Hey! This is kinda a strange fic, but I just wanted to do something fun and goofy that still had hurt Spencer in it, so I hope you enjoy anyhow! Remember, I don't own Criminal Minds. Enjoy!
Spencer woke to a pounding headache and an incessant beeping right next to his ear.
Why was it beeping in the infirmary?
Spencer groaned and tried to make sense of his muddled thoughts. What had happened? How had he managed to land himself in the infirmary this time?
He tried to grasp the thought. It was right there, at the very tip of his consciousness, just out of arm's reach. Every time he would get close enough to grasp it, the key to his messy memory would slip just a bit farther away, out of reach once again.
It was quite infuriating.
It was like how Luke used to hold his books just over his head when he had been a small child surrounded by all the huge people with swords and armor. The blonde boy did it just to annoy him, the genius knew, and it did the trick. He would always remember the day he had finally outgrown the son of Hermes, a triumphant smile on his face.
Luke had grinned like he hadn't been planning on betraying his entire family.
So, he remembered Luke, and he remembered what Luke had done, so why couldn't he remember what had landed him in the infirmary with the gods-awful beeping-with-no-source?
"Reid, come on, man, wake up. I know you can hear me."
Reid? No one at camp called him Reid. Why would anyone in his family call him by his last name. No, he was Spencer. Always was, always would be.
There was that beeping. By the gods, he wanted it to go away.
He was hot. Or maybe he was cold?
Something was definitely off. His brain felt like the time Nico and he had been sick at the same time, and they had drank an entire bottle of cough syrup out of Will's medical bag.
It also felt weirdly like something familiar. Something less fond. A darker time in his life that made him shudder. For some reason, he had the sudden urge to reach down and touch the inside of his elbow.
"Reid!"
Spencer groaned and cracked his eyes open, resisting the urge to slam them shut again when the daggers of light pierced straight through his eyes to his brain, making his entire head hurt with a muted ache, like someone laying a towel over a speaker to muffle it.
"That's it, Reid. Come on, let me see those big brown eyes."
Brown? He didn't have brown eyes. He had grey eyes, stormy grey, just like his mother and just like all her children.
Obviously, this person didn't know him that well.
Spencer allowed his eyes to roam around the room he was currently in, but instead of the cloth cots lined in rows, lit torches, feral cleaning harpies flying around, and the usual camper missing a limb or two he was expecting of the camp infirmary, the genius was met with the sterile white walls and harsh lighting of a hospital room.
How hard did he get hit?
"There he is. Welcome, back to the land of the living, Sleeping Beauty."
Spencer's forehead creased with confusion. When had he left the land of the living? Because he had been to the land of the dead before, and it wasn't an experience he was eager to repeat. Too many dead people and hostage Spring goddesses.
There was suddenly a face swimming in Spencer's fuzzy field of view. It grinned down at him. "Have a good nap, pretty boy?"
Pretty boy…work…Derek! It was Derek!
"Der-" he cut himself off with a groan of discomfort as he moved his aching head. He reached up to rub it, but his floating hand was suddenly caught in Derek's and placed back on the bed, something pinching the back of his hand.
"Whoa, there kid. Don't go pulling your IV out."
IV? They didn't use IVs at camp.
"Huh? I've got no idea what you're talking about, Reid."
Oh. He didn't know he had said that out loud.
"Wha' 'appened?" he mumbled, lazily following Derek with his eyes as the man sat back down in the chair next to his cot. Hospital bed. Whatever the Hades it was.
"Not surprised you don't remember. You took a pretty nasty his to the head, kid. We were chasing the Unsub through the woods, the cannibal, remember? Anyhow, we couldn't find him for the longest time. Turned out he was the one tracking us. He tackled you at full speed and you cracked your head off a boulder. You've been out for the better part of a day, thought I suspect the meds have something to do with that," Morgan explained.
The story vaguely rang a bell in Spencer's head, but not loud enough for him to get a coherent grip on anything but just that, vague ideas.
Images of acres of trees flashed through his mind. People in leather armor and adorning helmets with red or blue lines of fur leapt over a bubbling stream, raising swords and shields high. A rock shaped like a fist was in the middle of a clearing deeper in the wood. A girl with curly blonde hair and stormy grey eyes just like his grinned at him triumphantly as she held him at knife point, a red flag flapping behind her. Suddenly, a boy with skin so pale it was almost translucent and hair as black as night dropped down from a tree behind her, judo flipping her and effectively disarming her. The boy dressed all in black high-fived him and they shared a grin as he grabbed the flag behind her.
Somehow, Spencer didn't think that's what had happened.
"Where're we?"
Derek's face took on a look of slight concern. "You're really drugged out, huh, pretty boy?" he mumbled seemingly to himself. "You're in the hospital. Unsub. Knocked out. Concussion. Did literally anything I just told you compute in that big brain of yours?"
Spencer was too exhausted to answer that. Besides, he didn't think there was a simple answer to the muddled mess that was currently his brain. "What're 'ou doin' 'ere, Morg'n?"
The elder agent's eyebrows shot up. "You know if you weren't concussed, I'd slap you," he muttered. "You are in the hospital because you have a concussion. I am here like the good friend I am so you don't have to be alone," he said, explaining it like he would to a very young child.
Spencer knew he was being teased, but frankly, he didn't have the energy to care. "No, I meant what're 'ou doin' 'ere? Why're 'ou at camp?"
Morgan somehow managed to raise his eyebrows impossibly higher, a small smirk playing at the corner of his lips. "Camp? What're you on about, Reid?"
Why was Morgan being so difficult? Why couldn't he just answer a simple question? Spencer wasn't in the mood for jokes.
"You know…summer camp, with Annabeth and Percy and Nico and…" he trailed off as a realization hit him. "That's it. Clarisse knocked me out for helping the Stolls plan a prank on her, didn't she?"
At this Morgan legitimately burst out laughing. "You really have no idea what the hell you're talking about, do you, kid? Go to sleep. Pretty sure your brain's having a nuclear meltdown."
Reid made an annoyed sound but didn't get much farther than that. Already, he could feel the tendrils of sleep reaching for him, calling him into the wonderful oblivion where his head would stop sounding like the Party Ponies were throwing a rager in there.
"Oh, I am so telling Penelope about this. Party Ponies? This is too good, pretty boy."
Damn, he really needed to work on his concussion brain-to-mouth filter.
0000
A few days later, Spencer was lounging in his apartment, flipping his dagger over in his hand and staring at the wall.
He was going a little stir crazy (more than a little according to his friends), but what did they want from him? He was off work for the unseeable future, and the doctor had given him strict instructions that he was being forced to follow by Mom Rossi and Dad Hotch. No reading, watching TV, electronics in general, or anything that required straining his eyes. Actually, the doctor didn't really want him out of bed yet, but Spencer's patience could only handle so much.
And his ADHD. His battle reflexes were making him go nuts after only a single day on bedrest.
He even had to be careful taking nectar. Sure, it would help expedite the healing process, but too much, and he ran the risk of spontaneous combustion. On top of that, it would be a little obvious to even the most unobservant mortal that something unnatural was going on if his massive concussion suddenly became perfectly healed in a matter of days.
He was temporarily drawn out his musings when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Throwing his dagger down on the coffee table, he reached for the device he was technically banned from. Not that he had ever been one to behave under doctor's orders.
Penelope's name flashed across the screen. I know you're not supposed to be on your phone, and you need to be resting, but I just wanted to let you know that Derek told me some pretty interesting tales. I never knew you had such an imagination, baby genius! Can I ask what a Party Pony is? ;)
Reid groaned. Sometimes he wondered why he was such good friends with Morgan. He was never going to live this down.
Then a grin broke across the young doctor's face. He tossed his phone on to the table next to his dagger and reached into his pocket, pulling out a golden drachma and twirling it between his fingers. He stood from the couch, waiting a moment for the world to hopefully stop swirling around him and for the jackhammer in his head to calm down before making his way towards the kitchen, or more specifically, the mist the kitchen sink produced.
He turned it on full force, letting the water spray up into the air before tossing the coin in and watching it disappear.
"O Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering," he said, watching as the mist shimmered in what seemed to be every color he could imagine.
"Annabeth Chase, Camp Half-Blood." Boy, did he have a story to tell.
All done! I hope you enjoyed this despite how strange it was. I enjoyed writing this and I hope you found it a little refreshing compared to all the other fics in this series. Bye!
