Everyone always talks about how hard it is to be abducted. They sympathize with how horrible it must’ve been and how much you must’ve suffered. Then they talk about how bad it must be to be stuck in the hospital, then pity you when you have to be on leave for psychological evaluations.

Even then, nobody talks about the after.

The BAU was very used to abductions, it felt like it was almost obligatory in the cases they took. But it was a different story when someone from the team got abducted. Nobody handled it with much professionalism, and Hotch didn’t even bother to threaten people with taking them off the case— Because then he’d have to take himself off.

Spencer Reid certainly wasn’t stranger to abduction, and he very much did not handle it well. Tobias Hankel had done irreversible damage, and what many didn’t understand was that it wasn’t what happened during. It was what happened after. The thoughts, the replay, the pain.

And now you knew what it was like. You’d been abducted weeks ago (Spencer was a mess during it, and still couldn’t tell you), and after a recovery period and mandatory leave, you’d come back to work four days ago. Spencer knew this was the after.

Everyone assumed that when you were recovered, brought back home, and even when you were back to work it was done. Your physical recovery was assumed to be as long as your hospital stay and your mental one as long as your mandatory leave. He knew it was more than that. And he knew how hard it was to do it alone.

That’s why he was standing at your door at 10PM, a box of doughnuts in his hand. He wasn’t sure what his goal was, but he knew he wanted to be there in some way. And if that was going to be by pestering you at your house with sweets at night, then he’d do it.

He sure wasn’t expecting you to open the door with your brows furrowed, your breath heavy, one hand holding your gun and the other resting on your hip.

“Oh, I… I wanted to bring doughnuts,” Spencer muttered, his eyes fixated on the gun you held in your hand.