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“By your response to danger, it is easy to see how you have lived and what has been done to you. You show whether you want to stay alive, whether you think you deserve to, and whether you believe it’s any good to act.” -Jenny Holzer
…
I.
As Spencer topped the stairs, gun extended, he didn’t know what he expected to find in the unfinished second story of the bank. Dust floated through the air, and in it, he noted shoe tracks—someone had passed through here, and not too long ago. He rounded the corner. There, blindfolded and gagged, sat Aaron—a bomb strapped to his chest and digital clock counting down in neon numbers. “Oh, dear god,” Spencer breathed. “Hotch!” Aaron lifted his head, his mouth fighting against the tight gag. “Hotch!”
Spencer hadn’t cleared the floor of other people, but that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. The bright numbers assailed him like bullets from an enemy battalion, and he could focus on nothing but the countdown. He holstered his gun and skidded across the floor on his knees, pulling the cloth from Aaron’s eyes and then from his mouth. Heavy chains bound him to the pillar. He wasn’t going anywhere fast. I’m not going to be able to cut these loose in time. He didn’t have any tools to spring these chains off of Aaron’s chest. “Reid, get out of here.” His voice was a desperate, thirsty rasp. Spencer sized up the bomb fixed to Aaron’s chest. “Go! Get out of here, clear the building—”
“No, the bomb squad is on their way—” He touched his headset. “Morgan, how far out is the bombsquad?”
“ Three minutes. ” Spencer’s panicked eyes danced to Aaron, whose serious gaze did not waver. “ Why do you ask? Where are you? Have you seen Hotch? ”
“Gotta go.”
“ Reid! ” Spencer pulled off the headset and dropped it on the floor, ignoring Morgan’s voice spitting out of it. He swallowed hard, his heart floundering in his throat. Think, think, think . Spencer did not know very much about explosives. That was Morgan’s area of expertise; he preferred to let the professional handle things that could kill him if he touched them wrong.
He regretted that, now.
Aaron’s voice cut into him. “ No one is going to be able to get here and dismantle it in less than two minutes. You need to go.”
“I’m not going anywhere, just let me think!” Spencer stared at the keypad. “Four digits, four digits—they met in 2008—” It’s a chance. It’s worth a shot. I have to try, dammit, I have to try. He plugged in the numbers, 2-0-0-8.
The bomb vibrated as the computer inside it rejected the attempt. The screen flashed. Spencer choked on his own breath, half expecting it to spark right then and there, though he had two chances left—two tries to deactivate this before it would kill both of them.
Aaron was painfully still. “You need to get out of here. Just go.” His voice was steady, almost hollow—he wasn’t afraid, Why isn’t he afraid? Spencer was scared out of his goddamn mind. “Spencer.” He sharpened his tone. Spencer lifted his gaze to look at him. “That’s an order.”
Spencer set his jaw, but he couldn’t keep his lips from quivering or the tears from budding in his eyes. “You can give all the orders you want, but I’m not going to leave you here alone.” You can’t fire me if we’re both dead. If Aaron decided to fire him after he saved his life, Spencer could live with that. He swallowed hard, his hands trembling. I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to—
“Don’t make a martyr of yourself.”
Spencer ignored him. His hands hovered there, inches away from Aaron’s chest—closer than he had ever dreamed they would come. Only when he slept, only when his brain got to cook up its own fantasies, did he get this close to Aaron. Smelling his cologne like this was an unfathomable joy for him, but tainted by the heaviness of this world, he could not appreciate it. He pressed his tongue between his teeth. Less than a minute— Gulping, he fought to steady himself. “They—They met in Chad, Chad, 2-4-2-3—”
The screen flashed again and vibrated.
Aaron leaned his head back against the pillar, squirming as the discomfort took over. He was losing his ability to act unflappable. “Spencer, please. ” His voice was softer now, and he didn’t make eye contact. “They don’t have to lose both of us.” The headset kept tittering at him. Spencer wanted to smash it, but he didn’t think his limbs would cooperate. “Run.” His voice was tight. “Tell Jack I’m sorry.”
Spencer’s jaw dropped with incredulity. “I am not going to leave you here and then look your son in the face and tell him I did nothing to stop him from becoming an orphan!” Spencer was shrieking, and he didn’t quite know why. Forty-five, forty-four, forty-three, forty-two—
“You don’t need to be here!” Aaron was yelling back. “Get out of here! Go!”
“ No! ”
“Why not?”
Tears rolled down Spencer’s cheeks. I didn’t want him to see me cry. It was too late for that now. “Because I love you!” It burst out of him, everything he had always told himself he would never say, but now it did not matter, because he would die beside the man he loved before he walked away and left him alone. “I love you, and I am not leaving the man I love alone with a bomb strapped to his chest! I’m not doing it! I’d rather die!”
You will die, Spencer half-expected him to say, but he didn’t. His face melted into a tender, solemn look—rueful and melancholy, ten thousand regrets settling upon his countenance. He admired Spencer the way one would admire a snowglobe, all the people within it distant and untouchable, living in a blizzarding world. Was that what Spencer was to him? A tiny, distant figurine through frosted glass? Was that how he had to perceive things to keep from losing himself in the madness of it all?
Something donned on him. His eyes widened. His face lit up. “Izzy.”
Spencer’s brow quirked, confused at the statement. “What?”
“Izzy. Her name is Izzy. This is a love letter to her—”
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen— Spencer’s fingers punched in the numbers 4-9-9-9. The screen flashed green.The bomb settled. He was right! Izzy! “Oh—Izzy—” He was too breathless to make another sound of approval, to thank Aaron for his quick thinking that saved both of them.
The second hatch sprung open, three wires intercrossing, a second clock counting down. Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight— “Oh my god—”
“Jesus Christ.” The yellow, blue, and red lines twisted up together and fed into the computer firing the clock. Twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-two—
The headset kept leaking Morgan’s voice, demanding Spencer’s coordinates, asking where he was, what was happening, why wasn’t he answering, did he have eyes on Hotch? and Spencer couldn’t think. He couldn’t think about anything but yellow and red and blue, the three primary colors. Primary colors blended together to make secondary colors, and secondary colors made tertiary colors, and then he remembered there were only three color receptors in the human eye, but the eye of the mantis shrimp had sixteen color receptors, wasn’t that unfair that there were so many colors that a mantis shrimp could see that humans could not? They were going to die without having seen the full spectrum of colors the way a mantis shrimp saw it—
“Cut the yellow,” Aaron said.
Sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen— “Why?”
Twelve, eleven, ten— “Reid!”
Spencer fumbled for his pocket knife. Nine, eight, seven. He flipped out the blade. Six, five, four. He sawed through the yellow wire. The computer died down. Spencer’s body gave way as the bomb defused. His knife clattered to the floor. He couldn’t hold a grip on anything. Shuddering breaths left his lungs, which refused to catch up with him. Tears streamed down his face. His head fell forward and rested on Aaron’s shoulder, and he wept into the crook of his neck.
Between broken sobs, he caught his breath. “How did you—know—it was yellow?”
Aaron’s jaw carried a slight tremble. He closed his eyes. “I didn’t,” he whispered. “I just think you look good in yellow.” Spencer’s whole body stiffened; he was afraid to move, afraid to ask, afraid to dare— “I love you, too, Spencer.”
…
II.
Spencer rested his head against the back of the frigid steel pillar where he was bound, his arms intersecting with Aaron’s; he could feel the coarseness of Aaron’s arm hair rubbing against his skin. He blinked. The scratchy blindfold rubbed his eyelashes the wrong way and made his eyes all itchy and teary. It burned. The cold air stung his lungs. He kept his breaths slow. Insensible heat loss through exhalation is not the way I want to go. But perhaps it would be kinder than what their captor had planned for them.
Aaron’s uneven breaths crackled beside him. Spencer’s hands twisted, finding Aaron’s wrists where they were back to back, and touched his radial artery. But without eyes on a clock, he couldn’t give a number—only that Aaron’s heart rate was definitely elevated. From pain or from blood loss, Spencer couldn’t be sure. “How do you feel?”
A sharp inhalation followed. “I’ll be fine.” He measured his voice with care to keep from sounding strained, but somehow, that made it worse for Spencer.
“Are you still bleeding?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see.” Aaron’s trousers had been saturated when their captor had finally torn them apart from one another and bound them to the icy pole in this freezer. “How—” Aaron shivered against him, a tremor in his voice from the chill. “How long can we be like this?”
He didn’t ask what he really wanted to know— How long will we survive here? —but Spencer understood his meaning. “The average—” He licked his lips. They were chapping. “The average temperature of a commercial freezer is, uh, below zero degrees Fahrenheit, so—” He quivered. “Frostbite will set in within—within half an hour. We’re not suitably dressed…” He swallowed hard. “A few hours. At the absolute most.”
“Less for me.” Aaron had lost a lot of blood. It would freeze against his body and make it harder to warm him, and he had less blood volume to carry warmth. The chill would kill him a lot faster than it would kill Spencer.
I wouldn’t have said it. “Yeah.” I’ll be alone. Spencer’s jaw tightened. Him, alone, tied to this cold pole in a commercial freezer, with nothing to keep him company but Aaron’s cooling corpse… We have to figure out a way out of here.
“He’ll come back.” Aaron shook beside him. “He’ll—he’ll come back. This isn’t his end game—”
He’s right. This didn’t fit the profile. The unsub always left two victims—one decimated with traces of opioids in their system, the other frozen to death. One victim was put to sleep and then slowly hacked to pieces while the other watched and then died while living with the memory. Which one of us do you think he’s going to cut up? Spencer wanted to ask, but he held his tongue. “Right.” He tried to rub his hands against each other to warm them. They throbbed from the chill. He wondered how much longer they would hurt before frostbite set in and began to kill off his digits. He wondered if it would be a relief when his body began to numb and he could no longer feel that pain.
“Reid?” Spencer paused the movement. “Do you have enough slack to swing around?”
Spencer tested the bounds again. “Yeah.” Sharing warmth. Smart. His feet skated across the icy floor as he propelled himself around the pole in a pivot, coming to nestle at Aaron’s left side—not his right, where his leg had been shot. They rested against one another. Spencer hesitated to press himself up against Aaron, but at the sound of his choppy, pained breaths, he allowed himself to draw nearer.
Aaron’s sleepy head drooped onto Spencer’s shoulder. “Thanks.” His breath was warm on Spencer’s cheek. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “You were right. The alley was a trap.”
“ I’m sorry.” Aaron’s hair was cold, but Spencer let his chin prop up there. “I should’ve run when you said—without two victims, it wouldn’t have fit his MO—” And he probably would’ve killed you to get rid of the evidence. Spencer tried not to think of that. There was every possibility the man would’ve left Aaron behind and picked another victim, a better opportunity. Instead, Spencer had surrendered rather than flee and leave Aaron behind, and their chances of escape were a fraction of what they would have been otherwise.
Aaron shook his head. “I never would’ve run from you. It was wrong for me to ask that of you.”
“Do you think they’ll find us in time?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” That doesn’t sound like a vote of confidence. Aaron’s blindfold was a scratchy burlap like Spencer’s. He didn’t like the sensation. Wait a minute. The burlap was loose. He turned his head. “Reid, what are you doing?”
“Hold still.” Spencer grabbed the hem of the burlap in his teeth and tugged it down. It slid off of Aaron’s face and pooled around his neck. Aaron grunted, turning and grabbing Spencer’s blindfold, as well. Blinking, the harsh light of the freezer assailed him, and he began to take in the sight of everything around them.
Emptiness. Empty shelves, ice on the floor, a few plastic bags with nothing inside—this freezer was used for nothing but the butchering that occurred here. A camera faced them. “He’s watching us,” Spencer whispered. He glanced sideways at Aaron, whose own gaze fixed on his leg. A frozen pool of blood rested beneath his limb. The flow had slowed to a trickle. The cold is helping staunch it. As Aaron lifted his head and tilted it back, Spencer noted his pallor and the slowness to his movements. “We have to get out of here.” He’s lost a lot of blood.
Solemn, dark eyes met his. Aaron didn’t say anything at all, but written in his face, Spencer saw nothing but resignation. There isn’t a way out.
The doors to the freezer swung open. A tall, muscular man wearing a heavy coat, hat, and gloves wheeled a steel table in and dragged behind him a set of metal tools and a few bags of fluids and IV supplies. “Nice to see you again, agents.” He had kind eyes. He set up the table. “You two are a little bit outside of my normal choice in victims, but… Well, you see, I’ve been watching you for awhile, and I find myself so enamored by the two of you. You’re precious!”
Aaron blinked. “What?” he echoed.
“Don’t what me, Agent Hotchner. You’ve both got it bad for each other, okay? I just thought I’d help you out a little bit. You know, make you realize it. Make you regret you didn’t say it any sooner.” Spencer’s heart skipped a beat. “I suppose it’s a little too late for you now, but better late than never, I always say.” The man crouched down in front of them. He extended a hand. “Don’t worry, Agent Hotchner. In a few minutes, you’ll be asleep, and you’ll forget all about that pain in your leg and everything else… You won’t know the end when it comes.” He patted Aaron’s cheek.
Spencer lunged forward and sank his teeth into the gloved hand. The man backhanded him in return. “Nice try, Dr. Reid. Not the first time someone has bitten me. Something about this place just tends to bring out the worst in people.” Aaron didn’t speak; he leaned his head back against the pole. The cold and the blood loss had gotten to him. He closed his eyes.
“Hotch—” Spencer said, desperate, and Aaron’s eyes fluttered back open. He fought to stay alert. “Stay awake, don’t go to sleep—”
A ring of keys jingled in front of them. “No need to worry, Dr. Reid. I won’t hurt him very much at all—” Spencer collected his legs under him, skating on the icy floor, and stood, trying to position himself over Aaron. Their arms were all tangled up in the handcuffs. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
“Take me. Not him. Take me.”
“Now why would I do a stupid thing like that?”
Spencer’s eyes stung. “Because his son deserves to have something whole to bury—” His throat closed up. Is this better? Was it better to die asleep and in pieces or awake? Would it even make a difference to Aaron? If there’s any chance we can get away… If there was a chance they could escape, there was a difference. “There’s no one who will care enough about what’s left of me. Take me.”
The man laughed. “You think I care about what happens to you after I drop you off together in some dumpster? I don’t care.”
From below, Aaron mumbled, “Reid, it’s fine…” Enunciating his words was a struggle for him, audible in his voice.
“It’s not fine—” Spencer’s voice cracked.
“Is there something else you would like to say, Dr. Reid?” The key ring jingled. Spencer’s heart raced. Tears budded in his eyes. Don’t let him see you cry. It was too late, too late, too late— “I can make a bargain with you. Tell us both what you would like to say, and I’ll let you assume Agent Hotchner’s place instead. Give his family some peace of mind. Does that suit you?” Spencer licked his lips. “Go ahead, doctor. We don’t have all day. Why is this really so important to you?”
The truth Spencer had strangled in his throat for months rose to the surface. “I—I—” I should lie, I should lie, I should lie— He could not think of a single believable lie that would convince this man to change his mind, but the truth, the truth would work, the truth would get him onto that table. The truth would give them whatever sliver of a chance remained. “I love him,” he whispered. He stared at the man, head low, blinking quickly, tears falling one by one. “I love him. I—I want to take his place.” His body would be desecrated, but Aaron’s wouldn’t be, and that mattered to him somehow, that he did something honorable now where he hadn’t done it before. He could feel Aaron’s eyes on him from below. He could not bear to look at him. He could not bear to see what laid in his eyes.
“So you would say you’re willing to die for him?” Spencer nodded. “Use your words, Dr. Reid.”
He gulped. “Yes.”
“Did you know, Agent Hotchner?” Aaron shook his head. “Is there anything you’d like to say?”
He opened his mouth. It hung there for a moment before he managed to speak. “Spencer…” His voice was thin and weary. “I wish you wouldn’t do this.” Spencer’s heart sank. “I don’t want… to see you die…”
The man chuckled. “Oh, how sweet. It’s so unfair, isn’t it? One of you will watch the other fall to pieces. Literally.” He walked behind Spencer. “No funny business, Dr. Reid. This building is locked down. You will not find a way out, and when I catch you, I will ensure your end is much more painful than the one I have planned now. But that won’t be a problem for us, will it, tiger?” He patted Spencer’s cheek. Spencer grimaced but did not lash out again. “I’ve tamed the beast. Such a meek little man until your precious is threatened. I bet this has never happened before. I bet Agent Hotchner thought you were a coward this whole time… What a change of pace.”
“I never… ” Aaron’s heavy eyes followed them.
The handcuffs fell from Spencer’s wrists. “Climb on the table for me, if you please. On your back.” Spencer’s hands were numb and had gone gray through his fingers. They did not want to bear his weight as he hoisted himself onto the table. He slipped. The cold steel burned through his clothes. He lay flat on his back, gazing up at the ceiling. The freezer hummed, but he could still hear Aaron’s rapid breaths. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to see what’s on his face.
“This will be quick, doctor. Fentanyl is fast-acting. You’ll be out before you even know what hit you.” The man scrubbed the back of Spencer’s hand with an alcohol wipe. “You have good veins. I bet all the nurses love you when you get bloodwork done.”
There was the stick, a familiar feeling, and then something even more familiar crawling up his arm, through his body. Warmth flooded him. The floating sensation, like resting on a cloud, carried him away—farther than he had been, maybe ever before, because this was stronger than Dilaudid, and he hadn’t done it in years, but—
I’m still awake. Experimentally, he flexed a muscle in his arm. It twitched. I can still move…
“Out like a light,” purred the man. “Are you watching, Agent Hotchner? Do you see? I always start with the abdomen first.” He pulled up Spencer’s shirt. The chill stung his belly. “The spleen. The gallbladder, if he still has one. The appendix. The nonessentials come out first.” The man laughed. “If you’re lucky, I’ll feed them to you.”
Aaron’s breaths rasped faster. “You’re not going to get away with this. They’re going to find you.”
He chuckled. “I know. But not fast enough to save you… and surely not fast enough to save your boyfriend, here.” He drew a pattern on Spencer’s belly with his finger. Spencer resisted the urge to twitch. “After the abdomen, I’ll open up his chest. I get away with as much as I can while his heart is still beating. I like to watch it, you know, watch it all… and once it stops, you’ll definitely get a bite of that. And then I’ll hack him up into pieces. Easier to manage. Not you, though, you’ll stay in one piece. And I’ll leave his head so you have some company. Something to stare at.”
The tools on the table clinked together. “Well, Agent Hotchner? I think it’s time for us to begin. A vertical incision is always the place to start…” The scalpel pinched just above Spencer’s navel.
His arms flung upward, knocking the scalpel away. The man stumbled backward. “Huh?”
Grabbing a handful of scalpels into his numbing fist, Spencer swung at his face. Every blade raked downward from his eye to his neck. Boots catching on ice, the man plummeted backward and landed on his ass. Spencer fell on top of him. Everything spun around in circles. He felt groggy and slow. He clutched the largest blade and stuck it in the man’s neck again and again. “What—” The word was garbled on blood.
“Bet you didn’t know there were—junkies in the FBI, you sick—motherfucker—” Spencer gasped his words between coughs. His stomach turned. His arms were itchy, but his hands were numb. Nothing would focus. The man’s protests quickly became feeble and then subsided. “Fuck you.” Staggering back to his feet, Spencer closed his left eye, trying to eliminate the double vision. He pulled the safety on the freezer. The door popped open. Heat emanated the room.
He slipped his way back over to Aaron. “The keys… his belt.”
Spencer’s fingers did not want to bend. Undoing a lock would be difficult. Instead, he picked up some large bolt cutters from the toppled tray of tools and sawed through the handcuffs. Aaron fell forward. Spencer caught him. “C’mon, we gotta—” The world was all woozy at the edges. “We gotta get out of here.”
He tried to hoist Aaron up under the arms, but even sober, he wouldn’t have been strong enough for that. They dragged themselves out of the freezer into a basement. “There—” A landline telephone hung on the wall. Aaron sat on the floor, his injured leg extended. Spencer lost his balance and fell beside him. “How—How did you…” Aaron blinked, still fighting to stay awake. “How did you know it would work?”
“Didn’t.” Spencer’s voice felt thick. I’m going to have to puke.
Aaron paused. “Did you mean it?”
Now, that’s not fair. Spencer wasn’t thinking straight; he couldn’t give a logical answer, a real answer. He had just flushed five years of sobriety down the toilet and was now higher than he had ever been before in his life, and nowhere in this would he have had the capacity to tell Aaron a lie…
But then again, he didn’t think he would’ve lied, anyway. “Yeah. I did.”
Aaron’s mouth opened and closed and opened again, just hanging there as he fought for an answer. He didn’t have one. Instead, he lowered his tired head and rested it on Spencer’s shoulder. That was answer enough. “When will help be here?”
Spencer sighed, staring at the telephone on the wall. “Probably after I call them.”
…
III.
Gunfire rained down from above at Aaron, diving to hide behind the armored wall of the Suburban. His tinnitus rang in his ears. Gun extended, he shot at one of the men on the roofs above him. That one fell. The next fell, also. Distantly, someone called his name, but he couldn’t make them out. He shot again, the last on the roof falling back—
“Hotch, get down —” A whole body smothered his as the sound of another thunderous gunshot rang out. His face kissed the asphalt. His gun clattered to the ground beside him. “Oh…” The long, exhaled sound followed, right into the shell of his ear, and Aaron did not need to see any wound to know his savior had just taken a bullet for him. He grabbed two fistfuls of clothes and dragged himself and the limp body around the back of the car, the motor still idling and pumping out hot exhaust fumes all over them.
Spencer’s face was screwed up, both hands pressed to the exit wound on his abdomen where the bullet had ripped straight through his back out his front. Blood covered his hands. “Reid, what the hell? I’m wearing kevlar—you’re not! ” The grimace on Spencer’s face sank deeper there, somehow managing to look sheepish—sheepish, even now. Aaron regretted his sharp words. He placed his hand over Spencer’s and pressed it in deeper. He held his hand over the buttons on his headset. “I need medics, now. ”
“ Medics are two and a half minutes out, sir, ” Garcia reported.
Two and a half minutes. How long did he have? Spencer was the only one who knew the answer to that, and Aaron wouldn’t take this time to ask him. Blood rushed around their hands. It was hot and sticky. The summer sun baked down upon the pavement. Sweat rolled down Aaron’s face. He pressed his other hand there, too, trying to stem the flow. It just keeps coming—
“Sorry.” Spencer closed one eye in a grimace, the other half-open. “I yelled—” He breathed harder and faster. “You couldn’t hear—sniper—on the other roof—” His hands went slack and fell off of his abdomen. “Sorry,” he mumbled again.
“Sh, sh, don’t be sorry, I didn’t mean that—” A sniper would’ve taken a headshot. The kevlar wouldn’t have helped him. He saved my life. And now his blood poured all over Aaron’s hands. “Don’t try to talk. The ambulance is coming. You’re going to be fine—” I haven’t seen this much blood in a long time. “Look at me.” Light brown eyes gazed up at him. “You’re going to be fine.” The stench of gasoline and heat rolling up from the city cement assaulted him. This is a terrible place to die.
Spencer coughed. Blood dotted his lips. “You—You sure about that?” He tried to put one hand back over Aaron’s, tried to offer some feeble help, but his limbs were weak and uncooperative. “There’s—lots of blood vessels—probably not gonna… make it to the blood bank…”
Aaron shushed him again. “You’re going to be fine,” he repeated, trying to make himself believe it, even if Spencer wouldn’t. “They’re coming. They’re coming. Look at me. Look at me.” Spencer’s eyes were reluctant to stay on him. “Don’t fall asleep on me. Look at me. Look. I’m right here. You’re safe.” Spencer rested his head on the back bumper of the Suburban. He shivered. Aaron tried to press harder on his belly, but he couldn’t tell if it was helping.
Lips quivering, Spencer breathed faster and shallower. “I’m—I’m cold, I…” He struggled to finish his sentence. “I shouldn’t be cold, right? It’s… It was so hot, earlier…” His eyelashes fluttered.
“It’s fine, it’s fine—” The heat from the engine of the Suburban billowed out around them and smothered their lungs, but it seemed to have no effect on Spencer, who shivered. Aaron sat down and pulled Spencer into his lap, arms wrapped around him, holding tight to his abdomen. “Better now?” Spencer had no spine and rested against his chest. He nodded and grunted an affirmative approval. “Reid, wake up. Look at me—”
“‘M awake, I just—” He coughed. More blood rose to his lips. “Gotta tell you—something. Before I—y’know—”
“It can wait,” Aaron interrupted, trying to strangle his own desperation in his stomach. “It can wait, it can wait until we’re at the hospital, and they’ll give you blood, and you’ll be warm, and then you can tell me whatever you want—”
Spencer smiled, a rueful expression. “Prolly not… gonna happen.” The thick slur to his voice made Aaron’s stomach flip. “I love you.” His eyes fluttered shut. “Should’ve said it… long time ago.” Aaron’s throat closed up. This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening, this isn’t happening— “Sorry… I just… Thinking about you… Not that we ever… could’ve been… but regret… not saying it… any sooner.”
“Sh, Spencer, it’s okay, it’s okay—” Spencer’s head rested against his chest. He did not lift it again. “I love you, too.”
Distantly, sirens shrieked from the approaching ambulance.