Title: 20 Moments Of Spencer's Life
Rating: FRT
Length: 2249 words
Genre: Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Pairings: Reid/Morgan
Warnings: Mentions of bullying
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Spoilers: For 1x22 and 2x01 'The Fisher King', 2x06 'Boogeyman', 3x16 'Elephant's Memory' and other random episodes which reveal facts of Spencer's life
Summary: Of everything that has happened to Spencer, eidetic memory or not, he remembers some moments more clearly.
A/N: I wrote this a long, long time ago, and actually planned it while writing 20 Moments In Derek Morgan's Life. The two are stand-alones, but if you read them together, you shouldn't find any discord. Inspired largely by my reading A Room With A View by E.M. Forster for Literature, thanks to runriggers for the spectacular beta. I'll continuing writing fics along this line -for the members of the team- so, hope you enjoy this one!
1.
Spencer's Mom actually wanted a girl. She never said anything, but by the time Spencer was three, he knew it for fact.
2.
They understood just how intelligent Spencer was before he was two. He was learning things too quickly for the average child –how to crawl, then walk, then run; how to draw circles and color within the lines, then how to differentiate circles and ovals and tell apart pink from purple; how to dress himself, knowing which shoe went on each foot then how to tie laces; how to speak at all, then how to speak more maturely than a child his age should— and then they realized that he was far from average. Spencer could not remember their reaction to this fact, but he thought that there was some yelling involved.
Whether it was the 'good' sort of yelling, he couldn't remember.
3.
When Spencer was four, he ran out of books to read in his room, so he sneaked into his Dad's study and started reading Maurice. His parents –when they found him in the middle of the room, books scattered around him in a messy circle, on the fourth chapter of the book in his hands—had learned that leaving him unattended and without something to read wasn't a good idea.
4.
He chose to stay in school and read instead of visiting the zoo with his classmates. His Mom had said that she was proud. His Dad had made a noise before shaking his head, almost disappointed.
Spencer didn't have the heart to tell them that the only reason he didn't go was because one of the other children –bigger than him, and he didn't have to be a genius to know that big didn't mean good most of the time—had threatened to shove him into the lion's cage. Logically, he knew that the child wouldn't, because it was too dangerous and Larson, the name of the boy in question, knew that the consequences weren't worth it.
Spencer was still afraid, though.
5.
When his parents decided to bring him to the zoo later, because they didn't want him to miss out on a valuable experience, which meant that it was his Dad's idea, he held his Mom's hand throughout the entire journey. He saw his Dad frown at him, at the action, and tightened his grip, shifting closer towards her.
At the zoo, he didn't go anywhere near the lion's cage till his Dad pulled him towards it.
The lions were huge, and he bit his lip to stop himself from screaming or, worse, crying.
A boy nudged him on the shoulder, hair curly and face pale, and grinned. "Don't worry, Mama says that the people here feed them lots to keep them fat so they can't go through the holes and eat us. And they won't eat us, we're too small, they'll start with the fat, old people and we'll run away together."
Then the boy ran away –shouting something back about his name being Riley something or the other— and Spencer was left staring at the lions.
6.
A Grandmother that he had never known died when he was six, and his Mom and Dad argued even louder and longer than they usually did about it. He let himself by comforted by Forster and Hardy; by the shining bulbs that filled the room with light; by the smell of his Mom's soap that clung to the sheets that she lay in, where he was lying.
His Mom came in after the front door slammed shut.
Spencer looked up. "You don't want to go."
His Mom looked haggard. "We'd have to travel there by a plane."
"You're afraid of planes." He was a perceptive child.
She climbed into the bed, pulling him onto her lap. He dropped the book; the feel of her cotton sweater was worth more than that of well-worn pages. "Why are you afraid of planes?" he asked, curious.
"Why are you afraid of the dark?" She was an honest mother.
He couldn't answer, and they both kept silent.
7.
Spencer went to the library the next day, the librarians all knew him by name and knew that he could be trusted not to make noise or tear the pages like the other kids, and pulled out every book he could find on pteromerhanophobia, aviophobia and aviatophobia. He swallowed information like his Mom used to swallow sleeping tablets, and realized that if he were ever to move far away, his Mom would probably never see him unless he himself made the effort to fly to her.
The thought grated on him for a moment, but he knew that he would never consider it seriously.
Then, he spent his weekend thinking up of witty responses to answer his Mom's question. Just in case.
8.
The day before his father left, he had actually read up everything he could find on schizophrenia and was going to suggest methods to cope with it.
9.
Spencer didn't need his Mom to read to him, they both knew that he read thrice as fast as she spoke, and that he had already memorized most of the texts in the house; definitely memorized those that he gave her. Spencer liked watching his Mom read, more than just listening to her voice, because her face softened, and the lines seemed to make her seem younger instead of older, and she would smile without even realizing it and she never smiled anymore.
After a while though, he would stare at her more carefully.
The slightly dull expression in her eyes that became crazed in seconds, the tangled mess of her blond hair, the scars left on her arms where she'd scratch herself till she bled –Spencer would wash the blankets, remove all traces— the pinched set of her mouth.
Then, he made a plan, and started counting down the days to his eighteenth birthday.
10.
His Mom knew what was happening at school. Vaguely, she did.
It was impossible not to notice the fact that the length of his sleeves kept growing, till they tickled the tips of his fingers, or that he spent over an hour in the bathroom after returning from school before he showed himself to his Mom, or that he kept having to wash his bed sheets because he wet his bed so frequently, or-
It didn't matter. She might have known, but as soon as she noticed something out of the ordinary, she would become distracted by some imaginary voice in her mind that was louder than Spencer could ever make himself.
11.
"If you weren't such a know-it-all, you might actually have friends," the girl was as tall as he was, as thin as he was, as pale as he was, but still better than he would ever be and they both knew it. "Or a girlfriend," she snorted at the idea. "You're probably a fag, anyway." Fag, he knew, was a pejorative term, mostly used to insult homosexuals.
He didn't respond, which he found was the best response in such situations.
The girl's eyes narrowed, the sound of the nails clicking together in time with that of her shoe tapping the floor. Then she rolled her eyes. "God, I can't believe I'm being paired with such a loser for the fucking project." Then, she wrapped her fingers daintily around his wrist and tugged him towards the library table. Mrs. Hillyard, the librarian on duty, smiled at him, scowled at her, then went back to arranging the books. He turned back to the girl, who sat down and leaned forward, her head on her hands.
It had the effect of hiking up her already short skirt, and showing more of her cleavage than it already did.
Spencer blushed, and the girl –Harper— laughed.
12.
When Harper told him that Alexa Lisbon wanted to meet him at the place behind the school field house –it was where everyone had sex—he didn't find her at first. Instead, he found her brother. He felt a fission of pleasure, even more than he had when expecting Alexa, before realizing that he'd brought the entire football team with him.
Then he closed his eyes and let his school bag fall to the ground, because he didn't need the books to be hurt alongside with him. They had done nothing to deserve it.
Then again, he hadn't either.
13.
Once, when his Mom was lucid –those times were rare, Spencer remembered each one—she told him to send her to a mental institution; told him that she didn't want to bog him down; told him that she didn't want to be a burden. Spencer didn't even have time to tell her that he'd considered all of this years ago before she was reciting bits and pieces of A Passage To India that he only just comprehended.
She never mentioned it again, and after he sent her away, he read the book again and again, hoping the words would drown out the memory of her pleading.
14.
The noise of a gunshot, he learned, was distinctly louder than any voices in anyone's head.
15.
His Mom, when he visited over a year after joining the BAU, had smiled at him and shook her head as he talked about the team. "This Derek, Derek Morgan," she said, interrupting him, "you bring him here."
Spencer had frozen. "What? Why?" Because he didn't want anyone to meet his Mom.
His Mom laughed, and that made something inside him unfreeze –it'd been too long since his Mom had shown joy like that, far too long—and she took his hand into hers, pulling him onto her bed, like they had so long ago. "Love is a wonderful thing, Spencer-" he shook his head in confusion, "just listen to your mother. This Derek has been good to you, good for you, and I think I need to make sure if he's good enough to stay."
Spencer had flushed in understanding then, and pulled his hand away. "You don't need to meet him, Mom, and you're not going to."
Except that before the next time he visited her, she'd already met the entire team.
16.
He was reading The Longest Journey when Derek walked up to him, cocky smile in place, and before he could speak Spencer had. "My Mom wants to meet you properly; she's been asking me in her letters." He didn't look up at Derek, intently studying Forster's writing, not processing Derek's reaction. When he didn't hear a response, he took in a breath and looked up.
"Well?" Derek blinked at him. Then he nodded.
"This weekend, then," Derek said, trying to get back control of the conversation.
Spencer nodded. "Before we leave Vegas," because they were there for a case and Spencer had been working up the courage to ask Derek throughout the week.
"Okay," Derek nodded.
"Okay," Spencer confirmed.
Then, Derek frowned. "You know, I'll have to pay Garcia 5 bucks now." Spencer cocked his head. "We made a bet, if I asked you out first, she'd give me five, and if you asked me, I'd have to pay her."
Spencer smiled. "I know," he gathered his things and walked out. "Now she owes me a drink for asking you out."
17.
To convince him that they should move in together, Derek had studied A Room With A View and told him that he was the George to his Lucy. Instead of being insulted that he was being compared to a character as confused and simplistic as Lucy, Spencer had bought Clooney a toy bone.
18.
Sometimes, Spencer would wake up, his Mom's name on his tongue, frantically searching for a pen to write out a letter, or a phone to call the Sanitarium. After the first three times that had happened –Spencer had knocked over a lamp, elbowed Derek in the ribs, left marks in the table from pressing down too hard with the pen and torn the phone cord—Derek had prepared for the possibility.
He had kept multiple pens and a thick stack of paper on the side table, along with both their cell phones and a new cordless phone. Derek also knew the staff that took care of Diana by name, along with the names of their family and the number of children or pets they owned.
Spencer never thanked him for this, because he knew it went both ways.
19.
"We'll visit her," Derek breathed against the skin of his neck, arms slung around Spencer's waist as they lay on their bed. "Together."
They did, and it didn't hurt Spencer like it usually did.
20.
Derek studied the form of Diana Reid, sitting in front of the windows, rivulets of light painting her to look almost ethereal. He could see where Spencer got that fragile beauty of his. "Spencer's turned out the way he has because of you," he broke the silence. Diana's head jerked towards him.
"You're with him because Spencer is good, he's better than-"
"I know," Derek agreed. "He's better than I'll ever be. But he could've lived a better life, without-"
"I know," Diana admitted, reluctant. "He had a hard life with us, both of us."
They stared at each other.
"But I'm not leaving him," Derek said slowly.
"And I'm not either."
They had reached an accord, and that would suffice, because they both owned different parts of Spencer, and Spencer owned all of them.