Disclaimer: Criminal Minds belongs to CBS, not me.
step out, step out of the sun, because you've learned, because you've learned
He ignored the signs for as long as he could.
The time she made him a cake for his birthday, but there were only eight candles and she'd used salt instead of sugar. And it wasn't his birthday.
The time he came downstairs to find that she'd made three pots of spaghetti because she had forgotten about the previous one and started again, even though it was two in the morning.
The time she set the house on fire because she'd lit candles in every room and then fallen asleep.
The time she had a fit in the middle of the grocery store and he got a phone call from the Summerlin police in the middle of a chemistry lab.
The time she put the car in reverse instead of drive and destroyed the garage.
The time he found the letters from the university, putting her on leave and then extended leave and then permanent leave.
He came home to visit for Thanksgiving break, a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday. He hadn't been back in a long time, choosing to stay through holidays and summer semester. It paid off, at least, he was already on his third doctorate.
He drove himself from Pasadena to Vegas, dread building in his chest the closer he came to his old hometown. The neighborhood was mostly the same- some different landscaping, new paint colors on a couple of houses.
His house stuck out like a sore thumb. Mail piled up in the mailbox and packages heaped on the ground around it. Shutters closed tight, newspaper covering the remaining windows. The car parked in the driveway was covered in pollen, the bumper missing. The garage door had yet to be repaired.
A memory he'd blocked out came rushing back, so fast it made him feel sick. He remembered CPS arriving on their doorstep, insisting they need to check things out. A concerned neighbor called, they were informed. They were going to take him away. They were going to take him away, and his mother was barely able to get him back.
Even with an eidetic memory, he could make himself forget.
Spencer pulled the car up to the curb and killed the engine. He stared up at the dark windows of his childhood home. There was no sign that anyone lived there anymore. After a long moment he turned the car back on and drove away. He got a hotel room for the night instead.
He didn't sleep much that night, just dozed fitfully on and off. The appointment had been set for a week now. He knew it was coming, and truthfully it was way overdue. It didn't make it any easier, though.
He got back to the house early in the morning and waited, hovering by the rental car. The van pulled up a little bit after nine and his heart squeezed in his chest as two men in uniforms stepped out of the vehicle.
"Mr. Reid?"
It was Dr. Reid now, but he didn't have the heart to correct them. "That's me," he said.
They shook his hand in turn, his fingers staying stiff. "I know this is tough, Mr. Reid, but you're doing the right thing," one of the officers said gently.
He nodded, a lump rising in his throat. "It's for the best," he said, and even though he knew it was the truth, it didn't make it any easier.
He led the way into the house, setting his key in the lock, but he didn't need it. The house had had been left unlocked. "We'll give you a minute first," one of the officers said, and Spencer nodded, mute.
The furniture inside was thick with dust, the kitchen cluttered with unwashed dishes and takeout containers. The living room television screen had a crack across it, as if someone had lobbed a baseball into the glass.
His mother sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by unsteady stacks of books, crumpled papers scattered like snowballs, wearing in an old dress and a thick cardigan pulled over it. One of his father's sweaters. At least she'd taken down the newspaper from the window and pale sunlight shone through the dirty glass. That was progress. But not enough progress.
Diana didn't look up when he walked in. "Hi, Mom," he ventured. She said nothing, dragged her hand through her close cropped hair and kept writing. Most likely she'd chopped her hair off in the middle of a fugue again.
"Hi, Mom," he said again. "It's me. Spencer."
She looked up at him, smiled vaguely. "Hello, baby," she said. Her voice sounded rusty from disuse. "Did school just let out?"
The lump in his throat was choking him. "It's Thanksgiving break," he said. "I got my doctorate. In physics."
She smiled at him again, sweet and absent. "That's good," she said. "That's very good." She turned back to her papers. "Go outside, honey, go see if Jeff wants to play. I need to keep working."
Any hope he'd had of canceling the call flew out the window. He stepped back to the door, beckoned the officers in, unable to speak. They followed him, and he waited for his mother to notice, his hands deep in his pockets, trying to hide the tremor in his fingers. She had her head in her hand, mumbling under her breath as she scribbled, but at last she looked up.
"What are these men doing here?" Diana asked.
"They're from the hospital," he said quietly, balling his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms "They're here to help."
She shook her head. "I don't need help," she said, tight through her teeth. "And you can't be here without permission. Tell them, Spencer."
She turned back to her work. He had never felt more lost in his life. He tried to speak, inhaled, caught his breath. "I called them," he said in a small voice.
She dropped her pen and sat upright. Betrayal was written all over her face. "Spencer," she said, disappointed, almost scolding.
He couldn't look her in the eyes. "I'm doing this for you," he offered, his mouth pressing into a thin line. He was, he was doing this for her. She couldn't live unsupervised anymore, and he'd spent his childhood caring for her, growing up in the shadow of her benign neglect. He had needed more than she was capable of giving him, and now the roles were reversed.
"This isn't legal," she said, shaking her head.
"Your son's eighteen, ma'am," one of the officers said. "He can act in your welfare."
She looked directly at him, her eyes wild, welling up with tears. He couldn't find the woman who read him Proust and called him "Crash" in this stranger's face, not this hollow shell who began to cry plaintively.
"You need help," he said.
She cried in earnest then, childishly. "I want to stay here!" she wailed, fat teardrops dropping on her pages. She covered her face with her hand and rocked back and forth.
He remembered when he was six years old and he read the book about schizophrenia for the first time, and his stomach sank with the same sense of doom he felt then. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
The officers moved towards his mother and she threw up her hands in an attempt to hold them back. "Please, these are my things!" she said. "This is my life!"
They pulled her gently out of the chair, holding her by the elbows, and kindly but firmly began to shuffle her out of the room. She twisted in their grip and looked back at him. "Spencer, please don't do this to me!" she begged, her voice spiraling up in desperation.
He drew his hands out of his pockets and wrapped his arms around his stomach. "I'm sorry," he said again, smaller and quieter, and they took his mother out of the room.
He squeezed his arms tighter around himself, his chin dropping to his chest, and he began to cry. The front door closed. He could hear the doors of the van open and shut, the engine rev. The van drove away.
Spencer sank down in the middle of the floor and sobbed. He cried because he wanted his mother, he cried because the mother he knew disappeared a long, long time. He cried because he was alone, he cried because he didn't want to be alone but there was no one there. He cried because he was still a child but he never had the chance to be a child.
He cried until his eyes were sawdust dry and his throat was raw. His whole body felt like a wrung-out dishrag, useless and limp. He sat on the kitchen floor for a while, his elbows balanced on his bent knees, staring at the wall. After a while, when his breathing settled, he pushed himself off the floor. Crying wasn't going to do any good.
He spent his Thanksgiving break cleaning out the house, getting ready for the realtors. His childhood home was full of garbage and useless junk. Most of it was thrown away. He was ruthless in his childhood bedroom. Very little in that room was attached to a happy memory.
He saved his mother's clothes, her books- the ones not destroyed by water spills or coffee cup rings. Anything that might make his mother happy in her new home.
The last remnants of his father he threw away. They should have been thrown away eight years ago, when he walked out the door.
He found some boxes in the attic that made him pause. For a few hours he sat cross-legged on the dirty floor, sorting. The plain dress his mother wore on her wedding day, her veil. A copy of Diana's dissertation in fragile yellow-edged paper. His baby book, a helter skelter of his mother's handwriting making notes next to photos- Spencer's first steps, Spencer's first word, Spencer's first tooth. The memories stopped shortly after his fourth birthday.
Those things he repackaged in a new clean plastic bin, to keep them safe. Maybe someday his mother would be well enough to see them.
He spent the week dirty and dusty as he scrubbed his childhood home into shape, eating when he remembered and crashing into his hotel room bed late at night. The realtor met him on his last day in Vegas, walking through the clinical cleanliness of the empty house. The for sale sign was placed in the yard with a promise that the sale would certainly happen soon, such a nice neighborhood, such a nice house.
He drove back to Pasadena and the safety of Caltech with only a few stops. The dorm wasn't home either, but it was certainly more welcoming. He slept too long when he got back and woke up thick-headed and sluggish. For a while he laid around watching shadows on the ceiling, his long legs almost too long for his narrow bed, his head aching almost pleasantly. He didn't have anything to do for the day, not till classes started the next morning. But there was something he wanted to do. Needed to do.
Spencer rolled out of bed and padded over to his desk to pick up his phone, then his wallet. There was a card tucked into the back, a little rumpled around the edges, but it had been waiting for a few years now. He dialed the number, waited, listened to the brief impersonal voicemail message.
"Hi, Agent Gideon?" he said. He paced around his dorm, his free arm crossed over his stomach. "This is Spencer Reid. Dr. Spencer Reid now, actually. I don't know if you remember me, you gave me your card a few years ago, after you lectured at Caltech. You told me to call you when I turned eighteen, if I was still interested in joining the FBI." He took a deep breath. "Well, I turned eighteen last month."
Author's Notes:
This is a short one, but don't worry- I just finished writing all the Revelations/Tobias Hankel stuff, and it is- I shit you not- 82 pages. So if you're looking for some good Spencer hurt/comfort, stick around!
So the next section brings Spencer into the BAU and his first case, I skipped over writing about his time in the academy. But what do y'all think? Would you like to read about Spencer in the academy, or jump right into his first days at the BAU?
On a related note, since I've wrapped up a lot of the childhood stuff, I am more than happy to take prompts! So if you'd like to read about something else in Spencer's childhood, I'm here for it.
Thank you to Dayanna, tearbos (by the way- KGI is also on my radar for updating!), nitrogentulips, fishtrek, Cherubim, and allieisrandom for reviewing! I appreciate y'all!
My tumblr is themetaphorgirl and I'd love to chat and fill prompts!
Up next: Spencer starts at the BAU. Possibly also goes to the academy. We'll see.