Keeping you to Myself

12. Spencer

A/N: Please read the warnings because the content in this chapter isn't easy and is a very real and traumatic experience for some! It's another emotional chapter, so please take care of yourselves afterwards, and make sure you have support if the content in this chapter could be triggering for you and you decide to read.

Warnings: loved one with illness/cancer, death and grief, hurt/comfort, kissing, crying, past drug use/addiction, discussions of: murder, gun violence, Russian roulette, abuse (bastinado), being drugged against your will, and an abusive father (Charles Hankel). Please let me know if I missed anything! My DMs are always open.

Chapter Summary: Reader lands in Seattle to comfort Spencer at the hospital. She meets the team, and later Spencer shares some of his past with her.

Word Count: 6.3k

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Your anxiety had never been as high as it was as you walked through the main doors of the hospital. You had your duffel bag on your arm, and the messages from Penelope were on your phone which listed Spencer's floor and room number. She assured you that she'd have someone from the BAU waiting for you to help you find your way to his room, and you were stressed over it.

The thought freighted you almost as much as it comforted you.

On one hand you were scared to meet his coworkers without him. The place and timing of everything was off, and the circumstances you were in were anything but ideal. Not to mention that his team knew almost nothing about you. You were a mystery woman to the doctor who spent most of his time in solitude. At least that was the way they saw him.

However, it was also nice that Penelope wanted to make sure you had the least amount of trouble navigating the foreign hospital as possible. And it was sweet that she wanted you to feel welcome when you were about to be faced with a bunch of strangers in an already stressful scenario.

Additionally, you'd barely gotten any sleep in the last 24 hours, and you could probably use the help at this point.

The entire taxi ride from the airport was spent dwelling over this moment. The cab driver had tried to make small talk with you, but when they were continually met with a few words at most, coupled with your nervous fidgeting, they decided to drop their attempts at a conversation. So, you sat in the backseat and pictured what it would be like to meet the people closest to Spencer.

You thought about seeing him again and helping to bring some sense of comfort back to him. The way his face might soften when he saw you.

Once you were inside the hospital, the sterile smell of alcohol mixed with hints of stale coffee hit your nose.

Every single hospital smelled the same. They were almost always chaotic, with rushing doctors and nurses, families waiting in uncertainty, and strangers who passed each other in the halls with empty sympathy.

Truthfully, you'd avoided them as much as you could. All you could think about when you passed the coffee station and saw the plastic covered chairs in the waiting area was how you used to spend hours in a similar hospital, drinking the bad coffee and sitting on those stiff chairs while you waited for your mom's tests to be finished.

And when her cancer got to the stage where she had to be admitted, you'd spent nights wandering the halls or passing time in the cafeteria when you couldn't bear to sit next to her bed and cry anymore.

But this time, you weren't here to think about the past, and you couldn't let your emotions get the better of you. You had to put on a strong face and be there for Spencer, so you could meet him and his team with composure.