Work Text:
“Emily, is there something wrong with me?”
Emily almost fumbled the book she was trying to replace on his shelf: War and Peace, in the original Russian. That would have sucked to have landed on her toe.
Finishing placing the book carefully between two other tomes with a measured breath out—making sure to slot it on the shelf alphabetically by the author's last name, as he’d told her—she took a half-second to compose herself before turning back around.
She needn’t have bothered: Reid wasn’t looking at her. He was holding a picture frame, staring down at it—or, she amended, staring at the hardwood flooring of his living room, slightly up and to the right above the frame.
“Of course not,” she said. “What makes you say that?”
He fingered the edge of the frame, brow furrowed and gaze still locked on something beyond the hardwood flooring. Memory, imagination, or deep in thought, Emily couldn’t tell.
“This frame was the one the team pulled the oldest bug off of, you know.”
Emily’s eyebrows creased. She took a step forward. “I do,” she said.
“We determined it was the first one placed,” he continued. “He knew I hadn’t touched it in forever. Hardly looked at it, but still never moved it from the shelf.”
Prentiss knew it was a photograph of him and Gideon. Fresh out of the academy, an almost fatherly grip on the shoulder of a nervously smiling, younger Spencer.
“I guess he did his research,” she said. Which went without saying. He was a stalker—obsessive information gathering on his victim was to be expected.
“Research, yeah. You know, he’s probably the only person who’s ever read every single paper I’ve published.”
He let out a small, self-deprecating huff. “Most academics don’t read deeply into the literature across multiple fields, let alone specifically into mathematics, chemistry, engineering, psychology, sociology, and philosophy.”
He rubbed a thumb across the relief of ivy leaves on the silver picture frame.
“He had some pretty insightful comments about my article on a hybrid Reynolds-Averaged Navier–Stokes and Large Eddy Simulation approach to turbulence modeling in fluid dynamics, you know.”
Emily pursed her lips. “Reid?”
And was caught off guard when he laughed. Sharp and broken and sad.
Finally, he snapped his gaze away from the spot of nothing on the floor to look at her, and the odd shine in his eyes—the wounded confusion swirling deep in tawny brown—stole Emily’s breath away.
“He actually, genuinely appreciated my work.”
Something in Emily ached at how pain-filled that statement had to be, that it couldn’t have been said in a different context, about someone else, with genuine excitement.
“Even when I was being held against my will, and I started rambling about quantum chemical modeling of electron correlation just to buy some time, did you know he actually followed what I was saying?”
His grip was now so tight on the silver frame that Prentiss worried he might snap it in half or cut himself on its edges.
“He didn’t interrupt or cut me off or anything, and it was—it was nice, actually—if, of course,” he scoffed quietly, “you could ignore the erotomania and the tying me down and almost—”
Spencer gulped, hands fluttering to readjust on the frame. “You know. The trying to force me into a relationship with him thing. And planning to kill himself and me both if that didn’t work out.”
“Spencer,” Emily said sadly, and didn’t know how to continue.
“Do you remember Nathan Harris?”
She nodded. Different cases hit each of them in different ways, and she knew that one had shaken him to his core.
“He came to one of my lectures, said he thought I was ‘pretty cool.’” Spencer gave that small, tight-lipped smile on the edge of authenticity and irony. “He also fantasized about murdering prostitutes and almost killed himself in front of me because he didn’t want to become a serial killer.”
Prentiss had a pretty good idea where Reid was going with this now, but she let him finish. The feelings and ruminations had been building in him, she could tell, and now that he was giving them voice in the safety of the settling dust after the case, the words gained a momentum all their own she was wont to halt.
“Henry Grace. ‘Professor Paul Rothchild.’ He also appreciated one of my lectures and was the only person in the 300-person lecture hall who got my joke about existentialists. He was also an actual serial killer, the brother of another serial killer, an extreme narcissist with a God complex, and a psychopath.”
Spencer laughed abruptly, as though struck with an epiphany. “Maybe I should just stop giving lectures.”
Emily reached out a tentative hand and laid it on his shoulder. Hoped it wasn’t unwelcome. He didn’t move away from it, at least. And considering everything he’d been through recently, it was a minor miracle that he didn’t flinch away.
Encouraged by the small positive sign, she leaned in. Tried to catch his eye.
“Spencer. There’s nothing about you that caused them to be like that.”
“No, I’m just a magnet for mentally unwell violent offenders or offenders-to-be, apparently.”
Emily’s lips tightened into a thin line. She considered Spencer for a moment. “Would you blame a woman for being targeted by jackass men at a bar?”
“W-what? No!” Spencer spluttered, shifted away to face Prentiss more fully. “Of course not!”
Prentiss raised an eyebrow and looked meaningfully at him, and his hands gestured in a defensive shield around him as though to parry the glance.
“Look, obviously, correlation isn’t causation. But correlation certainly implies a relationship of some sort, doesn’t it? There has to be a reason this keeps happening.”
Prentiss crossed her arms.
“Dr. Spencer Reid, there is nothing ‘wrong’ with you. There is no particular feature of yours attracting unsubs to you. You are a very intelligent and compassionate man who is good at his job and sometimes has terrible luck.”
“Only sometimes?”
The comment surprised a laugh from Emily, and she would have felt bad about it, except Spencer was also trying to smother a grin. She swatted at him without any actual heat, and he dodged neatly.
“Listen, buddy, you know things can always be worse.”
“Spoken like a true former goth kid.”
“Hey, I was trying to be encouraging.”
“And I feel very encouraged.”
His curve of his lips was downright impish, and she felt the irrational urge to stick her tongue out at him. She settled for rolling her eyes.
The moment of levity faded, but the air was less dense in its wake. The light of the sunset slanting through the window shone a little brighter, making the dust floating in the air look like soft-moving constellations.
Spencer sighed, running a hand through his hair, and glancing back down to consider the photograph.
“I appreciate you coming to help put things back in order,” he said. “And I know it’s silly—”
“It’s not silly. You’ve been through a lot lately, and I’m glad you let me come over.”
“Yeah, well,” he said awkwardly, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “It makes me feel better, too, having someone else here. Otherwise, I probably would have swept the apartment for any more surveillance tech for the sixth time by now.”
The sudden tightness of his expression and the darting glance to a location they’d found a camera in told her he still wanted to check.
She shrugged casually. “Two can sweep an apartment faster than one,” she offered.
“No, no,” he said, finally settling the photograph back on its old shelf. He frowned. “I should just get over it. I shouldn’t be indulging that compulsion. I’m safe now, I know that.”
“But if checking helps you feel safer…”
“Emily, if we went according to my feelings, we’d be turning this apartment upside down multiple times over. Maybe contracting Morgan’s company to renovate. Punching holes in the walls and tearing up the floorboards to make sure there isn’t anything else still left in there.”
“And I suppose your landlord wouldn’t be a fan of that idea.”
“No, definitely not.”
Emily hummed.
“What if I stayed the night? We could take shifts.”
“I couldn't ask you to do that.”
“Good thing you don’t have to ask, then.”
“Emily,” he said. “Don’t be ridiculous. You should go home and get some proper rest.”
She put her hands on her hips. “How can I when I know my friend will be up all night worrying about being an unsub magnet or that the team, local law enforcement, and technical surveillance countermeasures specialists missed a mic?”
“I won’t be up all night. I have melatonin.”
“Right, which I know you’ll take, because you totally feel safe enough to do so, right?”
He glared at her.
She softened her words.
“You know it’s okay for you not to bounce back immediately, right?”
“Of course,” he said, which was Spencer Reid for “theoretically yes, but in application to myself, no.”
That was okay. She’d found that with Spencer, as much as he liked facts and talking, you really had to show him this kind of stuff. And she was willing to take the time to do that.
“I’ll go if you want me to,” she said. “But I am letting you know that it would also make me feel better if I could stick around.”
Now it was her turn for her neck to heat uncomfortably. “Believe it or not, it’s hard for us, too, seeing you go through things like this.”
Spencer’s body language shifted, as she knew it would. Less defensive, more open. Eyes flicking over the tension under her outwardly cool composure. He saw right through her, which was fine, because she wanted him to see. Especially if it helped them both.
“Oh. Okay,” Spencer said hesitantly. “Maybe just for tonight. If it’ll make you feel better.”
Emily smiled. “It really would.”
He scratched the back of his head.
“I’d need to wash the sheets, but you can take the bed—”
“Nu-uh, 187. You’ve earned a night in your own bed. Besides, your couch is kind of to die for, and I’ve been eyeing it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Spencer. It’s your house. I’m just here helping keep watch.”
He looked down. “Ah, okay.”
“It’s settled then,” she said firmly. “I’ll take first watch.” Tone brooking no room for argument.
He squinted at her skeptically.
“Promise me you’ll actually wake me up when it’s time?”
Damn. He really did see right through her.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Fine,” she acquiesced. “I promise.”
And she did.
She really didn’t want to, but she did. She knew how important it was for people to keep their word with him.
As she settled into his brown leather couch, in the midst of a yawn, she almost didn’t notice when Reid poked his head back around the corner.
“Mind if I, er, keep watch out here?”
“What, worried something might happen to me while I sleep?” she joked.
“Yes,” he said seriously. “And, uh, all my books are out here. Not that I’d turn on a light to disturb you! I have them all memorized anyway, er…”
Looking caught at the self-exposed flaw in his logic.
“It’s fine.” She waved. “You can have the light on if you like; I can sleep anywhere. Call it a special talent.”
His head bobbed, and he shuffled over to his leather armchair near the window, grabbing a couple of books on the way. A soft glow blinked on, illuminating the area around his chair, but most of the room remained shrouded in darkness.
Soon, the shuffle of turning pages could be heard, and she buried herself deeper into the couch. Wrapped the blanket he’d given around her tighter. The soft, regular susurrations swiftly sent her drifting off to sleep.
She almost thought she was dreaming when she heard a quiet, “Emily?”
She muffled another yawn. “Yeah?”
“Thank you. For staying.”
She smiled into her pillow.
“Anytime.”