Chapter Text
The blistering heat hits him like a physical wall as Spencer steps off the plane. He can see the waves of it shimmering off the tarmac.
He should have expected no less from May in Texas, a place and time where the temperature routinely tests the upper limits of human heat tolerance.
He readjusts his leather satchel strap across his shoulders, and despite the heat that is now smothering him, he instinctively and anxiously tugs down the long sleeves of his shirt. A new, necessary habit.
They have been moving nonstop with several cases back to back and without even a single night spent at home at Quantico in over 2 weeks. The old him would have been fine. The old him would have been able to easily adapt.
He isn’t that person anymore.
He needs to go home. He had foolishly only brought enough supplies to last him 5 days, and there is no way he is going to be able to get any more of what he needs in a place like this.
He feels himself unraveling at the seams, and it is obvious enough that even Gideon will eventually have to say something.
He adjusts with shaky fingers his glasses, which have already slipped down his sweaty nose. His contacts have been irritating him. Everything irritates him. He knows he has deteriorated into the worst version of himself. The first 3 days after he ran out, he had been an absolute torment of shakes, vomiting, and body aches, but he has reached a new equilibrium by now. It was tolerable.
The incessant stream of his thoughts, more fractured and disorganized than usual, finally quiets down as he turns to give Hotch his full attention.
It is already late into the evening when they arrive, and they are all exhausted, but this isn’t a case that can wait until morning.
On its surface, your town seems like a typical small, rustic American town, with slow main roads, one traffic light, practically mandatory attendance at Sunday mass, and a devotion to Friday night football, but it is more than that. It is the kind of town that seemed to teeter precariously on the edge of its own secrets. One wrong move would have the whole place crumbling down.
He knows they were only called into this case because the nephew of the Texas governor was killed. Even though he seemed to be just collateral damage in the way of the unsub getting what he really wanted, his girlfriend. If it hadn’t been for his death, Spencer is certain that the BAU would never have gotten involved at all.
He should feel moved by the injustice of it all, but he really is struggling to find the energy to care. About anything.
The world is a never-ending cascade of misfortune. Most of it he will never be able to intervene in. He can’t even help himself. So the specifics of why they were called here feel irrelevant. The only thing that matters to him right now is making it home as soon as possible to the quiet nothingness of his empty apartment—mostly empty except for the vials underneath his bathroom sink.
The facts as Spencer currently knows them are that 4 women had been strangled and one man had been bludgeoned to death with a blunt object. Other than that, they have surprisingly little information to go on.
The Sheriff was supposed to send JJ over their case files, but if what they sent over truly was all they had, then they are in bigger trouble than Spencer had originally thought. The police are in over their heads, and either they are intentionally overlooking evidence and cutting corners, or they are just inept and incompetent. He isn't sure which option is worse.
Hotch directs Reid and Prentiss to the morgue to look at the two most recent bodies— Spencer struggles to hold in a sigh at this pairing—while the rest of the team sets up at the local precinct.
Spencer begrudgingly buckles into the passenger seat as Emily drives, and an uncomfortable silence settles between them.
At the morgue, Spencer examines the woman’s body, Nina, and notes an odd pattern to the bruising around her neck.
“Excuse me,” he calls over to the medical examiner, “what do you make of this? It looks like the bruises are inconsistent, and there are too many of them. The rings of petechia around the bruising are also odd. This looks similar to how the other victims' injuries looked, as far as I could gather from the pictures, but it actually looks even more extensive than those.”
“Ah, yes,” the ME responds, “it looks like whoever did this had a hard time; he struggled to get ahold of her.” Spencer was not convinced.
“Really? Based on the bruising and damage he inflicted elsewhere, it’s a little surprising that he struggled so hard with this. Yes, it takes about 30 pounds of pressure to compress and crush the trachea, but it requires far less force to simply cut off the blood supply to the brain. He should have been able to easily render her unconscious at least.”
The ME looks irritated at being questioned.
Emily interjects and tries to further explain, “It's just surprising that he would continue with manual strangulation now on the fourth victim if he continues to struggle so much. Why not switch to a ligature? Most killers learn to adapt and evolve as their kills progress. It doesn’t make sense that he would continue with something that was so difficult for him.”
Spencer doesn’t acknowledge her input or that she was agreeing with him, and pointedly avoids her gaze as she talks.
Oblivious to the tension between the two agents, the ME defends himself, “Do you have any other explanations then?”
“Well,” Spencer pauses to organize his thoughts, “It could have been intentional. He could have been intentionally starting and stopping to prolong their deaths. What else did you find?”
“Cause of death, as you know, was strangulation. With the trachea being crushed, and all had extensive bruising across their heads and torsos, including broken ribs, and defensive wounds.”
He mentions, as if to give more credence to his purported theory, that the bruising was just due to a struggle.
Spencer ignores him and continues on, “Where were the ribs broken exactly?”
The ME replies that it had been almost consistently always the sternum, and bilaterally the anterior aspect of ribs 2-7.
“Hm,” Reid hums to himself.
He doesn’t share his latest theory, that these wounds are very clearly consistent injuries one would find after CPR.
“Thanks, doctor,” he settles on instead.
“Any signs of sexual assault?” Emily presses.
“No, no, nothing of that awful sort,” The ME grumbles. His immediate dismissal and tone of voice worried Spencer that he wasn’t telling the truth. Or that he hadn’t even checked.
They regroup with the rest of the team at the police precinct. It was small, stuffy, and mostly empty except for the team and the Sheriff in his office.
“What did you find?” Hotch questions without any pleasantries.
Emily clears her throat to speak, but before she can respond, Spencer rushed out, “All of the female victims appeared to have been strangled, resuscitated, and strangled again. He clearly liked to spend time with them. The male was just a threat that had to be removed. He was killed with efficiency. It doesn’t seem that any of the victims were sexually assaulted, although I can’t say for sure, so the strangulation is his form of release. These features in their murders very clearly point to a pattern of sadism, with the unsub prolonging these victims’ deaths as long as possible. I think we are looking at an anger excitation offender.”
Hotch nods
“What have you guys learned here at the station?” Spencer asks in return.
“Not a whole lot,” JJ says with disdain. “The files are sparse, and the investigation seems quite haphazard,” she lowers her voice, as the sheriff is still nearby.
“Odd,” Spencer ponders out loud. “Do we think this is intentional? And if so, why?” He continues.
“I think it has to be purposeful,” Gideon speaks up. “They should have called us in after the second woman, but clearly we are only here because the relative of someone they view as important was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he continued, stating out loud what they all were thinking.
Hotch commands everyone back to the hotel to get a few hours of sleep before continuing in the morning. Spencer doubts he will be getting much sleep.
After a fitful few hours of sleep for everyone, they are right back at the police precinct. Spencer feels as if he had scarcely laid his head upon the scratchy motel pillow before his alarm is jolting him awake.
He allows himself to take a quiet moment of gratitude that he was able to wake up today without vomiting and without finding himself in a pool of his own cold sweat.
In their makeshift headquarters in the police conference room, JJ finishes taping up the five victim’s photos to their bulletin board. Hotch directs Morgan and Reid to focus on victimology first, and Prentiss and Gideon were to go look at the most recent crime scene.
JJ walks over to the Sheriff and politely catches his attention. He is an imposing, gruff man. Spencer didn’t have a full read on him yet, but he made him uncomfortable.
“Sheriff,” JJ begins, “what has the communication with the local press looked like up until now? I couldn’t see much about these murders, up until the last pair, in the papers. I want to know where we are starting from so I can work out how we are going to communicate with them from here on out.”
“Speak with the press?” The sheriff asks incredulously, “I need you to make sure they know as little about this mess as possible,” he firmly demands.
“Unfortunately, that is impossible. We don’t have an actionable profile or any information at this time that will be useful for warning potential targets, but that time is going to come, and we will be releasing that information to the press,” she clarified without room for argument.
The sheriff looks like he wanted to push back, but he makes a dismissive sound of acknowledgement.
JJ was worried about how political this case is becoming. The governor had promised full, unfettered access to anything the BAU could possibly need to catch his nephew's killer, but they clearly weren’t wanted here by the local police.
JJ and Spencer rifle through their bare files and eventually give up, realizing they wouldn’t learn anything more about these people through the information the police had gathered.
Spencer pulls out his cell phone and dials Garcia.
“All-knowing Oracle, how can I help?” Garcia chirps.
“Hey, Garcia, we need some help getting some background information on our victims. Can you start with the latest, Nina Giles, and give us anything you have on her?” Spencer asks.
“Copy that, crime fighters!”Garcia replies and perfunctorily hangs up. JJ and Spencer shared an incredulous look over her silliness.
Yesterday, her chipper attitude would have frayed the last of his fractured nerves. Today, he is doing a bit better.
“Well,” Derek begins, I could start with the sorority house that Nina belonged to?”
“Take Reid with you,” Hotch directs.
Spencer pales. “Sure, of course,” he replies.
This always happened even though Spencer thought everyone should have learned by now. Just because he was the youngest of the team, he had next to nothing in common with most people around his age.
He feels that familiar wave of unreasonable irritability rising within him, and he struggles to push it down before it bursts out again on some unlucky victim, the way it consistently had with Emily lately.
Derek grins at his discomfort, oblivious to the deeper issues he was struggling with, “What, are you nervous to be in a house filled with college girls? They’re practically your age!” He laughs.
“And yet we are worlds apart,” he mutters with disdain.
Most of his anxiety isn’t him just being awkward around women, as he has improved significantly on that front. Despite what his teammates may think…However, it was still a factor.
He would rather have him believe it was just that, instead of knowing the true reason.
It brought up bad memories of his own time in college, being alone in a new state by himself at a young age, far away from his mother, who he felt he had abandoned, and never fitting in himself, but being forced to see young adults quickly form a community with one another. A community he would never grow to be a part of.
Added to that, despite how bad he had thought college, and really his childhood as a whole had been, he would never have imagined back then that his adult life could be even worse. Even more painful.
It had been just a few months since he was kidnapped, drugged, and tortured by Tobias Hankel, and he was resigned to the fact that he would never be the same again.
Derek and Spencer pull up to Alpha Omega Zeta in their regulation black SUV and make their way to the front door, where the House Director, Sarah, greets them.
“Hello, hello, come on in. Wonderful to have you. Your agent Jareau called ahead, and we are all ready for you. The girls are all in the living room waiting,” she chirps. Derek and Spencer share a look at her perky attitude and rapid-fire speech.
He’s officially irritable. Increasingly nauseated. Restless. His whole body is aching, and this woman is causing all of that pain to shoot to his head and take form in an impressive migraine.
Spencer habitually scratches inside the crook of his left elbow and repeatedly tugs the sleeve down.
He looks around the common room and catches your eye as you descend the staircase.
He would reflect on this moment for years to come. What would his life have been like if he hadn’t looked over at you? Worse. He is certain of that. But how different would your life be? With how things unfolded, he was never able to break this endless cycle of his thoughts. Would you have been better off if the two of you had never crossed paths? Undoubtedly. If Derek had gone alone to the sorority house, could everything that followed have changed? He would never know.
You briefly lock eyes with him before your eyes drift down to where he is picking at his left arm, and an unreadable expression crosses your face. Your gaze feels piercing.
You then immediately blush and tug down your t-shirt. Apparently, the only thing you had on.
“What the f- hell,” you catch yourself, “I thought this was an update meeting just for us. I didn’t know there would be,” you gesture over at the agents and try to find a word other than ‘men,’ “well, them here!” You exclaim at the house director, and look ruefully at your best friend and roommate, Maddie, for support.
Sarah’s eyes beam daggers at the latecomer. “Well, if you could find it in yourself to wake up at a reasonable hour—or open your door—you would be more informed,” she brushes you off.
Maddie exchanges a look with you and rolls her eyes over how insufferable she is being, as always, and quickly shrugs out of her robe so you can save a shred of your dignity.
Spencer can’t look away from you even as the house director continues her tirade.
He had been briefed on the basics of the sorority hierarchy. Maddie was the President and you were the vice president. But you were not what he expected from a conservative Texas Sorority leader. Or from the daughter of the local sheriff.
Sarah implied that you had just rolled out of bed, and your beautifully wild hair supported that assertion, but in contrast to your bedhead, your makeup was meticulous, with glitter dusted across your eyelids and cheeks. You gently cradled your left wrist, bound in a brace, against your chest.
Most surprising was the fact that you were (apparently only) wearing a Doctor Who T-shirt, which seemed entirely out of place amongst the pink silk two-piece pajamas everyone else sported.
While crosses adorned the necks of almost every girl in that room, yours was the only one that wasn’t made of a flashy gold or encrusted with diamonds, and it didn’t appear to be merely a status symbol. It was old and dented, and clearly, the slightly mismatched chain you wore it on was not the original.
Your head is throbbing. Despite the fact that you refuse to open your eyes or make any attempt at moving, you can’t deny for much longer that you are now entirely awake.
You impressively ignore the incessant knocking on your door, and ignore the threats of disciplinary action when the would-be intruder realizes the door was locked.
Maddie must have locked it behind her.
You were getting used to waking up alone.
It’s your need to grab a drink to counteract your uncomfortably dry throat that finally drives you out of your empty bed. And your desire to grab some ibuprofen to soothe your still-aching left wrist. You readjust your brace.
You slip on some shorts, if they can even be called that, and try to wake up while struggling to do your makeup one-handed.
Every moment of this month has been a never-ending nightmare. But hiding in bed won’t keep you, any of you, safe.
Is this your fault? Yes, of course it is. Should you have done more? You only did what you thought was right. These self-loathing thoughts roll around your head as you begrudgingly make your way downstairs, still blearily blinking the sleep from your eyes and pressing your fingers to your temples.
You had expected to see your roommate—girlfriend—whatever, and your other sorority sisters in the common area, but are stopped short by the sight of two men.
Still half asleep and without a filter, you blurt out your surprise and awkwardly tug at your shirt, which is really too short to do much of anything.
As soon as the profanity slips out, you realize you are soon to experience the wrath of your “sorority mom,” as is only unleashed when she feels she has been embarrassed in front of strangers.
Thankfully, Maddie saves you from any further embarrassment and allows you to cover up with her robe. Sarah admonishes you, spewing your name with unrestrained vitriol, and turns to the visitors to apologize and continues, “so uncouth. You’ll just have to ignore her.”
The full power of her glare returns to you, “if you had managed to open your door for once this morning, you would know the very serious situation we are in right now. The FBI,” she tilts her head towards the men, “are here to help with those awful…tragedies.” Murders.
You know you should cool off. Maddie shoots you a warning look. But there is something wild in you that always wants to see how far you can escalate a situation.
“Oh, hello,” you say brightly, sarcastically. You draw your attention to the taller, thinner FBI agent and extend your hand.
Derek is preparing to make a disarming joke and tell you that Spencer doesn’t shake, and not to take it personally, when he surprises you by firmly grasping your hand.
“So glad to have you,” you quip, while still shaking his hand, “would have been nice to get a little help after the first…or second…or even third girl was murdered. But thank you for gracing us with your presence after the fourth girl!”
Nina, the last victim, wasn’t necessarily a very close friend of yours, although she was part of your sorority. But you know she was one of the only people here who fully understood you. Even now, you could imagine the weight of her quiet looks whenever it was the two of you alone in the house, studying, or at the library. And the pointed glances she would throw you whenever you were out with Maddie.
“Oh, right,” you dramatically pause, “actually, it was really her boyfriend who was murdered alongside her that finally drew some attention. Bad for him, of course, but very helpful for us, I guess.”
Spencer quickly recalibrates and adjusts to the situation as he uncomfortably withdraws his hand from your protracted handshake. He knows your anger wasn’t truly directed towards him but at the situation as a whole.
He contemplates what tactic he should take, how he could possibly disarm you, but settles on genuinely apologizing for your loss.
“I’m so sorry you lost your friend. We are going to do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Acknowledging the awkward fact that the two of you had not been properly introduced, and growing nervous under your piercing stare, he pushes ahead, “I’m Spencer. Spencer Reid. Doctor Reid, but you can call me Spencer,” he rambled, and ended with a grimacing smile.
It was reminiscent of all of his many social missteps from when he was his old self.
You completely ignore his borderline social ineptitude and give him a look, sizing him up, “great,” you respond in a clipped voice.
You almost feel bad for how rude you are being, you know you should just be grateful the FBI was involved at all, but you are brimming with rage and you really can't control how it spilled out of you.
Maddie grabs your hand and rubs soothing circles on your palm with her thumb. She doesn’t let go. The house director admonishes you and tells you that you are being incorrigibly rude, and she asks Spencer and Derek to ignore you, that you have an impossible attitude at the best of times.
Derek says they’ve heard worse and asks if they can speak to you and Maddie in private, since you are both sorority leadership.
Sarah hesitates and looks like she is going to refuse, when Derek reminds her that the governor would be really disappointed if he heard they didn’t have everyone's full cooperation.
“Well, of course,” she quickly responds, “I just didn’t want to leave you defenseless,” and shoots you a glare, which you promptly return.
You feel proud of yourself for resisting the urge to stick out your tongue.
You, Maddie, and the agents silently move to your shared bedroom. While you and Maddie finally let go of one another’s hands to take a seat on your respective beds, Spencer and Derek sit uncomfortably, and hilariously, squished on the loveseat across from you both.
They rightfully inferred that it would be difficult to get any information out of you and decided it wouldn’t help to be looming over you.
Spencer finally addresses what you said downstairs. He takes your anger in stride and doesn’t diminish your feelings. “You’re right,” he says to you.
“Right about what? I’m right about a lot of things,” you mutter, prompting Maddie to roll her eyes and beg you to behave for once.
“We are mainly here because he died. I won’t make excuses. I don’t know why we weren’t called in sooner, but we can’t deny that his death seems to have been the tipping point, prompting the local authorities to ask for our help.”
He leaves out the fact that it was not the local authorities, most certainly not your father, who actually invited them in.
“But I want to assure you that we operate differently from them,” he pauses, realizing he is essentially disparaging your father, but continues, “and we want to catch this guy regardless of who he is targeting.”
Spencer hopes you can tell he is being sincere, and tries to maintain eye contact with you, but you quickly break it, flushing. With anger?
His eyes then wander around your room.
Maddie’s side is neat and organized. It isn’t that she has no personality, but that it seems as if she is actively working to make sure her personality doesn’t show. She has a few tasteful, framed photos, but otherwise, the room honestly doesn’t look like a sorority room. It’s too neat. Devoid of color. It feels staged.
Your side of the room, however, is a different story. It is cluttered with the things you clearly love, on open display, and littered with markers of your numerous achievements. He wonders again at the things you have expressed interest in, which, at least from his own personal experience, should have been dubbed nerdy or weird.
He marvels at how you can confidently show all this off, yet maintain what appears to be a decent social standing if your position in the sorority means anything. While he’s been taking in your room, he has also taken note of the glances you and Maddie have been sharing, and how they seem to hold more than a history of friendship.
“Thank you,” Maddie starts, “we are so grateful to have your help. You can imagine how horrible it has been here. Everyone has been so scared. We are all doing the buddy system here now, trying to stick together, but no one feels safe, and I don’t think we should.”
You feel chastised. You are still angry, but now you feel doubly upset because you know you can’t keep lashing out at these FBI agents, even though they feel like a safe target for your anger.
“Okay,” you concede, “what can we do to help?”
Derek asks you to tell them as much as possible about Nina, the last victim, but also all of the victims.
Spencer notes how Maddie shoots you a cautious look before you tentatively outline what appears to be on the surface a detailed history for most of the victims, but he can immediately tell it isn’t the full story.
He also marks how you have been doing most of the speaking. Maddie is the president, yet she’s more than content to let you speak, even though you look more uncomfortable than she does.
Maddie almost seems to be silently conveying what you should say, with obvious but brief pointed glances in your direction.
Then why not talk herself?
You, on the other hand, seem to be frustrated, and restraining yourself.
What are you holding yourself back from? Maddie isn’t making eye contact with anyone as you speak, and she is intently focused on picking at the cuticles of her perfectly manicured hand.
“Is there anything you can think of that connects any of the victims?”
At your baleful glare, he immediately understands your perceived slight and revises his statement, “Sorry. Of your classmates?”
After his mistake is corrected, you finally seem to register his actual question and briefly tense up. You seem too effortfully casual in denying any connection, and this is the first time your words have sounded tentative and quiet.
He also notes that you seem to be working intentionally hard to maintain eye contact with him, whereas before you would easily and readily break it, looking up and away or down at the floor as you quickly rambled off seemingly truthful facts about your classmates.
Oddly enough, good eye contact with you seemed to be more of a tell that you were hiding something. He just wasn’t sure what it was yet, or what you could possibly be hiding when he could tell you were genuinely distraught over your friend’s death and presumably should want to do everything to bring her killer to justice.
He takes a break and realizes that he isn’t going to get anything else from you this time.
This time? He shakes the thought from his head. How is he so certain that you will ever interact again?
Derek receives a phone call and excuses himself from your room, shooting a meaningful glance over at Spencer, silently calling out his disastrous inability to connect with someone his age.
Theoretically, the two of you are just a few years apart, and it shouldn’t be this hard to hold a conversation. He wishes Derek would stay. He doesn’t care how things should be; he knows that Derek has a better chance of breaking through to you than he does.
Or maybe the look meant none of that.
Or maybe it's a deeper acknowledgement. Of how broken he has become this year and how he can’t seem to get anything right.
He tries a different approach to prove to himself that he at least attempted to build rapport with you.
Maddie’s side of the room offers little in the way of conversation, so he focuses on your side.
He picks up your birthday card from last week, the one that references Star Trek.
“Big fan?” He attempts to open up a conversation.
“Yeah, sure, I guess,” you attempt to deflect him, instinctively refusing to engage.
But now that you are thinking of the show, you can’t help yourself, and you continue, “I mean, considering when it was made, it's pretty impressive. There are basically no actual scientific inaccuracies. More like just some improbabilities.”
A small smile crosses Spencer’s face. He’s restraining himself from launching into an episode-by-episode analysis and asking you to share specifically what you thought was questionable.
He looks at your Taylor Swift poster on the wall and continues rifling through your stack of abundant birthday cards splayed across your desk.
“I’m surprised with your musical taste, no one got you a card about feeling 22.” At your confused look, he falters, “You know, ‘I don't know about you, but I'm feeling twenty-two’?” He had been proud for a moment that he knew something that should have been relatable to a college kid, but with your blank face, he realized he was doomed to just keep failing with you.
“Oh!” You laugh, and a genuine smile crosses your face. “Well, I’m not 22, I just turned 20, so there’s that.”
Now it’s Spencer’s turn to be confused. “But I thought you were a senior in college?”
Maddie looks proud and explains how our little genius skipped a few grades.
“Oh, whatever,” you attempt to minimize, your face flushing, “it was elementary school grades, nothing that mattered.”
It did matter though. As you continued to grow up and move through grades despite being younger than all your peers you not only kept up with them but you excelled. Apparently both academically as well as socially.
“Well if I’m such a genius, why am I about to fail this philosophy class?” you genuinely question. It was the bane of your existence and you were beyond frustrated with yourself for taking it.
“Well, I don’t know, I guess you’re the kind of genius who already had enough credits to graduate by the beginning of her junior year, but decided to complete a second major, ‘just for fun,’ and this was the only elective class that fulfilled those requirements and was empty?” Maddie helpfully supplies.
Derek pops his head back in.
“Hey, her boyfriend is downstairs asking if he can come up. Do you need any more time with them? Hotch wants us back at the precinct soon anyway, so we should start going.”
Spencer furrows his eyebrows, puzzled.
He was certain the two of you were more than roommates, but maybe he was mistaken.
He is reminded yet again of how much he has been struggling lately. That now he can’t even accurately gauge the dynamics between two college kids anymore.
“Prince Charming awaits, Maddie, don’t keep him waiting,” you click your tongue, and clarifying for Spencer that this is Maddie’s boyfriend, not yours.
There’s a flicker in your tone, in the look you send her, a nuance Spencer could have interpreted easily once. Now he doesn’t trust his read on anything. He can’t rely on his instincts. Whatever it signifies is beyond him.
Why does he feel relieved? Either you were in a relationship with Maddie, or you had a boyfriend, neither of which affected him, and it certainly wasn’t relevant to this investigation.
Maddie rolls her eyes at you, and directs her attention back to Spencer and Derek, thanking them for their efforts at keeping you all safe, and telling them to “please reach out if you think of anything else I can help with,” empty promises, and she ducks out of the room with Derek following behind her to finish his conversation with Hotch.
Leaving you and Spencer alone for the first time.