✓ | sick of losing soulmates [SPENCER REID]

4.3

Feeling emotional and, unlike Rossi, unable to hide it and unafraid of showing it, Spencer pulls out his phone with slightly trembling hands, and brings up Iris' number.

It rings three, four, five times, and then goes to voicemail: Hi, this is Iris Remington, but you probably call me Remy! Sorry, I can't come —

Sighing, but it comes out as half a growl, he hangs up and tries again. "Come on, Iris," he says through gritted teeth as it rings.

No answer, once again.

"Hotch isn't answering. Reid?" Rossi demands from behind him.

He hangs up, jamming his phone into his pocket as he turns to face the older man. "Iris isn't answering, either."

☆ ★ ☆

iris

"Holy . . . Mother . . . Of shit."

Those are the first words Iris manages to drawl out in pain and shock as she raises her heavy head, feeling like she's in a daze and nothing is real, almost like the events that had occurred before she fell unconscious were all just a product of a nightmare.

But, no, it's real, as she learns from the sight of the flaming car still parked up on the curb, and the wail of the car's alarm going off, which she only now notices because the ringing in her ears has died down.

She props herself up on her elbows, blinking blood out of her eyes, but it gathers like mascara goop on her eyelashes so she has to rub it away. Her hand brushes the cut in her eyebrow, where all the blood comes from, and she hisses sharply with the stinging pain it causes.

Other than that, and her face being dirtied with soot and ash, and a few rips in her jeans, and the fact her clothes are singed in places, she's pretty much unharmed. Luckily — very luckily — considering how close she had been to the blast.

A moment later, as she groans and begins to raise herself to her feet, she feels hands on her and looks up to see Hotch. "Iris," he pants, helping her steady herself. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?" He, too, is bleeding, and his eyes hold the same glazed, shocked stare as she's sure her's do, but he seems fine. He's too visibly concerned about her well-being not to be relatively okay himself.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she says, even though she's never felt so far from fine in her life. She's shaken and dazed, and her heart is pounding with fear even though she feels a simultaneous calmness, like she's merely an observer to this scene.

Behind Hotch stands another man: younger, maybe early twenties, with curly brown hair and wearing a casual plaid jacket and jeans. Hotch glances between them, orders the younger boy to make sure she's okay, and then races off, shouting out for Kate.

The moment he disappears, Iris loses all support aside from her own legs, and considering her legs feel like jelly, they're not much use either. The boy catches her, holding her upright with a comforting hand on her elbow and arm around her shoulders.

"Are you sure your alright?" he asks, bending his neck downward to meet her eyes with his own.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she says. She grits her teeth and forces herself to push her hand against the wound on her forehead so she can wipe away a bit of the blood.