Disintegrating
Author: Kelsey (which is me)
Title: Disintegrating
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Character: Spencer Reid
Rating: PG-13 for drug references
Synopsis: Reid is faced with long buried demons once again, and discovers the real extent of his own weakness
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I wish, mais non.
The apartment was dark, and felt empty. It was very late, but Agent Dr. Spencer Reid was still awake, mind troubled. Granted, he was also in too much physical pain to sleep. He, nor the doctors, were quite sure how he’d gotten off as relatively unscathed as he had. Spencer had seen a hit-and-run victim once in college. Broken skull, torso completely crushed, both arms and a leg broken…basically, the body was shattered, bruised, and gashed, bone fragments jutting from the skin like bleached white daggers covered in blood. And that had just been a hit. That vic hadn’t been run down…they hadn’t had friction-hot black rubber and two tons of steel roll over their chest, flattening them into the asphalt. But Spencer Reid had, and he’d been carried away with a crushed ribcage, a broken collarbone and sternum, three shattered vertebrae, and a concussion and internal bleeding. But it wasn’t because of these injuries that he now laid on his back on the living room floor.
They had given him morphine. Morphine, of all things, to dull the pain. For three days, Reid had been on an IV drip with something more deadly to him then pure sulfuric acid being poured into his veins. When he first woke up, six days after being run down by a violent unsub, he could only detect the faintest hints of the familiar drug in his system. By then, Morgan and Garcia and the rest of the team realized the mistake and had his medicine switched to a non-narcotic painkiller. But damage had been done. His past…dark and deadly and seductive…was brought back into stark focus, and he wasn’t even conscious. He’d spent a further three weeks in hospice care while his body healed enough for him to move without killing himself. But eventually, the hematomas formed in his bones and after being locked into a thick, rigid plastic backbrace that went from the middle of his chest to his hips he was allowed to go home. But the injuries and the pain were not what were keeping him up. The three-day-long steady intake of his worst enemy was.
He couldn’t keep his mind off of it. It wasn’t a craving. He knew cravings…he was never strong enough, really, to resist them. If this were a true craving, he would have already been out looking for the clear liquid he desired. This was more a preoccupation with the drug…an inability to take his mind off of it. He’d been alright when he was doing the desk work he’d requested from Hotch. But as soon as he finished a report, the downtime left his constantly-moving mind free to return to the seductive yearning that was always waiting for him now. The fact that the hospital, in their attempts to save his life, may have possibly ruined it again. The irony almost made him laugh, if it weren’t for the cold, sick guilt making bile rise in his throat.
Reid was sweating now, lying on the floor of his living room in a t shirt, pajama bottoms, and the stiff brace. Fear was turning into nausea and denial. This preoccupation, as he liked to call it, was becoming more, and he could feel it. He tried embracing the pain that gripped his chest sharp steel bands, searching for anything to distract him. But he was hot, and sick, and brokenhearted with himself for the tortured animal he was watching himself turn in to, all over again. The preoccupation was becoming a demand…a need…a craving. His mind, always so brilliant, and so kind, refused to travel down that torturous path again, but his body screamed at him violently that he needed the crystal-turned-liquid that would save him and free him from this agony.
Spencer rolled over onto his side, curling up as much as he could, hiding behind his arms as coarse sobs ripped at his throat and tore new phantom gashes in his slowly healing lungs. “No…no, no no no no nononono…..” he cried to himself. “I c-can’t do it again…I can’t l-lose their tr-trust..” He wept into the champagne-colored carpet, ignoring the light friction of the plastic fibers against his face. Strings of his soft, clean, mousy brown hair fell over his face and hands, and he shook gently, the self-loathing he felt making his pale skin crawl. The behavioral analyst begged with the demon in his own mind…he begged for release, for sympathy, and for mercy. He begged for the pain of his wounds to consume him…to free of the chains his own mind had wrapped him in. His gut-deep sobs eased to quiet, breathless heaves, and one spider-like hand gripped the carpet as he pulled himself up and to his feet.
His hair swung in his face as Spencer dragged himself into the kitchen. The feverish necessity had brought with it a heavy sweat, and he felt heat from the blood pulsing under his skin and behind his eyes. He opened the freezer to coax icy air across his burning face. Several items fell from the freezer; a few packaged dinners, a tray of ice cubes, and a long-forgotten half-eaten cherry popsicle. And something else entirely. A small, clear glass bottle, no bigger than an inch tall and half an inch in diameter. It had the complex plastic stopper that penicillin bottles had, and a white label around the glass. It was filled to the brim with transparent liquid, and the touch of the icy cool bottle made Reid’s blood stop pulsing. He thought he’d thrown it all away. He’d cleared his entire freezer, but he must have missed one. One tiny bottle of cheap heroin, cut with hospital-grade morphine. His breath was suddenly heaving again, and he felt his skin crawl. But now that he had it in his hands…he knew he wouldn’t be able to stop. He dived out of the room and into his bathroom. It was still there, right where he’d left it. The small ziplock baggy tucked behind a loose tile on the wall and shoved into a hole in the plaster. The baggy that held a thin rubber tourniquet, a lighter for sterilization, and a hypodermic needle. He pulled the baggy out, and prepared himself to watch his life disintegrate by his own hands.