Disclaimer: No characters original to the Criminal Minds television series, in any way, belong to me. There are references to domestic violence throughout the following work of fiction, as well as strong (offensive) language. Please be aware of this as you continue to read this story.


He was sitting inside Etch, as close as he could get to the front window. It wasn't really that hard to find a seat there on a weekend night like this one. Most of the patrons were finding dark corners at college bars, and the few that chose Etch on a night like tonight were either the really diehard students with their books, or the socially indifferent couples to whom it didn't matter where they were as long as they were left to study each other – in detail. Those couples sought out the dark corners of Etch rather than the bars, but for the same reasons. In any case, a seat by the window was a welcome break from the social awkwardness that would be posed upon him anywhere else tonight.

He occupied a table near the entrance, hidden behind piles of nearly a dozen books, which, for once, he wasn't reading. There were the awkward, large earmuff headphones of his childhood sitting atop his head, the cord trailing down to his lap where the disc man sat. He closed his eyes and leaned his head to his right to rest against the windowpane. Spencer sat cross-legged in the chair, trying not to think about spending another birthday away from Diana. He had written her letter and posted it promptly on his way to the coffee shop this afternoon. His mother only lived 257 miles from the campus, but he felt safer at school – closed away from the reality of what was happening to her – and he hadn't been to visit her since his eighteenth birthday. He reached down to the CD player and reset the track, listening deeply to the Icelandic minimalist melodies.

Just then, a cold hand, placed on his arm, startled him out of his reverie. He snapped open his eyes and pushed the headphones back around his neck.

"Hi?" The last thing he expected to see was the young woman standing in front of him.

"Can I sit here?" She was wearing jeans and a loose t-shirt, and was gripping the back of the chair across from him nervously.

He narrowed his eyes skeptically and glanced around the coffee shop trying to decipher who had put her up to this. No one looked particularly interested in the two of them, in fact, he was sure he had been invisible until the moment she walked up to him. "Um, sit. Please."

"You don't remember me?" she smiled as she sat solidly in her chair.

"I'm pretty sure we've never met." And he was. Certain.

"Didn't we have a lab together last semester?"

"No."

"Never forget a face?"

"No, I don't actually." He let a smile just touch the corners of his lips for a moment.

"You have a nice smile."

He wasn't used to girls being so forward with him. He took another moment to recall his first glimpse of her. She was slender and average height with dark blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail that just brushed her shoulders, her bangs falling in front of her glasses. She wore large, brown frames that made her face appear smaller and more angular than it actually was. Her shirt was a dingy white and her jeans were well worn in. She had three, small silver studs lining the edge of her left earlobe, and two lining her right. She was right handed, wearing a leather banded watch on her left wrist. All this he had catalogued in less than three seconds. He watched her grey eyes as she was obviously still studying him.

He had thrown on an old t-shirt this morning along with a pair of grey corduroys and his old, worn in chucks. His hair was probably dirty and it hung uneven just past his chin. She was beginning to read the faded, hand painted letters on his shirt. It used to say 'the no. 2 pencil is mightier than the sword', but some of the letters were missing.

"Who were you running from?" he asked. It seemed to startle her enough to break her gaze away from his awful t-shirt.

"I wasn't running from anyone." She looked confused.

"It's usually still warm in Pasadena at the beginning of October, and it's unusually warm today – almost ninety degrees. You're perspiring, but it's probably a cool sweat because all of the blood has left your face and extremities – part of the body's fight or flight response. Your hand was freezing when you touched me, and you look nervous."

Her mouth opened into a slight 'oh' of surprise. "It's nothing. Just an argument with a friend. I just… really don't want to talk to him right now, and I know he'll leave me alone if I'm…"

"Sitting with another guy," Spencer finished her thought for her as he glanced out the window at the man pacing the parking lot.

"Yeah. He just needs some time to cool off."

Spencer watched as the man finally turned and walked over to a mid-nineties model, green sedan. "I feel so used," he muttered under his breath, jokingly, trying to shake off the sense of foreboding that was nagging at him.

"Sorry," she slumped in her chair.

He looked back at her and tried to soften his voice. "Don't be. I was only trying to make a joke."

"So what did you have planned for tonight?

"Why"

….

They sat in a dimly lit booth at the back of the Spanish restaurant, near the bar area and, consequently, the smoking section. She had insisted on making it up to him, having 'used' him; but he knew she secretly wasn't comfortable being alone again just yet.

"I'll go on one condition," he'd said. "What's your name?" Now they were sharing a large order of mixed Paella. Spencer was picking out the chicken and leaving the prawns and mussels for Stella.

"I really hope I didn't monopolize your evening," she said between mouthfuls of saffron rice. "I just felt bad and… yeah, it was a stupid thing to do. I should have just told him to screw off for the night, huh?"

"It's fine. I usually don't have plans today."

"On Saturdays?"

"On my birthday," he muttered and took a gulp of coke from the glass bottle in front of him.

"It's your birthday? We have to celebrate," she half stood before he reached across the table, pulling her back down.

"Please don't make them sing."

"I won't," she said sincerely. "But I am going to do something for you. You can't stop me."

"You bought me Paella."

"You like chocolate?" He nodded. "You like coffee? – Yeah, you like coffee." He smiled as she answered her own question. She had seen the mountain of empty paper coffee cups in the back seat of his Volvo. "How 'bout some chocolate espresso brownies, home made?"

"I could handle that, I suppose." He found himself excited by the prospect. He hadn't had a real birthday celebration since his mid adolescence – Dianna had begun deteriorating faster by then.

She instructed him to drop her by the market, it would only take a minute to pick up what she needed, and she would meet him in the parking lot when she was done. He sat in his car as the last light of the evening bled into the night sky. The temperature was dropping to the lower sixties and he kicked the heat up slightly so Stella would be comfortable for the rest of the ride. She was rubbing her hands together as she climbed back into the passenger seat.

"Where to?" Spencer asked.

"Your place," she smiled weakly as she sorted through her two bags to make sure she had gotten everything.

"…Okay," he shook his head and took off in the direction of his apartment building.

"You don't live on campus?"

"No. I had an unusual arrangement with campus housing… Ah, do you?" He stammered. All freshmen were required to reside on campus, and though he was hardly young enough to be a freshman (even though he looked younger than he was), he had been far too young to live on campus when he was a freshman. "Live on campus, I mean… do you?"

"No, I have an apartment with my, my room mate. Anyway, I don't go to CalTech."

He picked up on the verbal stall. He was trying not to read much into her behavior, but it was difficult. He had always enjoyed his time studying sociology and kept reverting to his old habits from studying for the degree. "Well, my place is sort of… I live alone and I, ah, don't often have… company." He squeezed his eyes shut hard and clenched his jaw to keep from stumbling over his words even more.

"It's a guy's apartment. Say no more."

He opened his eyes again as the car behind him began honking, signaling that his light was green. A few minutes later they pulled into the small parking area of his complex. There were four two-story buildings, surrounding a small courtyard. Each building held two units – one upstairs, and one down. Spencer guided Stella across the dying grass to the far left, downstairs unit.

He took a deep breath as he quickly keyed his way into the small apartment. The front door opened onto a one-room efficiency. It held several low-end shelving units, all of which were filled to the brim with books. There were books stacked on the floor along the walls and in front of the shelves as well. There was a rolling component stand backed into a corner that held an early nineties model tube television set, an SNES and a Nintendo 64. There was a roll top desk along one wall with an ancient IBM computer and a new HP printer, which had been a necessity for school. The oak and black fabric futon bed doubled as his couch, even though it was almost always in the bed position.

"Cool," Stella pronounced as she scanned the room. "Kitchen?" He directed her through one of two doors at the back of the room; the other led into the tiny bathroom. She took her bags through the door and he began to gather up trash and clothing, depositing both on his closet floor.

"Just, make yourself at home. I unfortunately don't have much to cook with. I pretty much live on coffee and take-out." He shook his head at the sound of his words.

"I have it taken care of."

Ten minutes later they were sitting on the futon, coffee mugs in hand, waiting on the brownies to finish baking. She had bought a foil pan and a cheap plastic mixing bowl at the market. They had spoken about the weather, and Spencer's lack of culinary skills, before finally falling back on the topic of school.

"I'm taking the semester off." Her face fell a little when she said it. "I had just gotten this momentum going and it was like I was running head first toward a brick wall. I really enjoy what I was doing, I just needed a chance to breath, you know?"

"Not really," he said with the sincerest look possible.

"Well, Photography and Imaging at Pasadena Art Center. It doesn't sound all that competitive, but it really is. I was really more self-taught anyway. I actually enjoy the more intuitive shots I've been getting in the past couple of months. I usually take my camera with me everywhere."

"You certainly sound passionate about it."

"Yeah? What about you, Mr. Reid?" She smiled behind the lip of her mug as she took another sip of her cinnamon tea. "What are you passionate about, academically speaking?"

He could feel his ears turning red. He hated answering that kind of question. "I'm finishing a… degree in chemistry." The inflection of his voice made it sound more like a question.

"Nice. You planning on taking that on to graduate school?"

"Yeah, it's actually a doctoral degree…" He took a big gulp of his tea.

"Wow – you don't look that old. I could have sworn we were the same age."

"I'm twenty."

She stared at him, wide eyed, just as the oven timer began buzzing. He watched her jump up from her seat and take off for the kitchen. He was definitely not going to mention another thing about his academic history. She walked back into the room, holding the pan of brownies with a dingy dishtowel and dropped it on the bed between them. "Two forks," she announced, and handed him one. "So, when did you graduate high school? Fourteen?"

"No," he said gruffly.

"Sorry, I didn't mean… Um, so what did you major in?"

"Psychology and Sociology."

After agreeing to a truce to not talk about academics, they settled back into their brownies and tea, and Spencer tried to lighten the mood with some Episode I defaming humor. His mother called around eleven o'clock worried that she hadn't heard from him yet. He didn't want to get into this discussion in front of Stella. He had spoken to her this morning over breakfast. Every year on his birthday and hers they had their breakfast phone call. And every year she would forget and become agitated as the evening wore on.

Stella could tell he was uncomfortable and she excused herself to clean up her mess in the kitchen. He was exceptionally grateful for that, and hopefully he wouldn't have to explain why.

"How is everything, Mom?"

"I'm not well, Spencer. They told me you called today but they're lying to me. They don't want me to talk to my baby boy on his birthday."

"We're talking now, Mom." Spencer shuddered. It was always unsettling talking to her on her bad days.

"How was the party? Oh I'm so sorry I couldn't be there, darling. I had papers to grade. Did any of your friends make it?"

She was talking about his seventh birthday. His father had tried to get a few neighborhood kids to come over for cake and ice cream, but it had been an exercise in futility. Diana had spent the entire day in her room, forgetting the party all together in favor of grading her non-existent papers.

"Mom, do you know how old I am?"

"Don't try to trick me, Spencer - they try to trick me."

"I'm twenty today," he said with a sad, exhausted sigh.

"I know that! Don't play games with me. I'm your mother... I was twenty-eight... Did you have a nice party, Spencer?"

Her tone softened abruptly and he didn't want to lose any of the quality time he might have to speak with her tonight, so he indulged her.

"Yes. A new friend took me to dinner and then I had birthday brownies," he glanced toward the kitchen as he spoke, realizing that it was suddenly too quiet in the apartment.

"That's fine then. I sent you a book of poetry. I have to go now, Spencer. The nurse is cataloguing my every word. I love you very much, my grown up young man!"

"Goodnight, Mom. Much love."

He flipped the phone closed and stood up quietly, making his way toward the kitchen. Stella was sitting on the floor, leaning against the cabinet with her head in her hand.

"Thank you for the privacy," he said softly as he leaned against the doorframe, looking down on her. She startled slightly and he began to think he might not have to explain the strange phone conversation he had just had – she seemed to have been in her own world.

"No. No problem. I've been intruding on your life all evening."

"Not intruding. I could tell you to leave if I didn't want you here." He seemed offended at the idea that he had no control over her presence in his home. He was an adult and he could choose whom he did and did not allow in his personal space. Couldn't he?

"Well, I know it's almost midnight," she sighed. "Pumpkin time." He smiled at the reference to Charles Perrault's version of Cinderella in which he introduced the pumpkin in 1697. "So I'll just be going then."

"I'll drive you." He quickly began searching the room for his keys. He was pretty sure he'd discarded them somewhere near the front door.

"No. That's too much trouble, really. I can make it on my own."

"Walk? I don't think that's a great idea." He eyed her skeptically. "Where is your place, anyway?"

"I don't think it's a great idea to let some guy I just met know where I live." She was agitated.

"But it is a good idea to go to that guy's apartment with him, alone?"

"I can take care of myself... " she mumbled, looking unsure of her own words. "I'll take a bus."

"At least let me drive you to he bus stop."

She glared at him.

"Please," he asked quietly, still unsure whether she would say yes.

"C'mon then." She walked past him and headed for the door.

They drove to the buss stop in silence, where Spencer insisted on waiting for the buss with her. The night was chilly and he had left his sweater on the futon at his apartment, he tried not to let on that he was cold. Stella wasn't shivering at all. In fact, she sat rigid next to him, hardly breathing at all. She turned her head and caught him looking at her.

"So, if I wanted to hang out again, how would I get in touch with you?"

"You would want to 'hang out' again?" He used air quotes.

"What's your number?"

Without thinking he rattled off a series of numbers, which he had to run through in his head after the fact to make sure he hadn't given her his childhood phone number. She fished around in her purse for a pen and an old bank receipt, and quickly wrote it down before she could forget it.

Spencer saw her bus moving up the street toward them. He stood and shoved his hands into his pockets waiting for her to gather her things and board the bus. She grabbed his hand and scrawled her number down on his palm, and he glanced down to read it as she released him from her grip.

"Who's 'Lou'?" He shouted as she climbed the steps into the vehicle.

"That's me!" she shouted back.