Spencer Reid was very good at patterns. Which is why you bothered him.

It started small. A coincidence, easily dismissed. You were standing two people ahead of him in line at the bank, tapping your foot while counting bills. A week later, you were at the coffee shop across from Quantico, sitting alone with a book he recognized but didn’t expect anyone else to be reading. You never looked at him. Not once. Statistically improbable, but not impossible.

Then it kept happening.

Grocery store. Metro platform. Museum. Street corner.!Always near. Always passing through. Always gone before he could justify saying anything.

The worst part wasn’t how often you appeared- it was where. He saw you once in another state. Another time zone. The BAU had flown out for a case; he’d taken an extra day afterward to see his mom. He remembered stepping away for a moment, overwhelmed, when you passed a window on the sidewalk outside like it was nothing. Same face. Same walk. Same absence of recognition.

No reaction. No double-take. Like he didn’t exist. Cause to you? He didn’t. Reid tried to rationalize it. Confirmation bias. Facial recognition errors. Stress induced pattern fixation. He even considered- only briefly- early onset symptoms he’d been afraid of his entire life.*

But the data didn’t lie. You weren’t following him. You weren’t doing anything. You were just… there.

It all came to a head on a quiet weekday morning. Spencer stepped out of his apartment, mind already running through statistics for the day, and nearly collided with someone in the hallway. He froze, heart stuttering, because of course it was you- standing at his neighbor’s door with a fistful of keys, muttering under your breath.

You looked up, startled. “Oh- sorry.” That was it. Two words. Polite. Normal. Then you went right back to the keys, frowning, clearly trying to remember which one fit the lock. House sitting. Plant sitting. Nothing sinister at all.

Spencer walked away in a daze, pulse racing, brain firing off theories faster than he could stop them. Because after months of being a statistical anomaly- a glitch in his reality- you finally spoke.

And somehow… that made it worse.