"It's not the drugs that make the drug addict. It's the need to escape reality." - Unknown
Morgan's body felt stiff and tired as he watched Spencer. The younger man had fallen asleep, well...passed out would have been a more accurate description, on the couch. Spencer's arm was curled up under his head, which rested in the crook. His other hand was hanging over the edge. He'd dropped the syringe onto the floor after his fingers had relaxed from the dilaudid taking effect.
Morgan ran his hand down his own face. This was worse than he had originally thought. He didn't think Spencer would actually shoot up in front of him. He thought outright calling him out would get him to take a step back and at least sit down for a discussion. He hadn't been mentally prepared. He froze as Spencer had prepared a syringe with the narcotic and injected it within a minute.
Spencer needed rehab.
The words felt foreign and wrong as they crossed Morgan's mind. The possibility had come up in conversations between himself and Gideon but Morgan still had a sliver of hope that they were all wrong with their assumptions. It was the last conversation between the team that had Morgan's senses on high before he had come to check on Spencer.
The team, except for Spencer and Hotch, had met at a small Thai restaurant they liked to frequent after cases. Instead of the normal chatter to lighten their moods after a trip away, they were staring silently at each over the containers of food that were scattered across the table.
Gideon informed the team that Hotch had filed for leave for Spencer and did not want to know, for reporting purposes, what happened during that time off. Gideon then said what everyone had been thinking in the back of their minds for the last couple of months. JJ looked close to tears as she looked from Gideon to Emily.
"Are you sure?" She asked, the disbelief bubbling up in her soft voice. Emily sighed audibly.
"It would make sense." She said carefully, looking from JJ to Garcia. Garcia's face mirrored JJ's.
"Reid hasn't resembled his statistic spouting self in a long time but, drugs? I'm with JJ. Are you sure?" She added, squinting behind her bright pink glasses, as she used a sparkly blue manicured finger to push them up the bridge of her nose.
"He all but admitted it to me." Gideon stated in a matter of fact tone. Gideon looked to Morgan. "I think we need to look into checking him into a facility. Between his behavior and diminished emotional state, it might be past the mark for novice intervention."
"How will we keep this under Strauss's radar?" Emily asked, twirling her noddles around her plate with her chopsticks. "If his insurance is run, she'll know almost immediately. Hell, if his social is run, she'd know."
"We won't make him use his insurance." Gideon said, tilting his head to the side. The rest of the team looked at him quizzically. "I have a bit of a savings and an old friend of mine offered to help. Let's just say him and I go way back. He knows first hand what a number this job can have on a person. Now, as far as running personal information, there must be a way to make that disappear from the system. If only we knew some type of skilled computer hacker..." Gideon let his voice trail off and four pairs of eyes turned to face Garcia.
"Copy that, wise leader. Let me wave my talented technical digits over my crystal ball of dark hacker magic and as Dr. Picard requests often, I will make it so."
"I was hoping I'd hear something to that effect." Gideon said, his mouth curling into a half smile.
"Now that leaves the messenger."
"The messenger?" JJ asked.
"Yes. The person who's going to convince Reid to get some help."
The five agents stayed quiet a moment as they looked at each other. Finally, JJ broke the silence.
"It should be you, Derek." Morgan's head snapped over to look at JJ. He knew he'd been uncharacteristically quiet for most of this conversation.
"Me? Why me?" he questioned, shifting his gaze from JJ to Gideon. "We all know the kid looks up to you, Gideon. You should do it."
"Yes but who does he go to before talking to me?" Gideon said, making eye contact with Morgan. It was true. When Spencer had first started having nightmares, it was Morgan that he'd broached the subject with first. When he was having a hard time with his first case after the abduction, it was Morgan who had gotten the truth out of him on the jet. Morgan stared down at his plate, contemplating.
"Okay." He said simply. He looked up, his eyes scanning over his coworkers. "And if he says no?" Gideon responded first.
"If he does...then we keep asking until he goes. "
And now Morgan was here. Sitting in Spencer's apartment no closer to helping him than when he had arrived. Morgan looked down to his pocket as he felt his phone vibrate. He retrieved it and looked at the message on the screen. It was from Gideon,
How's it going? Has he agreed to go? Morgan shook his head as he typed out his response.
I've barely been able to bring it up. This isn't going well. He's high and he's passed out.
Give us twenty minutes.
All right. The door is unlocked.
Morgan locked his phone and slid it back into his pocket, He felt Spencer shift beside him and he turned to look at him.
"Who was that?" Spencer mumbled, kicking his legs out to stretch them.
"Gideon." Morgan told him as he watched Spencer slowly push himself up into a sitting position. He watched him as he shut his eyes tight, as if the act of sitting up was too painful to bear, before letting his face go slack. Spencer turned to look at Morgan and he could see that Spencer's eyes were dilated. He was still high.
"What did he want?" The words were soft and almost emotionless.
"He had a question about a consult he's working on." Morgan said without missing a beat. Spencer laughed then leaned forward to grab the syringe from the floor where he'd spotted it moments before. He knew he should feel bad about shooting up in front of Morgan but he just didn't care. He went about refilling the syringe ignoring the fact that Morgan was even there.
"You know you move your lips while you text?" Spencer said, as he was tapping out the bubbles.
"W-what?" Morgan stuttered, surprised at the statement. Spencer cast a sideways glance at him, curling one side of his mouth up into a smirk.
"If I have to sit through an intervention, I am going to at least make it bearable. I figure I've got about ten minutes before the rest of the team is at my door. I should be surprised but I guess I knew it was coming. We're all profilers. Do you know what I mean?" By the end of the sentence, Spencer was ready to inject his, well if he was being honest, fourth dose of dilaudid of the day but it was ripped from his hand from Morgan.
"Stop!" Morgan's voice was filled with frustration as Spencer made a feeble attempt to reclaim his syringe.
"What the fuck, man? Give it back! If I'm going to sit and listen to everything, I'm going to be numb while I do it."
"You're killing yourself."
"If I wanted to do that, then I'd use my gun. Much quicker. Maybe I'd even play a little roulette for old times' sake. You know...it's God's will"
"Reid..."
"Or maybe I should just inject a barrel full of air. An air embolism wouldn't be a bad way to go. Although, it would have to be done with a much larger syringe if I wanted to be successful on the first try. It's actually some what common for air to accidentally get into the blood circulation during events such as surgical procedures but because it is stopped at the lungs it-"
"Reid!" The sharp sound of Morgan yelling his name stopped him mid ramble. Spencer looked at Morgan and was about to start in again when his apartment door opened. Both agents turned to look. Morgan's face flooded with relief as Gideon and Emily walked into the apartment and Spencer's face twisted with embarrassment despite himself. It was one thing to be candid with Morgan, who seemed to pull things out of him with ease but it was another to let the rest of the team see him like this. He used the moment of distraction to grab the full syringe from Morgan and stuff it into his sweatshirt pocket.
Spencer watched as Gideon and Emily made their way to his living room. He saw the silent exchange between Morgan and Gideon as Emily sat in the arm chair adjacent to the couch, and effectively blocking the exit to the apartment, while Gideon took a seat on the other side of him so Spencer was sandwiched between him and Morgan. There was an almost electric vibe of nervous energy in the room. It made Spencer bounce his legs as he shifted his gaze from Emily to Gideon and finally to Morgan. He wondered where Garcia and JJ were but was glad that more people weren't in the room. He rarely had company and even having these few people in his home was filling him with uneasiness.
"Spencer, how are you feeling today?" Gideon started, his voice even and his face neutral. Gideon could feel Spencer fidgeting next to him as he watched his eyes dart nervously from each agent to the next. It was reminiscent of a small child being caught red handed with his hand in the cookie jar. He inhaled slowly as he waited for a response. Spencer remained silent, alternating between wringing his hands then trying to calm them by gripping his thighs.
"Reid?" Emily's voice was soft as she leaned forward trying to make eye contact with him. He ignored her questioning tone as he tried to get his thoughts in order. His mind was spinning like a Rolodex trying to come up with a response. He wanted to just give in, to accept the help but a stronger part of him wanted to seek safety in his room and to inject the syringe that he had store in his pocket. One part of him knew he was hurting his colleagues, friends really, the only real friends he had ever had but he couldn't see how to get through this.
"Can you just give me a minute?" Spencer said, as he started to rise from his seat. Morgan quickly reached up and laid a firm hand on his shoulder, pushing him back down to a sitting position. Spencer turned and cast an irritated look at him.
"Just sit and listen, okay?" Morgan told him, knowing if he let him leave the room he would shoot up.
"I'm not going. I already told Morgan I'm not going to any rehabilitation facility. I will go to meetings. I will figure this out on my own. I don't need your help. Thank you for coming here. I appreciate it, I really do but it's not necessary. I have four weeks to start making a change and tomorrow I plan on-"
"Except tomorrow will become the next day and then the next day is next week. Spencer, logically, you know the pattern of addicts." Gideon said as he shifted in his seat. "This will end one of two ways, either you decide to get some treatment or-"
"I wind up dead?" Spencer finished Gideon's sentence, mumbling down into his hands so that his response was barely audible.
"Yes, or you wind up dead." He confirmed. Spencer sighed as Gideon continued. "No one is mad. Not one of us are judging you. Will you at least listen to what we have to say?"
"Fine. I'll listen but I need to use the bathroom first." Spencer said, purposely not looking at Morgan as he stood. Morgan opened his mouth to protest but Gideon held his hand up.
"All right. We'll be here." The three other agents watched as Spencer stood and made his way quickly down the hall to the bathroom.
"Gideon, he's going to get high." Morgan said in a hushed tone. Emily looked between the two men.
"I don't think he'd try that with us here." She said hesitantly. She still wanted to give Spencer the benefit of the doubt even though they were sitting here, intervention style, to try and convince him to seek treatment.
"Emily, you haven't seen him over the last few hours. The kid's a complete mess. This is way past what we thought our worst case scenario was. I mean, I got here and he'd downed almost a fifth of liquor with a dilaudid chaser."
"Are you serious?" She asked, her eyes going wide. She'd barely seen Spencer drink let alone consume enough alcohol to be intoxicated.
"He's an addict." Gideon stated. "If we're lucky, he'll be high enough to let us convince him rehab is the answer to his problem. If we're not, he'd still be high."
"I hope you're right." Morgan replied. The three turned to face the hallway as they heard the bathroom door open. Spencer was using the wall as a mean to steady himself as he made his way back into the living room. The glazed look in his eyes was noticeable to everyone and they watched as he stumbled a bit and tried to hide it as he sat down.
"Okay." Spencer told them as he stared straight ahead trying to look through them rather than at them. His body felt weightless and he used the sound of his own breathing to quell his nervousness. In and out. In and out. He waited for one of them to speak.
"I'll cut to the chase." Gideon began. "We've arranged for a spot at a treatment center for you. It's in Alexandria. Twenty-eight days in patient treatment. You'll have a safe detox and whatever it is that you need to work through, they can help."
"I can't. Once they take my information, it'll send up a red flag." Spencer countered.
"We've got that covered, Reid. Garcia will make sure it doesn't." Emily told him.
"Garcia know's about this?" Spencer said, an edge evident in his voice. "Does anyone not know about this?"
"It's not like that, kid. We've all noticed something hasn't been okay with you for awhile." Morgan told him. Spencer ran his hand through his hair nervously as he began to tap his foot.
"This sounds expensive. I won't be able to afford it."
"It's taken care of, Spencer." Gideon told him. "You just need to say yes."
"I can't accept that."
"You can." Gideon said.
"Please, Reid? You can't keep going like this. We need you. This team needs you." Emily told him. "Will you go?"
"What about-"
"Please go, Pretty Boy. You don't need to worry about anything else." Morgan interrupted.
"Spencer?" Gideon's voice hit him.
"Reid?" Then Emily's.
"Please, kid." and finally Morgan. Spencer's mind was reeling between relief that there could be a solution to this and terror at the thought of detoxing and feeling every thought and emotion sober. He closed his eyes.
"Yes." He said quietly."I'll go."
It was Morgan whose arms wrapped around him first then he felt Emily and finally Gideon's hand on his shoulder. He didn't know where else to start but with yes.
