The Ghost of Princeton ||Spencer Reid||

lying

CRESSIDA

ten minutes before

"That is your panic button, okay?" Emily said, handing me a device that looked similar to a pen. I nodded as I put it into the pocket of my jeans. This was going to work, it had to. "You remember the plan?"

"Divide them, if they're separated then get the location of the sniper. We already have all the evidence we need, so we don't need to waste time on getting a confession. All we need is to arrest them without any civilian casualties." I said, playing with the neckline of Spencer's sweatshirt.

"I'm going to be honest, I wasn't sure if Spencer even had a jumper until now. I've only seen him..." Emily trailed off as she realised the joke wasn't landing well. As she saw that I hadn't even cracked the corner of a smile. "You're going to be fine." She told me.

"You say that, but..." Maybe Spencer had been right. This was all a bad idea, but it was also too late to back out now.

"You're going to be fine. If something goes wrong, you can at least rest easily knowing that Reid will-"

"Why are you so focused on him?" I asked. Maybe it was the adrenaline, the fact that death might be waiting around the corner for me, that made me ask that question. "You keep bringing him into every conversation you can, why?"

"Because... we all want to see him happy, and he's curious about you." She said, my eyes flicked to Seaver who was sitting next to Garcia in the surveillance van with us.

"Curious?"

"He likes you." Seaver said bluntly, which I was grateful for. It felt like the first time a conversation regarding Spence was making semi-sense to me.

"What do you mean?" I asked, pulling the sleeves of his jumper over my cold hands... oh.

"There it is, at least one genius has it figured it out." Garcia said, a smile on her face.

I wasn't sure how that made me feel. Is that why he didn't want to share a bed with me? Because it was going to be awkward for him? But then why would he agree to let me use his jumper?

"Okay, we have to move. You can think about this after we have this done." Emily said, her hands on my shoulders as she lead me to exit the van.

I didn't do as she said though, instead I thought about everything as I walked by myself to the meeting place a street away from the van. What if he agreed to the jumper because it meant he was protecting me? Or maybe he wanted it to smell like my perfume? Wait.

Clothes. The reason I was wearing his jumper was because we wanted to throw off the person who was possessive over me. But what if the initial theory of they thought I was their property was wrong? I'd always assumed it was all of their clothes that I wore, but what if it was just one? And what if it wasn't because I was thought of as property, but because they were attracted to me and wanted their clothes to smell like me?

None of them had ever touched me sexually, and I'm sure that if they even thought about it that Death would have...

No, not Death but Harrison Cooper.

Cooper was the one that gave me clothes every week.

Cooper was the one who kept his distance the most out of the three of them. He only came and spoke to me for positive reasons, for provisions of clothes and food and water. That fucking idiot was trying to build a positive association between us. He let Famine and War dish out the punishments so he could keep his hands clean. But there had to be a better reason than to just want me to want him.