#phantasmagoria

Spencer feels you go limp in his arms, and the world stops.

Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. It stops—the way a heart stops when the electricity cuts out. One second there's noise, chaos, the distant echo of Morgan's voice barking orders through the comms. The next, there's nothing but the terrifying, suffocating stillness of your body going slack against his chest.

"No," he breathes. Then louder, sharper, a sound he doesn't recognize as his own voice: "No—no, stay with me. Stay with me."

He shakes you gently, then harder, his fingers finding your pulse point like a lifeline. It's there. Faint, thready, but there. He almost sobs with relief.

"Help!" His voice tears out of him, raw and desperate. "I need help in here! Now!"

He can hear boots pounding against concrete somewhere in the distance. Hotch's voice, calm and clipped, coordinating. But none of it matters. None of it reaches him. All that exists is the space between your heartbeats and the terrifying weight of your head against his shoulder.

He presses two fingers to the side of your neck again, counting. Always counting. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand—

Your pulse stutters.

"Spencer—" someone says. Morgan. Hand on his shoulder. But Spencer can't look away from your face. Too pale. Too still.

"She's crashing," he hears himself say, and his voice sounds hollow, clinical, like he's reading an autopsy report for a stranger. "Her pulse is weak and irregular. She's lost too much blood. She needs a hospital now or she's going to—"

He can't finish the sentence. The word die lodges in his throat like broken glass.

"Ambulance is two minutes out," Hotch says, and Spencer nods, numb, pulling you closer even though he knows he shouldn't move you, even though he knows he could make it worse.

Paul Rieth (1871–1925), Phantasmagorie

CW: angst • alcohol/drug mention • Sanemi x reader

He catches you between your second and third drink and before any purple pills make their way under your tongue. He’s had plenty of time to map this out; knows that you’ll shoulder your way to the furthest edge of the bar top, right next to the wall. It’s here he traps you, sliding a bill to the bartender to pay for your drink before you can pull your credit card out of your bra.

It’s here he’s going to get his answers.

As intended, he catches you off guard and slightly indignant, but you don’t immediately shove past him. You’re less brave without your vices, and the strobe lights don’t reach this dark corner of the club. Here, you’re stripped back, almost sober, and for the moment, his.

Sanemi casts his line. “You didn’t answer my question. Last time.”

What do you want from me?

Anxious eyes dart around the bar and Sanemi notes your hand - feeble as a dove’s and twice as shaky — smooth anxiously over your hair. Again and again, as you try and fish for an excuse.

Finally, you settle on one. “Mitsuri needs me.” You nod toward the dance floor where the beautiful, pink girl sways alone, face turned toward shifting lights of blue and purple, her eyes closed. “She’s gone too far.”

Sanemi’s fist tightens. “So have you.”

Your hand pauses midway down your head, and your eyes flick to him, sharper than glass. “Because you know everything, don’t you?”

Sanemi answers with a boldness he knows better than to feel. “When it comes to you? Yeah.”

A laugh, bitter and sharp, barks its way out of you. You snap your shot glass up from the bar and toss its contents back in a single, smooth gulp. You manage to hold out against the burn sliding down your throat, save for a single twitch at the corner of your mouth. “Fucking me isn’t the same as knowing me.”

Sanemi’s hand curls into a fist atop the bar. “Yeah? So what about all those years before? That just all disappeared, huh? Just like that?”

He snaps his fingers. The club lights shift and the shadows under your cheekbones darken, sharpening the planes of your too-hollow face.

“I don’t know, Sanemi,” you retort, mocking. “You tell me.”

Nope; he’s not going to rise to your bait. Not this time. “Says the one who always vanishes before the sun comes up.”

Your voice goes colder than the ice in his glass.“Guess I learned from the expert.”

Always quick to cut him down to size, to remind him that he is nothing, and certainly not anything to you. And like always, Sanemi flinches, and he loses the upper hand. Again.

You swipe an abandoned shot from down the bar and throw it back in one. Your lipgloss smears across the back of your hand when you wipe your mouth, but you’re gone before he can try to reel you back in, disappearing back out onto the crowded dance floor without so much as a look back.

And Sanemi loses you. Again.