criminal minds | one-shots ✓

1. wheels up

spencer looks up and meets emily's hopeful gaze, a challenged and willful question in her eyes. 

it's two words. eight letters. two syllables.

wheels up.

he feels as if they hold more weight than they should be allowed to. like it's not a just a phrase, it's more.

wheels up.

in a way, it is.

he looks up at the agents that surround the table. luke, emily, rossi, jj, matt, garcia, tara.

they're more than just a team - they've been through too much together for spencer to look at them now and and only give them the title of coworkers. they're the people he knows he can undoubtedly trust. The ones who have had his back since day one, no questions asked.

this team is more than a team - it's a family.

it's scraps and bits and duct tape and glue and they're all fragile right now, but they'll learn to heal. together. in time. 

he's never left willingly, and there's a reason why, he knows. he remembers how long he's been here, the faces he's loved, the faces he's lost.

remembers gideon, who hadn't known when to stop, and who'd died and unfair and untimely death. remembers elle, who'd put men on alert for good reason, and who'd done the wrong thing for the right cause. morgan, who'd meant more to him than he ever thought a person he'd willingly let in really could. alex, who'd deserved the happy ending she never got. kate, who'd been headstrong and fierce. jordan and ashley, who he hadn't known very well, but had been just as valuable members as everyone else. hotch, who'd been the greatest leader and unofficial official father figure of the team any of them could've possibly asked for. 

they've lost a lot, so much - too much. and he knows they'll lose again and again and again and they'll keep losing. it's unfairly cruel and the people he sees in front of him now deserve so much better, so much more, but he also knows that's hard. especially with this job. with the sacrifices they're forced to make. they choices they have to pick. sometimes, it just seems better to pet it all go. to stop. but he does what he does now and pauses, takes a look around, because he knows, at the end of the day, the people he loves, the people who love him, will be there.

penelope will always fill her office with colour and will always be up for watching cheesy 80s romcoms with him. jj will always find ways to make himself feel better, feel more like himself, whether it be with a debate over whether or not twizzlers are as bad as spencer says they are, or if it's just with her talking mindlessly about henry until he forgets why he was upset in the first place. emily will always rant about how much better old films are in their original languages, now matter how truly biased she is. luke will always offer up a pep talk and a pat on the shoulder, not unlike derek morgan years ago. tara will always offer him rides, despite the fact that they have nothing in common, and she's definitely much cooler than him. rossi, loathe to admit it, will tell stories or cook pasta and teach him the difference between truly good italian opera and wailers. and maybe he's not sure about matt, yet, but he can see already that he'll fit right in. 

spencer knows he doesn't just have a team in front of him, and he knows he's struggling right now. but he's learned, slowly but surely over the years, that he's got a family who will help him, in whatever ways he needs. he can depend on them and trust them. he does. 

so, he looks into emily's gently reassuring brown eyes and he feels a small smile grace his lips. he knows the answer, though there was never really a question. he supposes he had from the beginning.

"wheels up."