Chapter Thirty-Eight: July, 2002

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He had a bad night at work. The details eluded him. But he was shaken, rattled, unravelling from his core. Aaron had visited his work that day. Approached Elle. Spencer had approached them both. All three of them were marked now. Suspicion folded down around them. He tended bar for two hours and slammed a patron into a wall for grabbing his ass. Elle was pale and silent and hadn't answered earlier when Spencer had breathed to her when will this be over using the noise of the ice machine as cover. It was never going to be over, he suspected. Spencer wanted to hit the man harder.

He did.

He was sent home without pay for the hours he'd worked that day. Eyes watched him out the door. He checked every corner for more eyes watching him walk home. Couldn't bring himself to lead them there.

He went to Aaron, taking the long way and circling multiple times around different blocks before parking the car three buildings away and using a back entrance into the apartment building Aaron lived within. Paranoia shook up his hands, his spine, and the only way he could fight it was to be… nothing. Just a man. Emotionally neutered, someone had once described him as, and he could still be that now if he needed.

Once he was safe in Aaron's apartment, it would be fine. No one would reach him in there. There was no way anyone had followed him here. He rapped his fingers on his cell phone's screen through the material of his work pants. It was silent.

It would be fine. They could reconnect.

Buzzing and numb and wired all at once, Spencer went to Aaron.

That proved to be a mistake.

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He was scared of dying, so he drank.

He was scared of losing Aaron, so drinking turned to sex.

And he was more fucked up than he'd allowed himself to realize, so he absolutely and completely lost control. It happened in a heartbeat. One moment he was Spencer Reid and arching against his boyfriend's body, aroused and giddy and his heart was thumping with something dangerously close to love. The alcohol hit in a staggering whirl as he slipped to his knees and slid his mouth roughly along Aaron's cock. He swayed, slid off, closed his eyes as his head thumped and his brain rocked and something dark and cold dropped down his spine.

I'm drunk, Spencer thought dazedly, his stomach twisting. Aaron's hand threaded through his hair, tugged at the roots. Distantly, Aaron was talking using words Spencer couldn't understand. I'm drunk.

I'm drunk, replied a memory, just as distant as Aaron's voice, and in response to that quiet whimper Spencer looked up into dark, dark eyes and replied without the conscious decision to do so: "Would you let me fuck you?"

And then he stepped away. Not physically. Physically he was still there.

Or someone was.

It wasn't my fault, Spencer thought as he watched the men fall to the bed together. It wasn't my fault, he thought again, feeling a hand on his cheek and a rough voice murmuring, "There's only you, Spencer. Only ever you. She's nothing."

It wasn't my fault, Spencer repeated, freezing. On the bed, they were fucking. Close to fucking. Spencer watched the pain skate into the other man's eyes, the panic, the fear. The choking worry. He knew that look. He watched that look on Aaron's face and then he looked at his own face and he realized: It was my fault.

It was completely my fault.

And I'm doing it again.

When he finally unfroze, he was in the bathroom and he'd missed the toilet throwing up. He cleaned up, washed up, went back to the bed where Aaron slept, and wondered if he'd hurt him.

He couldn't remember if he had and was too scared to ask.

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The invitation that finished what everything else this year had started arrived on a Friday, two weeks after he'd used his body to hurt the man he loved. Spencer would always remember the exact moment he'd found the glossy envelope on his office desk at the college and eased it carefully open to reveal what was inside. The invitation itself was nothing damning. A conference to celebrate recent advances in forensic psychology, many of which Spencer's previous research had contributed in no small way to. He was to receive an award. There was discussion of the completion of his next doctorate. It would be an honour to attend, a boon to his career. The erasure of past mistakes.

The invitation was nothing damning.

Spencer stared at the type below the You are invited.

Guests speakers include the foremost expert of cognitive development, Dr. Ross Connors, PhD.

"I can't go to this," he tried to say, but the words tangled and stuck in his throat. Overhead, the air conditioned hummed. The air was sticky. It was summer. He hated summer. No one heard him. They were discussing their own attendance.

"You'll be there of course?" someone asked. A research student, one of his. Maybe. Possibly.

He might have said, no. More likely, that someone who lived inside him and swallowed up his best intentions took over and said, of course. He didn't know which, because moments later he was on his knees and pressing his face against the cool porcelain of a toilet bowl that was nowhere near as clean as the one at Aaron's.

Aaron, he remembered, and staggered upright. Stumbled again. Doctor Reid, are you okay? someone asked and Spencer didn't answer because he was raising his hand to rap sharply at Aaron's front door. Except it wasn't Aaron's front door, it was his, and he stared blankly at it before letting himself in and walking robotically towards Ethan's room. Stopping in the hall, in the thick air of the uncooled apartment.

Ethan wouldn't help him. Ethan hated him. He'd hurt Ethan more than Ethan could forgive him for.

He turned and left.

He went to Aaron. But Aaron couldn't help him. One day, Aaron promised and Spencer didn't have the vocabulary to express how it needed to be this day. That he couldn't think, couldn't reason, couldn't even keep track of the suddenly skipping days of his life anymore. The day Aaron said no turned into the day after without Spencer being consciously aware of an in-between. He stayed with Aaron because the man was his only anchor to himself. Distantly, he thought he might be missing work, missing college, but his cell was turned off and in his car and the calendar kept lying to him and telling him days were passing in minutes, skipping him merrily towards the date on that damning invitation.

He only asked again once.

"The conference," he whispered, but they were fighting again over something Spencer couldn't remember doing. They were fighting and Aaron snarled, why are you doing this? Instead of answering, Spencer left. Drove until he was dizzy and contemplated isolation. He contemplated running. He contemplated oblivion.

His cell was on. Parked in a dismal parking lot with a broken light hanging overhead, it was night now and he'd left in the morning.

He dialled a number. "Bennington Sanatorium," said the tired, angry voice on the other end. Spencer opened his mouth and nothing came out and still the voice somehow replied, "I'm sorry, Doctor, but your mother is asleep. Would you like to leave a message?"

But when the voice in the cell spoke again it was Ethan's answering message. Leave a message, maybe I'll return it, it said using Ethan's voice. The next two times Spencer tried, the cell was off. Beep beep beep, laughed the phone. This number is unavailable.

Once more, and this time it answered. "This better be good, Reid," Elle said snippily. "I'm about to hit the bath and pretend you and your asshole of a friend don't exist. You calling me is really make that pretence difficult—Spencer?"

He was crying except not really. It bubbled and coughed out of his mouth in desperate wheezing sobs that hiccupped and left him dizzy and lost. He couldn't breathe. The cell slipped in his sweaty hand to he pressed it harder to his ear and curled his knees up in the cramped space of the driver's seat so he could lean his face down as Elle's voice rattled on and on and on and on and on and he understood none of it through his buzzing brain.

Where are you

Tell me

What happened

Are you hurt

I'm calling—

"Don't tell Aaron," he managed thickly, his tongue clumsy and his face rigid. None of the muscles seemed to be responding adequately to his prompting.

He'd felt like this before, once. Just once before.

"Okay, okay. I won't. I promise. How about you come to me then? You're in a car right—I can hear traffic—so listen to me. Spence, listen to me. Do what I say."

"Don't look for me," Spencer managed.

"I'm not," she soothed. He could hear her walking, hear the sound of a tap running her bath receding as she moved into a different room. "I'm not looking for you because you're going to come here, okay? I'm going to direct you here. Just do exactly as I say. Start the car. Do not hang up on me."

He followed her instructions right up until he parked in a ramshackle parking lot. "I'm here," he mumbled into the cell, and cut off her reply as he switched the cell to off. The someone was back. Spencer watched as the someone else who'd called his mom and Ethan and Elle stepped out of Spencer's car and walking into the apartment building without pausing, his expression blank. He watched as they reached a door, puffy-eyed and pink-lipped and swaying slightly despite not being drunk. He watched as they knocked.

And he took back control as the door opened and the woman let him in, her eyes wide and her mouth moving with shocked exclamations.

"Hi," he said numbly to Clary. "No one is looking for me."