Spencer Reid had met Max on an ordinary afternoon walk through the park — one of those calm, uneventful days that offered him just enough space to breathe. Things with her had started off easily, no friction. She made him smile, he didn’t overthink every word. For a moment, things felt normal.

Until Cat Adams came back into the picture and everything turned to shit again.

Max didn’t give him an explanation. No call. No goodbye. She just disappeared, like she was never there at all. Reid kept waiting for something — a message, a reason, anything — but it never came. And she had meant something to him. He was really starting to care. But she still left.

And Spencer? He was sad, but not surprised. Not really. He had stopped expecting permanence from people. Not after everything. When he was framed and thrown into prison, not even Hotch or Morgan — people he trusted with his life — reached out. Not once. He understood, logically. They had families. Kids. Responsibilities. Still, the silence stayed with him.

He had raised himself while taking care of his mother, a woman brilliant and ill in equal measure. His father had left, and no one else stepped up. So Spencer adapted. He kept everything in. Locked it up in compartments. Told himself he didn’t need anyone.

Because it was easier that way. Because sentiment always backfired. Still… there were days like this one.

Days where the silence felt heavier than usual. Where it pressed down on him like a weight he couldn’t catalogue or explain. He’d start to wonder — was it him? Was he too much? Too strange? Too difficult to love? Maybe his past had made him this way. Maybe the damage really did stick.

And he hadn’t cried in years. Not properly. He didn’t know if he forgot how, or if the well had just dried up. But either way, crying didn’t come easy. It was his day off from the BAU, and being alone in his apartment felt like a bad idea. So he left. Walked with no destination in mind. He deliberately avoided the park where he met Max. He didn’t want to backtrack.

He didn’t want coffee, or a book, or food. He couldn’t sit still long enough for any of it. So he found a bench in front of an amusement park — loud, chaotic, full of kids with sticky fingers and bright plastic toys. It was a place most people would associate with joy.

But not Spencer. All it made him think about was what he’d missed. His mother had already been unwell by the time he could form memories, and he was too far ahead in school to ever feel like he belonged anywhere. He didn’t grow up. He just got older.

Then:

“Sorry.”

The voice caught him off guard — soft, clear, kind. “Can I sit here?”

He turned his head and saw you standing there. You were... striking. There was something about you that immediately short-circuited the part of his brain that wanted to stay detached. Maybe it was your voice, your presence — something grounded.

He blinked. “Sure.”

You sat down with a polite smile, and after a moment, you glanced over at him. You didn’t know this man — not his name, not his past, not what kind of week he’d had — but he looked... empty. Like he was there but not really there.

So you asked, “Are you okay?”

Weird question to ask a stranger. You knew that. But you asked it anyway.

Spencer blinked again, surprised. The words hit harder than they should have. No one had asked him that in a while — not really. And he didn’t know you. He didn’t know if he was allowed to tell you. Trauma wasn’t something he handed over to people anymore or to someone he didn't even know.

So he smiled — the kind of smile he’d practiced to make people feel at ease. It didn’t touch his eyes, though.

“Yeah,” he said, quietly. “I’m fine.”

And he lied. Because the truth was too heavy to say out loud.