Letters - Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Criminal Minds - 2/?
Title: Letters
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Criminal Minds
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dr. Reid writes his mother on a daily basis, telling her of his "adventures," but, after a chance encounter, Buffy Summers accidentally receives one of his letters. Eventual Buffy/Reid
Setting: For BtVS, this is post series; for CM this is season 2 but the prologue was not set during "Fisher King" (in my mind, Dr. Reid decided to visit his mom again after she returned to the sanitarium).
Series: Calling it the Stamps 'verse, which will consist of this story and a few tags in other crossovers, I think.
Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Criminal Minds. I make no money from this work.
Links: Prologue & Chapter 1 II Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Got a Secret, Gonna Keep It
"There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses."
-George Bernard Shaw
The slam of the door threw Mr. Gordo the Third (the second replacement since the Fall of Sunnydale) from the set of drawers to the carpet.
"Congratulations, Judy. You're officially on my list," Buffy muttered, glaring daggers at the door. Daring the slayer outside to ask the question again. After a moment, Buffy could hear retreating footsteps and the soft murmur of whispers as Judy and Lily, the house's two permanent residents continued their gossip.
It wasn't that she was hiding the letter. Well. Maybe. But that wasn't the point. The point was that Jr. Slayers had no business digging through "T"he Slayer's mail. Period.
Because I never dig through other people's mail. Buffy scoffed. She had the good sense to feel ashamed at her little outburst. On the menu tonight, hypocrisy with a side of condescending heroine.
The thought made her consider Xander, and for a split second, Buffy wanted to call him on his work cell and rant. But she'd made a little promise to him: no calls to the construction site involving shopping or cute guys.
And Spencer qualified as "cute guy" talk, right? He definitely wasn't the demons and fresh wounds that Xander would expect from a mid-day emergency phone call. So no ranting. Not yet. She could save that for the dinner table.
The envelope snugly slipped into her day planner was open. The letter had been delivered a day earlier, and Buffy had read it since. Once. Then again with a raised brow. This was the second letter that Spencer Reid had sent her way. The first had been... Well, Buffy was pretty sure the guy had been in full ramble mode, if not a little intoxicated. In fact, he'd acknowledged the number of drinks he'd consumed between the paragraph giving her statistics on mail fraud and the paragraph explaining the threat of anthrax to the US postal system. Somewhere in the mist of the crazy, Buffy had started laughing. And she hadn't stopped.
So, when she'd reached the end of the letter and found him slightly inquisitive, she'd not given it a second thought. She'd written back.
But this second letter...
Buffy chewed her lip, unfolding it again. Thankfully, she'd caught Judy just before the teenage girl had pulled the note free. In fact, Buffy was fairly certain the other slayers hadn't even realized that it was a private letter. Usually Buffy shoved the bills in her planner, where they were forgotten until the overdue notice arrived, and it was up to Xander to fish them out of their calendar-lined grave. But Buffy had put Spencer's letter there for a reason: to forget about it.
Because, heaven forbid she actually answer.
Buffy slid down onto her bed, resting her head against the pillows and raising the letter above her. Light haloed the tight fibers of the yellow paper, causing the black ink to look more intense. At the top, her name stood out like a beacon.
Her lips curved upward. She couldn't help it. Something about his words reminded her of her friends. Goofy Xander, rambling Willow, and somewhere between the lines, there was a man hesitating to say what was really on his mind. That reminded Buffy of someone too, and she quickly shook the thought off. Spencer's words were nervous, intelligent, and plentiful. Definitely the work of someone who'd written letters before.
Dear Buffy,
I was surprised to hear back from you so quickly. There's no need to continue apologizing, I assure you. I think we're past that now. And, no, your letters aren't interrupting my work. Though, if I disappear for a few days, it's likely job related, and you should take no offense.
Yes, my mother is doing well. Thank you for asking.
Buffy quit rereading, wincing. She'd definitely brought this upon herself.
Buffy hadn't really been into the pen-pal scene as a kid. Way too interested in cheerleading to take the time to buy stamps. And the internet age's chatrooms and message boards hadn't called to her, especially after Willow's fiasco with the creeptastic "Malcolm" (aka Moloch the Ultimate Computer Virus). Still, there was something really nice about talking to a stranger.
Of course, as is the Summers' way, all good things must come to a brutal and untimely end.
She'd known Spencer would ask eventually. They could only go on with the apology game for so long. And she'd really left it up to him to bring it up. Why? Why had she talked about his job at the FBI? Would it have been too hard for her just to comment on the weather Ohio was having? But, nope, she had to mention his job. And so, the inevitable, dreaded question had arrived:
What do you do for a living, Buffy?
Damn. Buffy moaned. Why'd he have to ask? And if that hadn't been bad enough, he'd ended the letter with another blow:
If you don't mind me asking, was that your sister you were visiting in Bennington?
"Own. Damn. Fault." Buffy groaned, letting the paper fall onto her face and shade the light. The letter smelled very Giles-like, which, in turn, meant it reminded her of a well-aged library.
She could lie about the job. Find a way to explain away Dana. But a little voice inside her was shouting out a warning. Lying to a federal agent? So not smart.
And what did she really know about Spencer Reid?
Buffy sat up, something akin to fear on her face. What did she know? Nothing, that's what. Here she was, getting chatty with a guy she saw once, when he could very well be in league with the next Big Bad. She'd definitely receive disappointment-face if she mentioned him to her friends.
Which she hadn't. Mentioned him. Buffy wasn't quite sure why she was keeping his letters secret. Oh yeah, disappointment-face.
The answer was clear to Buffy. There was only one way she could continue speaking to Spencer, and that was if she had him checked out. There was a very clear problem here, though. Willow, her go-to girl, was busy on a spiritual quest to tame her inner goddess (again), Xander was only talented with computers when it came to ordering pizza and looking up... Well, Buffy was going to pretend she hadn't stumbled in on him that one night. And Andrew, king of gossip, would turn Spencer into the talk of Slayer Central.
Buffy stared at her laptop. It was sitting on her desk, currently covered with a pile of clean t-shirts. No Will or Andy, that left Mr. Google. Buffy cracked her knuckled and slid off the bed.
"Ok, Spencer Reid, let's see what the public knows about you."
Dr. Spencer Reid wouldn't say that his eidetic memory was his calling card, but it definitely helped him do his job. The ability to see an image, or, in most cases, words, and recollect them almost instantly was one that most professionals would pay millions to obtain. However, he was a rarity, and his ability could not be traded for, given away, or passed on.
It was for this reason that the team took notice of the folded slip of purple stationary sticking out of Reid's notebook. Because Reid had slipped the paper out four times since he'd arrived to work that morning, glancing over it, as if re-reading the handwritten message. And every person in the room knew for a fact that the young profiler hadn't forgotten whatever was scribbled on the purple page.
"Okay, I give," Morgan announced, sitting on the edge of Reid's desk, "what is it?"
Spencer jumped slightly at the interruption before blinking furiously up at the other man. He coughed, hiding the paper before Morgan's outstretched hand could pull it away.
"Excuse me?" Spencer didn't fake confusion well. He tried to cover his attempt. "Is there a reason why you've decided to sit on my desk? Again?"
Morgan huffed, hiding his bright grin with a cool swipe of his fingers. He shook his head. "Come on, man, you're distracted. And it has something to do with that purple piece of paper."
Until the words left Morgan's mouth, Spencer hadn't fully realized how obvious his little "peeks" at Buffy's letter had been. Awkwardly folding and unfolding his limbs, he managed to slip his notebook into his top drawer.
He took an anxious breath. How best to deal with this....There was always the truth. Reid's brow wrinkled when he realized what that truth would be. Morgan was his friend, quite possibly his best friend, but Reid knew him just as well as the rest of his BAU family. When it came to strangers entering their lives through suspicious circumstances, other agents could get a tad bit paranoid. And justifiably so.
Spencer could admit that writing letters to a strange woman was a bit of an odd hobby, somewhat of a dangerous one, some would say. And yet there was a such a draw in the risk alone. Sure, on occasion, Spencer would meet someone in a restaurant or at a workshop that would strike up a conversation, but there was something decidedly more intimate in letter writing. He quickly shook his head, deciding at once neither to dwell on the subtle allure of Buffy's letters nor to tell Morgan anything close to the truth.
A plan of action formulated on its own.
"Perhaps I have a friend," Reid said, smiling slightly. Not a complete lie.
Morgan's gaze narrowed, partly in suspicion, partly in amusement. "A friend. Huh. And this friend doesn't use a telephone?"
Spencer raised a brow. "Some things are easier said in writing," he answered. "And text messages are simply insufficient."
Derek leaned back, a silent laugh rocking his chest. "Oh, Reid, you're killin' me." With one last snort, he rolled his eyes, realization hitting him. Morgan lowered his voice, "It's from your mom, isn't it? Jeeze, kid, you had me thinking there was a secret admirer who'd gotten our addresses mixed-up."
Reid scratched his brow to hide a blush, smiled, and stood. "More coffee," he excused, and walked past the other agent.
"You mean more sugar?"
Spencer pretended not to hear him, but before leaving the room entirely, he paused, looking back over his shoulder. Morgan hadn't bought the act, not entirely. Reid frowned when he saw the other man gently ease open the top drawer to sneak a peek at the notebook's binding. Finding no purple corner of a letter, and not willing to invade his friend's privacy to a greater extent, Morgan hopped off the desk, unsatisfied.
Reid patted his sweater, where the letter sat flat against his stomach, planted there with one slip of his wrist. "Never play a magician, Derek," he muttered.
And went in search of coffee. With extra sugar.
Buffy's hand hovered over the touchpad, her brow wrinkled in a dramatic display of horror. She pushed the phone closer to her ear, eyes glued on the screen in front of her.
"And I just move it to the vault?"
The tinny voice sounding out of the cell phone was low in true bored-Dawn fashion. "Yes, Buffy. Just move click the button that says 'move.'"
Buffy hesitated. "But what if comes back?"
A groan was her first reply. "It won't Buffy, not with Willow's system of magically infused virus and malware protection. You're covered, trust me."
Buffy moved the cell phone, giving it a hard stare before resting it against her head again. "Thanks, Dawnie."
Finally. Buffy had spent twenty minutes trying to figure out a game plan when the Willow-alert flashed over her screen, throwing her for a loop. But the information she'd found before the alert... There was very little one could guess about a person's life by reading their letters alone, but the internet had given Buffy a new view of Dr. Spencer Reid. Articles, essays, workshop guest lists: when the FBI had started plastering their agents all over the news, Buffy wasn't sure, but she was pleased to find his face staring back at her from a scanned article clipping.
Buffy was left with a strange, hollow feeling in her stomach. Nothing she'd read suggested he might be part of some evil plan to take her down, but, still, she didn't think that information would be spilled out for all the world wide web to see. From what she'd managed to find, she was left, well, impressed. If not a tad bit intimidated. Dr. Spencer Reid was practically a genius.
What on earth would make him want to write her back?
"Well, it's supposed to be idiot proof. Go figure."
"Yeah, funny." Buffy smiled nevertheless. The expression wavered slightly when she thought of Spencer's reported IQ. Surely geniuses still had computer issues. "How's the search for Dr. Malestrom's book going?"
The sound of rap playing in the dormitory nearly drowned out Dawn's voice for a moment. She shouted something away from the phone before coming back to her sister's question.
"He's finally admitted that he has it, but he's hesitant to hand it over. Apparently the New Council sounds a tad scary, a bit too Illuminati for his liking. Oh, and apparently I'm not the first student who's ever asked about it."
Buffy raised a brow. "That's weird."
"Yeah, apparently a couple years ago some, and I quote the good doctor, 'giant, puppy-dog-eyed pre-law student' saw it during a meeting in his office and asked to borrow it. Dr. Malestrom said he was going to loan it out but the student dropped out of school soon after. I'm guessing the gentle-giant was just an amateur warlock who recognized the symbols on the front," Dawn paused to take a breath. "Oh, and I realize what you're doing here."
"What? I'm doing something?" Buffy faked stupid. Expertly. Unfortunately, her sister could see through the act. "Is it a crime to ask how your baby sister is doing?"
"Buffy," Dawn deadpanned, "how'd you run into malware? You never use your computer. Oh, lord, you weren't looking up something 'ugg' were you?"
Buffy rolled her eyes, remembered Xander, and then frowned. "No!" she snapped. "I was doing research."
A heavy silence filled the line.
"Dawn, you still there?"
Dawn's laughter sounded over the line. "You? You're doing research on the internet? And the laptop is still in one piece?" The younger woman pushed down another fit of giggles, regaining her composure. "Are you sure you didn't simply discover the wonders of online shopping?"
Damn. Buffy frowned. That would have been such a great excuse. So why hadn't she used it? It occurred to Buffy that there were some things a girl really could talk to her sister about.
"Spill."
The one-word command was simple. It was also given in a tone that most the Jr. Slayers had come to refer to as "Scary-Dawn Voice."
"Alright, Dawn." Buffy sighed, leaning onto her elbow. "When I was visiting Dana, I sort of spotted this guy."
"Wait," Dawn interrupted, "Buffy, please tell me it wasn't a patient. Because, considering your dating history, there are only so many ways you could impress me."
Buffy was surprised that her cheeks were blushed. "Not a patient, and who said anything about dating?"
Dawn snorted, causing the phone in Buffy's hand to vibrate.
"Sure."
It was going to be a long conversation. One in which Buffy was determined not to mention the FBI.
READ CHAPTER 3
