held out his hand. As soon as his grip reached Spencer’s wrist, Y/N pulled him up and onto the chair.

In position, he ignored all the women screaming in the crowds, ignored the fetishization at their expense. He focused on Spencer. And that awful shirt.

He kept an inch between them for now, but Spencer wasn’t tense as he had imagined. No, Spencer was lounging back, and basking in the performance. The smile on his face, it was daring Y/N to move closer.

Spreading his legs to stand between them, Y/N touched him first. He could feel the padding of Spencer’s bulletproof vest beneath his shirt’s soft fabric. At the ends of those lovely arms (the ones often hidden beneath those cardigans) Spencer’s hands twitched.

Y/N backed up against him like he had done with the pole. A cinematic parallel the women definitely appreciated. Bringing those long legs back together, Y/N made himself comfortable on his lap, a fingertip facing the threat of being cut as it dragged along Spencer’s jaw. That prickle of stubble sparked against him. Their faces so close that his lips so close to brushing over Spencer’s, barely any space for the crooning of the possessive lyrics to reach between them. Straddling Spencer gave Y/N even more confidence. He continued to tease Spencer, taking in the smell of the sweat from the light’s heat and his skin’s flush, bolded in bright pink. His lips at his throat, they dragged across the swell of his Adam’s apple that quaked beneath him as Spencer swallowed.

They heard a whistle from the crowds that was almost definitely from JJ, spurring on the crowd to react louder. But over their roars, Y/N heard a gasp fly from Spencer. His eyes instinctively drifted down to look at Spencer’s open mouth, down further at where he was sat. Even if Y/N couldn’t feel everything, the trousers were doing nothing to hide how Spencer was feeling.

Bills were flying onto the stage floor. Y/N continued to play his part, arching his body to ripple against Spencer’s. But Spencer caught his hip, his bottom lip now bitten as he let out a groan, low enough to not be heard over the music’s closing bars. But it was clear that his reaction sparked something in the audience. Y/N leant back to survey his handiwork, twirling a loose lock of Spencer’s hair around his finger in the space between them. Then his hand drew away and left that hair in his face before climbing off him and walking off the stage with a blackout - bar one pink spot left on Spencer.

The second he was off stage, Y/N turned around and watched from the wings. Spencer rose from the chair and took a little bow. He bowed again much to the pleasure of the crowd. As he walked down the steps, Y/N could see that he was very clearly aroused.

Y/N made his way out as soon as the audience’s attention was on the stage. He knew the unsub would still be watching Spencer, now stood at the bar and sipping from a glass. It was hard not to feel the sting of a serial killer’s stare as he approached Spencer with a coy smile.

“Hey.”

Turning to face him, Spencer finished his drink before speaking, “Hello, Derek.”

“Hope you enjoyed yourself up there.”

“I did.” And he leant against the bar leisurely, his hand pulling out a wad of cash from his pocket, “Any chance of another round? Without the crowd this time.”

Plucking the money free with one hand, Y/N beckoned with the other, “Right this way, sir.”

Both men could see the unsub watching them in the reflection of the ceiling, following them until they filtered through the beaded curtains. Spencer went into the private room first. Y/N closed the door, trapping them in a room of mirrors and flooded pink light over a disco ball - music only muted slightly on the tiny speakers. The epitome of sleaze.

“The unsub followed us here,” Y/N dropped his act and the dollar bills onto the couch arm, falling into one half of the seat.

After a moment, Spencer sat down beside him. The cuffs of his trousers hitched up, revealing the Reid Special that was mismatching socks. He fiddled with his fingers for a moment.

“Uh, what happened out there…”

Spencer struggled to find the words so Y/N jumped in, “Don’t even worry about it. You’re not the first guy to pop a boner when I’m dancing.”

Even with that reassurance, Spencer was tenacious in explaining himself, “I want you to know I wasn’t creeping on you, and that I was focused on the situation at hand. It’s just, when an attractive man is mostly undressed and dancing like that right in front of me -” he paused to look at Y/N for the first time since they’d entered the private room “- Well, that was the most natural response.”

“I get it. It’s all good.”

Spencer, the germaphobe, perching on a couch that was definitely not up to any kind of sanitary standard, wearing that horrendous gaudy shirt, decided to strike up conversation.

“Why’d you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Become a stripper.”

“Kept me fit during college and the tips were good.”

“Then why’d you quit?”

“I wanted to be an agent more than I wanted money.”

Eventually the wordless drone of EDM faded and Shook Me All Night Long began to beat across the room. Y/N jumped right up onto his feet, his hands open and out for Spencer to take, “Come on, up. No way to pass the time like dancing. And I’m not talking the kind from onstage!”

Spencer’s frown was hilariously contradictory, “We are tracking a serial killer, who likely has you for her next target.”

“I know, but we’re in a private room, and we’ve got another fifteen minutes at least to pass. We can’t do anything else, so up!”

“Y/N, I don’t dance. You know that.”

Sighing, Y/N’s head lolled back then rolled around to look Spencer dead in the eye, “Think logically. You need to leave this room, looking like you’ve just gotten the lap dance of your life, all hot and bothered. Either you get up and dance, or I’m gonna have to get in your lap again.”

Spencer blinked, “I know you think that’s a threat, but it’s really not.”

That caught Y/N off guard, and again when Spencer stood up and began a very awkward, very out of time two-step. Y/N let Spencer’s words go to focus on getting him more pumped.

“There we go! Let your body do all the talking.”

“My body is telling me to sit down.”

“Well… Ignore it then. It’s just us!”

Now, when his dances were coordinated like the one he had performed on stage, Y/N was rather good. Dancing outside of the stripping profession however was not his forte. One might even say he was worse than Spencer in this regard. Somehow the random arm movements alongside the bouncing on the balls of his feet were classified as “dancing”.

Spencer couldn’t laugh; his efforts, once he matched the energy, were no better. His curly hair jumping just a little delayed, that one lock that Y/N had pulled onstage still separate, he tried the headbanging like Y/N suggested. It was somewhat terrible, but not completely.

It was midway through the second song that the men fully allowed themselves to enjoy this silly moment in the sea of seriousness.

Only when Locked out of Heaven faded into more EDM did they stop for breath. They went halves on the couch and soaked up the temporary respite.

“Can’t imagine if it was Hotch in here instead of you,” Y/N panted. Spencer let out a little wheeze at the notion as he continued, “Not to undermine the importance of the job but I was glad it was you I was going undercover with. And I think you’re quite attractive too.”

It only took a fraction of a second for Spencer to understand what Y/N was referring to at the end. With a surge of confidence, he replied, “Only quite?”

“No offence to that exploding rainbow of a shirt, but I prefer you in your usual button-up and tie.”

They shared so much in that moment. Smiles, breath, honesty, the couch, endorphins. It went beyond the eye contact across the conference room’s table.

In a spike of nerves, Spencer reverted back to a constant in his life: facts.

“You know, dancing is meant to improve problem solving skills and reduces cortisol – a stress hormone – in the body. Furthermore, Dr Lovatt proved that dancing helps with social bonding. The synchrony involved in dancing to a beat along with other people is a powerful way for humans to connect.”

Y/N propped his head against his hand, arm leaning on the back of the couch as he watched Spencer’s facts unfurl.

“I didn’t know that,” He said quietly, “But it explains why it made me feel better about going back out there.”

“You weren’t nervous though. You weren’t tapping.” And Spencer pointed to Y/N’s hands, still as the rest of him.

Flexing his fingers before relaxing again, Y/N dared to look at Spencer again, “It’s why I said I’m glad I’m undercover with you.”

Spencer held that look, just for a little longer than before, checked his watch, “I guess we should get going if we wanna catch Marcie Lowenthal.”

“I suppose we’ll have to do our jobs,” sighed Y/N, only half joking.

Just before he was about to leave, Spencer was stopped by Y/N, who proceeded to untuck Spencer’s shirt and pull the end of his belt out of the loop.

“Make sure she sees you looking like this.”

Spencer gave him an incongruously polite nod before exiting. Once in view of the unsub, he made a show of adjusting his appearance before going to the bar to get another drink. Y/N took his time before coming out with the stack of bills tucked into his hot pants.

His dancing continued but back to its regularly slutty program. It was an hour with a hen do, six women who were tipsy and very liberal with their dollars. Sometimes Y/N found JJ and Emily while he was blending in, and though he couldn’t smile, and neither could they, he felt that safety net secured. Safer still when he passed them by on his way to the bar where Marcie Lowenthal was nursing a beer in a flower-patterned shirt and black skirt.

She was the one who initiated contact, stroking over Y/N’s arm to get his attention as he passed.

“Hello,” Marcie leant over to speak in his ear, “I enjoyed your dance earlier.”

“Thank you.”

“You versatile?”

“I can be anything you want.” And Y/N touched her waist, “I can make you feel good.”

With a catlike grin, Marcie leant in to whisper, “When do you get off?”

“Doesn’t matter if I do, it’s all about you, darling.” She let out a bark of laughter before Y/N managed to answer her question properly, “I finish in an hour.”

It was then that he realised Marcie was gripping his arm tight, “Meet me outside, in the back alley, in fifteen minutes.”

The team was right; she was escalating, devolving now that she was planning the murder before the night was done.

Y/N kept up the mask of intrigue, though he was cringing into himself underneath. “In here not good enough for you?”

“I like it dirty.”

“Alright then. I’ll see you there.” He winked before heading towards the dressing room.

His palms were a bit sweaty. That soon changed as he stepped outside in just his pants and a button up he’d brought for this very occasion. The alleyway seemed empty, aside from the unsub waiting by the dumpster. But Y/N kept faith that his team was ready and waiting nearby as he approached Marcie who was wrapped up in her leather jacket.

It was when she reached for something in her pocket that the hem lifted and Y/N saw the belt around her waist, hoisting the skirt up over her hips. About one and a half inches wide.

From her jacket pocket, Marcie procured a silk tie, “I like my men seen and not heard.”

“My safe-word is ‘alligator’,” Y/N said before opening his mouth.

Silk never was his favourite form of gag; it was too soft, too soggy once in the mouth. Marcie tied it roughly around the back of his head, causing Y/N to grunt and again when she tugged again with another around his wrists. Then he felt it. The cold tip of a blade pressed against his stomach.

“Turn around,” Marcie spoke through gritted teeth. A glance behind her and Y/N could see the shadows of his fellow agents gaining on them. Complying, he turned around as slowly as possible. The tip of the knife dragged across his skin.

“FBI! Marcie Lowenthal, drop the knife!“

Derek’s booming voice caught Marcie off guard, the knife breaking the skin of Y/N’s lower back.

“Drop it!” Hotch stated with less volume but just as much authority, “You don’t have to do this.”

“Drop the knife and step away from him,” Emily backed up from the other end of the alleyway, taking a step towards them.

Seeing that she was surrounded, Marcie crumbled and dropped the knife. It clinked away somewhere to the right. The team swarmed on her.

“Hands in the air, on your knees!”

The grind of handcuffs snapping around her wrists was the cue. Y/N ripped the gag from his mouth and began untying his hands; he was quick to pass the agents and officers to get on the street. There, he placed the tie in an evidence bag on his way out of the alleyway. Spencer, FBI vest atop his stripy shirt, held out Y/N’s coat for him. He thanked Spencer. He kept his “now I look like a flasher” comment to himself.

Lowenthal did not go quietly, not even as she was forced into a cop car to be driven to the station.

“Straight people are fucking headcases,” Y/N muttered to himself as he ducked around various onlookers.

“The tie,” Emily remarked as she saw the second one being examined, “It was her first anniversary present to Andrew. The others were ones purchased after he found out he was gay.”

“And Andrew couldn’t say anything about her behaviour or else she’d out him,” concluded Y/N.

With a nod, Emily touched his shoulder, “You alright?”

“Yeah, thanks,” and Y/N squeezed her hand before heading over to the club – hopefully for the last time. By the corner of the building, he found Mimi waiting and watching.

She spotted him and spoke quickly, “You take care of yourself.”

She pulled him into a hug. Y/N had enough time to say “you too” before breaking away and joining the team to drive back to the station. Mimi had already vanished from the scene by the time Y/N was looking out the passenger window, driving by the hubbub of Encore.

---> ---> ---> ---> --->

Thankfully, Y/N was granted the opportunity to change before getting on the jet home – as was Spencer. Both were in their comfort clothing: a hoodie and joggers, and a cardigan paired with slacks respectively. Claiming the couch, Y/N curled up around his pillow and rubbed over the bruise that he could feel growing on his shin. His friends were occupied with their own activities. Everyone was too wired to sleep.

“Get many tips?” Emily joked about fifteen minutes into the flight.

“I did alright, and no wank stains on ‘em either. Makes you rethink your career choices?”

“No stains? That’s how you know you’ve hit the big time.”

“I’m a luxury few can afford.” A pause followed as Y/N thought on the money tucked into his bag’s front pocket, then he addressed the cabin, “Y’all better not think any less of me because I used to strip.”

“Of course not,” JJ spoke up immediately, and a wave of agreement swept through the cabin.

“We’d never judge you for that,” Rossi added.

“Good,” Y/N stood up in the middle of the aisle, “Feel free to judge me for keeping these though.”

And he dropped his joggers to reveal a pair of hot pink hot pants with “BABY SLUT” in sparkly letters on his rear – just visible below the hem of his black FBI hoodie.

Instantly JJ and Derek exploded into splutters, Derek fumbling with his phone to take a photo. Emily was well on her way to laughter as she gawped and grinned. Spencer was hiding behind his book, his eyes peeking over the top. They were crinkled at the corners so Y/N could tell he was smiling. Even Rossi and Hotch had the tiniest of smirks that lit up their eyes with mirth.

“Look at you, Hot Stuff!” Derek cheered.

“Think this is a better uniform than the vest? Alright,” Y/N held a hand up to Hotch who had either opened his mouth to speak or had just forgotten to control his jaw, “I’m putting them away.”

Just like that, he pulled up his jogging bottoms again and fell back onto the couch, as if nothing ever happened. He was pleased as punch that he could joke about this with his co-workers and not at his expense.

A spare glance landed on Spencer, who had dropped his book into his lap and was suddenly very interested in the cuff of his left sleeve. Y/N made no comment but felt very pleased that he’d gotten another response from the doctor.

Sitting in silence, he folded his arms around the pillow, pulling it into his chest. That silence continued until they had landed and were back in the office to drop off the paperwork, ready for revisiting tomorrow. That was when they were alone, when Y/N made his move to speak to Spencer.

“Hey,” he started, drawing Spencer’s attention away from his shoulder bag, “I am sorry about all the touching on this case. I know you don’t like it.”

“Oh, I didn’t mind.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, Spencer’s eyes widened and his hand reached out as if to grab them from the air and drag them back, “I, um, I mean I understood that you had- it was necessary for your cover to remain intact; you don’t have to apologise.”

Y/N couldn’t really do anything other than blink. It felt a little formal after their previous interactions, more awkward after the “attractive” comment they had shared.

“Good, no bad blood?”

“Not at all.”

Walking away from the desk when Spencer dragged Y/N’S attention back with a burst of words, “A-And I wanted to say I don’t care that you were a sex worker. In fact, I think you’re brave. Not just on this case; going up to on that stage when you were in college, dancing for all those people, and doing that with a serial killer last night, that took a lot of guts. I really respect that. You, I respect you, Y/N.”

God, that was attractive. That flow of words that were often statistics or fact Spencer had tucked away in that brain of his, something Y/N never wanted to interrupt and it was admiration, understanding, for him.

“Thank you, Spencer.”

Then Y/N remembered something else. The front pocket of his bag was unzipped and he held out the bills to Spencer, “Kept your private room refund stain free.”

The brushing of fingers during the exchange of money filled Y/N with more butterflies than the entire outing in the club.

“Thank you.” Spencer tapped the bills between his thumb and forefinger, looking back to Y/N, “Maybe I could buy you dinner some time, with this stain free money.”

Y/N bit the inside of his cheek to restrain his glee, yet still a comforting smile beamed at Spencer, “I’d like that.”

---> ---> ---> ---> ---> 

“Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.” ― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

[purple-scarf-mistress]

Dark Truths

A Criminal Minds FanFic. 

Chapter 2

Summary: Jamie has been missing for a year, subjected to horrible torture. Her friends/team/family aka the BAU team scramble to find her. Once she is found it will be a challenge to help her get back to her normal life.  Master List (Multi Chapter)  Pairing:  ReidxJamie (OC) Warnings: This story is explicit and deals with s*xual assault and psychological torture.  I will add notes for where to skip and pick back up to for those who want to read this but avoid the warning content. 

June 3

Jamie clenched her teeth to avoid screaming. She was already paying for making noise when she was not asked to. It was one of the rules she was told to follow, even though her captors made it nearly impossible to follow a single one. She couldn't hear what the men around her were saying, she was becoming dizzy from pain as they beat her and called her names. She felt her ankle snap, biting down hard on her lip to keep from screaming out at the excruciating pain. The world around her began to spin before it all went black.

July 1st :

Hotch had everyone gather so they could review the new evidence they had collected. They couldn't be certain if it had anything to do with their long lost friend but they were working with it.

"The phone number that called Reid that night was made from an Irish pub about 5 miles away from here." Penelope said as she pulled up pictures of the pub, "I did some digging and looked into the visitors that frequent the pub and found that a good 90% of them have ties to the Irish mafia, or mob, or whatever you want to call the Irish bad guys. I am not sure what that has to do with Jamie unless they just randomly picked her for …" Garcia trailed off mentally kicking herself because they didn't know what they were doing to her, or what they had done with her.

Rossi cleared his throat taking over the conversation before the team could lose themselves in what-if scenarios. "The Irish Mafia, like many other organized crime groups, has a long history in grudges, robbery, assault, drugs, prostitution, illegal pornography, human trafficking, and murder. The Irish mafia and the Italian Mafia do not particularly get along and I might be able to call some people I know to see if they have any idea as to what's going on with their rival."

"I don't see why they would target Jamie…we haven't come across these people ever, as far back as I can see Jamie hasn't either in her personal life, what's the connection here? " asked JJ who was getting frustrated.

Hotch pulled out a file handing it over to them. He knew this held sensitive information that he should have guessed was connected with his baby girls' disappearance. "This was my very first murder case as a detective, in it has every detail on how I met Jamie McConnell." Looking around the room Hotch saw a lot of different emotions staring back at him.

"Jamie McConnell?" Reid asked dumbfounded looking through the file first. He pulled out photos of a man and woman, both dead, both with obvious signs of torture; behind the rest of the crime photographs, which he passed around the table, was a document.

He started reading out loud "Deckland and Mary McConnell were found murdered in their Los Angeles home on August 12th 1997. The way the bodies were found match other bodies similar to those that were killed by members of the Irish Mob. Upon looking through the house detective Aaron Hotchner found a young child. The child was determined to be Jamie McConnell, age 5, daughter of the deceased. It was estimated that by the time detectives had arrived on scene they victims had been deceased for three days. It was later confirmed that the child had stayed in the closet during the duration of the murder and the days after. The child will be placed in a foster home with a new surname for protection."

The room was silent as the agents mulled over the new information on their friend. Every person remembering how Jamie never talked about her parents and didn't really talk all that much about her foster families either. In fact, when the topic of the family was brought up Jamie simply skirted the topic or talked about the Hotchners.

"So, we have a lead with some actual evidence." Stated Morgan "Now let's find our girl, kick some ass and bring her home."

It had been a long day. Jamie felt numb and exhausted; she craved the cool, damp corner of her dark cell where she some sometimes was allowed to sleep. Instead, her captors carted Jamie to different "parties" where she would entertain them however her boss ordered her. She noticed what they dressed her in today was red, white, and blue and assumed it was some patriotic holiday today, probably the fourth of July but she didn't ask. She had given up asking questions or talking without permission… hell making any sort of noise without permission. She could still hardly walk from her last bought of punishment where they broke her ankle. Jamie was so tired, her body craved both sleep and the cocktail of drugs they had shot her up with so many times. She fought her body hard to stay awake as they drove to their next location, but she kept nodding off.

"Someone call the boss. She isn't going to make it the full day out... Let's give her a few hours rest, give her the shot, and clean her up." He chuckled "We won't want a crashing, dirty girl for our party tonight." She heard the man say.

She knew this man well. Knew everything he liked and everything he disliked. She knew how he enjoyed punishing her in all sorts of ways. She even knew that for this kindness he was giving to her, a slave, she would have to pay. The price for this would be high but she needed it. She would pay whatever he asked of her later so long as she could have one hour of quiet sleep, where no one was touching her.

"Hey Hotch, we have a problem" Jamie started shaking hearing that name. "The chick is crashing, I don't think another injection is going to keep her up right now and it could kill her if we give her it now. Quinn thinks we should let her catch some sleep so she is ready to entertain them later."

Jamie's heart started to race. She had grown to fear the man on the other end of the phone. The one who was responsible for all her pain, she couldn't argue it anymore, couldn't fight to not believe it, her dad was doing this to her. She pulled her knees up to her chest trying to calm down till she hears the man in the front seat start talking again.

"Yes sir." He hung up "were taking her back to the factory for some rest. Hotch says that we can let her sleep for a little while, clean her up, and have our own fun later. She earned enough money for him this morning."

When the car parked at the factory Jamie got out and slowly walked inside with Quinn. He led her to her cell, stripped her out of her "work clothes" and put her back into her usual old tattered shirt and panties. Once she was dressed for bed he pushed her hard into the ground, watching her weak body crash into the cement.

"Sleep. You have two hours, then you’re up and with us." He watched Jamie crawl into the corner before bedding down and gabbing her hair, yanking her head back to him, he kissed her cheek "Happy Independence Day" Quinn laughed as we walked out of the room, locking her in the dark.

It had been 3 days since they learned about his dear friend's true history. Since then it all became clear. They had quickly narrowed down where they believed Jamie was being held with the aid of Rossi's Italian contacts. The team took the jet to New York City and split up in groups of two at three possible locations where they might find their friend. Spencer sat at the window watching the old abandoned factory. A dark tinted SUV pulled up across the street at the factory he was watching pulling Reid from his thoughts.

"Morgan!" he called to his friend to come to see. He watched as the driver and passenger got out of the car, followed by the people in the back seat. Morgan and Reid watched them intently, making sure to snap pictures of the men. The two found it hard to believe what they were seeing; the fourth person was a girl wearing some skimpy Fourth of July attire. The girl looked weak as she walked getting pulled along by the man they would eventually know as Quinn, there wasn't a doubt in either of the men's minds. They found her.

"Jamie…" Spencer whispered so quietly to himself before grabbing his phone calling Garcia while Morgan took more pictures "Garcia! Call everyone else! We have eyes on Jamie! Get them on the line now!"

Penelope was so excited that her friend was really alive, that they were going to get her, that even as quickly as she connected everyone it didn't seem fast enough.

"Got them! I got them! Hotch, Rossi, Prentiss, and JJ you are connected to Reid and Morgan and me!"

"Guys! We found her! She is here! They just walked her inside the factory!" Reid said, his voice climbing higher as he was anxious.

Hotch spoke quickly, "Everyone gets there as soon as you can. Reid, Morgan you are not to enter until we get there and create a plan." He hung up before anyone else could argue. Grabbing his gun and his bulletproof vest he quickly made his way to the car with Rossi in tow.

"Ready to get your baby girl back?" asked Rossi trying to get Hotch to talk.

"More than ready. I want her home. I want her home tonight!" he took off when they were both in the car. Diving quickly to the apartments where Reid and Morgan had been placed.

Prentiss drove quickly as well, only slowing as they neared the location so that they would not attack attention. Taking a deep breath she looked at JJ "ready?"

JJ only nodded in response. She was worried about what state they would find her friend. She knew that getting her back was only the first half of the battle, the second half would be dealing with the psychological and physical damage that the youngest member of the team had sustained during her year in captivity.

JJ and Prentiss walked up the stairs and joined the rest of the team. They heard Garcia on the phone going over the blueprints of the old factory.

"When we enter, the likelihood that we will arrest everyone if anyone at all will be very small. There are two many exits. The goal here is to get Jamie out safely. We will find these people again later if we don't get them now and get Jamie the justice she deserves." Said Hotch.

Rossi looked out the window at the factory, "It would be better for us to go in when it's dark, so long as they don't take her anywhere. Someone should be watching for that at all times."

Morgan nodded taking up a post at the window while he listened to the rest of the group plan how they would enter and sweep the building. When the planning was done all they could do was wait. Hotch sat sating at the pictures that Morgan had taken of his baby. Seeing her dressed the way she was made Hotch's stomach churn. It was not something Jamie, his baby, would ever have chosen to wear on her own.

The other three agents went about filling their time in the best way they could, trying to sleep though it was hard to do. Spencer, who knew he wouldn't be able to sleep, sat in a chair reading a book he had carried with him since Jamie had been taken. She had bought it for him to read because it was one of her favorites and she desperately wanted someone to share in it with her. Whenever he missed her he read this book, and if he was honest, he missed her every seconded that she had been gone. So pretty much any of his free time was spent with reading this book over and over again so that when he got the chance they could talk about it as much as she wanted.

 Quinn checked the time as he smiled to himself; it was time to wake her. He grabbed a syringe full of methamphetamine and walked to her cell. He laughed to himself, looking at her huddled up on the floor, she truly was pathetic to him and he really enjoyed making her life hell. For no reason at all. Squatting down beside her, he took her arm, found a vein, and shot her up fast.

Jamie's eyes shot open, her heart beat faster and her lungs were working overtime. Her eyes hesitantly looked up to look at Quinn then back down as fast as possible. No eye contact. She was never to make eye contact with anyone. Property didn't have the right to do that she reminded her self. Quinn pulled her close to him, kissing her cheek like he always did when he had something horrible planned.

"Tonight I'll let you come and enjoy the fireworks with us. You will be able to see them from the bed in my room" he gave a long pause "But only after we get you cleaned up. You are too filthy to be allowed into a bed." He told her, putting the choke collar around her neck, adding a leash. "I like this one better than the shock collar I used to train you with." Pulling on it hard, forcing her to grab her neck in response as the prongs push at her skin and cut off her air.

"Walk" he commanded her.

Jamie didn't hesitate to obey his commands; the reactions had become a natural response. She crawled after him, keeping slightly behind as he led her to the showers. She stayed on her hands and knees watching him from the corner of her eye as he turned the water on. He knelt down by her undressing her quickly before tossing her into the tub keeping a tight hold on the leash.

Jamie winced feeling the cold water against her skin.

"Go on. Wash up" he smirked watching her shiver in the shower.

Jamie slowly began to wash. In her head, she prepared her self for what was to come as she went through the motions numbly. She was happy that he wasn't participating in the shower like he had so many times in the past. He always made them so much worse. Quinn saw she was done and yanked on the collar making Jamie lean towards him as she clung to the collar trying to keep the prongs from cutting into her skin and choking her. It didn't work. Jamie felt her body go weak as she blacked out.

/// Skip to next note to avoid s*xual assault content///

She woke up feeling sore. Jamie was careful to keep her eyes closed as she listened to what was around her. She could hear the three men, her stomach churned as she began to get more feeling back into her body. Jamie recognized the familiar sounds, smell, and feel of the man who wasn't talking with the others. She knew it was Quinn and that meant he would soon recognize that she had woken up. As if he had read her thoughts, she felt her head being lifted by a hard yank on her hair.

"Decided to join in on the fun, huh?" Quinn laughed as he kissed her cheek. "You have been out for a while and we didn't want to slow down the party to wait for you." He stated as he continued his assault on her body.

Jamie stared at a familiar comer of the wall, the one she always focused on in this room, trying to close her self off from the feeling of him. She made sure not to cry or make a noise as he continued. He was being more gentle than usual and she didn't want that to change. She didn't want to screw it up as they told her she did with everything. A big bang followed by some sizzles made her flinch, gasping in fear of what the noise was coming from.

You stupid girl, you may have just pissed Quinn off! Her mind berated her.

"She is still scared of loud noises I see" laughed a man who was watching them over in a chair. "I wonder what else we can conditioner her to fear, we have ingrained so many into her subconscious."

Quinn grunted his approval at her reaction, before he violently flipped her over onto her hands and knees, yanking her hair back hard again pulling her against him, "watch the fireworks, it's the closest to freedom you will ever be."

Jamie's eyes watered as she opened them and watched the light show trying to not react to the sound each time one went off. She swallowed bile as she felt him release inside her as the firework show finished.

Jamie got through the next couple of hours without disobeying too many rules. Each time she did they took the time to give her the punishment she deserved. Quinn and the boys were done with her for the night. So they dressed her back into her clothes, that in all honesty no more than tattered rags, and took her back to the cell. After they left her, Jamie cried silently to her self until she succumbed to some much-needed sleep.

 ///Pick Back up here///

11:15 pm July 4th :

The BAU team was dressed in their bulletproof vests as they approached the factory. It was time to get their girl back.

"Morgan, Rossi, and Prentiss, when we enter go left. Reid, JJ, and I will go right. Detain anyone you can, kill if necessary, but no matter what, we get Jamie." Hotch said before he nodded to Morgan to enter.

The team split, both clearing the hall and rooms as the checked for their safety as well as hoping Jamie would be behind one of the doors. Reid made his way to the staircase; slowly he walked quickly to the second floor. Upon seeing that Morgan was already checking that hall he worked his way up another level and proceeded in.

Quinn looked up at the security footage, "Shit FBI is inside! Get everything you can I'm going to get the girl!"

"No! they're almost to her! We got to let her go! We can get her back for the boss later!" said one of the other men as he grabbed as much video and documents of what they had subjected Jamie through into a bag.

The other man began wiping the hard drives of the computers after he copied all the information for them, "Let's GO!"

Quinn struggled to go after Jamie, his pet, he didn't want her taken but once he saw one of the agents pass by their door he had no choice but to run with the other two men as they worked their way down the fire escape.

Prentiss called out, "They are running down the fire escape. Three men. They don't have Jamie!"

Quinn Fired a shot at Prentiss who retuned fire missing Quinn but hitting one of the other men. She kept firing but Quinn and the other man were able to get into their car and drive off.

Jamie tensed hearing the gunshots but she didn't dare move. Her eyes darted to the door when she heard the knob turning. Reid slowly walked in seeing Jamie sitting on the floor, his heart pounded in his chest as he carefully walked up to her and knelt down.

"Jamie..." he saw the fear in her eyes as he slowly moved towards her, his heartbreaking as she scooted further back against the wall trying to get as far away from as she could.

~Can also be read on AO3 and Fanfic by anonymouslymine ~

[i-can-do-tricks]

archivist sasha tma au living in my head rent free is just the truth babe!!!!

wrote a little something because while not!jon is fucking great i had to put my own spin on it for a minute. this is all well and good and definitely not awful

now on [ao3]

During the Prentiss attack Jon gets separated from Tim in the tunnels after they both lose Martin, and he finds himself back in the Institute. In artifact storage.

He’s not alone.

After he meets back up with everyone, he’s……not acting quite right. Martin can’t put a finger on HOW, but he concludes WHY is because of this Very stressful encounter with the alleged supernatural firsthand. He doesn’t think about it again for a long time.

Everything’s back to normal, or at least as “normal” as working in the Magnus Institute really can be, but Jon is… different? But not in ways immediately obvious. More…mellow. More keen on making conversation than refusing to shut up about the Leitners. Doesn’t fidget with the stapler anymore. Much more easily pressured to clock out on time instead of staying late.

Every time Sasha’s mind wanders over to one of these thoughts, she can’t help but dismiss it without a second thought. She’s glad that Jon’s making healthier decisions since the attack, it had really taken a toll on his physical and mental health more than the others. She’s glad that she doesn’t have to worry about him, she tells herself, though there’s something lingering behind that sentence she can’t quite parse.

A woman had arrived in the Archives, though to provide support for her friend making a statement rather than herself. She had a statement of her own inside her, Sasha had been growing strong enough to… know that, but the woman just didn’t want to give it, was all. Georgie Barker, she said her name was when Sasha asked.

They got to talking, and both Georgie and her friend Melanie had stayed in touch, being intrigued by the supernatural themselves and apparently what Sasha had to say about it. Georgie had been visiting one time when Sasha noticed she had been looking strangely at someone at the other side of the room. Sasha knew that Georgie and Jon had been together at one point, and now they weren’t, so she didn’t really pay attention to the weird glance Georgie was giving him until she spoke up.

Why was Jon drinking coffee?

At Sasha’s confusion, Georgie started listing things that as they were pointed out suddenly became clear they didn’t make sense. Jon hated that sweater vest, he’d always said it was so scratchy he could feel it under his shirt. Jon claimed to like being tidy, but he could never get papers in just the way they were neatly piled on his desk now. Jon wouldn’t be caught DEAD listening to his old Mechanisms songs for fear that someone would see and find out about the band he was part of in college. Georgie knew Jon, why was he acting so differently? Somewhere behind Sasha’s eyes begin to hurt.

Sasha’s clever. Of course she’d realize something had been shifting her attention away from the couple of statements she’d dropped three times now, one of them even in the trash. It had taken an ungodly amount of excruciating focus to listen and read through each one of them, one after the other. The house on Hilltop Road. A psychology experiment gone wrong. A student choked by a thick cloud of strings that had pulled them along through living for weeks, unnoticed. A tape that had turned on back when Sasha had rushed out of the room to warn Tim of the woman behind him, of Jon confiding in Martin about his encounter with a Leitner when he was a child.

Sasha listened to this one for as long as she could, somehow knowing it to be the last record of Jon she had before… it was the last time she had heard Jon being scared, she realized. The next day, when Sasha looked closely, she could see the faintest of oily threads glinting in the air above Jon’s hands.

Jon was being punished for pulling back the curtain, for showing a thread pertaining to him thought to be invisible, even to just one person that he loved.

And she hated it.

When she’s ready, she sends the rest of the staff home early, and thinks she has Jon cornered. He’s lying still in the cot in one of the back rooms of the Archives, the one he hadn’t used in so long ever since he had been…”convinced” not to overwork himself, with the lights off. When Sasha calls out to who might be the puppeteer, he freezes, curled up so tightly that he felt more like a crumpled sack of….. than a person. When Sasha calls out to Jon, though, he risks a glance over his shoulder toward the door of the room and, seeing a figure there, quickly turns back to the wall, muttering to himself near inaudibly; if he doesn’t move at all, doesn’t struggle, then maybe the Spider watching at the edge of the web he was trapped in wouldn’t notice, and more importantly, he’d know that his inaction was his own–

Sasha hears rope of all kinds of thickness stretching and tightening from down the hallway. She snaps into focus and hefts up Jon in her arms, much to his (though not disgruntled) bewilderment, and carries him out of the institute as fast as she can, wiping cobwebs stuck in Jon’s hair and clothes away, and pulling apart the now oh-so delicate spiderweb threads attached to his hands, his legs, his tongue….

The floor is sticky beneath her feet.

A few days later, when Sasha was still letting Jon stay at her flat and giving everyone paid leave while the…exterminators? got rid of the spiderwebs and the rest of the unexplained infestation, she invited Tim and Martin to get lunch with them.

Jon told the three of them how at first, it really didn’t feel like he was being controlled or compelled. When he did something just a touch too out of character, even for him, he felt surprised, but he guessed the attack had changed him a lot more than he thought.

That is, until he noticed the strings.

Before he could properly realize what they even were the strings tightened, thousands of impossibly strong threads constricting around him so tightly he couldn’t move.

Until he did.

It hadn’t hurt, no, but it felt wrong, walking too slowly and standing too straight, words coming out of his mouth so alien it felt like someone else’s, with the bitter taste of bad coffee lingering on his tongue. The strings hid any sign of loosening its suffocating hold, so he became numb, slowly turning complacent that he would never be able to act of his own accord again at the same time as being utterly terrified out of his mind by that very same thought.

As the months went on he felt something else rise up, however. Jon had lost his tongue to a string ages ago, and when whatever was speaking did talk… they were polite. More considerate to Martin when he slipped up. Friendlier with Tim and easier to laugh with. Jon became all too aware that whatever- whoever he was was taking greater care of himself than he had ever thought to. Maybe- if he ever DID come back- it would just be better to give himself up again, if he did anything himself he’d just ruin everything, he should just not-

At that point Jon had full collapsed with his head on the table, shaking and sobbing in front of the three of them. Martin had been crying as Jon spoke, and now reached out tentatively to comfort him. Tim was certainly no worse for wear, tears in his own eyes and looking completely distraught as he thought about the talks he’d had in the past seven months when someone who was Jon, but somehow so very not Jon had been working with them, and they had just….never noticed.

With Jon’s permission, Sasha placed the tape recorder on the table in front of them and pressed play. They wordlessly listened to Jon and Martin panicking and hunkering down in the Archives, hiding from the worms, when Jon had told Martin about Mr. Spider; the last time in seven months any of the four of them had heard Jon speaking.

[sighmurderbot]

Irish Coffee Chapter Four

Title: Triple Shot Espresso

Chapter Rating/Warnings: G, I don’t think there’s even any profanity in this one

Word Count: 2.9K

Summary: They meet over coffee and Kierkegaard. There was a spark in his honey-brown eyes that drew her to him. There was a sadness behind her bright smile that drew him to her. Spencer Reid/Original Female Character. Slow burn coffee shop meet. Strangers to friends to lovers. This fic is also available on AO3, it’s ahead of tumblr currently!

previous chapter//next chapter

"I felt it shelter to speak to you."

-Emily Dickinson 

The sun dawned on my fourth day off work, and my late alarm roused me. Somehow I woke up tired and rested at the same time. Shooting my boss at the coffee shop a quick text, I hopped in the shower. Sure, another day off might be nice, but I couldn't really afford it if I wanted to stay on track with my plan, plus losing my diner job was still fresh in my mind.

It took less than an hour from my alarm going off to the door to my apartment shutting behind me. My coat felt like gauze as gusty winds chased each other down valleys of skyscraping office buildings, so I hurried my steps to the shelter of the coffee shop.

The bittersweet scent of coffee surrounded me as soon as I opened the door, pulling me in like hands tugging at my sleeves. My eyes fluttered shut for a moment as I basked in the cosy warmth. After missing it for a few days the smell of fresh coffee was heady, and I could almost taste it. It pulled me back to a hazy memory of the sun streaming through tall windows and laughing with my mom, teasing each other about how we liked our drinks. I had always drank mine black, but she poured enough creamer and sugar in to turn the dark liquid almost white. 

I opened my eyes and smiled a little, holding onto the image as I nodded to the boy at the counter. Evan gave me a short nod back, clearly displeased with his current situation as he served the woman in front of him.

Even though I was a little early, I still dropped off my things in the back room and slipped on my apron. It was easy to fall into the motions of making drinks and packaging baked goods, supporting Evan while he handled the orders. I enjoyed working in the back, close enough to give the customers a smile with their snacks but far enough to not have to converse with them. 

If only we could justify keeping two people on all the time, I thought, handing the next customer their boxed up bearclaw with a smile and a nod. However much I wished, I knew the owner couldn’t afford it. We weren’t close, but she had been a friend of my mother’s, and I was sure that’s how I still had this job. 

After an hour of handling customers, the torrent of bodies pouring through the doors slowed to a trickle, and Evan grumpily took his leave. I made my short rounds of the tables, ensuring everyone was settled and happy, and then hurried back to the counter. Propped up on a short stool so it was out of sight of anyone coming through the door, my laptop hummed to life.

I quickly lost myself in the world of scholarship applications. I did qualify for more now that I’ve been working longer, and the notepad open on my screen was populating nicely with links and notes on what scholarships I should apply to and what each required. So absorbed I was in my work I almost missed the annoying ring of the bell above the door.

 Thankfully, the awful, high pitched sound was seared into my brain, and before I had even consciously processed it I was standing with a picture-perfect customer service smile on my face. A man and a woman entered the shop, looking around curiously as if they were expecting a surprise.

“Hi!” I greeted, cheerfully. “How can I help you two?”

The man, an imposing, muscular specimen with no hair but eyebrows to make up for it, turned towards me. As soon as his dark eyes fell on me he not-so-subtly elbowed the woman beside him. She was just as imposing, with straight black hair and an “I operate within the law but just barely” vibe. Despite the fact that they both looked like they could snap me like a twig I didn’t sense anything dangerous about them. A second cursory glance revealed they both had weapons on one hip and government-issue IDs on the other, and I nodded to myself. 

Knew it.

The man approached the counter first, with a swagger in his step and a barely-restrained grin on his face. The woman was half a stride behind, looking for all the world like she was physically restraining her eyes from rolling.

“Hey,” the man said, flashing a bright smile. “When did they let such pretty girls work here? Am I really so out of touch with my local cafes?”

I returned the smile. Years of customer-facing jobs had quickly taught me how to weed creeps who flirt with women on the job out from guys joking around. This guy struck me as a jokester, so I was happy to play along.

“Looks like it, maybe you’ll have to come by more often to make sure they keep me around,” I replied. The woman made an exaggerated gag expression. 

“Sorry about him,” she said in a conspiratorial tone. “Doesn’t know when to cool his jets.”

I gave her a reassuring wink. “Not a problem. Can I get you guys something to drink?”

“Sure can,” she replied, relieved at the thought of caffeine. “I’ll take a triple espresso.”

The man beside her turned to her with one bushy eyebrow raised.

“Trying to get off our next case with a heart attack?” he asked. She scoffed.

“I wish. Just trying to stay awake to get through the consultations.”

“And for you, sir?” I set the espresso to brew and returned to the counter.

“Just a dark roast with a splash of milk, please.”

“Coming right up!”

I could feel two pairs of eyes boring into me as I turned to prep the drinks after accepting payment. A surreptitious glance over my shoulder showed the two whispering, but there was no chance I could hear them over the sound of the machines and the everpresent underlying tone of music and conversation that always filled a coffee shop. 

A few moments later I returned to the two. Their eyes were piercing but they smiled their thanks when I handed over the drinks.

“Funny name,” the woman said, raising her cup to show the shop’s logo. “Just naming your coffee shop ‘Coffee Shop’. Must be hell for branding.”

I shrugged with a chuckle, I got comments occasionally about the unusual name.

“Makes it easy to remember at least!” I replied. 

“Guess so,” the woman said, still seemingly perplexed by the name.

“Thanks for the coffee, sweetness,” the man said.

“You’re welcome, have a good afternoon!” I smiled. 

“Thanks,” the woman’s eyes dropped to my nametag. “Katie. Nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

They left, heads bent together as they conferred. I shook my head a little. They were a strange pair, but friendly. Maybe they’d be back one day.

 Spencer

It had been four days since Spencer had gone out for coffee. Yesterday he had tried to go back to his old usual shop, right on the corner, but the music had given him a headache and the coffee was too strong and he hadn’t returned.

Still, he thought about the coffee shop called Coffee Shop every day at 2:15pm. So when Morgan and Prentiss strolled off the elevator at 2:10 holding cups emblazoned with the circular logo he clocked it instantly.

“-coffee’s good too,” Prentiss said, taking a sip from her cup. 

“You’d like anything that had enough caffeine to hype up a horse,” Morgan teased. Prentiss only shrugged with a half smile.

“Perhaps.”

Her eyes flicked to Spencer, who quickly tried to look busy.

“The barista was pretty too,” she said, a little louder than before.

“You can say that again,” Morgan agreed, also glancing at the resident genius. ��She was friendly too.”

“Women are always friendly to you.” Prentiss rolled her eyes. 

Spencer’s ears were burning. Was Katie there again? Maybe he should go back, just to see...plus she made damn good coffee. Yeah, the coffee was the reason why he was shoving his things into his bag and pulling a scarf around his neck.

“Where ya going, pretty boy?” Morgan called after him before Spencer even realized he was halfway out of the bullpen. 

“Out for coffee,” came the short reply.

“Oh, we would have got you some,” Prentiss said, raising her cup. “We tried out a new place, it’s pretty good.”

“No, that’s okay,” Spencer said hurriedly. “I like getting my own.” He went to leave, then remembered something and turned back. “Thank you.”

With that he strode purposefully out the glass doors, electing for the stairs instead of the elevator. As the door to the stairwell swung shut, Prentiss and Morgan allowed cheshire-like grins to spread across their faces.

“I’m just glad there’s something that’s getting him out of the office,” Morgan admitted, draining his coffee.

“You don’t think it’s odd that he’s so...I dunno, squirrely about it?” Prentiss asked. 

Morgan shrugged.

“The kid doesn’t have a lot going on in his life. If this is the one thing he decides to keep private for now, I say we let him have it. He needs something.”

“Especially now.”

The two coworkers and friends exchanged a sober look as they sat at their desks. It was a few moments before one broke the silence.

“They’d be cute together,” Prentiss said, not looking up from the file she was perusing. Morgan glanced up with a lopsided grin.

“Yeah, maybe,” he replied, then returned to his own paperwork. “I just hope she’s ready for our boy genius.”

“Ready for him?” Prentiss almost scoffed. “Has he ever been in a relationship? Maybe we need to help him get ready for her.”

“Relationship might be hoping for a bit much, I just hope she doesn’t hurt him.”

“I hope so too, but honestly, I hope he gives her the opportunity.”

Morgan looked up sharply at Prentiss’ words.

“Why would you say that?” he demanded. Prentiss made a soothing hand motion.

“Because it means he’s allowed himself to be vulnerable to someone outside of the team.”

Morgan’s tense shoulders relaxed a little and he nodded slowly.

“That’ll be the day.”

“Mm, you said it.”

The two bent their heads again, diving back into work. A few blocks away, Spencer nervously fiddled with the strap on his messenger bag.

He was stopped just before the coffee shop windows. He wasn’t sure why he was stopped, only that he was anxious for some reason. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward and glanced to the counter before he could stop himself.

Katie was leaning on the counter, propped up on her elbows. Her long, golden ponytail flopped over her shoulder. Eyes fixed on a small yellow notepad in front of her, she tapped a pencil against her lips, thinking. 

Spencer pushed the shop door open carefully, so as not to send the bell above the door swinging wildly. He had noticed her winces of annoyance when other customers carelessly shoved their way in. 

Still, it made a small noise as he entered, and she looked up quickly. As her grey eyes met his, a smile broke across her face like the sun piercing through cloud cover on a rainy day. Spencer matched her expression instantly. 

“Spencer! You’re back!” she exclaimed happily, setting her pad and pencil aside. Spencer felt his chest tighten a little, he couldn’t remember the last time someone had been so genuinely happy to see him.

“I could say the same for you,” he replied. Katie nodded, twisting a corner of her mouth apologetically. 

“I was sick, sorry. I hope you were able to find a decent caffeine fix while I was gone.”

She had been sick, of course. Spencer scolded himself for not thinking of the obvious answer sooner.

“Let’s just say I’m really glad you’re back,” he replied, and Katie laughed.

“I could say the same for you,” she parrotted his earlier words with a twinkle in her eye.

 Katie

I felt almost giddy when Spencer walked into the shop. Perhaps it was a sign I needed to get out more, but I enjoyed his company and conversation so much that I couldn’t help it. We bantered for a moment. Watching him smile was like a breath of fresh air, not only after the days alone in my apartment, but after a morning of grumpy customers. It didn’t hurt that he had one of the greatest smiles I’ve ever seen. We laughed as I made his coffee, and when I handed it over he took an appreciative sip.

“Scholarships?” he asked, nodded to the notepad on the counter beside me. I quirked an eyebrow, and he blushed a little.

“Sorry, I can read upside down, I kinda saw before I knew what I was looking at.”

I gave him a reassuring smile.

“No apologies necessary,” I replied, pulling the pad towards me. “Scholarships indeed.”

I scanned down the list of names, amounts, and deadlines.

“Where are you hoping to go?” He asked. I sighed.

“Honestly, wherever I can afford.”

“Dream school,” he countered, and I smiled down at the paper.

“George Washington,” I admitted. “I’ll never make it, though.”

Spencer’s eyebrows drew together, wrinkling his forehead.

“Why?”

I shrugged, unable to meet his eyes. 

Of course he can’t understand. He probably had colleges tripping over themselves to give him full-rides.

“I’m a pretty good student but GWU is picky,” I explained. “Plus they’re expensive. No way I’ll get enough of an offer from them to be able to swing it.”

I sighed, encroaching anxiety worrying at the corners of my mind.

“I’ll probably just have to move.”

“Where would you go?” Spencer sounded a bit sad as he asked.

“I’m not sure...New York, probably. Or Virginia. Wherever I can afford.”

“You don’t want to leave.”

It was a statement, not a question, but I nodded.

“I really don’t. I have an apartment in the District, I like working here.”

I let out a big sigh, dropping my head onto my hands where they rested on the counter. 

“I don’t know what I’ll do yet. I don’t want to leave but if I stay I’m stuck. I have to move forward, ya know?”

I looked up to find a surprising amount of sympathy in his amber eyes.

“Keep at it,” he encouraged. “You’ll find a way.”

The smile I gave him was small and weak, but it was the best I could manage with the impossibility of my situation hanging over me.

“Thanks, Spencer.”

I stood, shaking my head at myself.

“Look at me, rambling on. You come in for your coffee and I just talk your ear off about my problems, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he replied hurriedly. “I’m always the one talking your ear off, I’m happy to listen.”

“Yeah, but I actually like hearing about what you have to say,” I chuckled, slipping the notepad under the counter.

“You do?” He seemed confused by the prospect.

“Yeah,” I looked up to find him frowning at his coffee. “You’re the best part of my day.”

The words left my lips unbidden and a blush quickly spread across my face.

“Sorry, that sounded weird,” I backpedaled. “I just mean-”

“You’re the best part of my day too,” he cut me off. His own cheeks were red and he was looking anywhere but at me. I felt butterflies start to flutter in my stomach.

“I am?”

He nodded, apparently mute in sudden embarrassment. 

I haven’t made a friend in so long, I thought, blinking shyly and dropping my eyes to my fingers nervously twisting around each other. What if I mess this up?

My mother’s gentle voice sounded in my head, quoting Emily Dickenson once more.

“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.”

An ecstatic experience might be a little dramatic, mom. But...maybe this could be a good one. Maybe this is the silver lining to losing my diner job.

“Do you want to get coffee after work?” I blurted out. The sudden break in silence startled Spencer and he looked up. 

“Coffee?”

My rush of confidence was quickly fading.

“Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t have to be coffee. And it’s not a date or anything, don’t worry.”

As if someone like him would ever go out with someone like me.

“I just…” I took a deep breath and forged forward. “I get off at eight and I thought it might be nice to talk while sitting down. If you want. We don’t have to.”

I fell quiet, studying his face carefully, but his expression was unreadable. Hopefully I hadn’t just scared him off…

“Sure, yeah,” he said finally.

I let out the breath I hadn’t known I was holding and smiled.

“Cool! So...if you want to stop by at eight, I know a nice tea shop nearby that does good coffee too, and they’re open late.”

He seemed to be warming to the idea, nodding as I spoke.

“Alright, eight it is.”

I tried not to smile too wide.

Damn, act like you’ve been there, Katie, I scolded myself. Making a new friend is something people do every day.

Spencer glanced at his watch.

“I should be getting back,” he said, regret tinging his tone. 

“Oh, yeah, no worries,” I replied. “I’ll see you later, then.”

“See you later,” he repeated, raising a hand in farewell and slipping out the door. I looked at the clock above the door as it closed behind him.

2:30. It’s going to be a long shift.

[diyarlight]

together forever (part 1)

A different twist of Criminal Minds season 4, episode 24 “Amplification”

part 2 

"Two more minutes," Y/N whine, snuggling deeper into the bed. She felt something heavy on top of her, and let out giggles as the man tickled her.

"Spence!" She yelled out, unable to control the giggling.

"Come on JJ said it's an emergency," He mumbled into her neck, his breath making her giggle again.

"Okay fine," She gave in, letting him pull her up. He gave a quick kiss and went to the kitchen to put the coffee on. She got out of the bed, washing quickly and pulling her hair in a ponytail. She walks into the living room with her boyfriend holding two cups of the coffee. She kisses him as a thank you and together walks out.

Sometimes, she wonders how did she get so lucky. Two years ago Y/N joined the BAU, along with David Rossi and quickly became close to the team, especially to Spencer. She was a nerd herself, more loyal to her Hogwarts’ house rather than her high school, and that just made her like Spencer even more. She waited for two months for him to ask her out, but because he is incredibly shy, she knew that she had to take the initiative. So she asked him out and had to bit back her laugh when she saw stuttering in shock. And now a year later she moved in with him in his apartment, happy and content. Hotch was worried at first about how both of them would be in the team once Y/N and Spencer came out to the team, but after seeing that the couple were always professional he let go of his initial suspicion.

"Do you know what the case is?" She asked Spencer who shakes his head once they both are in her car.

“It must be local though,” He tells her, fidgeting with his bag. He had an uneasy feeling though as if something was going to go wrong. He must have been frowning because Y/N takes a hold of his hand as soon as they get out of the car. They both do not do any PDA near the headquarters because they had deemed it unprofessional, so he was surprised when she took hold of his hand and pulled him closer to her. “Are you okay?” She asks and he nods with a smile. She doesn’t let her hand go, and he doesn’t want to either.

Minutes later they both walk into a room full of military men and women walking around in the BAU bullpen along with Morgan and Prentiss.  "Wow," she muttered, tightening her grip on Spencer's hand.

"Case must be local. JJ said not to bring a go bag," Spencer stated, brushing his thumb on top of her hand. He knew it was calming him as much as it was calming her.

"What's the army doing here?" Morgan asked, looking around.

"What the hell is going on?" Prentiss wondered.

Y/N stood with them for a moment, taking in the rush of people who were looking through files and talking to others. They were all tensed, completely focused on their job. Spencer dragged her up to the conference room, never letting her hand go. As they entered the room, he squeezed her hand, letting her know that it was okay and pulled away. She looked at him, concern in her eyes as he gave a small smile. They see as an Asian woman in a suit placing tablets in cups and JJ was standing beside her holding a large cup in her hand. JJ turn when the group walks in, and Y/N smiled back at JJ as she took her place between Morgan and Prentiss while he stood near JJ.

"Guys this is Dr. Linda Kimura," JJ introduces her to the team. "Chief of Special Pathogens with the CDC."

"Hello," Prentiss politely welcomed her.

"Hello. I am sorry to meet you under these circumstances," Kimura answers, her voice low.

"What circumstances?" Spencer asks.

Hotch and Rossi talking to each other as the two senior profilers walk in. "We need to get started," Hotch cuts in, giving everyone a nod.

"Last night, 25 people checked into emergency rooms in and around Annapolis. They were all at the same park after 2 P.M. yesterday, and writhing ten hours the first victim died. It's now just past 7 A.M. The next day, we have 12 dead," JJ said.

"Lung failure and black lesions," Morgan said, looking through the pictures of the victims. "Anthrax?"

"But Anthrax doesn't kill this fast," You said, looking at Spencer for confirmation who nods in agreement.

"This strain does," Kimura said.

"What are we doing about potential mass targets--airports, malls, trains?" Prentiss asked, her eyes landing on Hotch.

"There is a media blackout," He answers.

"What?" You ask

"We are not telling the public?" Prentiss adds.

"We'd have a mass exodus," Morgan answers.

"The physiology of group panic would cause more deaths than this last attack," Rossi said.

"Yeah and if it does out, whoever did this might go underground or destroy their samples," Spencer concludes.

"Or if they wanted attention and didn't get it they might attack again," Prentiss counters back. "Doesn't the public have the right to know that?"

"If there is another attack, there's no way we'll be able to keep it quiet," Hotch said, his voice leaving no question. You bit your lips to keep the groan and you notice how worried JJ looks.

"Our best chance of protecting the public is by building a profile as quickly as we can," Hoth continues, ignoring Prentiss's eye roll.

"What do we know about this strain?" Spencer asks, hoping to bring the focus back to the case.

"The spores are weaponized, reduced to a respirator ideal that attacks deep in the lungs," Kimura explains. "Odorless and invisible."

"A sophisticated strain," Rossi concludes. "Only a scientist would know how to do that."

"You can't cross the possibility that it's by a terrorist group who got the supply from somewhere else," You add-on.

"These lesions are doubling in size in a matter of hours," Morgan adds on.

"It's not the lesions that I'm worried about," Kimora interrupts. "It's the lungs. We don't know how to combat the toxins once they're inside. And the reality is that we may lose them all."

"The remaining survivors have been moved to a special wing at the hospital. Our office will become a small command center," JJ also informed the team.

"We will be working with military scientists from Fort Detrick," Hotch said.

"General Whitworth is coming here?" Rossi asks him.

"He is in charge of site containment and spore analysis. Determining what strain this is will help inform us who's responsible."

"My team is in charge of tearing all victims," Kimura said to the team.

"Reid, go with Dr. Kimura to the hospital and interview the victims. Morgan, (Y/N) and  Prentiss, there's a Hazmat team that will accompany to the crime scene," Hotch lets everyone know what to do. "There's Cipro that everyone needs to take before you go."

"We don't know if it's effecting against this strain, but it's something," Kimura tells them.

"This is really happening huh," You talked out loud, swallowing down your fear.

"We knew this would happen. We've done our homework. We've prepared for this. This is it," Hotch said before he swallowed his pills.

"May we live 100 years," Rossi dryly said before swallowing his pills down.

Y/N shared a wry smile with Spencer as she gulps down the pills. But it didn't settle the bad feeling in his stomach.

Spencer nodded at Dr. Kimura, asking her if he could have a minute. She nodded and walked away, and Spencer walked to where Morgan and Y/N were standing. The two stopped when they see the tall man walking towards them, with a nod Morgan walks away, giving the couple the privacy they need. He brings her closer to him, and soon his heart calms down. He kisses her forehead and pulls back, cupping her face in his hands. “Be safe,” He said and kissed her with all the love he had. For a moment, all they could focus was on their lips, and soon the bad feeling he had goes away because he knows she can take care of herself. 

They pull apart, knowing that Morgan and Prentiss were waiting for Y/N, Her eyes open and he could see the concern in it. “Yeah,” she whispers heavily. “Be careful okay?”

“Okay. I love you,” He tells her with another kiss.

“Love you too,” She whispers to him. 

“Y/N?”

They both turn to see Morgan and Prentiss waiting. "Go," Spencer said with a smile and she brushes the hair away from his face. With a kiss on her forehead, he walks to Dr. Kimura, leaving her with Morgan and Prentiss.

“Are you okay?” Dr. Kimura asks Spencer, and his expression must be bad because even a stranger could read him. 

“Yes, I am fine,” He thanks her, and he could really believe that now. He knew that Y/N is going to look after herself, he knew that. Now if only he could believe it. 

….

After the team delivers the profile to the military men, Hotch assigns Y/N and Morgan to go to Dr. Nichols’ home while Prentiss, Rossi, and Spencer went to his workplace. They reach there and look around the home. Y/N didn’t really focus where she was going which ended up with cutting her hand when she fell flat on her face as she tripped.

“Do you want me to carry you, princess?” Morgan teased as he helped her get up. She glared in response, dusting off the dirt on her pants. She was about to reply back when his phone rang, so with a final glare, she left him talking as she wandered into the house. Instantly she knew that something was wrong when she stumbles into the house lab, so she took her gun out and headed carefully in. She stops short when she sees a dead body and broken vials of anthrax litter the floor.

“Y/N?” Morgan’s voice snaps her out, and she rushes to slam the glass door, locking herself inside when Morgan almost got into the lab. “Get back,” She shouts at him, locking the door and looking up to see Morgan’s terrified face.

“What’s wrong?” Morgan asked her, his hand on the glass. “Y/N, open the damn door!”

“I am so sorry,” She whispers as she sees his gaze land on the broken vials. He takes a step back in shock, just looking at her. “Call Hotch. Nichols is dead, and I am pretty sure that the cure is here.”

[butsomeofusarelookingatthestars]

Hey, I love your blog! How about a luke piece with “You could have been killed!” “What were you thinking?!?” “If they lay a finger on you, I swear I’ll kill them.” “Who did this to you?!” Thanks ❤

Fandom: Criminal MindsPairing: Luke Alvez x ReaderPrompts: “You could have been killed!” and “What were you thinking?”

Hi, thanks for the requests! I’ve already posted the latter two here (https://butsomeofusarelookingatthestars.tumblr.com/post/163064308190/if-they-lay-a-finger-on-you-i-swear-ill-kill) and here (https://butsomeofusarelookingatthestars.tumblr.com/post/162975409645/bruised). I decided to combine the first two into this piece. I hope you enjoy reading it! It’s inspired by the scene in Minimal Loss when Prentiss sacrifices herself for Reid.

You shivered violently as you lay motionless on the cold floor. All your strength had evaporated, leaving you unable to even stand upright. Your head pounded sickeningly as a steady trickle of sticky blood dripped down your face.

But, the BAU was coming. You held onto your unshaken belief in your teammates. Any moment now, they would come bursting through the door to come to your aid. You were a family and you trusted them with your life.

That was your reasoning for sacrificing yourself for the other hostages. You’d been conducting an investigation into a religious cult when all hell had broken lose. Bullets had flew across the room, causing the cult leader to order a lockdown. Men, women and children had been trapped with little access to food and water.

To make matters worse, the leader had learnt that there was an undercover FBI agent amongst them. After he had threatened to kill an innocent member, you’d confessed your guilt. You couldn’t allow anyone else to take the punishment designed for you.

It had been strange, but your first thoughts had been about your FBI partner Luke Alvez. You could almost see him hitting the wall in fury at your decision. Although new to the BAU, Luke had quickly became an important part of the family. He’d easily assumed the role of protector. You all remembered how far he’d gone to help Reid through his prison ordeal. You assumed the former Ranger had a great sense of loyalty and devotion to his colleagues. As Rossi had described him, he was a ‘first in, last out’ kind of guy.

You’d grasped desperately to the inspiration of Luke’s strength and determination as the cult leader unleashed his attack. You’d thought of his reassuring voice as glass shattered around you. You’d thought of his calm advice as you struggled for air, each breath burning your lungs.

You’d felt slightly guilty, knowing that the entire team would be listening to the assault. You didn’t want them to feel so powerless, you knew they’d blame themselves for your suffering. But, it had been your decision alone.

A loud bang caught your attention. Your hand twitched uncomfortably as you attempted to shift away from the sharp glass that littered the floor. You had to get up. But, your efforts were futile. You’re weakened state forcing you to collapse back down to the floor. You gasped in pain as the shards pierced your skin once again. Your vision blurred as you began to lose consciousness.

You heard the door smash open, but you were unable to turn around to glance at who had entered. So, you remained frozen in your vulnerable position as you silently prayed.

You winced as you felt warm hands gently shaking your body.

“Y/N? Y/N look at me.”

Your eyes automatically flew open at the sound of Luke’s voice. You wondered for a brief moment if you were suffering from hallucinations. But, there he was in front of you. His dark eyes full of concern as he gazed at you intently.

“I need you to stay awake, okay? Just stay with me.”

His hands moved to gently cup your face as his eyes swept over your body, assessing the extent of your injuries. You’d never seen the FBI agent look so worried. You missed his bright smile.

“Luke?”

His eyes flickered up as you called out, your voice straining with the effort. He tenderly swept a thumb across your cheek as he wiped away a trickle of blood.

“I’m here.” He murmured, running a soothing hand across your forehead to push your mattered hair out of your face.

“I knew you’d come.” You smiled weakly at him, trying to ignore the intense pain shooting through your aching body.

His jaw tensed and his eyes darkened slightly as he noticed the dark bruises around your neck. He closed his eyes as he breathed deeply. It looked as if he was trying to compose himself. “What were you thinking Y/N?” He hissed slowly, finally opening his eyes to meet your confused gaze. Luke had never spoken to you in such an angry tone.

“I had to Luke. He would have-”

“You could have been killed!” Luke snapped furiously, his rage finally exploding. You winced at his words. Luke was almost unrecognisable to you when he was this angry. But, you knew it was directed at situation rather than at you personally.

You leaned forward, ignoring the shooting pain in your side, to take his large hand in yours. “Luke, I’m okay. I’m fine.” You intertwined your fingers with his and gently squeezed, letting him know that you were still here. You were still with him.

His eyes softened as he looked down at your joined hands. You felt him relax slightly, your touch seemingly calming him.

“I thought I’d- we’d lost you.” His voice was pained as he avoided your gaze.

“It will take more than that to get rid of me.” You smiled softly as you gripped his hand tighter. His dark eyes met yours.

“I knew I’d be okay because I knew you’d find me.”

“You can always count on that Y/N.”