Chapter Twenty-Nine: July, 2001

.

Life was a hazy mix of spending time with Aaron, going to work, hiding his work from Aaron…

Hiding himself from Aaron.

It was thrilling and exciting and overwhelming and Spencer felt like he was drowning in it, but in the very best kind of way. The attraction didn't fade. He wanted Aaron, desperately, but he also wanted more. He wanted what they'd had back. Suddenly offered a taste of that halcyon friendship once more, he found himself paging through laminated letters still with the pinholes in the sides from where he'd stuck them to his college bedroom wall. All the mundane memories, so much sweeter for their childish mediocrity. He spent hours reading back through his and Aaron's past, all the simple parts of it. The terrible ones he'd buried, but these he still had.

He realized, distantly, that he was only reaffirming his own rose-hued view of Aaron. All these letters, all these memories, they were the good with none of the bad. They were movies and storms and Lord of the Rings, but they weren't Aaron's Dad or Spencer's Mom or being isolated and alone. And maybe he was drowning, but he wasn't exactly reaching for a life-vest.

His cell buzzed constantly as they rebuilt a tentative something that solidified quickly into something more. Spencer was tapping out a text one morning while buttering toast one-handed when he glanced up to find Ethan staring at him.

"What?" he asked defensively, shielding his phone with his palm so that Ethan didn't glance down and see his dangerously flirty text: Results on your state of ticklish inconclusive. Need more evidence. When are you getting here? S.R.

"I've never seen you this…" Ethan stalled, his fingers wrapped around his thermos. Heading off to the musical practise he'd ended up auditioning for after Spence had dared him to, probably, but Spencer was off today and looking forward to having the house to himself. To himself, and to Aaron. "Uh. Happy?"

Spencer blinked. Was he happy?

Was this happy?

"He was my friend," he settled for saying, "I missed him."

Ethan shot him a strange look. "Missed him is one way of putting it," he murmured. He slurped at his thermos, loudly, just to make Spencer twitch with irritation at the obscene noise. "Spence… um. I just… careful, alright?"

Incredulously, Spencer stared at him. Careful? Of Aaron? What on earth was there to be careful of? "He'd my friend," he repeated blankly, because didn't that say everything? Aaron would never hurt him, not ever. "He's not Clary or—"

"I don't mean him." Ethan wasn't slurping anymore, but levelling a steady gaze at Spencer that made him feel small and twisted and dangerously out of air. "You don't just get better overnight because you find a friend, Spence. Hanging your entire recovery on one man is asking for trouble, especially with your—"

"My what?" Spencer was shivering with something dangerously close to anger. "My history, Ethan?" And he didn't know why he felt so fucking angry, but how dare Ethan bring that into this. He wasn't clinging to Aaron because he wanted to recover, he wasn't using him as a twelve-step-program, and he wasn't stupid. "Worried I'll fuck him for a hit—"

The chair thumped the wall as Ethan stood, moving around the table in two strides as his hand flashed out to snap, vicelike, around Spencer's wrist. Spencer squeaked, startled, and automatically felt himself go passively limp in the face of the expected anger. But there was no anger in Ethan's eyes, soft even though his mouth was set in a thin, white line, as he turned Spencer's arm and studied the crook of his elbow.

"I'm still clean," Spencer managed, thrown. The marks were faded.

"You're being a fuckwit," Ethan replied sharply. "You're not usually this much of a wanker unless you're withdrawing. What's got you so rattled?" He didn't let go, but his grip had relaxed. More a comfort than a confine. Spencer tugged away and Ethan let him.

"I'm not going to—" But Spencer couldn't say it. He couldn't even insinuate it. "I'm—"

Completely incapable of facing his fears.

Ethan's mouth twisted, confused and worried and still sharp, all at once. But he didn't know. He couldn't know.

"Just be careful," his friend repeated, and moved away to gather his belongings. "What are you afraid of, Spence?"

Spencer couldn't answer that either.

.


.

He wasn't careful. He'd meant to be. Shit, he'd really meant to be. But then there was Aaron and the man was a ridiculous flirt and so fucking pretty and—

Spencer let his head drop against the desk, the spiral-binding of the book under his cheek digging painfully into his skin. It smelled of paper and ink and cigar smoke, the ambient sounds of the club around him muted as he lost himself in his own insecurities, and the memory.

What are you afraid of? Ethan had asked, and then Spencer had stupidly stumbled right into it. What are you afraid of and, as it turned out, what Spencer was afraid of was getting his gorgeous best friend off on his living room floor in a frantic, hazy fumble of hands and then having that friend look at him like that, with fear in his eyes and panic flushing across his clammy face, and admitting that that was a first.

Spencer didn't want to be anyone's first. He couldn't be. He'd… it wasn't possible. Aaron was just so fucking handsome and well-spoken and his clothes were always so neat and styled, how could it be possible that Spencer was a first for him? That Spencer had taken the trust his friend had shown and lured him into—

Bile burned and Spencer turned his head, just in case. Wastepaper basket to the side of the corner desks he worked on—the last thing he needed was to vomit on the books. He'd be working overnights for weeks fixing that mess up if he did.

Your first time is special, Spencer, murmured a distant memory. When you're ready.

He lurched and puked into the basket, distantly hearing someone make a noise of disgust. It left him teary-eyed and trembling, hanging painfully over the desk with his fingers cramped around the rough edge and his head spinning. Drowning in everything he'd done, leading Aaron down the same path he'd been led down.

Oh god, he was doing it again.

"Oi," barked a voice, and Spencer jerked upright and stared at a bottle of water floating in front of his nose. "What's with you?"

Dent. It was just Dent.

"Bad dinner last night," Spencer rasped, taking the water with a shiver. Dent was big on coke. The guy always had a bump on him, or two, and was generous with them if asked. He'd have some on him now. Just a little bit. Just a hit to get through this shift. One hit, half an hour max. No one would know. No one but him and Dent, and Dent never narked.

Dent was eyeing him now, his hooded eyes squinted down into an obscure kind of worry. "Maybe you should bunk off, go home," he said, leaning closer and frowning. "You're all sweaty. You tweaking?"

No. "No," he managed. He wasn't.

He could be. But that wouldn't help. It might help.

"Here." It wasn't water being offered. It wasn't coke either. Spencer shivered again, almost thankful, and took the cigarette Dent was holding. "Take five and decide. I'll take over if you need. Nothing big needs to be done for a few weeks, we can spare you the night."

Dent was kind, even when high. Which was something Spencer hadn't managed.

"Thanks," he said, and took the smoke. It would make him dizzy and dry-throated, but anything was better than facing that he couldn't think about how Aaron had looked underneath him without becoming aroused. As though somehow in the interim between now and then, Aaron had become nothing but a body to him. How would he know? It's not like he'd managed any worthwhile relationships to compare it to…

He slunk outside, his head thumping and barely soothed by the wash of warm, July night-air that fell over him like a blanket as soon as the employee access door slammed shut behind him. He was in the parking lot, a single yellow light illuminating him in stark profile against the door, and he looked up and focused for a second on the blinking red light of the security camera that watched him emotionlessly.

He'd forgotten a lighter. The cigarette hung between his fingers, and he remembered when his mom was quitting. How he'd teased her. He flicked it and closed his eyes, slumping back against grimy brickwork and trying to catch his breath. Summer here wasn't like it was at home. Even mid-July, there was a bite of cool to the air. A bite of coastal promise. Vegas didn't have that.

"Damn," he muttered, and put the cigarette to his mouth for something to do, chewing absently on the end. It left his hands free to pick at the threads of his shirt, loosen his bowtie, tighten his belt, end up tapping restlessly at the screen of his smartphone.

Bored. Work is boring. I miss you. What are you doing? S.R.

The reply was instant, as though maybe Aaron was sitting there with his cell fretting over this too. Nothing important. When do you finish.

Excitement churned with horror and horror with wanting and with the wanting came a sick flush of something that he wasn't sure whether it was desire or cravings. Maybe the two things were so twisted up in his stupid addict brain that they basically amounted to the same thing anyway. But he hadn't been clean for a year by giving into those baser desires.

Three a.m. That's way too late to visit. It's not safe to travel at that time. S.R.

There. See. He could walk away from what taunted him. He could say no. He could keep saying no. He was just… struggling. It would pass. It always passed. He bit down on the smoke and tasted nicotine and almost gagged, feeling the filter give between his teeth. And almost as though to mock him, while he was distracted, his fingers had typed out wait, no. I do want to see you. Can you come over?

He erased it. Typed out again I think I need help and I want to tell you why.

Erased it again. Once more. I'm an addict and I don't know how much of the boy you knew is left anymore. Everything I do is tainted by that.

Erase.

Tap tap tap tap went his fingers and he sent the final message before he could rethink it, shifting the smoke from one side of his mouth to the other using his tongue. Bloop and it was sent. He stared at it.

But I really want to see you. Tomorrow? S.R

There. Only sort of giving in. Only sort of. But what would happen? Would they talk about what happened? Would they talk about what they wanted?

Would they have sex?

He shuddered. He wanted. He—

"Well shit, look what the neurotic cat dragged in."

He spun, fist bunched around his phone and the smoke falling from his mouth as he opened it to shout for security. None of them were easy with being snuck up on. But it wasn't anyone dangerous, or rather, it wasn't anyone dangerous to anyone other than him.

"Clary," he said coolly, and looked down at the cigarette laying on the dirty asphalt.

She was dressed for the weather, showing plenty of pale, freckled skin and faded tattoos as she sashayed over and examined him carefully through heavily mascaraed eyes. Hair tied back in a tidy bun and mouth bare of lipstick, her foundation only light today, he blinked and realized that, even in the yellow glare overhead, she looked healthy. Healthy-ish. Nowhere near as strung-out as usual.

"Hey, kid," she said, cocking her chin back. "Need a fag?" He blinked. What? For a moment thrown, until she offered him a smoke from her own packet, nodding to the one he'd dropped. "Unless you've gotten over that weird germ thing you have."

"No," he said, then, "yes," and took one. Her mouth quirked upwards; she lit her smoke first with a lighter that guttered low and then lit his with her own.

The first drag hurt. The second wasn't any better. He coughed and kept coughing until his head cleared a little and the cloying, thickening anxiety that was twisting his thoughts and his brain into thoughtless tangles began to recede. His chest loosened. He hadn't even noticed he'd been panting. They stood in silence.

"You alright?" she asked, and he grunted. "You look… antsy. Anxious. Figured you'd be doing better, now you're off the shit."

"I am better," he said, and it was only half a lie. "You've put on weight." A thoughtless observation, she probably wouldn't thank him, but his mouth was running away with his loosening tongue and he distantly thought that he was definitely on the tail end of a panic attack that might have started the day before when Aaron had lain under him and admitted that this was nothing he'd had before. "I mean, you look good. Better."

Clary's eyebrows popped. "Fatter?" But she was smiling. It was a good look on her. Last time he'd seen her, her mouth was split open, her bottom lip a fat mess. He'd cleaned it for her. He touched it now, just to check. To anchor himself. There was ash falling from his smoke. Her lip was warm and she twitched away, pale eyes widening. He traced the touch down to her jaw, the skin that was smoother than it had been.

"You should stay clean," he murmured, and her smile faded. Someone shrieked out the front of the club, raucous laughter. "It suits you. You look pretty."

"Fuck you, kid," she muttered. "You're the only shitbag who ever says that, you know?" A pause, a sigh. "I'm not clean, idiot."

Oh.

"Oh," he said, his hand dropping. The smoke was burning down.

And she'd retreated, back behind her cool ice-eyes. Looking at him like a customer again instead of sometimes-something else. Was this the only semblance of a relationship he'd made since Aaron, aside from his fucked up half-infatuation with Ethan?

"You, on the other hand, look like being clean ain't doing you any favours." Her words were sly and he swallowed. Swallowed again. Stubbed the cigarette he'd barely smoked out under his shoe, feeling rocks grind and twist under his heel. Slowly. Slowly. Smoke curled from hers. The anxiety was back and craving made him stupid. Fear made him stupid. "I can help with that."

He swallowed again. Unwound his numb fingers from his sweaty cell and peered at the time and at the message that blinked there.

I really want to see you sooner. I can't stop thinking about you. About us. About what we did.

Spencer Reid, meet wall. He slammed into his breakdown hard and stepped into her embrace, curling around her body. It was just a body, just sex. He'd prove it. What he had with Aaron was nothing like this.

"Yes, you can," murmured the desperate man who sometimes took over the body of Spencer Reid, and led the way to his apartment.

.


.

He fucked her sober, just to prove a point. "Stop thinking," she'd hissed to him, right before moaning because he'd taken his mouth and brought to right to the pretty curve of her breast. She had a tattoo there, a bird trying to leap into the air. He licked at it and imagined its wings catching the wind, and then he tapped his hips against her in the rhythm he knew she liked best. Fast and erratic and needy and willing, and she was high and pliable under him.

Wait, she'd murmured, and he'd curled naked on the bed with his knee to his chest and watched her slip the hypodermic under her skin. Held her as she'd purred and relaxed into his arms, barely into it anymore but still willing to play along. He still got her off. More than once. He figured he owed her that much since he was basically using her as a get out of Aaron free card.

And he didn't think. He stepped back. He was good at that. Disassociating they'd called it in the therapy he'd gone to twice in the time after. Whatever it was, he'd taken it and refined it to a fine art. Blanking out everything but the touch of skin and the throb of their hearts and the sound she made when she came. That was all that was important. He didn't need drugs to be nothing.

"The hell is wrong with you?" she was hissing now, and he blinked back into his mind just enough to find his fingers tracing that grounded bird. "Don't leave me hanging, asshole."

He blinked again. He was softening within her, loosing that rhythm, losing the pace. Another shiver and he tried to reach for the nothing again.

His cell buzzed nearby, and he faltered.

"Wait," he mumbled, pulling out before his distraction destroyed the integrity of the condom. "Give me a minute." He used his fingers on her to keep her quiet while she rolled her eyes and went for the needle. Curled his own fist around himself and stroked and stroked and whined as he tried to find that knife's edge, desire leeching away and leaving him cold. His eyes on the drugs. She fumbled the hypodermic, made a noise of annoyance, tossed that aside and went for the powder instead.

He waited until she was done and then he abandoned his dick and kissed her furiously, just to get a taste of the powder traces on her top lip, hating himself. Despising himself.

She glanced down, raised an eyebrow. "Not like you to be such a limp—" she began, but he made a low noise of anger and she stopped. "Just take some, Spencer. You want it. Look at you."

His cell buzzed again.

Rattled, he reached for it and she slapped his hand away. He kissed her again. Rolled her back onto the spotty sheets and tried to forget himself by being pushy, angry, demanding. She gave into that. She knew that.

He realized what he was doing and rocketed away with her with a sharp yelp, staggering up. Stunned and flushed all red across her bare chest, she stared at him with her pupils blown black and her legs still half thrown open. "The fuck?" she panted, wiping her mouth. There was a line of red marks on her shoulder where he'd gripped her. That would bruise. He'd bruised her. "Get back here, you almost—"

He fled. Bolted out of the room and to the bathroom, slamming the door so hard shut behind him that it bounced. Washed his face and hands and paced about the tiny space, toes squeaking on the gritty tiles. There were trousers in there, musty and sweaty from being worn at work. He tugged them on anyway. Found a shirt and sniffed it and winced as he recognised Ethan's cologne. Not right now. He couldn't do that.

Thump thump yelled the bathroom door as someone battered their fist against it. Spencer curled back, ass to the sink and still half-naked. Bare-chested and trembling. He looked at himself in the mirror. Pink lips all swollen from kissing, his hair a wild mess, his throat marked by her hungry mouth. He looked like a whore. He bit at his lip and watched it turn white.

Thump went the door again. "Spence?" called Ethan. "Was that you?"

Ethan?

Oh fuck.

Spencer stared at the door, frozen. Hoping Clary wouldn't come out of the room, hoping Ethan hadn't heard, cursing his stup—

The door had never locked. Or, it had once, and Ethan had removed it quietly and never mentioned it. Neither of them had. They both knew why a bathroom lock might be a bad idea in this household. It opened and Ethan poked his head in, eyes squinted shut in case he was about to cop an eyeful of his naked housemate and his mouth still half-grinning. "Hey," he said, "you naked? What the hell was that? You almost scared the—"

Spencer didn't answer. Ethan opened his eyes. Looked him up and down and went to make a lewd joke, stopped. There was a cool silence.

"You're shaking," Ethan said.

Spencer said nothing.

"Spence? Hey. Hey… what happened?" Being cautious. Being worried. He wouldn't be soon. Soon he'd just be angry. "Are you hurt? Are you…" Spencer didn't look away from those green eyes examining his, searching for tell-tale signs. So untrustworthy. Always untrustworthy.

"Don't," Spencer stammered. And there it went. The worry vanished, replaced with the stormy kind of oncoming fury he was more familiar with. "Don't overreact."

"Clary," Ethan said. "Fucking Clary."

Spencer smelled alcohol. Fear turned him cold.

Ethan was a volatile drunk.

"Don't," Spencer whispered again, but Ethan was gone. And Spencer stayed there because he was a coward, a goddamn fucking coward, until the shouting began. And then a little more, because his chest had gone all tight and narrow listening to them scream at each other, hearing the so-easily-unleashed rage that Ethan so rarely let loose except at the woman he despised. And he'd brought her here in the face of that.

Finally, he gathered together what was left of his mangled courage, and walked out there to face what he'd done.

.


.

Aaron saw it. He saw it all. Every last twisted, rotten thing that festered inside Spencer's mind and body. He saw Clary. He saw the drugs. He saw Ethan at his worst.

And, still, he held him. Still, he took him in.

Spencer felt so so small in the face of that kindness. Unworthy.

The day after everything he'd thought he'd regained came crashing down under the weight of his contemptibility, Aaron went to Spencer's apartment. Alone. Spencer didn't say anything as Aaron told him this was happening. He didn't have the right to say anything. Just sat quietly at Aaron's kitchen bench with the man's housemates orbiting around them and trying to pretend that they weren't listening intently. He knew Ethan would be there. He knew Aaron and Ethan would talk.

He knew Ethan wouldn't hold a thing back. Not a thing.

And he knew this was the end. There was no way Aaron would want anything to do with him after this. Absolutely no way.

"Stay with him," Aaron had murmured to his housemates, and now the girl—Kate—was trying to talk to him in a soft voice that suggested she thought he was the victim rather than the antagonist. Spencer answered everything as shortly and softly as possible, and eventually they stopped trying, just left him sitting there while he waited for this something to end.

The TV chattered with something vapid, the couple began bickering quietly, a clock ticked endlessly on the wall. Spencer's cell was silent, loaded with the texts he hadn't received—none from Ethan, none from Aaron—angry ones from work about him vanishing; he wasn't worried, he was too important to be fired—and one from his provider offering him bonuses for switching plans. He played snake until the battery went flat, then did the dishes. Poked at the leaky faucet in the bathroom. Paced.

Found himself in Aaron's bedroom faced with the relentless personality of the boy he'd loved and the man he'd become. In there, he found it. He was sitting on Aaron's bed thinking of very little at all except how numb he felt, when his eyes fell on the paper folded inside an old, yellow-paged book. He shouldn't have looked. He did.

It was their letter. The trying again letter, and it was folded and well-worn from being read over and over and over. Spencer read it and then look at the book it had been placed in.

Lord of the Rings. The copy Spencer's mom had given Aaron, all those years ago. Shaken, Spencer replaced the letter gently under the page where Diana had thanked Aaron for being friends with a lonely boy, and then curled on the bed to await the inevitable. It felt like minutes later but it might have been hours, as Spencer drifted from a half-doze to real sleep to twitching awake, when Aaron walked in. Spencer looked at him and waited for the final blow.

"What?" he whispered, and curled back into himself on the bed, as though trying to be as outwardly small as he was inwardly. But Aaron didn't sneer. He didn't spit or snarl or lash out like he should have. Instead, he looked at Spencer like his heart was breaking, and then crawled onto the bed with him.

They clung to each other in utter silence. Spencer couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could just rigidly wait for something awful to happen as those warm, firm arms folded around him as though hoping to shield them both from the world. His own hands scrabbled at Aaron's chest, folding tight inwards and feeling cotton scrunch between his fingers.

"I would have helped you," Aaron said suddenly, and his voice cracked painfully as he said it. "You weren't alone."

Spencer blinked. That wasn't true. He'd always been alone.

"I don't deserve help," he mumbled, and let his head press down against Aaron's shoulder. "You should leave."

"You're in my bedroom," Aaron teased huskily, and then he began to cry. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" He didn't stop and Spencer could do nothing but hold him, dry-eyed and numb, until it stopped on its own. And he knew.

All they were going to do was hurt each other.