Knockin' On Heaven's Door — Chapter One: Six Minutes
info: This story takes place in early 2007 and serves as a rewritten and reimagined aftermath of the events depicted in the mid-season two episodes "The Big Game" and "Revelations".
Available on AO3 and Wattpad under the username fallenamongstroses
That's what I would say to my mother every time she lit a cigarette, like I did as I leaned against a brick wall, one foot kicked up, leaning against it. I found it almost ironic that I didn't seem to care too much when those six minutes were taken off my life.
The chilly night air cut through my cardigan as I blew smoke up into the starry sky, the smoke hovering in the dim honey-hued glow of the streetlights looking almost like a sparkling cloud before it vanished like a ghost in the shadows. I always went on my smoke breaks when I needed to pop pills — stimulants for my newly-medicated ADHD, benzodiazepines for my anxiety. Vyvanse and Klonopin.
It had been a couple of months since vyvanse and klonopin were first prescribed to me after Gideon had insisted that I get a complete psychiatric evaluation and assessment after all that had transpired regarding Tobias Hankel. The psychiatric team evaluating me had diagnosed me with Autism, ADHD, PTSD and a form of severe Generalized Anxiety Disorder that caused extreme panic attacks that rarely (if ever) seemed to have any clear or specific origin or triggers causing them to happen in the first place, long before the recent trauma I'd endured which only seemed to worsen my unrelenting anxiety. Of course, I was not at all shocked when they added an additional diagnosis of moderate to severe insomnia. I had always had more nightmares than the average person, but in the last two months since my team had rescued me from that graveyard in the middle of nowhere in Georgia... Well, the nightmares had become inescapable and far too real. I had not slept consistently or soundly since the night I was saved.
But Tobias was in the past. Two months, nineteen days, three hours, and forty-nine minutes in the past, to be exact. An eidetic memory was never helpful when it came to processing trauma. It would be easier if I could forget small details like most people. But that does not happen for people like me. I chuckled dryly to myself. People like me — geniuses with exceptional memory and even more exceptional IQs. People like me should know better than to do something as stupid, unhealthy, and dangerous as chain-smoking cigarettes. Theoretically, the cork filters I favored over the average filter — a mess of cotton and shards of glass — offered decreased health consequences, yet I still knew better. I knew the statistics. Higher price points and superior filter types could only save you so much.
After all, it's the addictive nature of it all at the heart of what kills you in the end.
I crushed the dying embers of the cigarette filter under my foot, pulled the pack back out of my cardigan pocket along with a lighter. I flipped the lid of the pack open with my thumb, pulled a cigarette out by the filter with my teeth, sparked the lighter and held the flame to the cigarette, inhaling lightly before taking my thumb off the lighter and watching the flame disappear as I removed it from my mouth with my right index and middle fingers, exhaling, and then inhaling once more. There was something almost meditative about the routine. Something nearly hypnotizing about it all. It felt practically ritualistic — putting the cigarette between my lips with the taste of dissolving calmness under my tongue and the energy and focus that I had swallowed just moments ago.
The cigarettes steadied my breathing and shaking hands as my body slowly began to adjust to the medications entering my system. Vyvanse sharpened my mind and vision, making my movements feel more precise, pulling everything into clear focus. Klonopin melted away the overstimulation that coursed throughout my entire body like a live wire — the office lights had been too bright, and I had felt like I couldn't breathe. I had been doing nothing but reading and paperwork all day and could feel the panic creeping up the back of my throat. Maybe it had just been the stomach acid from the panic itself. Either way, I knew if I didn't make it out of the bullpen and out into the smoking area, I would have surely puked into the wastepaper basket at my desk right then and there, in front of my team. Thankfully, the team knew well enough by now that moments like that — moments of complete overstimulation or panic — were nothing to be taken lightly, nor to be joked about or teased over.
I took a long and thoughtful drag as I tried to do the impossible by forgetting what Hankel had forced me to endure. I was still bound to that chair for a fraction of a nanosecond. I could almost feel the high of dilaudid he'd forcibly injected me with. I knew what a flashback was from my studies and work experience, but it never failed to take the breath out of me faster than any cigarette ever could, and far more painfully. All the studying and intellect in the world couldn't prepare me for how unimaginably real every moment of even the briefest of flashbacks felt, let alone the onerous task of differentiating those flashbacks from the reality of whatever was happening at any given time over the past several weeks.
"Focus, Spencer!" My thoughts practically screamed at me, echoing and reverberating through my skull.
I needed to be focused tonight. I grabbed the water bottle I had placed next to me, opened it, opened the vyvanse bottle, and tapped out another pill into my hand. I swallowed the capsule and washed it down with the water before screwing the cap back onto the water bottle, returning the half-empty water bottle onto the cracked parking lot concrete next to where I stood. I looked towards my hand and saw that the cigarette was now just a long stick of ash. "Weird, I swear I lit that less than two minutes ago, and this brand takes at least seven to ten minutes to burn on average..." My thoughts trailed off. I shrugged and thought, "I'm sure it's just the side effects of the medications."
I lit another cigarette, making sure to focus on it this time. I needed to fully concentrate on whether I would be useful to the team tonight. I took a frustrated puff, exhaling with anxious stubbornness.
I wondered what would happen as the long night in the bullpen continued. Would there be a new case and briefing tonight, or would I be able to go home after finishing the endless pile of paperwork on my desk? Only time would tell. I nervously tapped the fingers of my free hand against the side of my leg, trying to get the leg to stop shaking. The doctors had explained to me that this was something called stimming, common in both Autism and ADHD — not at all uncommon for it to become more severe and noticeable after trauma as extreme as what I had gone through. I had always just assumed I was too fidgety. I had assumed a lot of things about me were simply something wrong with me that nobody else dealt with until the diagnoses made every empty part of the puzzle of my life finally be filled in so that I could see the full picture of who I had always been for the very first time all those weeks ago.
I had not seen any point in hiding any part of my diagnosis from the team and had discussed it privately and individually with each team member, met with slightly varying reactions. Still, all doing their best to be understanding and supportive in their own ways.
I smiled as smoke left my lips, remembering how Garcia had laughed at my diagnosis as she lightheartedly giggled and said, "The brilliant boy genius has Autism? I'm sorry, sweetheart, but that has got to be the least shocking diagnosis I've ever heard!" She had asked for permission to hug me and, after I allowed it, she wrapped her arms around me almost too tightly to breathe. "Don't worry, Doc. I won't see or treat you any differently than I always have unless you want me to."
I had tightened the hug and replied, "Thank you for understanding. I knew you wouldn't make me feel weird like the others might."
"Oh, sweetie... I'd never make you feel weird about anything. However, I do tend to weird people out. Your weird doesn't ever outweird me, okay? I pinky promise," she had held out her pinky finger, and I had humored her by intertwining it with mine. "If anybody treats you weird about anything, then you tell me. If they wanna mess with you, they'll have to deal with me, first!"
"Weird protects weird, I guess is what you're saying?" I had presumed.
"Yes- wait- but no! Not exactly. I mean, yes, of course, weird protects and looks out for weird... but being autistic, having ADHD, and all that other stuff doesn't make you weird. It's just part of who you are. Who you are is perfect, no matter what. Got it?"
"Good. Keep thinking that way, alright? Not weird, just different — just you. Just Reid. Smart and useful as you always have been. A diagnosis doesn't change who you always have been, it just gives it a name and an explanation." She had been entirely correct.
In response to the diagnosis, Gideon smiled slightly and said, "I always wondered why you were far more difficult and complex to profile than the rest of the team. People on the spectrum typically don't display the same behavioral mannerisms as what we're trained to read as profilers. But even still, I read you loud and clear now, Spencer. You aren't useless or broken like you think you are,"
"I never said that... did I?" I had asked, a bit unsure as the klonopin made my memory less reliable - something about how it impacted the brain to form new working memories.
"No, you're right — you didn't say you feel useless or broken. You also didn't say that you have felt unsure of your ability to be a good profiler since Hankel or since the diagnosis. You didn't say that you're worried about whether your autism makes your profiling skills more or less valid and accurate. You didn't have to say any of that out loud."
I stayed silent for a moment, taken aback by Gideon saying everything I had felt aloud, spoken for the first time. "How did you know-"
"I knew because I'm a profiler and I am damn good at my job and doing what I do. And so are you, kid. Don't ever let anything make you doubt yourself. I am sure someday you will be seen as the greatest profiler the BAU has ever had. You are already one of the best, if you ask me. You wouldn't be here where you are right now if you weren't, or if I thought even for a moment that you were not perfect for this job. I have faith in you, Spencer. And one more thing,"
Gideon's eyes and face softened as he said ever-so-gently, "I'm proud of you, kid. I mean it."
"No. No need to thank me. I just needed you to know that."
I pulled out and lit my sixth cigarette since I got outside. Garcia had decided to gift me with an MP3 player recently because she hated the idea of me being left completely alone with my thoughts during my long smoke breaks and had explained that she had read that many people like me used music as a coping mechanism to stay grounded. It seemed to be accurate enough. The guitar strummed softly in my ears, a song I had been introduced to by my mother, who would often sing it to me as a lullaby of sorts, and the familiar lyrics began.
Mama take this badge from me
I pulled out my flip-phone and quickly texted Garcia to check my mother's files and records for where I had her staying, asking her to make sure to notify me of any medication or behavioral changes, as well as anything else worth mentioning.
I flipped the phone closed, dropped it back into my satchel, and took a much longer and deeper drag than usual off of my cigarette, exhaling, only noticing the nervous shaking in my hands as I brought it to my lips again. I wasn't sure if it was worry for my mother or the vyvanse kicking in that caused my hands to tremor. I tried and failed to not worry about it. I tried to think positively and hope that my mother was okay. I would write my daily letter to her once I got back to my desk. The paperwork of our old cases could wait that long. They'd have to. But before I could worry myself too much about that, I finished and extinguished my cigarette, lighting another.
Feels like I'm knockin' on Heaven's door
The music softly yet powerfully thrummed in my ears through the earbuds, slowly easing away the flashbacks that had threatened to blur the edges of reality, grounding me in my body and current surroundings.
Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door
Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door
Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door
Knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door
My hands began to shake less as I blinked tears away from my eyes. I needed to pull myself together and make sure the meds kicked in before I was ready to head back inside and face reality, along with all the familiar faces awaiting my return inside the building behind me.
"Get it together, Spencer," I thought to myself. I closed my eyes, trying to focus on nothing but the next drag. Felt the heat, tasted the chemicals I had grown to find comforting, smelled the tobacco as I exhaled the smoke from my nostrils. "Just get it together," I thought silently once more.
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