She Penned my Dreams

On My Mind

Spencer

I walked into the BAU bullpen and immediately ran into JJ. She looked frazzled, carrying a huge stack of files and she had a fine sheen of sweat on her brow, like she’d been running around all morning. I offered to take half of the papers, and she gladly accepted, handing me all of them and quickly walking away, calling a thank you over her shoulder as she rushed back to her office. I laughed it off, knowing how stressful her job is, and took the files to the conference room and set them down in the middle of the table. I grabbed a folder of the top and flipped it open, taking it with me as I went to go get my coffee.

            I was already halfway through by the time I started pouring sugar into my drink. Morgan came up next to me with a “Morning, kid”. Reaching around me to grab the pot, he paused, his face uncomfortably close to me.

            “Uhh, Morgan?” I asked, stepping backwards, away from him.

            “What is that?” He asked, pointing to my sweater.

            “Umm, a shirt.” I supplied, my brow creasing in confusion.

            “No, no, that’s the same shirt you were wearing yesterday.” He said, tapping me in the chest as a wide smile split his face.

            “No it isn’t, it’s just a smiliar one,” I said, hoping the lie sounded convincing. I hadn’t realized I hadn’t changed this morning, and hoped Morgan was the only person who would notice.

            “No, it’s the same shirt,” Morgan continued. “ And that,” he said, pinching something on my sweater, “is a hair, way too long and blonde to have come from your head,” he said, holding the hair up so I could see it. ‘Oh no, this is going to end badly.’ I thought to myself.

            “Who is she, Reid?” he asked tauntingly, dropping the hair. It caught on my arms and I brushed it off again, watching it fall as I thought of how I could come back from this.

            “First of all, it’s not the same sweater. Second of all, there is no she.” I said firmly. “My dry cleaner is blonde. Although I’ll be getting a new one now, now that she’s leaving her DNA all over my supposedly clean clothes,” I muttered, searching my shirt for more of Katie’s hair, making a disgusted face as I found a few more. I turned away, still staring down at my shirt, mentally patting myself on the back as Morgan returned to his coffee, mumbling something that sounded like a mix between “too bad” and “typical”.

 I had never been a good liar as a kid, but after a few years with this team of trained profilers, I had learned a few tricks. Don’t hold too much or too little eye contact, don’t stop what you were doing to talk, don’t think too hard or talk too fast. And most importantly, act the way you normally would and believe the lie yourself. I hadn’t had a plausible reason to employ these techniques, not with my team. I trusted them completely. And until my struggles with drug addiction, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d lied to them. Which means it had never happened. And I hadn’t lied since then, not since I got clean. Honesty within the team is crucial. Even if we don’t share every aspect of our personal lives, we seldom lie outright to each other.

But I didn’t want to share Katie with Morgan. I don’t know why not, it didn’t make sense. Maybe I was afraid if I told him about Katie and what happened last night, he’d rationalize it for me, something I never needed someone else to do. Maybe I was afraid he’d tell me it was no big deal and that she’d probably forget about me tomorrow. This was stupid, as Morgan always encouraged me when it came to women, almost to the point of it being obnoxious. Maybe that was another reason I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want him or the team profiling Katie and whatever it is we started last night. I told myself I was protecting her from getting pinned to a slab and dissected by the team. But really, I think I was just trying to protect myself. From the knowledge that maybe I was making this a whole lot bigger than it really was. And that if the team knew, they’d tell me what this all really meant, and I’d be faced with a much less pleasant reality than the one I’d begun building in my head. The one I’d allowed myself to live in since the second I woke up with her head on my chest.