Title: Obsession
Rating: T (the rating will go up later)
Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.
Summary: Dr. Spencer Reid was not used to attention such as this, and he most certainly was not used to using that attention to achieve such an end.
Author's Note: This is the start of my first CM multichapter fic, but it doesn't involve the character from my one shots. It has a new character that I created. When this is done I'll start the other one. So, here it begins.

Prologue

Pressed into the fresh earth, his fingers were stilled by the cold lack of moisture beneath the soil and the slowly building pressure against his hands. He'd fallen with his palms turned upwards and outwards in some desperate attempt to stop the rain of dirt across his body, but the dirt had now scattered and found its way into every opening of his clothes. His dark blonde hair had taken on the color of the dusty earth as the ground around him had dried; his eyes had not reacted in time to save themselves for the whites were not brown with the lack of oxygen, but also with the small particles of earth that had slipped between the lids; and his mouth had closed and his lips had had remained the same light pink they had in life with only a soft covering of dulling dirt. No one who had known him in life would have ever remembered seeing his body so still had they been able to view his body now.

The six feet of space above him had been filled by filth and flora only moments before, and now the empty space was being filled by uniforms and useful things that the eyes of the dead man had seen sparingly in life because they were the useful things of the collectors of the dead. His mind would have no memory of these objects. Though they passed before his eyes his memory would fail him because his eyes would not see, his mind would not remember, and he would not attempt to do so.

In death he was reduced to a motionless and mindless cadaver that had become stiff with perpetual sleep. It was not a form that his companions of only days before would ever wish to see him, but it was them that pulled him from the earth. Gloved, their hands gripped the dead weight of their friend and reclaimed his body from the earth that had claimed it only seventy-two hours before now. Two hands gripped his torso beneath the arms and another set of hands gripped his legs as they struggled to free his long-limbed frame. His feet came free of the dirt, and they lowered his body atop a stretcher as another set of hands pulled the edges of sheet under him around his body.

Not a single pair of eyes dared to look at his face.

Only when the three people standing beside the stretcher stepped away did another set of hands grip the plastic bars and pull the body away from them. The three of them kept their eyes cast in separate directions: one pair never left the back of the coroner van as it drove away, another pair stayed fixed upon the upturned earth at their feet, and the final two eyes were turned upward towards the sky and the gathering clouds on the horizon.

"We need to set up some tents to preserve the crime scene." The lips beneath the first pair of eyes barely moved, but the two people near him began to move as he spoke. He turned his eyes from the van and back to the pile of dirt at his feet. Rolling up his sleeves, he spoke to no one particular, but to everyone around him. "Someone grab the CSIs so we can start. This case is now priority."

"Yes sir." A blue tent began to assemble itself over the crime scene.

The man issuing orders began walk towards the line of cars blocking the road, and his eyes closed as the red and blue spots of color found his face through the trees that had blocked him from the barrage of lights before. His fingers reached for the crime scene tape, pushed it aside, and struggled with the metal of the door handle as he realized that his vision was beginning to blur. The door opened, and he was thankful for the refuge of tinted windows and metal as he slammed the palm of his hand into the steering wheel twice before tilting his head back and gasping. The few tears that had threatened to fall vanished, and he glanced at his reflection in the mirror. Dark eyes met dark eyes, and he glanced at the odd angles of his dark hair and the lines crossing his face. He had been awake for far too long, and he was beginning to show his tiredness. That could not happen. He took a breath. They all needed him now.

When he stepped from the car his hair was parted, his breathing calm, and the tears no longer threatened to fall from his darkened eyes. He flipped open his phone.

"I need to be connected to the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI in Quantico."

-TBC-