The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

21| The Ninth Step

His mind was wrapped in a fog. For most people, it had to be disorienting, but Reid, he enjoyed the sensation. It made him feel normal. The connections he made so easily now came sluggishly, and strings of numbers no longer added themselves up effortlessly. It was a comforting numbness. Normal. All he had ever wanted was to just be normal.

A normal person with a normal job and a normal life.

Normal people got to be happy. The people he worked with were evidence of that. JJ didn't have a PhD, she had a husband and a son and a house. He wasn't the only person with a deceased loved one, or personal problems, but he was the only person on the team with an institutionalized parent or a drug addiction.

And the only one with a drug relapse. Though that one, he supposed, was partially his fault. It wasn't his choice to become an addict, but it had definitely been his choice to call the dealer. Addiction was a powerful thing, he knew that - just like he knew it would have been easy to talk to Hotch or to go to a Beltway Clean Cops meeting after Charleston. If he had called Bianca, she would've listened to him. But how could he ask that of her when he was finally supposed to be doing better?

Instead he called a drug dealer, and left the street corner with a fresh syringe and three vials of Dilaudid.

He thought it would help him forget. And to an extent, it did. But he'd neglected to consider the unfortunate side effects it had on his mind. He was angry and moody and exhausted and all too often disoriented. But if he could forget, maybe he could feel normal again. If he could forget, maybe he could make things better with Bianca.

He'd meant what he said in the library - he couldn't imagine a future without her. But he didn't want that future to be clouded by flashbacks and ghosts. He couldn't keep asking her to help him with the things he should have been able to handle on his own. He had to learn to handle this on his own.

It took a great effort to maintain some level of professionalism at work, an act he supplemented with great patience and regular hits. If Hotch suspected something was up, he would be in trouble, but his recent personal loss – and Hotch's already packed workload - had given him a greater amount of leeway. They all chalked his neurotic behavior up to grief and guilt, which wasn't exactly wrong. It was just that those feelings were magnified by his drug use.

But then again, it wouldn't have been the first time they overlooked him. When he first started using, they tiptoed around him and pretended what they saw was mere irritability, and nobody confronted him. Two of his team members went to go talk to Strauss about getting help, though. And she still kept her job. When Haley died, they all stood by Hotch. When Strauss died, they all went to her funeral, and everyone made a toast to Erin. Naturally, Maeve's death didn't warrant quite the same response. Just because he avoided the topic in conversation, didn't mean he wasn't hoping one of them would ask how he was doing. They were profilers, for god's sake.

Reid still had a tolerance built up from years ago, and he found himself increasing his doses in order to keep the high from crashing down. The haze never completely erased the nightmares or the guilt, but he was grateful for an escape. It sure as hell beat dealing with the constant sting of an old wound. Every high left him craving another. After so many cycles of rising and crashing and craving and repeating, even the side effects were familiar; strange dreams, hallucinations, weight loss.

He wasn't sure if Bianca had noticed, but every now and then he thought he caught her looking at him funny. He didn't pay enough attention to confirm the fact. He was too exhausted to. When he was around her, he could finally let his guard down, the effort of doing his job catching up with him. And when that happened, more often than not he found himself annoyed or agitated, and he would snap at her for no reason. This was supposed to help him be better for her, but instead it made everything worse as he found himself arguing with her for no reason at all. He regretted it, always enough to try and make it up to her, but never enough to stop and explain it to her. The drugs just wouldn't let him reach that point. Under their influence Reid found himself saying things he knew he didn't mean, things he knew weren't true but he couldn't seem to stop himself. Sometimes he didn't even remember it.