My Jaw Is On The Floor - Blog Posts

The cage is open, you can walk out anytime you want (Why are you still here?),

S2!Post!Hankel Spencer Reid x gn!BAU!reader

Angst (hurt/comfort). Autistic Spencer (you know the drill). Perhaps some traces of fluff if you’re like…. masochistic. Heavily implied happy ending.

— Explorations of Spencer’s (very glossed over) addiction. Love confessions? Half love confessions? Spencer admits it mentally, Reader implies it through actions. What am I saying? They’re sooooooo in love it pains me.

Warnings: *cracks knuckles,* okay…. —heavy depictions of drug addiction, mentions and allusions of suicide, previous mentions of being held hostage (Hankel). PACKED with Greek mythology references (sue me, i study classics as a degree), perhaps some light biblical imagery? Spencer being at rock-bottom. he’s kinda bitchy. he also disses hotlines (they do save lives, don’t listen to Spencer!!! he’s being a dick). mentions of childhood bullying.

w.c: 3.2k

a/n: title so long it’s basically a midwestern emo song.

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There’s intimacy in being fragile. Spencer knows firsthand, has romanticised his Glass delusion. The fear of shattering, fragmenting on impact, like jagged, sliced glass. He thinks of Charles VI, (1380’s King of France), what he felt when he refused touch. When he reinforced himself, shielding behind excess clothing, in the fallacious fear of dismantling.

Spencer does the same, hides behind fabric, shies away from human contact. Because— because being careful is better than being impetuous. If he can make himself so small he no longer takes up space then maybe they’ll be kind to him.

Monachopis. Has he always been this out of place? Has it always felt this way? Will it ever stop?

12 years old. Curling inward to shield himself from the ache of cracked fists. You’re not here, you’re not here, you’re not here. He still feels like that kid, the one bleeding across the school yard, smashed glasses, bust lip, new bruises to hide from mom.

Perhaps he should blame genetics. Find something to point the finger at. Mentally distort the truth, until it’s no longer a paling face he sees, drawing the first needle into his arm, forcing him to take what he never asked for. No longer that, but a bigger issue, a concern that cannot be personified, a larger statistic in the minefield of human psychology.

Those with ASD have a doubled risk of substance use.

He never stood a chance. Did he?

So just like Charles, he covers his arms. Veils the track marks that penetrate skin. Pretend they’re not there, pretend you’re okay. Okay? Okay, nobody has stopped to ask him if he is ‘okay’ since ‘the incident.’ When the shock wore off, and attention strayed, everyone lost interest.

He feels like an outlaw to his own team.

How do you move on from being bound, tied, degraded to something beneath human?

How did everyone else?

He understands now— the pull of addiction. The way it mimics, artificially replicates home. Something soft, in that one, life-ruinously warm moment between the first hit and the inevitable come down.

But just like everything good. It dies. Turns ugly. Disfiguring, decaying. What once was simple, a fleeting temptation, a way to starve off lonely withdrawal, has derailed into desperate, insatiable hunger. To reproduce the first time, to appease the way he palpates in the wake of something tiny—

Call it what it is. Not an analgesic agent, not a semi-synthetic, not a simple narcotic utilised in the medical field. It’s an opioid, two to eight times greater than that of morphine. Given to those dying, to help alleviate Cheyne-stokes breathing, to reduce pain before the end.

It binds to the opioid-receptions in the central nervous system.

He is no superior than those on the street. Begging for loose change to shoot up and placate the cold.

2AM. The phone connection is faint. Do you feel like killing yourself? Is the noose already tied, is the rope choking you? Do you need to breathe? Do you even want to? He wonders what it would be like, to call into those bullshit hotlines, to hear the detached, sharp-bladed sympathy of some stranger.

Instead, when the phone picks up, the blaring beep of a dial dissipating, he hears you instead.

“You know how it’s believed that Artemis killed Orion?” He starts. He cannot begin with hi, I’m scared of the dilaudid burning through my veins. Do you still love me? (Presumptuous of him to believe you loved him in the first place, he certainly wouldn’t.)

He doesn’t let you answer. Maybe he’s scared, or maybe he can try and satiate your concern by fact-dumping so extensively that you automatically revert back to oh yeah, boy genius is talking again. “Well— there’s this other interpretation, that she… y’know didn’t. Instead, they were hunting companions, and it was because of the animals he slaughtered on Crete, that Gaia. Mother ea— yeah, you know who I’m referencing. Okay.”

Even at his worst, he is conveniently a social disaster. They could poke holes in his brain, drag the sharp edge of a blade through the tissue lining of his stomach, and his mouth would still find a way to run:

‘You’re missing major arteries here, c’mon — I know you can push harder than that. Aim for my descending aorta, that will do the job correctly.’

It would be funny if he wasn’t the biggest screw up to ever exist. Social ineptitude has never looked worse.

“Anyway, um… so— disturbed by the blood-bath, and feeling repentant — she summoned this scorpion. Humans are no match for the gods, obviously. So any creation with intent will—“ he sighs, finding new ways to hate himself. “Basically he died. Yeah— dead. To… uh, sum it up?”

“And what?” Oh, there you are. He’s surprised you’re listening, that you didn’t hang up the moment his morbid rambling begun. He’s always surprised, surprised that you listen, that you stay, even when you shouldn’t. It would be romantic, if he wasn’t so flawed in believing you could never want someone like him.

“Well— Artemis gathered up the remnants of Orion and placed them in the sky. Yknow,… hence the constellation.”

There’s shuffling — a moment of uneasy silence. “Spencer—“

He keeps going. Shock-horror. “I’m not sure science would agree with that myth. It certainly counters the Big Bang theory. And the whole schtick regarding— look… it doesn’t,… it doesn’t hold any truth, of course. The gods aren’t real,” (if they are, they must spit at the flawed creation of him), “I just— it was on the forefront of my mind. Made me think of you.”

It’s innocent. If you don’t take into account the stored vials he keeps stashed in his cabinet sink. If you pretend you’re just two people, two old, weary friends, who are insomniac and restless. Then again, where Spencer is concerned, everything is innocent. He’ll bare the weight of existence with no expectation of a return favour. So willing to give give give. Always taken for granted. Tossed to the sidelines. You’ve watched the team ignore his plans, call rain check after rain check, incessant excuses for something so diminutive. Even now, they can’t see what’s right in front of them. The blunt of the truth.

The aftermath of the Hankel case.

“Bad night?” You ask. Like you don’t feel it in your ribs.

He sighs, head spilling back against the wall. Throat bared, it would be so easy for hands to wrap around the unmarred skin, to put him down. “Aren’t they all?”

You’ve both been trained to pinpoint human behaviour. Discern threat from over exaggeration. You don’t hesitate, he knows you don’t— he’s seen you behind the weight of a gun. Dominant hand curved around the grip, aligning the front and rear sight. Firing pin striking the primer of the cartridge, no recoil— he’s watched you no more than blink when the bullet penetrates.

He always anticipates a flinch that never comes.

Sometimes, he has this dream, where he’s got the same Hornady branded bullet, lodged through his chest. Sometimes he wakes up and still believes he’s bleeding out.

He can hear your keys, the clattering that fades into the grating, confirmative slam of a door. You’re out of the apartment complex, and what? He’s too busy thinking about some warped manifestation of his subconscious?

Will he ever live outside of his mind?

The call doesn’t end (5 dragging minutes of heavy breathing and awkward silence), until you’re standing right here, flesh and bone, in his kitchen.

He’s making himself small again. Sat against cold tile, he shields his face from view. As if that alone will incrimate him. He knows you know. And it’s scary; to be so raw in the face of someone you love.

When you drop to your knees, it feels like tending to a wounded animal.

“You didn’t need to come,” he mutters, obstinate.

“So what?” You brush it off, ever the hero. Spencer thinks they should marbleise you in the Vatican. “I still did.”

You came. You called. Spencer fucking hates that cliche. Except, no.. no he doesn’t. Sometimes, he wants to make himself sicker, just so you have reason to touch him.

Reaching up, he feels your calloused palm, the way it cups his jaw, coaxing his face to lift. He thinks, knows, you’re disturbed by the sight. Red-rimmed eyes, and waxen features. Skinnier, hollow. If he is Leander, then he prays you don’t suffer the same fate as Hero.

‘Geniuses are never happy,’ they told him as a child. Detailing the cyanide found in Viktor Meyer’s stomach, Wallace Carother’s affinity for Potassium Cyanide. Hans Berger, Valero Legasov, Alan Turning. Some things hurt more than can be described.

Is it really so startling that he turned out the same? When that’s all he’s ever known?

Spencer stares. He tries to look through you, but it doesn’t work. Not when you’re warm, and real, and if the come down is configuring you into reality, and you’re not really here, then so be it. He’ll take what he can get. “You’ll find Dilaudid in my bathroom. Left turn from the hallway. I suggest you call 911. Report drug possession. They’ll take it more seriously if you say my name, emphasise the doctor in the title.”

“No.”

“Yes—“ indignantly, he huffs, “Yes. You will. Otherwise you’re guilty by association. The FBI will fire you, take away your credentials. You’ll be ruined.”

“That’s if they find out.”

He can’t comprehend why you’re covering for him. There’s decency, empathy, general human kindness, and then there’s this. “You’re supposed to be an upholder of the law.”

“Pft,” you scoff, brush it off. “Yknow, in Alabama, you can’t play cards on a Sunday. Alaska, no moose on sidewalks. There’s also a ban on wearing masks in Georgia. California has—“

“I get your point.” He cuts off, “Well— no, I actually don’t. Considering they’re dumb laws that waste time. Drug paraphernalia, in contrast, is not.”

“Even high, you’re a stickler. Guess old habits die hard?” you push up, and he chases your touch. “C’mon, golden boy. You’re getting a cold shower and some water. Gonna flush that shit out of you the old fashioned way.”

“I wasn’t aware there was a modern alternative…”

He doesn’t let you see him naked. Partially because, it’s his body. This vessel that feels so alienated from the better part of him. He’s never let someone undress him before, see behind the meticulous layers. But, mostly.. well, he has a firm belief that the first time you take off his clothes, it will be in better circumstances. If that ever transpires.

You’d probably think him deranged: hi, i’m saving myself for you, because any touch that isn’t yours makes me sick.

He’d rather rot alone than string someone along who could never fill the void of you.

The shower is methodical. Skin recoiling from the harsh rivulets of water. 3 minutes spent standing there, staring outwards not in. Complete disregard for the mirror, he’s all soft features and freshly-washed pyjamas when he pads into the bedroom. Corduroy pants, thermal-wear socks, some dumb science print embellished onto the front of his shirt. (‘Never trust an atom, they MAKE UP everything’ — yeah, he hates himself.)

You don’t talk. Not until he’s consumed his body weight in water. He fights off the urge to warn you about the dilution of sodium content in blood. Hyponatremia. Fatal, with a likelihood of seizuring and long-flight comatose. You’d probably just laugh at him, considering it was two glasses, a litre at best.

He’ll use his intellect to hurt. And you’ll counter him with little regard.

Even at his ugliest, you still stay.

“I’m fine,” he protests— hating the way you look at him when he’s so raw.

It’s that gaze. That same sinking, pity-warped gaze he received when he talked about his mom, about the kids at school. Adolescent meat-heads who pushed him into lockers, and beat him between class. Its— suffocating sympathy that he no longer has room for.

“No you aren’t,” this might be the worst you’ve ever seen him.

Would you have known? If he didn’t make the call? Cassandra complex. Disambiguating. A psychological phenomenon where an accurate prediction of a crisis is dismissed. Silent concern, the intuitive awareness that he never recovered, it was only going to lead to this—

Oh fuck it. You knew. The entire team did. You’re just the only one who cared enough to help.

You’re not like the rest of them. Maybe they can blanket suspicion, play pretend, refuse to get their hands dirty. But, there’s a reason you’re better. You don’t sugar-coat reality. You act. You react.

He’ll see your name on a wall one day. An award adorning your efforts.

“You’re exhausted, lie down.”

Spencer fights the urge to scowl. Since when were you in charge? Admittedly, he knows the answer to that: since you spitballed into his apartment, better yet, since you spitballed into his life. So, like the good, propitiated loser he is, he complies. Shock horror…

“What are you gonna do? Tuck me in?”

“You wish.” Instead, you force your way onto the right side of the mattress. “Get comfy, you’ve got your own, free of charge, narcotics anonymous sponsor tonight.”

“You’re not great at the whole ‘tough love’ thing.”

“Then call someone else next time.”

Vulnerability feels like being ripped open at the seams. Like some botched Pygmalion creation — stitched wrong, still breathing. He wants to fall asleep, to just… fade into himself. But— you have this uncanny, accursed ability to make him honest.

You, draped over his bed, does little to appease the sickness in his mind.

“I never asked for this,” he starts, “I didn’t— I didn’t even want it. How is that fair? I never got to decide, I wasn’t even given the anatomy to choose. Now—“

The words rip free like Prometheus’ daily punishment: inevitable, agonizing.

He laughs. Cold. Something ugly that doesn’t belong to him. “Now, if I’m not thinking about my next hit, I’m thinking about how you see me. How the team must see me. It’s— it’s the disappointment. I just— I don’t know why you stay.”

It’s all so tentative. The moments before, when you extend your hand, run it across the curvature of his jaw. All it takes is the touch and he’s crashing into you. Like there is no feasible option but to submit to the basic human need of contact. Face pressed into your shoulder, he feels like dead-weight. Something unworthy of labour.

Stop pushing that boulder up the hill, Sisyphus. Let it fall. Let him fall.

His hand knots tighter in the fabric of your top. Like if he lets go, he’ll spiral into Tartarus itself.

Why? Why would you do this—

“You think I’m going to cut and run just because you’re inconvenient? Pft, i’m too stubborn for that. And, well…” there’s a sigh,… “I care about you too much. Alright? So be inconvenient. Fuck, call at 3AM. Call at 5AM. Make me drop everything and come over. I don’t care. I want to carry the burden. I want to carry your burden.”

His touch lingers near your lower back. Drawing soft halos there, faint and uneven. “I hate you,” comes out muttered, something muffled by skin.

“No you don’t.” you counter, immediately.

“No I don’t,” just like that, he breaks. Cease-fire. How could he ever hate you? The statement was deflective, at best. Some way to make you ache the way he aches. At least then it would be a level paying field.

“I hate who I am when I’m like this. I hate— I hate my mind. It’s not… it’s not accurate, the way people romanticise it. I can’t be what they all expect of me.”

You’re doing that thing. The one where you don’t respond. Where you just listen, without interjecting, without cutting through his incessant monologues.

Sometimes, he feels like he dreamed you up. Like you don’t even exist, a stowaway in his brain, something to re-mantle whenever he’s lonely. Real people aren’t this good — this good to him.

“I don’t get to make mistakes. I need to have the answers every single second of the day. I can’t be me. You’re the only one, how are you the only one who notices? I’ve tried so hard, I’ve been so good—“

He’s tangled into you now, tethered like Daedalus’ forgotten son trying to stitch his broken wings back together mid-fall. If he could, he’d crawl into you. Find somewhere warm to safely exist. Without hurt.

“This isn’t just, I’m not like this just because I need you. Please— please remember that. I miss you always, even when I’m sober. Even before— before everything. I’m not in some—“

“What?” you finally (mercifully) interject. “Some drug-infused decline? Where you‘ll lean on anyone that will give you the time of day?”

Spencer flinches — not because you’re wrong, but because you’ve drawn blood from a wound he didn’t know he still had.

He hates that you’ve distinguished him as some mischaracterised energy vampire. Like you could ever be nothing. Like you’re just the closest fix he can find beyond a chemical high. Designer drugs, manufactured in a lab, they say Heroin feels like a hug from God.

Until your body becomes gluttonous for a hit that never appeases.

You— you are not a hollow high. You are slow and real and catastrophic.

Oh, you’re dependable, a want that morphed into all-encompassing devotion over slow dragging time. “Yes, to the former. No— no, definitely no to the latter. You’re not just some emotional crutch to me. You’re, I don’t know, you’re just… everything.”

Spencer swallows, pulls back, feigning composure. “I should be able to do this alone,” he mutters, “Normal people can. I should be—”

“C’mon, Spence. You’re not a machine. You were never built for that.”

Another sharp laugh. It pierces— you can almost taste the blood this time.

“I’m so tired,” he says in defeat. “I’m so tired of trying to be someone worth saving.”

Pressing your forehead to his, you’re kind to not mention the tears. To just let them occur, free fall. “You don’t have to be anything,” you murmur into his hair. “You just have to be. That’s enough. That’s enough for me, and i’ve got you. Okay? I’ve got you. Always.”

“Will you stay with me?” He doesn’t mean tonight, you know that well enough. “Will you stay with me through it all?”

You’re aware of the burden it would imply, the jagged, ugly reality of withdrawal. The toll, sweat-soaked skin and cold fevers. Irrational begging, pleading for god, just one more fix. The way it would change him, change your untainted perspective of him. When you agree, it is not misguided.

You know what you’re signing up for.

“Yeah. I’ll stay. Through it all.”

If this is love, true unvarnished love, reciprocal and real, then he’s sorry he found you at a bad time. Give it, give me, a few months, he thinks, and i’ll spend the rest of my life giving you everything.

Bdubs recognize he has artistic talent challenge (impossible)