Wild Nights, Wild Nights || s.reid

11. Would the Eden be an Eden?

You hadn't been at work in three days, and Spencer was freaking out.

The first day you were gone hadn't been cause for concern. Hotch had begun the briefing meeting that day by telling the team that you had taken a personal day. When Morgan made a quip about how "Miss Perfect Attendance" had "finally missed a day of school," Hotch had shot him a disapproving glare.

"We'll catch her up to speed tomorrow," he'd said.

And that was that--on to the case. No further explanation.

There had been a series of murdered bodega owners in DC, but even as Garcia began delineating the details of the case, Spencer still couldn't keep his mind focused on anything but you. Truthfully, he'd had trouble keeping his head straight ever since your outburst in his apartment. Spencer prided himself on his intellect, on his ability to talk his way out of any situation, and on his seamless psychoanalytic skills.

But he could not for the life of him figure out what the hell was eating away at you. And that, in turn, ate away at him, in part due to his slightly damaged pride, but mostly due to the fact that he couldn't stand to see you upset. Obviously, the arson case had struck something sensitive, but he didn't know enough about you or your background to even begin piecing together what it was and why. And if he wasn't smart enough to figure that out, if he wasn't smart enough to help the people he cared about, then what was the point of being a genius?

And then, to top it all off, he'd kicked you out when you were in a vulnerable state. It hadn't been for nothing (you had crossed a line you shouldn't have, and he felt entitled to be upset by your words), but he had gotten so caught up in his own hurt feelings that he hadn't realized the implications of his actions until after he'd closed the door.

And when he saw you the next day, he hadn't really known what to say. That was a first for him. He'd wanted to address it after the last case, but you were gone before he could get a moment alone with you, whisked away from him by "Special Agent Christopher Preston."

Spencer was immediately off put by the ViCAP agent. He wasn't so dense that he didn't know how his own jealousy biased his opinion of someone who was likely a fine person (and he was self-aware enough to recognize that his ill-feelings stemmed from jealousy). What he couldn't understand, though, was why he felt that cancerous seed growing in his gut when he saw you two interacting.

Spencer had decided that ruminating over it was pointless, mainly because he didn't enjoy the knowledge that he was not, in fact, your closest friend like he'd been led to think--that there was someone who was above him in your hierarchy of interpersonal relations. But then he thought about the probability of Preston knowing more about you than he did, of having that privilege of being closer to you than anyone else, which also meant that Preston likely knew why you were so distraught over that case.

And Spencer really didn't like that.

He had resolved after the first day that, the following day when you returned, he would talk to you about that night in his apartment.

But then you didn't show up again.

When he arrived at the police precinct the following morning and noted your absence, he'd asked Hotch where you were. All he received as an answer was a monotonous "she's out."

She's out.

There was no way you were just "out." You hadn't missed a day of work for the entirety of the two years he'd known you, and he could only recall a single instance of you being late due to being rear-ended by a high school student while you were driving to work. Something had to have been wrong with you.