A/N: As school begins to settle in once again, I can be a bit more consistent with my writing. Sorry it took SO LONG for me to update… again… but that just comes with the package with me, inconsistency. I'll be more on top of things now. I try to promise. Per usual, I own NOTHING of Criminal Minds. I do own Haley and my other original characters. Yay!

Four

Starved, Spencer Reid walked into his apartment the next evening at nine to see a dish of chicken parmesan sitting on the stove. He opened the fridge to grab a bottle of water to see a salad on the top shelf. He heard nothing coming from Haley's room and fell silent, then the slight ruffle of paper on paper. Good, she was reading. "I'm home, Hales," he called. It wasn't necessary, but he felt that he should make some noise. Spencer knew that it could get pretty dreary without another body in the apartment.

He heard her duvet cover rustle as she moved off of her bed, the soft shuffle of her be-socked feet on the carpet as she emerged in her PJ's. "Oh good!" she smiled. "We can have dinner now."

"You haven't eaten?" he asked.

"I always felt that when I come home from a rough day, it's good to eat with someone and talk about it. And I cheated while I waited for you," she nodded toward the plate, which, upon further inspection, had a chunk of a piece of chicken removed and more than likely eaten. Haley smiled sheepishly. "It's not cold. I've been reheating it every thirty minutes or so."

Spencer could think of nothing to say, but he had held out for her this time and it appeared she held out for him. "So you had a bad day?"

"No… well… Brigette is an asshole," she shrugged as she put a plate together for him. She walked across the room and put it down in front of him on the counter where he pulled up a barstool and sat. Brigette? he thought.

"And Brigette is…?"

"Some girl in my class who couldn't tell Hamlet from a hole in the wall," the girl rolled her eyes as she made a plate for herself. "No," she sighed, sitting next to him on the barstool facing the boring backsplash underneath the cabinets. "She's actually pretty smart, only she's a self-promoted narcissist if I've ever seen one. Inflated ego to the extreme."

Spencer took a bite of his chicken, listening to her. "This is great Haley," he said, mouth full.

She gave him a look. "Sorry, pet peeve of mine. And you should have had the spaghetti," she added as a side note.



He nearly laughed at how she mothered him. This morning she had smoothed out an unruly hair and told him not to slouch. "Well, a way to deal with the Bridgette's of the world is to kick their asses at pretty much everything," he jabbed his fork in the air to accentuate his point. "Just succeed and succeed and succeed and succeed. Don't sink to their level."

"As if I would!"

"Just saying."

The next couple of minutes were held in silence as they ate, each having certain things to say, but uncertain as to how they should say them. Spencer had another thought. "You haven't mentioned that Greg guy again."

"Well… what's there to mention?" Haley asked, a bit uncomfortably. She picked up on the fact that Spencer did not like the fact that she was talking to a boy, one he didn't know in particular. He was just paranoid, she guessed. But that was only the pot calling the kettle black, considering her nightmares.

"Anything would be nice, really," he said, again with his mouth full of chicken.

Haley let it slide in her contemplation. Deciding she shouldn't lie to her older brother, she spoke again. "He asked me out on a date tomorrow night."

Spencer choked.

"Is it really that hard to believe?" she asked, offended.

No it wasn't. But Reid had a hard time seeing his little sister as someone that a boy, an unknown subject said his profiler mind, could take out on a date. He didn't even know what the unsub looked like. He didn't know enough about him to form a profile of his personality. He didn't even know what the guy's middle name was. And he dared ask his little sister on a date?

"When will I meet him?" Reid asked, trying to hide his panic, but his voice raising a few octaves when he posed the question. One reason he wasn't a good bad cop interrogator.

"Tomorrow, maybe," she mumbled.

"Hales, don't be offended, okay?"

"Okay."

"You're still mad."

"Don't profile me! I'm not."

Spencer panicked again. He needed to call JJ. He needed to call JJ. She knew way more about this kind of thing than he would ever dream.



He noticed her pick up her plate and carry it to the sink, clean it off, put it in the dishwasher. Without saying goodnight, she stormed to her room and he heard the door, but not the lock, click shut and he was left alone.

--

Haley walked into her room and flopped on her bed to finish reading her book, Timeline by Michael Crichton. The story was good, and she liked the fact that he actually knew what he was talking about when he used science in his stories.

Her eyes began to droop at around eleven thirty through the sounds of Spencer muttering to someone on the phone. She couldn't believe him. How could he be surprised? But then, it was sort of mean of her to burst on him like that. She was… well… Aunt Flo was making her visit. She laughed at the crude phrase, and hated having to confront Spencer and put him in an awkward spot by explaining that about once a month she would be crabby and unpredictable. She didn't want to make him feel even more out of his league with the whole teenager rearing thing.

She flipped over on her back and looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes, sighing. Seconds later they flew back open, as the door began to creak. "Hey Spence," she breathed as she gathered her senses. Who else would it be?

Spencer didn't answer her. It didn't sound like him either. The footfalls were heavier, like a man who was bigger than her skinny brother. The breathing was irregular, ragged, strained, eager. This wasn't Spencer.

Gasping, she looked up to see the face of Edgar Cross glaring down at her. He pulled his knife and ran it along her torso from one side to just under her right breast. "SPENCER!" she shouted but looked across the room and saw him, mangled, limp, and his body twisted in strange contortions in the corner. Under him was Rita, her body decomposing with worms and maggots breaking through the grey, decaying flesh every now and then. Under her was Robert, much in the same way.

Dead dead dead.

"SPENCER! SPENCER! SPENCER!" She screamed and rolled over, her back to him and buried her head under her pillow as she felt the knife slice through her back over and over and over. Blood spreading under her and staining her sheets.

--

Spencer heard the screams from the living room where he was on the phone. "What's that, Spence?" asked JJ on the other line.

"Haley?" Spencer asked, standing up. "Listen, JJ, I'll see you tomorrow and we'll talk then okay?"

JJ consented quietly and hung up, leaving Spencer to slam his phone shut and sprint to Haley's room.



The lights were off, and she was thrashing in her blankets, screaming and sobbing. "SPENCER!" she screamed, her voice hoarse from the intensity of her prior screams. "SPEN-CER!"

He knew better than to wake her up, but seeing her in this state… he couldn't just watch her. He walked over to the side of the bed and sat down, contemplating shaking her awake, but didn't. Don't make things worse, he thought to himself. He didn't touch her, but watched as her struggles against the imaginary Edgar Cross grew weaker and weaker as he overpowered her in the dream, and then she ceased to move, essentially dying in her dream. She woke up screaming.

"Haley!" Spencer shouted, catching her as she shot upright. "Hales, you're alright," he whispered to her. "You're okay, safe, with me. I'm here, Haley."

She clutched at his back as she embraced him, gasping for air, as though making sure he were still alive, still there. When she established his presence, her body collapsed into body-throttling sobs. Spencer held her tighter, scared, though he would never admit it to her. He was terrified of what she might be seeing in her head. He hated to imagine what would happen if he weren't there when she woke up from one of her fits.

Her sobs died down a bit into whimpers and he still held her close, though his shoulder was sufficiently wet. "How are you?"

"Fine, fine. In a minute, I'll shine," she mumbled.

"Sorry?"

"Hm?" she looked at him with her bright blue, bloodshot eyes. So similar… why did he think of Diana Reid now?

Because she just inadvertently rhymed, perfectly rhymed with what seemed to be intention of doing so, with no memory of doing so, a signal indicating schizophrenia.