Chapter Three: Remembering how to love you

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The silence was the loudest quiet she'd ever experienced.

She sat at the table, running her fingers over the smooth wood and thinking about nothing but breathing, listening to the soft sounds of her own heart beating. Downstairs someone called out, laughing. Outside she could hear cars and sirens.

It was like the apartment itself had hushed, waiting for something to happen. They were all unsure of what the next move was.

He stepped out of his room where he'd been since she'd gotten up and walked out without a word three hours before, dressed as though he was about leave for work. Even his tie was knotted, albeit crookedly.

He looked startled to see her, as though he'd assumed she'd left.

She wasn't sure why she didn't, aside from the small matter of her pants sitting crumpled on the floor of his bedroom.

"Say something," he said huskily, and she looked up into a face that just hours ago, she'd been falling in love with all over again. His lip was bleeding, she noted absently, feeling a pang of something at the thought of him sitting in there worrying at it with his teeth.

He still smelt like their sweat and her perfume.

She couldn't leave. Not when he was like this. The drugs were clearly affecting his inhibitions, today was absolutely proof of that. She wouldn't leave him alone while he was like that.

But there were no words left to say.

She waited until dawn lightened the world outside before gathering her things and leaving, mouth a firm line.

She said nothing.

Reid walked into his bathroom and emptied the wooden box with the bottles of narcotics into the sink, the glass clinking against the porcelain.

He slammed the box down onto the bottles, watching them shatter, and ran the tap until the light outside the windows was bright enough that he knew he was going to be late for work. At some point the water swirling down the drain had run pink, and he pulled his hand out of the sink numbly to examine the numerous small cuts on his palm.

A small part of him was pleased. The cuts would quantify time for him, at least for a little while.

Each day they heal was one more day away from this one.

She didn't know what to say to him, not anymore. She still wasn't sure what to make of that night, whether it was really Reid or if it was the drugs, and she was too scared to ask.

He missed a plane, just one plane. When she saw him again he'd gained a determination in his face that was both frightening and hopeful.

"You need help," she told him one day when it was just them in the elevator. He looked tired, he always did these days, but there was a colour in his skin there hadn't been two weeks before, and his smile was genuine.

"I'm getting it," he said, and she believed him.

"Movies tonight? Morgan and JJ are coming." Reid gave her his best hopeful look, eyes wide and she calculated how long the stack of paperwork in front of her would take. He read her mind, as always. "I can do half?"

"Alright," she agreed, shoving more than half of the stack over to him and watching him bend over the desk with his pen busily scribbling away. It struck her as it did often that she knew what he looked like under those carefully presented clothes, knew what he looked like when he was focused on his body for once instead of his mind.

She knew what he looked like when he was high and on the knife's edge of losing everything.

They were taking careful steps, trying to rebuild what Hankel had taken from them, but he flinched now if she touched him, and she couldn't help but wonder how long this improved Reid could last.

Gideon left and Reid felt more alone than he'd felt in a long time.

Emily was threatening to quit, Hotch too, and Reid sat at home and wondered dimly what it was about him that made everyone so keen to get away.

The only consolation he had was that the idea of taking the easy way out, of finding one of his old dealers stupid enough to sell to an FBI agent and sink back into emptiness, didn't tempt him. He blamed his addictive personality.

He had a new craving these days.

She didn't look at him the same way she used to anymore and there was an air of sadness between them that he didn't know how to remove, but when she walked into the room she took up all the space in his brain. Anytime she brushed against him, he couldn't help but vividly relive that night in his head, including the moment when he'd said the two words that both destroyed and restored him.

The look of alarm and dawning comprehension in her eyes at that moment had been every bit as horrifying as he'd imagined before the fact.

It was some small source of sick amusement to him that he was pretty sure she'd loved him before that instant. She could never love him after that admission, never place her affections onto a desperate junkie burnt out by his failures.

He was always meant to be alone in the end.

It didn't change the way they worked together, and they still hung out outside of work. They never mentioned his problem again, but every time Reid earned another coin he left it under her mouse mat for her to find; a silent apology and a promise to continue doing better.

They were in the compound on what should have been a routine mission when it all went to hell and she took the fall for him.

When he saw her again after it was all over, her face was a patchwork of cuts and bruising, and for a single transient moment Reid knew what it was like to want to hurt someone with his bare hands.

It was a violent, overwhelming feeling that turned his blood to ice, and some of that fury must have shown in his face because she looked at him like he'd turned into a stranger. "Next time I'll duck," she said with a pained smile, trying to break the mood, her eyes wide and worried.

He made a choked noise in his throat and nodded stiffly before walking away. Love could be an awfully vicious motivator.

She took the beating so he didn't have to, their hope for escape locked in that brilliant mind of his. She knew that he'd never see that. He'd only see her trying to protect him again, one thing guaranteed to get his back up.

He found her after the raid, sitting in the back of an ambulance with a paramedic carefully swabbing at her face and checking for broken bones. She looked up at him, prepared for concern and frustration. She was pretty sure that anything he threw at her, she could rebut. She had a perfectly good reason for letting herself get caught, and he wouldn't argue against plain logic.

She looked straight up into a face so coldly furious that she was frozen for a moment.

"Next time I'll duck," she said, forcing a smile onto her face. He blinked and the rage vanished, leaving him just looking sad. He nodded and walked away without saying a word.

She thought maybe she was the only one in the world who'd ever seen that look on his face, and that knowledge took her breath away.

Reid didn't mean to notice, but it was a little hard not to when he was required to be one of the most observant people in the world. One day she looked up at him with a grin that was just the right amount of friendly, and he noted with a detached sort of numbness the new shade of lipstick she was wearing and the faded stamp on her left hand.

"Hot date last night?" Morgan asked with a smirk, leaning over the partition between hers and Reid's desk and nodding at her hand.

She twitched an eyebrow and shook her head at their incorrigible friend. "I can't get anything past you lot, can I? What if I just went out with a friend?"

"New lipstick," Reid said quietly, and she stiffened as though she'd forgotten he was there.

"It was a date." The admission was rigid and awkward in a way he thought they'd moved past months ago, and she looked down at her desk clearly signalling that the conversation was over.

Morgan looked confused for a second and then his eyes widened and he stared at Reid in a way that suggested their months of secrecy had very abruptly come to an end.

Nothing stayed secret for long among profilers. She should be shocked it took them this long.

Garcia called her up with a request for a signature on a file, but as soon as she walked into the IT tech's room, she was faced with a very concerned Penelope and an oddly intimidating JJ.

"Did you sleep with Spence?" JJ hissed with narrowed eyes, and Emily didn't even answer before Garcia gasped.

"Oh my god, you did," she said, hands over her mouth. "When did this happen? Why was I not informed? What happened? Are you okay?"

"Is he okay?" JJ cut in, mouth twisting unhappily.

"I didn't sleep with him." Emily couldn't help the defensive tone in her voice. It was very much like being circled by a pack of angry mother wolves. "We… almost did. Something happened. We're not together, it was one night months ago."

JJ suddenly sighed, eyes flickering over Emily's face, as though something she'd been trying to work out for a long time had suddenly become clear. "You loved him."

She used the past tense.

"Once," Emily said, hoping they didn't notice the pain held in that one word.

They did.

"Was it just one night?"

Morgan was as determined as a dog trying to get a bone, not letting up for a moment with his questioning.

Reid ran the water over his hands, shaking them dry irritably as his friend crowded him into the bathroom. "It wasn't even one night, we didn't sleep together. Not… not really."

"Something happened though? Come on man, you looked gutted out there. You don't look like that unless there's a history."

"Something happened," he snapped, suddenly furious. "Leave it Morgan, it was ages ago. It's not relevant anymore."

A hand against his shoulder held him in place. "If it's not relevant, then why do you still look at her like she's the only person in the room?" he asked Reid gently, and for once Reid didn't have an answer.

Anthrax. The bloody idiot got infected with anthrax.

Out of everyone in the world, fucking Spencer bloody Reid managed to walk into that shed and infect himself with anthrax. He actually had the audacity to almost die. Emily was furiously betrayed. She thought after the last time he'd almost died that they'd come to some sort of agreement about this kind of thing.

Reid was absolutely not allowed to die or almost die, or engage in any behaviour that could theoretically lead to his death.

She hadn't been aware of speaking out loud as she paced with her thoughts racing angrily through her mind, but when she spun on her heel to face the line of stiff-backed chairs holding her team, they were all staring at her with raised eyebrows.

"Maybe you should sit down?" Rossi said, standing and gesturing to his chair. "You're frightening people."

"Maybe you should go in last," JJ added, smirking slightly. Morgan elbowed her, grinning.

"No way, send her in first. Maybe she'll scare Reid enough that he'll stop getting into trouble."

"I doubt it," Hotch replied shortly, closing his eyes and leaning his head back to wait for news. She sat and focused on her breathing.

She wondered how the team would take it if she saved Spencer the trouble, and just killed him herself.

Doyle was back.

He was back, it was only a matter of time before he came after her, and she was so unbelievably terrified she couldn't think for the fear of it. Nights were spent with her focus locked on every noise or movement around her home that could possibly constitute a threat, her days melding into a soft blur of exhaustion.

The only time she could feasibly let her guard down is at work, but if she kept doing that then her team was going to notice and start asking questions. Questions that would put them in danger. It says something about her life that the only time she felt safe was when she was at her workplace hunting serial killers…

The previous years had lulled her into a false sense of security, teasing her with the possibility of a life beyond what she'd done in her past. Everything had just settled into a calm sort of normalcy. It was everything she'd ever wanted.

Now it was gone, shattered with a rose and a simple phone call from her old handler.

She spent as long as she could fighting the exhaustion that threatened to claim her, but in the end she went to the one place she knew she could be safe, even for just a little while.

The knock at his door was completely unexpected. Reid answered it holding a bowl of soggy cereal, wearing a tattered dressing gown and a perplexed expression. "Emily?"

She smiled shakily, knowing how weird this must look. "Can I stay here tonight? My apartment is being fumigated." The lie slipped easily off her tongue, and he shrugged and stepped aside to let her in.

"Err… okay. You can take the… bed. I normally sleep on the couch anyway." They both noted the hesitation before he says the word bed, but she let it go without comment. "Cereal?"

Her face twisted and he could practically see her wondering how her life had gone so astray that he was her friend. "For dinner? Reid, you know there's more to a balanced diet than sugar right?"

"I drink coffee too."

The laughter was genuine and when she emerged from his bathroom an hour later, looking more relaxed than she had in weeks, it was almost like everything was finally coming back together.

She refused the bed, of course she did. She wasn't going to invade Reid's privacy and take his bed as well, and she wouldn't put it past him to lie about sleeping on the couch just so she wouldn't feel bad.

Later that night when he'd drifted off to his room to presumably sleep (or do whatever it was he did to recharge when full of enough caffeine to give an elephant the jitters), she pressed her face against the clean sheets covering the surprisingly comfortable couch, and thought that maybe he was telling the truth.

The couch smelt like him, and her body lay easily across it as though someone had lain like that many times before. She thought of him curled up just like she was now, and her stomach twisted slightly in an emotion that was almost like longing.

The morning, and Doyle, feel wonderfully far away and as she softly breathed in the scent of him, she thought that maybe they could finally try again.

It wasn't the right time, but when had they ever gotten a right time?

He was flicking slowly through a book, savouring the text in a way that felt almost decadent, when his door creaked open and she padded in.

Neither of them said anything when she slipped into the bed next to him and he lay an arm around her cautiously, pulling her close against him.

Neither of them said anything as she leaned in and pressed her lips against his, pushing him back against the pillow and curling a leg around him.

He still didn't say anything, or stop her, as she unbuttoned his pyjama top and slid it off of his shoulders, slowly running her hand up his arm as she looked at the skin of his inner arm with an expression that was terrifyingly close to pride.

In the end, neither of them spoke at all until it was over and she fell asleep naked against his side, skin of her chest still flushed prettily. He wrapped himself around her like a protective shield against whatever was frightening her and nuzzled his nose into her hair, smelling his shampoo against the scent of her.

"I never stopped loving you," he whispered like it was a secret.

Perhaps is a way, it was.

"I never stopped loving you," he whispered into her hair.

She didn't let him see that she was awake and hoped to hell he didn't notice the tears on her face.

I forgot how to love you, but I remember now, she thought, but she didn't say it. She couldn't say it yet, not with Doyle out there.

There'd be time later.

"She never made it off the table," JJ said, and her eyes never left his.

He tried to run, tried to do what he should have done four years ago when he took her pulse at that crowded bar, but she touched his arm and froze him in place, the soft sounds of his friends' grief behind him. "Spence?"

She was expecting tears, expecting anger and torment and destruction. He didn't give her that.

"I didn't get a chance to say goodbye," he said numbly, but what he really wanted to ask was how could it be the end when it had felt so much like a beginning?