Disclaimer: I own nothing except my OCs.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. - Robert Frost
"Gracie!" Garcia squealed, smothering her friend in a hug when she entered the BAU on Monday. "You're alive!"
"Not for much longer if you don't let me breathe." Grace laughed.
Garcia laughed and released her. "Let me see this bite of yours." she said.
Grace pulled down the sleeve of her shirt to reveal her bandages which she pulled back, uncovering a sickly shade of green.
"It's infected?"
Grace nodded. "Yeah, that old bitch had like never brushed her teeth."
"It looks like a zombie bite actually." Garcia remarked.
"Yeah, I know." Grace said. "Sweet, eh?"
Garcia laughed. "For sure, gorgeous. Oh, speaking of gorgeous, has Reid seen your new tattoo?"
Grace blushed. "He finally found it last night. He doesn't know what it means though and I'm making him figure it out on his own."
"And he hasn't gotten it yet?" Garcia asked, surprised.
"Contrary to popular belief, the boy does not know everything. Especially Sanskrit." Grace laughed. "Anyway, as much as I would love to spend the rest of my day with you, there's a pile of paperwork waiting for me on my desk."
"Oh yeah, I almost forgot you had a case."
"Yeah, it sucked not being able to call the Oracle every half hour to humbly request her powers."
"And it sucked not having my Chocolate Thunder calling me constantly." Garcia sighed.
"What about me?" Grace pouted, jokingly.
"And of course you." Garcia said. "How did the case turn out anyway?"
"Well, I doubt we'll ever be going back to Missouri." Grace replied.
"Why's that?"
"After I got bit, Rossi freaked out at the sheriff." Grace explained. "He said that they only called the BAU in because their detectives were too chicken shit to go into the woods and that he refused to sacrifice an agent's life for their lazy asses ever again. Except, he said it with a lot of curse words even I wouldn't use."
"Wow." Garcia said.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Grace said. "Anyway, I really have to get my work done. See ya!"
Grace went to her desk and sighed when she saw the pile of paperwork that awaited her.
"Hey, Spencer?" she said.
"Hmm?" he said, not looking up from whatever he was working on at his desk.
"Nevermind." Grace sighed.
She scanned the room for something she could do instead of her paperwork. Two months of living entirely on impulse had not helped her already terrible capacity for concentration. Emily was also lost in her work and Derek was nowhere to be seen. JJ's door was closed and Grace could see a massive stack of case files on her desk. She looked at Hotch's open door and laughed to herself at the idea of going to spend some quality time with her boss. Dave's door was open though, so Grace shrugged and went to pay him a visit.
"Working hard or hardly working?" Grace couldn't help but laugh as she leaned on the door frame of Rossi's office.
"Well, now that you're here, I guess I'm hardly working." Dave said, motioning for her to sit in the chair across from his desk.
"I wanted to thank you." Grace said, biting her lip.
Dave raised an eyebrow.
"For telling off the sheriff in Missouri, for standing up for me and not being all weird about me being back." Grace continued.
"Don't mention it." Dave said. "You know, it took awhile for me to get used to the whole 'team' thing."
"But now you think of them as your family." Grace said, rolling her eyes.
"They'll accept you again eventually. Just give it time, trust is earned, not gained."
Grace laughed. "Do you know how old you sound?"
"Hopefully not as old as you make me feel." Dave laughed.
"You know," Grace said. "I haven't been hunting in a really long time."
"How's next Saturday sound?"
"Great." Grace smiled. "See you then!"
She skipped back to her desk and sat down. She took a deep breath and began on her paperwork. After a while, Spencer began to click the pen he was holding. At first it set a nice, steady rhythm for Grace to complete her work, but eventually it became overwhelmingly annoying. It was as if the sound was drilling deep into her brain, forcing her to dig her nails into the edge of her desk. Grace could feel her emotions beginning to spiral out of control so she dug in her purse for her prescription. All should found was an empty pill bottle, the prescription expired.
"Would you fucking stop it?" she snapped, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Sorry." Reid said.
Grace got up and ran out of the office. Reid got up to follow her, seeing Morgan roll his eyes as he did so. He found Grace locked in her car in the parking lot.
"Grace," Reid said, tapping gently on the window. "Sweetheart, open the door."
Grace sniffled and shook her head.
"Open it, please?" Reid begged her.
Grace sighed and unlocked the door. Spencer ducked his head down into the car and wrapped his arms around her.
"Grace, what's wrong?" he asked, rubbing her back. "Have you been taking your pills?"
Grace shook her head. "No, I ran out. This is why I never wanted to take anti-depressants, Spencer. I don't want to have to take them just to feel normal, it's like being addicted all over again."
Reid sat down and pulled Grace onto his lap. "You feel better when you take them though, right? You don't freak out as much and you're not always depressed."
"Yeah, heroin does the same thing for me though."
Reid sighed. "Do you think you'll be alright until your next appointment with Dr. Browning?"
Grace shook her head. "I'm not seeing him anymore."
"What?" Reid exclaimed, letting go of Grace.
"He was a jerk." Grace pouted. "He just wanted to blame all my problems on you."
Reid wrapped his arms around her again and let her sob on his shoulder.
"Shh... Sweetheart, we'll find you a new therapist, we'll get through this." Reid assured Grace and kissed the top of her head. "I love you, Grace."
Grace looked up from Spencer's shoulder and kissed his cheek. "I love you too, Spencer."
"Hey, Grace," Spencer said, standing beside their bed. He took Grace's hand in his and played with her fingers until she opened her eyes which were usually bright green, but today were dark and glazed over.
Grace did not say anything. She tightened her grip on her pillow and stared at the wall.
"Are you coming to work today, sweetheart?" Reid asked.
Grace shook her head. Two days without her anti-depressants and she still could not force herself to get out of bed.
Reid sighed. "Alright. I'll call to check on you later."
Grace simply nodded and continued to stare past him. Reid bent down and kissed her lightly on the cheek before leaving.
After staring blankly at the wall for awhile, Grace got out of bed and got herself a glass of water. She enjoyed the darkness and complete silence of the apartment. Actually, it wasn't silent, Grace remembered from some science class in high school that the average house was always buzzing with about sixty hertz of energy. The buzzing was quite calming though. She finished her water and went back to bed.
Grace was jolted from her sleep by the ringing of the telephone about two hours later. Presuming that it was Spencer calling to check on her as promised, she did not bother to check the caller ID.
"Yes Spencer, I'm still alive." she sighed into the receiver.
There was a laugh on the other end of the line. "I'm not Spencer, but I'm glad to hear you're still breathing." a familiar male voice said.
"Sam!" Grace exclaimed happily.
"How you doing?" Sam asked. "I haven't heard from you since you ran away on me."
"I've been working, Sam." Grace replied. "I got bit by some crazy bitch in Missouri last week."
"Well, you should come work for me." Sam said. "I can promise you that you won't get bit by any crazy bitches."
"Sam, that's the reason I ran away from you at the club. I don't want to sing again." Grace said. "At least not professionally."
"Come on, Dahl, it's not like work." Sam pleaded. "It'll be fun, like the garage days, except in a kickass studio."
"Sam, don't you dare call me by my stage name ever again!" Grace said firmly. "Dahlia Destruction died the day I went into detox."
"You still have the wig, don't you?"
"No." Grace said, lying about the wig that she kept hidden in the back of the guest room closet. "Sam, I really just want to put all that behind me."
"It's part of who you are, Grace." Sam said.
"Sam, please."
"Just give it another shot, Grace." Sam begged. "You were so great. You could be famous by now, but you gave it up."
"I had to give it up to get clean, Sam!" Grace yelled into the phone. "You know I couldn't go onstage without shooting up. I'd be dead if I hadn't quit, Sam!"
"You don't have to go onstage." Sam insisted. "Please, just record a demo with me then we'll see how it goes."
"What is this about, Sam?" Grace asked. "Why do you want to sign me so bad now?"
"I want to sign you before someone else does." Sam replied.
"I'm an FBI agent, Sam, no one, I repeat, no one is trying to sign me except you!"
Sam sighed. "Would you at least think about it?"
"I might." Grace said. "Goodbye, Sam."
Grace hung up and got out of bed. She went into her closet and changed into a pair of grey sweats and a white tank top and put on one of Spencer's sweaters. She made a cup of hot chocolate and stared out the window at the pouring rain. She hated this part of fall. The leaves were all dead and had fallen to the ground, now the rain seemed endless and turned the ground into her expensive leather boots' biggest enemy. She sighed and pulled all the curtains shut in an attempt to ignore the miserable weather. She put on a Sufjan Stevens record and went to the guest room/studio where she pulled a blank canvas from the closet.
Spencer Reid sighed as he parked his car in the driveway. Despite the downpour, he walked slowly to the garage and almost thought twice about ascending the stairs to the apartment. Grace's bad moods always made him sad. He hated to see her like that, it reminded him of his mother descending into schizophrenia.
He heard the music before he even reached the top of the stairs. This was a good sign, it meant Grace had at least gotten out of bed. When he opened the door, he recognized the song as one of the upbeat, bass pumping songs Grace listened to when she was either getting up in the morning or preparing for a night of partying. Reid knew that these were not her favourite songs, they lacked the deep, thoughtful lyrics she liked, but she often used this kind of music to put herself in a better mood.
"Grace?" Reid called. "Sweetheart?"
"In here!" she replied cheerfully from the bathroom.
Spencer found Grace dressed in a tight emerald green dress, applying black mascara to her eyelashes.
"Hey handsome." Grace greeted him, looking away from the mirror for a moment to kiss him.
Reid blushed. "What's the occasion?" he asked.
Grace shrugged. "We haven't went out in a while."
Reid went closer to her and she put down her make-up and wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Wh-what do you mean?" Reid asked as Grace ran her fingers through his long brown hair.
Grace smiled and kissed him again. "I'm asking you on a date, Spencer."
"Oh, OK." he blushed. "Where do you want to go?"
Grace shrugged. "Anywhere."
"Well, there's an eighties retrospective at the cinema tonight." Reid said. "If we hurry, we can catch Dirty Dancing."
"You know me too well, Spencer." Grace laughed.
"Oh, here, I forgot." Reid said, reaching into his coat pocket and extracting a plain white envelope. "This came to your desk today."
Grace looked at the envelope, her work address was written sloppily in blue ink and there was no return address.
"It'll have to wait til we get home." she said, setting it on the bathroom counter. "I refuse to miss one second of Patrick Swayze's sexy dance moves for anything."
A/N: Goodbye writer's block! Yay! That last case was like physically draining for me to write. I had originally wanted it to be like The Blair Witch Project since it was Halloween in the story, but it kind of took a slightly different direction and I realized a bunch of stuff I want to change after I had already published the first half, but I used it as a way to make Grace and Dave get closer because I have plans for them in the future.
So, I almost gave up writing this weekend. My life has been pretty stressful this year because of graduation and family and illness and a whole bunch of other stuff, but when I found back in November and began to write Threshold in December, I was thrilled to have an escape from my life. Now things are getting more stressful and instead of writing for myself, I feel like this is like a job, something demanding that I have to do. A lot is demanded of me in my personal and professional life, I don't like feeling like things are expected of me here. So I really don't like feeling like I have to update, I want to feel like my readers want me to update. I mean, reviews like "Awesome, please update soon! :)" are fine, but being bugged to after just posting an author's note about going through a really stressful situation kind of irks me. Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is, please don't expect or demand things of me, the whole reason I write is to escape this. I got a book of Ray Bradbury's short stories this weekend and in his foreward, he says that he writes because he feels the obligation to himself, that these stories have to come out, onto paper. That's how I felt when I began the Threshold series and then Gaze Back Into You. So I'm going to continue writing just because I feel that these stories have to come out of me. Anyway, I doubt anyone even reads my notes so I'll shut up now.
Please don't forget to review! I'd really appreciate it.
