Things had been going well the past year; Spencer and Aida skyped all the time, and he got over his technophobia to be able to communicate with her. They wrote letters to each other every few days, too, so there was also a bit of an old fashioned tone to their correspondence, though Aida wanted to stick mostly with the technology because she was worried the letters would remind him too much of he and Maeve.
It did bother him, the letters, Maeve, Aida, but it didn't bother him enough to force him to stop out of pain. They had been taking things slowly, but Aida had visited him several times in Quantico, even coming to the field office and bringing goodies from Hawaii for the team each time she visited.
Reid sat at his desk and looked over everything on it; he had taken the time to organize his desk for once, and there were pictures of he and Aida in frames on it, and the book Maeve had given him sat in plain sight but unnoticed in a small file organizer on the desk alongside other books and files. Aida had gotten upset with him the last time they were together because he still carried the book with him everywhere, so he decided he'd leave it at work.
"Hey, Pretty Boy." Morgan said, rolling over next to Reid, "Whatcha thinking about?"
"I haven't heard from Aida in a while… She's never on Skype, she's not replying to my texts, and she hasn't written a letter in a month. I think she might still be mad at me about the book." Reid said, eyeing the spine of the book.
"Maybe writing letters and holding onto that book make her feel like you're still not over Maeve… It's been a couple years, and you've been with Aida for a year now. I know if Savanah was keeping gifts from an old boyfriend, I'd be a little worried." Morgan replied.
"I guess that makes sense…" Reid sighed. "Do you think I should get rid of the book?"
"I don't know, Reid. Only you can make that decision." Morgan pat his back and rolled back to his desk to finish a report he needed to turn in.
Reid's phone began to vibrate on the desk, and what he saw on the lock screen surprised him; incoming call: Raccoon (Aida)
"Hey!" He answered enthusiastically.
"Hello~!" She sounded cheerful, "Are you guys busy in the BAU right now?"
"No, not really. We're all just sitting around at our desks; nothing incredibly urgent has come up."
"Good." She hung up a second later, leaving Reid perplexed and Morgan wondering what the twenty second exchange had been about.
"Hey." Morgan snapped his fingers in Reid's face, and Reid came back to reality from his distant thoughts. "What happened?"
"She asked if we were busy here, I said no, and then she said good and hung up." Reid glanced back to the book.
"Hey, you can't just run through here!" One of the other agents on the floor shouted, as a woman ran towards where Morgan and Reid were.
Both men spun around in their chairs and looked over to see what the commotion was; Aida was running as fast as she could over to them.
"Aida?" Reid got up out of his chair and reached her when she was about ¾ of the way across the room. The other agent had a gun pointed at her. "Whoa, whoa, hey!" Reid said, putting Aida behind him and putting his arms out in front of himself defensively, "What the hell are you doing?!"
"She broke past security and came up here, Dr. Reid!" The agent said, not lowering his weapon.
"Okay, but you don't need to point a gun at her! Or me, for that matter!" The other agent slowly lowered his gun after a long delay, "I'll take care of her, okay? You can go back to doing whatever you were doing before she got here." As soon as the agent turned away, Reid rolled his eyes and turned to Aida, "Are you okay?"
"I don't know, I-I think so, but I don't know." Aida replied; she was wearing pajamas and her hair was put up in a messy bun, her glasses were askew, and she looked panicked. She had also been crying.
Reid led her to the conference room and shut the door, at which point she began pacing around.
"What's wrong?" Reid asked, not sure what to make of her behavior; he'd never seen her act like that before.
"I… I had to leave Hawaii, and I have nowhere to go, and I'm being called in as a witness in my mom's murder trial, and I don't know what to do, Spencer! I'm terrified!" She began to cry and braced herself against the wall by the door.
"You left Hawaii when you're being called as a material witness?! That's illegal! They'll arrest you, you have to go back!"
"You think I don't know that?!" She covered her mouth and looked away from Reid; she felt horrible for yelling at him. Her hands dropped back to her sides and she took a second to try and compose herself, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you, but I can't do this. I can't testify, and I can't go back. You have to help me, BunBun."
She picked at her cuticles and he thought about what he could do to help her. After a few minutes, he decided there really wasn't much he could do.
"I'll go with you, okay? I'll stay with you until it's over, and then you can come back here with me." He said, sighing and taking her hands in his. "I can't allow you to not go because I'm a federal agent, but I also don't want to watch you suffering because you're my girlfriend and I love you. So, as a compromise, you won't break the law and I'll be there with you, okay?"
She shook him off and then hugged him tightly, knocking the wind out of him and thanking him profusely in several different languages.
Two hours later, they were in a cab to the airport to catch the next string of flights back to Honolulu.
