𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐞 | 𝐬. 𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐝

TEN

It will always be a part of you. You can't run from it. Will you let it ruin you? Will you let it ruin you? Will you let it—

Jane crumples the paper up in her hands and chucks it into the trash can beneath her desk, biting her tongue roughly as she spins to face Ben again. "Can you write up the autopsy report on Mr. Whitfield? He's in cold storage."

"'Course," The man nods dutifully, ducking out of her doorway as she steps past him to go greet Dr. Reid.

"Spencer," She says, tone full of something forced but entirely genuine in the same breath. "It's been a while."

"3 months and 9 days," He spouts off before he seems to realize what he's said, and his lips press into a thin, embarrassed line.

Jane doesn't laugh at him despite the urge to, instead she just tilts her head slightly. "Do you have the exact timestamp, too?"

He winces slightly, but answers. "5 hours, 22 minutes, 15 seconds."

She walks towards him, gesturing with her hands as she smiles. "God, I bet you're a dream to play trivia games with. Any game, actually, now that I think about it,"

"Most games have been banned with the team because they think I cheat," He says, turning slightly to follow her as she bypasses him for her box of gloves, pulling blue latex onto her hands.

She chuckles this time, only because she knows he was trying to be funny that time.

"Don't tell him I told you this, but Aaron is such a sore loser. We don't play chess anymore because he doesn't like getting mad and I kept beating him. That is also one of the reasons we don't play poker anymore– he says I was teaching Jack to be a con man."

Spencer smiles, something private and soft at the minute detail she'd offered him up about her personal life. Even if it does involve his Unit Chief. "Morgan plays poker with me, but Prentiss won't. They say I have too many unfair advantages since I grew up in Vegas."

Jane's eyes snapped to his from where they'd been examining a petri dish with something unidentifiable growing spores inside of it. "You're from Las Vegas?"

Spencer stifles a full-body grimace as he nods. He hadn't meant to say that, didn't want to possibly trigger any memory, good or bad. He was meant to be neutral ground, nothing more. A stranger who gave her a clean slate after everything she'd been through. He knew better than most how much people like that mattered and he wanted to be that for Jane, even though it felt like pulling teeth every time he had to stop himself from bringing up something about their childhood that would instantly give him away.

He'd gotten caught up in this easy conversation with her. It distracted him– he'd forgotten why he was even down there in the first place, and that her intern was their audience of one.

She looks at him for a moment, eyes narrowed in the wake of his silent response before she seemingly brushes it off with one of her own and returns to her petri dish.

"Small world," She huffs, setting the petri dish back down in the curing box. "I lived there when I was younger. I wasn't born there, but it's where I lived the longest before–" She stops, physically shaking her head to silence herself. "Suburban Las Vegas is so much different than people think. It's not all casinos and Elvis impersonators, but you definitely learn to gamble early on."

"1 in every 3,400 Americans is an Elvis impersonator," He says, as happy as Jane is to shift the subject just enough to keep it from spiraling. "That averages to about 92,000 Elvis impersonators in the U.S. alone, but there's an obvious influx of them in Las Vegas because of his infamous residency there that's often said to have been his death sentence."