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A/n hello everyone. The time frame for this story begins after Reid's first round of enforced leave and teaching. It will take place in it's entirety before the season 13 finale. Please enjoy and thank you in advance for your kind support. As always, many thanks to my brilliant beta and friend, REIDFANATIC. Happy Spring, everyone.
Spencer Reid collected his messenger bag, and several file folders he'd used for his teaching presentation. He turned for the door leading from the auditorium and stopped. He'd got through his first teaching experience without many mistakes or metaphorical bruising to his ego. He wanted to look at the empty room with its chairs, desks and the steps that led down the half-moon shaped seating area. He scanned the table and the podium in the teaching area at the front of the room. The whiteboard behind him and the projector bolted to the ceiling gave the room a modern feel, but otherwise, it reminded him of the day he'd gone to find Gideon and pull his mentor back into the field.
"Looks like medical leave's over, boss."
He almost heard the echo of his voice from nearly fourteen years ago, and he shivered. The memory of Gideon's face when he'd said the words seemed to penetrate deep into the place where he'd locked away the trauma of losing his sobriety, his prison time, and the kidnapping of his mother. He felt the lock begin to turn, as if that trauma were a living thing, trying to push past the barricade in his mind.
Reid focused his attention on the clean whiteboard and tried to slow his breathing. After several seconds, he felt the lockbox slam shut on the trauma. He let out a long, slow breath, and felt like he could leave the room. He forced himself not to consider that he might be repressing, which didn't bode well for his emotional or mental wellbeing. Instead, he shouldered his messenger bag and left the auditorium.
The silence in the hallways always amazed him. He sometimes forgot that he taught in the middle of a military base. He walked slowly down the hall and turned left instead of right at the next intersection. The decision to go to the gymnasium had become automatic since his release from prison. He passed several agents he recognized from the Bureau's anti-terrorist unit. As usual, they argued about their picks for the upcoming football games and ignored their surroundings. Spencer didn't slow or increase his pace as he tried to stay out their way.
When he entered the locker room, his nose wrinkled at the stench in the room, even after the maintenance staff cleaned. The pungent odor of sweat permeated the walls, Spencer thought and refused to vacate even with a thorough cleaning. He decided that the cleaning staff had a new cleaning solution and it reeked. It smelled as though someone had smeared every available surface with coconut oil. He hated the smell of coconut oil! He blew out a breath, nearly gagged and turned toward the locker he'd inherited from Morgan when he'd left.
Morgan had assured him that he'd cleaned the locker, and he gave Spencer his padlock. "I don't need it anymore," he said. "I set up a workout room in the basement of my house. You take it and see if you can put on some muscle, pretty boy."
Spencer had taken the locker, reluctantly, and then ignored it until after his release from prison. Now, he used it religiously.
After changing into a pair of shorts, a tee-shirt, old socks and an even older pair of Converse running shoes, he entered the gymnasium. It was empty, except for one person, which startled him into halting in his tracks. He came at this time of the afternoon because through trial and error; he'd determined that this time of day meant an empty gym.
He stood just inside the huge room and tried to decide what to do. His old shyness and indecision held him tethered to the spot, like a horse tied to the hitching post in some dusty, backwoods town in the old west.
He set his teeth and surveyed the room with its treadmills in one corner, the huge practice mat for learning self-defense, weight-lifting equipment, and safety equipment in another corner of the room. The person he noticed worked with a heavy bag that hung in a third corner of the room, and she didn't seem to notice he'd entered the room. Spencer could hear her fists pummeling the bag and the sound of her ragged breathing and the squeak of the rope that secured the bag.
Spencer shook himself impatiently. He'd go on the treadmill just as he did every day and go about his exercise routine. Why did it matter that another person used the same equipment? "You don't own it, remember," he said under his breath and nodded his head.
He marched to the nearest treadmill, stepped up and programmed it for a brisk walk. As he began to walk, the lockbox in his head began to slip open. No, that wasn't right, because he allowed it to open and show him all the memories he suppressed when teaching and when profiling. It swamped him, and he increased the speed on the treadmill. He tried to listen to the slap of his shoes on the moving belt, but the thud of his feet, couldn't drown out the sound of a fist smacking his gut, or of rough hands twisting his arms. He heard the echo of bones breaking, and flesh tearing. He heard the sound of terror, and his cry for it to stop, for someone to help him.
He realized that he ran instead of walked, and he breathed in harsh, ragged breaths that burned in his chest. Pain stabbed through his torso along the left side of his body, and he groaned aloud. He reached for the controls and stopped the treadmill. He stood, panting for breath and trying to hold back a scream of misery as more memories careened through his head.
You survived!
I nearly killed six men.
You survived!
Spencer bowed his head, put his hands to his ears, and squeezed his eyes shut. "Cross back over the line," he said through gritted teeth as sweat poured down his face and soaked his tee-shirt. "Cross. The. Line," he repeated and fought to slam the lid back on his mental lockbox.
Finally, the memories receded like the evening ocean tides. He stood up straight, reached for his water bottle, and downed half of it in long, noisy gulps. It tasted like ambrosia, and finally, he began to feel like he could put in some weight-lifting time. He reached for the towel he'd hung over the treadmill's hand rests and scrubbed at his face.
He turned around and nearly screamed in surprise. The heavy bag pummeling girl stood about five feet from him. She stared at him with something like curiosity in her eyes. She didn't speak to him, but turned, grabbed her towel, water bottle and walked from the gymnasium without a backward glance.
Spencer watched her walk away, and something like irritation flared in his chest. Why did she stare at him like he was an interesting bug, and then leave without a word? Where was common courtesy in her manner? Why not say, "Hey, you okay."
He shook his head and said to the empty room. "Why do you care?"
A good question, but he didn't have an answer because his head still whirled from trying to suppress the urge to scream in frustration at his continuing bouts of PTSS. He went to the rack holding free weights and began a set of bicep curls.
After another thirty minutes of weights and some cool down stretches, he hurried back to the locker room and a shower. He'd just finished dressing when Agent Anderson entered the room. "Hi doc," he greeted. Agent Anderson was the only agent outside the BAU that called him anything but Dr. Reid. Spencer liked him, and they'd become good friends over the last decade and a half.
"Hi, Rick. How are you?"
"I'm great. I'm getting in a quick workout before I go home."
"Me too."
"You like teaching."
"Yeah, it's more enjoyable than I thought, " Spencer admitted as he hefted his messenger bag and his gym bag full of dirty workout clothes and towels to his shoulder.
" I ran into Doc Lewis, and she said you let her sit in during a lecture. She said it was mesmerizing."
Spencer shrugged. "Friends have to compliment your work, right."
"Not true," Anderson countered. He slipped off his jacket and folded it neatly. "I've got a friend who doesn't believe in compliments. He says they make you complacent."
Spencer finally smiled. "Well, I was nervous teaching with Tara in attendance, but I'm glad she liked the class."
"Tara's the most honest person I know," Anderson said.
Spencer nodded. "Yes, that's true."
"You see the new self-defense instructor. She's hot," Anderson observed with a sparkle in his eyes. "If I wasn't engaged… well, I guess it doesn't hurt to look, right?"
"Sure," Spencer agreed and wondered who Rick meant by the new instructor. "I don't remember seeing her."
Anderson laughed as he pulled off his tie. "I guess not, or you'd remember her. She's tall, well-toned and she has eyes that look at all the guys like we're bugs she'd like to crush underfoot. You know what I mean."
"Yeah," Spencer said faintly and wondered if the girl in the gym was the new instructor.
"I asked around," Anderson continued as he removed his shoes. "She's a transfer from the Baltimore office, and her name is Georgia Blue if you can believe that. They say she likes to be called George."
Spencer simply stared at his friend. Georgia Blue? It sounded like a lounge singer or a stripper. If she were the same woman, it didn't fit her at all. The woman he'd seen was tall, with a well-toned physique and eyes the color of the sky in summer. Her hair, the looked like ripened wheat and had resided in a ponytail off her face. She didn't have a conventionally beautiful face, but it was an attractive one, with a wide mouth, almond-shaped eyes, and a long nose. She had high cheekbones and a sculpted chin with a dent just below her lower lip.
"Doc," said Anderson.
"Oh, sorry. I was thinking about my last class."
"You need to get out. Listen, you want to go for drinks tomorrow night. The game is on the big screen. I know you don't like football. I thought we catch a basketball game. Phoenix is playing the Utah Jazz. What do you think?"
Spencer agreed because the thought of sitting alone on a Friday night bothered him in a way he couldn't explain. Why not sip a cold beer in a room with a bunch of rabid basketball fans?. Maybe he'd drown out the memories of ninety-three days in hell that still haunted him every time he let the lockbox in his mind open and spill its contents into his consciousness."
"Sure," he said. "Sounds good."
"Great, I'll text you the details. Have a good one, doc."
Anderson, in shorts and a tee-shirt, hurried to the gym, as Spencer made his way out and into the late afternoon sunshine. His talk with Anderson had made him late, and if he didn't hurry, he'd run into the middle of rush hour traffic.
CMCMCMCMCMCMCM
Supervisory Special Agent Georgia Blue strode briskly toward her office on the same level as the gymnasium. She's showered and changed from the blue FBI tee-shirt, and the grey sweatpants she wore for personal workouts. She shut the door to her office as soon as she entered and turned the lock. The workout hadn't helped, and she blamed the second agent who barged into the gym without so much as a word and interrupted her concentration.
Yes, because the gymnasium is your personal property. He should be ashamed.
Georgia sighed and tried to shut out the sarcastic voice in her head. It was true that she liked to workout alone, but after all, she'd broken pattern and gone to the gym in the afternoon instead of the morning because of the early morning meeting she'd had with her immediate supervisor. SSA Marvin Halloway liked to inconvenience her whenever possible.
What else is new? You've dealt with his kind all your life. Suck it up!
Georgia, now dressed in grey pinstriped slacks, a white blouse, and a matching suit coat, took her seat at her desk and began to go through cadet status reports. Three new cadets concerned her because they refused to listen to her. She'd have to get used to male cadets either dismissing her or to trying to bed her. Still, these three were different than the other jerks in the class. They were openly hostile and seemed to band together to make her life difficult.
"You can handle them, or you wouldn't have signed on at the FBI."
Georgia sighed again and thought about new strategies to deal with the cadets. She could make examples of them in front of the class, but such tactics only made sense as a last resort, and she hadn't reached the last resort, yet.
She signed off on the reports and looked at her watch. She sighed and let her eyes drift to the photograph on her table. The child smiling at her from the picture was three years old. He had large eyes the color of melted chocolate and wavy brown hair. She reached out and touched the picture. Her fingers brushed the glass cover over the photo, and she shivered.
Andy!
She pushed away thoughts of the small boy and picked up her bag. She unlocked her office door, opened it, stepped through, shut it and locked it again. She'd find a place with low lights and good tequila, then maybe she could forget the stranger in the gymnasium and his eyes that reminded her of Andy.