FELLAS! This Is Your Captain Speaking

FELLAS! This is your captain speaking

Original frames under cut

no big deal (i love you)

moreid hanahaki wip based on this post

⚠️Content Warnings: emetophobia (coughing & throwing up flower petals), spencer's addiction & drug use

The first petals are white.

Small and delicate, white daisy petals crawl up his throat and decorate the pristine porcelain of his sink in the morning, not yet full or bloody, new enough to remain untainted by the torn tissue of his lungs.

Daisies, innocent and loyal love, holding his tongue, root in his chest, threatening to suffocate him if he leaves his feelings to grow, but the flowers don’t lie.

Call it innocence or naivety; Spencer won’t tell. He’ll hold his breath until he runs out of air, longing blooming like weeds, feeding on his life until only the flowers and a corpse remain.

At first, it’s slow, coming and going like the tide, feelings ebbing and waning with uncertainty.

He buries himself in books on the disease—hanahaki, hana (flower), haki (to throw up), a sickness that ails people who suffer from one-sided love, taking weeks to years to develop fully—and flower language, reading what every petal means about the longing ache in his ribs and how to cure it.

He goes to work—it isn’t bad enough to affect his performance—he profiles, coughs up petals, takes down unsubs, spits up his innocence, and flies home.

His case is slow; months pass before single petals turn into two or three and longer until the dull itch in his chest grows into a light ache when he exerts himself, his lungs reflecting his gradual, timid love.

The flowers change in Georgia.

The daisies stop coming, the drugs numbing his mind and body—his heart—concealing his love deep in his chest, buried where Charles Hankel and Raphael can’t reach.

They return in full bloom when Tobias revives him.

Spencer hacks up entire flowers on the cabin floor, belladonna, butterfly weed, cyclamen, and blood splattering against the ground, and even in its state, a part of his drug-and-death-addled brain recognizes the buds.

Silence, letting go, and goodbyes; flowers from the beginning of his gardener’s almanac burn like the fish hearts and livers in his soul as Tobias Hankel hauls him back from the dead.

He isn’t sure if the team sees the splashes of color, overfilling adoration through the camera, focused on sending a message, desperate to get out before he can cough up more symbols of regret, spilling his secret to his coworkers and friends– his family.

He argues when Hotch climbs into the ambulance beside him, feeling more flowers clawing at his throat, but the older agent wins, remaining by his side as the EMTs check his vitals, staying silent, even when the blooms come.

Bittersweet nightshade (truth) spills from his lips by the bushel, spurring one set of hands to hold a bag by the heaving agent’s chin to catch the fragile foliage, the others asking him a barrage of questions he doesn’t hear over his painful wrenches.

Hotch keeps the rest of the team out of his room at the hospital, telling them Spencer isn’t up for visitors as he chokes on pink camellias (longing), never bringing it up until the young brunette gets discharged less than 24 hours later.

He drives his agent home, offering to help him to his apartment, which Spencer refuses before the two linger in the car outside the building for a few seconds of petal-like, fragile silence.

“We’ll talk when you return,” He finally speaks, watching the younger brunette shift and fidget anxiously, clearing his throat and coughing into his elbow. “Take care of yourself; we’re only a call away.”

Spencer nods, silky petals and the taste of iron sitting on his tongue, and disappears into his lonely home.

The flowers stop while he’s on leave, too high for their stems to reach, losing time on the bathroom floor, buds withering with the body they’re feeding on.

The dilaudid numbs the fire in his chest—in his lungs and heart—eating away at the tissue the roots of his love buried themselves in until he can’t feel the stems in his organs, pollen in his blood, petals rising in his throat, and swallowed like his words, burning in his stomach.

“I love you” doesn’t linger on his tongue, waiting to spill past his lips with white chrysanthemums for truth, an admission after over a year of obstructed breathing, and when he’s high, he can almost convince himself that his garden died with Spencer Reid in the cabin in Georgia, at rest in the grave he dug with bouquets of daisies, of belladonna, butterfly weed, and cyclamen, nightshade, and camellias on the fresh mound of upturned soil.

Spencer tries to get sober before he returns to work, but there isn’t enough fertilizer—enough of his body, his dying cells—to sustain all the flowers he regurgitates in those 48 hours of trembling and heaving, purple hyacinths for sorrow and marigolds for grief; blood and bulbs litter his bathroom floor until he can’t breathe, darkness swimming in his vision, and the shell of Spencer Reid, a glass vase with everything on display, succumbs to his cravings, losing himself in oblivion.

He sits in Hotch’s office, pinprick pupils, and tells his boss the flowers and his feelings are gone, that it was the stress that made them bloom, not his genuine, heart-wrenching adoration for his best friend squeezing his organs like a sponge for every ounce of love, threatening to bleed him dry.

Spencer returns to work, profiling people who have experienced everything he’s gone through—enough trauma to break the human psyche—because he can think clearly for the first time in over a year, flowers and genius dying together as poison courses through them.

“I’m struggling.”

Despite everything—his team telling him they have his back, that they’re there for him, that they’re profilers, and Spencer is too high to hide his habit most of the time—Emily is the only one to call him out.

“Reid.” She approaches him after New Orleans, trained eyes seeing through him.

“Look, Prentiss, I’m sorry for snapping at you, but I’m not in the mood–”

“I’m getting waffles and milkshakes. Come with me.” It isn’t a question or an invitation as the older agent steps into the elevator, turning around expectantly, her gaze practically daring Spencer to run as carefully neutral eyes observe him.

He follows Prentiss with a heavy huff, shoulders sagging, his body too exhausted to fight, a familiar itch building in his throat as the doors close.