Spencer got out of rehab right on time. He was doing well. In fact, if you asked him, he would tell you that he didn't even think about the drugs anymore because all of his thoughts were once more consumed with none other than Amanda Hotchner. He remembers what she said to him in that cabin what seemed like a lifetime ago. Evan had gotten clean for her, not himself, and Reid was determined to be different.
Reid had gotten clean because he didn't want to become the person he was becoming so he did what he could to prevent that. Amanda was just a plus. When he was in rehab it was almost like it was when they were back in college. They would joke and talk and watch movies that Spencer would never watch at any other point in his life. She had convinced him to read the entire Harry Potter series because she said that everyone had read them.
Even now, as he was being discharged, she was still concerned for him and his recovery. "Spencer, you're supposed to spend 24 hours with someone after rehab to recover. You most definitely aren't supposed to go back to work," she chastizes.
"I'm supposed to spend 24 hours distracting myself from taking drugs. What's a better distraction than work. I have to give my 100 percent so I can't be thinking about things like Dilaudid." She frowns at him before nodding and sighing.
"We have a case. I'll drive you but if you get distracted for even a second, you tell me. Got it?" He nods at her with a smile before following her to her car to head to Quantico.
"What did Evan do for his 24 hour period?" He can't help but asks and Amanda takes her eyes off the road for a second to look at him before looking out the windshield once more.
"He asked me to dinner. It was all really cheesy. Pretended we had never met, lied that he just happened to be walking by the rehab building, and then gave some line about how he didn't want our relationship to be a lie so he felt that he had to tell me that he was addicted to heroin and he wasn't supposed to be alone for 24 hours. Said it would just be great if he could spend it with me because he couldn't possibly think about drugs when with such a gorgeous woman," she chuckles and Spencer can't help but smile.
"That sounds really sweet."
"It was. You would've liked him. He would love all your facts. He used to turn to me about the most random thing and ask me for statistics on it just because he knew that I couldn't forget them once I saw them. He loved magic too. Had no idea how to do it but was insanely fascinated with it. Actually, he always wanted to meet you because I told him about how you were so good at it. I used to send you letters but you never answered."
He frowns. "That's because I was an idiot who took what I had for granted. Believe me, Amanda, I'm never going to do that again," he vows and she snorts as she pulls into the parking lot of Quantico.
"No offense, Spencer, but you don't have a great track record with keeping promises." With that, she exits her car and heads towards the building. Spencer sits in the car for a few moments longer, not only watching her but thinking about what she had said, and realizing that it's going to take a lot more than merely getting clean to earn back both Amanda's trust and her friendship but he was willing to do whatever it takes.
He keeps that mindset as he walks into the BAU and heads for the conference room. JJ is surprised to see him there so early and mentally scolds herself for allowing herself to get used to his erratic behavior but refusing to hold her breath and hope that Spencer was back to normal. The rest of the team tries to hide their surprise as they enter and see a much more normal-looking Spencer. Emily walks in and sits next to him, paying him a small smile which he returns and she sees that happiness behind it making her happy as well.
She's even happier when she jokes about him not giving exact statistics leading to him explaining that he was trying to be more personable to which she responded it wasn't working. Everyone, but Amanda, waits with bated breath to see if Spencer will snap but he just shakes his head with a smile, making JJ and Morgan smile believing that they have their friend back. As the team goes over the case some more, Reid can't help but allow his eyes to drift over to Amanda.
He studies her as her blonde curls fall to one side of her neck. She leaning over the file slightly as she reads. Her eyes scan the page slowly and Reid can tell that she's already read the same page more than once. That's what Amanda does. She reads the same things over and over to see if she can find a different meaning. It was why she loved Shakespeare because no matter how many times you read it, you will always relate to a different character depending on the events in your life as you read it.
Reid is snapped out of his staring when Hotch says wheels up and everyone begins to dismiss. He hurries to gather his things to go after Amanda but he isn't quick enough. By the time he gets out of the door, last in line, Amanda had already grabbed her go-bag from next to her desk and likely headed to the jet. He sighs, hoping to get to talk to her on the jet but knowing it won't be likely. When Amanda doesn't want to do something she has a special ability to always not have to do that thing, even if it is a confrontation that someone else is initiating.
Sure enough, Amanda spent her time on the jet telling JJ, Morgan, and Emily of her time spent on a fake beach she never went to as an excuse for her week vacation spent helping Reid in rehab. He wasn't sure if this was a good or bad thing. On one hand, he didn't think he would be fired unless he started using again but he wasn't sure he wanted to actually admit he was an addict to his teammates. Then there was the whole masturbation thing the first morning he was in there that he knew she would tell them on account that she still thought it was hilarious.
On the other hand, he felt like they had really bonded once more while she was helping him get better and he didn't know how to react now. He wanted to tell Morgan but that would mean telling him that she was lying and why she was lying and then he would tell her and it would just be bad. The whole thing made Spencer anxious and want nothing more than to have the confidence of being best friends with Amanda Hotchner had given him in college. It's a miracle really, how someone could go back into their shell after college. He had practically reverted socially. It was pathetic.
His final hope of talking with Amanda was crushed when Hotch assigned her to go with Gideon and Morgan to the scene of the fire rather than with Spencer and JJ to the station. If he believed in God he would have prayed that they would get time to talk soon but he also believed that even if there were a God he would still have nothing on the power Amanda Hotchner seemed to hold over everyone.
JJ watched him during the case. She noticed how he would get antsy every once in a while but soon noticed that it was every time that Amanda interacted with Lieutenant Vega. JJ then began paying attention to their interactions and noticed how she would giggle at the things he said and occasionally flip her hair and if she didn't know that Amanda acted that way with everyone and simply had a naturally flirty personality, she would believe that Amanda might like him. But everyone was aware of how Amanda was so why was it bothering Reid now?
Morgan noticed a difference in Reid as well but it was different than JJ's. JJ focused on Reid's behavior because she was worried he was still on drugs and just covering it better but Morgan knew exactly what Reid's problem was now. He could see the way Spencer's face lit up when he made Amanda smile or giggle, he had noticed it since she arrived. It was why Morgan never made a move on Amanda despite her being just like him.
He knew that he could get with Amanda and be done with it. She would act like it hadn't happened, she wouldn't expect a call, and they could go back to work and have no qualms. Amanda was like a female version of Derek Morgan. He could tell from the way she would tell him and Garcia about the new guy she met at the bar or even the way she attracted both men and women on the dancefloor and dirty danced like she hadn't a care in the world.
But despite this similarity, Derek was wary of her for two reasons. One was Amanda's natural magnetism. If there was one person that Derek Morgan believed could make him want to settle down, it would be Amanda Hotchner. Nothing about her screamed domestic but everything about her seemed to be designed to pull people in. The other reason was that he could tell that the same magnetism that he feared had already pulled Spencer in. He noticed it from the first time she was on the team.
Morgan loved Spencer, they were like brothers, and the last thing he wanted to do is get in the middle of a relationship that he believed would be good for him. If only he knew what happened between them in college. He had tried to look into it but no matter how much he Googled the two, all he came up with was that Spencer was on the chess team and the two were apparently best friends. Every time he watched them together, he wondered what it possibly could've been to tear them apart but couldn't tell.
Amanda knew that the team was on edge. She noticed it when JJ presented the case and Prentiss made her comments to Reid. She watched them all practically inflate with elation that Spencer seemed to back to normal. But they weren't obvious in the way they watched her.
They all found it odd that Amanda got off the same time as Reid only for him to come back seemingly back to normal. This was evident the moment the three had asked her about her vacation. She told them all about a private beach off the coast of Florida where an old friend of hers from when she was young lived.
This was, in fact, a real place, and the man in question happened to have been one of the many that were bullied by someone in her neighborhood and she had even broken the heart of his bully. Anthony was so grateful that he sends her Christmas cards each year and had even dated Kristen for a few months when they were sophomores before they realized they didn't have a lot in common as Kristen was less than enthusiastic about school and Anthony practically lived for it.
Nonetheless, the two friends had been invited to his beach on several occasions and went almost every time. They had even been invited last week and Amanda knew for a fact that Kris went and knew that if asked, she would lie and say Amanda was there in a heartbeat.
Sadly, this didn't stop their curiosity. They had watched her the whole case and she knew it was because Spencer watched her the whole case. She knew he wanted to talk and she finally caved after she got the call from Morgan that Evan Abby had blown himself up along with the killer, Vincent Styles. Gideon, Aaron, and Morgan were on their way back and Aaron wasn't taking it well.
She noticed Spencer at the coffee machine and made her way over. "It's over. Abby blew him and Styles up. Apparently, my brother isn't doing too well."
Spencer frowns. "Why not?"
Amy sighs. "I have no clue. It messed him up learning that Abby had leukemia."
"Why?"
"Because when Aaron was a senior, my dad's less than perfect behavior was getting more noticeable. Everyone knew he had affairs but suddenly it was like he wasn't even trying to hide it so Aaron followed him to confront him, only it wasn't an affair this time. He had lung cancer."
Spencer gapes at the girl he had known for so long. The girl who used to spend nights telling him how much she hated her father for beating her, how she wasn't even sure she was the person she wanted to be or even liked because he had forced her to change so much. He had heard everything she had to hate about him but he never known about the affairs or that he had cancer. "You never told me that your dad had cancer."
"That's because he went into remission. The bastard's chemo actually worked. It's like there's no justice in the world. My father deserved to die slowly and painfully for all the bad he did but instead, he got to live long enough to have a heart attack while people like Abby who did something to try and make the world better don't get the same luck. He knew that he was dying and wanted his death to mean something since Styles made a mockery of his chapter of the EDF. It just isn't fair."
"You can't help who lives and dies, Amanda," Spencer points out and she nods.
"You're right. But I can damn well complain about the good, innocent people lost while monsters like my father are still revered because nobody knows what happened behind the curtain." Spencer studies her and watches as a strand of hair falls into her face. She goes to brush it away, but he's faster. He moves it behind her ear and she sighs.
"Spencer, we can't keep doing this." He frowns and so she continues. "You were right with what you said in college. We were never really friends. I was in love with you and maybe, at one point, you felt the same, but we aren't those people anymore. We tried to give the whole friends thing a shot but we just aren't good at it.
"All we do is hurt each other. I hurt you by leaving the team and refusing to come back. You hurt me because you know me well enough to say the very things you know will hit home and hurt me the most. We can work together and we'll still be a good team but we can't be friends. We aren't good at it and the next time one of us does something to hurt the other, we might not be able to work together and I don't want that. I like this team, I like what we do, and I know that you do too, so let's not ruin this, okay?"
It's like ice water had been thrown on him. Spencer had spent this past week in a blissful state where he was Vegas and she was Amy once more and he hadn't even realized it until this very moment. He knew that what he said about her not being enough for Evan had hurt her. It was meant to. It was the one thing he could fathom that would make her not care enough to notice as he got worse. Yet the moment it left his lips, he regretted it, but now that he thought of it, he never apologized.
Which is why, as every molecule of his body tells him to agree with Amanda, to let her have this after all he's done to hurt her, he can't bring himself to do it. "I think you're wrong," he states firmly. "You were never the one doing the hurting, it was always me. I haven't been a good friend and I need to make up for that. What I said in college was stupid and I said it because I was scared. I let all my trauma feed my insecurities and said the first thing I could think of to hurt you and in turn protect myself. That's what I do because I know that you are the only person that could truly break me down, Amanda Hotchner.
"What I said about Evan was wrong and I wish more than anything that I could take it back but I can't, I can only make up for it. But we are friends, Amanda. And we make a good team because of that. I care about you and that's never going to stop and if there was one person that I never should've hurt, it was you.
"You saved my life when we got kidnapped and the only reason I hurt you was because I knew that you would be able to get me to stop and I wanted to take the drugs. They made me feel better because I could get away from all the bad memories and I didn't care who I hurt as long as I got that but now all I can think is that losing you from my life is the worse thing that could happen to me, so, please.
"I know that I'm already on friend probation," he jokes, and Amanda has to bite back a giggle which makes him grin, knowing that he had actually won this argument. "From the last time I acted like a total, what do you call them? Douchecanoes?" She nods with a grin and he chuckles.
"I know that what I said was my second time acting like a douchecanoe in recent times we've spent together and I'm prepared to bring you coffee for three months and buy you a new camera, one of the expensive ones you like, if you promise to give me another chance."
He looks at her, pulling out all the stops just in case, and, as she looks into his hazel puppy dog eyes, she can't help but deflate. "Fine and you don't have to give me a camera. I outgrew that when I left Caltech but I will accept the free months of coffee," she states with a smile and Spencer grins before pulling her into a hug, surprising JJ, who had been watching the interaction from afar, as well as Hotch, Morgan, and Gideon who were entering the station at the very moment and wondering what had happened to make the germaphobe hug Amanda.
But Spencer can't care because all he can focus on is the fact that he had managed to keep Amanda in his life and he was going to win her heart back over again. No matter how long it took him to do so.