Spencer doesn’t remember what they were talking about. It was something, some argument, and he must have quoted a statistic wrong, because someone pulled out a cellphone and googled something and now everyone is smiling and laughing at him, taking joy in his moment of weakness.
For what feels like the millionth time, Morgan turns to him and says, “Wow, looks like Boy Genius can make mistakes! Damn, what’s next? The world stops spinning? We’re gonna have to replace you, you know that?” Spencer’s stomach drops, and he knows he has to say something.
“Please stop doing that,” Spencer asks, eyes fixed on the floor.
“Doing what?” Morgan questions.
“Making fun of me every time I get something wrong.”
“Reid, chill out. It’s just a joke, learn to take one. You’re right about everything; you can handle being wrong this one time.” Derek rolls his eyes, turning away from Spencer with a look entirely too close to disgust.
The words echo around in Spencer’s head, blending with memories of, “Well, looks like the genius finally got one wrong,” and “Not so smart now, huh?” and worst of all, “I think he was just tricking us in the first place.”
Come on, Spencer, are you really that narcissistic and stuck up that you can’t take criticism? Are you really so conceited that you can’t admit when you’re wrong? Are you, a twenty four year old adult, going to go cry because someone was a widdle bit mean to you?
Fucking pathetic. Worthless. They’re right about you. You deserve it. You should go listen to what they have to say until you learn to accept it. You’re not special. You’re not smart. You just trick people, because you’re a terrible person and that’s what you do. There are other people like you, plenty of them. Better watch your back, or they’ll just go find another one of you to do your job.
Spencer can’t stop the heat rising to his face or the knifelike agony of tears cutting their way up his throat. There’s nothing to be done about the sheen of tears blurring his vision too badly to see much of anything. The only thing he can do is dig his nails into his palms and pray the pain is enough to keep him from breaking down right here and now.
It’s not. The tears keep coming, threatening to spill over, and it’s a good thing no one’s looking at him right now, because it must be painfully obvious that he’s about to break down like a child in the middle of a conversation. He puts his hands behind his back and drives the nail of his right pointer finger into the soft skin of his left wrist, trying to focus on the pinprick of pain in order to drive the tears back.
It’s JJ who ruins it, JJ who turns to say something to him and frowns, squinting in a way that immediately draws the attention of the rest of the team. He’s fucked now, caught with a heaving chest and red cheeks and tears in his eyes, unable to do anything but watch and hope as JJ opens her mouth.
“Spence? Are you alright?”
“Yeah, you look kind of spooked, Pretty Boy,” Morgan adds, drawing closer to him. Morgan, who thinks he’s a stuck-up asshole who can’t take a joke. Morgan, who just had to take the opportunity to humiliate him in front of the entire team .
Spencer opens his mouth to reassure them, but to his horror, nothing but a dry squeak comes out, caught by the lump in his throat. Oh, no. He tries again, and manages to croak out, “I’m alright,” but it’s accompanied by the first shed tear. Which, of course, has to be followed by the next. And the next.
JJ tries to say something again, but Spencer cuts her off with a stammered excuse about using the bathroom and all but sprints out of the bullpen.
He barely makes it to the single stall bathroom in time, closing the door and collapsing to the floor just as the first sob made its way out of his mouth. It hurts to cry this hard, something he’s been aware of for as long as he can remember. Each one takes his breath away and forces him to curl around himself, wringing him like a wet rag while all manner of disgusting fluids flow from his eyes and nose. There’s nothing pretty about this, inside or out, and all he can think of is Derek’s words.
God, he really thought Derek would stay on his side. How could he just sell him out like that, make a mockery of him for everyone to see?
Because you deserve it. Because he’s right.
No. No, that is a very bad thought pattern. That thought pattern leads down very dangerous roads, and if he wants to be at all functional for work, he needs to stay away from it.
But why else would he do it?
See, this is the problem. Every time he finds himself in this situation, he has to choose between blinding, suffocating anger at the person who did this to him, or crippling self hatred. He’s yet to figure out which is the right answer.
He has to make the feeling stop. He has to relieve the pressure. He knows how, and, you know what? Fuck it. He’s already drawn blood trying to keep the tears away. He claws at the buttons on the cuff of his shirt until he manages to get the left sleeve up to his elbow. Then, he takes the long, jagged nails of his right hand and drags them slowly down the inside of his arm, pressing deeper as he goes.
The pain is sharp, crackling, almost too much, but it starts to bring him back into his body. His breathing slows. His vision clears, the world around him starting to reassemble itself.
“You can handle being wrong this one time.”
It’s like being punched in the gut. The words come flooding back, all of them, every time he’s ever been humiliated in front of an audience, reminded that he’s only worth anything if he’s never wrong but also that never being wrong is something wrong with him. There’s no way to win. Spencer curls up again and tries to keep himself from digging his nails deeper into his skin. It doesn’t work.
He doesn’t know exactly how long it is before JJ finds him, but he guesses it’s somewhere in the ballpark of fifteen minutes. He can’t cry anymore, so he’s being wracked with these dry, painful sobs while he waits out the stabbing pain of rejection. The scratches on his arm have opened up into shallow, jagged cuts and there’s blood on his face, he thinks.
JJ opens the door after he doesn’t answer her knocks. She finds him leaning against the wall next to the toilet, and he can barely find it in himself to be more embarrassed when her eyes go wide and she drops to her knees beside him. He’s tired.
“Spencer, God, what happened? Oh, my God, your arms,” she whispers, taking his hand in her own. “Did you do that to yourself?”
He tries to answer her, he really does, but all that comes out is this noncommittal shrug. All the energy, all the panic, it’s left and now he’s just numb and raw and fucking exhausted.
JJ takes his other hand and looks him in the eye. He goes along with it because he can’t really bring himself to care enough to look away. She’s crying. See what you’ve done, Spencer? You’ve gone and blown everything out of proportion.
He thought he was done crying, but that thought gets another sob out of him. It hurts, God, it hurts so bad, but this time, instead of grabbing for his arm, he lets himself fall forward into JJ’s arms.
She holds him until the tears are gone again, until it no longer feels like every thought he’s ever had is pushing against his skin and trying to get out. She holds him and pets his hair and murmurs comfort and encouragement until he’s done and he pushes her away because his skin is too raw to touch right now.
“Spence?” she tries, biting her lip and giving him a worried, heartbroken look. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, it’s nothing. I was just- I was just being dramatic,” he says, and it feels like a lie and the truth all wrapped up in one. “I’m alright.” He braces himself against the wall and starts to stand.
JJ comes with him, offering a steadying arm when he falters and nearly collapses again. “Really? Because it didn’t sound like nothing, and it doesn’t look like nothing. You’re shaking, Spencer.”
Spencer busies himself with cleaning off his arm and fixing his sleeve. He deliberately doesn’t look at her as he prepares himself to return to the outside world, bracing himself against the lights and sounds and smells and people that will undoubtedly make him want to pass out. How long until he can go home?
“Spencer, come on, talk to me. You need to give me something, or I’m getting Hotch involved.”
“ No,” Spencer chokes out. No, not after- not after he’d just pulled himself up from the hell that had been drug addiction. Not when he had so little currency to trade on when it came to Hotch trusting him. “It’s fine, it’s just a thing that happens sometimes-”
“Well, not to most people. Not to me, not to Morgan, not to Garcia, not to people who are functional and healthy and mentally sound.” Spencer’s eyes widen and his stomach drops and JJ must see it, because she backtracks. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry, I just meant that in terms of general mental health, not that I think you’re going crazy. You’re not, I promise.” She grabs his arm and gently turns him to face her. “Spence, please talk to me. I’m worried about you. I don’t know what- I mean, I could tell that what Derek said upset you, but I had no idea it was this much of a big deal. I’m sorry.”
Spencer sags against the wall, eyes darting away in shame. He has no idea how to explain himself, no way to describe to her what it’s like without sounding dramatic or weak or like he’s begging for pity. No way to convey all the things phrases like that have come to mean for him over the years, how his own mind, his own humanity, has been weaponized against him again and again. So he just says, “It’s alright. I’m okay. I just needed some time.”
JJ opens her mouth to say something more, but she’s interrupted by a knock at the bathroom door.
“JJ? Spencer? Are you guys alright?” Derek’s voice came through the door, obviously worried, and Spencer wishes it didn’t make him angry. He’s not angry at Derek, really, but more at the fact that he didn’t even think about the implications of what he was saying before he said it. Spencer had asked him to stop, and he hadn’t, which wasn’t something he had ever expected Morgan to do.
JJ looks at him questioningly, and he shrugs. She must take this as permission, because she calls out, “We’re in here. It’s unlocked, you can come in.”
Morgan opens the door and Spencer ducks his head, trying his best to inconspicuously cover his face. It must not work very well, because Morgan gasps and starts making his way over to him.
Spencer picks his head up in time to see JJ catch him by the arm and pull him back from grabbing Spencer in a hug, which he’s grateful for. Morgan doesn’t, however, give up, resorting to giving him those stupid puppy dog eyes and saying, “Jesus, Pretty Boy, are you alright?”
“No, actually, I’m not,” Spencer hisses, pushing his way past JJ and Morgan. He turns around at the door, leveling the strongest glare he can muster at Morgan. “I asked you to stop and you didn’t. I shouldn’t have had to give you a reason. You should respect me enough to respect my boundaries.” And then he leaves, not bothering to close the door behind him.
Of course, they get called out on a case. Of course, it’s in California and he has to spend five and a half hours on a plane with two people who just watched him break down over a conversation. And, of course, Derek has to come over and sit next to him and stare at the floor awkwardly. Because he cares.
Finally, when it becomes abundantly clear that Spencer’s not going to say anything, Morgan breaks the silence. “Hey, uh, Reid? You looked kind of rough earlier. Listen, man, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I didn’t know- I thought we were just having fun. I didn’t know you would take it so hard.”
Spencer sighs. He’s had some time to think, to run over the scene and let go of the anger and the bad memories and the irrational fear that Derek had been intentionally trying to make him look bad, but the fact still remained that he was not a favoured member of the team, and sometimes, people’s words reveal things about them that they don’t know about themselves. He doesn’t say that, though. What he says is, “It’s alright. I knew it was going to happen eventually. It’s not your fault, you had no way of knowing.”
“Knowing what, Pretty Boy?” Derek frowns at him, ridiculous eyebrows quirked.
“Knowing that I’ve been told that, what you said to me, so many times before.” Spencer sighs. No time like the present to clear the air, right? Best to get it out now before it could interfere with the case. “People love to point out when I get things wrong. They did it in high school, in college, everywhere. It’s a power thing, I think. They think that, by catching me slipping up, they’ve knocked me down a peg. They don’t see me as a real person, just a threat.” Spencer takes a deep breath, willing himself not to get choked up. “But the thing is, I am a real person, even if I am a bit… different, and getting publicly humiliated like that hurts. “And, and sometimes, when I’ve heard it enough, it starts to sound like they’re telling me that I’m not worth anything if I mess up. Like if I can’t do the one thing that I’m good at doing, then I’ve been a fraud the whole time, and I’m not actually worth anyone’s time, and-”
“Woah, woah, woah, Spencer. Spencer, take a breath.” Things are getting blurry again, but this time, Derek’s got a hand on his knee and concerned eyes staring at him and he’s asking something again. What’s he saying? “Spencer? Hey, Pretty Boy, can I touch you?”
Spencer nods, and Derek surges forward to wrap him in a hug. The pressure feels good, as does the hand moving up and down his back in firm strokes. Spencer buries his face in Derek’s shoulder and shuts his eyes against the tears.
“You’re alright. God, I’m so sorry, Spencer. I had no fucking idea, but that’s not an excuse. You’re right, I should have listened to you.” Derek squeezes him gently, and Spencer sniffs, collecting himself before drawing back from the hug.
“It’s alright,” he says. “I- you’re forgiven.” He chuckles weakly, giving Derek a shaky smile and trying to convey that he’s joking. “You didn’t know any better, and I was being dramatic.”
“No, Spencer, you were not being dramatic,” Derek insists. “And hey, I want you to listen very closely.” Spencer nods. “You are a valuable, important person. Not because of your noggin, though it is pretty cool-” Derek ruffles his hair, laughing- “but because you’re Spencer Reid, and you’re a good person, and I love you.” Derek taps his heart. “Don’t ever let my big mouth convince you otherwise, you hear me?”
Spencer’s tearing up again, but he’s pretty sure it’s good this time. “I hear you.”
“Good.”