Maybe This Time
Chapter 1: Too Many Things Left Unsaid
Author's Note: This is third part of my story arch and takes place close to two years after the events of Stepping into the Unknown. It will follow the case-line of Season 8 but might branch away in the future.
I do not own Criminal Minds or Dr. Spencer Reid. I do own Michelle, though.
He stands in line at the market, his head filled with the horrors of the Silencer case; he wishes the line would hurry up, all he wants to do is just to get home, shower and climb in bed with a good book and the ice cream he's purchasing. He stands behind a short redhead who already has her items on the belt.
The cashier tells her the price and she turns toward the debit machine to swipe her card, his heart drops and the ice cream pint falls out of his hand and hits the belt with a loud thud.
"Mim-Michelle?" He catches himself before calling her by her nickname. Her hand stops mid-hair as she reaches for her bag, she turns toward him. His body is numb, frozen in place, they haven't seen each other since that fateful morning, almost two years ago. He stares at her, taking in her new appearance; she changed her glasses, they're now black cat eyes instead of her rectangular purple ones, she's dressed in more mature clothes than she used to as well. He can see the little bit of the scars left by Tara Allen, down on her forehead and it makes his heart sink even deeper.
"Hi, Reid." She says this very matter-of-factly, but to hear her call him by his last name feels just like a stab in the heart.
"Sir, it's gonna be $5.78. Sir?"
He turns his attention to the cashier for a moment, getting out his wallet to pay, when he sees her heading toward the door. He gets out a $10, drops it on the counter, grabs his bag and run after her.
"Michelle! Michelle please." She stops and he takes a second to catch his breath, he's not too sure what he's doing, but it feels like the right thing to do. "Can we talk? Please?"
"I don't think we have anything to talk about, you and I." Her voice is blank, but her words cut him like a knife, she's got every reason in the world not to want to talk to him, and after all he's put her through in their last few months together. She sighs, looking up into his pleading eyes. "I'll be at Mile's in an hour."
She doesn't wait for an answer and just walks away; his eyes follow her for a moment before she gets lost in the crowd. He won't be getting the relaxing evening he was hoping for, but maybe, at least, he'll be able to say all he's wanted to say for a very long time.
He walks in at a quarter to 7, she sits at the counter, twirling her straw around in her vanilla milkshake. He thinks about leaving for a second, he's not sure if reopening that wound is a good idea for anyone, but he gathers his courage and takes the stool next to her.
"Hi."
"Why did you wanna talk?"
She doesn't look at him, she stares at her hand as she keeps opening and closing it nervously; she's uncomfortable and she makes no effort to hide it, probably because she knows he would see right through it.
"I-I don't know," he admits truthfully. "I just couldn't let you disappear again without even trying to stop you."
He presses his index just above his right eye, despite him being officially okay according to the doctors, the headaches still sneak up on him from time to time, especially when he gets stressed and the fluorescent light of the diner makes it worst.
"You're still having headaches?" She's looking at him for the first time, she's trying to keep her face devoid of emotion, but her eyes and voice betray her and he can both see and hear her concern.
"Actually, I've been talking to a geneticist who found a regimen that seems to be working well, now I just get them when I get nervous," he admits but leaves out the part about them also happening when he feels overly emotional. He gives her a small smile as he adds that otherwise, he's supposedly at 100% both physically and mentally.
"You should put your sunglasses on." Her voice is flat again, he says he'll be fine. Despite the pain, he would much rather have her be able to see the honesty in his eyes as he speaks.
"I know I have no right to ask this, but I'd really like to just have a normal conversation with you. You have every right to hate me, I..."
"I don't hate you Reid." She passes her fingers through her hair, fiddles with the scars on scalp. He remember how angry it made him when the doctor said she was lucky to have thick hair, that it would hide them despite the fact the hair will never grow back; how can you say someone is lucky when they had an UnSub carves letters in their scalp is beyond him. He realizes how much she changed since he last saw her, back then she could barely even touch them without shedding a tear. She sighs before continuing: "I was really angry and disappointed with you for a long time, and I moved on, but I never hated you."
They both stare at their food; they can't seem to bring themselves to eat. He looks at her, she looks so different, yet her presence as the same soothing effect on him as it did when they were together. He knows it's selfish, but hearing her say that she moved on, kills him inside. For years, he thought that he would spend the rest of his life with her and now, he feels like he's losing her all over again, all he wants to do is reach over and take her hand; he wishes everything could be all right again.
"Wanna hear something ridiculously pathetic?" She says that with a joyless chuckle, her eyes locked on his, he had forgotten how strong her gaze can be. "Despite everything, my heart still sank every time I heard you guys were out on a case and I still couldn't sleep until I knew you were all safe just like when we were together. But, I guess, you already knew that right?"
"What? How could I have known that?"
She stares at him for a moment, her expression reflecting the confusion as he feels.
"Penelope didn't tell you?" His expression seems answer enough, she just continues without him replying. "Huh... That 'face cards' robbery with the big explosion two months ago... I saw it online as it was happening, I saw Morgan and J.J. and Emily, which I have to say was very much of a surprise, since I read about her death in the papers... but the thing is, I saw the explosion, I saw them, and I didn't see you and..." Her voice trails off for a moment; she fidgets with her napkin, looking at everything except him, her face reddening. "And, I couldn't bring myself to call you, you know... but, I had to know if you were okay. So, I called Garcia, long distance, all the way from Grasse and when she picked up, I begged her not to tell you, but that I needed to know if you were alive."
Her breathing is staccato at best, she's looking away from him, but he can see her eyes filling up with tears. He can hardly believe Garcia was able to withhold that information, what else has she kept from him since Michelle moved out of their apartment?
"How many times did you talk to her after... you know..."
"That was the only time, I promise." He frowns at her choice of words, adding that he was surprised she didn't keep in contact with the team, they were her friends too. "Yeah... but they're your family and when you leave someone you can't stay friends with their friends; that was one of the worst part of it, you know. With that one decision, I lost pretty much everything I held dear; my home which was also my place of work, half of my friends and you. In 24 hours, I went from living with the man I loved, being able to do what I love the most to being homeless and alone. But, I just... I just couldn't take it anymore..."
"I acted that way to protect you." He's been repeating that phrase in his head like a mantra for almost two years and now that he says it out loud it just sounds fake and rehearsed, like a bad excuse. But it's true, he adds that she had no idea what she might be in for if his headaches had been a precursor sign of schizophrenia, that he just couldn't let her life be destroyed.
"I didn't want to be protected, Reid. And no, I don't know what it would have been like, but in that moment it just felt like you didn't believe me when I said that all I wanted was to be with you, regardless of what came our way."
Her words bring back something similar she said years ago, something that changed his own feelings toward her from infatuation to love.
"'Neither of us has to face the world alone anymore.'" He utters the words without even realizing it; she nods, her throat tight, her voice straining.
"I loved you with all my being, Spencer. I wanted to spend my life with you... I thought you were the love of my life!" She sniffs and swallows with difficulty before continuing. "Heck, I was going to ask you to marry me at your 30th birthday party if you hadn't popped the question by then!"
Hearing her say his name fills his stomach with butterflies, he didn't even know that it was possible to get those a second time with the same person. It takes a moment for his brain to process the rest of the information though, and when it does, all he can answer is: "Really?"
She nods as she removes her glasses to try and dry her eyes with the palm of her hand; she smiles at him through her tears and lets out a little choked laugh.
"You'd think that, as a profiler, you'd have seen the signs!"
He smiles too, shaking his head and reminds her that she always distracted him too much for him to be able to concentrate on anything but her while they were together. She turns her head away and he knows she's blushing, some of her hair falls in her face and he instinctively reaches out and pushes it back. After the fact, he realizes what he's done and pulls his hand away quickly; he mumbles an apology as he stares at the cold french fries on his plate. She shrugs and says old habits die hard, the sad smile back on her face and he would give everything to take away all of the pain he's caused her.
He mentions that he likes the red hair on her; she says that she just decided to give it a try one morning and walked into the first hairdresser she could find and just went ginger.
"I figured after shaving my head, there weren't many barriers left for me to break."
He was about to drink from his water, but stops dead in his track, he asks if she did just say she shaved her head. She nods and says that she went bald for a month, she needed to learn to live with her scars and now, she feels comfortable enough with them, and she hasn't had any nightmares about the incident that caused them in nearly six months. He tells her he's very happy for her, that he knows how horrible nightmares can be. She then asks when he decided to grow his out again.
"I didn't really, I just kinda stopped going to the barber." He gives her that silly straight line smile with his raised eyebrows that she used to call his 'Frog Face' and he's glad to see it still makes her smile.
"You said earlier, you called Garcia from Grasse?"
She explains that after she moved out, she stayed with her friend Allison for a while and she realized that she couldn't really stay in D.C.; too many memories and with Tara's release she didn't feel safe in the district anymore. She had already placed the vast majority of everything she owned in a storage locker, so she went home to Canada for a while. After that, with some help from her father, she flew to France and enrolled in a 1 year beginner program at a perfumer school.
"It's been even better than I imagined it would be, and it's been great for business too." As she always did when they were together, she lights up as she talks about her company and all that she's creating. He makes a mental note to check her website when he gets home. "I'm actually only here to retrieve my things from storage so I can have them shipped to my place over there."
He lies and says he's very happy for her and wishes her all the best, despite the fact that all he wants to do is beg her to stay and to tell her that he knows now that he isn't going to lose it and ruin her life... that maybe they could give it another try... that he still loves her.