Spencer never knew freedom until he reached college at the age of sixteen. It wasn't the fact that he needed to stay in high school until then - his intelligence could have got him to the sanctuary of higher education way earlier in his teen years, if his mother had been able to be more aware. He didn't blame her, though. He knew about her illness - more than probably some of the doctors through the years who had treated her, but that's what happens when you live with it day in and day out and desperately need to understand why your mother...can't be there for you.

Before his father had left, Spencer had been able to skip two grades, even though his father disapproved of it, wanting his son to have a chance at "being normal", but Spencer knew that he was anything but normal and so did his classmates. Two years or four years, -or how ever many he could skipped - they treated him differently. Like a freak. Too smart for his own good. Too academically smart, too emotionally stunted. First year of high school, he was tied down on the football field. Second year, he learned not to speak - even though that really didn't help his cause. The third and the fourth? He doesn't even like to think about.

But college. College was amazing. Cal Tech was everything that he could have dreamed for as a child. He was surrounded by people who cared about their education, people who did not bully him just because he knew the answer, but encouraged him to continue, to explain because they wanted to know more. Because they needed to know more - because they were like him.

It takes him a year to get back to the person he felt like he should have been after the traumas of high school, but it's a good year. He gains friends who are patient and seem to understand. He works on a math degree, which doesn't really require for him to do much talking anyways. The ability to skip classes that he can test out of with ease makes the process go much more smoothly - he's not stuck in a class, having finished the curriculum during the first week and spending the rest of the semester, trying to survive the sneak attacks from fellow classmates. Not that he really imagines that would happen at Cal Tech, but it is his experience.

His second year at Cal Tech, he meets a man named Ethan, who reminds him of the kind of men that used to tease him. Other than the fact that he has the same intelligence as everyone around him. He smokes and drinks and he really needs to shave (but the latter is true of a lot of people at Cal Tech, definitely the Computer Science and Engineering programs). He makes it a mission to become Spencer's friend, not that Spencer really understands why. And for the first few months of his second year, he tries his best to ignore the man. He had learned his lesson in trusting people like that in high school. He was not going to have to re-learn it. But Ethan is consistent and charming and Spencer finds himself, finally agreeing to go to a bar with him. Although he does mention that he's not even legal yet, but Ethan just chuckles at him and tells him that he'll take care of it. It's the way that he says it that Spencer just believes him and then immediately feels kind of queasy about it - this find of fate in someone usually got him in trouble.

The bar is dark and the music isn't overwhelming as he would have imagined it to be - a muted jazz feeling. There's art on the wall, nothing that he recognizes either, so he assumes that it's local artist. Some of it is terrible - or well, to him, it looks terrible but he does notice some people looking at it, so maybe he's wrong. Ethan is late and he sits at a table, looking around at the type of people in the bar until a waitress tells him she needs the table. He checks his watch - Ethan is now 27 minutes late and Spencer decides to give him until the 30 minute mark before he retreats back to his safe spot - his Cal tech dorm.

"It's wonderful, isn't it?" A woman's voice from his side says, but she's alone. Or he thinks she's alone. He looks around, trying to find the person she's talking to because it can't be him. She laughs and he freezes.

"The painting," She says and he looks at her. A blonde girl, probably a year younger than he was is looking at him before her eyes move back to the canvas they are standing in front of. His eyes move to the painting as well. It's one of the ones he thought was awful, so he doesn't say anything.

"Don't talk much, do ya'?" She says before laughing again. "I'm Delilah. My dad owns this place." She gives out the information so easily, but he stays silent, unsure why she's talking to him. "Do you have a name, stranger?"

"Reid. Spencer. Spencer Reid." He stumbles over his own name and clenches, knowing that she's about to make fun of him.

"Well, Reid, Spencer, Spencer Reid," she teases, but it doesn't feel as... demeaning as it could have been. "What do you think?"

"about what?"

She laughs again. "About the painting."

He nods, his eyes going back to the painting and he stares at it, still unsure of what to say. He opens his mouth to admit that he's clueless, but a hand clasps on his shoulder which he pulls away from, turning to see Ethan there, checking out the girl in front of him.

"Hey, man, whose your friend."

"Too young for you," She teases before turning back to Spencer. "Think about it, Reid Spencer, Spencer Reid."

The two men watch as she walks away, for different reason.