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"Wheels up in twenty." Hotch walked out of the room and Spencer resisted the urge to just roll his eyes. Another plane ride. Another case. Another crime scene. Another body. The monotony of murder was beginning to set in and he could feel the crawling of his skin as the agitation set in. Someday it amazed him how even the most deranged and deprived serial killer became just another day on the job, how a family being torn apart became a Monday. He knew why, desensitization to violence had been a key part in his psychology degree but the cold hard facts in a text book didn't manage to cover the guilt that came with it. Reid shook his head slightly as he waited for the lift to come. He was too young to feel this old.
"You good kid?" Morgan's hand gripped his shoulder briefly, jerking Spencer out of his cynicalism. He hummed in response, adjusting the strap of his bags in the hopes it'd stop the ants in his veins. He didn't want to worry anyone but he knew it was a bad day, that this case would just be one of those that lingered in his mind and in his sleep. "You sure? No statistics on missing blondes or anything?"
"Actually the rate in which blonde women go missing is far less globally than almost any other hair colour except for gingers due to natural blondes only making up about five percent of the population of America so as far as correlation to a specific type of crime there really isn't one." Reid smiled slightly at the calming effect the numbers had as he recited. "However Arizona does have the second highest amount of missing people out of all the states with 13 people per 100,000, honestly it's a surprise we don't end up there more often."
"Ok genius, leave some stats for the flight yeah? We have plenty of time before we get there."
The first half of the flight was spent in silence. They looked over the case file but were yet to talk, Morgan had been right it was a long enough flight that they didn't actually have to start working the case quite yet but Spencer couldn't help but think this added to the mundanity of the whole thing. It wasn't that it bored him - three women had been found dead- but it was not looking like a case that would stand out in memory. Someone was taking young blonde women when they were alone and holding them for two days before dumping the bodies out by a canyon. So far all three bodies had clear signs of asphyxiation and self defense wounds but no sign of sexual assault or any other form of torture. All of the missing girls had disappeared from the same down town area but there seemed to be no overlap between any of the girls social lives. They were strangers.
"-and I have the awful job of telling you that another girl has been reported missing from the same area. Twenty year old Katelyn Meehan was last seen leaving her job as a waitress at a diner down town but her roommate said she never made it home which was highly unusual for her."
"Any connection to the others girls?"
"Not that I can find so far but I'll keep looking, Garcia out." Spencer smiled softly at the bubbly tech analysis. Even despite the fact that she was still so effected by the cases she still held a spark. Spencer tried to ignore the jealousy that flared up. It wasn't her fault he was jaded.
"Ok, Morgan and JJ I want you to head out to the most recent crime scene, Rossi and Emily you'll interview Meehan's roommate and see if they know anything whilst me and Reid will set up at the station. If Katelyn Meehan really had been taken by the unsub we have less than 24 hours before the next body turns up."
The expectation surrounding masculinity was something Spencer tried to ignore as much as possible, possibly because he knew he would never achieve to it and possibly because it was never something he felt pressure to conform to. His masculinity had not mattered at home where his mother had always had a quite acceptance for who he was or at school where his lack of traditional 'alpha male' traits had been overlooked because of his age. It was at police stations like the one they had just entered where these expectations had been reinstalled in Spencer's brain. The station was small, Miami was not a particularly large town, and so the force was fairly small and consisted entirely of very masculine men. Men who looked at Spencer with disbelief and distrust in equal measure. His longer hair and stick figure did not broadcast a man who could solve these murders to the locals and as he saw two laugh to each other he knew this case would feel even longer than originally anticipated. Hotch turned back to him and raised an eyebrow, he'd noticed too.
It happened on occasion. People would see Spencer and take a dislike to him, decide he was too...something or not enough. In stations this could result in hazing and in witnesses this could drag a case out far longer than needed. It was fine. Spencer had decided early on that this was fine because Gideon had decided it was going to be fine, he established Spencer's credentials and believed this was enough. Spencer had a lot of questions for whoever had taught Gideon what enough was, he'd been tripped by enough officers to know his doctorates were not the shield Gideon had decided they were.
Spencer shook himself out of his thought again and got started on the geological profile, hoping that when the others returned they may have something more to add to it because so far the usual venn diagrams were looking a lot like unrelated triangles. It was a small enough town that taking the victims from one end of town and having the dumpsite on the other didn't help to establish where in town the unsub lived - getting from one end to the other was not something that'd take very long at all. Hotch checked in a couple times but seemed unsurprised by the lack of progress that had been made. The rest of the team came back and they continued to try and work the profile with Spencer only adding statistics that were relevant, he didn't feel up for adding to much more on than what was necessary. He could feel the urge in his chest bubbling away, the want to just pace and ramble on with all of his thought but he knew they'd be irrelevant at best. The feeling of ants was only getting stronger but despite this he felt tired. He ignored the look Morgan shot him.
The profile had been established within the hour but they were still unsure of what exactly the unsub was doing with the women for the day he held them.
"The unsub is a white man in his late twenties to early thirties, he is physically fit enough so that he does not feel the need to subdue his victims so much as just taking them." Hotch began
"We believe he is driving a van or a vehicle large enough to transport the victims from where they are taken," Morgan continued, "but due to the lack of witnesses coming forward it is likely he fits in around the area and knows it well. It is likely that whilst the victims did not know the unsub they had seen him around."
"The victims represent someone to him that he feels he has lost, due to the lack of sexual assault we are looking most likely at a sister or family figure rather than any sort of romantic figure." Spencer tried to stop the twitching of his fingers as he explained. "This is shown through the specificity of the type the unsub goes for."
"He likely lives or own property away from the rest of the town due to the fact he is able to hold these women for a day without anyone noticing or hearing them at any point."
A few of them cornered him in the bathroom. The ridiculous thing was he'd only gone in there to splash cold water on his face. They were big guys, three men all with mean eyes and trigger happy fingers, standing in the doorway like the same type of guys had when he was in high school. This is so stupid, Spencer thought, even the bullying has gotten boring. The man in the middle smiled with his teeth, like a dog looking for a fight. Spencer blinked back with dead eyes, he couldn't be bothered to wind them up or defuse things either. Either they'd hit him and he'd tell their superior or Hotch, or they would just threaten him and he'd ignore it. It really made no difference.
"So how'd a skinny faggot like you get into the FBI?" The man said, his tone almost nonchalant.
"By applying and completing the course." Spencer replied calmly, leaving out the waived fitness tests.
"Wise-ass doctor over here thinks he's too smart for us small town cops is that what this is?" the man growled back. "Y'know I told the chief he didn't need to call you guys in, fat lot of ego behind a bunch of sissy city boys. A few missing girls ain't nothing we can't handle and then they send a little pussy like you? A long haired little fag to do a man's work?"
"Three girls are dead and it's obvious your chief didn't think you were smart enough to figure out who has been doing it so if you'd excuse me." Spencer mad for the door but the man in the middle slammed him into the wall by his shoulder. The two behind him still stayed quiet, they were obviously just there for the intimidation aspect.
"If a fourth one turns up I'm putting that on you."
Spencer rolled his eyes as they let him leave. What was it with people thinking his being there was patronising? It wasn't his fault he didn't look like the typical action movie agent. He shrugged the exchange off and grabbed another coffee, his fifth that day his mind reminded him. He tried not to think about what he wished it was, if he didn't give it a name it wasn't real. Instead he focused on the slight bruising on his shoulder and tried not to smile, it was hard to admit but moments like that between him and regular assholes helped him feel more at ease with where his head was. If there was an excuse to be sad it felt less like there was an issue with him and more like his issues were justified. Spencer knew the figures, knew trauma could trigger mental illness and addiction but that some people didn’t have any trigger for their problems. Some people were just born with ghosts in their bones and ants in their veins.
Diana Reid had had a normal life, plenty of friends and a successful career but that hadn’t stopped the depression crawling in during her early teens and the late set schizophrenia when the depression had become negligible so why did Spencer still feel like bad things had to cause the feelings he was having? Why was it easier to blame a case he was hardly bothered by and an encounter he found funny for all the thoughts piling up in his head? He paced the length of the conference room where their board was set up and tried to focus on finding Katelyn Meehan instead of the itch in his skin. He was fine, she probably wasn't.
"Have you interviewed the owner of the laundromat? Whoever took the girls had to pass by there and the diner to get to anywhere else in town? Spencer asked the room after staring at the map for who know how long.
"No, we didn't notice that." Prentiss replied and Spencer finally looked up to see who else was in the room. Everyone but JJ and Morgan was gathered and Spencer shook his head slightly as if to dislodge the fog that had allowed him to not notice their leaving. What use was he as a profiler if he couldn't keep his own surroundings straight, in fairness he hadn't noticed dinner arriving until Morgan had dragged him away from the board to eat so he assumed they'd all notice he was having one of those days.
"Good job Reid." Hotch nodded with a not quite smile. Spencer tried to not preen despite the pride that the not quite compliment filled him with. "Rossi, Emily, I want you two to check out the diner and see if they have cameras if they haven't noticed anything. Morgan and JJ are down that way so they can take the laundromat."
Hotch and Reid continued to work on the board in silence as the minutes ticked by into hours. Each second felt like a countdown to failure but still the stress of the case didn't by pass into the empty expanse of Spencer's heart. It all felt like his emotions were clouded by a haze of boredom. He threw himself down onto the lumpy couch and closed his eyes in the hopes that by rearranging the information in his minds eye he may get an answer instead of another lead that'd go no where. Katelyn Meehan deserved more than just this. So did the team.
A text came through from Morgan just as it looked like it was time for them to start trying to find a new lead. The laundromat's nephew had been deleting their camera footage since the first murder but the owner had assumed he was just stealing from the family's business. They didn't even need to call Garcia to confirm that this was their unsub, he was not tech savvy at all and had left the backups with a clear video of him grabbing Taylor Davis, the second victim. There was no need for either Hotch or Reid to move from the station either as the unsub lived just three minutes from the laundromat. Chris Stridden's missing sister had left him longing for answers and so he had transferred this desire for answers onto the girls. They'd been kept a day due to Chris being told to wait a day before filling a missing's person report.
Hotch and Reid were left at the station to wait to hear how the take down had gone and to start packing up to leave. Still Spencer lay in the silence of the room he'd spent the past six hours in.
"Reid?" Hotch's voice was full of concern and Spencer could hear the true question behind his name.
"Why did none of you help?" He looked at the wall, pretending that the blank expanse was what he was speaking to and not his boss. If he wasn't looking at Hotch then he wasn't asking about the drugs, about shivering through withdrawal alone in his bathroom thinking he was having a heart attack. He had though he was going to die alone after surviving the part that was supposed to kill you.
"We thought Gideon was helping." If Hotch was shocked at the question it didn't show.
"He didn't. He gave some shitty, cryptic advise and then just looked disappointed. He never really mentioned it, I felt like I was screaming some days and that you just didn't care enough to answer." From upside down the wall is still white. The couch is not comfortable.
Hotch moved so he was sitting on the couch, he rearranged Spencer so his feet were in his lap and it's only when Spencer looked up that he said "I'm sorry. We fucked it up by not talking about it but we didn't want to smother you and make you uncomfortable. I genuinely believed Gideon was helping. If I'd known he wasn't I would have done anything to get you healthy."
Spencer's heart stopped. He kept breathing. Hotch's hand was on his ankle.
"Really?" he wanted his voice to sound strong or disbelieving but it wasn't. It came out soft and shy and it cracked slightly towards the end of the word and he did too. He tried to will away the tears but he couldn't.
"Of course," Hotch's voice held no room for lies. "Even if I couldn't Morgan would, he'd move mountains to make you smile again."
"Hotch?"
"Yeah?"
"I really need help."