Leah's Point of View
My hotel room wasn't all that impressive, but it was in the upper parts of my price range, and it was a relatively nice place; bedroom, small seating area, washroom. And it was clean. That's all I really cared about. The fact that the wallpaper in the bathroom was hideous had little standing.
I'd washed a bunch of my clothes and thrown them haphazardly into my old duffel bag to pack, along with my toothbrush and other necessities. I hadn't brought anything sentimental with me, even though I didn't know if I'd be in this room for a few nights or a few weeks— but none of my stuff at home felt like it was mine anymore, so it didn't feel like it mattered. My pictures, my old teddy bear, my books... they all felt like they belonged to another life, another Leah. I had changed. I was starting over.
The police had made sure to post a guard just down the hall of my room, when Spencer updated them in the change in my situation—the fact that he might be stalking me. I wasn't so sure it was stalking, but Spencer was avid that we inform the police of the fact that he was... but really, he could just live or work near me. Perhaps that was how he found me in the first place. The street where I had seen him wasn't all that far from where I was abducted from; it could have just been coincidence. He may not have been looking for me at all. (These were the excuses I gave myself to calm my nerves.)
The knock at the door of my hotel room startled me out of my reverie. Because of the guard, no one other than law enforcement and hotel staff were supposed to approach my room— I assumed that, therefore, it was either room service or Dr. Reid coming to check on me. It was the latter.
"Spencer!" I said almost gleefully when I opened the door to reveal him. "I thought you went home already." Not that I minded, of course. My guardian angel was always welcome into my home (or, rather, hotel room). He grinned at me sheepishly.
"I just thought I'd check up on you and see how you were settling in before I called it a night," he explained, an adorable blush creeping into his thin cheeks. I raised an eyebrow and glanced at the analogue clock that was sitting on the little built-in shelf beside the door. It was only seven thirty.
"Calling it a night at seven thirty?" I asked, eyebrow still raised, "Geez, you get more beauty sleep than I do!" He flushed again.
"I-I meant from... work." The way he stumbled over his words was undeniably charming, in a cute, geeky way. "I don't go to bed at seven thirty," he assured me, and I grinned.
"Oh. Well then. ...Would you like to come in for coffee then?"
Spencer's posture suddenly became a little straighter, and his body much more rigid. He looked disgruntled, as though he didn't know how to respond to the simple question, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back again, frowning slightly.
"I don't think that that would be... appropriate," he concluded finally, his voice a little higher pitched than normal, like when he first found me on the beach. His whole body looked tense. You'd have thought I was propositioning him, by the way he reacted. I frowned back at him, crossing my arms.
"Okay." I decided to change the subject, even though it felt sort of indiscreet talking in the doorway like this. "What time will we be heading to the shooting range?"
His posture relaxed a little. "Pretty early, as long as that's alright with you. Their normal hours are ten to six, but I know a guy who works there and he said he would be there after seven, and that he'd set up a booth for us any time after that because of the circumstances."
"That was nice of him," I said honestly. He gave me a look like he didn't know whether I was being sarcastic or not.
"I know. I'm planning on putting in a good word with his boss for him. What time do you want me to be here?"
"Seven should be fine." I made a mental note to get up earlier than that so I could take a shower and wash my hair. The summer's humidity was really doing a doosey on my poor hair; it felt stringy already, and I'd just washed it this morning. "But you might have to knock really loud to wake me up," I joked.
Spencer gave me a slightly worried look before nodding. "See you tomorrow then," he said, then turned as began strolling down the hallway.
"Goodnight to you to," I muttered exasperatedly as I closed the door. Spencer Reid was a strange character, alright. Apparently, I made him uncomfortable, and he lacked a simple social skill— being able to tell when what someone was asking you as sexual in nature or not. My offer for coffee had simply been that: an offer to come in and talk over a cup of coffee. There was a coffee maker on the little built-in beside the door, complete with cups and packages of ground beans.
I smiled slightly. I could totally use this to my advantage— make him completely uncomfortable at the range by using every innuendo in the book while trapped in close quarters with him. I could just see it now; his face turning beet red as I made some dubiously veiled comment about his shoe size and winking at him. Those kinds of thoughts were welcome, even though they were highly inappropriate, because it was like a little bit of the old Leah shining through my new skin.
The old me wouldn't have paused to think about what I was doing if I were to proposition Dr. Reid— the attraction was definitely there, and that's all I would have cared about before. Now, things were different. If I was going to look at someone in a romantic light, I really had to know that I trusted them, and felt safe with them— though, perhaps Spencer was my Knight in Shining Armour. We'd just have to wait and see.
Spencer's Point of View
I'd borrowed Morgan's car to drive Leah and I to the shooting range. I hadn't told him what I was using it for, though, and he didn't ask. The look he gave me as I walked out of the BAU with his car keys after the end of our shift suggested that he thought I had a date. It was as if he didn't know me at all; he knows I act like an idiot around women!
She was awake and almost ready to leave when I knocked on her hotel room door at exactly five to seven, her hair wet and up in one of those ridiculous towel things women put their hair in after they shower. She pulled it out and gave it a quick brush as I waited in the doorway, then grabbed her purse and followed me out, barely speaking a word. Though our morning was mostly nonverbal up until we pulled into the shooting range's parking lot, I didn't sense any hostility towards me. I thought maybe she just wasn't a morning person.
As I carefully (very carefully) pulled Morgan's car into a parking spot, she laughed lightly. "You don't drive much, do you?" I put the car in neutral and looked over at her, intrigued.
"Not really. How did you know?" She shrugged.
"You're treating this car like it's made of glass. You didn't go a mile over the limit on a road with no cars on it, and you pulled into a space in the center of the lot when there are plenty closer to the doors." She pointed to the multitude of available spots in front of us. "This isn't your car."
"It's a friend of mine's," I admitted, looking at her in a new light. She had the makings of a good profiler in her, and she didn't even notice. For a second, I stopped seeing her as a victim, and more of a beautiful, intelligent woman— and blushed bright red. I had called her beautiful again, even if it was in my head.
Spencer, you can't think of her that way, I scolded myself, she's a victim. Even if she did like you that way, it would be like Lila and Austin; transference. You have to learn how to meet woman who haven't been victimised!
"Why are you looking at me like that?" Her voice startled me from my thoughts, and I realised I'd been staring at her forehead for almost a minute.
"Sorry," I said, my gave falling on the car key as I pulled it out of the ignition. "I was just thinking."
"About what?" she asked as we opened our doors. I made sure both doors were locked before answering.
"Just... stuff. I noticed you had a scar above your eye. Where'd you get it?" I surprised myself by asking her such a personal question. She frowned slightly, but didn't seem to mind about the intrusion.
"When I was three, I fell down the stairs to the basement and hit my head off a coffee table that was at the bottom. I don't remember it, though. My mom just always tells that story when she introduces me to people." She rolled her eyes. "Another reason not to visit."
I didn't exactly know how to respond to that, so I Just put my hands in my pockets, nodded, and walked towards the doors with her.
"Dan, this is Leah Banks," I introduced an old acquaintance of mine, Daniel Cooper, to Leah when we met him in the lobby of the building. "Leah, this is Dan Cooper, the friend of mine I was telling you about." Dan extended his hand and Leah shook it.
"Nice to meet you," she said, smiling slightly before pulling her hand away and stuffing it into the pocket of her jeans. I had a feeling she didn't like the way Dan was eying her figure appreciatively. I wasn't at all comfortable with that, either, so I cleared my throat to get this attention. Dan looked at me, confused for a half second before he got the hint. He grabbed us a couple of pairs of earmuffs and grinned, pointing him thumb over her shoulder.
"I set up a booth for y'all in the back." He led us through a door and into a long hallway with dividers along the one side and various guns hanging up on little rubber hooks on the other, then motioned towards the one farthest from the door. "I already put up a target for ya. Guns are along the wall, ammo in the marked drawers." He paused, then took a step closer to the gun-covered wall and took one down. "You'll prob'ly want to star her on something small, like this." He held up a .22 calibre handgun for my inspection. "Kickback is a doosey for first-timers."
"Thanks," I mumbled, looking over the unloaded gun quickly. It was one of the smallest they had, and was rather light without a magazine in it. Dan left us alone after giving me the earmuffs, and Leah looked at me expectantly. I handed her the weapon, and I was her hands shake a little— I remembered that I'd been very nervous the first time I'd shot a gun, and gave her a friendly little pat on the shoulder to encourage her before I scanned the drawers' labels until I found .22 and filled a magazine for her.
"It can't be that difficult, can it?" she asked me quietly as I clicked the magazine into place for her and led her to the booth Dan had specified. "I mean, you just point and pull the trigger, right?" I chuckled.
"Yeah, just point and pull the trigger," I said half sarcastically as I put my earmuffs over my ears and then put hers over hers. I took a step back and motioned to the target, a vaguely human-looking black shape on a piece of white paper twenty feet down the shooting isle.
She raised the gun slowly, closing one eye and biting her tongue as she tried to level the barrel of the gun to the center of the target. She looked impossibly cute when she was concentrating.
The kickback surprised me a little, and I was expecting it. Leah, who'd never held a gun before was shocked as the handgun practically leapt backwards out of her small hands and caused her to stumble backward, almost right out of the booth. She gave me a fearful, half-angry expression and took off her earmuffs. I did the same.
"That's harder than I thought it'd be," she admitted, handing me the gun. I took it from her and she immediately began to shake her hands, and I could tell they were probably stinging. "You said all I had to do was point and shoot!"
"Did I?" I asked innocently, knowing full well that by letting her learn about how forceful guns could recoil on her own would probably make her a much better shot in the end. "Whoops. I guess I forgot to mention that it's not as easy as it looks on TV."
"No, really?" Leah said in a sarcastic, exasperated voice. "You could have at least warned me."
"Wouldn't be nearly as fun if I did that," I told her honestly, suppressing a chuckle. "Here, why don't I show you how to avoid that?"
Using the same techniques my instructor used on me when I was training for the FBI, I showed her how to properly aim and to bend her elbows and pull up as she shot to lessen the recoil's strength. Of course, I couldn't help but stand a little closer to her than my instructor did to me and hold her arms for more practice shots than was necessary— she was getting it, slowly but surely— but that was just instinctual. And she didn't seem to mind, anyway, giving me these wonderful, understanding smiles between shots. I, for one, didn't feel uncomfortable at all being that close together. Until, that is, the first time I didn't guide her arms with her.
I took my hands off her wrists and instead rested them on her shoulders, offering for the first time since the initial one for her to do one solo. She prepped the way I had showed her, lowering her sights but aiming a little high in order to get a center shot, but when she pulled the trigger, her reaction time wasn't fast enough and she didn't bend it upwards in time. She stumbled backwards, and I braced myself for her impact, catching her around the waist so she didn't fall.
My body's reaction to her being pressed against me in this way was exactly what it should have been, according to human nature. Not that that made it any less embarrassing, or my sudden release of her and hurried backward steps to hide the object of my discomfort any less panicked.
"Oof," I heard Leah grunt as she grabbed the wall to avoid falling over. She turned to me, her lips pursed in a sour expression. "What was that for?"
"Sorry," I squeaked, then cleared my throat. "It was a reflex."
"Sure it was," she grumbled almost sarcastically, turning back to face the target. I couldn't tell, but I thought maybe by the way her voice sounded, that she was grinning.