em💌

Crisp July wind, warm and suffocating, leeches into the bullpen, somehow, through the windows. Spencer’s flipping through files at his desk, glasses falling down the bridge of his nose; you’d both been in a rush this morning - your hair in a barely holding on pony tail and his lack of contacts proves that. Across the room, he hardly glances your direction as your phone buzzes and a frown paints your face when you answer. The gentle hum of other people and their computers drown out whatever conversation you have with whoever, but he does look up when you’re suddenly at his side.

All the life and color has been washed away from your face, smoothing your hands over your slacks, eyes unseeing, as you look down at the dingy carpet.

“That was my mom.”

You breathe out, voice catching, creaking. It doesn’t go unnoticed, certainly not by your behaviorally tuned boyfriend. He stands, his hands taking your forearms, sliding down until he can hold both your hands. HR and ‘PDA’ and fraternization be damned; you look like you’re about to tip over, and he’s not going to let that happen.

Strangely, though, you don’t look close to tears, as empty as your tone is. Thumbs soothe over your knuckles, as he watches your face, voice low enough that it gets lost in the nine fifteen hustle and bustle.

“What’d your mom say, Angel?”

Faintly, you realize he’s talking to you like he would a victim, or a victim’s family. You’re too stunned to be bothered by it.

“My grandma. She’s gone. Stroke.”

Several thoughts fly through Spencer’s brain. Your grandma, who practically raised you, while your parents were working. Who calls you at least once a week to check in, and sends small trinkets she thinks you’ll like in the mail. Gone. With absolutely no warning.

Quickly, he goes through what he knows about grief. What does he know about grief? Statistics, and informational articles about the five stages (or more) fly through his brain, but he comes up empty with what he should say. So instead, a simple phrase falls out.

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

Wrong response. Was it? He’s starting to freak out internally when all you do is raise your shoulders up, and down, a lethargic movement, as your eyes stay low.

“I suppose I should tell Hotch. My mom will want help. Planning the viewing. The funeral.”

Numbly, you turn, before he squeezes your hands tight, to keep you in place.

“Hey. Woah. Um, maybe you should just take a second and—“

“Spence. It’s fine. I’m fine. This— I’m just going to be very busy for a few days.”

You’ve got your ‘please-just-let-me-avoid-thinking-about-this’ face on, but to be honest, he’s considering having you go sit right back down and telling Hotch himself. Frozen to the spot, he watches you head up the stairs, how your fingers brush along the handrail.

As you initially described it, the next few days are a blur. Hotch gives you time off, and you spend it at your mother’s or the funeral home or your grandma’s house. The first night you come home after spending the day with family, Spencer’s already on the couch, book in lap, when you open the front door. He’s over at your side in a flash, too-quick hands shutting the door behind you and taking your freezing ones in his.

“Hey. You, uh, okay?”

You shrug, a half-hearted movement as your hands sit limply in his.

“I guess. I— maybe it hasn’t hit yet. I haven’t cried yet. My mom was crying, and my cousins, but I couldn’t. Think something might be wrong with me?”

Spencer’s face falls, and he’s quick to busy himself by smoothing through your hair, over the high plane of your cheek bone with his thumb; worrying with his hands so he maybe won’t say the wrong thing.

“Lovely, no. Nothing’s wrong. Grief, it, uh, comes in all types of patterns and forms, and maybe you’re still in denial?”

Still locked away somewhere in your mind, you shrug again, rubbing your hands over your arms. You might as well be underneath layers of ice, underwater, watching everyone up on the shore.

“That’s the first stage right? Makes sense. It’s cold in here, don’t you think?”

Frowning, he watches you head over the thermostat, and then to the kitchen.

Like nothing’s amiss. Like you didn’t just lose someone irreplaceable.

And yet—clearly, something’s very, very wrong.

“Angel…”

You don’t look up as you get out a pot, pan, a colander. Must be making pasta.

“Mm?”

“You can just go relax, okay, I’ll— let me get dinner tonight.”

Now it’s your turn to frown. He swallows, watching your face stay perfectly devoid of any real emotion, just carefully placed confusion as you turn his direction.

“Spence, why wouldn’t I make dinner? I usually do.”

“But I want to. Can you just let me? Please?”

He watches the indecision flicker through your eyes at his plea, and then you nod, slowly.

“Yeah. I’ll go— sit. For a bit. I’m really hungry anyways. Long day.”

Talking in cliches never good, especially when it’s you. Spencer watches you head to the couch, your eyes landing on a shelf — and he winces as you look dully at a frame.

He knows which picture rests behind the glass.

Staring for a moment, your muscles tense, and then you whisper, hoarse, like you’re talking to yourself more than him.

“It’s funny. How time works. Maybe ‘funny’ is the wrong word, but— how someone can be alive in a picture and you don’t think about it until they’re gone, it’s jarring. Wrong. That the picture is all you have.”

To your credit, you don’t choke, there’s no lump in your throat. But you sound so distant, and it absolutely crushes him.

“Baby, you—“

You head down the hall, before he can finish, and the soft click of the bedroom door is all he hears. Sighing, he turns back to dinner, anxiety bubbling in his chest. He knows you need a moment, to gather yourself back into something vaguely presentable, even for him.

How can he fix this? Can he? He can’t just apply his knowledge to his girlfriend like she’s a part of a case.

But he doesn’t know. And that terrifies him the most, that there’s something he can’t learn, can’t prepare for, because grief is different for everyone and God knows it’s going to be unique for you.

When the morning of the funeral dawns, you’re up before he is, taming your hair in the bathroom, already dressed — black skirt and a rather nice matching blouse that he’s never seen before. He comes up behind you, as you run the straightener down your hair, and you meet his eyes in the mirror. What he sees in your eyes is a whole lot of nothing. Emptiness. It’s deeply concerning.

“Hey. Morning, lovely.”

His lips find the side of your face, feather light, and then the column of your throat, but your face stays blank. Nodding your acknowledgment of his presence, your voice comes out dangerously close to emotionless. As if you’re discussing the schedule for a normal day.

“We need to leave by eleven. The funeral’s at 2, but the roads might be busy, there’s a lunch for us before, and a private last chance to—“

You stop. Compose yourself into something steel and put together, and continue.

“To see. Her. Before they close the-her- it. The casket.”

Spencer lets his hand come to rest against your hip, gentle, grounding.

“And then, there’s the funeral, and the burial, and—“

The recitation of the agenda halts as you finish your hair and set the straighter down with a clack against the laminate top. Hands falling against your un-made up face, as though you can hide yourself from the inevitable of today. As though you’re young again, believing that if something is not seen, it simply doesn’t exist.

And God, he wishes it could be done that way.

“Spencer, I don’t want to do this. I can’t, do this.”

A beat. He sighs, his other hand reaching to click the power button and unplug your tool.

“Baby, you have to.”

Perhaps, softer reassurances could have been spoken, but his gentle ones, firm in their candor, have you nodding, measured as you reach for your makeup bag. He can almost hear you repeating his reminder to yourself in your mind - an affirmation, that some things in this world are agonizing beyond human comprehension, because of how they remind us of our mortality. How small we are under the stars, but that we must use their light to keep going anyways.

Morning rushes into noon, and Spencer is dually impressed and unnerved as you stay polite but quiet through tearful family interactions and casserole. Right before the service, he pulls you to the side, some small room in the church, clicking the wood paneled door closed behind the two of you.

When he runs his hands over your arms, he winces at the chill he feels through your sleeves. Your eyes stay low, on the mulberry colored thinning carpet, avoiding his gaze, because you know — meeting his eyes and seeing the pain there will break you more than anything else.

“Angel girl. Hey. Listen. If you don’t feel these emotions, this grief, now, I’m afraid you’re going to regret it.”

Shaking your head, you look off to the side, voice hoarse.

“I can’t. I can’t fall apart in front of all these people, my mom, Spencer. I have to push it down, squash it so far into my heart that I can pretend it’s not even really happening to me.”

But it is happening to you.

Neither of you say it, but both of you feel it. Your mother weeps during the service, during the burial, until she’s all cried out and sort of just stands there and trembles. You? Stone. Several times, the urge to let out some sort of bitter little whimper crawls up your throat, but you shove it down.

You’re a gargoyle, watching the people you love and grew up with weep over the casket as it’s lowered into the dirt, your face impassive. Spencer’s fingers find yours when someone hands you a rose to toss in the grave, and on wobbling legs you move, tugging him with you, the breath in your lungs kept there only by the physical contact.

It’s not until you’re both back in the apartment, and you stand there, purse in when hand, dangling to the carpet, in the entryway, until Spencer turns to you, voice so soft you barely hear it.

“Baby? I can help with your shoes if you want, or—“

“I don’t need help with my fucking shoes.”

Immediately, the guilt replaces the anger, but not by much. Swallowing hard, you set your bag down on the counter with a little more force than necessary, and sigh, a quick, short burst of air.

“God, Spence, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

Pressing your fingers against your eyes, you vaguely realize that you’ll smudge your makeup. As if that matters. He’s silent, as you stand there, his hands darting over his slacks a few times, uneasy, before they’re shoved in his pockets.

“You didn’t mean it. I know. It’s okay.”

Is it? Does grief give you the right to respond in any way that rolls off your tongue? Looking away, out the living room window, you shake your head.

“No. It’s not okay. I’m sorry. None of this is okay. None of it. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I just can’t believe we just put her in the dirt like that in her dress; she doesn’t have her rose sweater, she’s going to get cold—“

During your ramble, your voice has gotten high, crackly, almost unintelligible, as you turn back to meet his eyes. The expression on his face borders on pity.

“Hey, come here. Let’s just sit for a bit, I can make tea.”

You can’t bear it.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

Spencer sighs, steps closer, lets his hand rest tentatively on your waist. Tensing, you turn, barely, out of his touch.

“Spencer, she can’t be gone, she— she didn’t even look like herself! Didn’t you see it? In the casket? That wasn’t her, they made her all up to look like her but it wasn’t, I swear to God, it wasn’t. How could my mom not tell? It couldn’t be, my grandma can’t be dead, she can’t, Spencer— she is.”

There’s the tears.

He folds you into his chest, feels your tears against his shirt for a moment, arms around your waist. In a desperate attempt to ground yourself, yours wind around his neck, lifting your head to rest on his shoulder so you can speak.

“I want it all to be some lie. That I’ll wake up tomorrow and call her again and she’ll tell me about the new cookies she baked for her neighbor and I would call every day, I would.”

What can he say? He’s never been well-versed in words when they matter, so he lets you get it out. His thumb drifts up and down the fabric covering your ribs as you hiccup another sob.

“It almost makes me sick. I can’t think about the fact that I didn’t return her calls, or that they all got together last Thanksgiving and we didn’t go, I can’t go back to see her, I can’t go back and fix it, I can’t—“

Breathless nearly, he shushes, gentle, one calloused hand coming to rest on your scalp, smoothing down the hair there.

“Breathe, angel. You will make yourself sick if you don’t stop hyperventilating. Just— let me help. Tonight. Okay?”

Somehow, the minutes tick by, and he’s managed to get you showered, in pajamas you love with tea in your hand, and he’s combing through your hair. Sitting, half nothing, half human, in front of him, you let him slide the plastic teeth through your damp locks.

“I was horrid today. You were nothing but supportive and helpful and I was terrible. I’m sorry.”

“You’re grieving. I can take it, okay? The anger. The pain, it’s all a part of this, and I want to be able to handle it with you. That’s— sort of my job, isn’t it? To help you. When you need it.”

Sighing, you turn to face him. He takes your hand, threading your fingers together and letting his thumb ghost over the side of your hand.

“I mean it, sweet girl. Grief is ugly. Horrid, as you say. I definitely can’t expect you to just act as though you’re fine when you’re not.”

“But you also don’t want it to consume me.”

You lean forward and press a kiss to his cheek, and he grins softly through the light pink that stains his face. Somewhere inside your heart, something glows— still, your affection overwhelms him, just a little.

“And I’ll be damned if I let it.”

“Spencer.”

There’s a warning in your voice, gentle, sad.

“There are some things you just can’t control. No amount of knowledge of statistics or information can fix my heart. This just hurts.”

He blinks. Something flickers in his eyes — upset, raw fear, then, that he won’t be able to drag you out of the pit that you’re slowly sinking into.

“Okay, but I can still apply what I know. How to alleviate some stress, please, just let me.”

Your heart twists. The way his shoulders won’t relax, how tense he is as he tries to hold your eyes despite how you try to avoid avoid avoid.

“We’ll see.” You concede, before you let yourself be tugged under the quilt of your bed and into Spencer’s grasp and the warmth that seems to seep from him. Mentally, you promise to try to let him help. However he can.

God, you try, you do. At first, it’s easy, faking cohesiveness, and you begin to wonder if you’ll really need external assistance at all. Too much blush and caffeine. A tight grin when needed. Barely collected and rationed laughs that the entire team pretends aren’t flimsy like ash.

Until you take the first sick day. Spencer isn’t thrilled about leaving you home alone, but you tell him that you’re just sort of blech, and a day is all you need to recover, and tidy up around the apartment.

What you don’t mention to him is how you spend the entire day in bed. Nothing gets cleaned. The lights stay off all day, curtains drawn tight, your home a dim shadow of what it normally is. Normally? It’s a sanctuary. It’s starting to feel more like a crypt. Coffee cups pile up on your nightstand, on the end table, and the more you stay home, the harder it is to leave. At all.

Because there isn’t just one sick day. There’s another, a week later, after a night spent in tears. And another two days later, when you feel so nauseous and tense at dawn that you feign a stomach bug. Despite the guilt the first few times, each time, it becomes easier to text Garcia that you won’t be in, with excuses that begin to sound poorly crafted even to you. And you want to believe them more than anyone.

You stop looking in the mirror, because all you see is her, and your mom’s soft reminders from childhood turned haunting whispers of ‘you look so much like her.’

In some back corner of your mind, you begin to wonder how long you can wallow before the water fills your lungs and you drown off shore, a corpse waterlogged with muddy memories. The sea salt in your wounds is when you see a picture, hear a song she loved, or smell her perfume in public, and your lashes catch droplets you try to hide from Spencer. Before you know it, you stay home from a case. One in Florida, that you probably would’ve been helpful on.

You don’t care. Every time you close your eyes now, you see her body, fragile and made up to look less gray than she really was, cushioned by pale pink satin. Hotch calls early, to say there’s a case, and you refuse to go, numbly, dully.

Spencer is shocked; no matter the amount of recent absences you’ve had at work, he still can’t believe the development of your depression.

“Baby, you love cases. Please, come along. You can’t just keep taking sick days and not getting out of bed and—“

“Watch me. I’ll do whatever the hell I like.”

The words are empty, despite their vitriol quality, and he frowns. You’re sat on the edge of the bed, hugging your knees to your chest, cheek laid upon them.

“Easy. I didn’t say you couldn’t stay home, but you already took Monday off, and last Thursday, and—“

“Damn it, Spence, I know! I know. I just can’t. Okay? I can’t. I don’t want to. Let it fucking go.”

Now his face goes dangerously blank. You two rarely fight, but your tone is starting to border on hostile. Guilt creeps up your throat.

“Sorry. God, you didn’t deserve that.”

He glides his hands over his suit jacket, voice clipped as he looks down at his shoes.

“I’m not able to support you if you don’t want it. I’ll see you when we get back, then, I guess.”

Panic claws at your chest, sinks its teeth in and has you flying from your spot, voice shrill.

“Spencer, hey, stop, I’m sorry, please, I know—“

He turns, and the anguish in his eyes is intense.

“Baby, I don’t know. Okay? It is excruciating to watch you collapse in on yourself. I want to apply some study I’ve read or even just cheer you up and I’m beginning to think you don’t even want to be helped.”

Taking in a uneasy breath, you nod, color drained away from your face. Spencer’s fingers itch to comfort you. He doesn’t. There’s so much defeat in his eyes, unbound desperation to fix and heal.

“If I stop being sad, if I just keep going on with cases and life, it’s like she’s not even gone. It’s like she didn’t even die, Spencer! And she did! She’s gone, I can’t do anything to bring her back, please, just let me—“

The tears fall now, clumping on your lashes and dribbling down your cheeks, and the pit in Spencer’s chest gets bigger. Sometimes it feels like all time is anymore is minutes spent weeping or not. He steps forward to bring you against his suit coat, trembling hands smoothing over the linen of your pajama top as you heave silent sobs.

“I’m here. You’re not going to make me leave. Because the one thing I do know, Angel? Deep down, you want life to go back to normal. And it will. The grief won’t get smaller, but you’ll grow around it. Okay? I love you. So much.”

Tender hands trace up and down your spine, one eventually coming to tangle in your hair.

“Tell you what. We take this case, and then come home, and take some time off. Together. I’ll help you clean, and maybe—“

Is he pressing too much?

“Maybe we could go see her. It’s been a few months.”

Immediately, your brain lights up with a oh no please don’t I can’t-

“Sure. Yeah. When we get back.”

Florida is what it is — hot and humid and you manage to stay in the field office the entire time. Vaguely, you wonder if Spencer spoke to Hotch. Eventually, you decide it was probably for the best.

True to his word, the apartment is cleaned when you both return home, and two days plus the weekend is granted to the both of you. During the drive there, your heart twists and you’re pretty sure no interrogation has ever made your stomach turn like it does when Spencer slides the car into park, and his hand squeezes yours to help you out of the vehicle and onto sun starched grass.

A quick glance your way tells him you’re apprehensive to the extreme, and he stops halfway there, turning to face you.

“We uh, don’t have to do this. If you don’t think you’re ready.”

You shake your head, one quick movement.

“No. I need to do this.”

He looks relieved, his small smile growing after you try to smile too.

“A lot of people say that it can provide a lot of closure, and be cathartic. It might also… not be easy. Might be jarring, but really, the potential benefits of this outweigh the possibility that—“

You stop, pulling him to a halt with you. Fresh stone, neatly carved letters, her name, followed by years, followed by some lovely sentiment you can’t read because your eyes are clouded.

“They did a good job. With it.”

He says softly, and suddenly, the adrenaline kicks in, and you’re shaking so hard you might just collapse right there.

“We need to go. I’ll come back another, we’ll come back, but right now I need to go.”

Typically, he’d suggest that studies show facing fears can help with said fears, but one look at your terrified, gutted expression and he’s leading you back to his car, hands on shoulders, voice in your ear.

“You’re okay. Breathe baby. In, two three four, out, two, three, four. I’m not going anywhere.”

Once back at the car, you sink down, your back against the cold metal of the car, to land on the ground underneath. He follows suit, and your glossy eyes find the sky, a crisp, autumn cerulean that you just stare at.

“Think she’s watching? Like people say?”

He stares too, and takes your hand. He hears the guilt, the loss in your tone, and knows you’re afraid she wouldn’t be proud.

“That’s one thing I’m not sure about. Religion is, I think, at its core, a response to what people see in the world. A solution to the agony and problems we face down here. I can’t comment on whether or not she’s watching, but if she was, she’d still love you. Still be proud. Just like me.”

“Really? Proud? Of me? When I’ve spiraled into a caffeine and depressive lump that barely gets to work, let alone gets anything productive done?”

“Always. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that, well, I love you. Adore you, really, and you’re still in there, even if it feels like it’s all too foggy to see. I still see you.”

He presses a kiss to your cheek, and then pulls back, flushed, and looks away.

“Sorry, that was probably cheesy. But I do. Love you. A lot, and it’s okay if you can’t do this yet, and I—“

You silence him gently with your own mouth, a lingering kiss before you stand.

“We should go. C’mon. Thanks for driving me all the way here. Even if I couldn’t do what I wanted to yet.”

“Good clarifier, ‘yet.’ You will. Eventually. And I’ll be here for each attempt. And, when you finally talk to her.”