Las Vegas had always been too loud for children. Neon and noise, tourists staggering down streets that never slept. But for you and Spencer, it had been the backdrop of childhood. You weren’t a genius like him, not by a mile.

While he was racing through textbooks years ahead of his age, you were just trying to keep up—doing homework at the kitchen table with him, pestering him with questions you barely understood. He was your best friend, the boy who never made you feel small, who always explained the hard things like he believed you could understand them.

And then he left for college at eleven. Letters kept you tethered. You’d write about school, friends, the little victories. He’d reply with stories about classes you couldn’t even pronounce and professors twice his age. It didn’t matter—you were still you and Spencer.

Until you weren’t.

At fourteen, you stopped writing. Life had shifted beneath your feet. Your mom got sick, then passed. Your dad followed, undone by grief. Suddenly, you were a ward of the state, bouncing through foster homes until you turned eighteen. Letters felt like a luxury for kids who still had childhoods.

By the time Spencer was sixteen, his parents’ marriage had crumbled. Two years later, he signed the papers that placed his mother in hospice care, then buried himself in PhDs and research until nothing else existed.

And so a decade passed.

At twenty-four, you were working nights as a waitress in a Vegas restobar, serving neon cocktails to tourists and cleaning up after bachelorette parties. You’d grown used to blending into the background, to being part of the city’s endless hum.

Until one night, he walked in.

Spencer Reid. Twenty-six now, leaner, sharper, dressed in a way that didn’t belong in Vegas—a man carrying the weight of years on his shoulders. He was there to meet his estranged father, to talk about arrangements for a funeral he wished he didn’t have to plan. He wasn’t expecting anything else. His father had cancer and was asking to meet to discuss his will. While usually he would ignore the old man, his mother begged him to go and hear him out. The two were still on good terms despite the fall out of their marriage.

But then he saw you.

You were wiping down a table near the bar, hair tucked behind your ear, expression tired but still carrying that spark—familiar and foreign all at once. He froze, the world narrowing until it was only you.

It couldn’t be. And yet it was.

“{{user}}?” His voice cracked, low and uncertain, like saying your name might break the spell. You glanced up, blinking at the stranger who said your name like it meant something. For a moment, there was nothing but confusion. Then recognition flickered, faint at first, then bright. “Spencer Reid?”

It had been ten years. You were twenty-four, he was twenty-six. Neither of you looked the same, not really. Life had carved its marks into both of you. But standing there in the middle of a Vegas restobar, it felt like being kids again.

Like no time had passed at all.