Something about the way Emily's question was worded - "what do you mean, you're in love with me, too?" - caught Spencer off-guard. It didn't make sense that she'd emphasize his acknowledgment of her love for him rather than focus on his unprecedented admission of being in love with her.
Suddenly, confessing to eavesdropping on Emily's conversation with Garcia from the bathroom stall in the locker room at the BAU didn't seem like such a good idea anymore.
Spencer reached for her, wanting to interlock his fingers with hers, craving some kind of tender physical contact after the highly emotional experience of his first ever orgasm with another person, but Emily harshly pulled her hand away and scooted backward to the edge of the bed, out of his reach, leaving him feeling empty and alone and unbearably, desperately vulnerable.
"Wait, are you telling me you're not in love with me?" he asked, unsuccessfully trying to prevent the raw tinge of pain from resonating in his voice.
Emily cocked her head to the side, her black hair falling over one shoulder. In her constricted pupils, he could still see those unnerving opiate-induced traces of emotional disconnection, of detachment from reality. Spencer knew instantly that if he engaged in this discussion with her before she was fully herself again, it could prove disastrous for both of them.
And then the painful realization diffused in his consciousness like an IED explosion. If Emily's not herself right now ... then who did I just have sex with?
"I never said I wasn't in love with you," she stated matter-of-factly, her unblinking charcoal eyes trained on him. "I'd just like to know when you figured it out. Or, precisely, how long you made me suffer before you stopped being such a pussy."
Just as Spencer was about to reply with a carefully-edited version of the truth, they both heard the muffled sound of Emily's cell phone ringing in her "go bag". "Hotch," Emily whispered to herself, a look of terror crossing her face as she jumped off the bed to grab it before the ringing stopped. Hotch loathed missed calls; no matter whether you were shampooing your hair in the shower or dining in a quiet elegant restaurant or on the verge of having an unprecedented mind-blowing orgasm, you were still expected to answer that phone when it rang.
Every BAU agent had a favorite "I missed Hotch's call because ..." story and all secretly kept a running tally of who had missed the most calls and why; it was just another unspoken competition designed to rank their own job performance against that of their team members. At one point, Reid even created a program to "grade" them based on the amount of time spent working with the BAU, the total number of missed calls, and the validity of the reason for the missed call.
The last variable was, of course, subjective and Morgan protested each time he was given a "completely inexcusable" rating for "being in the middle of sex." Reid would definitely be amending those to "entirely understandable" upon his return to Quantico.
Emily wondered where an excuse like the phone was still in my "go bag" because, instead of working the case I was assigned, I fucked Spencer in the back room of a club and then spent the night IV'ing drugs would land her on the spectrum.
"I haven't spoken to him since we arrived," Spencer called out from behind her as she frantically pawed through her personal items to locate the phone. "He's probably just checking in."
Despite the reassurance that Spencer hadn't called their boss when she disappeared without explanation or when she'd returned in a near-overdose, Emily was still obviously anxious as she grasped her iPhone in her hand, momentarily turning her makeup-smeared face toward the ceiling, closing her eyes, and taking in a deep ragged breath before pressing the "answer" button and barking out, "Prentiss."
Her ability to maintain a steady tone even with her entire body visibly trembling was, Spencer considered as he observed her, either impressively professional or extraordinarily pathological.
"I was just about to call you with an update, sir," she lied smoothly. "Based on the tracking information that Garcia provided, I've managed to locate Mand- Amanda's circle of friends. She's visiting Germany at the moment but she's expected to return to Paris in two days. Sp- Reid and I will try to gain more information until we're able to question her directly."
Emily paused, her body stiffening and her mouth dropping open as she listened to Hotch on the other end of the line. "Are you sure?" she asked as she turned to face the wall, her body now quivering so hard she appeared almost epileptic. "But how can that be ... ? She was in Paris when ..." Another pause. "I ... I will certainly keep that in mind when we locate her, sir."
Spencer couldn't bear watching Emily standing there shaking like a cornered miniature pincher for one more second. He rose to his feet and protectively encircled his arms around her waist, drawing her body into his and silently placing open-mouthed kisses against the side of her neck unimpeded by her cell phone. He couldn't hear what Hotch was saying but he recognized that muffled tone immediately; it was the severe, instructional voice their supervisor employed whenever there had been a break in the case and he was forced into a position of relying on other agents who he (or so they all suspected) didn't trust to do the job as well as he himself could.
"Understood, sir. I'll keep you in the loop," Emily intoned respectfully, moving the phone away from her ear to disconnect when Hotch hurriedly added something that Reid couldn't hear. "Garcia wants to know ... what?" she repeated, her free hand curling up to grab one of Spencer's arms, squeezing hard. "Yes, sir. Please tell her that her efforts to make us comfortable here have been greatly appreciated."
Emily hung up the phone and dropped it. Just dropped it on the floor. She twisted away from Spencer to face him, shaking her head in disbelief, the shocked confusion transforming into an almost helpless expression of agony as she spoke. "They think ... they think Mandy's the unsub."
"What?" Spencer exclaimed, repetitively brushing his golden hair behind his ears. "But that - that doesn't make sense. Mandy was here when the other murders occurred. How could she ... ?"
"With her boyfriend," Emily muttered in disgust. "Because of her high MCAT score, she was recruited by the Association of American Medical Colleges to double-check that every applicants' results were correctly sent to the medical schools they'd listed before taking the exam. The AAMC reported several IP addresses in France, all connected to Internet cafes, that accessed the site in the days preceding the official score availability date for applicants. And when Garcia cross-referenced those IP addresses with activity logs, she discovered that Mandy spent a lot of time focusing on test-takers in the Westchester area. The team thinks that she provided her boyfriend with a list of high-scoring applicants so he could check them out and, if they were the only daughters of divorced or widowed fathers, he'd ..." She drew in a ragged breath, her tearful eyes searching Spencer's. "Oh, my God. I spent half a year with her ... I called her my best friend ... How could I have missed something like this?"
"The same way we missed your connection to Ian Doyle," Spencer answered soothingly. "The same way I missed the signs that you were in love with me when you came back from Paris. The same way you missed the fact that I've been in love with you since ..." He stopped abruptly and blushed. Spencer had never admitted to anyone that he'd wanted Emily Prentiss for as long as he had or that the grief he'd suffered when he thought she was dead wasn't only grief over a friend or a colleague but grief over a love that might have been if only ... if only he'd permitted himself to tell her. If only he'd taken a chance on the possibility that she could ever love him back.
"Since when?" Emily asked gently, clasping his hands in hers and swinging them slightly back and forth.
"Since we talked about baby geniuses." His face lit up at the memory, a shy smile forming on his pale lips. "You know I've never wanted to have kids because of my mother, because of the chance that they might be genetically predisposed to schizophrenia. But when you asked me if I was thinking of having baby geniuses one day, I realized ... I realized that I was. That I was thinking about ... about having them with you."
A pink flush crept up Spencer's neck as he quickly added, "I don't - I mean, this isn't about ... I'm not trying to say ..." He took in a deep breath to organize his thoughts and temper the awkward stutter that always impeded his ability to communicate during emotional or difficult conversations. "What I'm trying to say is ... I also realized that you were 'out of my league,' as Morgan would say, both genetically and ... otherwise." He looked down, ashamed. "Because you are, you know? And if I was able to figure it out years ago, then what's going to happen when you figure it out, too?"
"You are un-fucking-believable," Emily stormed, her eyes flashing dangerously and sarcasm creeping into her voice as she pulled her hands away from him. "The next time you give a lecture on profiling, ask one of your eighteen year old Harvard groupies if they think you're not good enough for me. Better yet, show them more than just your pretty angel face and your intellect; show them how you'd care for them if their lives were in danger; show them how you'd give them the most intense, earth-shattering orgasms they'd ever had while denying yourself the same release until you were certain that their feelings for you were real; show them ..."
He cut her off midsentence. "I actually wanted to talk about that," Spencer interjected, staring down at her morosely. "When I ... when we were together earlier, I looked into your eyes and saw this - this heroin-affected version of you. And now I feel like you've had sex with me and I've had sex with you but ... but we still haven't had sex yet."
"Oh, Reid, just because I didn't come ..." Emily started to interrupt, her face crumbling.
"No, wait," he said, holding up one hand to silence her. "It's not about that. It's about ... it's about how I didn't feel connected to you when it was over. How I felt like there was this invisible glass barrier separating us. And now I know how you must have felt last night at the club. Only the barrier wasn't drugs; it was me. And when the drugs have left your system, I want to do it again. Because ... because I don't think you're ever going to leave my system, Emily."
The love light shined in her eyes for a brief moment before she began to gnaw on the inside of her cheeks, sneaking a glance at her purse on the floor. "And if it takes a while for the drugs to leave my system?"
"Your pupils have been progressively dilating and your breathing and heart rate, while accelerated during your phone call with Hotch, are only mildly elevated now. You're alert, engaged, and emotional. And your body temperature has changed; you're sweating slightly but you also have goosebumps." Spencer spoke as though he were presenting a case study, not because he didn't want to empathize with her but because his own struggle with opiates and his feelings about Emily's flirtation with those very same drugs were too difficult for him to manage. "The signs of slight nausea I thought might be related to finding out about Mandy still haven't remitted even though we've stopped discussing the case. So it's evident to me that you're beginning to feel mild withdrawal symptoms."
Emily slouched uncomfortably, pointedly refraining from gazing at her black purse on the white plush carpet behind him.
"Don't worry, with only one night of OxyContin use followed by one night of heroin use, your withdrawal symptoms will be so mild they won't even come close to resembling the kind of horror stories you hear from people with prolonged physical dependence on these drugs," Spencer continued. "It'll be more like a brief hangover after a weekend of binge drinking."
"Mmm-hmm," Emily responded noncommittally.
"And you can stop staring at your purse now, by the way. I already flushed the drugs."
"You what?" she snapped angrily, swirling around to stare daggers at him. "What fucking right did you have to go through my stuff? You, of all people! I had to practically kill myself to earn back your trust and ..."
"That's why," he interrupted, almost sadly.
"What? What's why?"
"That's why I went through your stuff. You nearly killed yourself with drugs last night, Emily. I found you slumped in the hallway, barely alive, and I knew if I did nothing you'd die but I knew if I called an ambulance your life would be over in a different way. So I chose to administer cocaine to counteract the effect of the heroin instead." Spencer furrowed his brow, tilting his head sideways. "You really don't remember any of this?"
"I remember ..." Emily's eyes scanned the ceiling as she struggled with her memory. "I remember Picasso giving me a hit and putting me in a cab. And then I remember ... being led ... I remember you leading me to the bed." She stopped and held out her arms to examine the multiple puncture wounds lining her veins. "So which one was yours?"
"I didn't inject it!" Spencer insisted, horrified." I shoved it up your nose. It took me a few tries before I figured out I had to hold one of your nostrils closed if I didn't want most of it to fall out onto your dress but I managed eventually."
Emily looked down at her black dress, noticing for the first time that it was covered with dried smears of white paste.
"And after a few hours of listening to your breathing and your heart rate, I was convinced you were stable enough for me to leave you in bed so I could flush the rest of the drugs in your purse." Spencer licked his lips, hesitant. "I- I almost couldn't flush the heroin. I almost shot it myself. But you know what stopped me?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't. How selfish was she, really, for putting Spencer's already-fragile sobriety at risk?
"You stopped me, Emily. Not just the fact that you'd almost overdosed but thinking about what Morgan said to me when you were gone, about how if I relapsed it would hurt you, about how you wouldn't have wanted that for me. Thinking about how you asked me if I remembered what we were like when I was on Dilaudid ... and thinking about how I would have used that OxyContin with you on the plane if you hadn't made the choice to flush it. How, at the time, I almost wished you wouldn't flush it because the drugs felt so close to me, so much closer to me than you ..." Spencer reached out for her, pulling her lithe body into his. "I don't want us to be like that, Emily. I don't want us to be in a place where something always needs to be ... fixed between us."
"I don't, either," she murmured softly, still stunned by his admission that the choice he had given her between flushing the Oxy or receiving a "massage" wasn't some kind of poker play, that he really would have snorted opiates with her ... and she was especially stunned by the idea that he'd truly believed, at the time, there was a chance she might have let him relapse. Invited him to relapse, really.
"We have two days until Mandy returns from Germany. Can you just please let someone take care of you for once in your life, Emily? Can you let me take care of you?" he implored, holding her body closer to his and kissing the top of her head.
Emily gave a barely-perceptible nod against his chest even though every cell in her body wanted her to protest that she didn't deserve this, didn't deserve him, not after everything she'd put him through ...
"Good," Spencer stated with finality. "Then let's start with a bath. Go lay down on the bed and I'll draw it for you."
"Yes, Doctor," she retorted, smiling gratefully through her sarcasm.
When he returned from the bathroom, he found her sitting on her knees and shifting on the bed in apparent discomfort. Alarmed, he immediately inquired, "Emily? Emily, what's wrong?"
"Um ... this is really weird and a little embarrassing but I feel ... I feel ..." She stopped midsentence and that's when he noticed she hadn't just been shifting her body on the bed; she'd been rubbing herself against it.
"You feel sexually aroused," Spencer observed in such a detached manner she found it unnerving.
"I ... uh, yeah," Emily conceded, avoiding eye contact. "But I wasn't even thinking about that! I swear! It just ... um ... it just hit me out of nowhere ... and ... and it's not only a little, either. It's incredibly ... It's ..."
"It's one of the only good things about opiate withdrawal," he offered, his mouth breaking into a wide grin. "Hypersexuality."
"Really?" she asked skeptically.
"Yep. And you're lucky."
"Why's that?" she half-groaned, still frustratingly trying to grind against the comforter.
"Because you just happen to be in the company of someone who, until today, had suppressed his sexual urges for twenty-nine years." The look on his face was practically mischievous. "In fact, I was just in the bathroom thinking that you might not be able to handle the sheer force and amount of ... release ... I'm going to need until I'm satisfied."
An erotic shudder passed through Emily's body at his drawn-out emphasis on the word "release," just as he knew it would.
With a smirk, Spencer casually ran one hand down his thigh, drawing her attention to the bulge in his pants. "Do you think you'll be able to give me a hand with that?"
Emily swiftly jumped off the bed and pressed her body against his, hard and furious, eliciting a low moan from deep within his throat.
It was her turn to smirk now. "Oh, Spencer ... I think I can give you more than just a hand."