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You don't know me
"Excuse me… May I slip past you, please?"
He looked up and saw a young woman, pretty, with lovely dark blue eyes at his elbow. One wonderfully shaped eyebrow raised as she stared down at him.
"Uh, yeah, um please go ahead," he said, sighing quietly as she slipped past him and took a seat, leaving one in the middle of the row between them.
"I'm sorry to bother you," she said, nearly smiling at him. "I almost missed this flight, thanks to my idiot driver."
He suddenly realized that she spoke in rich, English tones. The accent nearly distracted him from the wavy flow of her golden hair and the way her light blue jacket and skirt hugged her curvy body.
"It's okay," he said stupidly. "I hate flying commercial," he added bluntly and felt the blood rise to his cheeks.
She stared at him inquiringly. "I beg your pardon."
"I just mean I usually fly on a private jet."
Her eyebrows went into her hair and keen interest filled her eyes. Great, now she thinks your bragging.
"Um, w-well I'm an FBI agent w-with t-the BAU," he stammered as three passengers passed in quick succession to rows beyond them. "I, um I mean, my team and I fly on a private jet to…"
He stopped because this woman with an oval shaped face and lips painted rose had more than interest in her eyes. She reminded him of a rock and roll groupie that had just met her idol.
"Oh, I know what you do. Perhaps it's Fate that we met."
He knew he stared, but he couldn't stop. "I don't understand."
She adjusted her seat belt and smiled widely at him. "My name is Dr. Imogene James. I'm a forensic pathologist with Scotland Yard."
His heart jolted like the engine of an old Model T automobile someone tried to start after they'd left it to rot in a field of weeds for a decade.
"I've heard of you. You wrote a series of articles in Europe's Journal of Psychology, on the Makeup of the Serial Killer's Mind. I thought it was a fascinating take on the subject. Did you know -?"
She grinned at him. "I think they're about to give the same safety speech we've heard a million times."
She pointed to the flight attendants at the head of the aisles. "Oh right," he tried to keep his mind on the spiel he had heard many times, but his eyes seemed to have a mind of their own and strayed back to her more times then he wanted to admit.
The pilot announced take off, so he busied his hands with his seatbelt. He glanced over at Dr. James again and flinched in embarrassment. She was staring at him. In fact, her face went just a little pink before she faced forward and stared at the back of the seat in front of her as the engines of the plane roared to life.
He liked the sensation of lifting off the earth, of feeling of the tail dipping back, as though this time, the engines didn't have the necessary power to pull them up through the counter force of gravity and into the sky. Just for the one moment, he always felt as though they might come crashing down, and it always sent his heart racing into his throat, until today. Today, he barely felt the lift of the plane, or the dip, today he just felt the beating of his heart and he wondered why he'd decided to take this trip in the first place.
"You look a little worse for wear, with all your vast experience flying."
He glanced over at Dr. James, who observed him with something in her eyes he didn't recognize for all his skills as an expert in body language.
He noticed that although the plane still climbed into the purple sky of twilight, they were beginning to level out a bit.
"Yeah, I mean, yes I'm fine," was all he could say.
She picked up a magazine from the pocket attached to the back of the seat in front of her and began to thumb through it. He sat back, and felt his heart drop a little. She wasn't interested in him. She just wanted small talk. He should have known. Here he was, chasing after a dream that'd left him behind He'd wanted to surprise Emily, but now….
He turned to look at the left side of the plane and wished he'd been able to get a window seat. Then he'd have something else to look at.
"You never told me your name."
His head whipped to the right so fast, a muscle cramped. Dr. James stared at him expectantly. "What's your name?"
"Dr. Spencer Reid."
"Well, Dr. Spencer Reid, it's nice to meet you. I hope you don't mind if I talk your ear off. The reading material on these bloody machines is sorely lacking and I always forget to bring a book."
"No," he squeaked, and then wished for the floor to open up and swallow him, even at around twenty thousand feet. Anything was better than the damn squeak.
"Good, because we've got a long flight ahead of us. Why don't you tell me about yourself?"
"There's not much to tell," he said, surprised that he wanted to talk. "I'm just an FBI agent."
"You're more than that," she said, as she unbuttoned her jacket and shrugged it off. "I recognize your name too. You're the FBI's wunderkind, a genius with three doctorates and several other degrees. I've read most of your articles. You're one of the most widely published criminal psychologists in the Western world.
"I don't -"
"No," she held up a hand, "to the devil with false modesty, Dr. Reid."
He felt his mouth turn up in a real smile, the first real smile he'd made in months. "Well, isn't that a little self serving?"
"I won't tell anyone, if you won't," she winked at him.
He laughed, and ignored other passengers that stared at them. To him, she was the only one in the world, and again, he wondered why he'd decided to take this trip.
"Was this your first time to merry old England?"
"Um, yeah, I uh, well; I'm not sure why I'm on this plane now."
"Why don't you tell me about it?"
Her eyes were as deep as the depths of the ocean. He thought they must have some kind of hypnotic power over him, because he couldn't look away and he couldn't stop talking to her.
"Is it a woman?"
He blinked and she smiled again. How did she know? It was as if she had the power to read his mind, or something. He rather liked it.
"Yes."
"I see."
He finally tore his eyes away from her and stared at the seat in front of him with eyes that didn't really see the fabric. His hands pulled at his seatbelt as he heard the ping of the seatbelt light go off.
"She was a member of my team."
Dr. James was silent. He breathed in a little of the faint scent of her musky perfume he'd noticed when she'd passed him to sit. In fact, it was much stronger than it should be. He looked over again and saw that she was sitting right next to him. He flinched when she reached out and touched his hand.
"I hope you don't mind if I moved. I thought you might not want to speak up."
Again, she'd seemed to read his mind and his hands began to shake a little. "I thought we were best friends," he said hollowly. "We worked together, sweated together, and even bled together, and then she betrayed me and the rest of my friends."
A bead of sweat rolled down his face. He wiped it away and reached up to turn on the little fan over his head. It didn't help very much, but it was better than nothing. The air was thick for some reason and just a little too warm on his skin.
"Anyway, she left us for a few months. She was supposed to be dead. That's what my boss and another friend told me. They watched me mourn and they could have stopped it, just like that."
He snapped his fingers.
"Go on," she urged him quietly as the pilot indicated that they had reached their cruising altitude of thirty-seven thousand feet, and the flight attendants would begin serving dinner.
"She came back, and everything was supposed to go back to normal, according to all my friends."
"But, it wasn't the same," she guessed.
He looked up at her eyes. She watched him as though her life depended on it. Why? She'd never seen him, didn't know him at all.
"No, it wasn't the same. I know that my team, my family, would do anything for me, and they have, but…"
"You don't have to say more, if you don't want to. I'm too curious for my own good."
He liked her eyes too much, to say that, no he didn't want to talk about it. "It's okay. Eventually, we all found trust in her, but then she decided to leave again. At least this time she didn't fake her death. I was devastated because I never -"
He looked down at his feet. Tears stung at his eyes for this and for this wasted trip across the Atlantic. It was so stupid.
"Dr. Reid."
Her voice, which reminded him of melted chocolate, and it pulled his eyes up to look at her. She didn't look like someone that felt sorry for him. There was only that something he couldn't identify in her blue eyes.
"I never told her how I felt and she just left because an old friend asked her to head up Interpol in London. I guess she burned out on the BAU and I can't blame her, but I wish -"
"You wish you'd said something sooner."
"Yes."
"What happened next?"
"About a week ago, I suddenly decided that I needed to see her again. I wanted to surprise her, and tell her how I felt. I thought, it didn't matter if she didn't love me back, or if she did and we had to have a bi-continental relationship. I thought we'd make it work."
"I take it; she didn't say she loved you."
He laughed quietly and bitterly. "No, she didn't say it. In fact, she never knew I was here. I flew over here yesterday. I thought I was so clever. I took a cab to her apartment and as I was getting out, I saw her come out with another man. They were laughing and holding hands and -"
"That doesn't mean -"
"No, it means something. I saw her kiss him. It wasn't a peck on the cheek, either."
The plane shook a little over some turbulence and her sounds of sympathy were drowned out by shaking food carts. One of the flight attendants interrupted them with requests for what they'd like to eat. He didn't want anything, but he agreed to the lasagna just the same.
"I'll have the chicken," Dr. James said.
"Very good," said the male flight attendant, as he looked her up and down.
She ignored him and returned her attention to Spencer. "What happened next?"
"I left. I went back to my hotel and then I decided to take this flight home. I never told her I was there. At least I dodged that final humiliation."
"I wish I could say I'm sorry, but I'm not."
"I don't -"
She held up one small hand with pink painted nails. "I just mean I'm glad you took this flight tonight, or I wouldn't have met you."
"You don't know me."
She grinned at his declaration. "No, and I'm not saying it's true love."
His face went hot again and he looked at his shoes instead of her face.
"Dr. Reid."
He wrenched his eyes up from his shoes to look at her. She was smiling like the sun over the ocean at dawn.
"Call me Spencer," he said a bit breathlessly.
"I hope you'll call me Imogene."
He nodded and she touched his arm again. "Why don't you think about it for the rest of the flight?"
He sat back in his seat and watched the dinner service move closer. His head spun, but for the first time in years, he wasn't thinking about Emily. It didn't even matter that she was happy with someone else.
"Imogene," he said.
She looked up from the headphones she'd plugged in for the movie that was going to play after dinner was served. "What, Spencer," she replied.
"Why are you going to the States?"
"Scotland Yard and the FBI traded pathologists for six months. Perhaps you've heard of the exchange program?"
"Yes. I have a friend that's going to take your place, as a matter of fact."
"Dr. Gary," she said with certainty.
"Yes, he's very excited to be there for the Olympics. Actually," he said. "Aren't you sad to be leaving now?"
"Why, I can watch it on television and the net. I don't have to put up with jam-ups, long queues everywhere, and the increased crime with all the tourists."
He laughed as the flight attendants reached them and passed over their dinners. "I guess you can."
She pulled a white card out of her pocket and handed it to him. "My cell number is on there. Please don't disappoint me and not call me. I know," she held up a hand to forestall him from speaking, "you just had your heart broken. Why don't we just be friends for now?"
He looked at the card. He shouldn't take it. She was only going to be in America for six months. He'd get attached again and then his heart would break. He looked up at her face and her wonderful eyes. She smiled at him and he pocketed the card. He'd worry about it later.