A/N: I'm finally getting around to posting one of these things. Basically, all my oneshots fall in the same universe, if something seems out of place or unexplained, it was probably touched upon in another one shot. I can't commit to a full length story like I want to because my editor is on my ass about the novel I'm supposed to but not actually finishing. Everything is unedited, I get to excited about each one to wait for them to be fixed up, and I don't have anybody who would do it for me. (My editor would kick my ass if she knew I was writing these things instead of my book.) All of them will be Prentiss/Reid, there just isn't a better match on the show, they've got such great chemistry, and they're a ball to work with. I thrive off of reviews and totally take prompts/requests - anything to help me procrastinate!
NOTE: Apologies, apparently this didn't save with all the quotation marks in it. . Fixed though.
Disclaimer: I don't own Emily Prentiss, Spencer Reid, or Kurt Vonnegut. I do own God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, but I don't own the rights to it, just a copy. An old copy, but a copy none the less. I do own the sleigh bed, and their words. No copyright infringement intended.
"Just explain it to me", Emily encouraged, sitting on Reid's king sized bed, her legs folded together Indian style. She had a book in her hand, the one that had prompted the small argument. It was God bless you, Mr. Rosewater, by Kurt Vonnegut, she had wanted to read it aloud to him, like she had done with a number of other books, but he had declined, and had begun to recite the opening chapter from memory, "A sum of money is a leading character in this tale about people, just as a sum of honey might properly be a leading character in a tale about bees. The sum was $87,472,033.61 on June 1, 1964, to pick a day. That was the day it caught the soft eyes of a boy shyster named Norman Mushari." Emily's response had been a growl and an eye roll.
"I can't Emily, its not something I can explain," Reid replied, stretched out on the bed on his stomach, a book in front of him as well, though he wasn't reading it, that would only piss her off and he wasn't in the mood for a real argument.
"Try, please, I want to understand you, Spence. You've got to understand, I've always been the smart one, the one with all the answers, but you're so much smarter than me, I need to understand it," she encouraged, nearly a pleading tone to her voice, which caught his attention.
"Fine," he sighed resignedly, sitting up, tucking his long gangly legs to the side. "And intelligence isn't properly quantifiable, Emily, I'm not smarter than you," he reminded her of his personal philosophy yet again. She waved him on, having heard the speech several times before. "Okay, you know I have an eidetic memory. Its commonly referred to as a photographic memory, but that's a misnomer. There are people who remember things like images, I know you do, right? He asked her, nodding along as she confirmed his speculation. You have a photographic memory, you just don't have the perfect recall to go with it. It has to do with how information is stored in the brain. People who have auditory brains remember things as words, they literally hear what they're remembering, they recall the voice of who ever spoke it, that sort of thing. But me? The information in my brain isn't stored as pictures, or as words. That's the part I can't explain, its like its all up there, in my brain, almost like a fluid, and when I want to remember something, I convert that into words, the same words that I used to put it there. I think that's why I can read so fast, its not like I'm reading each word, my subconscious recognizes each combination of letters and can then put it together for when I need it, while my conscious only comprehends the material as a whole." He finished his little explanation with a small shrug.
"I see..." Emily trailed off, unsure how to respond to him. She sat, thinking for a minute, her eyes studying his face carefully.
"Does that make sense to you?" Reid asked worriedly, he didn't want to fight with Emily, intelligence seemed to be the only thing they ever actually fought about. He knew that it was because Emily was lacking self confidence in that area, and that she felt a little jealous, if not intimidated by his seemingly endless knowledge.
"Yeah, I think it does. So that's why you don't remember things you hear as well?" Emily asked, "because you're subconscious can't process the words differently?" She was genuinely curious as someone who remembered things in pictures and smells.
Spencer nodded, "I can remember things I've heard more easily if I think about remembering it, otherwise I might or I might not," he elaborated. "I remember the first book you read to me, I could recite it," he smiled, shifting so that he was leaning his back against the back of the sleigh bed, next to her.
"I think I probably could too," Emily admitted with a smile, "But only because I've read it so many times since then." She was teasing him, only slightly though. He often requested for her to read that particular novel to him, it was in Italian, and though the words were already committed to memory, and had been, he enjoyed listening to Emily, the fluid Italian rolling off her tongue.
"You know, Em, you think I'm so much smarter than you, but you're the one who speaks the multitude of languages, I can't even wrap my head around Arabic, and you speak it fluently. Don't give me the I grew up there excuse either, because yeah, but its not normal to be able to speak that many languages fluently."
Emily flushed slightly, she wasn't a self deprecating person usually, but she wasn't exactly used to compliments, despite the fact that Reid enjoyed dishing them out like they were a necessity. "Do you remember that I love you?" She smiled, curling against his thin frame.
"Of course," Reid smiled, "but it sounds so much nicer coming out of your mouth."
"Ti amo, je t'aime, ya tebya lyublyu, bahebak," she recited in her fluent languages.
"See? You're so sexy when you speak in tongues," Spencer murmured, leaning over to cover her lips with his.
She broke the kiss only for a moment, "Forse dovresti imparare a parlare I'italiano anche, che sarebbe stato piuttosto caldo." And with that, she pressed her lips back against Spencer's, determined not to let him go.