New Glow - Spencer Reid x Reader

Go for Gold

It's been two long weeks since they came back from Los Angeles, but Spencer is still...unsettled by what happened while they were there. And it's not because of the unsub. Stalking cases happen all the time, and in the big picture everything turned out as best as it could. It's just...Lila. 

He can't get her out of his head, and he's had more than one dream about her since he's been sleeping in his own bed. Dreams like he's never really had before—reliving their kisses in the pool, images of things that didn't happen where she's in his arms, clinging to him and petting his hair... Really unusual things.

But Morgan was right. The lives they lead are too high-stress, too much for a steady relationship, and even though Hotch manages somehow with Haley, it doesn't seem like it's easy for him or too possible for anyone else. 

The fact that "entering into a relationship of any sort with the actress you just appeared on the front of a tabloid magazine with" is only another rung on the ladder made of things like "appearing on the front of a tabloid magazine with the actress you protected from her erotomanic stalker" and "kissing in the pool with an actress you're supposed to be protecting from an erotomanic stalker" doesn't make the situation look any brighter.

That's not to say that he didn't like her—he did. She was beautiful, and she either smiled away his generally insensitive rambling or reacted without making him feel bad about his almost literal inability to keep quiet, and... she'd kissed him. She'd pulled him into the pool with her (which was a horrible thing to do at the time, his brain supplies anytime the scene comes into his mind) and laughed and kissed him even though he looked like, as Derek had said, a drowned rat.

When even had been the last time he'd been kissed? It's a rhetorical mental exercise, if one ever did exist, though, because the unspoken "by someone that liked him" means that the list shrunk from less than a dozen to literally only her. Looking at the way his life has gone so far, it'll be another two decades before he gets another experience like that one, unless something changes. At least with his brain he'll get all the mileage out of the memory that he possibly can.

But, really, Morgan was right. And Spencer hadn't been criticizing him for the way he went through one-night stands. It's a good idea—finding someone to sub in for Lila, in his thoughts, for even a moment, would make the desire he has to call her a little weaker. He doesn't have his number programmed into his phone, but his eidetic memory means he's never going to forget it. Sometimes he picks it up and thinks about calling her, but he's only made it through dialing in her number, thumb hovered over the "call" button, before he's backed out.

You're just a-a kid, he thinks sometimes. She's literally one of the hottest topics in Los Angeles right now. She was only interested in you because of transference. You weren't a hero; if you hadn't been wearing a gun and with the FBI she never would have... 

/*\

"I can't believe you're actually going to go out to the club with us, man," Derek says, laying a hand over Spencer's shoulder. His hands are proportional and not unreasonably sized, but that does not mean they aren't relatively huge. The grip gets shrugged off, though, and the man in question looks up from where he'd been zooming through an article to meet his colleague's eyes.

"Don't make me regret it before we've even gone," he says, but he's smiling genuinely, and he gets another pat on the shoulder for his trouble. 

"I'll show you how to pull in ladies if it's the last thing I do, Doc," is the parting shot sent his way before Derek is on his way out of the room—probably heading for Garcia's office to tell her the news. 

Usually on Fridays—pending a case or any other work-related issue—Derek, Penelope, Elle, and JJ head downtown to go clubbing and "meet people, blow off some steam," as he'd been informed. It was a different environment from when the whole team went, different venues. Reid had learned that the hard way, when he'd accepted their invitation the first time and missed the cue that it wouldn't be the sort of sports bar environment he was mildly used to.