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The Invisible Sparks

Chapter One

Spencer Reid had spent years finely attuning his senses to his surroundings. It was how he'd survived a particularly grueling adolescence that had seemed to extend far longer than the normal decade assigned to such a maturing process. He made it a practice to learn where his dangers hid and then devise ways to successfully avoid them.

Except, the danger sitting directly across from him aboard the empty jet couldn't be so easily evaded. The danger whose eyes were currently boring a hole into his forehead probably wasn't even aware that he represented a threat at all.

But Reid was well aware that danger was not always easily recognizable. He was a profiler, after all. He hunted men and women who made it their lives' missions to blend in with the rest of the population and remain as undetectable as possible.

His intellect recognized that David Rossi posed no threat to his body; however, he knew without reservation that the opposite was indeed true. Rossi would take a bullet for him or any other member of their team. No, it wasn't his physical well being that was threatened by the imposing elder man.

It was his heart.

For weeks, he'd noticed the senior profiler watching him, glancing at him when others were occupied and not paying attention. Nothing overt. He doubted anyone else had even noticed. But he'd noted it.

And, more importantly, he knew the reason behind it.

Mentally cringing as he recalled that disastrous night six weeks past, Reid could still vividly recollect every single moment. Cursing his eidetic memory, he knew that no matter how hard he tried to forget, that those minutes would be permanently seared into his memory. He seldom drank, well aware of the lowering of inhibitions that he always experienced with just one glass or bottle, but the team had just come off of a horrible case and he'd just learned that his mother had suffered another setback in her ongoing treatment for schizophrenia. He'd been lonely and depressed, not a great combination to begin with, but with the added component of alcohol, he'd been a catastrophe in the making.

Luckily, the bartender had confiscated his keys and cell phone when she'd realized that he was drinking alone. And after she'd cut him off, she'd dialed the first number in his speed dial. And since D-A, came before D,E, in the alphabet, it had been Rossi rather than Morgan that had shown up to give him a ride home.

He knew he should have entered last names first.

In hindsight, he was more than a little stymied by the fact that Dave had arrived himself to collect him rather than send a cab. It wasn't as if they'd ever been particularly close. Dave gravitated toward Hotch and Reid had always seemed to lean toward Derek. He'd never questioned the why of it...always assuming that their age difference and lack of common interests had just naturally created a distance neither of them had ever bothered to breach.

Except in his inebriated state, he'd forgotten the boundaries. Somehow in his alcohol induced stupor, he'd managed to forget all the lines that you were never supposed to cross with your friends and colleagues, and when David Rossi had wrapped an arm around his waist to keep him from falling down drunk outside his apartment door, he'd mistaken that innocent touch for masculine interest...and responded accordingly, pressing a wet kiss against the legendary Rossi's partially open mouth.

Stranger than that had been was the absolutely unexpected fact that Dave had responded to him. He hadn't been so drunk that he couldn't recall of the feel of the older man's sensuous tongue sliding against his, rough in texture, but gentle in technique, kissing him back. He hadn't been deaf either, he thought grimly, the sound of Rossi's deep growl of approval still echoed in his ears.

As quickly as the illicit encounter had began, however, it had ended even more abruptly. Dave had finally realized who he was kissing in a public hallway and shoved him inside his apartment, tossing him his keys and closing the door firmly between them a second later.

They'd never discussed it. Never even had a nervous, whispered conversation regarding the incident. It was as though it had never happened at all. And if it wasn't for the obvious strain between them, he might have been able to convince himself that his overactive imagination had invented the moment in a tequila induced trance.

Stranger things had happened, although he normally blamed them on the misfiring of synapses in his genetically-disposed to disease brain.

That wasn't what happened, however. He knew it, and so did the man currently watching him flip a page he hadn't bothered reading in the paperback book he held. Something was happening between them. He couldn't define it...couldn't even begin to fathom it. But, he couldn't deny what was happening.

"You're watching me again," Spencer said quietly without looking up from his book, finally deciding to break the silence.

"Excuse me?" Dave replied gruffly, lifting his chin against Spencer's slight accusation.

Inserting his bookmark carefully before slowly closing his book and dropping it in his lap, Reid forced himself to raise his head and face the man across from him. He'd dodged looking directly into Dave's face for weeks for fear of what he'd find hovering in the other man's eyes. He'd expected to find censure...anger...and perhaps a shade of revulsion. Instead, behind those heavy lidded eyes, he saw only curiosity. "I said that you've been watching me."

"I have," Dave agreed, not bothering to deny the obvious. Stretching his legs out in front of him, he raised one brow as he waited for the other man to answer.


"I suppose I'm trying to figure you out," Dave shrugged easily, watching the younger man's face closely as if he could find the answers he needed somehow concealed there. Of course, he'd spent weeks trying no avail. Spencer Reid didn't show anyone anything he didn't want anyone else to see.

"What is it you want to know exactly?" Reid asked hesitantly, his lips twitching as he tried to determine how he could answer.