How To Carpe Diem

Spencer Reid One-Shot

There were many points in Spencer Reid's life when he had felt out of place. In fact, it would save a lot of time and effort for everyone involved just to name all the times he had felt in place. (If work related events with the team weren't included in the queue, Spencer could probably count those moments on one hand). Still, though, he didn't think that all of those rabbit in a dog pen days piled onto each other could compare to the experience of babysitting Henry.

Spencer wasn't completely clueless when it came to children. After being appointed as Henry's godfather, Spencer had seen it as a sort of duty to educate himself on the subject, at least at a basic level. And what he couldn't learn from books, he learned from watching JJ and Will interact with their son themselves. He never thought he would actually need to put the acquired knowledge to much use, but Spencer was still confident that he could handle taking care of a toddler if he absolutely had to.

Besides, even if, God forbid, something did happen to JJ or Will, Henry would end up in the custody of the closest blood relative willing and able to take him in; godparents only ever came into play if that family structure was substandard in some way. In a fictitious world where that was the case, then it would come down to Spencer and Penelope. Penelope would then, without a doubt, become Henry's guardian. Not because Spencer wouldn't be willing or able, but because Henry would be better off at all angles with the lively, loving woman than the bibliophile of a man.

Babysitting, while a far less severe scenario than the one previously mentioned, worked the same way. If no one else was available, Spencer would be glad to watch over his godson while giving his friend and coworker a day out with her hubby. He knew (or, rather, could imagine) how their job in the BAU could get in the way of personal relationships. It was the least he could do to help relieve some of that strain.

That was what Spencer kept telling himself as he pushed Henry's stroller thought the park. The boy had seemed restless for the forty-three minutes the two of them had been cooped up in Spencer's apartment, so Spencer somehow reasoned that going out into the public eye would be an easy solution. He was right, in a way. The fresh air made breathing a little easier, and it was hard not to love a walk in the park when the smell of autumn was so stalwart in the air. But Spencer had neglected to consider how much attention babies tended to attract.

When he was sure that Henry had fallen asleep, Spencer steered the both of them toward a park bench. He eased the stroller to the side, taking a seat for himself and reaching over the iron armrest to keep a precautious hand on the stroller's handle. He crossed his legs afterwards, feeling more awkward than usual and wishing that he'd brought a book along with him. But he hadn't, and he resigned to gazing at all the people who passed, alternating between giving tight, close-lipped smiles to those who slowed down to coo at the slumbering infant and perfunctorily profiling those who seemed too distracted to do so.

Spencer weaved his fingers over a knobby knee and tapped his foot to an unsteady beat. He really wished he'd brought a book with him.

"Cute kid."

A spark ran up Spencer's spine, and his stare snapped to the opposite side of the bench. There was a young woman sitting there, and she was reading a book. Spencer was sure the bench had been empty when he sat down, but he also hadn't noticed her joining him anytime after.

Clearing his throat when he realized that he was gawking, Spencer managed to choke out a, "Thanks." The woman smiled, the action looking like it came from a cross between amusement and sympathy, and motioned towards the stroller with her chin.

"He yours?" she asked, tucking a stray strand of platinum hair behind a five-time pierced ear.

"No," Spencer asserted, somewhat more firmly than he had intended. He made up for it by turning extra timid. "I'm just watching him. For a friend. My colleague. His name's Henry. The baby, n-not my colleague."

Spencer was ready to go on about his colleague being named JJ (which was, he would feel compelled to point out, short for Jennifer Jareau) and she was indeed a woman, who was married to a man named Will, and the two of them – JJ and Will – had had Henry together with absolutely no involvement from Spencer himself - other than his later appointment as the child's godfather. But he comprehended at some point during the .837 seconds it took for the words to scramble from his brain to the back of his throat that all of that information was irrelevant and too much to share with a stranger when they had only asked one simple question in the first place.

The woman nodded once, completely unaware of Spencer's inner strife, and let the corners of her lips twitch upwards. "I didn't think so."

It took a few moments for Spencer to fully register her words and all of the intentions they had to offer. By the time he felt a slight pang of puzzlement she'd already gone back to her reading. Spencer grappled with the idea of regaining her attention to ask what exactly she'd meant by that comment, but he thought that it would be both rude and too belated to matter by that point.

While he was debating, however, Spencer didn't realize that he'd been staring more than blatantly, wearing a wrinkled brow and concentrated frown. His bench mate noticed the odd behavior and apparently didn't have much trouble deciding for herself what was behind it.

"You just don't seem like a father," she said, her eyes darting from Spencer to the pages before her. She ultimately decided to close the text and give the former her full attention. "I mean, a father's usually proud of his son and not afraid to show it. You seem like you're more afraid of it; of him, Henry. I don't mean to insult you but I'm an elementary school teacher so I'm around parents all the time, you know?"

Spencer's brows rose in acknowledgment, his lips pinching as he weighed the pros and cons of opening his mouth again. Maybe it would be better to just let the conversation die out there?

"Oh," he ended up uttering, just to fill the space. As soon as the noise left him he knew he had no choice but to follow it up with something. "…I see."

It was a safe statement that Spencer had learned to use as a go-to rebuttal during casual conversation. Usually "I see" meant something more like "despite my proven status as a genius I don't understand a damn thing you just said".

The woman gave him another smile, this one less sympathetic and more amused than the last, before ducking her head and tapping her fingers against the cover of her book. Spencer saw an opportunity to redeem himself and leapt at it.

"What are you reading?" he asked, taking a gulp afterwards but thinking that it was something he should have done before; his mouth was dry all of a sudden, and he was sure his voice sounded just a little higher than it would have normally.

The woman tilted her face in his direction, watching him from the corner of her cherry-bark colored eyes.

"Oh," she murmured to herself, glancing down at the book askance. "Nothing impressive, really. Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer. You heard of it?"

Spencer bobbed his head up and down like a mindless doll, glad that things had successfully progressed into a field closer to his expertise. Only, when he actually tried to process the title and author she had answered with, his mind became a bug on a windshield. He'd never heard of anyone named Stephanie Meyer before, author or otherwise. Twilight? Was that something about environmental science, or maybe poetry?

The woman's face broke out into a grin – probably at the sheer lack of life in Spencer's expression – and dipped her chin as she gave a short laugh. "I'm kidding."

Quickly picking up on the fact that something about this Stephanie Meyer and the idea of reading her Twilight book should be considered funny, Spencer did his best to laugh along and act like he got the joke.

"It's actually Into the Wild, by Jon Krauss," the woman said, sparing a brief look toward Spencer. "Still not anything too impressive, but I find it interesting."

This time Spencer had a genuine reason to agree with her.

"Right, that's the biography of Chris McCandless," he stated, heading right into a recital of every fact her remembered about the non-fiction novel. "He donated the entire contents of his bank account to UNICEF, burned all forms of identification, left his family behind without a word, and made his way across America living off the land almost exclusively, all before he'd even turned twenty-five. He got all the way Alaska, but misidentified what turned out to be poisonous berries while scrimmaging for food. A group of hikers found his body two weeks later in the abandoned bus he'd been using for shelter."

The woman looked up at him, blinking once or twice before letting her eyes fall again.

"Yep, that's the one," she confirmed, flipping the book over so that the cover faced upwards in her lap. "It's a good thing this is my third time reading it, though, or you would have ruined it for me."

Spencer's lips parted, his cheeks tingled with a boyish blush.

"Sorry," he mumbled, remembering himself and suddenly unable to look her in the eye. From his peripherals, he could see that she was still watching him with the haunt of a smirk.

"Like I said, it's my third time. No harm done."

Spencer nodded mutely. It was a split second later when he realized that the conversation had been lost, probably because of his exuberance, and the pair had once again entered a strange, strangers' silence.

"I like your socks."

Spencer had to marvel at how easy some people could initiate communication. His eyes darted to her for a split second before flickering down to his own ankles, where a three inch gap between his shoes and pant legs showed off the mismatched set of under-footwear. His cheeks flared up again.

For a genius, he definitely felt like a fool far more often than he should have.

"Thanks." His voice once again squeaked as he spoke, which wasn't helping his esteem in the least. Even if the woman didn't seem to be showing any negative reaction towards his behavior Spencer couldn't help but wonder if she was just playing around with him, using his greenhorn for her own entertainment and hiding the whole charade behind a near perfect, cherub-cheeked poker face.

Her lips were curled up at the corners in a none-too-exclusively kind smirk, but the sparkle in her eyes was anything but maleficent. She was enjoying his failure as an articulate human being, in a way, but it wasn't something that she would exploit past an innocent zone. Most people found joy in his failure as an articulate human being, didn't they? Even his friends at the BAU. Especially his friends at the BAU.

The woman finally seemed to take pity on Spencer and returned to her own business, flipping Into the Wild open to the page she had dog-eared and resuming her reading as if the past four minutes of misery Spencer would remember for the rest of his life had never happened at all.

That was surely the end of their relationship, Spencer determined. She'd officially lost interest, if interest had ever been there at all. He seemed to be the only one left floundering in the wake of it, since she was so outwardly at ease. What a whirl-wind romance.

What now? Spencer didn't know what sort of action to take. Would getting up and leaving be rude? Was he supposed to get her attention to address the fact that he was leaving? They'd exchanged more than cliché conversation, so abandoning her without a word was probably a little less than polite.

Did he even want to leave? He was curious, with her and her gentle teasing and unabashed interest. For someone who worked with children, those traits that weren't all together unusual. He wondered what she taught; probably art or music, judging from her free style of dress and speech. She didn't seem like the type to be a full time teacher; she was too charismatic. Spencer couldn't see her adhering to a job that formal, whether it was based on statistical evidence or only his own opinion.

Besides, full time elementary teachers were usually old, weren't they? His teachers had been old. Old and cranky. Not young and social and wearing eyeliner and a leather jacket. Faux leather, rather. Spencer was almost positive it was seal colored, faux leather.

Whatever it was, it looked soft. Spencer couldn't see himself ever wearing a leather jacket, not that he'd ever paid the image any particular amount of attention before. Somehow he couldn't help but think it worked on her, though, even if he couldn't say the same when he pictured his own frame in one. Spencer wasn't exactly fashion savvy, but he was willing to bet that leather and cardigans clashed in a bad way. But did a woman in leather and a man in a cardigan clash in a bad way?

Said woman in leather snapped her book shut again, which also snapped Spencer out of his daze. (He'd been staring. Again). She kept her focus on her word as she brought a satchel type of bag onto her lap, eased the book into it, and swung it over her shoulder. She stood then, taking the time to adjust her clothing and accessories before catching Spencer's eye. He'd been staring. Again.

"So," she said, absently playing with a zipper on her satchel, "I come here pretty much every Saturday afternoon, as pathetic as that is. Maybe I'll see you around again." She paused, shooting a smile to the sleeping Henry and then to his caretaker. "If you ever have to watch him again, I mean. Isn't that what single guys bring other peoples' kids out for, to pick up chicks?"

Spencer could only keep gaping, but the woman didn't seem to have a problem with that. Her smile widened into a grin and she looked down to her feet, letting out a little laugh. She looked up again, biting her lip, and brought her hand up in a wave.

And then she was gone. Or on her way to being gone, rather. She walked down the park path, her hair glinting in the sunlight and her steps as fluid as the chilly breeze. Once she was out of sight, Spencer realized that he was supposed to be watching a baby, not a woman, and promptly returned to that duty. But after doing so, Spencer frowned. Now that there wasn't a woman around he was watching the baby, but why had he stopped watching the baby to watch a woman? He hadn't intended for that to happen. The woman had alluded to the idea that he intended for that to happen, but he hadn't. Is that what some men really did to attract the opposite sex? Did the woman – his woman, in a sense – really take him for that type of man? Couldn't she tell that he wasn't that type of man? She could tell that he was single, but she couldn't tell that he wasn't that type of man?

Whatever the case, it didn't matter for the moment. Whether intentional or not, Henry had just nabbed his godfather an unofficial date.

Spencer spared a moment to admire the tiny, beautiful being in the stroller. Spencer may not have been the type of man to use a baby to "pick up chicks", but at least the rouse worked for him. Babysitting may be an unsettling experience for Spencer, but it apparently did have its perks.

The question was, then, if he could get his hands on the opportunity again, and when?

(A/N)

This is something I wrote FOREVER ago. I pretty much hammered on an ending and posted it just so I could get it off my computer. I'm no genius myself, so Spencer is lacking some of that babbling intellect he's famous for; I don't exactly stalk Criminal Minds, so there are probably a boat load of facts that are either missing or wrong. Between all of that I hope it was still enjoyable to read! I really do love Spencer, and he really does need a good girlfriend~