"Are you hungry? I can order something if you like?" JJ asked, flipping the light switch and taking Reid's overnight bag out of his hands as they entered his house. Reid shook his head.
"Right. Of course…you probably just want to rest. You must be exhausted." She smiled sympathetically.
"I'm fine. I really don't need you to babysit me." Reid said, and took his overnight bag back stubbornly.
"You're sick and you were just kidnapped Reid! Let me look after you." she laughed at him and put her hand on his arm.
He shrugged it off uncomfortably. She looked hurt.
"...Reid?"
"Look, I wish you'd all just stop fussing okay! You and Prentiss trying to mother me all the time is driving me crazy!" he couldn't look her in the eye.
She looked shocked and seemed to debate with herself for a moment before saying,
"We can't help it. Hotch told us not to ask what happened to you and we won't. But we're your friends and we've spent the past few days sick with worry about you and Morgan, and now we can't even know what happened or why we're not allowed to know! You've got to understand that it's hard for us to be shut out like this."
Reid looked at her coldly.
"I'm so sorry it's been so difficult for you."he said sarcastically. "I can't imagine how you must have suffered."
JJ just gaped at him for a second. She had never heard Reid say anything this harsh to anyone before, especially her. He was the gentlest guy in the world. But now there was something scary in his voice, a kind of resentful cruelty. She felt tears come to her eyes.
"I'm…I'm sorry Spence. I wasn't thinking. Of course it's been worse for y-"
"I'll go and put my stuff away." He cut her off, his voice sounding mechanic and bored. He didn't try to reassure her or apologise for his tone like he normally would have. He went upstairs. She went through to his kitchen and started to cry, all the tension and fear and relief from the past week released in quiet sobs. Reid sat at the top of the stairs and listened to her. He felt nothing. Once the thought that he'd made her sad would have killed him, but now it provoked nothing more in him than faint exasperation, like watching a toddler cry because you told it to share its favourite toy. He sighed and leaned his head against the wall, wondering how he could get her to leave.
When she stopped crying and came upstairs he was lying in bed on his side, pretending to be asleep. She came over and tucked him in, kissing him on the forehead like a little kid.
...
Morgan wasn't even trying to sleep. He was lying on his couch in the darkened living room watching Family Guy reruns. He would start to get engrossed, even laughed a couple of times, but then something would remind him of what he'd done and he would cringe in agony as the awfulness of it washed over him again. Not to mention his shoulder was killing him. He'd taken the dose of morphine half an hour ago but it wasn't working.
Normally he was cautious about using drugs. He had seen first-hand growing up what they did to people, to the neighbourhood. He hadn't sacrificed everything to get out of that life only to slip back into it of his own accord. But this was too much, he couldn't handle this, he had no idea how the hell he was meant to come to terms with it. He'd never imagined in his sickest nightmares that life could be this cruel. So he gave in and took a double dose. They were amazing. They were like a filter for all the bad feelings, relaxing him, taking the shoulder pain away completely, and making him feel warm and sleepy. He could understand why Reid got dependent on them. He drifted almost straight to sleep. His shoulder woke him up multiple times, even when he moved into his bed but at least he slept a little, on and off.
He got up around half eleven in the morning and almost took a shower before remembering that he couldn't take off his sling for another day. He debated risking it. He felt grimy, inside and out. He decided against when he realised that if he fell or something the only person he would currently feel able to call for help would be Hotch. And despite the unexpected progress in their relationship he was not keen on the idea of being seen naked again by anyone, let alone his boss.
God that was sad. He needed friends. Like non work friends. He could've sworn he used to have some of those.
He took another double dose and watched TV again, anything to stop him being alone with his own thoughts for too long. He didn't have many hobbies, since work took up almost all his time one way or another, and he was too tired to do anything productive when he got home.
He ended up staying that way all day. He just couldn't find the energy to get up and find something to do, because that meant facing up to things and he wasn't ready for that. People kept calling him, but he ignored them.
...
Reid got up the next morning and ate breakfast and showered and behaved like a human being purely to avoid giving JJ the excuse to stay any longer. Then the moment she left he desperately wanted her back with him. Then he got angry at her for leaving and angry at himself for driving her away. He tried to finish a quantum physics paper he'd started on before he left as a little light reading, but then he found a spelling mistake and hated the author too much to continue.
He went back to bed. He woke up a couple of hours later. He needed the bathroom and he was thirsty and there was a horrible taste in his mouth, but he couldn't be bothered to move. He wanted to go back to sleep and not wake up for hundreds of years, like 'hypersleeps' in science fiction movies. He would wake up, and the bruises would have faded and the Faradays and everyone who knew what they did to him would be long dead. No one would know him so he could start his life again, step out of this beaten, pathetic shell and no one would ever force him to do things he didn't like. He wouldn't bother trying to fit in or being nice to people. He would hate them, look down on their inferior brains and horrible, filthy base instincts. Like a misanthropic superhero vigilante he would rid the world of scum like the Faradays.
He had to cling to the anger. Anger made him powerful. Depression made him weak. Currently depression was winning. And the urge to take Dilaudid again. The doctor gave him a pitiful supply that he was meant to take gradually to wean himself off and avoid withdrawal, but he knew if he took it all at once it would be enough to get him up. If he got out of bed he was scared he'd go straight to a dealer and fuck his life up even more.
One in four. That was it. He'd briefly read a report of an investigation into the psychological effects of male rape, which estimated that 25% of male rape victims committed or attempted suicide by the end of the first year after the event. Only something like 3% even reported it to the police. That was him now. He'd never understood how the victims could let their attacker get away with it. Now he realised exactly why. The thought of anyone knowing terrified him. It would feel like being raped all over again, violated and bitter and ashamed, and he couldn't face people's smug pity. Poor little Spencer, too weak and girly to defend himself. The FBI would never take him seriously again. His life wouldn't be worth living.
No. The only way he could see himself getting through this would be if no one else ever found out.
He knew he eventually had to somehow find the strength to stand up on his own and get his life back. But there was something darkly thrilling about the path the drugs coaxed him down. Giving up responsibility, giving up his ambitions and dedicating his whole life to his own pleasure. It could be his turn to be selfish, to fulfil every need and impulse his Id could supply, no matter who he used or climbed over and hurt.
Like the Farraday brothers used him.
Another day passed. He ignored the phone when it rang, just lay in bed staring at the wall.
He cried sometimes, but never for long before he went numb. He went to the bathroom and realised he was still bleeding down there. He felt disgusting. There were handprints of bruises on his skinny arms. He put his own fingers over them and dug them in hard, remembering Eric holding him down.
Then there was the sore swelling on the side of his head from being hit with the pistol, the inside of his nose was crusted with blood and there was a bruise along his cheekbone from where he was punched repeatedly in the face for disobeying.
He pulled his shirt over his head and ran his fingers over the scabbed over letters carved into his abdomen, 'BAD BOY.' It sounded like some kind of stupid gang tattoo. He could never let anyone see him without a shirt on but that was okay. He was never one for taking his shirt off in public anyway and he wouldn't particularly miss swimming. There were more bruises, and teeth marks around bruised nipples where Tom had bitten them through his shirt, taking advantage of the fact that Reid was drugged and only semi-conscious and Eric was at work, the day before they had brought Morgan down to the basement.
It had hurt a lot. He couldn't fight back at all even though he wasn't tied up. He tried to wriggle away when he first felt Tom's hands creeping up his leg, but his movements were uncoordinated, his thoughts were clouded and panicked, his brain obeying the primal instinct to freeze when faced with danger, no matter how much he hated feeling the man's filthy hands on him. Tom had talked to him the whole time, making it sound as if they were lovers, asking Reid how he liked to be touched while he stuck his arm underneath his shirt and touched his nipples, clumsily, exploring him like an over-sexed inappropriate child. Not even Morgan knew about that. And he never would. Reid didn't want to even admit it to himself.
He couldn't bear to look at the injuries on his lower half, the ones left there by Morgan. Not on purpose, he knew. But they brought back a different type of memory, one that confused and scared him even more than the violence. His body responding automatically to stimulation wasn't his fault, he knew that. It was perfectly natural for men to get an erection when the genitals were orally stimulated, even when the situation argued strenuously against it. But he felt humiliated, and betrayed by his body.
He put his shirt back on, sat on the edge of the bath and stuck a needle full of Dilaudid into his median cubital vein, hands shaking. He sat backwards into the bath, his knees hooked over the side. It was cold inside his arm, but then he was okay.
...
"They won't answer their phones. I don't know what to do." Hotch said to Rossi as he handed him a coffee. They were sticking photos for the new case up hectically on the board. They were stretched pretty thin without Morgan and Reid, and neither of them could make head or tail of Reid's instructions for how he did his thing with the map where he found the likely location of the killer by drawing mystical triangles everywhere.
"Have you gone to see them?" Rossi asked. Hotch shook his head.
"I don't know if that's the right thing to do. They're both pretty independent people, and they've both refused to answer their phones. I don't know if my presence will help or just make things worse."
"They need help Hotch."
"Goddammit David don't you think I know that! I know everyone thinks I'm made of stone but I know perfectly well when my colleagues are in trouble!"
"I'm sorry. I'm not criticising, honestly." Rossi put a hand on his shoulder. "I don't know how to handle this any more than you do."
"I'm scared I'll do the wrong thing. I'm scared of what this is going to do to them both." he massaged his temples wearily.
"Well we have to do something." Rossi said decisively. "Firstly I think we need to talk to them."
"I planned to check on them both tonight anyway." Hotch agreed.
Rossi paused. "And then I think they need to come back to work. As soon as possible."
Hotch raised his eyebrows. "You think that's wise?"
"I think that they will both be sitting around feeling pretty powerless right now. Maybe catching a few bad guys will remind them of their purpose, allow them to move on. And the one thing I'm certain of is that they need to be around people, and each other."
Hotch nodded.
"That shouldn't be too hard. At Reid's request the incident report was just claiming kidnapping and assault, so it shouldn't be too difficult to bring them back. At my recommendation they probably won't even need a psych assessment."
"Well, make the offer and see what happens." He stuck a pin in his thumb trying to stick the corner of the map up, and cursed. "Good God how does Reid do this triangulation thing? We do not appreciate those boys nearly enough."
...
Hello again sexy people, just thanking you once again for following and reviewing :) it makes my day, it really does.
Sorry this chapter is late and a little bit hectic. Basically I was re-inspired by you lovely reviewers, and decided I could do better and needed to pretty much rewrite this chapter, as the first version was longer and more action based, and had them going back to work almost the very next day, and now I think they need some time to recover first, to sort of pat themselves down and figure out what they want to do.
I hope you like it 3