#unrelated but he doesn't have a tobias face | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

the thing with spencer is that every thought becomes an afterthought almost synchronously. in fact, so much so that it is difficult to tell which ones precede the others, even for him -- especially now. dilaudid helps to stretch them over time, until his thoughts no longer happen concurrently. he supposes this is what most people call consciousness. dilaudid, or hydromorphone, is a morphinian opioid used to treat moderate to severe pain, and doctor spencer reid has never known a pain greater than the unrelenting violence of his own thinking. it is not an excuse, of course, for his decision of stealing the drug instead of going cold turkey. but it explains it, doesn't it? how he had never allowed himself too much to drink or how he had always refused to smoke a joint or even a cigarette. how he had protected himself from the possibility of it, only to be pushed into it by an unsub. he knew the statistics, too. studies suggest that 20% of individuals with substance-use disorders may have undiagnosed autistic traits. one in five treated for alcohol or drug may be on the autism spectrum. in the same fashion, autistic individuals are more likely to use recreational drugs to self-medicate their mental health -- and spencer's health has been naught but a declining curve since the whole incident with tobias hankel.

he has been self-medicating, yes, fine, he has micro-dosing himself to the point of annihilation. always on edge and desperate for more / always satiated and idly surfing through life. but listen! perhaps it is not unlike kafka's hero, gregor samsa. the man who became an insect & who continued on being sentient, half one & half the other, never quite accepting his fate as vermin, never quite finding the words to ascertain his humanity. spencer's feelings about the little bottles in his bag are similar to gregor's upon finding out his reflection has changed : the transformation is monstruous, but it must be temporary. right?

right?

it is juno's voice that takes him away from the terrifying possibility of foreverness. it puts him right back in his seat on the jet. spencer moves the fingers of his left hand, five of them. "you're mistaken : the size of my face is perfectly average." he murmurs in response, not sparing a look for the book between her hands. he read the back of it dozens of minutes ago, he even realized pretty early on that juno suarez was not actually reading it either, too lost in thought. they all were. a look, perhaps a bit slow, toward the rest of them : derek, on his back, with his eyes toward the ceiling and his headphones securely put over his ears. hotch, a perfectly terrifying blank face. gideon -- she's talking again, so he forces himself to focus. "all language is but a poor translation", he recites easily. kafka's words had never rung true before, but with hankel's face painted behind his eyelids, he cannot help but agree : i cannot make you understand. i cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. i cannot even explain it to myself. frown settling between his brows as he shakes his head. "and yet a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." a small smile for juno, an easy one to spare for the girl he so desperately wanted to impress with magic & scientifical miracles. he thought they would not get along at first, so convinced she would look down at him or that he would put his foot in his mouth & bore her to death.

but then she had seemed interested, the sole member of the team staying behind to hear the last of his monologue. he had found it charming, in the same fashion as one would encounter a wild flower and then ponder how to reproduce it at home. he, too, had wanted to catch that moment in a bottle & keep it locked up forever. it had turned into a competition, of course, for he knew that he now held the secret to her enchantment : he had come up with the tricks, always one in his pocket for agent suarez, hoping that they would surprise a smile out of her. he still wants that, of course, but it is such a silly objective to have when their daily life is composed of violence & utter disregard for humanity. "it seems kafka has more faith in the object than what it contains." just like everyone has always had more faith in doctor spencer reid, without quite focusing on the boy underneath, coming undone at the seams.

𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐚𝐫𝐞, 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐧𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐞 filling their eardrums like seawater. the plane smells like coffee and with kafka in her hands, it’s all a little too fitting considering the occasion. the pages are delicate in between her fingertips, fraying at the ends with some of the print fading into the page altogether. if not for her previous annotations, juno might have forgotten the true air of despair a string of words can aspire.

today, they’d been graced with a bittersweet ending ── a dead unsub, but a family reunited and in her mind that’s a twisted victory. though still considered a fresh agent, learning how to act fast enough and becoming more comfortable in asking for help, juno was finding her place and perfecting her footing. she was relieved and dared to admit confident because gideon gave her one of those soft, approving looks today and they were as rare as any. hotch’s timid ‘ good work agent ’ and morgan, who couldn’t compliment her without tagging a lighthearted jab at the end, had squeezed her shoulder. in the back of her mind, behind cobwebs tattered with grief, fear, and anger, she felt something warm and comforting. like things were getting better, but not all too well.

doctor reid, who had seemingly begun opening up, talking her ear off about tolstoy, and the effects of traffic on climate, was suddenly very quiet. to be fair, she rationalized his behavior to be a standard response to what had happened to him less than a month ago … but was it selfish to admit she missed their talks? it wasn’t like she could converse with morgan about these things without judgment and gideon … well, he’d make everything out to be a lesson and so, in reality, even though she’d refute it to the end, reid had become her confidant in all of this. in some ways like morgan, but entangled with emotions too complicated to put her finger on , but in other ways not. to put it simply, she did miss reid. and his behavior was deviating from reasonable towards something more concerning. he wouldn’t sleep on the jet anymore and his cups of coffee were less frequent; you had to ask him to contribute to the conversation and as he tended more to himself, the puddles under his eyes deepened. doctor reid was wilting away.

juno’s eyes dart from the printed words on her page, too the young man across from her. fingers absentmindedly drifting through her book, contemplating which string of words to confront him with and how to speak them. who had she become in the last year or so? why did she care? it was too late to ponder because she had already settled with her decision.

“ hey, brainiac. what’s with the long face? ” juno immediately bites the inside of her cheek ── had it been too straightforward? too teasing? oh, why was it suddenly so hard to speak? “ anything kafka can fix? ” softer this time and she holds up her book, a shy offer.

𓂃@violenthunt