A year after prison, a jaded Spencer Reid takes on a special assignment at Emily's request... to babysit Finn Doyle's ex-girlfriend while the BAU hunts for him. He doesn't want to do it, nor does he want to be solely responsible for her safety. When...
Summary: Spencer spends a day watching you work and it frustrates the hell out of him. When JJ and Emily call later, it only pisses him off more.
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Spencer couldn't figure her out.
As she interacted with customers, bright and cheery and clomping around in those ridiculous shoes of hers, she showed no sign of the fear of someone being stalked like prey. She laughed with regulars as he sat behind the counter with a book he couldn't read because he had to observe her amidst the crowd.
When they were alone she was reserved, pieces of herself held back and protected behind layers of steel. Now, it seemed she was further behind them and the first line of defense was to pretend that she was the happiest girl in the world.
He couldn't tell if she was just in her element, or if this was a carefully constructed facade for the world around her. Maybe the facade was only around when she was alone with him.
Spencer tried not to let his gaze linger on her curls bouncing out of that claw clip, or admire the gentle curve of her neck. She was beautiful, like delicately carved marble...and that fact that she was still wearing his cardigan didn't help. It fluttered halfway down her thighs as she helped pull books off of shelves and rang people up at the register, and more than once he caught her pulling the collar up to her nose to breathe in his scent.
He wondered if she liked it, but a part of him hoped she didn't.
After a long day of sitting and watching, bored out of his skull and desperate for a shower, she finally walked the last customer out and locked the door behind them. On an instinct that made him feel better about her ability to protect herself, she shielded his view from the keypad as she typed in the alarm code.
She turned and flashed him an awkward smile. The facade was gone, or maybe it was back. "I don't know about you, but I'm beat."
He said nothing, and she gave a small huff before making her way up the stairs. Her boots clunked with each stomp, as if she were trying to wake the dead. The alarm blared upstairs as they stepped inside, and Spencer groaned in annoyance. The steady thump of a forming headache only increased at the sound.
He stood uncomfortably in the doorway as she turned it off, then went about what seemed to be her normal routine; take off shoes, bring them back into the shoe room, then head into her closet.
He followed, clearing the rooms with a peek around the corners until he was satisfied. Her little closet hallway was filled to the brim with clothes, obviously more expensive for his taste but he was sure they looked good on her. Everything seemed to.
"The shower sticks sometimes," she said absentmindedly as she dug through the closet, pulling out a crushed yellow velvet duster that she used as a robe. "You just need to jiggle the handle and it'll go."
