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The hardest part is that sometimes he remembers what it was like, what the world used to be. Sometimes his memories shift from those distant facts into tangible, emotional things. And in those moments he can feel how it was, how he lived and loved and thought and how everything was just the slightest bit blurrier around him. Because every time he looks back he's looking in on a time when he knew less, when the world was that much less clear, when there were more mysteries left. And he can see it- why they say that ignorance is bliss. Because it always feels better than where he is now.
---
He was six years old the first time his uncle snuck into his room at night. He didn’t touch him, no, he did something else. He sat on his bed and rubbed his shoulder and told him all about the secret things he wanted to do. And Spencer understood everything that was being said. He stayed up all night afterwards on those days that his uncle would talk to him and he’d research and learn all about what was happening. And he was terrified. But nobody ever actually hurt him, nobody physically touched him.
It was worse, he thinks, sometimes- only to himself. Because he’s questioning the validity of his trauma every time it comes rearing its angry head. He flinches at a slight touch or casual brush of skin, he avoids looking others in the eyes, he’s distrustful of all adults all the time, and he has no bruises. None at all.
He feels like he’s crazy, sometimes. Like he’s the only little boy in the world whose family doesn’t love him right, and it’s all his fault. Like he doesn’t appreciate anything enough. And he still isn’t sure if the fact that statistically, he is far from lonely reassures him or just makes him sad. Mostly he’s just sad a lot.
---
The first time anyone says anything is in the 8th grade. Everyone has pegged him as a shy genius but really he’s just too terrified of anyone finding out to talk. He slouches away from closeness because he knows all the ways that it could turn against him. But really he would love a friend. He aches for one, every night he aches inside.
It’s a Friday afternoon and his teacher doesn’t have much for them to do that day. He’s handing back tests and Spencer scored the highest, so he asks him to come up to his desk right there in class. It’s in front of everybody, so he’s not sure why his breathing picks up as fast as it does, but it happens. And he’s almost shaking by the time his legs carry him to the front of the classroom. And then his teacher looks at him and smiles and Spencer feels like a mouse in a trap. And his teacher is talking and he’s just swaying there like the world has paused around him. Then his teacher tries to hand his test to him and the moving hand in his vision makes him cringe so fast and sudden and loud even amongst all of the chatter of the room. His teacher frowns, but lets him walk away.
When the teacher calls for Spencer to stay after class he pretends he doesn’t hear and he runs all the way home. He closes the door to his bedroom like that can protect him even though he knows that it’s all an illusion. He knows that words could slip right through the cracks and hurt him just as much as anyone breaking down the door. He knows it’s all an illusion, that safety doesn’t really exist- can’t. But he shuts the door because he needs to survive somehow.
---
That teacher must talk to the guidance counselor or something, because Spencer is called in one day to talk. Spencer doesn’t want to talk about it, he just says truthfully that nobody has ever laid a hand on him and can’t he see that he’s just an outsider. People don’t understand why he does things but that doesn’t mean that there’s something really wrong with him. He’s just different, he always has been. And the counselor squints at him and tilts his head and watches, and then he just sighs and lets him return to class.
Spencer feels soft embers in his chest. He is angry because everything that he said was true except for the fact that it was so, so wrong. He feels broken. He feels like he cracked under the weight of a light breeze on a warm beach.
He’s always been too fragile, too sensitive, too perceptive. He must have gotten something about the situation wrong, must have misunderstood.
His uncle was a good man, he knows that.
---
That was the only time that anyone ever really saw. They’d see- oh, they always saw. It was just never big enough for them. It was never loud and clear. And it became interesting to him, to learn how to read these tiny little details people let slip through.
Spencer wants to be someone that can notice, but anyone who needs noticing will stop the big things from showing. So he wants to learn how to interpret the small things. How to look at this little kid who’s never fit in and see the way that he cringes away from everyone and everything and not just assume that it must be from bullying, that this kid is bullied because he is smart, that that’s just how it goes- he wants to look at that kid and notice that the mean girls tease him too but he has never flinched away from the librarian as she hands him books. He wants to be the teacher that calls the guidance counselor, even if it doesn’t ever really help.
So that’s how he ends up in the BAU. And that’s where he’ll be happy to stay.
---
His gym teacher adjusts his stance during the archery unit and of course he’s a man. He is big and he has a beard and his biceps are as thick as Spencer’s waist. He squirms under the warmth of his palms and wonders why he has to poison everything with this perceptive filter built of shame.
His gym teacher does not want to hurt him.
He knows this. What he doesn’t understand is how to stop instinctually seeing the worst of humanity in everyone. How to turn off this part of his mind that stops him from forgetting that he is tarnished. He is forever altered and broken and he will never see the world the same as those that are pure.
But it doesn’t ever pay to be the cold one, to assume the worst of everyone and block out the good in an attempt to keep the bad out too.
The hardest thing that Spencer Reid has ever had to do is learn how to stay warm.
---
He fails his gun qualification because the administrator is male this time and he stands just a little too close. He hates that he is 23 years old and he cannot stop the way his hands shake in the presence of an unlikely possibility.
---
The unsub is a teenage boy who’s been bullied his entire life. Nobody ever tried to help him. And Spencer can feel it, the way he’s been scorned by everyone who ever had any power to help. The way that his skin itches like he doesn’t belong anywhere near this life. The way that he looks out from under narrowed eyelashes and examines the colors and still cannot see past the grayscale fog.
And he is so sorry that the world ever let him turn out this way. That everything that made this boy a murderer existed in the first place, that circumstances could be this cruel to anyone else. He doesn’t understand how the world is okay with people like Owen Savage painted as the enemy. It’s the uncles and the classmates and the useless school principles that make this all possible, that direct the reality show of the real world and set everything into motion. They build up this perfect model of a monster and raise a child to match.
He is angry that nobody ever stops to think how they could change this world so easily by letting everyone have a fucking chance.
He is angry that he sees himself in these unsubs, that he was never brave enough to get revenge so he stops others from getting theirs too. That he is called a hero for this, that everyone else in the world can miss the point so entirely.
But he guesses he already knew just how blind the world could be. Nobody ever sees anything that they aren’t prepared to see.
---
Morgan’s past comes out. And Spencer wants to laugh and ask him if he is angry, too. He sits on the jet for an hour just staring at him before he misinterprets it and tries to talk to him. Morgan wants to ask him why he's looking at him differently. He wants to tell him that he’s just the same, kid, stop thinking about treating him any different. And then he does laugh- Spencer, right in his face. And Morgan probably gets angry, at first, but he isn't paying attention then. He laughs and then he opens up his mouth to tell him- to ask- “Are you doing this because you see in black and white and gray and shadows, too?”
And he frowns, all gentle and surprised and soft. “Reid?”
“It’s like nobody else can see because they weren’t trained into it, weren’t tricked so- so- harshly- right? Or was that just me?”
He doesn’t seem to know what to say.
“Sorry. I was just excited that someone else might understand. I shouldn’t have assumed anything. If you want to talk about it, I’m here for you. Anytime.”
And he frowns harder, sudden, rough. “Kid, what are you saying here?”
And Spencer smiles. “Morgan. I know you aren’t blind. You have to be getting what I’m telling you.” And Spencer walks away. Because he never planned on telling anyone but Morgan makes him feel like he can. Like it’s real, what happened to him. Like just because he didn’t touch him doesn’t mean he didn’t ruin his life.
---
Morgan watches him after that. He can tell he’s holding his mouth shut from the light indentations on his lips underneath his teeth.
Then one day- “I was fourteen. He took me to his cabin and I thought nobody would ever believe me because I’d started acting up after my father died and he was the only thing left that was supposed to save me.”
He nods, soft. Adds, “I was six, but I knew they’d let it slide, too. There aren’t a lot of kids that do tell, you know.”
Morgan nods right back. “Thanks, Reid.”
He’s told Morgan ‘anytime’ and it seems like Morgan takes his word for it, trusts that he wasn’t just saying things for the sound of them. So they talk and they bond and their souls get so much closer. And one day Morgan says, “Sometimes I think I can still feel him on my skin.”
And he stays quiet because he's just going to listen. But Morgan looks at him like he knows that every time he can reassure him that he’s not alone he does, and he looks at him like he realizes that whenever he doesn’t add that comment it’s because he can’t. So he draws his eyebrows together in a question.
Spencer feels the shame all over again, fierce like he's never felt it before with him. And for a minute Morgan's past seems so much worse than his, and he feels like an imposter, and he feels like he's just lying and drawing it all out for some stupid sob story, and he wants to take it all back. But Morgan is waiting and he can’t lie to him anymore. Spencer knows him now, he really knows every part of him that he’s tried to hide for so long.
But he bites his lip and forces himself to raise his eyes, and he steels himself for the moment, and he tells Morgan. “He never touched me, not really. But I dream about his breath running over my ear and the sound his tongue made when he ran it across his lips. Sometimes my skin burns like his eyes are still studying it, like I can feel him, maybe, but it's his gaze instead of his touch. He never laid a finger on me. It was his words that dug themselves inside of me.”
”It was- so-?” He sounds lost, to Spencer. Unsure. He doesn’t let himself give up on his friend just yet. He's come to trust him enough to keep going a little longer.
“No, it was- it was sexual. But, well, yeah. It was- verbal, he, it was always verbal. Do you- you know? He- it- I don’t.” And the whimper that echoes in the room must have slipped from his own throat because he isn’t moving. “He’d lay in my bed and whisper about everything he wanted to do, how he wanted to touch, how he wanted to take me. But he never did- he just- I dreamt about it every night. And I’d wake up and I couldn’t scream because I didn’t want to scare my mom, but I always wish I would have screamed- why didn’t I ever scream?”
And then Morgan pulls himself together and raises a gentle hand to Spencer’s back and rubs between his shoulder blades. “You’re okay, Spencer. You’re going to be okay.”
Spencer falls asleep with his head on Morgan’s shoulder and he wakes up slumped into his lap.
He thinks, hesitantly, that maybe he will be- okay, that is.
That maybe with this person beside him it will be a little easier to stay warm.
Maybe this moment here is all he needs.