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They'd celebrated Emily's birthday on the 12th. She'd been back for a little over a month, and the team, still rejoicing her return, made sure to go all out.
It had been one of the best nights of Reid's life, if he was honest. Whether just because of all of the emotions from her death and return or because the night really was that memorable, he didn't know. But he and the rest of the team celebrated Emily's life, in more days than one, on the 12th, even in the midst of the craziness of cases and the scrutiny of every single higher up breathing down their necks after the final showdown with Doyle. They'd made the time for her. To show her how much she meant to them.
Maybe that's why it hurt so much when his own birthday had come and gone without so much as a nod of acknowledgement from anyone. They hadn't even had an active case on the day he turned thirty. The day passed like any other, full of paperwork and consults and the typical banter of his teammates.
And Reid went home at the end of the day, alone.
He tried not to dwell on it. But as he lay in bed that night, he couldn't help wondering if the team had merely grown tired of him. He wouldn't blame them. Not with the way he'd acted in the wake of Emily's return from the dead.
He'd been snappy. Rude. Snide. Angry. Over something that was a good thing. Emily was alive, and all he'd dwelt on were his own hurt feelings. No one else had been that immature. No one else had been unprofessional enough in the field to make passive aggressive comments against a coworker every chance they got.
He would've grown tired of himself, too.
He went to sleep that night with a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes that he pretended weren't there.
And when he woke up the next morning, he buried the hurt down. Far enough that no one, not even himself, would ever see it. And threw himself into his usual Halloween shenanigans, celebrating his favourite holiday of the year only three days after his forgotten birthday.
Thanksgiving passed, then Christmas, then New Year's, and the team got together for each special day, even when cases stretched them thin and exhausted them and sucked up all their free time.
Reid and Emily were invited to speak at a conference, and despite his nerves at the inevitable public speaking, he was excited.
Right up until he actually took the podium. He opened his speech to disinterested and bored stares. Confused befuddlement on every face and awkward glances between the guests were the only thing he got to see the entire time he presented, a stark contrast to what he'd observed during previous speakers’ speeches.
The back of his neck prickling with humiliation he refused to let show on his face, Reid wrapped up his topic and stepped away from the podium.
The atmosphere in the room tangibly shifted into something more relaxed and natural as soon as he stepped away from the mic, and he hoped the heated flush on his cheeks wasn't actually visible.
Emily took the podium, and Reid watched as every person immediately displayed signs of interest, leaning forward in their seats and tilting their heads and–
He dropped his eyes to his lap as his face burned. He'd never been good at public speaking anyway. That had been a well established fact for years. It was a wonder why he'd even been invited at all.
When the conference wrapped up, and the attendees filed out into the lobby to meet and greet the speakers, Reid stood awkwardly in a little open area, not too far from the other speakers. The other speakers, who were all surrounded by people eager to learn more, asking question after question and listening with rapt attention.
Reid stood alone. His heart clenched in his chest, and he turned to leave, when someone called out to him.
For a few, brief moments, he was thrilled at the kid who came up to compliment his presentation and discuss it with him. He was young, about the age that people started considering joining the Academy, so Reid mentioned the possibility of joining and becoming a profiler to the kid who looked at him with an eager shine in his eyes and an appreciation and interest in his lecture.
His own excitement morphed into acute embarrassment when he realized that the kid was already founder and CEO of a groundbreaking nanotechnology company he, himself, had looked into out of amazement for their research and accomplishments in the field of pharmaceuticals.
The two parted ways, and Reid, feeling utterly humiliated and outshined by everyone in the building, left to wait by the car that would take him and Emily back to the hotel, his head hung low.
Emily caught up with him before he got too far. She politely asked who he'd been speaking with, but it didn't surprise him when she had no idea what he was talking about when he answered. Nor did it surprise him when she ignored, or maybe didn't pick up on, his low mood.
They were called in on a case, a copycat Zodiac Killer, and the two of them flew out to meet the rest of the team.
He tried to shake the feelings of inadequacy that lodged themselves into his brain and focus on the case. He was. . . not quite successful.
An encounter with the press where he'd debunked someone claiming to be related to the Zodiac Killer ended up affecting the case. He'd decoded a message naming a specific time and place, but when they staked it out, the UnSub sent a messenger to deliver a letter with his name on it, mocking him in front of the rest of his team and the gathered officers.
The inadequacy reared its head, and his cheeks burned once again, and he was grateful that it was dark out so he could duck his head and hide his embarrassment. No one called him out on his silence for the rest of the night.
The next day, he left the station to get some fresh air – and hopefully a fresh perspective on the available clues – and ended up at a local coffee shop.
But instead of his mind focusing on solving the case, it distracted him by dredging up every moment in the past several months where he'd felt like he'd failed himself or the people around him. The moments where he didn't measure up or was passed over or forgotten.
Emily eventually came searching for him, sitting down at his table. “You gonna tell me what's up?”
He shrugged and kept his gaze on the paper in front of him.
“Hey. Reid, it's me,” she said, as if that would be enough to get him to open up.
But then, maybe she had a point because he tended to open up to her with less resistance than the others. And maybe she knew him better than he knew himself – was that because he was fooling himself into believing he was someone he wasn't or because she was just that good of a profiler – because he sat back in his chair and looked up. “Do you ever-” he chewed his lip, trying to figure out how to word what he was feeling, “-feel like you're not. . . adequate?”
Emily blinked. “Adequate at what?”
He swallowed. Shrugged. Dropped his eyes to look at anywhere but her. “Everything, I guess.”
“Reid, what brought this on?”
His fingers twisted together where they rested in his lap, and he didn't answer.
“Why do you feel like you're not good enough?” she tried again.
He only stared at the paper, his words caught in his throat and swelling into an uncomfortable lump that he couldn't speak past.
Emily took the paper, glancing over it before placing it back on the table. “Is it because of what happened in the park?”
He shrugged and moved his hands onto the table to drum against the shiny faux wood.
“Reid, just because this guy sent out a red herring doesn't undermine anything you've done. We'll catch him, and I'm willing to bet with full confidence that it will be because you brilliantly put the pieces together.” She reached across the table to place her hand over his. “I have faith in you.”
His eyes burned, and he blinked the itch away.
“But that's not all this is about, is it?”
He shook his head, still unable to speak.
“Okay. Okay, well you've been rather quiet since we went to the convention. Which, now that I think about it, is rather strange because you couldn't stop talking about how excited you were to present. Even though we both know you get nervous lecturing. Did something happen there?”
He shrugged.
“Is it about the kid who talked to you after?”
He moved his head in a way that wasn't quite a nod.
“Okay. Alright, so what happened?”
He swallowed. Coughed. Swallowed again, and when he finally felt like he could force words out, he said, “It's just. . . the whole time I was speaking, I could tell that no one was interested in what I had to say. I've seen enough people switch off their attention whenever I speak to recognize it, and not one person there listened. And it was like everyone was wondering instead why I had even been invited at all. And it hurt because that's what I began thinking as well.
“And when I stepped away from the podium, there was a tangible shift in the atmosphere. Like everyone was thinking, ‘Oh my god, he's finally done.’ And the shift to sudden interest when you got up. . . I saw their faces, Emily. They couldn't get enough of you.”
He paused, but she seemed to sense that he wasn't done because she stayed silent.
“And then afterwards, there were so many speakers, and every single one had multiple people coming up to them and asking questions and seeking out conversation, and the only person who came up to talk to me in the several minutes that I stood there was a self-made CEO of a cutting edge company who only seemed to appreciate my lecture because I gave him an escape from a company meeting on another floor and a new list of random things to memorize.
“It was. . .” he paused, shrinking down in his chair again. “It was humiliating. The whole thing. And I can't stop thinking about how I must not have been good enough at something I can't even figure out for no one to care about what I had to say like everyone else there at the conference. And no matter how much I think about it, I don't know why I keep getting tossed aside and overlooked.” The last sentence came out strangled when his throat squeezed, and tears sprang up out of nowhere.
Emily squeezed his hand a bit more firmly. “You feel tossed aside and overlooked?”
He scoffed. “Obviously. My dad left me when I was ten, but kept tabs on me. And apparently, despite all my accomplishments, nothing was good enough for him to reach out again. Gideon left me a letter and no goodbye, and even though I've read that thing over and over, and I know he never explicitly says it, part of me will always wonder if part of the reason he left was because I wasn't good enough or strong enough to resist the Dilaudid. He left before I got clean, you know.”
A tear broke free and trailed down his cheek. He tore his hands away from Emily's and wiped it away. “I was shot in the knee, and no one was there for me in the hospital when I came out of surgery or when I was released. No one helped me get home. I never saw anyone except for a single visit from JJ right after I was admitted until I came back to work.
“And I get it, Hotch was in a much more critical condition than I was, and he's our Unit Chief. He's more important than I am, so obviously you guys would spend every moment that you had with him when you weren't chasing down Foyet. But it's hard not to feel worthless when no one comes to visit you for a month when you're in the worst pain you've ever been in, and you're not even sure you will ever walk on your own ever again.
“And then when Hotch came back, Garcia made him this whole batch of cookies, but wouldn't let me have a single one, even though she hadn't made me anything, and I know I sound petty and immature and selfish bringing that up now, two years later, but it stung to be glossed over like that.”
His voice wobbled more the longer he went on, and he cleared his throat and rubbed away the wetness on his cheeks.
“And then you died, except you didn't actually die, and it felt like I wasn't allowed to be angry about being lied to about something so huge and life changing and heartbreaking. I know your life is more important than my feelings, but it would've been nice if I'd been allowed to be hurt and angry without being nagged about forgiveness. And I shouldn't have made all those comments to JJ. I know that. I know it was passive aggressive and unprofessional, but I just needed some space.
“And then she tried to belittle my anger into being about my profiling skills instead of the grief I suffered through for seven months, and then you–” he stopped abruptly, barely clamping a hand over his mouth to stop the sob from carrying through the entire café.
Emily had a look on her face that he couldn't interpret, and maybe JJ had a point about his profiling skills after all. The tears were steady now, and he swiped them away even when he knew they would be immediately replaced.
“I what?” Emily prompted, voice soft and not at all angry, and it almost made him break down completely.
“You came up to me on the jet. And you told me- you said, ‘You mourned the loss of one friend. I mourned the loss of six.’ And it just made me feel. . . like you were trying to one-up me. Even though we were all alive and thought you were dead. Even though you knew we were safe, and all I knew was that I had carried your casket seven months ago.
“And then you asked me not to give you an ulcer, and it was like you were saying that me being angry was. . . inconvenient. And that hurt.” His breath stuttered. “A lot,” he sobbed.
He hid his face in his hands, wiping away the tracks of salt water. “I can't stop crying; I'm sorry,” he whispered.
“Don't be sorry. It sounds like you've been bottling this up for a while. It's only natural that you would reach your breaking point eventually.”
He nodded, and sniffled, but didn't say anything else.
“Is that everything?” she prodded, voice still soft and gentle and understanding in a way that kept the tears flowing.
He shook his head. “We celebrated your birthday, remember? Right after closing the case with the copycat school bomber?”
“I remember.”
“No one, um, nobody–” he took a deep breath. “Nobody acknowledged my birthday. We didn't have any cases or anything, but everyone. . . forgot. Or at least I think they just forgot, and not that they didn't care. But either way, I turned thirty and no one said anything and I went home completely alone and couldn't figure out why everyone remembered you but forgot me.
“And I know this might come across as me feeling jealous of you getting attention,” he blurted before she could cut in, even though she'd let him say his piece so far, “but it's not. It's more to do with just. . . me. A pattern I've noticed my entire life.
“So to answer your question, yes. I do feel tossed aside and forgotten. All the time. And I don't know what it is about me that makes people do that, but it must be something I'm doing wrong or because I'm just not good enough. At whatever it is.”
He trailed into silence after that, fiddling with a loose thread on his scarf while waiting for the inevitable fallout of his long-winded vent. Silent tears dribbled off his cheeks and landed on his scarf, splattering the purple fabric with darker splotches.
“Spencer,” Emily said. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, he did.
“You are good enough. I'm sorry people keep leaving you or pushing you to the backburner. I'm sorry we've all failed to make sure you know how much we care about you. I'm sorry for each time we've neglected you, and I'm sorry for ever making you feel like your feelings were invalid and inconsequential. And I know that none of what I just said can fix any of it, so I'll ask you this: What can I do to make it right?”
He hesitated. “Can you, maybe, just hug me?” he asked in a small voice that he knew made him sound like a child. But he felt very much like a child in that moment, so he supposed it was appropriate.
Instead of answering with words, Emily rose from her seat, bringing it around next to his, and sat back down. Slowly, as if giving him time to change his mind, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close.
He nestled his face in the crook of her neck and hugged her back just as tight as the tears picked up again.
The hug didn't fix everything. It didn't take away years of abandonment and neglect from the people he called family. It didn't take away the scars left by every time he'd been made to feel less than everyone else.
But Emily's arms around him were comforting, and it made him feel better, even as he cried into her shirt.
And for now, that was enough.