Notes: I played a little fast and loose with Reid's educational timeline, forgive me. Also, this references events through season 7 and ends specifically on 7x13.
According to his father, people living in Las Vegas bond over cards, but his mother says they're all spies. Spencer Reid, just turned four, takes in both of these viewpoints and assigns them equal value. He's pretty sure card players aren't spies, but he isn't convinced of any bonding either. When his father plays a card game with the neighborhood dads at a table in the garage, his mother paces the house and wrings her hands. Spencer bounces between them, alternating between asking his mother to sit down and standing by his father and watching.
At the card table, Spencer keeps track. He doesn't even realize that he's doing it, because it's just what his mind does. It keeps track of how many white houses he passes on the way to school (7), how many cats live in the neighborhood (a dozen, 5 domestic and the rest feral), how many times his mother wraps every food item in his lunch in tin foil (every school day last month, to keep out the radiation, she says) and the approximate reading speed of his father (100-200 words per minute when reading aloud to Spencer, about 300 when reading silently).
So given the cards on the table and the cards he can see in his father's hand, Spencer knows that it's likely that his father will draw a seven of clubs. The fact that he does and wins the game doesn't really register.
At five, Spencer is watching over his father's shoulder and tells him that he should fold because Jimmy's father has three queens. The table falls silent and Spencer's father laughs nervously, then tells him to go inside and check on his mother.
His mother and father sit down with him at dinner later that week, which makes him suspicious because family dinners are few and far between (1 time in the past year) and usually involve a Talk.
"You can't count cards like that," his father says. Spencer frowns, confused.
"I don't count them, I just know what they are," he tries to explain. There is a moment of silence as his father holds back an exasperated sigh.
"That's called counting cards," he says. "It's cheating." His mother snorts in disagreement.
"It's not cheating to use the skills you were born with," she says. It's a good day for her. She packed Spencer's lunch in paper and Tupperware and waved him off at the bus stop in a seasonally appropriate sundress.
His father finally lets out the sigh he's been holding in.
"Just don't get caught," he says.
Spencer takes his advice to heart. His father never teaches him cards, but the rules aren't that difficult to work out. When the boys from school (3 years older than him and two years behind) offer to let him join their games, he agrees. They play for pennies and Spencer cheerfully loses one hand in three.
Things get more complicated when he's ten and his father leaves. Spencer spends his days completing school work with one hand while chewing the nails of his other to the quick, and his nights putting his mother back to bed. She's convinced someone has put cameras in the light fixtures and keeps trying to take them all apart.
Spencer doesn't have the energy to pay attention to much else until one day he opens the refrigerator to find it empty. Their stocks of freezer food are gone too. Spencer thinks back to how many times his mother went shopping in the last eight weeks (once) and what she bought (4 rolls of tin foil, one watermelon and a gallon of bleach).
Spencer breaks out his stash of pennies, goes to the store and buys enough shelf-stable food for two weeks. When he pours the pennies onto the counter at the register, the cashier looks both aghast and impressed at the same time.
"Son, is there anything you want to tell me?" the cashier asks. Spencer bites at the nail on his thumb.
"A hyperbolic paraboloid is defined by the equation z = axy," he says. "It's approximately the same shape as a Pringle."
The cashier looks down at the can of Pringles on the counter and scans the rest of the groceries without further comment.
The problem is that his pennies don't last very long. The only solution he can see is to figure out who plays cards at the high school. It's easy to get invited. The high school kids have graduated from pennies to dollars and think he's an easy target. He loses the first and third hands and then loses one in every five. It's enough to keep them from going hungry and Spencer can finally relax a little.
When he is eleven, the landlord threatens to kick them out because his mother hasn't paid the rent in four months. Spencer, who had eased up to losing one hand in every four, wins every hand he plays for two weeks straight, until he's told that Alexa Lisbon is waiting for him behind the field house. Spencer's mind keeps track because that's what it does: Alexa Lisbon and 10 other girls, the entire football team, 11:17 pm. They take his clothes with him when they leave. They even take his shoes.
Spencer and his mother don't get evicted but no one at the high school will play cards with him anymore.
They get by on soup kitchens and thrift stores and disability checks for a while. Spencer, aged twelve, graduates from high school and works odd jobs delivering papers and stocking shelves in between college classes. The manager of the grocery store lets him sit in the back with his heavy psychology text on his knees and gives him the stale bakery items that won't sell.
Spencer doesn't go back to playing cards until he's fourteen, partly because no one will play with him and partly because the last time he won a card game, he ended up tied naked to a goalpost and the memory stings like it was yesterday.
That summer, he grows 6 inches overnight, and though his knees ache, he's suddenly taller than almost everyone he knows. It's also the summer when he doubles his course load and has to give up his odd jobs to make it to all of his classes. He learns that if he wears a hat and keeps his head down, the small casinos that don't care will let him play. He loses more hands than he wins. He makes enough to pay for food and rent and leaves the rest on the table.
At eighteen, Spencer doesn't have a choice. He's about to leave for graduate school and Diana Reid cannot live on her own. He checks her into Bennington and then hits the big casinos, blindingly bright and crowded. He's eighteen now. It's legal.
He eschews roulette and slots, sticks to blackjack and poker, and doesn't lose. After two hours, three men appear at his side and politely but very firmly suggest that he cash out and leave. They even escort him out the door.
He works his way from one end of the town to the other. At the end of the night, every casino he visits tells him not to come back. He puts the money in an account in his mother's name with instructions for Bennington to take out what they need.
In graduate school, he doesn't stick out as much. People just assume he's a freshman. On his first day of classes, he is asked 6 times if he is lost.
After class, a young man introduces himself as Bremerton Hathaway and guides Spencer back to his room where a card table and 4 other boys are waiting for them. Bremerton and the other boys (crew cuts, expensive watches, soft creamy sweaters) shuffle and deal the cards like they know what they're doing, but Spencer (ratty jacket and slacks that are too short and show off his mismatched socks) wins the first hand without too much trouble.
"Where did you say you were from?" Bremerton asks. Spencer's father once claimed that Spencer had no sense of self-preservation. Spencer's father was wrong about many things in his life, but Spencer has learned the hard way that he was right about not getting caught.
"Arizona," Spencer lies, then loses enough on the next hand to break even and walks away from the game.
Two years later, Jason Gideon would like to speak with him. Gideon plays chess, not cards, and Spencer loses every game. They are breathtaking, spectacular losses. Losing to Gideon makes Spencer feel giddy with delight. Finally, he's losing because he's outmatched, not because he throws the game.
They let him out into the field with a head full of chess strategy and a mind that keeps track (victim patterns and geography and behind it all, the white noise of the team: Hotch claims not to be superstitious, but calls his wife before every plane ride. Morgan's music playlist is eclectic and he skips an average of 5 songs every hour). He discovers that matching serial killers to profiles is a bit like counting cards. When you see what's on the table, you can predict what comes next.
Morgan pulls out a pack of cards one night when they're flying back to Virginia when Spencer is twenty-three. FBI agents don't play for money. Elle grabs packets of peanuts and pretzels from the galley. JJ eats half of them while Hotch shuffles and deals and Morgan wheedles Spencer into playing. Gideon doesn't play. He watches from the corner, where he pretends to read a book.
Spencer loses. He turns his hand into a full house, then folds. Hotch wins with a straight and Spencer uses the distraction of the end of the game to slip his cards into the deck before anyone asks what he has.
When it's Morgan's turn to deal, he holds on to the cards for a few minutes, eyeing Spencer. Spencer isn't really paying attention to him. He's watching the sun set below the clouds and trying to ignore Morgan's overhand shuffle, because every time the cards slide from one hand to the other, Spencer sees where they are out of the corner of his eye (the 3 of hearts nestled behind the 9 of diamonds, the bottom card is an ace). He wishes Morgan would just get on with it already.
"Hey kid," Morgan says, tapping the table to get his attention. Spencer glances at him and then away. It's kind of painful to watch Morgan shuffle cards like a grandmother.
"You know you're allowed to win right? You don't have to lose," Morgan says. Spencer holds his breath for a moment. This feels a lot like getting caught.
"I've been told that gambling is a form of bonding for people living in Las Vegas," he says. Morgan nods a little as he taps the cards even and cuts the deck.
"I guess that makes sense," Morgan says.
Spencer frowns. If that makes sense then there's a chance they're all spies, but Spencer leaves that part out.
"So are we bonding?" Morgan asks. " Or is that only true in Vegas?"
Spencer looks up and spots Gideon smirking at him from behind Hotch's shoulder. Spencer glares, annoyed at being called out like that, and grabs the cards from Morgan. He shuffles, deals and takes them all for every pretzel and peanut they've got.
He's not sure what to expect after, so he hesitates a little over the cards, but Morgan just groans and says "I knew you were holding out on us." Elle makes another trip to the galley so they can buy their way back in and Gideon's smirk turns into a warm smile.
From then on, Spencer only loses if he wants to. Usually, he wins.
Epilogue:
Spencer's mind keeps track: the plunge of the needle; four gunshots, one each for Elle, Garcia, Haley Hotchner and Spencer's knee; blinding headaches that last for an average of 36-48 hours; two coffins and one miraculous resurrection.
Spencer quietly turns thirty.
Rossi commits a minor administrative violation and gives Spencer a $50,000 buy-in, followed by an injunction not to lose it all. It is the most fun Spencer has ever had gambling. He's busy looking out for 8's or 88's or just someone who fits the profile. He floats from game to game and barely has time for his own cards. He wins without trying. He wins without even paying attention.
He spots the magic eight ball and then gets thrown out, but Spencer is used to that by now.
On the jet back, Rossi looms over him with his arms crossed and his toe tapping so loudly that it's audible over the hum of the plane. Spencer digs a thick wad of cash out of his bag and presents it with a little flourish.
"I'll admit, you're good," Rossi says as he thumbs through the bills. Spencer grins up at him.
"I know."
"But not that good," Rossi continues. "I know there's more. Hand it over."
Spencer's grin widens as he pulls a smaller stack of bills from his back pocket and slaps it into Rossi's waiting hand. Rossi pretends to glare at him as he turns to leave, but Hotch speaks up from across the jet.
"Dave," Hotch calls without looking up from his paperwork. Rossi sighs and turns back. He pulls some bills from the stack and hands them back to Spencer.
"Well played, kid," Rossi says. Bonding, Spencer thinks, then has to quell a sudden, bubbling laugh. Something in his look catches Rossi's attention.
"What?" he asks, cautious.
"I went undercover to play poker," Spencer says, his grin tugging at his mouth. "I guess you could say I was a spy."
The team doesn't get it. Spencer doesn't explain.