❝Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.❞

MARY SHELLEY

✩

2.1 : bad mood

OR

season 7, episode 2 : proof

AFTER THE MEETING WITH HOTCH LAST NIGHT, FIN IS HOPING FOR AN EASY WEDNESDAY. She might finish up her paperwork, spend lunch with Penelope, and maybe convince Hotch to let her off early. She needs to make a grocery list, too. As long as Esther's still around, Fin's not allowed to run errands alone; either she goes with Spencer, or she sends one of the agents assigned to her house. They're usually glad to go and do anything.

 But all those plans go out the window when Fin wakes up to her phone buzzing on the nightstand. It's a text from Penelope: Sorry to bug you, Hazelnut, but we've got a case :( Meeting at 8!

And as it is currently 6:50, Fin and Spencer need to hustle. They both take über-quick showers, scarf down some leftover muffins from Fin's last baking session, and are in the car by 7:35 on the dot. Fin's pretty proud of them, to be honest.

But it's clear from the moment Spencer starts the car that he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He doesn't talk to Fin at all on the drive in, doesn't turn on the radio, and bumps the curb with the front tires when he pulls in to park. He's in a bad mood, and Fin's worried. Spencer in a bad mood is a ticking time bomb, and it's only a matter of time before something lights the fuse and he explodes.

The elevator doors open, and Spencer strides out, already flipping through a file.

"Hey, where have you two been?" JJ asks, as she and Emily follow them toward the BAU doors. "I wanted to do brunch this weekend."

"I had to deal with some stuff with my mom," Spencer lies, before Fin can respond. "Have you seen Garcia?"

"Uh, she's with Rossi," JJ says slowly, sounding hurt.

Spencer strides off toward the conference room, and Fin pauses in the doorway, glancing back at JJ. "Next time, Jaj, call me about brunch, okay? We'll reschedule."

"He hates me." JJ sighs, shaking her head.

"He's just in a bad mood," Fin says, shrugging. "It'll blow over."

At least, she hopes so.

The conference room is silent, almost eerily so, until Rossi and Penelope walk in together, talking about Italian food and recipes. "Maybe you could show a Disney film and stick with burgers," Rossi quips, sitting down next to Morgan.

"You know, Rossi, you could always give Penelope a cooking lesson," Morgan suggests, his eyes twinkling mischievously.

Rossi gives Morgan a look that clearly says You just signed your death warrant, as Penelope's mouth forms into an excited 'O'. "Oh, my gosh, that would be amazing. That would be like–that would be like the Iron Chef meets the BAU. And we could do it at your house!"

"I don't have a house," Rossi mutters grumpily. "I have a mansion."

Fin chuckles, shaking her head, just as Hotch enters the room. "All right, let's get started."

JJ glances down at the remote next to her, pausing hesitantly for a moment before pushing it toward Penelope. It's been a little weird having her around as a profiler, not a media liaison, although she was always more than just their public face. JJ's an incredible profiler, and Fin's just happy to have her back. The BAU feels more like home with her around.

"All right, mes amis," Penelope says, hopping up from her seat, remote and tablet in hand. "You are jetting to Durant, Oklahoma, because in the last three days, two women have been found dead after being sexually tortured and then blinded with a sulfuric acid solution."

Fin winces. So...not a relaxing Wednesday.

"Abby Elcott is our first victim," Penelope continues, bringing up two photos of a pretty young blonde girl on the screen. "Nineteen-year-old art student. She was headed to campus for an advanced drawing class. She'd been missing for two days. Same goes for our second victim, Beth Westerly, seventeen." Two more photos, this time of another attractive blonde girl. "She had just finished her coffee shop shift and was on her way to a bar method class."

"Both low-risk victims," Emily says, staring at the screen.

"And physically similar," Morgan adds.

"How close are the two abduction sites?" asks Rossi, squinting at the screen. He's far too proud to buy reading glasses, insisting that he's "not that old" and that he's had 20/20 vision his entire life. Fin's stopped arguing with him.

"Five miles apart at bus stops," Penelope replies, tapping quickly on her tablet screen. "Abby's cell was found near one, Beth's scarf near the other."

"Where are the dump sites?" Spencer leans back in his chair, frowning a little.

"One in an alley, the other in a field."

"So he stapled their eyes open, then he blinded them," JJ says, pushing her file away, a look of slight disgust on her face.

"That reads as a need for control," Fin says, remembering the textbook chapter on control freaks. "He's exerting dominance over them by leaving them defenseless. They can't close their eyes or look away."

"Or it could be about shame," Spencer counters, rocking back and forth in her chair. "Perhaps the unsub is disfigured himself. Blinding the victims leaves them helpless, lost, totally dependent. It may be a manifestation of how he sees himself in this world."

"It is a form of enucleation, just without the scalpel." Emily nods, glancing around the table.

"His face is the last they see before darkness." Rossi grimaces, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

"Garcia, come up with a list of jobs that would give the unsub access to sulfuric acid," Hotch says, speaking for the first time. "The rest of us, wheels up in thirty minutes."

✩

Fin watches through the window as Hotch talks to Abby Elcott's distraught parents. This is her least favorite part about their job, confronting grieving people and squeezing information out of them. It's necessary, but that doesn't make it any easier.

She wonders how JJ and Spencer are doing. Hotch couldn't have known about Spencer's mood when he told them to go to the abduction sites together, but it's clear that Spencer's not just in a bad mood: He's angry, and especially at JJ.

Fin understands it: They've known each other for almost seven years, been through unimaginable things together, spent nearly every day together, and it's no secret that they're best friends. And for JJ to spend five months lying to Spencer's face... He's right to feel betrayed. But forgiveness has to come soon.

Fin was angry, too. But she's seen enough loss to know that it's a waste of precious time to hold a grudge. You never know when your last 'I love you' will be.

"Hey." Rossi appears from the doorway to her right. "Hotch and I are going to the M.E., Reid and JJ are headed to local thrift stores to see if they can find the victims' clothes or maybe get a description of our unsub. You want to come with?"

Fin shakes her head, finally tearing her eyes away from Abby Elcott's parents. "No...no, I'll stay here."

"You okay?" Rossi frowns at her. "You seem a little off today."

"I'm fine." Fin forces a weak smile. "It's just been a weird couple of weeks."

"I know." Rossi squeezes her shoulder gently. "But it'll get better."

Fin desperately hopes he's right.

She waits in the conference room, staring up at the case boards, Abby and Beth's faces permanently seared on the back of her eyelids. She sees them every time she closes her eyes.

There's something weird about this unsub, Fin realizes, as she stares at the photos. He blinds them, stabs them, both in the chest and the genital area, and then dresses them in 80s' clothing and dumps them in alleys or near dumpsters. It's a signal that they're trash, that they're where they belong, which is consistent with the sadistic killings.

But what doesn't fit is the blinding. The clothes.

Stabbing in the genitals... Changing their clothes...

Fin's eyes widen. "Oh. Okay."

She fishes her phone out of her pocket and calls Rossi. He picks up on the second ring. "Hey."

"Hey, is Hotch there with you?"

"Yeah, hold on. Okay, you're on speaker."

"I'm gonna call the others, too. Give me a second." Fin puts Rossi on hold and dials quickly, and within minutes, she's got Spencer, Morgan, JJ, and Emily on the phone, too. "Can everyone hear me?"

A chorus of yeses comes from her phone speaker. Fin takes a deep breath. "Okay, so I'm sitting here, staring at the case boards, and something's been bugging me about this unsub. Everything about him tracks as a traditional sadist. Overkill to the bodies, burning with sulfuric acid, disposing of them near dumpsters... But there's nothing sadistic about changing their clothes."

"What are you thinking?" asks Hotch.

"I think he's a jilted lover," Fin says, her eyes finding the photo of Beth Westerly on the board. "He was probably rejected by someone in the 80s, someone he's still obsessively in love with, and these girls are his surrogates. They probably look like her, too: blonde hair, blue eyes, between sixteen and twenty. He's dressing them up so that they match his fantasy of the woman he really wants."

"That fits with what we found at the M.E.," Rossi says. "He also poured sulfuric acid around Beth's nostril area. We think he's trying to take away their senses."

"Which means our next victim will probably have touch, taste, or hearing impacted," Spencer adds.

"You think he's taking away their senses because he was rejected by a woman?" Emily asks, and Fin can hear the frown on her face.

"Most likely he was in a situation as a teenager, maybe at a school dance or a party, where he made advances on a girl and she pushed him away." Fin drops into a chair, curling her legs underneath her. "Maybe he's unattractive, poor hygiene... It's likely the real object of his rage said something to the effect of, 'You're not cute, you don't smell good,' and he internalized it all these years."

"So what we need to find out is what triggered the killings," Morgan says. "If the initial rejection happened in the eighties, what made him start killing now?"

"That's our next priority. Good work, Finley," Hotch says. "Reid, JJ, anything at the thrift stores?"

"Yeah, the cashier was able to identify both Beth and Abby's clothes as being bought from his store," JJ replies. "And we found Abby's clothes hanging on a rack."

"So he's getting rid of his souvenirs," says Rossi. "What's he using to remember his victims, then?"

"That's what we need to find out," Hotch answers. "Good work, everyone."

Fin hangs up the phone and blows a breath out slowly, finally dragging her eyes away from the photos on the boards. She needs another cup of coffee.

✩

But before they can even begin to figure out the unsub's trigger, he kills again that night–and this time, the victim's mouth and tongue are burned. Rossi's sense theory was right. The crime scene photos are horrific.

Spencer's mood hasn't gotten any better, either, and Fin has hardly had time to sleep, let alone talk to him about it. He's giving both Emily and JJ the cold shoulder, and Fin overheard JJ telling Emily about some snarky comments he's made about being lied to or being offended. She understands his anger, but it's really pissing her off.

Hotch calls everyone together to give the profile. "We believe the unsub, or unknown subject, that we're looking for is a white male in his forties. This is someone who's reacting to rejection by a woman when he was a teenager in the 1980s. He's punishing his victims for their reactions to him by taking away their senses with sulfuric acid."

"We believe our unsub could possibly work part-time as a janitor or a mechanic, which would give him access to this chemical." Rossi leans casually against the desk in the center of the room, blazer abandoned on a nearby chair. Fin doesn't blame him; it's ninety degrees outside and the air conditioner is struggling to keep up.

"And after studying the disposal sites, we think it's likely that he's homeless," Morgan adds. "Now, how do we typically react toward the homeless? We judge them by their looks and their smells. It's that same negative reaction we believe that a woman had toward the unsub at some point in the eighties."

"The unsub's fixation on this woman is now all-consuming," Emily says. "It's caused him to develop obsessive love disorder. He most likely has tunnel vision and believes that she holds the key to his happiness."

"It's also incredibly likely that this woman is still in the unsub's life." Fin sneaks a glance at Spencer; his face is nearly expressionless, except for the slight furrow of his brow. "Whether by choice or not. Either she's still in his social circle or he's stalking her. Whatever the case may be, he is both in love with her and outraged at her, and at some point, this conflict will cause him to break down."

"He will do whatever it takes to be near her," JJ adds. "But another rejection will spiral him into depression."

"Which would lead to rape and murder of the surrogates who represent her," Spencer continues, crossing his arms tightly over his chest, "and it's only a matter of time before this rage and anger causes the unsub to go after her directly."

"Thank you." Hotch nods at the police officers watching them, and the profile is over.

Spencer immediately strides away from the group, heading toward the conference room, determinedly avoiding both Fin's and JJ's eyes. JJ goes after him, and Fin hesitates: They need to work this out on their own, but with Spencer's current mood, it's bound to get messy.

So she waits and watches. From where she's sitting, she can't hear what they're saying, but she can see everything.

JJ approaches Spencer, who avoids her gaze, stacking files on the table in front of him. He starts to leave, but then pauses, clearly triggered by something JJ says. And then she hears it: "You couldn't? Or you wouldn't?"

Spencer's tone is angry, condescending: Fin's had enough. She reaches them just as Spencer says, "What if I started taking Dilaudid again? Would you have let me?"

JJ's eyes widen slightly, her bottom lip trembling. "You didn't," she says, almost like she's trying to convince herself.

"Guys, stop," Fin says quietly, pushing Spencer back a few steps. "People are staring." It's true: nearly the entire police station is watching the argument unfold.

Spencer ignores her, his eyes trained on JJ. "Yeah, but I thought about it." He turns to leave, his knuckles white, grip tight around the file in his hand. Fin reaches for his wrist, but he shakes her off callously. Fin's stomach knots in anger. Uncalled for.

"Spence." JJ's voice quivers a little. "I'm sorry."

Spencer, who's looking at her sarcastically, arms raised in question, shakes his head. "It's too late, alright?" And he heads out of the room.

Fin doesn't have time to apologize to JJ, nor does she have the patience. Spencer has the right to be angry at JJ, Hotch, Emily, but he does not have the right to be angry at her. Maybe six months ago, but not anymore.

So she storms after him, calling his name, and when he finally stops walking and turns to face her, she shoves him into the nearest open doorway and closes the door behind them.

It's dark, the only light coming from beneath the door, but as Fin's eyes adjust, she realizes she's just shut the two of them into a janitor's closet. It would be funny if she weren't so angry.

Spencer opens his mouth, but Fin shakes her head fervently. "Don't you even start with me. Spencer, I'm not a violent person. God knows I've had enough abuse in my life, but you are pushing me to the edge right now. I'm angry enough to give our future kids some character development. There is no reason for you to be petty on a damn case. People are watching us, some people idolize us, and you're being pissy because your friend lied to you? What are we, twelve? Grow the hell up, for God's sake. Be angry, but at least be professional about it."

Spencer's watching her with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment on his face, and when she pauses for breath, chest heaving, he raises his eyebrows at her. "Feel better?"

Fin sighs heavily and nods. "Yes, I do."

"Good." Spencer blows a breath out, chewing on his lip. "At least one of us does."

As the blood in Fin's veins cools, and her heart rate slows, she realizes the weight of everything she just said and immediately feels guilty. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have blown up at you–"

"No, everything you said was true. There's just–I can't put myself in her shoes, you know? I was grieving Emily and it hurt, and she just watched me. She watched us and she never said anything." Spencer rubs his eyes; all this shouting probably gave him a headache. "I don't know how she did it."

"She did it because she had to," Fin replies softly. "People can do remarkable things in love. She was doing it to protect us and to protect Emily."

"You're not defending her–?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just as angry as you are, but things aren't always black and white. Doyle wanted to torture Emily by destroying us, but he couldn't cause her pain if he believed she was dead. It was either let Doyle keep chasing us and risk more people getting hurt, or fake Emily's death in order to keep everyone else safe. They chose the lesser of two evils. But now Doyle is dead, and we can't change the past, so the only thing left is forgiveness."

Spencer looks down at his shoes, entirely silent, and Fin tilts his chin up gently, forcing him to look at her. "Baby, listen. I know you feel betrayed and you have every right to be angry, but abusing JJ over and over again will not make the pain go away. Trust me when I say that the only way to fully heal is forgive."

"I know," Spencer whispers, nodding slowly. "It's just hard."

"But you're strong," Fin replies, sliding her hands up to cup his jaw, resting her forehead on his. "You can do it."

He sighs softly, his shoulders relaxing, and closes the gap between them, pressing his lips to hers in a tender kiss. He tastes of coffee, smells of apple and vanilla, feels like home. Fin smiles against his mouth, her hands sliding up into his hair, pulling him as close as possible.

"So," Spencer mutters, pulling away slightly, their faces a breath apart, "our future kids, huh?"

"Yeah, I think so." Fin shrugs, grinning. "Boy and a girl?"

"Crazy girl." Spencer kisses her again, chuckling softly.

There's a loud knock on the door and Fin starts, knocking a broom into the wall with a loud clatter.

"Hey, lovebirds," Morgan says, and Fin can hear the grin on his face. "Whenever you're finished kissing and making up, we've got a case to solve."

Fin rolls her eyes, sighing through her nose. "Piss off, Derek."

Spencer just looks at Fin cheekily and mouths "Forgiveness," before pushing open the closet door and leaving her standing there, looking like an idiot.

Oh, boy.

~

spencer and fin's kids canon??? hehe