There is a fine line between delirium and dying, neither are particularly pleasant.

Reid startled to consciousness on the floor, he could have sworn before he was sitting somewhere. His body shivered despite being coated with sweat, the overall sense of nausea hit him hard and he'd have sworn up and down the bricks that made up the walls that confined him were moving, almost identically to a lava lamp.

He rolled from his back to his side and vomited. He didn't think he'd be able to physically get up to drag himself to the hole stationed at the corner of one of the dynamic walls. After what must have been an eternity, he let out a raspy cry, "…Hello…? Is anyone there…? I… I really need some help!"

He clenched his eyes shut. He wasn't lying, by the way his stomach felt warm to the touch he suspected the cause. A small gash no more than two inches long but deep adorned his taut midriff. At first it had been very painful, however long ago that was by now, but now? Now it just felt hot. Hot and wet. Sallowed eyes with purplish bags beneath were the most color on his face, despite a soft pink blush that crept across his cheeks. Then again, with as dim the light was, it would be hard to notice. He panted out once more, "Hello!"

"Reid!" It was a hushed tone, which concerned him because he was certain the owner of that voice had never used a hushed tone in his entire life. He supposed he might be slightly inaccurate with that description. "Reid, can you hear me?"

Reid turned his head to follow the sound, he knew the voice to be that of his boss and lover Hotch, but as he was unable to see the body, he felt concerned. Instead he saw a small drain.

"Reid you have to stay quiet or else he'll come back."

He closed his eyes, winced them shut then reopened them to focus on the drain. Inside it, he could see Hotch, but as the small drain was only three inches in diameter at best, he knew it couldn't really be his lover… even if it did sound like him. Reid belly-crawled closer to the drain to inspect it, as he reached the drain he could see simultaneously the drop of pipe and the shrunken face of his lover as it perfectly filled the dimension.

"…Oh this is not good…" Reid muttered to himself and debatably to his hallucination.

"Definitely true, Reid you have to irrigate your wound, it's getting infected."

Reid blinked at his hallucination of his boss, his absolutely correct boss, which unnerved him. Reid was usually the one with those sorts of answers, not the others on his team.

"I don't have any way to…"

"Sure you do, you just have to make it rain."

Reid closed his eyes and shook his head, even for non-sense that was fairly random. He expected his hallucinations in fits of delirium to at least try to be more helpful. He rolled back onto his back, it would probably be best to ignore that hallucination for now, anyway. Or so he thought, until he saw the sprinkler over-head. His eyes went wide.

How long had he been in the room? His mind clearly fed these small details to his subconscious which was driving his delusions to have more accurate information than they should have… he wished he could think, but everything was just too damned sore, hot, or heavy to let him. And yet, for things to feel so warm he felt like he was freezing.

With a touch to his wound to feel out it's edges, his body let out an involuntary scream. He panted a few moments to re-collect himself. He really wished he remembered how the hell he got into this situation, but before that, he had to make it rain, didn't he? Reid took off his belt which proved to be a challenge of drunken hand motions before he could even pull at the clasp. He knew the next part of this would be the worst part, the part where he stood up again.

"I haven't stood up in 29 hours…" He mentioned to no one, vaguely he realized that he was correct, but he had no idea why. With several very loud pops and cracks, he stood up, almost immediately, he fell half-into a nearby wall, he caught his nose and was rewarded with a gush of red.

His arm hoisted him further up the wall anyway, and he tossed the belt at it. Genuinely shocked, Reid connected with the first toss. He smiled, until he realized that wasn't even the first half of the way there. So, with all of his weight on the belt, he hoped and he prayed the nozzle his buckle was stuck to would turn, when he found that it did give about a quarter-turn, he was met with a steady bead of liquid as it poured down into the room.

He knew there was no way to actually retrieve his belt for now, so he opted to let it stay there as he laid below the leak of water to flush his wound. He lifted his shirt away, the canvas of lake-blues and purples were unnerving, but he vaguely recalled how he got at least five of the larger ones.

Cold made contact with hot, and a sting that felt worse than being stabbed ripped through his core. He turned his head away, almost certain the blood he saw drain from the wound was a tarry black instead of the varied shades of red and clear coagulated blood normally was.

As he turned back toward the drain, he could swear he saw a hand reach out, it probed for more solid ground, and then another hand came up from the same tight drainage pipe, Reid took in several shallow breaths, this couldn't be real… it was distorted, a rubber-man pulled his way half through, about to fully push his face up when Reid insisted it was not real and refused to see it. He closed his eyes tightly and told himself over and over that it wasn't there, that it couldn't be there. When he opened his eyes again, he was proven correct. The room just housed himself, bricks that seemed to move and vibrate, a drippy water-valve, a drain, and a reinforced door.

He forced himself to sit up, something he quickly regretted as his head spun around, but he knew irrigating the wound was one thing, to allow himself to become soaked was another.

"I have to remember how I got here… is anyone coming for me…?" He asked aloud, again the drain answered him.

"Of course I'm coming for you, Reid. I'm coming for you, so you have to hold on." Reid looked at the pipe unnerved. As comforted as he felt to hear Hotch, he didn't feel fond about hallucinations, regardless of assignable causality.

Reid crawled closer to the drain anyway, hallucination or not, it was Hotch. Upon his arrival, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.

"You wouldn't happen to be willing to fill me in on how I got here, would you, Aaron?"

His eyes closed slightly as his hallucination started to speak with him, practically lulling him to sleep for the better part of a half-hour.

"We were sent to investigate a child abduction case, the unsub requested ransoms but made it clear he had no real will to collect them, it was just to throw us off track. After three days and increased police presence, the unexpected occurred. The missing boy walked back to his parents' house in a straight line from deep woods. He was covered in mud and pine needles, and seed pods that weren't located in that area, but he was too traumatized to actually speak with us. Whenever he tried, he spoke of the slender man, an urban legend. It was as if he was told to say those things. But we had forensics, we had the boy, and we had your geographic profile. The team walked out to where the boy had came from and you were the one to see the storm drain. With that, we worked on identifying the likely areas for a den, when we concluded which areas were most probable, we divided into teams of two and did grid searches. JJ and Rossi, Prentiss and Morgan, you and…"

"You can't be dead!" Reid's hand clapped to his mouth but it was too late, the vomit of words led to a cascade of his alimentary canal, he retched until bile came out. He locked eyes with the image of Hotch in the drain, it didn't look as pleasant this time, now it was distorted with the bloat of a three-day dead body and a bloody head-wound. Reid's eyes rolled up on him and he hit the ground hard.

Eyes half-lidded, he could see hands claw through the drain as if in some attempt to drag themselves free, or maybe they were looking to drag him down with them. If it really was Hotch down there, he couldn't say he'd mind. Instead he spotted Hotch's face, not discolored or distorted with bloat.

"Of course I'm not dead. If I were dead I wouldn't be able to come and rescue you, now would I?"

Reid's eyes attempted to focus, and as it seemed to, the image went back into the drain.

"If you're not dead, why are you in that drain…?" He said, utterly exhausted and cramped.

"Don't you want to know all of what happened to you? How you got here?"

Reid's head lolled to the side, as if he had given a nod for consent, Hotch continued to speak.

"We saw a drain in our area, we both went in, and then it started to rain. A flash rain, actually. You had found a crawl-space, my shoulders were too broad to get through, but you could manage. And then you said it, 'Hotch, I found the slender man…' I told you to come back, that it was too dangerous, I tried to pull you back, but I slipped and hit my head. When you turned around, you slipped and started to fall. You fell down about ten feet and landed in muck water with that." Hotch hinted toward Reid's gash.

"…So the slender man… he's here somewhere…"

"You can't be loud, Reid, let me talk, just listen and I'll tell you everything." Reid nodded, he heard footsteps that seemed to go past. It was odd, it wasn't one set, it must have been closer to dozens.

"When you came to, you weren't in muck water. You were in a utility room. Look around, Reid. Take a good look, this is a sewage treatment facility. You were locked in here. Someone dragged your ass here and locked you in."

Reid's eyes went wide, he looked at the face in the small drain, he looked so excited to have revealed such a thing. Nothing at all like how Hotch would look.

"…Aaron… that's not really what happened at all…" He started, but then he opted to yell again instead, as he heard steps. "HELP! SOMEONE HELP I'M IN HERE!"

For a moment he imagined he heard more steps. He looked at his surroundings more closely. Near the door were deep drag marks and puddles of fluid.

"You're filling things in for my mind… but the slender man is a myth. What that little boy saw was a body. He saw the near-skeletonized remains of someone who drowned… I slipped from the flash rain, I was knocked through a tight opening and down twelve feet of uneven cobble stones before I hit anything solid, and I did get cut, on a glass bottle. After that, I dragged myself up into the upper channel and into the access room, I closed the door because I was afraid of any debris coming in and trapping me… I've been down here for two and a half days going in and out of consciousness and feeling guilty because I thought you died when you tried to save me when I slipped… but Aaron… Aaron would never want me to just lie here like this… you… you're just a feeling of unconfirmed guilt clearly manifesting because of septicemia."

Reid's head moved from side to side, the footsteps were getting closer.

"Reid! Spencer can you hear me?"

"I'M IN HERE…" he let out as loud of a yell as he could, with his remaining energy he dragged himself closer to the metal door and banged on it. "I'M IN HERE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?"

"Reid! Thank god!" Hotch let out, "Reid keep banging, we're looking, we're looking really hard!"

Propped against the door, Reid continued to bang on it, he didn't realize his ministrations were jarring it more and more open until he saw a beam of light from a Maglite. "I'm over…" Reid hit the door twice more before his hand went limp.

He felt a powerful wave of nausea and he was certain it had something to do with the smell. His head tilted to the side where the partially dislodged body of 'the slender man' was wedged, maggots and all. He let out a gut-retching sound as he horked more pronounced than he had been able to speak the last time.

A flashlight landed on his features just as his body exorcised the last few bits of digestive content it had stored. That, by the way, had been more bile and a little blood. Head heavy, Reid allowed his forehead to rest beside his emission as he watched in strange fascination as the light zigged in a parabolic arch left, right, left, right, left- he vaguely realized it was much, much closer now.

His glossy eyes looked up to see Hotch standing there, it was inappropriate and wrong to see a Zegna suit in a place like this. He looked up at the man who looked so intently down at him before in a smooth motion he knelt down, straight into Reid's puke with his left knee, to get a good grip under Reid's neck and knees and hoist them both up.

"Ugh…" Reid mentioned as he curled toward his lover, "I feel so sick…" Reid's eyes teared up as he clutched the fabric to Hotch's suit jacket.

"I'm going to get you out of here, hold on Spencer." Was all Hotch murmured to him before he pressed the talk button on his touch-radio. "I have Reid with me, we need medical top side and CSUs down here."

"CSUs? You don't mean that son of a bitch unsub really…" Morgan started, the way his radio crackled, Reid suspected he was below-ground, searching too.

"No. It's a dead body. Probably weeks old, but it might be what the missing boy saw."

"You mean the slender man was that guy's corpse?"

"Likely, this storm drain was a straight shot from the drainage systems in the woods near the boy's house."

Hotch adjusted Reid in his arms, "You're burning up…"

"Dehydrated too… think I'm septic…" he attempted, but felt too drained to add further.

"Septic? Christ, Reid why didn't you tell me you're bleeding!" Hotch stated upon coming into more lighting. Within less than five-hundred feet Reid realized he had come across ambient sunlight. Only two major turns from where he had so hap-hazardously landed in the perpetually dark storm-drain, though he did know some light had managed to pour in from ventilation slats, or perhaps more drains.

Once outside, Hotch had Reid lying on the ground as a stretcher was brought over. His hand traveled up Reid's center searching for the exact source of the blood, Reid grabbed Hotch's hand before he could make contact.

"Don't… I'll pass out if you touch it… think I bruised my spleen on the fall too…" Reid offered, though he didn't personally feel too helpful. "…Water?"

Hotch caught a bottle that JJ pitched to him, cap already twisted off before it even reached Reid's lips, Hotch poured some to him before pulling back. "The paramedics need to load you onto that gurney, then they're going to take me with them to the nearest hospital and you are going to stay awake that entire trip, understood?"

Reid blinked and nodded at the same time. In his peripheral, he could see long, long arms, far more arachnid than human, bent and disjointed as they curled around the brick features at the mouth of the storm drain. Long, bony fingers pressed flat against the wall. He sensed movement, as if whatever had been walled off with that body was trying to move free, itself.

In the back of his mind, he supposed he could hear the way his heart was pounding, his breath became so much lighter as he focused on the peripheral specter.

Little Andrew Callahan, what had he said when he had come back? Reid knew the boy was traumatized, he also knew his auditory memory was less than phonographic.

The Slender Man! He's real! He's really-really real! I could hear him the whole time!

"REID!"

Reid's head jerked, eyes snapped half-open.

"Reid, you're still awake, aren't you? Like I ordered…" Hotch said, his own tone belied how worried he was versus how angry at Reid's realistic defiance to the order. But it didn't stop Reid from his attempt to focus in on the distant memory of a sound.

The walls had been moving. He was so certain of it, but he knew there wasn't enough water pressure nor were there any detectible smells from rodents to lead to that confusion.

"…Hotch… the slender man…"

Hotch looked away for a moment before he turned a hot gaze to his lover and subordinate, "Reid, you're delirious. There is no such thing, you were the one who even mentioned the urban legend…"

"Spencer, you need to calm down…" The paramedic offered, she pushed down on the fleshy portion of Reid's lower arm, a tourniquet helped her with the exact location of a larger vein as she fed in the IV. "Take deep breaths, I don't want to bag you."

Reid sent the woman a small glare then looked back in the distance, he could swear he saw a cord run to the length of the ambulance and trace all the way back to where the storm drain had to be.

"Hotch! Why won't you listen to me! You were right, he is there! He's killing people, not just kids either…"

As he continued to hyperventilate, his ability to communicate (and stay awake) was becoming precariously difficult. Reid's head lolled back as he watched the corner of the ambulance as a small black spot grew and grew until a long hand started to reach through.

Almost ready to pass out, Reid locked eyes on whatever it was trying to creep in from there before he tried to sit up. Back slightly off the gurney, Reid was immediately thrust down by a strong forearm into the foam-rubber material.

"The patient's becoming combative!" The woman noted as Reid attempted to swing his arms.

"Get off me… get off me don't you see it! He's right there…" Reid managed to rub his one IV line out of his arm as he maneuvered his arms left and right, each swing a near-miss to the paramedic as she fought to put each arm into a restraint-loop.

With no range in motion for his hands, and a pessimistic fear of what the portal in the ambulance would bring him, Reid's eyes scanned the remainder of the ambulance. Hotch looked so worried, Reid wondered if maybe he saw it too, now?

"Tch! His arm's a mess…" The paramedic noted as she spotted the dislodged IV still taped to Reid's now bloody arm. She pressed a wad of gauze to it before she wrapped it with medical tape. "ETA?"

"Three more minutes… at least." Came the call from the front of the ambulance.

"Reid, you have to stay awake…" Hotch's voice sounded so far away, Reid looked back to the hole in the corner.

"Is he coming to kill me…? Is that why you all can't see him but I can…?"

"Reid, NO ONE is going to let you die, now get a hold of yourself- there's nothing there!" Hotch's voice shook with a timbre that only partly met Reid's ears.

"His core temperature is over 105.9° Fahrenheit… we need more anti-pyrogenics!"

Reid could see the slender man's threads all up and down his torso. Thin red lines radiated toward his chest, "Get them off… get them off!" He started to scream.

Hotch unbuckled his seat belt and was already in the back with Reid as the paramedic started to mark up Reid's skin with a sharpie.

"Oh this is bad…" The woman said in a hushed tone.

"What are those things…?" Hotch asked. The woman shot him a glare.

"He has acute septicemia, those red lines are his inflamed blood vessels." She took Reid's pulse and blood pressure yet again. "He's tanking on us!" She shouted back to her partner. "You, keep him talking. If he loses consciousness this could be game over."

Hotch squeezed Reid's hand. "Reid, listen to me, this is very important… you're the only one to see our unsub, this Slender Man, I need you to tell me about him, give me the profile…"

Reid's half-misted eyes attempted to lock onto Hotch's, but Hotch could see them waver as they attempted to stay focused. "He's invisible except to his victims, his reach seems unending though… that's just a metaphor, the urban legend aspect of it… I know my mind is trying to make the connections, I know, but still! Someone else was down there… the wall was moving… there was more than one body… that little boy might've been lost… but… but I'm telling you there's more corpses down there… there's a real predator I… I know it…" Reid's breathe was erratic, a small counter had it at 27 breaths per minute. Nasal canicula aside, the cyanotic look in his tinged blue-lips concerned everyone else in the ambulance aware to his circumstances. "Why… why are you letting me tell this profile in front of civilians, Hotch?" He suddenly realized.

Hotch's eyes grew for a moment, unsure where Reid would go with that knowledge in his current mind-set.

"…Oh god, I am dying… or is this delirium… I'm going to be sick…" Reid announced, again vomiting, this time instead of clear or clear with tinges of green came a splash of red coated with a thick layer of mucous-y saliva. He hacked as he tried to clear his own airways, but being strapped down made it difficult. "…I know I'm delirious, Hotch, but I still saw at least two bodies there…" He locked eyes with Hotch. "Your head…? Why don't you have a bruise…?"

"What about my head, Reid?" Hotch asked as he continued to clutch at Reid's hand.

"When I fell, didn't you reach forward and hit your head…?"

"Shoulder." Hotch tapped Reid and his enjoined hands to his opposing shoulder.

"…Three… there had to be three… One was fresh dead, two or three days, just leaving rigamortis, another body was dead for about two weeks, another dead for about a month… The body I saw when I fell was the first victim, the one you saw…? That had to be fresher…"

Hotch blanched, Reid was certain he saw the reaction.

"The slender man is the victim… the killer is the real monster hiding inside those myths. I would've been next… if he'd have heard me… I'd have fit his preferences…" Reid closed his eyes as he desperately tried to recollect if that was really why he had locked himself into the room and stayed so quiet while search efforts were occurring. His own hallucination aided his escape when he dissociated due to the fever. "Hotch… you're really smart. I know I don't say stuff like that much, but I think you are."

"Then listen to me when I tell you to open your eyes."

Reid blinked them open a few times, the lights in the ambulance felt wonky, as if going super bright then dim, momentarily he thought he might lose his vision.

"FINALLY!" The paramedic said, momentarily able to distract Reid from his thought. The fluid forward motion lurched to a halt and his body shifted uncomfortably.

"Reid, you're doing great, the doctors are going to take care of you." Hotch mentioned. His thumb traced the center of Reid's palm before he pulled back and took out his phone.

From so far away, he could swear he heard Hotch ask the CSUs what they found. By the way his tone shifted, he'd say it wasn't good.

TBC.