Dune Point {Spencer Reid x Reader}

• One •

But there was still that nagging voice in your head telling you, "Don't get too comfortable. The second you slip up you'll be a laughing stock."  It was like you were in high school – or schools – again. You were walking on landmines. Any little slip up and a whole bomb could go off on your entire career...
Well, that's just what your brain was telling you. At least it caused you to be proficient.

As you began to pack your stuff up and exit the bullpen along with everyone else, Prentiss spoke up, causing you to turn your head. "Hey, Y/N! JJ, Garcia, Morgan and I were gonna go out to get drinks. Wanna come? We can all get to know each other better," she said with a smile. That smile quickly faded when you replied with, "I-uh, I wish I could, but I'm in the middle of looking for an apartment right now... I-uh, I'm in a rental so I'm... I'm looking for an apartment... So... yeah." You hurriedly packed up your stuff, the team watching as you stumbled out of the building.

"O...kay...?" Emily looked back at Spencer. Spencer held a confused look after watching the doors swing closed, then looked back to Emily. "Who is she?" Spencer thought to himself. Emily spoke up again, "Well, we're still going to go for drinks... if you wanted to join us?" Spencer, keeping his disconcerted expression, declined, as per usual. He had other plans.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

You found yourself resting on that same bench you used to come to when you were just a teenager. You weren't completely sure if it still existed, but upon investigation, you were pleased to discover that it did. The gate, never having been fixed, was now hidden by bushes and shrubs.

You called this place, Dune Point.

You stayed with your cousins in their home in Virginia during the summers. They lived on Dune Street, a street on a hill with only a few houses on it. You found this bench when you were a teenager, babysitting for the Michaelsons who lived in the highest house on the street.

~ • ~

A 15-year-old version of you walked out to the backyard with three glasses of lemonade on a tray as Oliver and Lola Michaelson played catch with a baseball. You watched what you could of the sun beginning to set over the tall bushes and fence of the backyard.

Setting the tray down you heard Lola shout, "Oliver!"
"What's wro–WOAH WOAH WOAH!" You began to ask what was wrong until you noticed Lola starting toward the backyard fence, in hopes of jumping over it. It was physically impossible for an 8-year-old – or really anyone for that matter – to jump over that fence. It towered the backyard, and it had rose bushes lining its perimeter. I ran after her and yanked her back. They were on a high up hill that you didn't want two little kids to be recklessly running around on.

You held onto Lola as she started pouting. "Oliver threw the ball over the fence! Now we'll NEVER get it back!" She glared at Oliver who just shrugged and took a sip out of one of the glasses of lemonade.

"Hey, don't worry, okay? I'll go look for the ball, you two stay here and enjoy some fresh lemonade, okay?" Lola deepened her pout and huffed her way over to the tray where Oliver was already gulping down drink that was now a little less than half full.

You knew there was no way of getting over that backyard fence, but you did notice how the street out front ended with a woven wire gate. A gate that you'd noticed before had been demolished from a street cleaning car that had accidentally backed up into the gate and crushed it a bit, making it easy to cut through.

You left out the front door, making sure to lock it, then wandered to the top of the hill where the gate remained unfixed. You spread the torn part of the gate and found not the deserted baseball, but a far cry from it.

Before your eyes laid a concrete bench, strewn flowers and weeds blooming all around it, looking out over the cliff of the top of Dune Street – hence the name, 'Dune Point.' You traveled over to lean your forearms atop of the back of the bench, facing the illustrious view of the sun setting over the horizon of the city beneath you. This emptiness that you'd felt stirring within you for a long while now was suddenly fulfilled at this dazzling view. It's not like it fully swept away the dark hole that was beginning to form inside of you, but it patched it up for the time being.

~ • ~

You never did  find that forsaken baseball, but what you got instead was even more valuable. You began going to that bench every single evening to watch the sunset. It was like your addiction, the way you kept coming back to relive a moment that will never be as fantastical as it was the first time you experienced it. It was still a way for you to slip away from reality, just without using.

Once you realized it wasn't enough to just enjoy the sunset – when you noticed yourself getting restless, just sitting there for 70 minutes, doing nothing but watching a big ball of flame – you began to bring a little pick-me-up. Weed. Good ol' Mary Jane never failed to ease your nerves.

Before that, you began to try to bring activities to do like eating dinner, solitaire, playing music – basically anything that didn't involve looking at technology. On your phone or computer, you were plugged into the world around you. Without that distraction, the sunset was the more pleasing version of that devilish candle.

It was just you and a flickering flame that would eventually pull you into a darkness. The only difference is that one of those darknesses was inescapable.

Sometimes to 'spice things up,' as you reached an older high school age, you'd bring some weed, but then you'd heard that the families of Dune St. were talking to the authorities about a weed smell which deterred you from that area for a while.

As time went on, and the Michaelson children grew up, that house at the top of the street was demolished. So was the house below it, and a few below that. This bulldozing left only half the houses – the ones toward the bottom of the street – remaining. It was safe to say that a weed smell, at this point, wasn't a big problem, which was partially why you came back.

Sitting on that same shrub-strewn concrete bench, you felt your past come rushing back to you. That gaping, black hole that began to stew inside you when you were too new to life to comprehend it was now as sizable as your being. The simplicity of an attractively pink and orange sky wasn't anywhere near enough to merely patch the hole up for the moment anymore.

That's why you turned to the darker flame. The flame that whispered to you, telling you "It'll just be the two of us. Nothing else can get in our way."

You'd brought a pre-rolled joint that you kept tucked away in a fancy stash box, along with your lighter. As the sun began to drift to sleep, you began to drift away.

You lit your joint, bringing it to your lips, knowing you were going to have to wait a bit for the euphoria to seep into you.

As you waited, you examined your lighter. It spoke to you the same way your candle had earlier.

"Come here and let it just be the two of us." 

The seduction of the flame broke you just as it had every other time. You flipped the lighter cap up, watching as the flame burst into the open air. With your joint resting in between your lips, you let your hand hover over the flame, slowly lowering it so it ended up in painfully close contact with the fire – a freeing kind of painful. You'd grown used to the way the flame would scorch and pinch at your skin. It was even more painful as you burned over your already scorched palm.

Just as you felt the intoxication of the weed kick in, you heard a voice calling your name.

"Y/N?" A familiar voice sounded.

You quickly shut the lighter off, pulling the joint out of your mouth as you turned your head to see who had disrupted your peace in your sanctuary, only to find that same figure you'd come in contact with the most in the last week.

Doctor Spencer Reid.