Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds or any of these fabulous characters that I am abusing for my own enjoyment. I do however own this story, I wrote it and I do NOTgive permission for anyone to post it anywhere else. If you want to share it post a link.
Gideon left the bar and Spencer just sat listening to his friend play the piano. His hands started to shake and he drained his glass before he spilled it everywhere, clasping his hands in his lap until that wasn't enough to hide the shaking then sat on his hands hoping that the darkness of the bar would hide the fact he was starting to sweat.
Part of his brain told him that he couldn't quit tonight if he wanted to get on the plane with the team tomorrow. He'd just promised Gideon that he'd never miss a plane again, so he needed to be there. It would be so easy to justify a few more hits, just enough to get back to Quantico and talk to Strauss to get a few weeks off without attracting suspicion, but Spencer knew that if he gave in now he might not be able to find the strength to try to quit again before it was too late and if he kept using eventually he would get caught and lose his job and if he knew he wouldn't be seeing Hotch nearly every day he didn't know how he was going to find the strength and motivation not to one day use too much to stop the pain permanently instead of only temporarily.
Ethan finished his set, surprised to see Spencer still sitting there until he took a good look at his friend.
Without asking him any questions he quickly pulled him to his feet and down a few dark alleys to his apartment, leading Spencer straight through to the bathroom where there was a plastic chair.
"What exactly are you taking?" Ethan demanded.
"Dilaudid," Spencer admitted looking at the floor to avoid seeing disgust or condemnation on his friend's face.
"Have you been cutting it with anything?" Ethan asked.
"No, the unsub who originally got me addicted cut his with something like LSD I think but that was weeks ago now," Spencer replied.
"Do you have any with you?" Ethan asked.
Spencer shook his head.
"Hand over your messenger bag," Ethan demanded.
Spencer shook his head again.
"Spencer I'll help you get through detox and get clean but you have to want it! You have to take the first step. Hand over your bag and let me help or I'll call you a cab to take you back to your hotel," Ethan said refusing to compromise.
Spencer shakily handed over the bag. "I want your help," he said.
"Okay now strip," Ethan ordered after going through the bag and not finding anything.
"What!" Spencer yelped.
"Don't worry I'm not going to be overwhelmed with lust at the sight of your skinny white arse. I just don't fancy groping through your pockets and other hiding places while you're still wearing them and you'll want your clothes clean to be able to leave in afterwards. Once I'm sure you're not hiding anything from me I'll get you some of my pyjamas to wear," Ethan said amused.
Spencer nodded and slowly pulled off his clothes handing each item to Ethan to go through the pockets. "I honestly don't have any more, I don't have needles either, I threw them away."
Ethan nods and takes out the clothes returning with ragged pyjamas. He picked up the hotel key and waved it in Spencer's face. "Do you still have stuff at the hotel?"
"Yeah there's a condom box in the bottom of my luggage with stuff in it," Spencer admits blushing.
"Okay, We need to contact your boss to get you some time off and then I need to go and get that before one of your colleagues notices you missing and goes through your room. You think you can trust one of my friends to sit with you while I go?" Ethan asked.
"I'd be okay here on my own," Spencer protests.
"Yeah, No. Not going to happen," Ethan retorts. "You need to have someone with you, or to come with me and I really think it's better if you stay here out of sight, looking like you do."
Spencer looked at the floor in shame.
"Who do I need to email to get you emergency medical leave? Preferably someone back in DC that can't come and check up on you when they get the email," Ethan demands.
"Section Chief Erin Strauss, but I'll need a medical certificate for that type of leave. I guess I didn't think this through very well," Spencer said apologetically.
"It's fine Spencer, taking the first steps and deciding you want to stop and admitting you need help is the nly important thing at the moment. Let me help get the rest sorted out. Have you read up on heroin withdrawal?" Ethan asked.
Spencer chuckled slightly, "Of course I did, I'm scared. I can't go to a hospital, I'd lose my job. But I don't know if I can do this. I know it would be more sensible to cut down the amount slowly until I get to a level that I can safely quit from without medical help, but I can't do it without help and I'm afraid if I don't quit now I won't be able to bring myself to do it."
"That's okay. I know a doctor who will make an off the books house call if we need him and he'll write you up for emergency leave for PTSD and keep his mouth shut about the drugs," Ethan replied soothingly. "I won't let you die, Spencer."
Spencer hugged him and began crying. "Thank you. I love you," he sobbed.
"You don't need to thank me. You're my little brother remember, I love you too," Ethan murmured, hugging him tightly.
Spencer did remember that horrible weekend he turned eighteen and had his mother involuntarily admitted to Bennington Sanitarium. He hadn't had much choice his mother was getting worse and was becoming alternating between a near total catatonic state, where she ate nothing and refused to get out of bed, and violent fear when she hadn't taken her medication. "She was aware enough the day they came to get her to blame Spencer for locking her away, disowning him and calling him weak like his father. Thankfully the Bennington staff had stopped her from physically attacking him again.
Ethan had come looking for his friend several hours later to find Spencer huddled in a corner sobbing so hard he was near throwing up. He'd sunk to his knees and hugged the younger boy promising him that he would always have a family in him.
"What happened Spencer? Addictive substances were always my weakness, not yours," Ethan asked.
"It's a long story," Spencer warned him.
"I've got plenty of time. Is it something you're allowed to talk about with a civilian?"
"Yeah, it's not a matter of national security and the unsub was killed. It's not going to trial," Spencer reassures his friend.
Ethan just sat there waiting.
"We were investigating a series of murders in rural Georgia and JJ and I went to question someone we thought was a witness to an earlier attempt at one of the home invasions and it turned out to be the unsub. There was no cell phone reception in the area so we couldn't call for backup so we were looking through the windows trying to make sure we had enough evidence to proceed before we drove back into cell phone range when he caught us. We got separated and he was chasing me through a cornfield and the next thing I knew I regained consciousness handcuffed and tied to a chair. The unsub had dissociative identity disorder and there were three personalities. One of them tortured me, one was the killer and the third was just trying to help. Problem was he tried to help me escape his abusive father who was the abusive personality the same way he escaped him. With Dilaudid cut with some sort of hallucinogenic. I was held for three days, during which time I had a seizure and died but luckily that brought the Tobias personality to the forefront and he performed CPR and resuscitated me. He was a computer genius and he was filming what was happening and the team was watching and I managed to give them enough hints for them to find me. One of the other personalities freaked out that I'd come back from the dead and dragged me out to dig my own grave. I didn't have the strength to dig properly and he eventually shoved me out of the way to take over. He'd put his gun down to dig and I picked it up and shot him. It was sheer luck that I managed it, there was only one bullet, he'd been playing Russian Roulette with me trying to get me to choose who he would kill next.
My team found me just after that but it was too late Tobias was dead and I was addicted. I didn't tell them at the hospital about the drugs and the team didn't mention it either though I know they had seen me get injected with the stuff and the profile they'd put together on Tobias included the drugs he'd been addicted to, so I was discharged the next day and we flew back to Quantico. I had a week off to recover from my physical injuries and I was alone with my nightmares. I just kept taking it, it helped me not to feel everything. It made me not care that I was never going to have a chance to be happy."
Ethan just sat there and wrapped his arms around his sobbing friend.
"It's okay Spencer I've got you. You're not alone any more. You don't need to do this by yourself," he murmured.
"What did you mean when you said you're never going to get the chance to be happy?" Ethan asked, after Spencer had calmed down and drunk some energy drink.
Spencer seemed to ignore him and be drifting off to sleep so Ethan let it go. He figured that if it was important then Spencer would tell him eventually.
"I met my soul mate," Spencer said still resting in Ethan's hug some indeterminate time later.
"That's great, tell me all about them. What do they do? Where do they live?" Ethan said, not realising that it was a delayed answer to his earlier question, smiling until he saw Spencer's face.
"It wasn't great? Why? What happened?" he asked gently.
"He's straight and married with a son, he doesn't want to get to know me. He only told me so he could ask me to avoid his wife so she doesn't find out my name, since she's seen it written on his chest and it would upset her to know he knew who his soulmate was," Spencer said dejectedly. "Though I'm not sure how avoiding her is going to work when the rest of the team will notice my absence and mention my name, but maybe they don't, maybe they're glad I'm not there tagging along all the time."
"He can't be straight if you are his soul mate. It doesn't work that way Spencer?" Ethan argued.
"He's years older than me and married to a woman he's been with since High School, I've never seen him look at anyone other than her in an admiring or sexual way," Spencer replied.
"You can't blame the man for not walking out on his kid. You wouldn't want a man that could do that," Ethan said reasonably even though he was concerned about his friend.
"You're right, even now I wouldn't want him to abandon his son but that's not the reason he doesn't want me, Jack was born more than a year after he met me and his conception wasn't an accident," Spencer said painfully.
"Oh hell, Spencer! You deserve better than that, man," Ethan said hugging him.
Spencer shrugged, "It doesn't feel like it."
"Do you ever see him?" Ethan asked.
"That's the worst part, I see him all the time, he's my boss, I spend up to eighteen hours a day with him sometimes though he avoids discussing anything even remotely personal with me," Spencer said bitterly.
"Fuck Spencer, no wonder you're taking Dilaudid. You've got to get away from him," Ethan swore.
"Profiling is all I've ever wanted to do, and it's important, I'm making a difference, saving lives," Spencer protested. "I can't just walk away from him."
"At the cost of your own life. You can't honestly tell me that you're happy!" Ethan argued.
"No but I don't think I've ever been truly happy. Certainly not since my Dad left," Spencer admitted.
"You may not have been deliriously happy at Caltech but at least you were content with life, not to mention sleeping and eating on a semi regular basis and not risking your life with a needle in your arm," Ethan retorted. "You're putting your whole team at risk going into the field in such a state. Do they know?"
"About the drugs? They haven't said anything but yeah I think they must. I can't see how they wouldn't. They're profilers for heaven sake, nobody can keep anything secret around the team and they were watching when Tobias started drugging me. The unsub was sending them live feed of my torture," Spencer replied.
"And they haven't done anything about it?" Ethan said agitatedly pacing around his apartment.
"They can't acknowledge they know about the Dilaudid without the FBI sacking me, and them too if IA can prove they knew and didn't report me for it," Spencer tried to make excuses.
"Yes they could Spencer. When you were rescued from being kidnapped before you had chosen to keep using or broken the law to get drugs. They should have told the doctor who treated you after you were rescued. There was no reason they couldn't have sent you to rehab back then without risking your career much less their own, or found you an effective counsellor or even had you stay with one of them to help you deal with the nightmares and the PTSD so you didn't need to turn to drugs for help. In fact, I'm sure that the regulations demanded that your unit chief make sure you got the appropriate treatment after being held hostage. I could gut the lot of them."
Spencer just rolled his eyes knowing that there wasn't a truly violent bone in his friend's body. "Uggh no don't do that, do you have any idea how awful a gutted body smells."
Ethan paled, "No, but I'm guessing from that comment that you do," he muttered.
"Yeah, it's almost as bad as a week old corpse in the Florida heat," Spencer replied inadvertently making his friend turn green.
"Please stop Spencer. My imagination doesn't need that imagery," Ethan begged.
"You get used to it," Spencer replied.
"I don't think that I would. Why would any sane person want to get used to such things?" Ethan retorted.
"I didn't want to but it isn't so bad. Someone's got to help get justice for the victims and stop the unsubs from killing more people," Spencer replied.
"But it shouldn't be you with your eidetic memory that can't forget the horrors at the end of the case," Ethan retorted.
"You think the others forget, they don't," Spencer replied.
"But at least time dulls the memories for them," Ethan argued.
It was the early hours of the morning when Ethan had to call the doctor in and he settled Spencer with some fluids and some non-narcotic muscle relaxers and pain relief after stabilising him.
"Get some sleep, I'll sit with him for a while," the Doctor offered.
"I've got to go and get his stuff and let his boss know he won't be making their flight home, to try to make sure he has a job and a life to go back to," Ethan said tiredly.
"How many times will you prop him back up?" the doctor asked.
"This is the first time he's asked anybody for help with this. The people who should have noticed all let him down. He's not your usual addict Doc, he didn't choose this. He was abducted and injected against his will a few months ago and he didn't get the rehab he should have been offered when it happened. He's got a severe chronic depression and a pretty extreme case of PTSD underlying the addiction. He's going to need therapy, but he's a profiler how do I find him a therapist that he can't talk rings around?" Ethan tried to explain.
"Go do the things you need to do," the doctor said writing him a certificate for eight weeks off for severe occupational trauma induced PTSD.
"Thanks Doc," Ethan said gratefully.
-o0o-
"Where's Reid?" Morgan asked as they met at the airport the next morning. He looked around and frowned at the tired looking stranger standing nearby. Ethan had had a very long night and he knew it would be an even longer day trying to help Spencer deal with detoxing. He'd left Spencer with the off the books doctor he'd had to call in a couple of hours earlier when he'd been concerned that Spencer couldn't stop heaving even though his stomach was totally empty. The doctor had set up an IV of fluids and ondansetron to stop the vomiting and Spencer was now sleeping exhausted you until the next round of cramps began.
"And if I told you that Spencer is right where he wants to be? Handcuffed naked to my bed?" Ethan asked obnoxiously, though he wasn't looking at Morgan his eyes hadn't left Aaron Hotchner's.
The older agent flinched, "We are leaving in twenty minutes as soon as the pilots finish their pre-flight check. He'd be risking his job to miss another plane," he said frowning fiercely.
"Spencer isn't coming. He's applied for leave and your section chief has approved a month to begin with," Ethan replied, walking over to Hotch. "Scram kiddies. I want to speak to the suit alone."
"Gideon is Reid's mentor," Hotch replied.
"Yeah and I heard last night what a sterling job he is doing of it, giving Spencer permission to struggle.
Spencer doesn't need permission to continue struggling on his own with raging PTSD he needs actual help and support before it's too late. Help I'm going to make sure he gets before any of you get your hands on him again. If I had my way he would resign once he's well enough to think clearly again before you totally destroy him but he seems to think that you need him."
"You can't just keep him prisoner like that? Who do you think you are?" Morgan fumed.
"I'm Spencer's best friend. And I'm not holding him against his will, you know. Spencer agreed that he needs help and unlike you all he trusts me to do what's best for him and provide it," Ethan retorted.
"Our hands were tied," Hotch said.
"Yeah, Spencer gave me that lame dipshit excuse too. It didn't wash when he said it and it sounds even less believable now coming from you when I can see you don't believe it. You're not even trying to believe it like Spencer is. Not only did none of you try to offer him support or make sure he got the help he needs. You put his life in danger letting an agent with PTSD, and severe depression in addition to his other problems out in the field. Were you trying to get him killed? That would solve all your problems wouldn't it," Ethan said cynically, viciously pleased that the man in the suit was shaken by his statement.
Hotch shook his head instinctively, he'd never wanted Reid to die. He had to admit that even the thought of the younger man leaving the team hurt him though he knew he had no right to be hurt after his rejection of anything more than a professional relationship. He hadn't even let himself be friends with the younger man knowing that any social contract would lead to them both wanting more. He thought that keeping his distance would prevent Spencer from becoming too hurt by the lack of a romantic relationship.
"Spence isn't depressed," JJ said shocked and defensive.
"JJ isn't it, I recognize you from his letters but I thought that you were his friend, I know that he thinks you are, or at least he used to. The man is practically suicidal. I hadn't seen Spencer since his first day at the academy and I could have told you from his email he's been depressed since about six months after joining your team, though I only got him to admit it and tell me why last night," Ethan replied.
Hotch looked away, feeling incredibly guilty that Ethan could time Reid's depression so accurately to the night he told him about the soul name written on his chest.
"He seemed more withdrawn, particularly when we lost half the team in Boston about then, but he was adjusting, he never mentioned being depressed," JJ said.
"He was a serious danger to every single one of you every day you went out in the field with him and nobody even noticed. Or maybe that's not true. Maybe the two of you did notice and neither of you cared," Ethan said to Hotch and Gideon.
"That's right, isn't it Gideon, he's your perfect little protege, lapping up information and skills like a sponge. You don't need him to be happy or even safe or sane, as long as he makes you feel better about yourself? And if something does happen to him well that would be his own weakness, you wouldn't blame yourself," Ethan snarled before turning to Hotch. "And you, you're supposed to care about your team's wellbeing but all you care is that he doesn't interrupt your perfect life with your pretty little wife and perfect family."
Hotch paled, even more dramatically since he'd previously been flushed with anger but if the team noticed nobody seemed to think anything of it.
"And the rest of you call yourselves profilers? You can identify motives and emotions in others but not Spencer. What happened? Did you forget that Spencer isn't just his knowledge, reading speed and eidetic memory, that he's a real live human being with feelings and emotions, even if he is a bit awkward about the way he expresses them sometimes? Or did Gideon say he was fine and the rest of you just accepted it because Gideon is never wrong? But he can be, can't he? Tell me did Spencer ever get counselling over the loss of his teammates in Boston or did it get missed because he was off work the week when they were blown up? Did he get real counselling after being kidnapped and tortured or just seen by some paper pusher more interested in clearing him to return to the field as quickly as possible than offering him the help he needed?" Ethan asked disgusted with them for the way they'd treated his friend.
"I don't think he'd want you talking to them like that," Emily said.
"Yeah, because you know him so well. Wait, no you don't. None of you bothered to get to know Spencer properly. None of you really notice him as a person at all except for the work he does for you. That's how he's managed to nearly kill himself without any of you even trying to help prevent it," Ethan snarked.
"Newsflash. Spencer knew how angry I am at all of you before he sent me to tell you he wasn't coming, and he knows me well enough to know I wouldn't miss the opportunity to tell you all off. He could have telephoned if he didn't want me to meet you. He knows I'm going to try to talk him into leaving the BAU and he still chose to stay with me to get himself sorted out rather than ask any of you for help. If I had my way none of you would ever hear from him again. I don't think it will work, Spencer's too stubborn for his own good. But I swear to you that he'd be better off without you and if you don't take a good hard look at the way you've been treating him when he does come back, you and I are going to have issues." Ethan knew he wasn't quite being truthful, the only reason he let Ethan tell the team about his leave was because he wasn't capable of calling them, in fact it had been Ethan that had pretended to be Spencer and emailed Strauss to ask for the leave, stating that a friend had got him into a program to help him deal with the residual PTSD from his kidnapping. Ethan expected that Spencer would be upset with him if he ever heard what Ethan had said to the team but at the moment he was too angry with them all to care.
"Spencer is never going to want to leave the BAU," Morgan retorted.
"No he feels that your team is where he can do the most good even if it's the one thing that does him the most harm. He would regret leaving but sometimes it's better to amputate a limb than leave a festering wound that won't heal even if you have to cut out some healthy tissue to do it." Ethan said sombrely.
"The job isn't easy, Reid knew that before he joined," Gideon said dismissively.
"It's a horrible job and you're right that somebody needs to do it but the rest of you have family and friends to turn to. Spencer has nobody in Virginia and a friend on the other end of an email can only do so much. Our schedules aren't exactly compatible for phone calls most nights. He needs a support network. Maybe I'll encourage him to join a research group at Georgetown or GWU if I can't talk him into quitting the FBI," Ethan said conversationally.
"And we will do our best to support him when he returns," Hotch said.
"See that you do," Ethan growled disbelievingly. "And keep in mind that Spencer may not be ready to actively commit suicide but he doesn't really believe it would matter all that much to anyone if he died. Not even to himself. With a mindset like that he's going to be willing to take stupid risks and sooner or later one of them isn't going to go in his favour and he won't survive. It's sheer luck that it hasn't already happened. Sending him out in the field in that state of mind was criminally stupid."
He turned and stalked off leaving a shaken BAU team behind him.
"Do you think that he's right?" JJ asked.
"We all knew he'd been struggling since Georgia," Morgan said.
"I thought he'd been receiving support after his abduction," Hotch said glaring at Gideon.
"What about before that, was he already depressed?" Emily asked. "If I'd known that I would have insisted that he stay with one of us after his abduction."
"I don't know exactly when it happened but he withdrew from us about three months before the Bale case," JJ said. "He was always shy and a bit geeky but he did socialise with the team, and talk about what was going on with him. Then he went back to Caltech for a couple of weeks and when he came back he stopped rambling as much and we all thought he'd finally learned to read the cues when to stop talking but now I think he realised after spending two weeks with his real friends that we weren't interested in what he had to say and I think he started believing that we didn't really want him around outside of work. After the Bale case when Gideon took his leave of absence Spence spent a lot of time being Gideon's TA between cases. I think he was still doing consults but he wasn't spending time in the office, and even after Gideon came back he continued to take leave for odd projects outside the Bureau."
"I haven't noticed any leave. What sort of projects? Or are they top secret NSA stuff?" Emily asked.
JJ just shrugged, "Some of them might be, but some are related to stuff he did in college. He doesn't talk about it, Gideon doesn't like him taking leave like that. I know he was on the team that developed the Mars Exploration Robots, we found out later from Elle Greenaway who recognised him from the article in the paper."
"That's pretty huge and you say he came back and didn't even mention it?" Emily asked surprised.
This time it was Morgan who sighed. "We think he tried to tell us, that was the leave JJ was talking about when he changed, he came back from leave about that time all excited, babbling about something scientific but it went over our heads and we shut him down. He hasn't babbled about science so much since then."
"To be fair, to Spence the science probably was the exciting part at the time, and his descriptions went over all our heads, they wouldn't have found out their robots won the bid to be sent to Mars until later," JJ said.
"No he knew they'd been short-listed, that's why Strauss granted him the leave on such short notice to finish ironing out the final bugs," Hotch replied. "Though you're right, I don't think that was what excited Reid about the project."
"That's not the point here. Do we believe him that Spencer is a danger to himself and the team? And that he's better off away from us?" JJ asked shakily.
"What are we going to do about Reid?" Morgan demanded. "Are we really going to just leave him here with this guy? How does he even know him?"
"They were friends at Caltech, since Reid was an undergrad," Gideon replied.
"So, he might be correct that he knows Reid better than any of us?" Emily asked.
"You think he's right that Spence is suicidal?" JJ asked devastated.
"There's something seriously wrong with him. I barely knew him before Hankel abducted him but since then, yeah. I've been worried about him. I just didn't know what to do and I didn't think he'd accept help from me because we've only just met. I didn't realise that he had nobody else to help him," Emily confesses. "If this friend thinks that he can help Reid, then I think we should let him try. Even if he is going to try to talk him into leaving, I don't think he'd succeed, and maybe if he does it will be for the best."
"Let's talk further on the plane. We've kept the pilot waiting long enough," Hotch said, hiding his fear and trepidation that this friend of Reid's could talk him into quitting the BAU or returning to Quantico.
A/N: Thank you to all those who reviewed followed or favourited this story for your support.
Stay safe everyone.