So this was originally a chapter intended for a huge Criminal Minds/NCIS:LA crossover story I had planned. Nothing ever really became of the story, but this chapter can be read as a stand-alone oneshot as well, so here you go.
Warning: Can be read as slash depending on the googles you're wearing.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything apart from the plot.
"Come on, Reid. Stay with me. Stay with me, Spencer, don't you dare do this to me, come on! Stay with me, please, stay with me. Come on, kid!"
It was all oh so familiar.
Come on, G.
He'd been in the exact same position.
Come on, G. Stay with me.
He'd said the exact same words.
It was like the worst moment he ever had to experience was coming back to life right in front of him.
Like a very vivid trip down memory lane.
Stay with me, G. Don't do this to me, come on!
Sam had been plagued by nightmares of it happening again, but this right here was real, this was no dream.
But this time around it wasn't him who clung to his dying partner.
Different actors and different scenery, but still, the fear itself remained one and the same, even if it wasn't his own.
Stay with me. Stay with me. Come on, buddy.
The fear of losing someone you so deeply cared for, of them dying in your arms, and this damn helplessness, being unable to do something, anything, to save them.
Been there, done that, got the nightmares to prove it.
He grins at G's retreating back for a moment and then makes to start the car. Just as he's about to swerve into the road a van rushes past him with screeching tires.
"Crazy son of a…"
He notices the guns.
Aimed at G, who's smiling at some girl across the street without a care in the world.
Shit.
Even as Sam rushes out of his car, screaming "G!" at the top of his lungs he knows he won't make it.
That this time, he spotted the weapons that important, life-saving second too late.
Shots ring through the air and G is falling.
"God no. No, no, no, no!" is all he can think.
Everything seems to be happening in slow motion, sound suddenly strangely absent, his mind fixed solely on G's body hitting the ground.
The tires are screeching again, the spell is broken, and he aims his gun at the retreating back of the van. Of course he misses.
Sam is kneeling beside G the next second.
"Come on, G. Come on, G. Stay with me." He's saying while fishing for his cell phone.
His partner's chest is riddled with bullet holes, five if he counted right. He's hoping he didn't.
G's eyes are closed, his breathing labored.
As Sam is shifting his friend into his lab his eyelids flutter for a moment and blue eyes find his gaze.
"Stay with me G." He's hugging him now, unable to stop himself this once. If these are his final moments with his best friend – God no, he still has to-
Then G's face is contorting in pain, and his eyes close for what Sam fears will be the last time. He calls for an ambulance.
"Don't do this to me, come on!" Sam never begs, ever.
"Yeah, I need an ambulance. Ocean Front Road, Venice."
His best friend is limp in his arms, and he's panicking because G can't be dying-
"Stay with me. Stay with me. Come on, buddy."
-this is a bad dream and he'll wake up any second now, and at work he'll see his partner and he'll hug him so tight it'll hurt to breathe and G will laugh at him and call him names but he won't care because this dream is scaring the hell out of him and-
G isn't breathing anymore.
Sirens are wailing in the distance.
In front of him, Spencer Reid is bleeding out in the arms of a desperate Derek Morgan.