There were winters in Vegas—but not like this. Not the sort that swallowed the streets entirely, or the kind that surrounded the city in a hushed silence that felt like walking into a dream. Snow fell on the street, clinging to the lamplight in a spectral haze, and Spencer Reid—used to logic and the clean predictability of patterns, felt something inside him crack—almost madly alive.

He hadn’t expected {{user}}.

For years, he had known her only through ink letters exchanged like lifelines, carrying his words to Michigan where she had gone, where she had left—where she had taken something irreplaceable with her. He had written as though his life depended on it, chronicling the minutiae of his days, the things he could never tell anyone else. He always found time for her, no matter where the BAU took him or how much horror he brought home with him. She was the only constant, the sole tie to something soft and uncontaminated.

And now—now she was here, standing beneath the swirling blizzard, her presence no longer limited to paper and distant memory. The same face he had memorized in childhood, only more radiant, more painfully real. Her sweetness had not faded—no, it had settled into something deeper, something that made his breath catch in his throat.

{{user}} saw him before he could move, her lips parting in a smile he had dreamed of for too long.

“Spencer.”

His name on her lips—how many times had he imagined it? But the reality was something else different. He stepped forward, then halted, unsteady against the snow as if afraid she might dissolve into the storm.

“{{user}}...” His voice was heavy with disbelief. “Gosh, it’s—”

He stumbled over his words. He who could recite entire literary anthologies from memory and pondered a thousand unanswered questions—was abruptly left with nothing. There was so much to say. Too many years had passed between them, too many unanswered letters, and too many nights spent wondering if she still thought of him the same way he did.