Wild Nights, Wild Nights || Spencer Reid x Reader

35. ...And Death But Death

"So, tell me; how are you going to run it?" you challenged. "You're personally going to oversee and partake in the deaths and violation of countless young women? You can live with yourself if you do that? If you lead the rest of your life pretending like you're not better than that, when you and I both know that you are?"

A muscle jumped in his jaw. "I'm not."

"You are."

You took a sharp breath and forced your voice level. You forced it into submission, into softness. You forced yourself to draw upon whatever lingering nostalgia you might have had for the once sweet boy you'd grown up with.

You forced yourself to think back to innocent nights spent walking along the beach, to lavish events where the two of you danced together without care for anyone else in the room, to romantic intimate duets played side by side as Liszt and Debussy and Mendelsson bore witness to the gentlest form of love.

Because, as much as you wished you could deny it, that was what it had been in the beginning.

So you took a deep breath and softly said, "You know why I know? Because I loved you, Alex, as much as any teenage girl can love anything or anyone. Do you want to know exactly the moment I knew that I loved you?"

He stayed silent.

You continued, "It was a month or two into dating. We were walking in Central Park. You were complaining about one of your finance classes—you hated studying finance, remember?—and I told you to give me one benefit to studying it, to focus on the one good thing instead of how tedious the rest of it was. Do you remember what you said to me?"

Alexander shook his head. His grip was loosening on the gun.

"You said that you didn't think that there was anything good about studying finance itself, but that you weren't planning on working in finance for the rest of your life, anyway. And when I asked you what you meant, you said that you were going to get to Wall Street, make enough money to be completely independent from your dad, and then leave to do something good with it. You said you were going to make up for 'things.'"

You managed a smile despite the circumstance. "And you didn't answer when I asked you what 'things' were, and I didn't understand why you'd... why you'd want to be completely separated from your family. But I didn't care to think about it too much because I just saw someone who cared enough about the world to one day try and make it better. You were a good person, Alex. Deep down, you still are. That's why you won't kill me, why you're even letting me speak, why you're still considering helping us. And you can still do the good thing."

He was silent for several moments. You held your breath and waited.

You were almost there.

Finally, he whispered, "I... can't." And when you opened your mouth to object, he cut you off. "You have no idea, Y/N." His voice was hoarse and quietly tormented. "You have... even when we were together, I had to do... terrible thin—"

"Then make up for it," you cut him off firmly. "A bad person wouldn't care. You do. You can still make up for it."

And he went quiet again. The slight tremble was back in his hand. It looked like he was looking through you rather than at you now. He opened his mouth to say something, and then—

Loud buzzing from your coat pocket, now on the couch behind you.

You squeezed your eyes shut.

Fuck.