Authors Note: This story takes place in the Criminal Minds universe with the occasional crossover into the Bones universe. As such, I only own my own original characters and everything else belongs to the writers and networks, blah, blah, blah.

Hope you enjoy.

P.S.: I am dyslexic. Any grammatical error is caused by such dyslexia, and after so many years of failing grammar, I could give less of a shit about how you feel about it or what I did wrong. If you want to correct my facts or translations, I welcome it. If something I wrote doesn't make sense, I welcome your opinion. Spelling and grammar errors? Not so much. If it bothers you, find something else to read.

Chapter 7: Winter 2006-2007

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

― Edgar Allan Poe

Things changed in Harley's absence. Emily Prentis came onto the team, replacing Elle Greenway. Schrodinger, the cat, started acting like any other cat, no longer hiding, and now swatting at Spencer for attention. Books where delivered to Spencer's door every few day by a courier service Harley had hired. And a pile of little sticky notes with quotes written in Harley's thin, looping script sat collected on his table. And he read the books the notes had come in, no matter how out of Spencer's typical genre they were. And the only time he heard her voice was during their daily phone calls, and the voicemails she'd leave him before she went to bed and periodically through the week. Harley loved Hawaii, there was no doubt in Spencer's mind about that. He just hoped she loved him more

When Spencer got kidnapped by Tobias Hankel, Harley was still working out in the JPAC in Pearl Harbor, one month into her second four months there, identifying the remains of American soldiers from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. She hadn't been able to get a flight back before Spencer talked her out of coming home, and Spencer hadn't expected her to. Nor did he want her to (Or at least not the new addict in him. The old Spencer wanted her home more than he wanted air). Harley knew him better than anyone else, even the professional profilers he worked with. Unlike his team who would more than likely attribute his new behavioral quirks to his experience having been kidnapped, Harley would have seen the deeper implications. That he didn't blame Tobias and was actually saddened by his death. That he'd only blamed Tobias' father and the psychosis. She would have been around to find the needles and the track marks and the Dilauded. She would have seen the addiction at its start. And she might have done something about it, like his team failed to. She could have stopped the addiction before it evolved. And the irrational, addict side of him couldn't let that happen.

So when she offered to come home, he told her not to. He encouraged her to stay with a renewed vigor and a tenacity he had lacked before his time being held prisoner.

Instead, he woke one morning to find Harley's Nonna had come in her stead, and had taken over his kitchen early in the morning as he had slept. She had a new desire to fatten him up, much as Mrs. Weasley had tried to with Harry in Harry Potter (it was one of the books that Harley had had delivered to his front door, so of course he had read it. And then he'd gone out and bought the rest of the series that had so far been published). The elderly Italian woman had stayed a week, made him enough meals to last a few months, and babied him more than he ever had been before, before heading back home to Trenton, New Jersey, and all the children and grandchildren that lived near her. Harley was gone through most of his time as an addict. In the coming two weeks afterwards, he'd return from cases to find one of Harley's aunts had been by or was still at his apartment, wanting to make sure he was okay and give him some extra babying. One case after another he found himself immersed deeper and deeper into Harley's family. And at the same time, more and more dependent on the clear liquid in the tiny little bottle. By the first month after… after the first month of addiction, Harley's family began to remain home rather than coming to baby him, and Spencer couldn't tell if he was relieved or saddened by this turn of events.

He had more freedom, sure, but he'd just had his first taste of having a family who loved him unconditionally, and he was sad to see that fade.

Schrodinger, who had almost turned into a regular cat following Harley's departure to Hawaii, had now reverted back to his usual behavior of hiding since Spencer's addiction started, and Spencer felt conflicted about that as well. It was as if everything was returning to normal.

Except Harley still wasn't home.

After a while, Spencer and Harley stopped talking on the phone every day, and it was nearly entirely his fault. Sometimes he'd go a week before picking up when she called. He'd became increasingly paranoid that Harley could tell there was something wrong with him just listening to him talk through the phone, and as dependent as he'd become on the drugs, he couldn't have afforded to have her worry and decide to do something about it. Harley still called him every day for a couple months, but what had been three times a day, dwindled to once a day, and by the three month mark of his addiction, it finally got to the point where there hadn't been a new voicemail to listen to in a few days. And despite being the cause behind that, it saddened Spencer immensely, especially when the books being delivered to his door slowed down as well. Although wither it was because Harley hadn't planned to be gone this long and there just wasn't the same stock of books there had been at the start or if Harley was intentionally withholding the book deliveries, Spencer couldn't be sure.

Three months into this new phase of his life, when a case took the team to New Orleans, Spencer's addiction finally began coming to light, and he finally had to face his demons. It affected his work, and his relationship with his team, and it'd even impacted his relationship with Harley. So Spencer tracked down the only person he knew he could go to for help, no questions asked. The only person who could grasp the situation with perfect clarity, knowing all the pieces and all of the players that were missing. Ethan had a grasp on the situation that his team couldn't understand: he knew about Harley and Spencer's relationship with his fellow genius. Ethan understood the effects Harley's absence had on Spencer.

Spencer found Ethan in an alley and decided to scare him.

"Jeez! Reid, you scared me," Ethan exclaimed. Ethan's dark hair was long and curled at the ends, brushed away from his face. He had a short beard on his face that took away from his cheek bones. The grey button up and black slacks he was wearing really made him seem paler than he was. He was thin, and Spencer couldn't tell if he'd always been that way or if it was new. Harley would probably know.

"Always been one step ahead of you, man," Spencer told his friend with a grin.

"Yeah, whatever helps you sleep at night," Ethan replied. "I'm glad you called, it's good to see you."

"You too," Spencer responded.

"Let's get a drink," Ethan told him, leading him into the dimly lit Jaz bar. The walls were painted red, the furniture was all of a dark color, all the lamps and light fixtures where old, and there was thick gold crown molding above the bar.

Behind the bar were 214 clear glasses turned upside down on glass shelves all, very well lit. Ethan went over to the bar in look of some pistachios to eat, greeting the bartender dressed in all black as he drew closer. There were a copper vase with pink and yellow lilies at the end of the bar. Spencer's phone rang while they were standing at the bar, and he pulled it out and flipped it open to see that Emily was calling him. He put his phone away, not wanting to talk to her as Ethan started talking. Being here with Ethan was more important than the case. Especially if his old friend could help him get clean. If not, he'd go to Danny next.

"So, are you going to ask the question?"

"What question?"

"Come on man, it's me here. We haven't talked to each other in years. I know it's why you called me. Ask the question," Ethan told him.

"Why did you quit after only one day of FBI training?" Spencer relented.

"Well… I'm sure you've considered the evidence," Ethan started, raising his drink to his lips, "analyzed the science. What's your theory?"

"You were battling your own demons. You didn't have time to analyze someone else's," Spencer told him, watching Ethan take a sip of his amber colored alcohol.

"Not bad. Not bad," Ethan replied. "Those days I did prefer Jack Daniels to Jeff Dahmer. But they both weigh on your soul eventually."

Spencer's phone started to ring again. "Sorry." Emily again. Just like before, he didn't answer, putting his phone back into his pocket.

"The Bat Phone," Ethan joked before taking another sip.

"Let me ask you this, Ethan. Do you ever regret it?"

"No. I may not be changing the world, but my music makes me happy. Doesn't take a profiler to see that you're not. Tell me, where is Harley these days?" Ethan informed him, walking away from the bar. Spencer knew the last question was rhetorical. Spencer might not have kept in touch with Ethan, but Harley sure had.

"It's not easy," Spencer spoke quietly, putting money down on the bar to pay for their drinks, and then taking his own glass to follow after Ethan. "It's not… I don't even believe some of the things that I've seen."

"John Coltrane. He was a genius too. Died of cancer. But most people think it was the booze and heroine that did him in," Ethan informed him, sitting sprawled back in his antique arm chair. Spencer sat across from him on the edge of his seat.

"What are you trying to say?"

"You look like hell," Ethan told him frankly.

"I'm fine."

"Come on man. I'm a jazz musician in New Orleans. I know what it looks like when someone's not well. It's maybe the one time that I can tell you something that you don't already know. It might make you forget, but it would make it go away," Ethan explained. "And if I can tell… You're surrounded by some of the best minds in the world. If you think they don't notice"—Ethan put his hand out in front of him to imitate the shakiness Spencer had between highs (It was similar of the shakiness Harley got when her blood sugar got to low)—"Well, for a genius, that's just dumb. And Harley hasn't even seen you and she can tell. When are you going to call that girl back? She isn't the type of girl you can just go silent on and get away with it. Trust me, I've tried."

_._._._._

Spencer sat in that same jazz bar two nights later watching Ethan play the piano. They'd just wrapped up their case in New Orleans and would be heading home soon. Or, at least, the rest of the team would be. Spencer had other plans.

Gideon came up and sat beside him, and Spencer watched, his leg crossed one on top of the other, ankle to knee.

"How'd you find me?"

"You're not all that hard to profile," Gideon told him. Spencer felt like smirking. If that was the case he'd have asked about Spencer's relationship status a while ago. "Your friend is good."

"I missed that plane on purpose."

"I know."

"I'm struggling," Spencer admitted.

"Well, anybody who's been through what you've been through recently… would." Too bad he didn't even know the half of it.

"This is all I've been groomed for. I never even—I never even considered another option," Spencer told him. Well, he had, but that option wasn't something you talk about with other people, especially not ones without the right level of security clearance. And looking back, all things considered, if this was what happened after a few years with the BAU, it would have happened a lot sooner and been a lot worse if he'd taken option number 2.

"Now you're questioning whether or not you're strong enough to be here." Spencer nodded in the affirmative.

"Yeah."

"I have been playing at this job, in one way or another, for almost thirty years," Gideon told his protégé. "I've felt lost. I've felt great. I've felt scared, sick… insane. I don't know. I guess the day this job stops gnawing at your soul, and hand… your hands stop feeling, and… Maybe that's the time to leave."

"I guess I… just needed to figure out if I could step away from this job."

"And?"

"I'll never miss another plane again. At least not after this one." Gideon turned to look at him, confused. But Spencer had already turned to look at Danny McCoy who'd just stepped out of the shadows and into his peripheral. "I'm going to need a week or two off. To get clean."

Gideon nodded, still confused, watching as Spencer stood and walked across the room to join his friend.

_._._._._

Spencer spent the first week in a discrete rehab center in Vegas under a fake name and the watchful eye of Ed Deline. During that time, while under the symptoms of withdrawal he worked on profiling some of the better known cheaters in the casinos black book, and mapping out their methods. It was something he did anyway, acting as a consultant from time to time, but it gave him something else to think of besides the fact that someone had probably already told Harley. And she hadn't called him that entire week.

He felt like shit that entire week. It was hell.

But at the end of the seven days, he felt better. He felt good. And he found himself on a plane to Hawaii at Danny's insistence. Spencer hadn't wanted to go, but counting the days, he realized that this was the week off he and Harley had talked about going on back before she started at JPAC. The week between the end of her time with JPAC and before her return to the Jeffersonian. The time for them to just be two people in love in paradise.

Spencer didn't want to get his hopes up.

Harley only stopped talking to people when she was really really pissed. And he'd never seen her impose silence on anyone for a week before.

Stepping off of the plane, and walking to baggage claim, he spotted Harley standing among the people waiting for their loved ones. She had on a pair of short cut off shorts, a loose tank top over a bikini, and her rich brown hair which was now a little longer than her shoulder blades was highlighted by sun exposure and falling around her in loose waves. She had an intricate arm cuff on one upper arm, and another on her other forearm. She smiled when she found him in the crowd.

Spencer smiled back.

He walked to her, and she throw her arms around him. She seemed to deflate in his arms. "I missed you so much, Pen."

Spencer breathed a sigh of relief. At least until her hand came up and smacked the back of her head in a move she'd learned from her mom and her Nonna. They were very physical in their method of speaking to people: swats to the back of the head told you you had been an idiot, a kick to the butt as they walk is a sort of teasing gesture, and flicks expressed irritation. And if one stabbed you in the hand with a fork, you were probably failing to steal from their plate.

"I've missed you, too," Spencer told her, cupping his hand to the back of her head. He'd take any blow she dealt as long as she still let him hold her. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't apologize, Pen," she whispered in his ear. She had to be on the tips of her shoes to wrap her arms around his neck. Spencer wrapped one arm around the lower part of her back and lifted. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and he held her with a shaky strength. He was sure that Morgan and the rest of the team would be shocked to find out that Spencer wasn't skinny, his was just lean. He didn't weight lift. He rock climbed, paddled, hiked, rode a motorcycle, could hold his own weight, and had tried almost every extreme sport at least once. His muscle was a consequence of long time exposure to Harley's life style. He probably could have passed the physical requirement now. Probably. He'd never be Morgan, but he could hold his own.

Or he could have eight months ago. He'd lost muscle mass, especially in the last three months.

"Come on. We're going to go have dinner, and then I'm taking you back to my apartment. I have someone I want you to meet."

Spencer didn't know how comfortable he was with this someone.

_._._._._

Spencer should have known. Honestly, it was so typical Harley.

The someone he'd been worried about? It was a dog.

An adorable dog, but a dog none the less. The dog in front of him was still a puppy, probably only six months old. A Louisiana Catahoula Leopard Dog. And a chimera at that. The dogs face was divided right down the middle with two different prints. One eye was blue, the other was almost black.

"This is Slade," Harley explained with a grin. Then, using her baby voice that was never applied toward human children, always toward animals, she continued. "His my new little buddy. I found him along a highway in a box. Isn't he pretty?"

Spencer wanted to laugh. She got another freaking dog. He really should have known. "Where is Slade going to live in DC?"

"I'm buying a house," Harley admitted. He gave her a look of confusion. This from the girl who hated moving so much that she didn't want to buy a house until they were ready to settle down. "You don't have to move in with me, but… I want this dog and my landlord already said he's going to be too big. So I'm looking into houses, and Antonio and Marco are going to do all the renovations."

"What do you have over them that they're willing to do this for you? They work out of Jersey," Spencer asked. He was still thinking over the whole "living with her" part of it. "Morgan renovates old house."

Harley looked at him, quizzically. "A magician never reveals his secrets. And since when do you want to involve your team?"

"I don't. It was just something I thought of. If the team found out about us, Morgan would be the worst with the teasing. I'd tell Hotch first, but that's because I'm pretty sure he already has his suspicions," Spencer admitted. "I want to wait another year. Hopefully by 26 they won't think I'm being rash or naïve, being in one single relationship for… I just don't want them thinking that we're too young to be this committed."

Harley grinned as she led him to her couch. "And I don't want to be looked at as another one of those girls who have one relationship and get really serious, really young. So we're good. Of course after you reveal our relationship to your team, they're going to hop on my Nonna's bandwagon. "Oh, Harley, it's been almost ten years. How is there not a ring on your finger by now?""

Spencer laughed along with Harley. Her Nonna had been trying to shove marriage down her throat since the first time she'd brought Spencer home. "Almost ten years" wasn't quite accurate, but then Nonna liked to round up to make things seem more dramatic. The old woman had only known about Spencer for the last five years.

It turned out that Danny was right. A week with Harley in paradise was exactly what he needed.

_._._._._

Spencer and Harley spent the week exploring as much of the island as they could in seven days. And not once in those seven days had either of them brought up the topic of his drug addiction. Instead Spencer found he liked Slade, a lot more than he thought he would. And he and Harley also came to an agreement about buying a house. And it helped that Harley's landlord seemed to change his mind (so long as she told anyone who asked that Slade is a psychiatric service dog for her panic disorder, or as her landlord had put it: "some sort of service dog that wears a vest or something").

He and Harley would put down for a house together. But an older one. One that would need lots of work to improve but still preserve it. One that was closer to DC. One that would probably take a year to fix up. So in the meantime, he had a year to get his affairs in order, so to speak. A year to tell his team. A year to stay sober and find a group to talk about his addiction with. A year to deal with the aftermath of his choices before he and Harley started a new chapter of their lives together. A year until the end of owning separate apartments.

They were going to own a house together. Live together without another space to go to when they needed to be away from each other. Spencer found he enjoyed that idea more than he thought he would.

Now on a flight back to DC, Spencer looked over the pictures from their trip.

Harley liked documenting things. She documented her demons and monsters in some of the best books on the market (in Spencer's opinion, at least, which should be considered an expert opinion due to how many books he read a year). And she used scrapbooks to document the good things in her life. She had at least a dozen scrapbooks at home, all about different important parts of her life. A family scrapbook. A holiday scrapbook. An adventure scrapbook. The list went on. Spencer's personal favorite was the scrapbook SR+HI. It was their scrapbook with all of the letters they'd written each other in college, all of the notes they'd left each other over the years, and all of the tickets stubs of places they'd been together.

The pictures from Hawaii would be divided between their scrapbook and the Adventure book.

He held her hand in his as they flew. They were two hours into a nine and a half hour flight. The plan was that someone would be picking them up from the airport, and then they'd booth spend the night at Harley's apartment.

"So," Harley started, still turned to face the window, "what drug was it?"

Spencer had figured she already knew and that's why they hadn't talked about it. He should have known better. Harley had made sure that they'd had one week of bliss, untainted by the toils and hardships of the real world, before they both returned to daily life. So instead she waited until the week was over to deal with the hard questions, and do it in an environment that Spencer couldn't run away from her in. He should have known, considering it's something Harley always does. She doesn't crack out the hard questions until the sunshine and rainbows part is over. She didn't tell him that she was going on a three month mission trip one year until after the holidays, about a week before she was supposed to leave for Pohnpei. And she didn't tell him that she was offered a place in Stanford's anthropology department until she'd already decided on the Jeffersonian a week after he told her he was joining the BAU. So why would his drug addiction change her MO.

"Dilauded. Hospital heroine," Spencer replied softly. "Tobias Hankel gave it to me after one of his alternate personalities, the one of his father, beat me."

"Why did you continue to take it?" Harley asked, just as softly, and still without looking at him. "What made you want to…?"

"I was already one the track to being addicted by the time I got free, but… Tobias wasn't the bad guy. It was just the other personalities that overpowered him. I never blamed him. I just felt bad for him. And I felt… I don't know… guilty that he was dead I guess. And you weren't home so I felt like I didn't have you to talk to as much anymore. You were just… you were gone for a really long time, and I thought I could handle it, and I did for a while, but… I got kidnapped and brutalized, and you weren't there. And I started to think about it, and if it had been you, I would have dropped everything to be there for you. And I guess I just didn't understand why the same didn't apply in reverse," Spencer explained. "And then your family stopped coming by, and Schrodinger started acting like himself again, and I just felt really alone. Like I felt after my dad left."

Harley turned to him with the most heartbroken expression he'd ever seen on her face. "You should have told me, Pen. Instead you just kept telling me that you were fine and that I didn't need to worry, and that I should stay at JPAC. I mean, I knew you weren't fine, but… Pen, you're the man I love, and one of the things I love about you is that you never felt the need to lie to me or hide the truth. I expected that if there was something that was really wrong, you'd tell me. And you didn't. And I know that I should have gotten on a plane and come straight back home, but I figured I only needed to finish at JPAC and then all of my credits would be completed and all I'd have to do would be to finish my theses. And I wouldn't have to keep going back and forth with school, and I could just be with you for as long as we could. I just, I wanted to be done with school so we could both move on from it and work on establishing ourselves in our fields. Together. I know now that that was stupid of me, but… I honestly thought that you'd tell me if you needed me. I don't care what's going on, Pen. If you need me, you know I'll be there."

Spencer nodded, squeezing her hand.

"I think we should establish some rules."

Spencer was confused, watching as Harley reached down to her purse on the floor and picked up her purse. She withdrew a note pad and a pen, flipping it open to an empty page. They'd never had rules before, and Spencer was confused about what Harley thought she was doing by making some now.

"Rule number one. No matter what is going on, you call, I come. Rule number two…"

"A four month traveling limit on any travel without the other present. No more than four months away from one another," Spencer smiled, seeing where she was going with this. It was like a contract or marriage vow. In fact, Harley had even titled the page "The Vows."

"Okay, good. Rule number three…" Harley smiled, jotting the rules down as they went.

They spent a good amount of time jotting down rule after rules, as well as discussing some of them as they went along. Harley had been right, after all. They did need rules. She explained it to him after they'd written down the last of the.

"We aren't an I, or a me, or a myself, Spencer. We're an us, a we, a they. What I do impacts your life, and what you do effects mine. We need to be more aware of it. It's a byproduct of our relationship. We need to think about how the dissensions we make about our lives impacts the others, okay? It's the only why this relationship is going to work in the long run. We need to be able to sit down and talk things over, and look at the bigger picture," Harley explained. "I can't go running off to parts unknown for months at a time, and you can't just shut me out because I'm not with you in the heat of the moment. If something is wrong we need to be able to trust the other enough to know they'll tell us. I want to believe that if something is going on with you that you're secure enough in our relationship to tell me what it is. And the revers has to apply as well. It's the only way this relationship is going to last for as long as we both want it to."

"I don't want to grow old with anybody else," Spencer admitted.

"Neither do I, which is why this is important now. We can't let the little things break us, Pen. So what do we need to do so that you trust me enough to know that not even something like a drug addiction could make me want to leave you?" Harley asked, placing her other hand over their interlaced fingers.

"I don't know," Spencer whispered, pulling her hands towards him so he could kiss the back of one of her hands.

"Well, you need to figure it out, Pen," Harley told him, looking him in the eye. "There's nothing we can do about it if we don't know what the problem is."

Spencer nodded.

The rest of the plane ride home was relatively quiet afterwards as they both basked in each other's presents. Spencer thought, and Harley wrote with her free hand, her left hand. And it really got Spencer thinking about how they were two parts to the whole picture. One was left handed, the other was right handed. One was older and the other younger (only by a few months, but long enough so that Harley had been able to joke that she was still a teen while he was a twenty something, and so that he could throw it right back at her, a year later, that he could legally drink alcohol and gamble). One was a field agent, and the other was a scientist in a forensics lab. One feared the loss of their mind, and the other feared a hundred different things. They were different and yet the same. They complimented one another in some places, and mirrored each other in others.

It was why they worked so well together, Spencer hypothesized. Because, while they had their differences, they understood one another in ways no one else had ever been able to. And it was that understanding, mixed with years of knowing each other that made them who they were as a couple.

Honestly, though, Spencer couldn't imagine himself ever finding anyone who made him happier than Harley.

He didn't even think he wanted to.

"I used to think that finding the right one was about the man having a list of certain qualities. If he has them, we'd be compatible and happy. Sort of a checkmark system that was a complete failure. But I found out that a healthy relationship isn't so much about sense of humor or intelligence or attractive. It's about avoiding partners with harmful traits and personality types. And then it's about being with a good person. A good person on his own, and a good person with you. Where the space between you feels uncomplicated and happy. A good relationship is where things just work. They work because, whatever the list of qualities, whatever the reason, you happen to be really, really good together."

― Deb Caletti, The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Thank you, to all of you who have favorited, followed, and reviewed my story! It's so encouraging to see how many people like it, and I love hearing what all of you have to say!

Please, please, please keep reviewing. I really want to know what you think about this story. And I'd love to hear what you think some of the rules should be. I'm going to bring it back again in a couple chapters, and I'd love to have your input.

Thank you for reading. And for any of you already back at school, or on your way back to school, I'm so sorry that summer is already over!