The Keeping of Words | Spencer Reid

6 |Unpublished

The weekend after Bianca had finally finished unpacking, Spencer called to ask if he could stop by. She agreed, frantically trying to make sure her apartment looked clean, free of wads of used packing tape and stray pieces of cardboard before he arrived.

He greeted her with a small smile. "Can I come in?"

She stepped aside to let him through the doorway. "Are you limping?"

"It's nothing," he assured her. "I just got hit on a case, that's all."

Her eyes widened. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"Um, did I ever tell you about the time I was on crutches?" Bianca shook her head. "Well, I kind of got shot in the leg once. It was almost a year ago, but it still bothers me sometimes. While I was out on this last case, one of the unsubs took a swing at me with a lead pipe. It only left a bruise, but it didn't really help with the whole leg thing."

"Spencer, why didn't you say something sooner? You should be sitting down!" She led him over the living room sofa with persistence. He winced as he sat, his fingers rubbed a spot on his thigh absent-mindedly, and she wondered just how bad it really was. "Do you want something for that?" She darted over to the kitchen cupboard. The ice packs Bianca owned were only size of the miniature Tupperware containers she packed in her lunch. She considered putting ice in a Ziploc bag, but she hadn't gotten around to buying any yet. That left the small medicine cabinet in the bathroom. "I've got Advil or Tylenol?" she offered, already making her way to the bathroom.

"No!" he called out, just a little too loudly. "No. I don't want anything. I'm okay."

She wasn't so sure. He looked anxious, and she suspected that there was more on his mind than just his leg. She stepped closer to the sofa. "Is something wrong?" There was a long pause as he fidgeted on the sofa.

"Bianca, we need to talk," he said finally. She frowned, waiting for him to go on. "It's just, um, now that we're in the same city, things feel... more serious. More real, I guess. And I know we've talked so many times, but we haven't- we haven't talked about..."

"About hard to talk about things?" she offered. "Skeleton in the closet things?" He winced, and she realized that his experience with that phrase was probably quite literal.

"Yeah. Those things. I just, there are things that I want you to know, because I want you to know what you're getting into, before things go farther. Does that make sense?" His expression seemed somber, almost grim. Worry lodged in her throat, wondering it was that had carried him to her apartment with such a sense of resolve and solemnity.

"Of course. If you want, I can make some coffee or tea or something before we talk?" Coffee would be great, he told her, and a few minutes later they were sitting cross-legged on the sofa across from each other with mugs in hand. Spencer looked as though he was trying to decide where to begin.

"Why don't we start with family," she suggested. "That's usually where people begin when they do these sorts of things."

"You say that like it's normal," Reid said.

Bianca shrugged. "At my college, we had retreats like this. The idea was to talk about the things you normally kept hidden. It helped to foster connections, and it taught us that it was okay to be vulnerable." Retreats were among of her fondest memories of college, but she could imagine that the idea would be uncomfortable to most people. It was hard to talk about those things, and she wondered how many conversations like this Spencer had had before. "If you want, I can start."

He nodded, looking relieved at the opportunity to ponder his words more carefully, and listened as Bianca began. "Well, you know I'm not exactly close with my parents. I'm not close with any of my family really. I have a younger brother, so we were a family of four. For as long as I can remember, I've felt distant. You know, home is supposed to be a place where you feel welcome, and mine just wasn't that way."