Tequila || Spencer Reid

Spencer

Spencer Reid woke to absence before he woke to light. His hand moved across the mattress by instinct, reaching for Skye, expecting warmth, the familiar shape of her beside him. Instead, his fingers met cold sheets. Not cool from a recent absence—cold enough to tell him she had been gone for a while. His eyes opened slowly, then all at once, and he sat up in the hush of the apartment.

The silence registered first. Skye was motion in the mornings—coffee brewing, cabinets opening, bare feet against the floor, music low enough to pretend it was not there. But now the apartment held itself too still. Spencer moved into the kitchen and stopped. The lights were off. The curtains were still closed. Nothing about the room looked touched by morning.

He went back to the bedroom, and the clinical part of his mind began collecting details before the emotional part could catch up. Clothes pulled loose. Drawers disturbed. Items missing. The pattern was frantic but deliberate—someone leaving quickly, not casually. Spencer returned to the kitchen with his pulse beginning to climb. When he turned on the light, he saw the folded paper on the table. His name was written across the outside in Skye's handwriting.

Spence,

God, I didn't think that it would ever come to this, but it seems I was wrong cause here we are, and I really hate that I have to do this, but I don't have a choice right now, and I am so sorry I never wanted to hurt you, and I know that this is going to crush you...

And no this is nothing that you did, that was the cause of this happening, you see I've hidden things from you, things about my past that I thought I was free of but turns out I was wrong, god I shouldn't have even opened the stupid door... when I met you that day, I was running from my past, I never expected that day would have been the best day of my life... You, Spencer Reid, are truly the best thing that ever happened to me... You saved me that day; you saved me from myself. I was spiraling and in a pretty dark place, but you brought light into my darkness that day, and I will forever be grateful for that... but my past has caught up to me tonight, and I have to leave you, even though I really didn't want to, but it was for your own good... I just want you to know that I'm protecting you by doing this and that I love you more than anything and that I would do anything to make sure that nothing happens to you.

And please, Spence, do not come looking for me because odds are you won't find me, and it honestly would just make things worse, so please don't.

And if Matty comes by like he planned to he was supposed to come and meet you today- tell him that I love him, please.

I don't have much longer but Spence I love you so much, just never forget okay I have to go now.

Love,
Skye

By the time Spencer reached the end, the room had narrowed around him. He wiped at the tears on his face, then looked down again, rereading the letter as if the second pass might turn it into something else. The page was tear-stained where she had signed her name, the ink marked by proof that she had suffered through every word before leaving it behind.

Nothing fit. Spencer's mind moved too fast and not fast enough, searching for a missing variable, a hidden piece of data, something in Skye's behavior he should have seen. A past she had not named. A threat she had not explained. A door she said she should never have opened. Every sentence in the letter felt like evidence, and none of it told him where she had gone.

A knock at the door cut through the apartment. Spencer looked up sharply, the sound dragging him out of the spiral. He folded the letter with unsteady hands, forcing himself into something close to composure before he crossed the room. When he opened the door, Matthew Montgomery stood on the other side—Matty, Skye's older brother—the man Spencer was supposed to meet under entirely different circumstances.

Matty took one look at him and read the scene the way trained agents learned to read rooms: pale face, red eyes, forced control, silence behind him where there should have been life. The man immediately knew something was wrong. "What's going on?"

Spencer's grip tightened around the folded paper. He knew his voice would shake, but he made himself speak anyway, because saying it might make the nightmare real—and keeping it unsaid would not bring her back. "Skye's gone."

Matty's expression changed at once, confusion sharpening into concern. "What do you mean?"

Spencer stepped back and let him inside. The apartment seemed even quieter with another person in it, the kind of silence that followed bad news before anyone was ready to name it. "She wasn't here when I woke up. It was strangely quiet in here, and then I found this." he held the letter out for the older man.

Matty took the letter. His eyes moved over Skye's words, and with each line his face tightened in ways Spencer could not quite interpret. Not surprise. Not fully. Recognition, maybe. Dread. The kind of response that suggested the letter had not created a mystery for him so much as confirmed one. When he finished, he handed it back. "I see, I will do everything in my power to make sure she's found; she only said for you not to go looking for her... I swear I will not stop until my sister is brought home safe."

Spencer nodded, though the motion felt disconnected from him. His mind kept returning to the same impossible question. Skye had trusted him with her heart, with her laughter, with pieces of herself he knew she did not give easily. But she had not trusted him with this. "I just don't understand why she felt like she needed to hide whatever it was that spooked her so much that she disappeared in the middle of the night from me... it would not have made me look at her any differently."

Matty sighed, and the sound carried the weight of years spent knowing his sister's stubbornness and fearing what she had survived. "Skye even when we were kids has always been the one to want to handle things on her own unless she absolutely needs help, and you probably gave her a sense of security that made her not want to drudge up the past and believe me even though I don't know all the details I do know that it's not pretty... I'll find her, Spencer, no matter how long it takes."

Spencer believed him. He could see it in Matty's posture, in the controlled anger beneath the promise, in the immediate shift from brother to agent. But belief did not quiet the panic. This was not how Spencer had imagined meeting Skye's brother. Not in a silent apartment with a goodbye letter between them. Not with his mind spinning through every detail he had missed and every way he might have helped if she had only told him the truth.

The helplessness settled into him with frightening clarity. Spencer had spent his life turning information into answers, patterns into predictions, intellect into control. But there was no equation for waking up to an empty bed and a letter that sounded like a final confession. The feeling did more than break him. It made something inside him decide. His decision to apply to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit hardened into certainty.

He wanted to help people before they vanished. Before the people who loved them were left standing in quiet rooms with unanswered questions. He wanted to understand monsters well enough to stop them, to keep someone else from feeling the way he felt now—useless, terrified, too late. Matty spoke with him a little longer before leaving to begin the search for his sister. When the door closed behind him, Spencer stood alone in the apartment, the letter still in his hand, and hoped that wherever Skye was, she was still alive.

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Here we go, chapter two (: we got to officially meet Matty in this chapter. I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter :D Next chapter will focus on Skye once again. I'll probably do like surprise chapters that focus on other characters at some points (: just so you know.