✓ | 𝗔𝗣𝗛𝗥𝗢𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗘 · ͟͟͞͞➳ spencer reid

CHAPTER 47 ━━━

# ! | CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
- he picks up her broken pieces

━━━ SPENCER LOOKS DOWN AT
his feet and then up at her door. It's four a.m, but he knows she'll still be awake. Everyone else is so jet lagged from the time difference, he also knows they won't have any interruptions. Having changed into a yellow tee-shirt with a green cartoon dinosaur on it and black jeans, he's trying to look as non-imposing as possible.

He knocks softly, enough so that if she is sleeping, it shouldn't wake her. Spencer hears something clink and then a light sigh, then her footsteps as she opens the door. Meryl only widens it enough for her head to be visible, hair piled on top of her head and glasses on. Her undereye area is a greeny purple, though the left side is almost completely blackened with bruising. She shields her body with the door, he notices, and keeps her hands out of sight.

"Hey," Spencer greets, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Her reply isn't rude, persay, it's nothing. Not cold, not angry, just words without inflection. "How can I help you?"

He bites the inside of his cheek. "Can I come in?"

"I'm a little busy. Would you mind yelling at me because you think I cheated on you in the span on nine and a half minutes maybe, huh, I don't know, later?" Her eyes flare suddenly with anger and Spencer feels a knot in his throat form.

Before he can reply, she brings her hand to her nose and runs toward the kitchen sink as blood drops through her fingers. Spencer takes that opportunity to open the door, step in, and close it behind him. Meryl's midsection is almost entirely wrapped in bandages, same as the upper portion of her right arm, her left forearm, and a two inch portion of her right thigh. Her knuckles are cracked all to hell and a bowl sits on the coffee table. It's full of glass shards and a pair of tweezers sit next to it. She's dressed in a fresh pair of lime green shorts and a black sports bra. The muscles in her back tense as she cracks her nose again, facing away from him.

Meryl is completely exhausted in every sense of the word. Aaron had stopped by to make sure she was okay and she had convinced him in his massively sleep deprived state that she was. But Spencer was fine tuned to her physical display of emotion and would not be so easily convinced. He'd just broken her heart, her trust, and marched into her room like he owned the place.

When she cleans up the blood and turns around to face him, Spencer's doing the one thing she could have least expected. He's crying. Not a pretty, fake cry either. His eyes are puffy, cheeks red. The truth is he couldn't take it, seeing her so broken up with no light behind her eyes.

"Please leave, Spencer. I'll go grab my badge if it makes my request more official." She looks everywhere but in his eyes and he just wants to reach out to her, hold her until it's better.

Spencer continues to just stand there so she puts his hand on his chest and walks him backward. He pins her hand to his chest, she can feel his heart beat under her fingertips. "You have glass in your back," he whispers. "Please don't make me leave."

"No, please! Don't subject yourself to me anymore, I know it's taking so much effort for you, right? That's what you said. Maybe I'll go get Akela to help with the glass, eat her out while she's here because that's who you think I am, Spencer. I'm sorry you think that, but I am fucking in love with you." Green eyes aflame, the severity of her words burns him. "I haven't looked at a single goddamn person like I look at you. But I can't open your eyes for you, doll." Meryl reaches out to feel her cheeks, finding that somewhere along the way of her declaration, she's begun to cry.