Written for a request by anxiety-banana on Tumblr

"Hey, so…hear me out."

Spencer looks up from his notes and blinks up at Ethan. He's on his second day of no sleep, and his filter is long gone. "It's always a bad sign when you start a conversation like that."

"Hear me out," Ethan repeats, which makes it worse. "I was talking to Caroline this morning, and she said that her band is playing tomorrow evening. She wants me there—and you're invited too, obviously."

Not obviously, Spencer thinks. He's only met Caroline a couple times, and while she's never been rude to him, he's always gotten the distinct sense that she only ever talks to him because he's Ethan's friend. That's the case with a lot of people, actually. Before his recent birthday, Ethan was the only other underage student at CalTech, but starting at seventeen rather than fourteen made him much more tolerable to the freshman, and Spencer's proximity to him made him more tolerable as well, even though he's still a good four years younger than most of his year.

Spencer had expected to hate rooming with Ethan when they were first paired together for his third year (being the only underage student for his first two years meant he'd gotten a room all to himself). Then, surprisingly, Ethan had been really quite lovely, and Spencer had been excited to room with him again this year—he's intelligent, funny, and sociable. Everything Spencer is and everything he isn't. Being friends with him has gotten him much more positive social interaction this past year-and-a-bit than he's had in his whole life. And a lot more invites to things like this. He lets himself be excited for a moment before…

"Why did you ask me to hear you out?" Usually, when Ethan starts a conversation that way, it means he's about to ask Spencer to do something inane, not to attend an acquaintance's performance. "Is her band really bad or something?"

"No, they're awesome, they—" Ethan stops and sighs. "It's…at a bar? Like, a show-your-ID-at-the-door bar?"

There it is. "You're eighteen," Spencer says, returning to his notes. "I'm seventeen. Unless I've missed a major change in the law, that's illegal."

"Caroline said she can get us fakes."

The words "that's also illegal" are about to leave his mouth, and then…

Ethan probably thinks he's taking Engineering notes. The moment this conversation ends, he'll probably tease Spencer for being so studious when he has the final "in the bag", whatever that means. He hunches protectively over his desk so Ethan can't see what he's really doing.

In-patient psychiatric care is expensive. Spencer knew that going in, but these past couple days of research…even if he picks up extra shifts at the library and the restaurant and the lab, there's no way he'll have enough money for anything but the worst of the worst. And he won't do that to his mother, not after…

Well. Not after everything Spencer knows she would have done for him if she could have.

It's been burying him, really. It's why he hasn't slept. But there's something else he can do with a fake ID that could help. Something he knows he's good at. He chews his bottom lip. "Okay."

"Come on, you don't have to drink if you don't—" Ethan visibly startles. "Okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Spencer says. He can feel Ethan's suspicious gaze burning into his back. "Just for the music."

"Awesome, I'll let Caroline know," Ethan says, clapping his hands together. "Don't worry about it, man. She says her guy makes really convincing ones, and I could probably pass for twenty-one even without an ID." He points proudly at his patchy moustache. Spencer bites his tongue. "And you—well. They're really good fakes."

Spencer's face heats. He's sure Ethan will get past the door without any problems, even though all his facial hair does is make him look like a teenage boy with a bad moustache.

And Spencer knows that if he gets stopped, it won't be because of his age or persistent babyface but because of the energy that seems to radiate from him. As if there's a sign above his head at all times, proclaiming I don't belong here, which will be just as accurate in a bar of twenty-somethings as it was in high school and as it was for those precious couple years he spent with kids his own age. He doesn't think there's a place for him out there—Ethan's place seems to be everywhere.

Hell, Ethan has been here for less than two years, and students Spencer knows his friend has never shared a class with greet him by name in the caf. It's not because Ethan looks like he belongs with them but because he acts like he belongs with them. Meanwhile, Spencer is still being asked if he's lost over three years in.

He despises the envy that curdles in his stomach at moments like this. It's so childish. He technically is still a child, but he hasn't felt like one in a very long time. Most seventeen-year-old boys aren't in college. Most seventeen-year-old boys don't stay bent double over their notes even as the prying eyes leave to hide the fact that they're comparing psychiatric hospitals and not bridge materials.

Spencer huffs as Ethan closes the door to their dorm, probably to let Caroline know his goody-two-shoes roommate has agreed to break the law after all. He can't get caught up in this woe-is-me nonsense, not when he has so much to think about.

He flips to a new page in his notebook. At the top, he writes Poker Strategies and another piece of his childhood dies.

It's the scariest thing he's ever done up to that point, but he does it.

He can spare the missed days, so Spencer drives down to Vegas (he can hit more casinos there than in Pasadena, and there's a risk of people recognising him if he does this too close to his college) and spends his entire week visiting first all the casinos he dares on the strip.

Then, when he starts to get turned away from the doors before he can even flash his fake ID (word gets around, apparently), he goes to Pahrump. And then he goes to Laughlin. By the end of it, he has more money in his bank account than he ever has before (maybe more than he has, cumulatively, in his entire life). It's enough to pay off the deposit for Bennington Sanitarium (his best option, he'd decided, barely listening to mediocre jazz while nursing a ginger ale at a bar he wasn't supposed to be at) plus at least a few months of care.

He goes to a hotel even though his childhood home is nearby, unable to face his mother. He's not sure which is worse—that she'll find out what he's done for her or that she'll never know. He begins to cry the moment the door clicks shut for reasons he can't yet place but which he will later identify as grief. His face hurts, and his stomach hurts, and his head hurts, and his heart hurts.

Spencer sleeps right there, not bothering to move to the bed. In the morning, he stops at CVS to buy some concealer (nobody likes losing, least of all gamblers) and covers the bruises. Spencer goes back to school and tells nobody what he's done. Some months later, he commits his mother with his ill-gotten funds and tells nobody about that either, even though it easily tops his illegal gambling for the scariest thing he's ever had to do. He assures himself that nobody will ever have to know, not about his mother and not about what it took to get her help.

He is wrong.

It takes Spencer a long time to feel settled in the FBI. It's not the team's fault—in fact, all of them are kinder towards him in his first couple months than anyone was in the first twenty-one years of his life, save, of course, for his mother. And…he detests himself for thinking it, but they're more consistent than her.

It's just that Spencer has never felt settled anywhere. He's never felt welcomed like this. He spends a year waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under his feet and then slowly begins to believe that it won't. Maybe there was no rug in the first place, and he stands, finally, on solid ground.

He's wrong about this, too.

It's like the setup to a bad joke; a bomber, a hostage, and six FBI agents walk into a building. Only the bomber walks back out. The FBI makes headlines for the worst possible reason, and the public needs someone to blame. They decide on Gideon, who blames himself anyway, and the very public breakdown that follows makes for a second round of headlines. It's shocking, frankly, that Gideon gets away from it all with only a forced sabbatical. Spencer would bet all the money he won in Vegas six-odd years ago that it's Hotch's doing.

He doesn't think he can respect the acting unit chief more than he already does. Yet again, he is mistaken. It's not always a bad thing to be wrong, he learns.

Shortly after Gideon goes on leave, they get their first case in Vegas since Spencer joined the team. It, too, feels like a cruel joke. Now that the rug has returned to its place under his feet, he's thrust into a brutal case in a state that makes him feel unsettled and unsteady in the worst possible city. A spectral hand prepares to pull the rug out from under his feet as they board the jet, giving a warning tug as the SUVs pull up in front of the casino their last victim visited.

Spencer gulps. He's not banned from every casino in Vegas, or Pahrump, or Laughlin, but it's close. And he's definitely banned from this one. He'd consider risking it, but this particular casino…

He'd gotten a lot of money out of them. And the floor manager had gotten a bit handsier than necessary in throwing him out. If he walks in, there's a not insignificant chance he'll be recognised and thrown out again, this time in front of his team (his friends?), who still believe him to be some geeky kid whose first taste of real hardship came after he walked through the doors of the BAU.

Everyone else walks casually up to the casino. Spencer doesn't get out of the car. Hotch holds the door open for him, arching a brow when Spencer remains still like a statue. "Are you feeling alright?"

"I can't go in there," Spencer blurts out.

Hotch says nothing. He's waiting for elaboration, Spencer guesses. Right. What kind of unit chief—even a temporary one—would he be if he took that without questioning it? Yes, Spencer, of course, you can sit in the car while we gather critical information from potential witnesses. No, I don't need to ask any questions. You can just sit in here and colour like the child you still are deep down.

Spencer looks at the pristine floor of the SUV and swallows down the nausea. He has to be an adult about this, even if it means his career and life will end under neon lights. "I'm…um. I'm banned?"

Hotch just stares for a moment. Spencer shrinks in on himself as Hotch slides into the backseat with him and closes the door. He's giving him privacy, he thinks. He doesn't want to fire him in front of the team, maybe. Or maybe—

No. Hotch is a good man. Those exist. Spencer clasps his hands together in his lap and tries not to panic.

"Why are you banned, Reid?" Hotch asks carefully.

Spencer can't detect anything in his voice. Reproach, disappointment, simple curiosity—all of it escapes him. "Counting cards," he admits. Hotch will know if he lies. "I can't help it. My brain just…" He doesn't finish his sentence; instead, he just gestures loosely at his temple. Hotch says nothing, so he continues frantically. "I—I don't know if I'll be able to go into any other casinos we need to investigate. I'm banned from a few. A lot. Most." His shoulders are up by his ears now.

Hotch's brows raise in outright surprise. If he wasn't thinking about how he's definitely out of a job, Spencer might find it in himself to be a little proud to have gotten such a reaction out of the older man. "When did you have time to do all that?"

It's a fair question. Spencer is barely twenty-three, and the legal gambling age in Nevada is twenty-one. He hasn't had much free time in the past couple of years. He opens and closes his mouth, trying to think of a not-technically-lie—

"Ah. You were underage?"

Spencer freezes. He doesn't say anything or even nod, but he doesn't need to. It wasn't a question. Slowly, he opens his messenger bag and takes out his badge, holding it out to Hotch without looking.

"What are you doing?"

"I can give you my gun when we get back to the station," Spencer says flatly. "I didn't bring it." He should have. But he's not a very good agent, not yet. Not ever, now. "I—I'm really sorry. You're right. I was seventeen."

Silence. Spencer gathers what little courage he has and looks up, then frowns. Hotch doesn't look angry or even disappointed. He looks confused, maybe even baffled. "I'm not firing you, Agent Reid," he says, pressing on Spencer's hand so he lowers his badge. He never calls him Agent, always Doctor, respecting all three of his PhDs. Normally, Spencer prefers it that way, but being called Agent now makes something warm bloom in his chest. "If we fired every agent who did something foolish when they were seventeen years old, we wouldn't have any. Come on."

He opens the door and leaves, not looking over his shoulder to make sure Spencer is following. Trusting him still, somehow. He strides towards the casino and waits at the door for Spencer, who speaks through his teeth as if the floor manager who threw him out six years ago is around to hear him. "Hotch, I really can't—"

Hotch opens the door. Morgan and JJ are standing near the entrance, chatting with a floor manager—a different manager than the one Spencer is familiar with, thankfully.

"Morgan," Hotch says. "We don't really need four people talking to witnesses in one building. Why don't you and Agent Reid—"

There it is again. The warm thing settling behind Spencer's ribs is reassurance.

"—go check out some of the surrounding businesses, see if any of them know anything."

Morgan scoffs. "You just don't want me around all these beautiful women," he says, winking at the fresh-faced pit boss. It's all talk, of course, and he leaves quickly, ruffling Spencer's hair once he gets outside. "Come on, kid."

Spencer tries not to feel too bad about pulling half the team away from such a significant location because of his problems.

Except then, the restaurant a couple doors down does have a lead—a big one. When they reconvene at the station, Spencer watches JJ for any knowing looks she sends his way, but none come, and he relaxes. Hotch has not told her. It barely feels like Hotch knows until they're boarding the jet again, and his boss sends him a rare half-smile that Spencer knows is for more than a job well done.

He doesn't think he'll ever be more grateful.

He is wrong again.

Enough time passes that Spencer believes it will never come up again, not in any significant way. The first time it even remotely does is when they're flying back from Delaware after rescuing Billie Copeland. Spirits are high, and Spencer is destroying everyone at poker. Morgan complains, and JJ accuses him only half-jokingly of cheating, and then Hotch quiets them with a simple "he's from Vegas." A bolt of fear goes through Spencer, but the comment goes unelaborated and unremarked upon, and JJ deals next. If that's all the attention Spencer gets for his gambling for the rest of his life, he won't complain.

Or, well, he's not quite that optimistic. The gambling scene of Vegas and the surrounding area is infamous enough that Spencer knows it will eventually feature in a case again, but he suspects Hotch is more likely to quietly keep him away from the Strip than to plainly acknowledge their conversation. He doubts his…history will stay irrelevant forever, but he trusts that he'll never have to discuss it again.

And then, a little over a year after that day in Vegas, the team goes on two weeks of vacation, of which they get less than twenty-four hours before things go awry. They've had worse cases than Randall Garner, technically—Adrian Bale left six agents dead in Boston and one on the brink of collapse, and Garner leaves one in hospital—but everyone is still shaken by the time they rescue Rebecca from her father's basement and reconvene at the hospital to wait for Elle to wake up.

Morgan, JJ, and Garcia have gone to the gift shop to get her something, and Hotch has left to check Elle's status. And, though he hadn't said so, on Gideon, who is waiting in her room for her to rouse rather than outside like the rest of them. Technically, the hospital allows two people in a patient's room at once. Gideon had told them he "didn't want to overwhelm her", but Spencer suspects his isolation has more to do with his guilt than any concern over Elle's tolerance for a crowd.

He voices none of this as Hotch (who has by now dropped the acting from acting unit chief—Spencer won't complain) returns and gets comfortable in the chair beside Spencer. As comfortable as Hotch ever looks, anyway.

Spencer clears his throat and sips at his long-cold coffee. "Any news?" There isn't any. Had there been, Hotch would have told him Elle had woken before he'd even sat down. It's socially expected to ask, though, and he's getting better at that kind of thing. Not that there was a particularly high bar.

Hotch shakes his head, as expected. "Soon, though. She's out of the woods."

"I know," Spencer says, almost defensively. Embarrassingly, it does calm him to have the information repeated. "Um. I mean—that's good."

Hotch doesn't seem bothered by his usual…Spencerness. His phone dings, and he looks down before turning to face Spencer. "I asked the agents in charge of watching your mother to update me every thirty minutes. She's still doing well. I thought you might like to know that."

Guilt makes Spencer's stomach flip. He…hadn't even thought about that. They'd gone straight from the Garner house to the hospital to wait for Elle to wake up, and in the chaos, Spencer had nearly forgotten he'd left his ill, paranoid mother in the care of the kind of people who made her paranoid. "I…do. Thank you."

Hotch nods slowly. Spencer can't take it.

"You can ask. Whatever questions you have, you can ask."

Hotch shifts in his seat and inhales like he's preparing himself. Spencer prepares himself too—to be grilled about his genetics, to be asked if he's ever seen or heard things that aren't there, to be asked outright if he can be trusted in the field if his mother can't trust her eyes or ears.

"She's in care?" Hotch asks instead. It's a polite question. It feels like he's easing into something. Spencer tucks his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.

"I—um—yes. My dad left when I was ten and she…well, she already wasn't well and him leaving didn't help matters. I tried to help her myself, I did, but eventually I couldn't. She's lived in Bennington Sanitarium for six years, six mon—for over six years. It's a nice place, I made sure—"

"You don't have to defend yourself to me," Hotch says, holding his hand out. He cuts Spencer's babbling off the least of the team—only when they're doing or discussing something time-sensitive. Spencer doesn't mind that—saving victims and catching the people who would hurt them are much more important tasks than listening to him talk.

But this time, it feels like he's being cut off for his own sake. He's not sure how to feel about that. "R-right. Thank you. Sorry."

Hotch nods, not acknowledging the apology, which Spencer has come to understand to mean he finds the apology unnecessary, not that he doesn't accept it. "That's quite expensive, isn't it?" he asks so casually it makes Spencer's skin crawl. Because Hotch is never casual, and if he's acting casual about something, it won't be casual at all.

Spencer shrugs. "The—the FBI pays well."

"You weren't in the FBI six years ago," Hotch says. "Gideon told me once, before you finished the academy, that you'd been having trouble finding well-paying work. All the jobs that wanted to hire PHDs didn't want to hire twenty-two-year-olds."

He feels like he's being interrogated. Spencer's shoulders crawl up to his ears, and he can only nod.

"And when you were seventeen, shortly before you had to make what I'm sure was a hefty deposit, you got in some trouble for gambling illegally."

The childish part of Spencer aches to scream you promised you wouldn't mention it again, even though Hotch had never technically said so, but he stuffs it down and says, "you said it yourself. Everyone does stupid things when they're kids."

"I don't think you were being a stupid kid," Hotch says carefully. "I don't think you were being a child at all."

Spencer is silent. Hotch clearly already has it figured out—there's no point in denying it now.

"Reid?"

"I guess not." Spencer waits for Hotch to continue—to decide his fate, condemn or forgive—but he doesn't. Spencer rubs his hand over his mouth and blurts, "why are you…why are you telling me this?"

Hotch says nothing for long enough that Spencer wonders if he intends to carry on like this conversation never happened like he did outside that casino all those months ago. Spencer is just about to do the same when Hotch says, "I saw the way you looked at her. The guilt over what you did for her. And I remember the way you looked at me in Vegas. The shame over what you had to do to achieve it." He pauses. He—he hesitates. Hotch never hesitates. "I don't think you need to feel either."

"No?" He hates how small he sounds. Like he's as hungry for approval from his boss as he was from William. Maybe more because this is a man he admires rather than fears. Or, only sometimes fears, though that isn't Hotch's fault.

"No." There's no hesitation this time. Spencer thinks that even the hesitation from before had more to do with voicing the thought than believing it. Hotch sounds as confident about this as he does about everything else. "I'm sorry you had to do either of those things, especially at the age you did, especially alone, but I think you should be proud that you managed it. I would be."

Of yourself or of Jack? Spencer wants to ask, but he bites his tongue, terrified of Hotch's answer, terrified that this emotional surrogacy only goes one way. He picks at his cuticles as Hotch looks down at his phone, eyes burning. Only because he needs to sleep, of course.

"Elle is awake," Hotch says. "I'm going to go down to the giftshop to grab the others, do you want to wait here?"

("To compose yourself" goes unspoken as the first tears slide down Spencer's cheeks).

Spencer nods. "I—yeah. Yeah, I'll wait here. Thank you."

Hotch leaves. He doesn't acknowledge the gratitude, either, and if the pattern holds, that means he believes it to be unnecessary. If pressed, he would probably claim to be "only doing his job." Spencer doubts the job description for Unit Chief includes half of what the man does for them.

As the voices of the team get closer, Spencer makes a resolution. He's only banned from casinos in three cities, and only in Nevada. The next time they go to Atlantic City, he's sending Jack to college.