100 Reviews! 100 freakin' reviews! I don't believe it. I'm in shock... ya'll are just amazing, you know? 100 reviews... Sorry, kinda in shock.
Oh, and sooooo sorry about the wait for this one! I've had some computer issues. First, I lost my charger, then got a new one (finally), then I got virus, which I thought I'd cleaned up and been really good with, but then, I went to restart my computer a week later, and, lo and behold, something happened to it again and the start-up thing was infected. So, it wiped my hardrive. That means documents, things installed, drives, flipping WINDOWS! I'm just lucky we had an extra Window's CD from when we built my brother's computer and my laptop is a good enough model that it worked and that OpenOffice is free. Else, ya'll would be waiting a lot longer.
So, again, I'm waaay sorry. If you have any requests for one-shots or anything you'd like me try, I'd be glad to give it a shot! Just, give me an idea and I'll try. :D As a reward for all the wonderful reviews and patience (or encouraging impatience in some cases) and I'll try and make this a long chapter. I've got an idea of the direction I want this story to start going in, but not really how to get there, so...yeah. :/
But I can promise that next chapter will bring on the angst. … and you'll probably all hate me at the end of this chapter, so I'll apologize ahead of time.
Spencer looked up at Penny. She was weird. Her hair was really blonde and she had lots of stuff on her eyes and funny purple glasses. But, she seemed friendly enough, he supposed. Derek trusted her at least, which gave her some points, but she'd have to earn a lot of them. Spencer didn't just give out trust points. That's what he called them, trust points. It was a system he'd started sometime after he met Gramma Morgan. He needed a way to judge how much he could trust someone that was easily quantifiable, thus the trust point system.
Right now, Derek was at 100, Gramma Morgan was at 40, Des and Sarah were both at 20 and Penny was at 30. It seemed a fair enough number, although it was a very precarious 30. If she made that number go down, so would Derek's.… He had to be fair with the points.
"Spencer? Sweetie?" Spencer jerked out of his thoughts and looked up at Penny when her overly sweet, 'I'm-talking-to-a-mentally-unstable-child' tone addressed him. "Are you alright? You were zoning out there a bit."
Spencer bit his lip and nodded in response to her questions.
"Well," she said, sounding hesitant, "alright then…"
She spun back to her computer for just a second, before turning right back to Spencer and speaking in a very fast, almost panicky way, "Because, if you're not, it's okay, you know. Well, not okay. You shouldn't have to be not okay, but I mean it's okay to admit that you're not okay and you can tell me if you're not okay. Okay?"
Spencer almost giggled at the over activeness of the grown woman and the abuse of the word 'okay' in her sentence, but she didn't have enough trust points for open emotions and giggles yet. A person had to have at least 40 points for an emotional display.She had enough for 'I'll stay in a room with you without having a panic attack.'
Spencer nodded in response to her question.
"Ok then. If you get bored tell me or you can read a book or something. Do you like reading? I don't know if I have anything for someone your age. Darn, I'll have to look into that if you're gonna be staying here often..."
"It's fine. I like reading. I can find something," Spencer responded quietly, not wanting to seem a bother. He found comfort in the near panicky way she cared about his contentment.
"Alrighty. I'll leave you to it then, pumpkin." And with that, she spun her chair back to the computer and started... doing whatever it was that she was doing.
Spencer continued to stand around awkwardly, not really sure what to do. He finally spotted a small bookcase somewhere between all the computers and screens. He tried to walk casually over towards it, in case Penny all of the sudden decided to spin around and ask him what he was doing and decide he wasn't allowed to read her books.
He stood in front of the wooden case and picked up a book at random. The word Twilight was at the top of the cover in a simple red fontand at the bottom, Stephanie Meyer. There was a picture of two incredibly pale hands holding a red apple. He didn't think his mom would like this book. Probably say something like 'pop-influenced and overly people pleasing modern crap that is mostly popular because of the media andgovernment's brainwashing of people out of enjoying good literature.'
But Penny didn't seem much like his mother and his mom wasn't here, so he had Penny's book choices. He cracked it open to the first page and began...
Being that there weren't any cases going on at the moment and most of her paperwork was out of the way, Garcia was taking some time to update her computers and rewrite some of the codes of search engines or other programs the team might need. They worked pretty well now, but things were constantly changing and evolving, and, with her job, Garcia needed to be sure that all her programs and devices were in tip-top shape.
But now it was already noon, and there's only so long a person can spend hunched over staring at a screen.
She lifted her arms above her head and leaned back in the swivel chair to stretch, then groaned contentedly as she felt her back pop.
"Spencer?" she asked, as she turned to see the child. He was sitting on the floor by her bookshelf, with New Moon opened on his lap. He was already about a quarter way through it andTwilight sitting to his left.
'He couldn't possibly be reading those…and at that rate? Not possible, he's only seven!' she thought.
"Spencer?" she asked again. This time, his head popped up from the book and looked at Penelope, startled.
"I-I'm sorry, Miss Garcia. I didn't know if I was allowed t-to read these and I sh-should have asked first, b-but I didn't. I'm sorry. Please don't punish me! I-I didn' mean to..."
"Woah there, honey!" Garcia interrupted, trying toresist the urge to scoop him into a huge bear hug. "It's fine. It's fine. I'm not going to punish you for trying to read a book. I said you were welcome to if you wanted, although I'll admit I am slightly surprised at the books you choose. Don't seem a bit... advanced for your age?"
"No, not all," answered Spencer, looking surprised at the suggestion that these were large books for someone his age. "They're not particularly well-written, but they're not difficult. Well, maybe it's not that they're not well-written. Stephanie Meyer has a good style and all, but her main character is one-dimensional and under developed. Way too much of a Mary-Sue like character to ever be able to grow or fulfill any potential of her own that doesn't have Edward jumping into save her, and if she did, then it would be unrealistic and make her even more unlikable. Plus, they're very predictable. For instance, in this one," he lifted New Moon to show what he was talking about, "you know that Edward will come back and they'll get back together."
Garcia blinked at the sudden onslaught of information coming from such a young boy. He'd read and analyzed one and a quarter of an adult (or at least teenaged) sized book in under 4 hours. She'd have to make a mental note to tell Derek to get his intelligence tested...
Derek sat as his desk, trying to get his mounds of paperwork done and watch Prentiss to make sure she didn't put any extra files in his stack AND try to not worry about Spencer too much.
He had a difficult and demanding job.
He really hoped that Spencer was okay with Garcia right now. It was so difficult for him not just get up and walk on over to Garcia's office to see how he was, but he needed to try and let Spencer get used to Penelope now, because he was going to have to spend time with her. Derek couldn't believe how hard it was to be away from him. How do Hotch and JJ stand it...
And what if he was bad at it? Parenting, that is. What if he couldn't handle Spencer and all his past problems and traumas and hurt the boy? His job wouldn't help either. Most children need a stable environment. Derek couldn't provide that. What if he was a terrible parent and Spencer ended up hurt and...
"...Morgan's buying," he heard a voice say, and he snapped out of his thoughts.
"What am I buying?" he questioned, looking over at Prentiss.
"Lunch."
Lunch. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was just passed noon. That means I can get Spencer now!
"Yeah, sure," he immediately agreed, ignoring the almost physical cries of pain from his wallet, and started making his way towards Garcia's office.
"Hey, Derek?"
He jumped when he realized that Prentiss had followed him.
"Oh, hey, Emily. Didn't see you there," he said nonchalantly.
"Yeah," she said, almost suspiciously and put a hand on his arm to motion for him to stop walking, which he did. "Is everything alright? You seem out of it today."
"Yeah, I'm fine Emily," he said. At her skeptical look, he added, "Really, I am... just a bit worried about Spencer is all."
She formed a silent 'oh' with her mouth and nodded in understanding. "Okay. Are you getting him from Garcia's office?" Derek nodded. "I'll go with you."
They walked down to Garcia's office and found Spencer sitting on floor surrounded by, God, the Twiligt books. God! That woman was going to corrupt the child with sparkly vampires!
He knocked at the open door to get their attention and both people spun towards him. Spencer's face broke into a grin and he was immediately attached to Derek's legs.
"Aw!" cooed Garcia, and Prentiss smiled at the scene. Spencer blushed at the attention but didn't release his hold on Derek at all.
"Hey, buddy," said Morgan, managing to peel the small child off his legs and kneel in front of him. "We're all goin' to lunch together. Are you hungry?" Spencer nodded up and down and gestured that he wanted Derek to pick him up. Derek obliged and Spencer threw one arm around his neck and put the thumb of the other in his mouth, while his head rested happily on Derek's shoulder.
"Okay, then, let's go,"
In the end, everyone decided to go out to lunch together and Derek didn't end up paying. They went to a little Italian place that everyone liked and Spencer got a plate of spaghetti that was really good and met the rest of the team.
JJ was really nice and pretty. She called him Spence, like no else ever had, and told him she had a son, but he was younger than Spencer. She had 20 trust points.
He'd met Prentiss before, but not for very long. She was still really nice and had helped him when he was getting away from Sir. She had 25 trust points, because she seemed a little nervous around him still.
Hotch was scary. He tried to smile and laugh and stuff, but he seemed very stoic and sad all the time. He had 10 points.
Rossi was okay, but was really intimidating. He also had 10 points.
Lunch was really good, and in about an hour everyone headed back to the BAU and Spencer went back with Penelope to her office, but before he went in, he overheard Penny pulling Derek aside to tell him something.
"... he's extremely intelligent, Derek. You need to get him tested. I'm serious. He sat there and read almost two and half good sized books and completely comprehended them!"
"Seriously? He did? I mean, I've realized he's smart, but I'd always kind of assumed it was an above average thing, not quite like that."
"Yeah, Derek, he's smart..."
'All I did was read a couple books... I did that all the time back home. Surely that doesn't make me super smart. Everyone reads'
He shook his thoughts off when Penny walked back. The books really sucked anyways.
4:59
Derek was staring at the clock on the wall. 4:59. Come on. One more minute! That's all! You can do it!
5:00
Yes!
Derek stood up and grabbed his stuff. "Bye, ya'll. I'm out for today." He tried not to full out sprint to Garcia's office in his eagerness to pick up Spencer.
"Are you ready to go?" he asked Spencer when he got there.
Spencer nodded and walked over to Derek, grabbing his hand.
"Let's go buddy."
They walked out to Derek's car and drove home. Derek cooked a nice easy dinner and they watched reruns of old shows together until 8:00, when Spencer fell asleep and Derek carried him back to his room.
Derek came back to the living room and started to flip the TV channel, until he heard his phone start ringing. It wasn't a number he recognized, so that meant that there wasn't case.
"Morgan," he answered, wondering who would be calling at 8 in the evening.
"Hello, Agent Morgan? This is Gloria Martinez from St. Marks's hospital in Las Vegas. I believe we a had a Spencer Reid here as a patient a few weeks ago,with no guardian. It's my understanding that you took him in under a temporary guardianship unless we could find a living family member, yes?"
"Yes..." answered Derek, feeling his stomach knot up all of the sudden.
"Well, we didn't think it was very likely at the time, but we did actually find a man named John Reid that is related to Spencer. He's his uncle; his father's brother. We've contacted him and he is perfectly willing to take Spencer in. He lives in Washington, near the Oregon border. We'll send someone to pick up Spencer in about a week. You can go with him if you want to. Oh, and thank you so much for watching him all this time. I know a small child can be a handful, but now we've found a suitable legal guardian and you don't have to anymore. Any questions?"
"Um, n-no. No questions. A week, you said? You're taking him in a week?"
"Yes sir. Actually, a week and 2 days to be exact. Can you make sure he's ready by next Wednesday?"
Derek swallowed. "Uh, sure."
"Thank you very much, sir. Bye now."
He barely heard the phone click when the call hung up.
They were going to take Spencer from him and there was nothing he could do about it...
Don't hate me, please? Oh, and I can promise, the cuteness is all but over now...
Oh, and I'm sorry if I insulted any Twilight fans.
Oh, and, as always, thanks Fuzzball45 for the beta! Especially because this chapter was so screwed up spacing wise. :/