A/N: There is a twist at the end of this story, by the way. I don't know if I mentioned it before. If anyone can figure it out, I'd like to hear your theories. Please let me know, and as per usual, review!

Four

6: 50 AM. Spencer looked up from his tenth book of the night at the window, Faust. He could feel the sun coming; it pulled at every pore in his body, almost beckoning him forth. It was in this moment that he realized that he loved the sun, adored it. He longed to feel its warmth lap at his icy skin. He put his book down and wandered over to the window; barely feeling his feet touch the ground as he did so. He pulled up the blind and put his fingertips up to the glass, the sensation was odd. It was supposed to be cold, seeing how this was a bleak December morning, but it felt as though he were touching his own face, a feeling he had become accustomed to this past night.

He waited more, the anticipation was building in his heart and he wished Haley were there to see him. If not to share his first moment in the sun, then to observe the decomposition process. It was a morbid thought, but if anyone were to have the true knowledge of how he died, he wanted it to be her. He took in a breath and exhaled, watching with a strange delight as the glass frosted, then melted.

Suddenly, the first rays tentatively reaching above the skyline to light the world. A dazzling color to his new eyes, deep purple fading to a sunflower yellow. He pressed further into the window, not daring to go too far, lest he break the glass. His skin was elated at the touch, his mind in euphoria. He could! He could feel the gentle touch of the delicate sun's tendrils without harm, quite the opposite. The bright fiery orb was like a healing draught to him, more fulfilling than the raw meat at night, more desirable than human blood. He forced himself to look away from the sun and to his hand, which hadn't left the window. There was no burning sensation, and he watched as it browned slightly, losing its white incandescence. Shoving back into the darkness, he looked with wonder as it returned sharply to the harsh pale sheen of the night.

Quickly, he began to lift every blind of every window, so that the delicious sunlight could fill his apartment, and he would never be without it. His rapid motions nearly broke the flimsy cream-colored panels, and when they gave him a hard time, they were promptly ripped away. Who needed those things anyway? Who would want to stay away from this beauty? This pool of golden life?

The shirt Garcia had lent him was soon on the floor, the filling light reaching nearly everywhere on his body. He fell to the floor in delight of it, letting the sun soak him. He closed his eyes and basked.

--

"Spencer?" he hardly heard the concerned voice. "Spence?" she shrieked. Suddenly a presence by his side. Hands frantically feeling for vital signs that wouldn't ever be there. He sensed her feeling of failure as she began to push at his side. "Get up. GET UP!"

"`Morning Hales," he came to enough to tell her.

She screamed again falling back. He leapt up and looked at her curiously. He could hear her heart palpitating faster than normal, and saw her clutching it. "You'll send me into cardiac arrest doing that!" she shouted at him. "If you're alive, then let me know you're alive! Goodness! I nearly cried!"

"I'm sorry," he grinned, not able to stop grinning. The sun felt so good. He looked at the clock and sighed. He needed to go to work again, he absolutely had to. As lovely as the sun felt, he loved his work and his job, his life. He sighed at this: his human life was to never be obtained again. "How long was I out of it?" he couldn't necessarily call what he did sleeping, more daydreaming. He was still very aware off his surroundings.

"I don't know when you fell asleep. It's about seven thirty," she said, nodding toward the kitchen clock.

"I've gotta get to the BAU," he pushed himself off of the carpet and ran to his bedroom, throwing on a pair of khakis, a red collared shirt, with a grey-ish sweater over it. He walked out, looping his belt as Haley protested.

"It's great that you look… not like yourself, but like a human in the sun. That's great, but that guy is still out there, possibly for me," she raised her eyebrows. She smoothed the red collar over the wool of the sweater out of habit. "And… and what about… blood? How long has it been since you've eaten?"

"I don't need it right now," he said and indicated the radiance pouring through the open windows. "The sun takes care of it; it does the same thing that blood does for me."

"What if the man comes back? You can walk in the sunlight, so he can as well."

"I don't think he knows that yet," Spencer said and led her to his open laptop on the coffee table. "He obviously researched: he knows the need for us to be in a… like a pack, and he knows of our need to feed on human blood; not raw steaks but warm, human blood. But, because he researched, he never got what it was like for… for one of us… to be in the sunlight. I looked all over last night, there is no accurate description of what it's like. He didn't seem like the kind of man to experiment or take such a risk, not with the way he left last night."

She looked at the sunlight romantically. "What is it like?"

"You don't feel the warmth?" he asked, confused.

Haley laughed. "Of all the things you forget, you forget why humans cover the windows during winter. It's freezing. You destroyed all the blinds," she pointedly looked at the disheveled piles of plastic lying in heaps around the room.

"Oh, er, yeah, sorry about that. I just got really, really excited," he grinned at her.

"Well, you'll be the one fixing them later, so who am I to complain?" she smiled like a smart-alek.

"Yes, yes I will fix those and try to be more careful tomorrow," he said, looking past her at the clock. "I'll be back, okay?"

"Yeah. Go. It's too late to take a train, you know," she called after him as she watched him go down the hall.

"You know? I think I'll walk!" he called as he descended.

--

Reid walked into the bullpen a minute later, trying not to walk too quickly, but also trying not to look like he was still infirm. He could only dream that his team wouldn't notice, but who was he kidding? They were all profilers. The first person to come up to him was Garcia.

"Hello, my Next Top Model," she said accusingly. "What are you doing here?"

"Penelope, I'm fine."

"No, no see, you aren't. Watch how you hold your jaw, I could see those pointy pearly whites from my room and you know what a distance that is."

"So they're really big, huh?"

"Not so noticeable if you hold your jaw the right way like I pointed out," she offered. "But I thought you couldn't go into the sun," she marveled at him, the darker pale color of his skin, resembling but never achieving the actual shade of pale that was Spencer.

"Why can't he do that?" Moran smiled, coming up behind her. "Hey, man, I heard you were down for the count!" He held out his fist.

"Thanks, man," Reid raised his fist to meet that of his friend. He paused, flashed a toothless smile, and realized that Morgan wanted him to answer the sun question. He thought quickly. "This medicine the doctor has me on is really bad for the melanin levels of the skin and increase the risk of—"

"Okay, okay, I didn't need that much information. You'll burn easy, I get it. Listen, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. Did you get my message?"

"I got a lot of messages. I wasn't really… aware of myself enough to really comprehend them. Why worry about me specifically?"

Garcia sat down on the edge of Spencer's desk. "I didn't want to tell you this last night, sweetie, because you were so upset, but the case we got yesterday was… well… it was a little disturbing."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"A serial killer: white, male, in his mid thirties, and possibly with a life-long injury administered to him in the recent past. He's here in Quantico, Reid, and he's killing white men in their mid to late twenties. All tall, all with brown hair, all with a reported IQ over 180," Morgan said seriously. "Sound like anyone we know?" Morgan squinted. "You okay? You seem a little off to me."

Reid leaned back in his chair, mouth agape. He fit the type. The man in black fit the description of the killer perfectly. The man had told Spencer that he had been searching, had he been testing as well? Was he the last one?

"Reid!" Morgan jerked Spencer back to the present by shaking him. He jerked his hand back from the younger agent's shoulder with a wide-eyed stare. "You sure you're okay, man?"

"Derek, he's fine," Garcia said quickly, trying to cover.

"What's been into you today, baby girl?" he asked Garcia, looking from her to Reid. "Okay, us three, in the storage closet, now." He began to walk away followed quickly by Spencer and Penelope. He looked again at her hand and punched himself mentally. How could he be so careless?

Once inside the dark closet, Spencer felt himself go frigid again and long for the sunlight. Morgan flipped the light on and looked at the other two agents. "All right. We're all alone, no one listening in. Can we talk?"

"Yeah," Spencer said, looking at his shoes, then at Morgan. "Yeah, I… I think that I may be the last person of that type who's died, Morgan."

"You're what?"