One Simple Wish Pt.4
In the weeks following the night at Spencer's, Alex had actively attempted to avoid unnecessary alone time with the man. She still took his notes when he could not make classes, but often rather than going for coffee before class with him, she text to say she was running late and always seemed to arrive to class barely on time with his favourite coffee in hand in case he was there. She would sit with him, but she always made the excuse of work or assignments for extra credit to see if she could finish the course ahead of schedule, using the excuse of not having an eidetic memory if he suggested they hang out.
She hadn't done it to be cruel. Quite the opposite, she wanted to ensure she caused no one any unnecessary awkwardness. She knew if he were to spend time in her company alone, his FBI profiling skills would soon see she was harbouring feeling about him she had no right to. The night in his house had not helped. She had thought of doing those things with him before, but always thought it was impossible because of his relationship with Morgan, so she put them to the back of her mind, but once she had experienced them, she could not stop the feelings from rising to the surface. She didn't want to lose Spencer as a friend, so she decided to remove herself from the situation until she got over her unrequited crush. Spencer of course had not been privy to this.
"She's avoiding me Derek" Reid ranted as they pulled up to Quantico, called back in at eight in the evening because the town of Toledo in Northern Ohio had fallen victim to a serial arsonist.
"Pretty Boy, she still sits with you and is polite with you, isn't she? She may just feel awkward after what happened, don't take it to heart" Derek said soothingly. "If she is avoiding you, then that's her loss, not yours baby!"Reid felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out to see there was a text from Alex, Morgan caught the name in the corner of his eye "Speak of the devil, anything important?".
"Hey, need to talk to you, let me know when you are able to meet, it's sort of important, okay. bye" Reid recited.
Morgan huffed "She even sounds awkward in texts, wonder what is so important?" Morgan wasn't being nosy, merely wondering out loud to himself. They got out of the car and grabbed their go-bags from the boot.
Reid was still a bit bitter about Alex's blatant avoidance and revealed to Morgan something he knew perhaps he shouldn't "She's sort of going through the same thing with her mom and as I did with mine" Morgan stopped walking and stared at him "Her mother suffers with severe depression, made worse by Alex's dad dying a few years ago, cancer" he elaborated. Morgan started walking again, throwing his go-bag onto his shoulder.
"Maybe she just has a lot on her plate with that at the moment, you do know the feeling" he said casually as he held the door open for his partner who walked through without another word. He pulled out the phone again in the lift and to text back. "Be nice" Derek remarked. He looked at what Spencer had typed. "Just called away to Ohio on a case, I promise to let you know as soon as we're back, if it is too important to wait until then, I'll call you when I get a chance" he held the phone to Derek, to see if it proof it. "Perfect" he kissed Spencer's soft lips one last time before the elevators doors opened and they had to become work colleagues instead of lovers.
The phone vibrated again "Thanks Spencer, It can wait!"
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Reid was running late, he had forgotten how long the subway took to get anywhere, he was getting too used to going around with Morgan in the car.
He ran across the road to where he could see Alex sitting outside the cafe. The waiter had just put two coffees on the table. Alex started adding sugar and milk to hers, she hadn't noticed him and seemed completely engrossed in her own thoughts. Her face slightly wrinkled up from frowning, her complexion quite pale, her eyes seemed to be becoming encircled by dark patches indicating little or no sleep. When she had said she needed to talk, if the stress clear on her face was anything to go by, she had meant it, and it was something serious. All irritation at her for her recent behaviour vanished. He knew from looking at her, she was trying to cope with something, and she was failing miserably. He pulled the chair across from her out from the table, she jumped violently from the shock of his unexpected arrival.
"Sorry" he apologised. "I thought you would have seen me coming straight for you" She just looked at him. "Alex, please don't take this the wrong way, but you look like haven't slept in a month" unable to hide the concern in his voice.
"Feels like it too, but it's only been just over a fortnight of sleepless nights, I've been a bit ill" she explained pathetically. "All I want to do is curl up in a ball and hibernate, I suddenly have an envy of bears!" her smile not reaching her eyes.
"What's wrong? Is it your mother again?" enquired Reid, knowing the stress her mother put her under had caused her to have sleepless spells before.
"She's worse than ever, refusing to take any meds at all now. I can't even visit her, she goes into violent outbursts if you say anything to her. I knew this would happen, I just wish my aunt would help deal with it. I'm getting pressure to move back off them, but I can't. I love my job, I love this course. Selfish I know, but I went to see her last week and she tried to go for me with a kitchen knife. I can't deal with that in my life at the moment, not with.............." she trailed off. Her face suddenly red and she just stared into the coffee in front of her.
Spencer failed to noticed this at first. He shuddered as the events she described sounded eerily like when he finally felt he had to commit his mother to the Sanatorium. "I'm sorry Alex, is that why you've been off recently?"
"Sort of, well one of a few reasons, there's also work, a lot of stress with college and a few other things" Alex croaked, for some reason her voice couldn't go above barely audible decibels. Spencer had to lean in close just to hear her.
"When have you ever had to worry about college? You fly through the course work, partly because you work in that sector and can relay the course work to cases you have worked, which leads me to wonder should you even have been allowed to study this particular degree in the first place, it really is an unfair advantage. I'm not sure..."
"Spencer. I'm pregnant" Alex blurted out, cutting across Reid's monologue.
".. if that should..........wait, what???" Reid took a moment to compute what Alex had said, sure that he had misheard her. "You're? But you? Who? What?"
"According to the doctor I am eleven weeks and four days" she answered, finally looked up at him from her coffee.
Eleven weeks and four days, Reid's mind was to the date before he had even mouthed the words. His eyes widen and his mouth fell open. The night they had been together was eleven weeks and five days ago, semen could remain alive within a woman for up to five days. He also knew that condoms were only effective 97% of the time. He knew what she was saying. He knew she was saying she got pregnant from the night they had sex. "How long have you......?"
"I found out at eight weeks and six days, like I said, I haven't slept in just over a fortnight." again she just blurted out her answer, her gaze once more turning to her cup of coffee. A full two weeks and she hadn't told him, anger starting to well up within him. She had sat next to him, had several fleeting conversations on irrelevant topics such as the price of coffee in the college coffee shop, but she hadn't the decency to tell him this.
"Why did it take you so long to tell me?" he asked darkly.
"I didn't know how to, and I needed to decide what I was going to do about it" Alex whimpered, she had noticed the drastic change in Spencer's tone. She had anticipated it could happen.
"You decided, oh, that's great, and what did you decide all by yourself then Alex?" he voice laced in anger.
"I... I.... I'm keeping it Spencer, I know it's a bit of a shock and that I should have come to you earlier, but I needed to weigh everything up." Alex decided to just blurt out everything in quick succession, hopefully then this would calm down quicker. "I know you probably are really mad at me now" one look at his face told her seething would be more the correct term. "But I want to do this and I just wanted to let you know you can do whatever you want, you and Derek, I don't expect or want anything from you, but the option is there for you to be involved if you want".
Silence loomed for a minute. There was no one at the nearby tables and the rest of the world seemed too busy with their own problems to pay attention to the two people sitting outside a small cafe and their discussion. "How the hell could you do this, force your decision on others like this, without even discussing it with them" he spoke slowly, which made it all the more painful for Alex to hear. "You said yourself, your mother is suffering with depression so bad that she should really be put in somewhere and you know it, you just too spineless to do it. You know that it's genetic and you are okay with passing those genes on, and as for my genes, you know that schizophrenia can skip a generation and you are more than willing to allow that to be passed on too. Both of us suffer severe migraines and the problem I had with Dilaudid, you know all of this" Venon laced every single word coming out of his mouth. He accidentally spat as he spoke, but he didn't care, he couldn't. "You can't possibly go through with it, with our genetic backgrounds it is bound to be messed up. You have to terminate it" The way he snapped the word "it" shocked Alex, as though it was a plague, a pestilence.
"Spencer, I can understand you being angry at me, but how can you be so angry at a baby that hasn't done anything to anyone, it never asked to exist!" Alex was hurt and scared, but her bond with the unborn life within her was already very strong and it allowed her the courage to answer him back.
"It's not a baby, not yet, it's a foetus, you know that. It's just a parasite really. It'll feed off you for it's own gain. It already has, look at the state of you" His hands purposely banging down on the table and then gesturing to the worn out, pale girl in front of him, as though to back up his argument "You know what, you were right earlier" Spencer finally stated, "You are selfish! Thinking of yourself rather than using logic" Alex's face looked as though he had slapped her, the words hurting more than any physical pain. He slapped five dollars on the table and walked off. His hands shaking with anger, not looking back at the girl sitting at the table, who looked as though someone was choking her as she fought to catch her breath.