✓ | sick of losing soulmates [SPENCER REID]

10.2

10.2
( good-mornings and goodbyes. )

☆ ★ ☆

iris

A flash of silver — a gun. And Spencer, with his old haircut, eyes crunched shut and the veins in his neck strained with fear. And her own voice, screaming. And her wrists, restrained. And her eyes blocked with tears, clouding her vision, like when she wears Spencer's coke-bottle glasses and reality looks distorted.

"Hey! Hey, no, no, he's my friend! Don't — please don't!"

"Tell me why not."

The voice is low — a growl, and the man who stands behind Spencer, with the gun pulled around the press to his temple, pushing a few hairs out of the way of his clammy forehead, has his face cloaked in shadow. The light is strange, both non-existent, to mask the room and the face of man, but also glinting against the metal of his revolver.

"Wh-what?" she breathes.

"Give me a reason," the man grits out through a growl, and the light shines briefly upon his mouth, showing yellowing teeth with some missing, and all of them sharp and pressed together, "why I shouldn't kill him."

"Iris," Spencer says, maybe in an attempt at reassurance, or many an attempt at begging, and she hates him for having such a steady voice, even now. But it's eyes so brown and wide and vulnerable, that give away his fear. He needs her.

No, no. It's the other way around. She needs him. She's always needed him.

That's why she can't do this: can't watch him die, not even if it's a dream, not even if it's not at all real. Real or fake, its unimaginable. Something she can't cope with.

But it's too late.

BANG!

Flying up in bed, Iris Remington breaks out of her nightmare and into reality, and she sucks in a mighty hasp of cool, refreshing air as her hand flies to her chest to check that her heart's still beating. She's breathing heavily, feeling like she's just been smothered by a pillow, and her hands are scrambling around to clutch at her sheets, her tether to reality.

"Hey," a familiar voice soothes and her head twists to her left, finding Spencer pulling himself into a sitting position beside her. Real, alive, smiling lightly in confusion and concern as his hand stretches across her knee, warm and big and real and there. Her heart slows and begins to cease in its harsh pounding. "Iris? You okay?"