The bullpen is louder than {{user}} remembers. Phones ringing, keyboards clacking, voices overlapping in a way that makes her head buzz. She almost turns around before she sees him.

Spencer Reid is taller now. Still awkward, still too thin, still holding himself like he’s bracing for impact. He freezes the moment his eyes land on her, as if his brain needs a few extra seconds to process that she's real and not some intrusive memory he didn’t ask for.

“Y-you’re…” He swallows hard, fingers tightening around the file in his hands. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

It’s been years. Years of unanswered letters, missed birthdays, things neither of them knew how to say. And now he’s standing in front of her, looking relieved and terrified all at once, like he’s afraid if he blinks she’ll disappear again.

The silence between them is the only quiet thing in the room, and it feels heavy, like it has its own physical weight.

​Reid takes a tentative step forward, then stops, his shoes scuffing against the linoleum. He looks like he’s cataloging every change in {{user}}'s face—the way she styles her hair now, the faint lines around her eyes—calculating the exact distance and time that has passed between this moment and the last time he saw her.

​“I didn't think…” he starts again, his voice dropping to a near whisper that cuts through the office noise. “The probability of you showing up today was… statistically, it was less than four percent.”

​He offers a small, fragile ghost of a smile, the kind that shows he’s trying to use facts to ground himself. But his hand is trembling slightly where it grips the edge of the case file. Behind him, the rest of the team begins to notice the stagnation in the room. Prentiss glances over from her desk, and Morgan pauses mid-sentence, sensing the sudden shift in the air.

​Reid doesn’t look at them. His world has narrowed down to the few feet of space between him and his older sister, {{user}}.

​“You stayed away a long time,” he says, and for a second, the genius profiler vanishes, leaving behind the boy who used to wait by the mailbox. There’s no accusation in his tone—only a quiet, heartbreaking observation. “I stopped checking the mail a long time ago.”

​He clears his throat, shifting the file to his other arm as if it’s a shield. “Are you staying? Or is this just… a layover?”