TITLE: Numbers
RATING: FRT
CHARACTER: J. Jareau / S. Reid
PROMPT: 2 AM
SUMMARY: When he calls you at 2 AM and says that the urge is keeping him awake...
WARNINGS: SPOILERS for 2.15 - Revelations and beyond, probably. Mentions of drug abuse.
NOTES: I know the storyline has been done to death, folded up and then put through a shredder and then done again. But I really wanted to see if I could do something telling JJ's side of things. It's really just a mindless drabble, but I hope you like it anyway.
Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say is what counts.
- Margaret Lee Runbeck
It's because he calls you at 2 in the morning, rousing you from some rarely decent sleep. It's because he knows damn well that you'll be exhausted, but you still spring into action the second you hear your phone arrogantly chirping Beethoven's Fifth from your bedside table. It's because of the way he says the temptation is back, how his voice sounds like water swirling down a drain when he tells you that it brought friends this time. He'll quickly tell you the statistics on a junkie relapsing - relapse rates for addictive diseases are in the range of 50% to 90%, who knew? - then you hear his voice go cold when he says, "The numbers aren't in my favor tonight, Jen."
You love it when he calls you Jen. No one else does, and he'll usually only whisper it when there's nobody else around, when it's just the two of you, when he calls at 2 a.m. and tells you that an urge is keeping him awake, he's in too deep now, it's alive in his skin, please help. You always go to him, especially when he calls you Jen and you can almost taste the beads of sweat forming on his brow. You owe it to him.
You know that's the reason why you'll drag yourself out of bed at some godawful hour just to make sure the addiction hasn't swallowed him whole. It's the reason your stomach drops when you see his name on the Caller ID and you have to seal your eyes, hoping that maybe, just maybe...
And then you hear his pitiful voice, like shards of broken glass, and you already know. You can practically hear his eyebrow twitching over the phone, anxiously awaiting your sympathetic smile and calm words of wisdom.
"10 minutes," you say before slamming your cell phone shut and chaotically scrambling into a pair of jeans and an old band t-shirt from your college days; it was the Pearl Jam Yield tour, and there's no doubt in your mind that Spencer's never even heard of them. But you find it hard to care as you fumble on your nightstand for your keys. You hear them jingle beneath your fingers in the dark room and you swiftly grasp them into your palm.
You only pray it's not too late as you switch off the lights and lock your front door behind you. You can feel the desolate spirit of Spencer Reid violating your soul once again as you rush blindly to the elevator, smashing the Down button impatiently beneath your sweaty fingertips.
THE END