CHAPTER FIVE
before .
❪ virginia : 2006 ❫

ON THE DAY THAT TOBIAS HANKEL KIDNAPPED SPENCER REID, LYDIA EXPERIENCED TRUE TERROR. She had felt fear for the lives of people she loves before—  like when her father overdosed for the first time, or when her grandfather got his cancer diagnosis during her freshman year of college, but that had been different.

She did not believe in fate. Yet, when they had become ill, it had felt a little like how people claimed that fate worked. There wasn't anything she could do but wait and let it run it's course. But with Spencer, it didn't feel like fate. It felt like a ticking time bomb, and someone was going to cut the wires— whether it detonated or defused was down to choice. Someone else's choice.

Even years after the matter, Lydia thinks of those few days as the darkest stain in the fabric of her memory. It changed her. When she was younger, people came and went out of her life like rotations in the season— her father when he went into rehab, her grandparents when they sent her to boarding school, her friends going hot and cold as quick as coffee cooling down in a mug. She was used to people being temporary, and it wasn't like their losses didn't sting, but it was expected.

The BAU was the first time she felt like something was going to last. And with Spencer, somewhere between late night conversations over re-heated chinese food and the ever-presence of his scuffed converse in her hallway, she began to think of him as someone who wouldn't fade.

She had never allowed herself to entertain the idea of him leaving— truthfully, it had never even occurred to her, so when he almost did, it was like a slap to the face. She didn't know what was different this time, what had let her become so comfortable. But as she'd held him tightly in that graveyard, she knew it was too late to fight it.

So, she didn't.

Spencer spent the night in the hospital— his heart had stopped, he'd been clinically dead and came back to life, but somehow all that was needed was overnight observation to ensure there was no other damage that hadn't made itself obvious upon admission. Physically he was, miraculously, fine. But mentally...

Lydia drove him home when they discharged him, quiet hum of the radio being the only noise to disrupt the silence. His leg was bouncing a hole into the footwell carpet, and she remembers how she struggled to concentrate on the road over her concern for him.

It had been pure chance that they lived so close together. Lydia was fresh out of college, having gone between her grandparents house in up-state new york and various dorm rooms since she was seven years old. Virginia was her first home, and returning to the city where she'd lived with her father was more comforting than she had expected it to be. Those years had been happy— before the night when he was wheeled out on a gurney, she had been too innocent to notice the signs of addiction that seemed so obvious now. Like how it wasn't normal for him to drink multiple cans of beer every night, or the way he'd hurry her off to bed early and she'd wake the next morning with the remnants of white powder still lingering on the coffee table. Sometimes she doesn't know how he managed to hide it for so long— it wasn't like he was neglectful. At least, not in all areas. He'd made it known she was loved, always had someone to take her to school if he couldn't. There was food in her stomach and happiness in her heart.

But it was reckless and selfish of him, she knows that. She knows that he put her in danger, that he'd put his own addiction above her. When she'd understood that as she came into adulthood, it was a little harder to hang onto the good memories as her anger started to creep in. If he'd just gotten clean, if he'd just chosen her, then she never would have been taken away from him and put into the care of the grandparents she only vaguely knew. He should have wanted that, wanted her more than the high. He should have loved her more.  As a teenager, she went a long time without speaking to him. It was only when she was eighteen that he came to her, asking if maybe they could try and rebuild their relationship.

He was eight years sober then. At first, she had said no. Told him that she wanted nothing to do with him, and even though she could see that it killed him, he'd respected her decisions.

Then Lydia started to remember. She'd spent years turning her father into this figure of selfishness that she'd forgotten everything else he was too. So, she'd picked up the phone and told him that she wanted to try. There were no promises in her words, still too poisoned with her resentment to give him anything definite. At the time, she didn't believe that she could forgive him. She thought she'd see him and all the ice that had begun to faw would immediately freeze up again.

Yet, the minute they'd met in that coffee shop, he started to look like her dad again. He really had changed, bettered himself. He was open about his struggles, didn't shy away when she threw hard questions at him that were clearly uncomfortable to answer. He owned his mistakes. She respected that. While it was certainly no quick and easy feat to repair everything between them, it had been the start.

Steven Baylor had seen the ad for the apartment in the local paper, hastily recommending it to her when she'd brought up the idea of moving back to Virginia as if to make sure she went through with it. The move was inevitable though, with her new job at the FBI requiring her to be close to quantico.

Again, Lydia did not believe in fate. But if she did, she might have said that it was fate that landed her the apartment one floor up from Spencer's. Lydia did, however, believe in coincidence. Beautifully random coincidence that had her rushing down the steps at the same time Spencer was exiting his apartment, one month into her introduction to the BAU.

He had blinked at her, brows furrowing as he pushed his glasses further up his nose. She had blinked back, but it was her who had been bolder back then— more willing to make connections than him. In the future, Lydia thinks back on that moment with the amused notion that he probably would have given her an awkward smile and continued on his merry way if she hadn't started the conversation.

It wasn't that he was rude to her in that first month, but he had been a touch closed off— stuttering out his words, apologising for long rambles and not really engaging in conversation with her outside of work matters. Derek had said it was because he found her intimidating— or, as he more poetically put it, pretty boy gets a little tongue tied over pretty girls. Spencer never did believe her when, years later, she'd told him that he was incredibly endearing to her from the very first moment they'd met.

Derek believed that Spencer had a crush— and for a moment, Lydia thought that he might have been right. But after she'd invited herself along on his commute to work, she'd decided that maybe he'd just been a little shy with people he didn't know. And then friendship bloomed, and he opened up to her, and that was that. They were friends. He didn't have a crush on her— she'd believed that wholly, even if there had been little moments over the years that had given her the hope that maybe she was wrong. Because the truth was, Lydia had been slowly falling in love with him since the moment they met.

It was only on the night of JJ's wedding that she realised he had been, too. It was a shame that good things never seemed to last.

They stopped in front of his door, and he stared at the numb for a moment, lost in thought.

"Hey," She said, "Are you going to be okay on your own?"

Spencer hesitated, teeth sinking into his lip as he shook his head, "Yeah."

"Well, you know where i am," she gave him an earnest smile, "No matter what time, okay?"

He nodded and said a quite thank you before disappearing into his apartment. It was only an hour before there was a knock on her door— she'd freshly showered, sweats and wet hair, and Spencer was standing there with silent fear in his eyes.

"I don't want to be alone." He offered, voice small. He was hunched in on himself, and she wordlessly opened the door so it was wide enough for him to step through. Spencer had been in her apartment before, but he stood helplessly now, like he didn't know what to do with himself.

"Spence, have you eaten yet?"

His body spun to face her, like he'd been lost in thought and forgotten she was there. He blinked, "I tried... burnt like five slices of toast. I was... distracted."

She nodded, "You still want toast? Or, I haven't been to the store yet, but I think there's a few ready meals in the freezer. You like the spaghetti one, right?"

"Yeah," He murmured, "Yeah. Spaghetti's good."

Spencer toed off his shoes at the door, and she moved past him to get the food into the microwave. He'd come at his own pace— so she let him take a moment, watching as his eyes remained on the coat rack from the other side of her open plan kitchen/living room. He took in a shaky breath then stepped away from the entrance way, taking a seat on the couch.

When the microwave dinged, she placed the plastic container on a plate and handed him it with a fork. He managed a grateful smile, but it wobbled slightly. Lydia took a seat next to him, feet curling under her as she reached for the remote and put on some talk show to fill the quiet. Spencer ate slowly, but some of the tension eased from his shoulders, eventually relaxing against the back of the couch. He'd finished his meal and a few more programs passed before she spoke again, "Do you want to talk about it?"

He was quiet for so long that Lydia wondered if he'd even heard her, but eventually he said, "I feel like... it's going to creep up on me at the worst time. I don't... i don't think what happened has fully sunk in, and now i'm just waiting for it all to collapse in on me. What if... what if I can't get past this? What if i'm out on the field and all I can think about is this, and it paralyses me. What if I can never look at crime scene photos without being transported back to that chair, tied down, and—" He took in a shaky breath, "What if I can't do the job anymore?"

She felt something splinter inside of her— he sounded so utterly defeated, and she wished she could take it all away from him. Spencer was the very last person who deserved to feel like he was inadequate, like he was someone who needed to be repaired.

"What you went through," Lydia started, "It's too much for one brain to process all at once. Life is going to be different now, Spence. That's what trauma does. You take it in waves, and sometimes those waves will be bigger than others, but they'll always come back down again. And when it feels like they're going to pull you under, ask for help. We all love you, Spencer, and if you ever need someone to talk to or you need a moment to step away when we're at work, then that's perfectly okay. No one goes through what you did and comes out unchanged."

He didn't speak right away, eyes becoming glassy as they remained on her. Finally, he nodded, and broke down. Shoulders shaking and quiet gasps. Lydia reached for him, and he sunk into her arms willingly, remaining there until the tears dried and his breathing evened again. They fell asleep on the couch during the early hours of the morning, Doctor Who playing on a quiet volume in the background.

It was three weeks before Lydia recognised the signs. They'd been building up— moments of distractedness out of character for him, mood swings from high to low, excessive tiredness, watery eyes. The list increased as the time passed, and suddenly she was left without a doubt. Spencer was addicted to the dilaudid his kidnapper injected during those torturous days, and it was stealing away the man he was before. 

At first, Lydia didn't know what to do. Spencer didn't like it when people tried to help him— he saw it as an attack, someone pointing out a flaw in himself that he needed to change. She didn't want to push a boundary  and offend him. But she also didn't want to be his friend if that meant standing by and watching him wither away— because, to her, that wasn't being a friend. That was being a bystander. So, if she had to make herself an enemy, if she had to overstep and create a rift, she would do it.

The day had been slow at the BAU. Piles of paper work whittled through by the team over cups of coffee and the donuts someone had brought in that morning. Derek and JJ had left an hour ago, Hotch still working through something in his office and Garcia buried away in her batcave. That left the two of them and Gideon in the bullpen— the older man absorbed in a case file, not having acknowledged anyone in hours.

Lydia was finished for the day, and she'd promised herself that before she went home, she'd say something to him. Reid was lost somewhere in his thoughts, staring off into nothing in particular.

She steeled herself, scribbling a few digits onto ripped notebook paper before pocketing the pen and rising to her feet. Her movement broke his daze.

"This number," Lydia said, placing it atop his stack of books, "It's my dad's. He was an addict, but he's been clean for over a decade now. He sponsors people, and I think you should talk to him. I know those meetings can be a little much— they were for him, but this would just be one person."

He stared at her— she couldn't entirely read his expression, if he was startled or angry or worse, she didn't allow herself to read into it. Truthfully, it didn't matter what he was thinking, because she'd made her choice. He'd either accept her help, or he'd lose her. She realised now that this wasn't about her loss, wasn't about the chance of her losing him, because that choice was all his. He'd make that decision. "It would be confidential, he'd never tell me anything. Not even about you reaching out. But you should, Spencer. I don't want it to be too late for you."

It had been for her father, at one point. Spencer only reached out to take the paper when she gestured for him to do so, not a word from lips. "You know I'll be there for whatever you need, whenever. But I'm not going to stand by and say nothing, so as long as you're willing to help yourself, then I'll be there every step of the way. But this is your choice to make."

Lydia shouldered her bag, offering a muted smile to him. "I'll see you tomorrow, Spence."

this chapter was definitely a switch up in my normal writing style, so let me know if it flowed okay! i really love their relationship, so i want to be able to do the depths of their dynamic justice. as always, thank you so much for taking the time to read! <3