Reid sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and allowing his eyes to slip shut for a short moment. Had he always had this many case files to complete? It sure as hell seemed like his workload was increasing lately; deep down, he knew it was his headaches and severe sleep deprivation that was making his workload seem heavier than it actually was, but he hated to admit that his issues were getting so bad that they were affecting his ability to do his job.

His job was one of the only things that made him smile, after all, and God knew that he couldn't lose that at a time like this.

Well, studying dead people and horrific crime scenes wasn't all that joyous, but spending time with his friends – his family, as they'd come to be in his mind – and saving lives made it all worth it.

He couldn't even enjoy that anymore, though.

His headaches were only getting worse as his condition progressed, and boy, was it progressing rapidly.

Just the other day, he'd decided to take a walk in the park a block down from his apartment, needing some fresh air and a bit of time to think and collect his thoughts. However, his trip had ended almost as quickly as it started when he was interrupted by a painfully high-pitched wail coming from the middle of the park. It took him a minute, but eventually, he realised that he'd heard someone blowing a dog-whistle.

A dog whistle. Y'know, the things that are so high-pitched humans can't hear them.

Everything was so loud and so bright and he honestly couldn't cope with it. He was trying to find ways to compartmentalise and sift through the sensory information he processed, but he was having little luck, and he was losing his mind because of it – he was a person that needed silence to unwind, but there was no such thing as silence in his world.

Everything made noise.

He'd been forced to take down the clock he'd previously hung on his living room wall, because he could hear it ticking while he tried to sleep at night and it was driving him insane to listen to it constantly. Even in the busy bullpen he could hear his watch ticking, and that was alongside every other damn noise in the vicinity. He could hear his computer's motor whirring loudly, he could hear people conversing on the floor below, he could even hear his own blood pumping if the room fell quiet. It was just a constant onslaught of noise, and a person like Spencer needed silence to think properly.

Nobody really seemed to appreciate how beautiful simplicity was.

Spencer's life had never been simple anyway, but the small dose of peace he'd receive when curling up on his couch with a new book was enough for him to get by on. Now, all he could focus on was how fresh and crisp the new pages smelt, how rigid the spine felt in his hands, how the binding creaked whenever he turned a page and how all of the tiny letters were just slightly unaligned or printed with a tad too much ink.

He needed something, anything. Hell, he'd even tried earplugs; it turned out that if he truly couldn't hear anything from the outside world, he'd hear his insides functioning instead. There was nothing quite like the sound of his Indian takeout making its way through his small intestines.

He'd had some small success when it came to controlling his hypersensitive vision: he found that if he concentrated hard and put a little extra willpower towards it, he could almost 'zoom in' on things that he was looking at, breaking down the massive image that his mind had to process into a somewhat easier chunk to handle. He'd been practising with his bookshelf. He'd pick a book and stare at it for a while, and if he focused just on the book, eventually, the rest would fade out. It was like tunnel vision and looking through binoculars at the same time, in a sense.

Despite this small victory being nice to utilise at home, he didn't really have the time at work to stop and stare at the same object for ten minutes. And, unfortunately, work was where he needed the control the most. He could see every speck of dust that landed on his desk, every single hair that was out of place on his coworkers' heads, read people's papers from across the bullpen... sometimes having hypersensitive vision came in handy, but for the most part, it was nothing but a burden.

At least he had some control over it, though. He tried to be thankful for that.

"Ooh, looks like someone's in trouble," JJ's voice piped up from behind him, snapping him out of his small stupor. He looked up from his desk, following her gaze to Hotch's office, where he was berating Morgan quite sternly, even by his standards.

"He's mad at Morgan, 'cause he's been reckless in the field lately." Reid murmured absentmindedly, having listened to their heated conversation all morning. Sound-proof doors were no use anymore.

"What? How do you know that?" JJ asked, her eyebrows furrowing slightly.

"Ahh... n-never-mind." Reid stammered, rubbing his eyes quickly and peering back down at the stack of papers on his desk.

"Spence... are you alright? You've been looking woozy all morning." JJ continued softly, setting a gentle hand down on Reid's shoulder. Reid sighed, staring at his lap instead of facing his friend. JJ was like a sister to him – her voice was one of the only ones that didn't grate against the inside of his skull, and he'd found that talking to her was quite soothing for his constant migraines.

"Yeah, I'm fine." he mumbled, picking at the hem of his shirt. JJ didn't move, and Reid quickly realised that she wasn't going to until she got some answers.

"I've just got a bit of a headache, alright? It's nothing, really. Don't worry about it."

"... Okay. Remember, I'm always here if you need help with anything." JJ reminded him, gazing at Hotch's office once more.

"You still haven't told me how you know what they're talking about." she said, looking back down at Reid with raised eyebrows.

Reid tensed up slightly, racking his already unsettled mind for an appropriate answer to JJ's question. He obviously couldn't tell her that he could hear through the walls of Hotch's office, but he was a terrible liar, and there was no way in hell he'd manage to lie his way out of a situation with a goddamn profiler even if he was the best liar around.

"If I tell you, I'll have to kill you." he chuckled, flashing JJ a small smile. It was a pretty pathetic attempt at diffusing the conversation, but he was hoping that maybe his smile would settle JJ enough for her to hop off his back.

She just rolled her eyes and went back to her desk, continuing with her load of case files.

His friends were beginning to notice that there was something wrong with him, and while he highly doubted they'd actually guess what it was, it still wasn't good. He knew he'd be badgered at until he caved in, the same as things had been with his drug addiction and migraines. Except that this time, it wasn't a problem that anyone could struggle with, it was something almost completely unheard of in medicine.

It sounded like something out a cheesy sci-fi novel: he'd been whacked over the head, and now he was developing strange abilities.

He sighed, hanging his head and finishing up his mug of sickly sweet, lukewarm coffee.

- – - – - – -

"Hey Morgan, what did Hotch want?.."

"Oh, he was just pissed 'cause apparently, I've been reckless in the field lately. I can't help it if I was grazed while trying to take down an unsub, it's my jo-"

"...Oh,"

"...What? JJ?"

"Nothing, just... did you tell Reid about that, by any chance?" she questioned, subtly turning to look at Spencer, who was huddled up at his desk on the other side of the bullpen.

"What? No, I didn't. What's this about?" Morgan followed JJ's eyes, staring at Reid.

"Don't stare." JJ ordered, lowering her voice, "I'm worried about him."

"Why's that?" Morgan asked, though something in his voice gave away the fact that he too was concerned for their youngest agent.

"It's just... well... ever since the accident, he's been acting differently. He's barely touched his case files, look – they're everywhere. You know how much of a neat freak he is, his desk is almost always immaculate. I don't think he's been sleeping much either, I know he doesn't sleep much anyway, but he looks awful lately." JJ observed with a small, stiff sigh. "I don't know, maybe I'm just worried about nothing."

"He mentioned that he was having headaches to me, a week or so ago... I don't like to betray his trust, but I'm worried about him too. I told him to go visit a doctor, but..."

"Like that's gonna happen. You know how long it took for him to go get his migraines sorted a couple of years ago. Do you think he's losing weight?" Spencer had always been thin and lanky, but he was beginning to border on skeletal. They were forced to watch the life being sucked out of their best friend, and it was pretty terrifying, to be honest.

They didn't know what was wrong, but something was wrong, and all they could do was silently muse over what it could be.

They could be as silent as they liked, Reid still heard every word.

- – - – - – -

They didn't even have to say the words out loud for Reid to hear their message loud and clear.

Great.

What was he supposed to do now? He wasn't the best actor, and even if he managed to conceal his mental distress, they were right about him looking awful and losing weight. They knew that something was wrong, and that was bad.

He knew that they couldn't find out. Hell, his mother was a paranoid schizophrenic and they knew that, and they also knew that schizophrenia was genetic: what were they going to think if he told them he could see and hear things that nobody else could?

He stood up on his weak, shaky legs and hurried off to the bathroom, locking himself in one of the cramped stalls. While the sound of the pipes functioning beneath him wasn't particularly pleasant, it was much nicer than the sound of his friends pondering over what was wrong with him.

What if he was just going crazy?

He swallowed thickly and rubbed his eyes with his cold, bony hands, before moving to run them through his dishevelled mop of hair.

From now on, there would be no sharing with anyone. Not Morgan, not JJ, not Garcia, no-one.

Until he knew what was going on, he couldn't let them jump to their own conclusions about his mental stability. And, he realised that he couldn't do that either. While it was easy to believe that this could have something to do with schizophrenia or another mental disorder, he knew that he was missing out on a lot of the other required symptoms, and that what he was seeing and hearing wasn't delusional.

Something else was going on here, he just had to find out what.

- – - – - – -

Sorry this took a while! I lost the original file for this chapter and I was so pissed off that I ignored it for a few days, but hey, it's all good now! Again, all reviews and constructive criticism/ideas are much appreciated, I love you guys and hope you liked this chapter 3