A/N: Story of a nighttime encounter of Dr. Reid, with character study for his post-prison PTSS conditions ( I hate that the show doesn't address this more.). Mostly I just wanted to write a Reid kiss. Oneshot, set during early in season 14.

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away…

This is what I am reciting in my head as I pick up my takeout and step out of the restaurant. It is 'Something Wicked This Way Comes' by Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury is one of the writers of English language that I love, and this novel, I feel, is one of his best works. It has evocative language, layered storytelling and insight to the psyche of pubescent boys- all of it done very poetically and nicely. I have read it a few times, the last time during lunch today.

It's chilly outside, whispers of winter in the fall night air. I wrap my scarf more securely around my neck. Humans lose 90 per cent of their body heat through their neck and head.

… But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Prickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month...

The restaurant is kind of tucked away in a back street, but I like to eat from here- they have the best Indian food in this area, in my opinion. I walk up the narrow alley, wishing I remembered to button up my coat. I don't fancy trying to do it with a bag of takeout in my hand now and spilling curry sauce inside it in the process.

… And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Hallowe'en will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets… around… corners….

I am distracted.

Giggles. Female voices, at least three. Talking over each other. Coming closer.

…bedsheets around corners…

What comes after that?

It takes me a second to catch hold of the severed thread of my concentration.

… But one strange wild dark long year…

Yes. I follow the thread.

…Hallowe'en came early. One year Hallowe'en came on October 24, three hours after midnight…

I am distracted again, because I can see the owners of the voices. Three women, walking down the alley. It's not hard to guess where they came from. There's a bar a little way from here, I pass it whenever walk home from this restaurant. It faces the other way, though; they must have come out through the back door. That doesn't seem very safe. One out of every six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime, of which 14.8 per cent are completed rapes. 15 per cent of the rapes occur in an open public place, 10 per cent in enclosed public areas.

The damage is done before I know it. Something Wicked is gone from my mind, replaced by statistics, factoids, and pieces of information. They come in fast, about anything and everything that is around me and that, that is a problem, because when the floodgate is open and undefended…

I feel it coming. My free hand involuntary goes to my eyes, rubbing them. I have to stop walking because I've got tunnel vision now.

And at the other end of the tunnel…

Me. Two men dragging me through the dark. Hands tied in my back. A dirty ball of cloth shoved in my mouth. Another man standing before me, with a long, sharp blade in his hand. I can see his face now, stony, calm and business as he gets ready to stab into my eye with his blade.

I blink, hard, trying to get the image out of the inside of my eyelids. But the sick feeling in my stomach remains. Suddenly the spicy smell of curry makes me want to vomit.

I take a deep breath. Another.

It's fine. I'm not in prison. I'm here. I'm safe.

The next sentence. I need the next sentence.

… Atthattime,JamesNightshadeof9OakStreetwasthirteenyears,eleven months, twenty-three days oold…

Yes.

… Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more…

Slowly, the world shrinks to a steady stream of words, sentences after sentences, line after line. I start walking again. The sick feeling dissipates. My focus is reined in. I am grounded.

…The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder…

The three women are still there, still talking- in lower voices now. Whispering, almost. But I need my mind guarded, so I carefully tune them out. Neither do I look at them.

Until one of them is suddenly standing in front of me.

I have to stop. She is in my way not accidentally, but intentionally. Do I know this woman?

Probably in her mid-twenties, glossy, wavy black hair to her shoulder, brown doe-eyes, a heart-shaped, wine-red mouth. Pretty.

I am certain I have never seen this woman.

I glance at the other two. They are standing at a distance, looking at us.

The book is gone from my mind again, but it's easier to handle and shift my focus when there's someone else, something else, something happening.

'Do I know you?', I ask the woman, knowing my answer but curious to know hers.

She shakes her head. 'No, no you don't.' She has a beautiful voice. One of those voices you wouldn't mind listening to even if they were reading the dictionary or the weather report.

'Do you know me?', I ask, scanning the possibilities. Did she see me in one of the seminars I taught, maybe? One of my classes? Around a block we were investigating in? At a restaurant? Passing that bar? Statistically…

No. My minds is scattering again, escaping its rein, and I pull it back, focusing hard, almost missing the women's answer. She has said 'No' again.

Then she is silent. Her earrings glint in the orange glow of the lamppost we're standing under. Her red dress looks dark brown. Her eyes are uncertain. I can see she wants to say something, but can't decide whether or not to. She glances at her friends. One gives her a thumbs-up, the other grins.

I frown. Something is going on here. Something…

The woman kisses me.

She walks up, grabs the ends of my scarf, pulls down, slips an arm around my neck and kisses me on the mouth.

Every thought I was having dissipates. Every connection my mind was making is snipped.

But wonderfully, amazingly, they're not replaced by statistics or eventual flashbacks, fear or poison.

My mind is blank, quiet, as my senses take over.

She pressed her lips on mine, almost hesitant at first, but my mouth opened, and she kissed my lower lip, and then it was in her mouth and now I am kissing her back for some ridiculous reason and I can taste her soft, full lips and I feel my hand go around her back and my mind, for once, for once my mind is not screaming, not overwhelming me with data, not shoving memories at me that I want to bury. It's just flesh, just pure pleasure, just sparks shooting through my nerves and dancing before my closed eyes.

I don't know how long it is until the woman pulls back. She's breathing heavily. So am I. My arm is still around her waist.

'I…' Words tumble out of her. 'My friends, over there, they dared me to kiss you. A stranger. I had to kiss a stranger for fifteen seconds. Do you know how long fifteen seconds is?'

I lock my eyes with hers. I say, 'Didn't feel long enough.' And I don't think. For the love of all that is holy, I do not think. I pull her in, and kiss her again.

This time, response comes immediately. Her mouth opens. Her arms are around my neck, clutching fistfuls of my hair. Her breasts are pressing on my chest, full and firm. I don't know when I dropped my takeout bag, but I must have because that hand is now free. I bring it up and it lands on the side of her face. I trace my thumb over her cheek, then keep going up and bury my fingers in her hair.

And I feel.

Her mouth moving with mine, one hand of her slipping inside my coat, the heat coming off her body, the small noise she makes in her throat as I suck on her tongue sear my mind, blinding and raw, until nothing is left, except for this, this moment, this kiss, engulfing my senses, my everything.

Finally, in the end, I pull back. I have to, I need air.

We stand there, taking gulps of breath, still close, still in each other's space.

Neither of us is saying anything.

Then one of her friends steps up. I'd completely forgotten about them.

'Um…', she says, 'Maya…'

We both look at her.

Maya, the woman I kissed, the woman who kissed me, takes a step back

It's like I can physically feel the loss, this one step of distance.

Her friend- tall, blond, blue dress- glances at me, then clears her throat and tells Maya, 'You won. You completed the dare. It's done. Okay? Thought I'd let you know.'

'Yes…', she shakes her head a little, as if trying to clear her thoughts. She looks at me and tells her friend, 'I'm coming, okay? Just give me a minute.'

'Oookay.' The blond woman looks like she has no idea what to say. In the end she shrugs and goes to stand with the other woman, already opening her mouth to share whispered insights.

I look at Maya.

'So', she says, 'I don't know if I should say sorry.'

'Don't', I reply.

She smiles a little. 'Okay.' She extends a hand. 'I'm Maya.'

I take it. 'Spencer.' Her touch is seeping into me, making me want to pull her to me again.

This is crazy. I am rarely in such a loss for control. But I am also rarely freed from the constant assault of my too-busy mind, too-frenetic thoughts, too-dark times. It's been this way for a long while now. Doesn't it make sense that I'd want to hold on to what gave me freedom from that for what still seems like too short a time?

I let go of her hand. A second goes by. Two. Then she huffs impatiently.

'Okay, as you can see, my friends are waiting and I don't have much time, so when are you gonna ask for my number?'

'I…' Do I want her number? Do I not want her number? I don't understand what just happened, I don't know what is happening, I don't know what to say.

She sees me hesitate. 'Oh my God', her eyes go wide, 'You have a girlfriend!'

'What?', a surprised burst of laughter escapes me. 'No!'

She cocks her head. 'A boyfriend?'

I shake my head. 'No.'

'Why?', she demands, scanning my face, as if trying to decide whether I am unattractive enough.

I laugh. 'That is a tough question to answer.'

She looks at me for a moment, then shakes her head and goes towards her friends.

'She's leaving', I think. Of course she's leaving. But I am frozen. What should I do? Nothing? Something?

But she was not leaving. She's coming back, something in her hand.

It's her wine colored lipstick.

She grabs my hand, flips it palm up, and starts writing bold red numbers on my forearm.

'This', she tells me, 'Is a pretty expensive lipstick.' She finishes writing and steps back. 'So you better make sure, Spencer, I haven't wasted half of it for nothing.' She gives me a smile, one corner of her mouth curving up.

Then she walks away. Grabs her friends' arms. And leaves with them.

I stand there, in the alley, under a lamppost, a bag of food on the ground, a phone number on my skin, electricity still echoing in my veins, a memory of a warm body and two long, deep kisses in my mind.

I realize I have lost track of James Nightshade and William Halloway long ago. I realize that it doesn't matter, because for the first time in days, it's quiet inside my head. No frantic chaos, no dark pits and barbed memories. Only glorious leftovers of a million sweet sensations, only a heady breathlessness, only a woman.

And I remember the quote from the novel, the quote by Y. B. Yeats that appears before the first chapter, the first part.

"Man is in love, and loves what vanishes."

Does Reid call the girl or doesn't he? ;) Might expand the story if enough of you want more.