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Fatherhood is great because you can ruin someone from scratch - Jon Stewart
The jet was uncomfortably silent as they flew back from Vegas. Spencer glared out of the window, and when he wasn’t glaring, he was staring off into the distance with a pensive look. He’d sigh occasionally like he was ready to finally talk about what played on his mind but never ended up voicing it. He tapped on his lips as if to smush the words down.
Whilst there was no doubt that he was going through it, Derek and David couldn’t help but wither further and further as more time passed. They should say something. They glanced at each other from across the jet. Derek tried in vain to ease the tension of the jet by slipping on his headphones, but somehow he could still feel the weight of Spencer’s silence on him. They kept looking Spencer’s way, suggesting the other be the one to spark conversation, and both refused.
Eventually, Derek lifted his fist up with a nod and initiated a game of rock, paper, scissors. He lost the first round and held up three fingers in hopes of another chance.
“I can see you, you know?” Spencer stated.
“Busted,” David muttered under his breath. Either the genius didn’t hear him or chose not to respond to it. “How’re you holding up?”
“Just fine,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, you look just fine,” Derek commented. “C’mon, kid, you’ve never not had an opinion on something, and this is practically begging for your opinion. We’ve got plenty of time before we get back to Quantico, so just lay it all out on the table.” He huffed and got up to get another cup of coffee. His first one had long gone cold as he sat stewing. He tried not to slam things around because, truly, he wasn’t angry at Derek or David.
Had he been annoyed with them? Yes. Mostly because they wiggled themselves into an investigation and then spent the entire time asking if he was completely sure he wanted to do this. Of course, he was sure; that should’ve never been in question. They may as well have asked a police officer if they were really sure they wanted the serial killer terrorising the town caught.
He’d also been irritated by the team members back home who acted like having a good credit score and not being a pedophile made you God’s gift to Vegas. Keeping a few scraps from your kid's academic achievements did nothing to change the fact that William Reid ran off when things got hard.
Now it was all over; he could see where they were coming from. They were trying to keep him impartial and see his father less like the man who abandoned him and more like a suspect he’d only met on paper. He would’ve liked to see some anger reflected back but they were likely keeping themselves as unbiased as they could be to make up for his war path.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to go home.”
Truthfully, he would like to talk about it. He would love to unload every spiteful thought he had about his father, but he knew exactly what would happen. He’d get to the peak of his anger, ready to really lay into the man who abandoned him, and he’d clamp up, then get mad he’d clamped up and would just feel angrier than when he started.
Even if that didn’t happen, what good would it do? He wasn’t a kid anymore. The damage was done. He had no interest in trying to make up for lost time or hear his father out any further than he had already. Whatever he had to say, whatever reasons he gave, it would never be enough for Spencer. His anger would always be there.
“I don’t know, it kinda seems like you want to talk about it. With the sighing ‘n all,” Derek replied. “Plus, if I went from thinking my dad was a pedophilic murderer to just another deadbeat dad that helped cover up a murder, I’d wanna talk about it.”
He brought his mug down with too much force and hissed as some of the coffee burned his hand. Yeah, made sense with how these couple of days had been going. He roughly rubbed at his with a napkin and hurried back to his seat before he could get tag-teamed by sudden turbulence. He only wanted the damn coffee to give him something to do with his hands as they started aching from the constant tugging and scratching.
The thing is, he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. William didn’t attempt to offer up a number he could call or invite him for dinner somewhere the next time he was in town, that he could then turn down with a sarcastic remark. Spencer didn’t even get the chance to deny his father the opportunity to know him better when it was never offered in the first place. Surely he was owed that at least. A small one-up or last laugh.
“We’re on your side, kid,” David stated.
“Didn’t feel like it,” he grumbled before he could stop himself. He could imagine Aaron’s stare if he had the misfortune of saying it in front of him. For a brief moment, he wondered what Gideon would do and couldn’t help his eyes glancing at the cabinet where they kept the chess set. It was just gathering dust now. “Sorry, that wasn’t fair.” He swiped the side of his mug stained by coffee with his thumb. “I just don’t see what talking will do. I’ve already done enough, haven’t I?”
“You needed resolution.”
“No, I needed to be right,” he admitted. “I needed a reason, and now I have it and… It’s not enough. It doesn’t wash away everything I went through, everything Mum went through.” He turned his attention back out the window as the frustration built up.
“I don’t think anything would’ve been reason enough for you,” David said. “He’s like the people we catch. There’s never anything purely evil about them. They’re often just people like you and I.”
“I’m aware,” he gritted out. Sure, David had written books on the subject, but he’d read them and supplemented them with his own knowledge over the years. It wasn’t news to him and frankly, it came as no surprise that he was left unsatisfied. “It’s just,” he stopped himself before he could get too angry. “I’m not going to get into it.”
“Reid.” He rolled his eyes.
“There’s no point.” Derek went to argue, but paused at his phone going off.
“Holy shit. JJs in labour.”
“But she isn’t due for another three weeks? Is the midwife with her? Is she with someone? Is LaMontagne there? Which hospital did she go to because I told her to-”
“Easy, kid, she’s with Garcia and Hotch.”
Spencer’s anger fell to the wayside, pushed back by anxiety and excitement for JJ. It was only as he held Henry that it came back.
Had he been this small when he was born? Did his father remember that when he walked out? He couldn’t imagine ever abandoning something that was half of him. Approximately speaking, of course. He couldn’t see what everyone else did as they picked out features that belonged to either parent. Henry, in the kindest way possible, was just a baby who looked like a lot of babies. William said they looked similar in his younger years; he replied that dog owners experienced the same thing. Somehow, even when he could see their connection, William had little problem with severing it.
He sat quietly as everyone spoke excitedly about the baby, offering up their services or placing bets on who the baby would take after the most. He wondered if his parents’ friends had done the same when he was born. Did they gather around him, imagining personality traits or job prospects? If they had, they didn’t stick around to see them come to fruition. Maybe his mother held him just that bit tighter, like JJ did. The relief that the months of weaning herself off her medication had brought her a healthy baby boy.
He excused himself at the height of the conversation with no intention of coming back. He’d only go to say something wrong or bring down the mood when he let slip what happened when he didn’t come back with them.
Spencer didn’t drive to the hospital, so he sat on the small bench by the bus stop. A taxi would’ve been fine, but he needed the time to think, and the bus wouldn’t come by for a while. He pulled his jacket closer to himself and tipped his head up to look for stars. There weren’t many given the light pollution and- well, more forms of pollution, but he could spot a few.
Sometimes his mum would take him out in the desert to get a better view of the stars. She’d park on a side road that never saw any cars and pull out a blanket from the boot. Then, with the same glee children showed on christmas, she would ask Spencer if he knew any by name. Of course, after the first time she asked, he’d read up on the subject and could’ve spent the entire night calling out stars and their facts. She’d always watch him with this muted awe. Now he wondered if she’d given him that same look when he was born. He was so special to her. Why couldn’t William see the same thing she did?
“I think I speak for the team when I say I really hate your irish goodbyes,” Penelope stated before taking a seat beside him. She made a show of wrapping her fuzzy neon scarf around his neck. He wasn’t dressed for November in Virginia but he’d hardly noticed until now. “I don’t see why you couldn’t sit inside. You’re gonna freeze into a beady-eyed icicle out here.”
“Actually-”
“Being dramatic to emphasise a point,” she interrupted before he could go much further. She tugged him a little closer, and he made no attempt to resist it. Sometimes he forgot how little he was held with care nowadays. Most of the time, it was victims gripping onto him for dear life or unsubs trying to snatch another life before they went to prison. He missed it. “They said you didn’t want to talk about it on the jet.”
“So they sent you to try?”
“No. I just thought you shouldn’t be alone for the time being.” He hummed and let the silence carry for a moment.
“I should feel happy that he wasn’t a murderer. I should feel some sort of relief and maybe a little proud of myself for solving Riley’s murder but I’m not any of that.”
“What are you?”
“Mad and all its synonyms,” he replied. “So he keeps up with a couple of academic accolades, saves them to his computer and takes a few newspaper articles that involve me, suddenly he’s an okay guy who made a mistake?”
“No one is saying you have to forgive him.”
“I know!” he exclaimed, surprising himself at how loud that came out. He shook his head. “I know I don’t have to forgive a man who made me choose between putting my mother in the last place she ever wanted to be in and my dream job. He was a lawyer just down the street, whilst I made accounts in my mother’s name to gamble for rent that month.” All those casinos he could’ve been barred from without the anxiety of finding a new way to find money.
“Spence-”
“Ten minutes. He worked ten minutes from my house. He probably saw me play chess in the park on the weekends, he would’ve seen me walk home from school, he-he,” his mouth clamped closed before he could get anything else out.
He wanted to claw it back open because he wasn’t done but every attempt to make it work for him rather than against him had his fists closing tighter and tighter until he felt his nails dig into his skin. He understood why so many agents turned to contact sports as an extracurricular. He wanted to destroy everything around him, create enough damage that would have him suspended with a lengthy bill.
He shot up and began to pace instead because any offence wouldn’t end with just a slap on the wrist, and he really loved his job. It was pretty much his life at this point if he were honest with himself. He didn’t have many if any friends outside of the small team he worked with. Sure he had a few people he could confidently call acquaintances but he would never think to call them to meet up or have lunch with them. His family was just his mother. He didn’t date, he had little interest in the matter.
Did William have the same relationship with his job? He never mentioned another family but maybe he was dating amongst peers. A spiteful part of Spencer wanted there to be some sort of affair he could expose and hopefully ruin his life with, but Penelope would’ve mentioned a juicy detail like that.
Is that where he got the ‘workaholic’ trait from, the same way addiction could run in families? Probably not, but then he’d have to go into nature vs nurture and what counts as you, rather than all the genes and hormones that made you.
Somehow, that line of thinking had him calming down.
Then came the embarrassment of doing all that in front of Penelope, who was just trying to help and was probably uncomfortably cold waiting for him to open up. He looked around for the bus, knowing it wasn’t due for another forty minutes and the city buses were never early so escape was unlikely. He sat back down.
“He said too much time passed and he didn’t know how to be a dad anymore,” Spencer said. “Like that was supposed to make everything better. My mum, the woman he left without a second thought, acted like it was all okay. Like it was the same as accidentally spilling coffee over someone when you bump into them.” He glared at the ground, digging the tip of his trainers into some loose dirt. “He didn’t even give me the grace of moving away. Just kept working a few minutes down the road, checking in on me like some sort of sourdough starter.”
“Dr Reid, did you just make a joke?” Penelope chuckled.
“It was more of a simile that had some comedic potential,” he answered, smirking slightly. “I look at Henry, and I can reason that there are chemical reactions that incline us to think of babies as cute for evolutionary purposes, but I wonder if my father looked at me the same way. I wonder how he could leave me less than a decade later if he did.”
“You’re never gonna find the answers you want,” she told him. “I wish you could.”
“Me too, but it wouldn’t have given me what I wanted.” It wouldn’t fix him. He supposed it was only the same as running an autopsy on someone who died of natural causes. Sure, answers could soothe the family, but the person was dead. Knowing why they died wouldn’t bring them back or bring them any consolation. “I’m glad you brought JJ here. It was in the top five hospitals I recommended.” She laughed good naturedly.
“Well prepared for baby Reids then.” He shrugged.
“I don’t know.” She chewed her bottom lip, realising she had hit a sore spot.
He didn’t consider kids the same way others did. There was always that underlying fear that either he would turn into his mother or see his offspring fade in front of his eyes. For the first, he didn’t want to put another child through it, even if he did have good memories of his childhood. For the second, it would break him to once again see someone he loved disappear whilst staying in the same place.
“Thanks for coming to find me, Garcia.”
“Someone’s gotta look out for the original team baby. Don’t want you getting jealous,” she taunted, poking him in the side. He lightly slapped her hands away with a breathy laugh. He didn’t have the energy for anything louder. “You wanna go back inside?”
“I don’t know, everyone’s having a good time, and I feel like I’m bringing down the mood. JJ keeps saying I look awful.”
“You do,” she said without skipping a beat. “But you always look like death warmed over.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Well, it’s either go back in or let me take you home.”
“I can take a bus.”
“Spencer, you know better than to try and refuse me.” She stood up and offered her hand. He hesitated for a moment, then took her hand, dragging himself to his feet. The cold was beginning to bite at his extremities, which she seemed to notice as she cupped his hand in hers. “So which is it, boy wonder?”
“Maybe I could do both? The last bus stops soon, and I don’t want to risk missing it.”
“Why do you even have that car if you never drive it?”
“I like the option. Public transportation is more reliable in some ways but there are instances where traffic has less impact on my route to work.” She nodded but didn’t really take any of it in, which came as no surprise.
A quiet moment was shared before she turned to him with a sincere expression.
“Oh, Spencer?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not a bad person for admitting your mum. It’s not the same as your dad abandoning you.” He stared at her for a while. She always praised their ability to read people, jokingly calling it creepy when they had friendly fire profiling one another, yet she never seemed to reflect that praise onto herself when she could be just as good. Her only downfall was seeing the good in people.
“Thank you.” She looped her arm around his as they continued to walk. “I’m not the baby of the team by the way.”
“Oh, sweetheart, that’s so cute.”
“I’m an adult man.”
“And I’m Aphrodite in human form, but I still need glasses. Both things can be true at the same time whilst being contradictory.”
“If I’m the ‘team baby’ that implies our team follows a structure similar to that of a sitcom family. What would that make the others?”
“Well, I would obviously be your cooler older sister. The father would be-”
“-Hotch-” they said in unison, giggling at themselves.
“Would JJ be the mother?” She shook her head.
“No, Rossi is the mother. Derek, Emily and JJ are the older siblings. Strauss is either the mean neighbour or the evil mother-in-law,” she suggested. “Do not tell her I said that.”
“I don’t speak to Strauss. Gideon always said not to.”
“Smart man.” He hummed.
“I wonder what he would’ve said. If he were still here.” She pulled him a little closer in lieu of a response.
He didn’t know what wisdom his mentor would’ve imparted to him, yet he felt like he was somewhat lost without it. It was that type of wisdom only a person could share with you, which books fell short of providing. There was no use in wishing for it, though. As with his father, Gideon had left, and he had no intention of coming back. He looked up at the stars before they could be drowned out by the bright white lights of the hospital.
Maybe he’d think of it one day.
Maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much the day after.