Innocent: Spencer Reid ✔️

{23} Wrecking Ball

t w e n t y t h r e e
A v e r l y n
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I never thought I'd be able to fall asleep tonight. Not with the snake, the bandage wrapped around my wrist, and the two disturbing images settling down in my head, making up camp. They aren't moving too soon, they plan on indenting themselves into my head, and I just have to let it happen. Spencer doesn't go to his own bedroom tonight, he climbs into bed next to me and pulls me in between his legs. He knows I love cuddling like this. As much as I want to submerge myself in the comforting feeling of Spencer's arms around me, there's a small part of my brain willing me to keep my eyes open, begging to keep my body awake. Spencer keeps one arm around my waist, and his free hand curls strands of my hair around his index and middle finger. I try to close my eyes, but not even a few seconds later I'm haunted by the images dancing around my head. Spencer swaps hands that are playing with my hair, and with his free hand he grabs a book from the nightstand.

After I was bitten by the snake and Spencer took me out of the room, the paramedics came as did the CSI. The round table room was officially a crime scene apparently. Until the heads have been removed. They don't need to DNA test the heads, I recognised them the second I saw them. Linda and Johnathan Barnes left behind a son they so desperately wanted for ages. They left Lucas behind, because of me. Because of my selfishness and my desperation for a normal life, without two grown men obsessing over me to the point they kill for what they want. After that, there was an unspoken conversation between Spencer and I. One that made me want to cry. I just wanted him to hold me, but he couldn't, in the way that the team would start guessing. Whenever he could wrap his arms around me, he would and he'd stay there for as long as possible, letting me cry into his shoulder. Now we're back at the safe house, we can hold each other for as long as we want, without interruption other that the guards at the front door. They won't come in, though, they value our privacy.

Spencer gets comfortable and opens the book at the start, even though it's clear from the uneven pages, he isn't at the start of the book. I don't get to read the title of the book before he flicks his way through to the first chapter. Olive Again, I manage to read the small words before he gets to the first chapter and his jaw slacks to speak. "In the early afternoon on a Saturday in June, Jack Kennison put on his sunglasses, got into his sports car with the top down, strapped the seatbelt over his shoulder and across his large stomach, and drove to Portland—almost an hour away— to buy a gallon of whiskey rather than bump into Olive Kitteridge at the grocery store here in Crosby, Maine." Spencer's voice is soft when he reads, and not even before the first paragraph ends, he's distracted me and I feel tired. "Or even that other woman he had seen twice in the store as he stood holding his whiskey while she talked about the weather. The weather. That woman—he could not remember her name—was a widow as well."

At the end of the paragraph Spencer stops, almost as if he expects me to be asleep already. I'm not a baby. I let my index finger trace patterns on Spencer's chest and stomach, waiting for him to carry on.

When we got back to the safe house, I didn't even feel safe. Although there were guards outside to secure the safe part of safe house, it made me feel like I was back at the hotel room. I felt safe at Spencer's apartment, despite the hidden cameras from Joshua. I couldn't tell the team I wanted to go back, because that wasn't possible right now. Not when they just broke a line in their victimology. They could kill anyone, and from the who's next they left in the note, it could be Spencer or someone from the team. We can't risk any more lives, and I can't risk Spencer's.

"As he drove, an almost-calmness came to him, and once in Portland he parked and walked down by the water. Summer had opened itself, and while it was still chilly in mid-June, the sky was blue and the gulls were flying above the docks." His free hand came back up to twirl my hair around his finger. He's soothing me, making me tired using all the things he knows tire me out to make me fall asleep. I want to speak, and tell him how much I love him right now, but it will ruin the trance and I'll be wide awake again. So instead, I roll it around deep in my head. I love you, I love you, I love you. "There were people on the sidewalks, many were young people with..."