Chapter 5: Blue

After that phone call, Reid and Maeve stayed connected by writing to each other, sending three letters a week back and forth. While they missed the sound of each other's voice, while each would have a sudden burst of joy and excitement each time their phone would ring, and find themselves sorely disappointed when they saw that it wasn't, as if they were crashing from an adrenalin high, they each reminded themselves every time, that what they were doing, was about keeping each other safe.

Maeve spent most of her time in the coming weeks, trying to come up with a short list of possible explanations for Spencer's migraines. It was becoming more and more likely that his uncle's stroke had been the end result of a genetic condition that manifests itself at the early stages, in headaches that much like the ones Spencer described. The rest of the symptoms he'd been experiencing and the timeline also fit with this hypothesis. But, that was far from reassuring. Thirty years ago, there was nothing that could be done for the unfortunate few unlucky enough to be born genetically predisposed to the condition she had in mind, now it was easily treatable. Once he got to the final stages of the disease, it would be too late, and if she was right, then that meant he'd already been symptomatic for well over a year…they were running out of time…just two months remained, to confirm or dispel her suspicions, and if it was confirmed, put him in contact with a specialist who could help from there, someone who would get him on medication that would get rid of his symptoms and reverse the disease, thereby saving his life. Considering it could take up to a month to get the results of the DNA screening, that wasn't a lot of time.

…

Reid, was getting lonelier by the day, not only was his correspondence with Maeve reduced to letter writing, but Emily had decided to return to Interpol to run the office in London, and Morgan and Garcia were in Brittan on a temporary assignment, leaving him with JJ, Hotch, and Rossi. Garcia's ex-boyfriend Kevin, was filling in for her as their tech analyst, but he was certainly no Garcia. What's more, hiding his migraines from the rest of the team was getting more and more difficult by the day. He tried to aim his desk lamp as far away from his direct line of sight as possible without it seeming too out of the ordinary as to raise an alarm, and it helped some…but his head still pounded, and his eyes still ached. In the back of his mind, he knew that it was hurting his ability to get through his mounting paperwork at his normal speed of doing so. At this point he should already be done with his own paperwork, and would normally be offering to help his teammates with their work load. Instead, he still had a pile the size a five subject spiral remaining; which in his frustration might as well have been the height of a small child for the amount which it dismayed him.

"Hey…Spence?" It took the sound of JJ's voice to jar Reid from his own thoughts back to awareness of his surroundings.

"Huh?" He asked, only barely having heard her, and having not registered what she said.

"Are you ok?" She asked.

"I'm fine…" he lied. He could tell she didn't buy it, but for all sorts of reasons he just…couldn't open that can of worms.

"Well I'm making a coffee run, do you want anything?" She offered.

"Um…an espresso? Triple shot, two spoons of sugar…?"

"You got it…" she said happily, before heading off the break room.

Once he was absolutely certain that JJ was out of ear shot, he gave a small sigh of relief. that had been a close one. JJ obviously knew that something was wrong, he'd seen her come to that realization at various times in the last year and a half or so, but so far, she hadn't questioned him about it.

…

By the time she got to the breakroom coffee bar, JJ was so nervous and frustrated that she barely noticed when she starting pouring hot coffee on her own hand.

"Darn it!" she exclaimed, wincing at the scalding hot coffee on her hand, quickly using the other to grab a paper towel and wipe it off.

She was worried about Reid, she couldn't understand what was going on with him. Something was obviously wrong, he was never this slow doing paperwork, but she knew that if she pushed too hard, he'd just shut down. She'd known him long enough that that's how Reid reacted when you put him on the spot like that, when you pushed too far on something that he didn't want to talk about.

She sighed, poured cups of coffee for herself and a double-shot espresso for Reid, and headed back to the bull pen, when she did, she saw Reid rummaging in his desk drawer for something.

"Here…" JJ said, setting the cup of espresso down on his desk.

He looked up. "Thanks…"

"You're welcome…say, what exactly are you looking for in there?" she asked.

"I seem to have misplaced my favorite pen…" he said, in a matter of fact tone, avoiding making eye contact so that JJ wouldn't pick up on the lie. Actually it wasn't technically a lie, he had misplaced his favorite pen; that just wasn't what he was looking for at that particular moment.

"Ok, well…hope you find it…" she said, not actually believing him, and went back to her desk.

A couple of hours later, while JJ was up in Hotch's office turning in her pile of paperwork, that Reid, once again, started digging through his desk drawer in search of the small bottle of Excedrin he'd kept there for the last year, for emergencies only. He finally found it, the small white bottle of the only thing he'd found, strong enough to temporarily help stop the pounding inside his skull.

The question was, how to sneak a dose? While they had never actually admitted it exactly, at least not in a way anyone outside of their own team would understand, Reid knew that the rest of the team, except perhaps Rossi, were well aware of his previous addiction to dilaudid, the results of being held, beaten, tortured, and dosed with it at the hands of one Tobias Henkel and the alter-personality of his abusive father. Since then, he'd been extremely careful about what medications he put into his body for any reason. He had to be, if anything, Tobias had proven that Reid was vulnerable to addiction, even when exposure wasn't by choice, and especially if it happened under stress. As profilers, JJ and Hotch would know that this was a weakness of his, if either of them saw him now, it would only raise even more red flags. Finally he decided that his best bet, was just to be quick about it. So he took a dose, chased it with coffee, and shoved the bottle of pills back into the drawer. He looked up, carefully scanning the office around him, JJ was still up in Hotch's office…good, she hadn't seen anything…

That's when his cellphone started to ring. The number on the caller ID was the same one Maeve had given him her first letter. Puzzled, he answered it.

"Hello?"

"Spencer…Hi…It's me…" she replied.

"It's not that I'm not happy to hear from you, this is great, but what's going on, are you ok?"

"Yes…"

"Good, you scared me you know…" he told her, sighing in relief…

"I know, I'm sorry, but listen we need to talk…are you alone?" she asked.

"I'm at work, but for the moment, relatively speaking…"

"I think I figured out what's been causing your migraines, and if I'm right… we need to get it confirmed so I can put you in contact with a neurologist…the only way to confirm, is to run your DNA for the mutation that would cause what I'm talking about…" she explained, intentionally leaving out the name of the condition in question, she didn't want him to look it up and scare himself with outdated information before they even knew for sure that, that was what was going on.

…

When JJ came down the stairs back toward her desk, she found Reid on his cellphone, talking in a hushed tone. She could hear his voice, but couldn't make out what he was saying. Who could it be? If it were Garcia, Morgan, or Emily, he wouldn't be acting so secretive about it, if anything, he'd probably have them on speaker phone, was it about his mom? Someone else in his family? Did whatever whoever he was talking to was saying have anything to do with why he'd been acting so strangely lately? JJ didn't know, but whether he wanted her to or not, she was going to find out…