For my sister, cause she's right; we need more Criminal Minds fanfiction!
Disclaimer: I don't own Criminal Minds or the character of Reid. This story is for entertainment only, no profit is being made.
Rating: PG-13
Oneshot
It was torturing him. Every day, every night, and every morning, it was with him. Not the shed where he had been held captive; that place of horror was only vivid at night in his dreams. His memories of that time and place could be locked away and ignored, at least for awhile. It was so long ago…no, just days, no, he frowned and took a deep breath. It had been two weeks and four days since he had been rescued.
The morning sun fought against dark blinds in an attempt to fill the room with light. But it was not the sun's dim rays or the blaring alarm clock that had woken Spencer Reid from sleep. He had lain awake in bed, staring at the desk by his door counting the hours and minutes until the alarm would ring, before finally unable to deny the fact that night had ended.
It was sitting there, waiting for him. No, he told himself, inanimate objects could not wait for people. They had no power to torment or punish. Only human beings had that power.
But if that was so, why couldn't he stop himself from leaving the bed to cross the room and pick up the needle?
"Shouldn't have left it here, must have forgotten to put it back in the medicine cabinet last night…" He stopped himself. He couldn't afford to keep muttering under his breath like that; it was only a matter of time before one of the others noticed. The others; the others were his friends, his teammates; not his enemies, he told himself firmly. Picturing their faces in his mind he cringed and grasped the needle harder before finding his way to the bathroom.
"It's not my fault, it's not…" He didn't realize he was muttering again until he was sitting on the closed toilet seat with the small glass bottle in his hand. Why couldn't he get their faces out his mind? It wasn't the drug that tortured him, every second of every day; it was the guilt.
How could he deal with the disappointment on their faces if he told them the truth? What words of comfort could Gideon possibly give him if he learned that Reid was not as strong as he thought?
Even as he watched himself place the needle to his arm his thoughts wandered. How could he have let himself become this? Surely this could not go on forever, someday someone would find out, or Reid would slip up at work and get fired… or he would wind up dead. But he wasn't going to think about that now; just one more shot, he'd deal with everything later, for now he just had to drift away, not think about it for awhile, just one more shot…
A/N: I know next to nothing about drugs, especially "delaudid" although I have been doing a little research just for fun. This story isn't meant to be a prediction of what will happen on the show; it was just a thought that popped into my head. Thanks for reading! -Luna Sealeaf