Dune Point {Spencer Reid x Reader}

• One •

A/N:
real quick:
~ • ~  = beginning/end of a flashback

TRIGGER WARNINGS:
Hinting at self harm, self harm

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

You'd finally arrived to your rental after your 40 minute metro ride and two mile walk. You'd had to find a place to rent for the time being while you found a permanent apartment. All you knew was that you had to move apartments quickly since you used to live so close to the Pentagon, and it's about five hours to HQ in Virginia from your old place. You'd found a shitty studio for the meantime and had been scrolling through Zillow every night. In the past two weeks of transition, you'd visited multiple open houses for apartments. You'd found a sort of comfort in them, but you never made the move to purchase.

Your problem was that finding a place just made it all real. It made the whole fact that you had to move away from your friends, from your life, real. At least you didn't have to work in the same building as your father anymore. 

It was almost like you wanted to live in this shitty apartment in this shitty neighborhood, living in some kind of... limbo. You'd pretty much lived that way all your life.

But now, you were faced with a conundrum:
You can either quit the FBI completely, leaving you with no job, which, honestly, probably wouldn't be too big of a problem for you. Your family had money, your parents both worked in the government, you could probably find a place. But that wasn't how you wanted to live your life; living off mommy and daddy's money and never doing anything for yourself.
Your other option was to just suck it up and do this job, as angry as it made you.
Maybe if you pretend for long enough, you'll actually enjoy it.

Your whole life had felt like a bad stage play, acting for an audience that didn't even care.

You realized you'd been standing in the middle of the studio for a few minutes now, staring into the nothingness you called your current state of life... just... thinking. You checked your phone and realized you'd been gone a lot longer than you'd like to admit, so you quickly gathered your new go bag along with your work bag and box of desk decor, and headed back out the door.

Before you exited, you surveyed the room to make sure you had everything when your eyes landed on one of your candles. You had pulled it out the other night when you first moved in. It was down to the last of its wick.

Although inanimate, it always felt like that candle was talking to you. "Come here, Y/N," It would speak, it's metaphorical voice laced with perversity. "Come here and let it just be the two of us." It pulled you into a world where only you existed with a singular flame, and nothing else. Where the only thing you knew was this game of cat and mouse with the fire and your palm. A game, that's all it was. A game played to feel something.

A loud "FUCK YOU!" from your left pulled you out of your thoughts. You looked down the hall to notice a man angrily marching toward the staircase while a woman flipped him off, slamming her door shut. "At least I'm not them," you said in your head as you shut your door, not daring to take another peek at that candle.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That "skinny kid" kept an eye on you as you reentered the office, sitting down right across from him. With his eyes still blazing into your being, it took everything in you to not glare at him with fury. You simply took your seat, and decorated your desk with the basics, a pencil sharpener, stapler, pens and pencils, paperclips, etc.; a few faux plants with honey-colored pots; and a simple, matching honey-colored pencil holder to pull it all together. You felt the kid's eyes watching your every move as you placed each object in its correct place on your desk.