was 11 pm at night. spencer and gracen had been talking for hours, mainly about their pasts, sitting in comfortable silence for amounts of time before starting more conversations.

spencer found all the information gracen jones gave him very useful to the investigation. he wanted to take out his notebook and pen and write all of it down, but he didn't want the girl to think he was interrogating her. he wasn't, though.

gracen liked to dance, sing, draw—anything artistically involved. she loved her parents and they babied her. it seemed like she remembered them very clearly. in fact, gracen jones seemed to have had great memory—up until she was 16. that's when she had been taken. gracen still couldn't recall some of those memories.

"—we're really alike, gracen. i'm glad." spencer smiled, looking up just to see the girl slumped over, eyes closed as she was fast asleep.

something fluttered in his chest, and spencer slowly got up from his seat, making sure to not wake her. keeping a close eye on the girl, he packed his things and put his jacket on. spencer drew near to the bed and pulled the blanket up so that only her head was peeking out. then, he slipped out the door, making sure to tell the nurses to check in with her throughout the night, before he left the hospital.

—

"gracen...your time is up."

"your time is up gracen."

"come here."

"COME HERE!"

a hand grabbed her throat, pulling her towards the voice.

it was a man, but his face was blank.

a blank, smooth flesh-like thing that represented his head. gracen started hyperventilating, struggling to get out his grip. who was this man?

"get me out!!" she screamed. "GET ME OUT!!"

"never." the man drew closer, and even though she couldn't see his face, she knew there was a sick expression behind it, grinning creepily at her.

she knew that expression.

then the man backed away, revealing several corpses piled on top of each other like zombies, all of them groaning and shrieking in pain.

the sounds tumbled through her ear, she felt like something was being sucked out of her. gracen screamed and kicked, not being able to escape. she felt nauseous.

the sounds continued, the shrieks. she couldn't take it. she couldn't take it.

"gracen...gracen..."

"SHUT UP!!!" gracen screamed, kicking and punching. "MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!"

two hands grabbed gracen jones, shaking her viciously before saying, "miss jones, you're at the hospital. wake up."

"open your eyes gracen. i'm going to count backwards from three and you'll open them, okay?"

"three,"

"two,"

"one."

gracen opened her eyes slowly, her vision being filled with blinding light. it was morning.

she was sweating like crazy, her breath still not catching up to a healthy level. "i—can't—breathe." gracen grabbed her chest, heaving up and down. her head was spinning and she couldn't see straight. "h-help—"

her nurse grabbed an oxygen mask sitting next to her bed and covered gracen's nose and mouth with it. oxygen filled her lungs and her breathing regained control. calm washed over her. yet she was still so panicked.

those dreams. there was a man. was this the person doctor reid—spencer—was talking about? gracen shivered at the thought of the empty-faced man staring back at her. she wanted to cry.

gracen sat drowning in her own thoughts. for those five days, she had been drowning in guilt, thinking she had killed those people—her friends, family.

the girl thought back to her and spencer's conversation from last night. he made more sense of it. something happened, something slipped out of the dark depths of her own mind, something painful. gracen rubbed the scars on her arm uncomfortably.

gracen looked at the nurse, slipping her a small smile. after a small explanation of what had happened, the nurse nodded in understanding. "would you like to go outside, miss jones? i will get your lunch and we can sit out there and eat."

gracen cocked her head to the side. "why?"

"...uh, truthfully, the man who left the hospital late at night told me to take you outside everyday." she shrugged. "rambled on about vitamin d. i don't know, but it sounds like a good idea."

gracen's eyebrows furrowed, and then she chuckled, mustering up the energy to sit up. "vitamin d. okay."

—

"get some rest tonight team. we have a tough case to work on tomorrow." hotch announced, as the BAU groaned in relief, all of them slumping on their desks after hours and hours of paperwork and sorting through cases. there hadn't been another body from the "x" killer yet, which lingered on all of their minds. he went from killing almost everyday, and suddenly he skipped today?

serial killers didn't take vacations.

"reid, are you heading up to jones'?" morgan asked.

i cocked my head to the side. "uh—" oh. now he remembered. he was supposed to be getting closer to the girl so that they could catch the killer. spencer didn't mind at all, in fact, he was glad morgan reminded him of the certain blonde. "y-yeah. i'm heading up there now."

"want me to tag along?" the buff man asked.

"um, i-i think i got it." reid said quickly, before morgan could find any other reason to come with him. spencer, though he didn't say, wanted to talk to the girl alone.

it would be better for her also, since he and her spent hours talking yesterday. seeing a new face would make her uncomfortable. spencer thought, trying to make sense of him wanting to be alone with the girl. "i got it."

morgan raised his eyebrow suspiciously. "oh? ...oh." he smirked, patting his pal on the back roughly. spencer flinched, not saying another word as he ran off before morgan could ask any more questions.

it's not like he had a thing for the girl, she was mentally unstable and he only needed her cooperation for the investigation of the killer. well, at least that's what spencer tried to tell himself as he slipped out of the bau doors.

—

"miss jones, you have a visitor." her nurse—who's name she found out was amanda green, informed the girl after talking for a little outside as they ate lunch.

the door opened wider and a tall, lanky figure stopped inside, thanking the nurse as he shut the door behind him.

gracen's smile appeared seeing that doctor spencer reid came to visit again, like he promised, and—

oh.

the man was drenched in water, and gracen diverted her eyes quickly to the window, where she saw that it was pouring outside. what had he been doing? sitting out in the rain like a homeless person?

"w-why are you so wet?" she asked, heat rising up to her cheeks an spencer ruffled his unruly hair, water dripping everywhere including on her. he didn't seem to notice.

spencer stopped and looked up at her, from what she could see out of the corner of her eye. "rain. a lot of it." he chuckled sheepishly.

spencer grabbed a chair and pulled it closer to the bed, sitting down. gracen saw the movement only out of her peripheral vision, as she couldn't look at him.

"gracen?" the genius asked. "something wrong?"

"fine." she snapped her head up and shook it, gulping.

the thing that had caught her attention was that spencer just happened to be wearing a white button up shirt, his sleeves slightly rolled up. his tie was all crooked and loose—but his shirt was absolutely soaked. gracen could see his skin underneath and the outline of his toned upper body—peeking through the thin fabric that turned translucent due to the water.

spencer reid was a pretty skinny dude, he was thinner than an average man, but that didn't mean that he was a stick—gracen now realized. obviously he had to physically trained to be in the fbi, too. gracen thought.

she quickly diverted her eyes and focused more on the symmetricalness his face, as more heat rose to her cheeks. he looked really crazy and messy and she thought it was really attractive. gracen forced the thoughts out of her head, releasing her bottom lip from her teeth. he was only here to investigate.

spencer looked more concerned then ever now. "uh-um, gracen, do you have a fever?" he asked. spencer reached in his bag, pulling out latex gloves and putting them on, just so that he could feel her forehead.

"did you put on gloves just so you could touch my forehead?" gracen blurted, smiling. she found it charming.

spencer pulled back his hand, awkwardly taking the gloves off. "is-is that weird?"

she shook her head, chuckling. "are you a germaphobe, spencer reid?"

"i-i mean, just a little. you don't know what kind of bacteria can spread, i-in fact, we have like 100 trillion bacteria cells on us, who's to say there's not something killer amongst them?" spencer rambled on about the statistics of harmful bacteria on a human.

gracen rolled her eyes. "but it's worth it."

"no, it's not. dying is not worth it, gracen." he replied.

"maybe that human connection is worth it. touching someone, i mean." gracen said softly. but she wouldn't know. she hadn't touched an actual human being for a good ten years.

spencer paused to think about what she was saying and he shrugged. "never tried it."

the girl narrowed her eyes. "i don't have to be a profiler to know you've hugged someone before." she laughed. "you're just being a diva."

"i'm not a diva, i just like to keep my bacteria happy, but thanks." he rolled his eyes playfully.

"funny." she chuckled.

the gracen now and the gracen from before, spencer realized, was shockingly different. the psychotic, mentally unstable gracen was terrifying, and so difficult to handle that spencer doubted anyone could imagine her as the peaceful girl she actually was. she was a good representation of the messed up world ruining another happy person.

he side-eyed her, then the rest of the room. "i like this room a lot better. it's more...home-y. isn't it?"

gracen nodded. "home-y. like homie."

"huh?"

"they let me use a laptop. homie means friend." gracen said factually, like it was a piece of knowledge that only she knew.

"that's funny." spencer chuckled.

"what's funny?" she asked.

"that-that you didn't know what that meant." he said lightly.

gracen rolled her eyes. "of course i didn't. it's not like called me homie those ten years while he kept me."

spencer suddenly froze, his eyes widening.

ben.

why did she say the name ben?

"gracen—" he muttered. "—who's ben?"

gracen looked up to meet spencer's round eyes, her own wide with horror.

"i don't know."

—