nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

thirty-seven.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN:
UNEXPECTED VISITOR

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They cannot look at each other afterwards. At some point they sleep, and when they wake up, both of them have lost the ability to talk.

A crack of early morning sunlight peeks through and illuminates the room in a white glow; Spencer's pale golden skin glows pure ivory in the line of light glimpsing over his stomach. In the corner of her eye, Nina watches his bare chest rise and fall slowly with his sleeping breaths, exposed by his twisting during the night that rode the sheets down to his hip bones. He looks glorious -- it's unfair.

His arms are twisted, one hanging over the side of the bed and the other tucked over his face, so she can't see for certain if he's still asleep. But his breathing is slow and rhythmic, and he hasn't moved at all in the half hour she's been awake. Gently, she shifts his arm to show his face, indulging herself in the pleasure of being able to see him like this. Finally.

When he stirs, she rolls away onto her side, heart thumping. She can't meet his eyes. Nina Scott doesn't get scared often — but that scares her.

"Nina," he grumbles, half questioning, barely audible, and her fear crumbles. She almost swoons.

Rolling onto her side, she smiles at him as he blinks tiredly at her, returning the grin almost half-heartedly. He rubs sleep from his eyes with the back of his knuckles, and then they simply regard each other over the infinite space of a few inches between them. No words arrive.

They're eternally in sync. Naturally, they share all their silences, too.

Making them both jump, moment disrupted without warning, Spencer's phone rings on his nightstand, buzzing loudly against the wooden surface as the ringtone blares. He turns his back on her to take it.

"Hello? Oh, good morn-- Yeah, I'm okay. I just woke up. Why -- what? What's happened? ... Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I know." At this point, he glances back to Nina with a slight frown, then stands up and tugs on some underwear with one hand before he goes into the bathroom. If it wasn't for how suspicious that was, Nina would have admired the ripple of the muscles in his back, his long lean legs, as he moved.

Instead, she twists out of bed, bare feet touching the carpet, tugs on his shirt and then pads after him. Silent -- a practiced stealth -- she presses her ear to the door.

"No, no, I'm alone," Spencer is saying. "What? How do you know? Did you track the IP address, the upload address, anything?"

Silence as someone responds to his onslaught of questions.

Spencer's only response is: "Shit." Another pause. "Any traces on Ed? No, no, I know, yeah, he must be -- I just wondered if he'd taken credit. No, no, yeah, I guess he doesn't have to . . . Is there any way you can send me the video?"