AN: Here we go! The sequel to Endling is here!
Thank you, as always, for my amazing beta's help and support. Without her, I probably would have panicked for another couple of months about my inability to write this 3
Tagged for explicit sexual content, extremely adult themes, and psychological trauma.
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Full summary:
Adjective
darkling
(literary) Growing dark or characterized by darkness.
Spencer Reid is the son of a human and the last incubus. He knows all the terms that describe him. Demon. Half-breed. Cambion.
Darkling.
He's never let himself be tortured by the dark. He knows that—despite his parentage, despite his magic, despite his species—he's human. He's spent his life proving that.
But then came Foyet. After him, Reid can't be sure of who he is anymore, or where his loyalties lie. It's the path his father walked. It's the path that destroyed him. Luckily, Reid has what his father never did.
He has family to guide him.
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"This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do."
Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
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Chapter One: Olfactory memory
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He never forgot the scent of moss.
Peering over Emily's shoulder, he watched as she picked disinterestedly at the thick green carpet of sheet moss on the forest floor, ignoring the niggling discomfort that the rich earthy scent raised. "Do you know," he said finally, and watched the barest flicker of her eyelashes on the profile of her face indicate that she was rolling her eyes. He continued anyway, because if he didn't she'd start paying proper attention to him, and he was mere inches away from worry and she was far too good at reading him. "That moss is one of the few plant species that can survive extreme desiccation. They can actually come back from a state of extreme dryness, often one of the first species to return after long periods of drought."
"Interesting," Emily mumbled, sounding anything but. He swallowed and coughed as the dryness in his throat grew exponentially, choking him. Inhaling sharply to stop from spluttering, right as Emily stood with a slab of moss cupped in her hands, the stink of it bit into his nose and throat, and he knew she saw him recoil. "Spence?"
Moss was one of the few species that could recover from extreme desiccation, a state that would kill almost any other plant.
But the structural damage it caused was permanent. It was never quite the same after.
"You two done faffing about in the woods like fairies?" he heard Rossi call, the man edgy. They needed to leave. Emily and Rossi both needed to leave. A case. They were working a case, asked his help with identifying the moss found on the body. He was helping.
He was panicking.
"Scent is linked strongly with the retention of memories, especially those linked to the arousal system – threats," he murmured, and stared at the moss. It wasn't even the same type, not even close.
There was a tug at his mental shields and he pushed away the revulsion it always brought, even two years after, and let her in.
"Calm down," she soothed, and wrapped around him like a blanket, enveloping him in her. She was a strange mix of prickly and smooth: pleasant to curl into unless his edges caught against her and dragged, like nails down silk. He wondered if she knew how much of her was flavoured by her cat, her mind's voice almost a purr. "I told Hotch you weren't ready to consult. There's no shame in this."
"There's only shame in this," he snapped back, and felt the snap-crack of her temper flaring, quickly damped down in an attempt to hide it from him. A failed attempt. Ever since that day, hiding things from each other had proven… problematic.
"Reid," Rossi said, and Reid jerked his head around to stare at the mage, knowing his eyes were wide and worried, mouth downturned, but having no idea how to fix it. "I'll drop you home. Prentiss, take that—"
Feeling the hardened wood of his cane grip slip in fingers suddenly slick with sweat, Reid shook his head. "I'll find my own way home, you need to go," he croaked, and Emily flinched at the ache in his voice.
With a quick twist of the air around him, he flared his wings and took off, blurring himself from their view.
Even through the sudden cold-metal scent of a storm pressing in on him, he could still smell the moss.
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He went to the library and spent a quiet afternoon losing everything that haunted him in the turn of the pages and musty scent of leather and dust. It was an entirely pleasant time after the haunting misery of memories faded, although his wings earned him a couple of wry glances from overprotective librarians and one corvid formed familiar who watched him as carefully as though he recognised him.
It had only been two years. It was entirely possible that he did recognise him. Reid turned his back on the bird, folded his wings tightly so the scarring didn't show, and buried his nose in his pile of books. After the past year of spreading his time between training and lecturing, this was his second run-through of this particular library.
Life was… resolutely empty without the BAU to divert him. It was proving difficult to adapt.
The flight home was bitterly cold, and his breath rasped as he landed on the frost-slick fire escape and hesitated, cane tapping on the metal grate and steaming slightly from the heat of his body after the overexertion of flying. He could go through his own window, into his echoing apartment and the nightmares that had yet to fade. Or...
He turned his gaze to Emily's. It was dark behind the thick curtain. She must be asleep. Slipping through his own window, he put the temptation behind him. Tomorrow was soon enough to pester her about the case, to put aside his nagging curiosity. Although he doubted she'd humour his questions, not after his… moment… in the woods today.
The apartment was the quiet kind of loud around him. The walls were settling into the cold night, a pipe somewhere above clanking. Reid leaned his cane against the wall and paced, ignoring the limp, trying to regain the easy sloping stride he'd possessed before the bullet had torn through his knee and left the bone and muscle a fragile mess of tentative spellwork. It worked for a short time, a bare instant, before the pain came back and he gritted his teeth through it.
He kept pacing. If he worked it enough, stretching the scarring and the muscle and allowing it to reheal minutely every time… maybe, just maybe, he could… become more like what he had been.
So he kept pacing until the burn reached his lungs and he was sweating again, the joint screaming.
She didn't knock. She rarely did these days. They both had keys, and his spellwork knew her and savoured her entry into its domain. The walls around him whistled their pleasure silently, and he turned to her as she halted in the darkness of his living room.
"Why are you walking around in the dark?" she asked, and he knew the half-wry smile she'd be wearing despite the gloom. He narrowed his eyes, sensing what she was about to do moments before she did it. The lights flared on. "Goddamn it, Spencer. You're going to fuck it up again."
"Doubtful," he replied coolly, looking down and examining the way his leg had settled into a wonky kind of list as soon as he'd turned his attention to her. Damn. "I'm fully aware of my limitations, Emily."
"Yes," she said dryly, and he stopped squinting and tried to look at her without blinking too rapidly in the light. He failed. It wouldn't stop him trying though – despite the pain, the resounding failure of today as a whole, and his own guilt… despite that all, she still managed to bring a smile to his mouth, the expression fighting the exhaustion he knew was dragging his mouth downwards and painting dark shadows under his eyes. "Come on. Come to bed. It's cold tonight and Sergio's stolen my hot water bottle. I need a heater."
By 'heater', she meant 'boyfriend'. Emily was perpetually cold, with hands and feet that chilled at the slightest hint of winter, and she fought this by piling her bed high with blankets despite Reid's insistence that beyond five, all she was really doing was causing a suffocation hazard. Reid combated this by being available as her 'heater'. It was really a win-win.
If she saw the increase in his limp when he nodded and followed her out of his apartment, she didn't comment on it.
He was thankful for that.
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He woke in the middle of the night with her in his arms, her mouth against his neck and leaving a damp patch of skin from the warmth of her breathing. Fast asleep.
Even now, even after two years free of Foyet and one of those years spent without her… even now, he never took this for granted. Never.
"I love you," he murmured into her dark hair, and pressed his mouth to her. When he inhaled, he could taste everything that made her her, and then some. Her hair products. The oils from her scalp. The barest trace of gunpowder from her hands that at some point she'd run through her hair, and failed to wash away before coming home. He tasted it all and loved it equally.
His hip burned with the reminder of her and he closed his eyes and savoured everything this moment was, locking it away in his mind with his eidetic recall for times when he struggled to remember what coming back had been for.
The bed dipped slightly and green-glowing eyes peered over Emily's shoulder at him. Mnah, complained Sergio, his white teeth glinting in the weak light from Emily's digital alarm clock. Reid shifted the arm that Emily wasn't asleep on and crooked his finger for the cat to bump his nose against. Mnah, he said again, with emphasis, and Reid missed his voice fiercely.
Sergio turned two times and disappeared. Reid could hear the soft srk srk srk of claws kneading the bed before feeling the press of warm fur against his hand and Emily's back. They weren't the only cold ones in the house.
Reid smiled, lowered his arm back around his sleeping girlfriend, and trailed a finger down the cat's spine.
Purring lulled him back to sleep.
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"How is your job going?" The therapist smiled brightly, the expression reaching her eyes and lighting up her face. Reid smiled back, only half as cheerily. She was decent. Of course she was, the Bureau had recommended her, and they had the best. She actually cared about him.
That didn't make opening up to her any easier.
"Fine, of course," he lied. Then he added to the lie with details – not enough to make her suspicious, but not so few she would think he was deflecting. I am content with my life, the lies said. I am content with my work.
"Very good, Spencer," she said. Light caught her name badge, the one he always wondered why she wore since it hardly added to her 'I am here for you and you alone' persona that she cultivated, and turned the Katie into Kat. Sergio would like her, Reid suspected. She had the kind of hands that looked at home petting a cat. "You're doing wonderfully. Much better than I expected. With trauma such as yours, recovery can be slow. That's absolutely fine – slow doesn't always mean bad, you know this. But it's always gratifying to see clients regaining their lives so swiftly."
Reid nodded, and made a few choice comments agreeing with her. Statistics have shown… trauma can result in… you must realize that I'm saying all this so those nice little reports you send to Strauss that I know end up in both Hotch and Rossi's inboxes say that I'm recovering.
Okay, so he didn't say the last bit.
"Your relationship with Emily is going well?" Genuine curiosity now, beyond just her work. Emily had accompanied him on several sessions, by Katie's recommendation. The two women actually… seemed to like each other. Reid suspected they did anyway. Emily smiled and chattered like she liked Katie, and he didn't know Katie well enough to pick up on her tells. But they seemed friendly enough.
Friendly enough that when Katie asked about Emily, Reid never lied.
"Really well," he said, and smiled probably properly for the first time that session. Dangerous. If she knew the difference, she could profile him. But, more likely, she'd just put it down to him being 'lovesick'. "She's…"
"Supportive?" Katie prompted, when he trailed off trying to find a single word that encompassed his rune mage and everything she gave him. "Compassionate? Encouraging? Doting?" A quick, light laugh, and she winked. "Dazzling?"
Now he laughed too, and the sound was almost foreign to him. If it wasn't for the fact that he was relying on fooling her, he'd be recommending she bring this kind of flippancy to the beginning of their sessions. She'd have a lot more luck assessing him accurately with his guard down. "Is there an 'all of the above' option?" he murmured, watching her smile waver very slightly as she met his eyes.
He looked away quickly, swallowing back his unease along with the slow roll of power that he'd let slip without noticing.
For a moment, he'd forgotten what he was. What lurked behind his eyes. Foyet, still. Hankel, shades of. His own legacy, both from his bloodline and the scars his actions had left on him. With that single, uneasy flicker of her facial expressions as he'd let his control slip for just a second, she'd reminded him.
"Spencer," she said, and he looked at the clock. One minute to go. "It's okay to not be okay. You do know that, right?"
Back to lying.
"Of course."
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"How are you really?"
Reid sighed and bounced his good knee, Henry kicking his chubby legs and giggling. He was getting heavy, and wriggly. Reid knew he'd only allow himself to be held for a short time until he protested and fought to be free to play with the assortment of toys strewn across JJ's living room floor. "JJ, I already had therapy today. Do I need to relive it with everyone I see?"
JJ popped her head through the door, brow furrowed. "Spence, if you think I believe for an instant you didn't lie your pretty little mouth off in there, you're more messed up than I thought," she scolded. "How are—Henry don't bite that—you, really?"
Reid tugged his cane out of Henry's curious mouth and distracted the toddler from squalling with a quick tug of his nose followed by a whirl of wind that he pulled from outside. He brought with it the scent of a melting snow and the fading winter, two fragrances that the little winter/water-affined (Reid couldn't tell which quite yet, but he suspected Will might win this one) elf baby locked onto with a fierce kind of attention, patting at the tame whorl of air on Reid's thickly scarred palm. Reid stared at the burn that obscured where his FBI credentials had used to sit and fought the temptation to close his hand to hide it. "Coping," he said finally.
One side of JJ's mouth bent crookedly and Reid couldn't tell if it was fighting to move up or down. "Maybe you should take up a hobby," she suggested, and bizarrely, Reid thought of the moss. "You know, like what normal people have. Knitting, or something."
Henry tried to lick the wind and shrieked as it chilled his mouth. Reid eased him down, watching him thoughtfully, JJ's words playing in his mind.
Maybe.
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Finding himself thankful, once again, for Emily's presence in his life, his car had started that morning with only minimal coaxing instead of the steady hour it usually took. It wasn't that Reid was neglectful… it was basically that Reid was neglectful.
He'd never been handy with mechanics. Fortunately, Emily was. Somehow. She'd never actually explained how she'd gained her proficiency, just sighed, scolded him, and then given him a list of things she needed.
Reid had watched her work on it, eyeing the careless smears of oil she'd left across her hips when she'd brushed her hands across her pants, and considered that maybe he should neglect his Austin more often. There was something entirely appealing about the capability of Emily covered in grease and swearing in a rich variety of languages when tools slipped out of her hands.
He'd showed her just how appealing eventually, coming up behind her and pulling her against his body as he'd brushed his lips against her neck. Fortunately for him, she'd immediately gotten the not-so-subtle hint of his appreciation pressed against the back of her thigh. Unfortunately for the car, that had spelt the end of its pampering for the evening.
He had been thorough in his appreciation, as she deserved.
It wasn't such a problem. He rarely drove, preferring to fly. Except, of course, for days like today when he was on a mission.
Tracking down what he wanted was surprisingly difficult. He'd managed it eventually, of course, and was only just placing the finishing touches on his new 'hobby' when the door opened and Emily walked in. He glanced at her before turning back to his task. Hair tied back tightly, coat on, gun on hip. Straight from work.
"Sergio says you've gone mad," she said cheerily, blowing on her fingers as she peeled gloves from her hands, and then she went very, very quiet. His ears burned. He waited for whatever was coming. Worry… or anger. It could be either. "Spence."
When he turned, she was leaning over the marshy terrarium containing Polytrichum commune. "Common haircap moss," he supplied, before using his cane to jab at the rocks clustered to one side. "Silene acaulis. Technically not a moss. And over here, Ceratodon purpureus…"
Emily stared at him. "You've filled your house with moss." Incredulous. Worry, yes. She hadn't quite decided if she was mad or not. Reid considered poking into her emotions, then decided that may cause more problems than it would solve.
Technically, the physical moss was an afterthought. Twelve different species of moss and moss-like plants so far, and the scent of each was subtly different and each set off a chain-reaction of shakes in his hands and cool sweat down the back of his neck. Exposure therapy. He could break himself of his aversion by surrounding himself with the olfactory memory that he was having the response to.
He couldn't tell Emily that.
"Yes, obvious," he said instead. "You know, moss has many uses, including…" He trailed off again, because her emotions had solidified into worry and a slight suggestion of wry amusement. Boyfriend is being eccentric again, he could practically hear her thinking. His hip itched and he felt his hand twitch towards it, the cane catching on the carpet and rasping.
"Come over for dinner, weirdo?" she asked, turning back to the door to hide her smile.
Tempting. He shouldn't though. It might invalidate his data to immediately seek distractions from the moss exposure.
Self-control wasn't his strength these days.
"Okay," he said, and tried not to move too quickly towards the door in case she noticed how eager he was to be away.
He wasn't entirely sure he managed.