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The grip he has on the steering wheel is white knuckled and violent. Spencer chokes on his own breath.
Just die.
He hasn’t thought it in so long; Spencer left those thoughts behind years ago, and yet they go straight to his head like they’re natural, like they always have been. Like they always will be.
Swerve into traffic. Ram into a pole. Speed up and see what happens. So many ways.
He was nineteen the first and last time he attempted. On the cusp of an episode of his mother’s, looking towards schools and jobs and opportunities, stuck between every reality, his brain found a way out. It coped in the only way it knew how, and when the razorblade went a little too far, the panic set in. I wasn’t supposed to die, he thought, followed quickly by, wasn’t I?
His foot twitches on the gas pedal, he speeds up minutely, but it makes his breath hitch with the reality of dying. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it, I don’t want to die, don’t do it.
I do, I do want to die. I just need to.
I don’t. Please, I don’t.
My gun is right there.
The tires skid across the dirt pull off as he brakes too hard for comfort. A heaving breath in that doesn’t make it all the way, and out that doesn’t take everything with it. Something is stuck in his lungs and prevents him from surviving, prevents him from wanting to.
Click, click, click, click, the blinker says. Kill me, his mind replies. Click, click, click.
He circles through everyone he could call. He doesn’t want to, not really. But Spencer hates driving on a good day, if he feels like this while he’s thirty minutes from home, there’s no good reason to risk continuing. It’s just a matter of if he has it in him to press call. Morgan, Hotch, Emily, JJ. Morgan, Hotch, Emily, JJ. Rossi? Not Penelope. Morgan, Hotch, Emily, JJ. Morgan watches the game tonight, JJ puts Henry to bed at this time. Hotch, Emily, Hotch, Emily. Aaron Hotchner, Emily Prentiss. Aaron, Emily, Aaron, Emily.
If asked, Spencer would tell you he never made the decision. The next thing he processes is click, ring, click, ring, click— “Prentiss.”
He has to heave to take the breath that carries his voice. “Can you come get me?”
There’s no hesitation: “Where are you?”
She doesn’t sound panicked, doesn't sound scared. He thinks she should. “Halfway home from work. I just turned off I-95.”
“Is your car okay?” she asks, followed by the jingling of keys.
“It… It won’t start,” he lies. Realistically he’ll needlessly take a cab to his car in the morning. He’ll wonder why he was ever so stupidly weak to think he couldn’t drive home.
“That’s why you should’a come for dinner!” someone yells on the other line, and Spencer realizes with a sickening jolt is Morgan. “Now I’ve gotta go home early.”
“Ignore him,” Emily replies, “We were headed out soon anyway, I’m Morgan’s ride. We’ll be over in twenty, hang tight.”
All he can think about is the firearm in his passenger seat. He wants it settled in his hand, the barrel to his mouth. His hands never move from the steering wheel but he feels himself gripping it. (The gun? The steering wheel?) Every ridge, every edge. It’s cold and rough, his finger runs across the trigger. Click, click, click, click. It would sound like his blinker. He wouldn’t even hear it before it killed him. Click, click, click, click. It’s indistinguishable. Click, click, click. It knocks against his teeth. Click, click. It tastes smoky. Click.
When Emily and Morgan pull in behind him, Spencer is shaking like a leaf as he stands outside. He doesn’t remember getting there. It’s getting dark, and it’s too cold to stand there, but none of them care because it takes everything in him to keep tears from falling. “Hey man, have you called a tow?” Morgan calls.
Spencer doesn’t answer. He breathes.
“Reid?” A step closer. “You good?”
“Can you drive my car back?” It’s barely a whisper but Spencer says it anyway. Click, click, click. “Keys are in the ignition.”
“Prentiss!” Morgan calls back, forcing her to step out of the car; it’s still running. He looks like he’s spent a long time learning to hold back his panic and that is the thing serving him best right now. He steps away only long enough to mutter quietly something Spencer doesn’t hear; he looks past the road and into the rural city. Pavement and empty parking lots and a condemned building he’s never bothered finding out about greet him. “Spencer, I’ll take your car back, and Emily and you will meet me at your place, okay?”
He agrees. It doesn’t take a second thought to step away from his car and the firearm. “Grab my bag?” he asks. “Passenger seat.”
He doesn’t look back. Morgan hands him the bag. Emily walks a half step behind him to her car, watching him take a seat and buckle himself before ever starting the car again.
She puts her blinker on. Click, click, click, click. It’s all he can think about. It’s all his brain lets him hear, long after it goes off. Is it his gun? Is it his time running out? Is it questioning which direction he really wants to go?
When will one option win over the others?
“Why’d you lie?” she asks not unkindly.
“I didn’t know how to explain.”
“You don't have to explain. You just have to ask.”
“I didn’t know how to do that either.”
She shrugs. “You did. That’s what matters.”
When they step into his house Morgan holds his firearm. He wishes he had just left it at the office. How is he supposed to say that? How is Spencer supposed to tell two of his closest friends that all he wants to do is end it? That even though he cries and cries that he doesn’t want to die, he can’t hold his own gun when he’s alone?
You don’t have to explain. You just have to ask.
He takes a long breath.
Click, click, click, click.
“Emily, take my gun home and bring it to the office tomorrow?”
The first breath of silence holds his fear; the second holds Morgan’s shock: “What? Why should—”
“Yes,” Emily interrupts, a sadness he knows well on her face. “I will.”
His hands shake violently enough that he shoves them in his pockets to hide as Morgan, shellshocked, hands over the firearm. She places it by the back door where she drops her bag. “Go make coffee, tea, whatever you can find?” she mutters to Morgan. Quietly, so he might not hear, “And try to find something to make up the couch, I don’t want him alone tonight.”
He nods. “I’ll be back,” he says simply.
Spencer sits on his couch and has to take his hands out of his pockets. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.
“Did you eat?” she asks, sitting beside him, thumbing through the stack of books he has on the side table. He’d been going through some of his mother’s collection the night before.
Spencer shakes his head. “Couldn’t.”
“How come?”
“Felt sick.” He understands it now as so much more than his fear of throwing it all up later, but his brain didn’t know how else to tell him, I’ve had enough. Please be gentle.
Maybe he hadn’t been gentle enough; maybe he can’t be.
“You can try again later,” she says simply. Morgan returns with coffee (it smells like hazelnut, which he only has in decaf; he drinks it anyway), and wanders towards the linen closet. Spencer pretends not to see it. “Are you okay, Spencer?” she asks quietly. “Mentally?”
He shrugs. “You’re spending the night anyway,” he reminds her.
“I still want to know.”
“Just… Just take my gun, please. I’ll be better without it tonight.”
“Does this happen often?”
“No.”
“But it’s happened,” she pushes. He realizes with a jolt the tactics she’s using, how she handles him; she’s played this game a hundred times with victims.
“It’s been eight years since it was this bad. And never this sudden.”
“It hasn’t been… building?”
He shakes his head and sips at his coffee. “Earlier today I was just tired. And then I was thinking about driving into traffic. It was terrifying. I—I pulled over right away. I was so scared. God, Emily, I was terrified.”
It’s barely more than a whimper. It hurts in ways he hasn’t felt in so long.
She whispers, “We’ll figure this out. We will.”
“You say that to everyone.”
A quirked brow shows as Emily leans forward. “What?”
“Victims. This is a script.”
“It’s not a script,” she says, and though he hears the earnesty he’ll never really believe it.
“It might be true,” he amends quietly, “But it’s still a script. And I know what happens to those people, Emily. They attempt. Some of them succeed.”
“You aren’t going to.”
“I could.”
“Not on my watch. I care far too much to let you slip through the cracks.”
“I don’t think you will, but people with good friends and a loving family still kill themselves.”
“You aren’t going to kill yourself,” she says firmly. It’s terrifying to hear. It’s terrifying to have to hear. “Spencer, you called me. I expect you to call me again if you have to, and do not hesitate. That is what I care about, that is what matters.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“But it’s true.”
Morgan makes up the couch for a bed in silence, accompanied by his clock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. “You or me?” he mutters to Emily when she stands.
“Me. You can take my car.”
“You sure? I don’t mind.”
“I wanna be here.”
It’s quiet, and it’s the only part of this night that feels more real than a gun in his mouth. When the night grows dark and his coffee has long since gone cold (Emily finished hers, and took his half-full mug to the kitchen), Spencer slips into sweatpants and asks Emily if she needs something to wear (“I have my go-bag in my car,”). Still by the time he goes to bed, Emily is wearing a hoodie he’s never worn before but sits in his closet. He keeps his apartment cold.
When he runs to the bathroom late at night, his razor is missing from his bathroom sink. He doesn’t have it in him to be mad, but he isn’t grateful either. Something about his fear has dulled his senses and all he has for the fact is recognition.
Spencer sleeps late in the morning; Emily wakes him so they can go to work on time. Her car takes on a strange noise when they go a certain speed; thud, thud, thud, thud. She throws the blinker on and it says click, click, click, click, and it all tastes just like gunpowder smells. It’s gritty on his tongue and he only stops it all by digging his nails into his hands.
When he walks into work, his gun isn’t in his desk, but Morgan’s. In its place is a note that reads, Let me know when you want it back. No questions asked.
He takes it back two days later. He slips it back in soon after. It stays there quite a few times over the coming weeks.
He thinks the most important part is that he lets himself be scared.