nina cried power [SPENCER REID]

fifteen.

"If you wanted to see me bend over, you could just ask," she teases, arching her back and wiggling mockingly, the silky feel of her pant suit tightening when she bends.

He has no reaction, swallowing as his eyes don't leave her face, so she rolls her eyes with a mumble of, Boringgg, and goes to put his gun on the coffee table by his sofa.

"You won't do it," he says to her turned back.

"And why do you think that?"

"You like me too much."

Turning, she looks at him with a judgemental grimace, twirling her gun around her fingers. "Like you?" she repeats with half a laugh. Now that there's no guns pointed at each other, and there's some distance between them, it feels a little more casual. She's even half-smiling when she speaks. "I like you?"

Honestly, she's had this moment before, with other victims: when they give up, exhausted, and just accept their fate. There's a sort of mutual understanding in that moment, and she feels it now with Spencer.

Except Spencer hasn't accepted his fate. It's almost admirable, really: his stubborn determination to live.

"Yes."

Now, what the hell has gotten into his head to make him think that, something that is so irredeemably stupid? And so confidently, too. For a moment, she knows that Edelstein had been right: killing Spencer will make her feel better. Despite her tendency to be an egotistical asshole, she apparently seems to loathe egotistical assholes. Especially the men.

And despite his soft-spokeness, he's still no exception to the rule of men being idiots. Still no exception to the distinctly male ability to project their own issues flawlessly onto women. To project their fantasies — that she is kind, that she will spare him, that she feels something, anything — and make them reality.

She had it with Ed, too. The entire world is run by men who can't handle blaming themselves. To men, the world is performing for them, and they are the director, they are in control. For women — and for Nina — their own lives, and Nina's entire existence, has always been a performance art on a course she will never graduate from. Whether that's down on her knees for her father, pretending she can take it all because she's brave, because she will survive; or here in front of Spencer, fulfilling an idea that a man put in her head, while another man questions that she's strong enough to dish even that out.

"No," Nina snarls, "I think you're an asshole."

"I see the way you look at me," Spencer tries.

The way she looks at him? The idea makes her scoff. "Oh, Doctor Reid. Don't project your feelings."

"Stop procrastinating then. Kill me."

Jutting out a hip, she gives him an unimpressed look. One hand sweeps back her red blazer, landing on the hip of her matching trousers; under the blazer, she's wearing a black lace bodice that would fit better as lingerie, and she smirks when his eyes wander.

"Kill you?" she repeats.

His eyes go back up to her face. "Right now," he says with a shrug, but even though he's trying to be casual she can see his legs shaking. But he manages to step forward, hands flexing at his sides. "I'm calling your bluff." Another slow step. Tantalising. "If I've got it all wrong, if I don't understand you at all, even on a molecular level — kill me."

Staring at her with raised eyebrows and earnest eyes, he stops just two feet from her.

Too close. Just close enough.