Disclaimer: Sadly they are not mine. If Spencer Reid were mine I'd torture him more….does that make me a sadist?
J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.
The knock on her door was unexpected; she opened it, surprised to see Reid standing there with his hands in his pockets. He was still in his work clothes, with his bag hung over his shoulder.
"Reid?"
"Hi, J.J." He shifted, looking extremely uncomfortable, "I need your help."
Months later
SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID
Spencer paced, all too aware that J.J. was watching him. To her credit she wasn't obvious about it, sitting at the small desk across the room with her eyes down on the pages of a case file every time he turned towards her; but he could feel her gaze on him whenever he turned away.
"What time is it?" He asked; his voice was slightly unsteady. He cleared his throat and winced as he caught the sympathetic look that crossed her face. His head ached; the beginning of what would probably end up as a severe migraine.
"4:43." She said and turned back to her papers.
4:43, nearly a half an hour left to wait. His fingers trembled as he slid them through his hair and his teeth gnawed at his bottom lip. He continued pacing, his bare feet making no sound on the carpet of the hotel room. In his head he recited Darkness by Lord Byron; he hadn't read it since he'd lent his poetry book to his college roommate and had never gotten it back but he still had most of it memorized word for word.
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.
His lips moved along with the words, his voice soft enough that he didn't even realize that he was speaking aloud. His eyes were far away, staring into a darkness that only he could see.
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
The ache in his head throbbed and he pressed his palms against his temples, his fingers digging painfully into his scalp as he continued to force himself to recite it. Nauseousness welled up and he was immensely glad that he'd skipped dinner earlier that night despite the hunger he had felt.
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.J.
"The brows of men by the despairing light wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits the flashes fell upon them; some lay down and hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; and others hurried to and fro, and fed their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up with mad disquietude on the dull sky,"
She set the file aside and gave up trying not to stare at him; at the way he repeatedly dragged his nails across his forearms, the way he viciously gripped and pulled at his hair, and the way his lips moved as he spoke.
"The pall of a past world; and then again with curses cast them down upon the dust, and gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd and, terrified, did flutter on the ground, and flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd and twin'd themselves among the multitude, hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food."
The poem seemed familiar but she couldn't place where she'd heard it before. It didn't matter really, what mattered was that her coworker, her friend, was hurting and all she could do was watch in silence. Why had he asked her for help? She wondered. Out of all their teammates why had he asked her? She understood why he hadn't asked Hotch. But why not Morgan? Why not Gideon? She'd always thought that they were close. Instead it had been her that Read had turned to; he had asked her to help him wean himself off the drugs that Hankle had gotten him hooked on.
"And War, which for a moment was no more, did glut himself again: a meal was bought with blood, and each sate sullenly apart gorging himself in gloom. No love was left; all earth was but one thought--and that was death immediate and inglorious; and the pang of famine fed upon all entrails. men died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh."
He was talking faster now, the words mixing and mashing together. He stopped pacing, but didn't stop moving. He rocked back and forth, his arms wrapped tightly around his torso and his eyes unfocused.
"Reid stop."
" the meagre by the meagre were devour'd, even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, and he was faithful to a corse, and kept the birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead lur'd their lank jaws"
"Reid!"
He fell silent and stared wildly at her, still rocking. "Is it time yet?" he asked, his voice broken and faint. Helplessly she shook her head, feeling tears prick at her eyes as he moaned and sharply turned away from her, his hands clenching at his hair.
"Himself sought out no food, but with a piteous and perpetual moan, and a quick desolate cry, licking the hand which answer'd not with a caress. he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two of an enormous city did survive, and they were enemies: they met beside the dying embers of an altar-place where had been heap'd a mass of holy things for an unholy usage; they rak'd up, and shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands the feeble ashes, and their feeble breath blew for a little life, and made a flame which was a mockery; then they lifted up their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died."
SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID. SPENCERREID
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
His heart beat was loud in his ears, pounding like a drum against his skull. J.J. was on her feet and moving towards him.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge-
She caught his wrists and pulled his hands away from his head, making him realize that he'd been pulling it out by the roots again. He mumbled the last of the poem through clenched teeth.
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.
Then he stopped and gazed at her, his hands trembled where they were trapped in hers.
"It's usually not this bad." She said, her expression indicating that she wanted an explanation no matter how he felt about it.
"I've been taking a lower dosage." He whispered. He had numbers on his tongue, statistics on how many people such methods were successful for, but he bit them back when he saw her expression. He averted his eyes from the disapproval.
"You're not supposed to do that without consulting me first, that's what we agreed on." She said.
He pulled his hands out of hers and watched them quake, "I know, I just…I wanted to prove that I could handle it. I'm sorry."
"It's okay Reid, you don't have to apologize…"
"Yes I do." He interrupted, "I asked for your help, I…I should have told you." He closed his eyes and his entire body shuddered. "Is it time yet?" He resisted the urge to follow her gaze to her watch.
"Yes." She said and went back to the desk to grab her handbag.
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He took the pills from her with disturbing eagerness. He no longer took the dilaudid intravenously, hadn't since he'd run out of the vials that he'd stolen from Hankle's corpse. The pills took hold slower than the syringe, it would be nearly thirty minutes before they started seriously easing the withdrawal pain. Nevertheless there was a clear relief in Spencer after he downed the pills. He stopped pacing and lay down, stretching out on the floor of her hotel room. He wouldn't sleep, he never did, but he became so still that he seemed to have stopped breathing.
"Thank you." He said quietly.
J.J. nodded and after placing the bottle of pills back into her bag turned back to the pictures of the murdered women on the desk in front of her. Reid had made a lot of progress with his addiction, lasting nearly 24 hours between doses. The withdrawal he willingly forced himself through was hell on the both of them, but with her help he would quit for good, someday.