Check the stalls, lock the door. With each step he can hear the vials clinking raucously in his knapsack. We're here, we're here, don't you want us, Spencer? We know you do.
He tries to tell himself it's just his brain. Just the neurons. The dendrites stroking the terminals of its connecting cells asking, Baby please, just one more shot? like a desperate crack whore. He tries to summon up the statistics, anything to calm him down—the racing pulse and quick breathing. His body readying itself for the needle in his vein, that's what's happening and he knows it, but fuck the rush isn't something he's set on abandoning. He needs it. He needs it more than they could understand.
He's alone but his feet won't direct him away from the mirror, so he stares at these eyes that have taken root on his face. They're not his eyes—these are wild eyes bulging back at him. Come on, come on, who's gonna know? Our secret, Spencer. It'll be our little secret, Dr. Reid.
And he wonders what just tilted fate to leave him like this, an FBI profiler, twenty-four-year-old genius with two doctorates, with a secret stash of heroin? For a moment, he lets himself imagine the team's faces as if they had caught him with the euphoric rush clouding him, everything about him. He guesses that he would be too stoned to care, but the agonizing pang of seeing it sober, it's deadly. Who would suspect innocent, awkward Dr. Reid of being a tweaker?
No one.
So go ahead, Spencer. They'll never know. You can do this.
"Where's Reid?" It's Gideon, so he knows to act fast.
It's all a blur: the belt on his arm, flicking the needle, the plunge, press, wonder. Dully he senses his head rock against the tile wall in the stall but this is all too breathtaking. Surge surge surge and once again those memories of the weekend wash away in everything and he can finally smile as his eyes roll into the back of his head.