criminalxminds | Fic: Deep Sleep

Title: Deep Sleep – Part 1

Author: Sara Nublas

Character: Spencer Reid

Rating: FRT

Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters of the show Criminal Minds. No infringement intended

Warning: Spoilers to 6x12 Corazon. If you haven’t seen the episode you might have trouble understanding some particulars I refer to

Summary: I’ve always thought that sleep is the only moment when our profilers expose their troubles and fears without being able to control them, so I decided to try and dig into their minds to see what’s most frightening or bugging them. There will be one shot for each profiler, all the stories are completely independent from each other and take place in different moments, the only common theme being sleep.

Notes: Beta’d by the amazing freddlerabbit

Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated

Dr. Reid and the refuge from eidetic memory

Reid comes back home with tired steps, he’s exhausted and there’s an edge of nervousness in his demeanor. A series of sketchy jerks has replaced the usual flow of his movements. His reactions border on the excessive and his weariness is ready to overflow in a matter of seconds. Today Dr Reid is a filled barrel and he doesn’t know how much more he can contain.

He messily gets rid of his tie and tosses it on the bed, he ruffles his hair and, while he heads to the living room, he instinctively avoids any source of light. He sits on his sofa and gets his shoes off, walking to the kitchen in his mismatched socks; he turns the kettle on and, waiting for the water to boil, painstakingly rubs his eyelids, as if he could send his pain back to the source.

Right, the mysterious source.

He lets out a bitter chuckle at the thought of the possible explanations he’s been provided with: a psychosomatic cause or ghosts filling his head. He takes out of his pocket the bracelet that Julio gave him few hours before and plays distractedly with its beads, before wearing it hidden under the cuff of his shirt.

The highlights of the recent case in Miami are darting through his mind as a series of snapshots he doesn’t seem able to stop.

The shells covering the eyes and the mouth of the mutilated victims.

The decapitated dove on the tray.

The white wooden house with the blue door; the lock of the gate restlessly beating against the frame.

Julio’s eyes staring at him as if he could read him like an open book.

He takes a few books from the crowded shelves of his living room and soon after, nervously tosses all of them, unopened, on the coffee table. He definitely can’t read tonight, he can’t find rest, his leg fidgeting, his head spinning. He comes to the conclusion he’s not going to catch any sleep, but against his expectations at some point he dozes off.

For Doctor Reid the transition to sleep is a dreamless drift, leading him to a refuge where no sound, image or word can reach. In this dimension he’s safe from memory, his synapses are finally at rest because there’s no stimulus to react to; everything is perfectly still and unquestioned in this never-ending darkness.

Many would find it scary and would be overwhelmed; the fear would cause an adrenaline rush, inducing panic and over thinking, the breath would be shortened and they would drown in the necessity to explain and rationalize.

For Dr Reid this faraway, untouchable place is the only shelter from his restless genius. For him salvation comes in the form of a cage.

He doesn’t really know what’s in this dimension, he doesn’t recall what happens when he gets to this silent oasis; after all how can you remember… ‘nothing’?

The simplest approach to assess the status of a conventional system is to adopt a binary code, a sequence of ones and zeros to record presence and absence, based on the comparison to a standard situation. But in this secluded corner of his mind there is no such thing as absence or presence, there is no standard, thus there is no deviation from the standard. In this corner there’s only the unchanged stillness of an infinite waveless sea.

Reid doesn’t know how he gets to this state of bliss; he just notices that sometimes at morning he wakes up unusually well rested and he can’t remember any particular dream. There’s a gap in the tissue of time, a hole in the sequence of events that led him here; for a while he feels calm and relieved, he doesn’t even realize that his headache is temporarily gone and that the light filtering through the windows does not hurt his sensitive irises.

Then a cascade of details assails him from every angle, his mind processing all of them at first and then filtering them according to priority.

He looks at an article in a journal he left opened on the counter top days ago, and slightly smiles at an inner joke as an association of thoughts arises in his mind; he’s not gonna share it with anyone, probably nobody would understand it. These thoughts are not moved by arrogance or frustration, just an assessment of the reality he got used to over the years. Finally now being exceptional, to a certain extent, is not a cause of loneliness or torment; he’s got a family who loves and appreciates him, exactly the way he is.

He leaves the house, his energy recharged and his memory refreshed, ready to delve into the deviation of a sick mind, until he borders the edge of oblivion again.