#sewing with me is mostly following the pattern before completely driving off the path into chaos to match exactly what is in my head

[snckt]

what if i just ✂️

[danyka-fendyr]

Absence of Good - 9

Chapter Nine: Legerdemain

Hello everyone! As promised, I am posting another chapter of Absence of Good within the same week! I know, I’m kind of stunned too. If it comforts anyone, this is completely unedited, so that’s still on brand for me. I’m really excited for where I’m going to take this series next. I have some ideas for what the plot conflict is going to be now that our two idiots are together, hehe. For now though, enjoy this mostly wholesome chapter (minus the murder, obviously).

Taglist: @dreamwritesimagines @rhabakoli @alwaysadreamingoptimist

AoG Taglist: @pancakefancake @prettyboyspenerrr @youreasnack @alioop3818 @newtslatte @rathersuspiciousbumblebee @andiebeaword @stalker83005

Wordcount: 3206

Warnings: Murder. Some gore. Generally disturbing themes. Mentions of abuse.

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.” ― Salvador Plascencia

You had been on this case for a week now, and it was starting to take a toll on you. Hotch had put you all on a plane about 5 minutes after your confession to Spencer, which at the time you hadn’t been worried about. Little did you know this would be the world’s longest-running case, and you had barely gotten 5 minutes with Spencer.

This was one of those rare times where splitting you and Spencer up was pretty much unavoidable. They needed his brain at headquarters to track this guy and they needed your body out in the field to catch the guy. You and Emily had been teaming up a lot, and while you had learned a lot from her, she was no Dr. Reid.

You missed him. You didn’t realize how much time you had been spending with him until the most you got was a quick, “Hi, how are you?” as you handed him coffee. He had been throwing himself at the books, forgetting to do basic things like eat and drink, so you tried to remember for him when you could. You were all at the end of your rope with this guy.

This unsub, whoever he was, just so happened to be extremely clever. You could only imagine how high his kill rate was, as you were sure this was not where he had started. No, the precision this guy worked with was almost a thing of beauty, if it hadn’t made you want to vomit. Apparently, eyelids were very hard to sew together, but this guy, he was pretty damn good at it.

You climbed up the hill, thighs burning as you approached the top, boots digging into the soft dewy ground. The sun had only just started rising about an hour ago, and you felt your eyelids weigh almost as heavy as your limbs. Emily was right behind you, the ragged pace of her breathing matching yours.

When you reached the top of the hill you couldn’t say you were greeted by your favorite sight.

“Oh. Well that’s just lovely,” you huffed out.

“It’s certainly new.” Emily was turning a little green around the gills.

Evidently, your man had gotten bored of just sewing people’s eyelids shut. This guy had his eyes sewed shut, sure, but he was also cut in half. So that was fun.

“Do you see the dove?” You started scanning for it, knowing it would be present somewhere on the crime scene.

Emily found it first, lying a few feet away from your victim. She bent down to closer inspect the plastic bird, looking for any sign that the killer might have left behind a message or a fingerprint. No such luck.

“Okay, well we know this had to be time consuming, right?” You said.

“To sever a man’s spine? Yeah. That’s no easy task.”

“He’s escalating. Showing off. He’s laughing at us,” you mumbled, leaning over the body.

“I think he’s earned the right to. 5 kills in one week? That’s…”

“Not good.”

“I was going to say scary, but that works too.” Emily grimaced.

“Want to head back to the station? I don’t think we can gather much more from here. We’re better off waiting for the M.E.’s report.”

“Hmm…Sure you don’t have any other reason for wanting to go back to the station?”

“Like what,” you said airily.

“Really?” she said. “You don’t think I’ve noticed you’ve been missing your usual partner? It’s okay, honest. You’re not hurting my feelings any.”

You laughed a little bit, relieved that she had either not caught on to anything or had chosen to keep it to herself if she had.

“Hey, I think you make for fine company. That being said, someone has to watch Spencer. He’s losing his mind right now.”

“Yeah. Hotch had to stop him from throwing a book across the room yesterday.”

“Wait, really?”

“Our resident genius is coming a little unhinged.”

You sighed, beginning the descent down the hill.

“I’m worried about him,” you confessed.

“We all are. He’s taking these deaths too personally. I think he feels like it’s his responsibility to figure this guy out, like he’s the genius and he’s not doing his job or something.”

“He puts too much pressure on himself.”

“You can say that again.” Emily rolled her eyes, but her face quickly settled back into a worried frown. “He always has. This case is just difficult. No pattern with the victims, no obvious clues, and no clear connection between eyes, doves, and now being split in two. It’s just a little mystifying.”

You nodded, climbing into the passenger side of the car. Emily liked to drive, and you usually fell asleep in cars, so in that sense at least you were the perfect duo. You laughed at the thought that Hotch would have paired you up for that alone.

“Maybe something about this will make sense to Reid. Maybe this is the piece we’re missing,” you said.

“Yeah, maybe.”

Emily does not sound hopeful.

 As soon as you got to the station you were making a beeline for the coffee machine. It was quite literally the only thing you could think about right now. Selfishly, you got your own coffee first, taking a couple of sips to get your brain and heart working in proper order. You definitely hadn’t been this dependent on coffee before you started this job.

Once you felt like you could be reasonably mistaken for a human being again, you made another cup of coffee, dumping a few cups of sugar in. Just how he liked it. You smiled to yourself, probably looking a little crazy. You had known how Spencer liked his coffee forever, but it just felt different now, more intimate somehow. Stupid human brain with its stupid human hormones.

Spencer was alone amidst an entire library’s worth of books. He was sitting surrounded by them on the floor, some of them stacked up around him, built up like a little castle. You tip-toed your way through the maze, heading towards the oblivious genius who clearly had his defenses and his drawbridge (the meager path you had carved for yourself) down.

“Spence.” Your voice was a soft echo in the room.

He jumped, turning around bewildered and bleary. You took in the site of him, the circles under his eyes that were moats of purple and the way his hands twitched like they were trying to turn a page or hold a shield he had misplaced. Gently, you smoothed out a stray piece of hair that was falling into his eyes.

“Brought you coffee,” you offered, shuffling around a few books to settle down on the floor next to him.

He relaxed, reaching out to take the cup.

“Find anything?” you asked.

“Nope. What about you? Hotch told me there was a new body this morning.”

“Yeah. This guy was chopped in half. We’re waiting on the M.E.’s report. Other than that, nothing new except for me almost losing my breakfast. Not cute.”

“I think you would have been very cute projectile vomiting over a corpse.” He grinned at you.

“Is that what you tell all the girls Dr. Reid?” You raised an eyebrow.

“No. Just you.”

“Hmmm���” You squinted at him playfully. “Then what do the other girls get that I’m missing out on?”

“What if I said there are no other girls?” He raised an eyebrow, but a hint of seriousness crept into his voice.

“Then I would say you’re a liar,” you whispered, leaning forward until your face was dangerously close to his.

“Don’t tempt me,” he said, voice low, eyes lower as they traveled well below your own.

“Oh, do magic tricks for me like one of your French girls, Spencer!” You feigned a swoon, one palm falling back onto a red leather-bound book to support you, the spine digging into the heel of your hand.

“Well, I could. Or I could return your hair tie.”

You glanced down at your free wrist, alarmed to find it hair tie free.

“How did you?”

He just smiled charmingly, pulling it out from behind your ear.

“I can think of other things you could do that with,” you suggested, waggling your eyebrows. “But seriously, how?”

“A magician never tells his secrets.”

“Yeah, well I wish they would start.” You soured again, thinking back to the case. “I would love to know how this guy sawed his latest victim in half.”

Spencer sat up rigid, eyes going blank as he thought faster than you could ever hope to process.

“Spence?”

“We need to get that M.E.’s report right now,” he said, standing and leading a one-man charge out of the hardbound, softcover castle he had built.

You followed behind him, scrambling to keep up. Unsurprisingly, you two ended up at the M.E.’s, who was mid-examination.

“Was the victim sawed in half?” Spencer said, not bothering with any niceties.

“He’s Dr. Reid, we’re with the FBI,” you clarified, confused where he was going with this.

“Umm…” The medical examiner looked a little bewildered but answered the question anyway. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure this was the work of a saw. Not an electrical one either. Very unusual. Probably took him a very long time to do.”

Reid spun around, heading right back to his books, leaving you to helplessly follow after tossing a hasty goodbye to the poor M.E.

“Spence, what is all of this about?” You asked once you had wended your way back to where you started.

“Don’t you see?” He asked, a slightly insane light to his eyes. “It all makes sense now. The dove, the saw, even the eyes. It all connects!”

“Spence, I think you need to maybe go lie down for a little bit.” You reached for something he could eat, spotting a box of donuts left half-empty on a table in the office space he had appropriated. “Why don’t you have a piece of bread and maybe you’ll calm down.”

“No, look,” he said, finding the crime scene photos amongst the shuffle of information he had acquired. “What do all of these things mean put together? How saws people in half? Who uses doves as part of their show?”

Finally, it clicked.

“Magicians,” you breathed, Spencer’s energy suddenly becoming contagious.

“Magicians!” He crowed. “Even the eyes make sense. It’s a taunt. ‘Now you see me, now you don’t.’”

“Because he always disappears!”

“Exactly!” Spencer pointed at you triumphantly.

“Okay. Now we just have to find a magician with a bone to pick,” You said, deflating slightly. “How hard could that be in a city of a couple hundred thousand?”

“Better go tell Garcia to start checking Fort Wayne’s yellow pages.”

“Yeah.”

 As it turned out, it was apparently not that hard to find a magician with a grudge. For some reason, there were several in this city. However, only a few had the migratory pattern of your culprit, who had been clever enough to cross state lines. He had been playing a long, subtle game before he started to toy with you, but the eyes had always been the same, a very unique touch of his.

“Okay team,” Garcia said, bubbly as ever. “We have learned two things today. One, our guy is probably Larry Harlborrow, A.K.A. Axel Ranger, traveling magician who just so happens to have stopped by all of our unsub’s previous places of residence and stuck around for a while. Two, never trust a magician.”

“Hey!” Reid interjected.

“Never trust a magician whose name is not Spencer Reid,” Garcia amended over the phone.

“Better. Carry on.”

“Anyway, it looks like our guy’s stressor was a messy divorce with his wife. Apparently, the magic business didn’t make him a very good bread winner, and the multiple charges of domestic abuse weren’t exactly a winning point for him either. I suspect it was the latter though that caused her to leave him, taking sole custody of the kids and getting a very neat, tidy restraining order put up against him. More power to her, but that’s where we come to our trigger and coincidentally where our timeline of murder starts. But hey, I’m sure there’s no connection there, right?”

“Address?” Morgan asked.

“Oh, you know I’ve already sent it to your cell, sexy,” Garcia purred.

“Alright, well as grateful as we all are, I think it’s time to hang up while this call can still be called PG-13,” JJ said.

“Good luck my darlings!”

“Thanks baby girl.”

Thankfully for you, it was just a simple snatch and grab, and it was about time you had one. He was at home, so confident in his own skill he didn’t have the slightest inkling you would be interrupting his afternoon. Classic narcissist. The homicide was a fun twist, but you couldn’t call it original.

Morgan kicked down his front door and you burst through to where he was, disgustingly, in the middle of sawing in half another victim. His entire living room was coated in plastic sheets, the kind you draped over furniture if you were painting. You couldn’t say you liked the way blood red matched the rest of his décor.

“Hands in the air!” You shouted, aiming your gun.

For a moment he paused, saw still in his blood covered hands, victim well and truly dead before him. You couldn’t believe he was actually considering not giving himself up.

“Piece of advice? Don’t bring a saw to a gunfight,” Emily warned.

That seemed to be enough to snap him out of it, and slowly, he raised his hands in the air. You cuffed him, trying not to look at the body so close to you.

“Try slipping your way out of this one Houdini,” you growled before starting on his Miranda rights.

After safely stowing your mad magician into the back of a cop car, you made your way back to the station to pack up and get ready to go home. It had been a very, very long week. All you wanted was a shower and your soft, warm bed.

You fell asleep almost immediately getting into the jet, your head resting on Reid’s shoulder. You didn’t even care that the rest of the team was watching. This was innocent anyway, and they were all far too tired to care.

When you touched down, you were still so blurry you weren’t sure you could be trusted behind a wheel. Thankfully for you, Spencer noticed.

“I’ll drive Y/L/N home. I still have enough coffee in me for that I think,” he said.

“Okay. I’ve got Emily,” JJ said, supporting her equally sleeping friend.

Spencer bundled you into the car and once again, you were dead to the world for a while, until he was waking you up again to lead you into your apartment.

“Will you stay?” you asked, lazily fumbling for your keys and allowing him to open the door for you.

“Of course,” he said, tucking you under one arm and guiding you inside.

“That was such a long case,” you groaned, stretching out your limbs.

He nodded, setting his satchel down in your doorway.

“Yeah.” A beat. “I missed you.”

You felt everything in you soften at those words, a gasp of relief that it wasn’t just you who had been feeling like this.

“I missed you too. So much.”

He crossed the distance between the two of you in your tiny apartment, wrapping you up in his arms, and you breathed the scent of him in. There was something deeply comforting about this, about the soft material of his sweater and the tickle of his hair brushing against your nose. It was starting to get long again.

“You need a haircut.” Your voice was muffled by his shoulder.

You could hear the frown in his voice. “You don’t like it how it is now.”

“No, I do.” You reached up to play with the longer strands in the back. “Actually, I think you should keep it this way. If you change anything you might get sexier, and then I’ll never be able to focus on cases.”

“Hmm, maybe I will cut it then.”

“No,” you whined.

“I think you need to go to bed.”

He combed a hand through your hair and you sighed blissfully.

“Are you offering to take me to bed Dr. Reid?”

“Something like that,” he said, scooping you off of your feet.

You let out a surprised squeak, wrapping your arms around his neck. The alarmed beating of your heart woke you up a little bit more, enough so that your brain could process the full implications of the fact that Spencer could pick you up with ease. You filed that information away in your brain for future use.

You let him settle you down gently onto the mattress but refused to untwine your arms from where they rested. He tried to move away, but you stopped him.

“One kiss.” A soft, tired plea.

He hadn’t kissed you in a week, and you were starting to forget the way it felt. You never wanted to forget that, the absolute rush of it. Little did he know you had been obsessing over it, pining after him the entire time you had been on this case. You could still focus on your work, but you had always had him in the back of your mind somewhere, holding you, kissing you, making snarky commentary. At some point, Spencer had become an integral part of your life. Without him something important seemed to be missing in a way you couldn’t explain.

“One kiss,” he agreed, leaning down to brush his lips softly against yours.

A shuddery little sigh unwound in your lungs, fluttering out of your mouth to meet his, and in response he deepened the kiss. One hand cupped your face while the other buried itself in your hair, and you loosened your grip on his neck so that your fingers could trace his face. They danced across his features as his lips danced against yours.

You loved the way he kissed. Every time he did it, it was with his whole body. Like it was the only thing he was thinking about, like it was the only thing he would ever think about. The way he curved into you, the furrow of his brow that you traced with the tip of your finger. You almost wanted to open your eyes, to immortalize this moment, but you couldn’t. You were too absorbed by the feel of him.

All of the effort, the concentration that Spence put into his kisses paid off. He was absurdly good at it, stealing your breath away, making you forget that there was anything else in the universe. The flick of his tongue against your lower lip was positively indecent, and you arced into him, pulling him closer.

Disappointingly, he pulled away, breathing hard. You realized you were doing the same, having forgotten about paltry things like breathing while he was kissing you. He walked around to the other side of the bed, toeing his shoes off and coming to lay down beside you.

Gently, he laid a kiss on your forehead. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

“if only these treasures were not so fragile as they are precious and beautiful.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe