puzzles of a heart | spencer reid ✓

one

When Spencer Reid was ten, he was halfway through high school. He had lied to his mom about having a last-minute school project on the solar systems and even conjured a deadline so it seemed like he needed assistance to finish it on time. He just wanted to make something with her before her deteriorating state dragged her further away, still, he wasn't sure why he fabricated a whole scenario.

"Spence, you're bright. You sure you need my help?" His mother was curled up on the couch, a stack of tabloids by her side and a hefty blanket over her frail body. "You've never asked for help before."

He was arranging the mound of cardboard boxes he fished from the kitchen recycling bin on the rug in front of her in the centre of the living room, his glasses slipping down his nose from the excitement of the incoming task. "Yeah I know mom, but please? Just this time, I really need your help with this."

Diana Reid heaved a sigh and plopped down beside her son, dragging the blanket with her and wrapping it like a cape around herself. She hasn't spoken to him much lately but then again, she wasn't fully in grip with reality. "How should we begin?"

Spencer opened the heavy science textbook and skimmed to the page of the solar system model. He grazed his hand over the illustration and nudged his mom, whose eyes had been transfixed aimlessly on the chirping bird outside their window. "Mom."

She whipped her head to face him and for a second, her eyes didn't register the face of her own son. "Oh, hi Spence, where are we up to now? Sorry, there's a pretty bird outside..."

He showed her the chapter, explaining how the project should turn out and rambled onwards about the topic he clearly knew extensively about. Diana was distracted again, her eyes wandered across the room before settling upon the bird repeatedly. Spencer didn't quite notice from his own long-winded discussion with himself.

"So I'm thinking, uh, I can begin on Mars and you can do Mercury!" 

Diana was silent, her fingers trembling slightly against her side out of habit. "O-Okay Spence, I'll get started on it."

Spencer beamed broadly, and the pair began their work. His mother, back against the worn couch and colouring the planets in carefully with children's markers while he cut out the intricate shapes from the thick cardboard with a pair of craft scissors. They talked, really spoke like mother and son for the while and it almost felt like the time before everything turned complex. He had ran out of glue. Spencer got up into the study to fetch one out from the bottom drawer, he was barely able to contain the euphoric joy bubbling inside of his stomach. 

Like all things, the universe did not care for moments. When he re-entered the room, his mother had disappeared into her bedroom, presumably worn out from the simple task. He could almost hear her words as he started gathering up the loose parts of his project and trashing the unfinished remainders: "I need to go lie down for a bit, Spence, I'm sorry." Perhaps for the memory of the fleeting and momentary moments of raw feelings, he kept the Jupiter with the colours crappily scribbled on simply because they had made it together. 

---

"Did you guys know that Mercury is shrinking?" 

David Rossi folded the crumbled newspaper he was reading and peeked at him in the early morning ambience dawning upon the cabin of the plane cruising at 38,000 feet. "No, I didn't know that."

"Yeah, so interestingly, before we first mapped the terrain of Mercury, we thought Earth was the lone active planet in our galaxy. Turns out, the tectonic plates of-"