.

.

Chapter Thirty-One

.

.

August 23, 2015

"Can I get you anything, Dave?" Fran asked. "Ice tea, juice, water..." She bent down to look in Morgan's fridge. "I think Derek has some lemonade or some Pellegrino in here."

"Got any coffee?"

"Coffee, really? What, were you born on the sun? It's sweltering in here!" Fran teased. Dave shrugged and she turned on Derek's coffee maker with a smile. When it was ready she asked him, "Cream or sugar?" but after he shook his head, she merely sat down across from him at the little kitchen island, sipped her ice tea, and waited for him to speak.

"Have I got something on my face?" he finally asked. He was preoccupied, it was true, but he was too old and canny of a negotiator to let it show. Or so he thought.

"I was just wondering what brought you over here," she said casually. Dave knew she really meant Let's get down to the problem, shall we? He couldn't help but smile; her careful directness was something he loved about her.

"Can't I come see a good friend?"

She smirked. "Of course. But you and I both know it isn't why you came today."

"I'm not going to get away without talking about it, am I?"

Fran raised an eyebrow, but the smug expression was still on her face. "Do you want to?"

Damnit, she's worse than the shrink, he thought, but he had to admit she was right: whether he had consciously come to her with that plan in mind or not, he did actually want to open up. He sighed, unsure of how to begin. Or maybe just reluctant, you coward. Fran, however, waited with an unforced patience. That was another thing he loved about her: she knew how to listen.

"It was just something that happened at J.J.'s baby shower," he said. "I know I sort of danced around the subject a little when I called you that night, but it's still weighing on my mind."

"Tell me exactly what happened."

Dave related the full details of how Henry, Jack, and Meg had complained about the lack of quality conversation without their uncle Spence around, only to have Fran peer at him quizzically when he was finished. "I'm not sure I understand the problem, Dave. It sounds as if the children simply miss Spencer."

He caught himself tapping his fingers on the table top and stopped. Fran was good; she didn't bat an eyelash, and even though Dave didn't mind showing his nerves so much around her anymore, he was still grateful. "It makes me feel guilty, that's what's bothering me. Guilty and damned stupid."

"What about that incident would make you feel like that? Do you believe you're not missing him as much as you should?"

"No, that's not it." He put his coffee down while struggling to nail down the precise problem. "It's because I can't help but think of all the times I and the rest of the team have shut him down any times he's tried to start a conversation with us. I mean, who knows how many times we've bored him, but he's always listened to us so politely, intently following every word. What does it say to him when we never give him the same consideration?"

Fran sighed and laid a hand on top of Dave's. "Okay, so let's look at this. Tell me why you shut him down."

"You know him, he has a tendency to go off on irrelevant, long-winded tangents at the most inappropriate times."

"So it's a timing issue?"

"Once upon a time it was, but now that I look back on the last few years..." He took a deep breath. "Shit. You know what the problem is? We've gotten too used to shutting him up. We've got to the point where we cut him off before we even find out what he's trying to say, or we look at him like he's weird anytime he opens his mouth, instead of just when he'd say something unexpected. A couple of times even when he was trying to share information relevant to the case."

"Then, if it's not always a timing issue, what is it?"

Dave shrugged, wanting to avoid saying the problem out loud. After sitting through Fran's steady gaze for a few minutes though, he threw his hands up helplessly. "He...I don't know... He drones on about boring things!" About things you and the team find boring, but maybe not other people. Smarter people, Dave's conscience whispered to him, but he wasn't ready to look at that yet. "There, I've said it. I find my own son boring. Every time he wants to talk about something that interests him, I have to fight not to run away."

"Really?" Fran asked skeptically.

"Okay, not every single time, but he just doesn't seem to... to communicate that well."

"So what you're saying is that Spencer needs to learn he should only ever talk about things that interest other people."

Dave sensed a trap. "Well, I don't know if I'd phrase it exactly like that..."

"So why do you think he talks about things no one else is interested in?"

Dave snorted, opened his mouth, only to suddenly snap it shut again. Despite all of his recent realizations, his first instinct had still been to say 'to show off', but the real answer hit him abruptly like a brick to the head.

Because he's genuinely interested in them. And he's trying to share those parts of himself with us. It was a thought that would have come out of Dave's mouth if anyone had ever asked him, but he had never fully taken it in, never absorbed the heart of what it meant. He's not trying to show off his academic superiority or be pretentious. He's not trying to assert himself in the only way he knows how. He's simply trying to reach out by sharing his never-ending curiosity with the world.

And we keep rejecting him. We keep rejecting him because apparently intellectual conversation is too much of a chore for us to handle.

My God, what have I been doing to him!

"Dave? What's wrong?"

"I think I'm just realizing how much I might have helped damage my own son."

-x-

They moved the conversation, such as it was with Dave brooding as a thousand recriminations flew around in his mind, to Morgan's living room and Fran poured him a drink. They then sat quietly for some time, Fran with her arm wrapped around his and her head resting against his shoulder. "Do you think you're ready to talk again?" she asked as the evening started to come on.

"I think so. And thank you for not arguing with me."

Fran touched his chin and gently brought his head around to face her. "That doesn't mean that I agree with what you said. I just thought you needed to think things through before trying to explain such a comment. You're not usually one to get bogged down dwelling on past mistakes; I knew you'd get yourself the right way round eventually. And I think you needed me to take your words seriously, to not dismiss them or argue to the contrary without listening first, even if I feel you're incredibly wrong."

Dave smiled and grasped the hand in his tighter. "I know. And as for getting bogged down on past mistakes, you're right. I'm not usually like this. I'm not into endless self-examination of everything I say and do, especially once the moment has passed, but this is different."

"Because it's the most important thing in your life?"

"Not only that, but because for the first time in long while I feel out of control. I've never been so afraid of screwing up before and so I think I'm going over the past in hopes of finding some kind of answers."

"I think I understand, but that isn't going to help you. So let's try a different tack," Fran suggested.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Hmmm... well, tell me how you act when Spencer tries to engage you on one of his 'boring' subjects? Is there give and take? Do you offer an opinion or ask any questions? Do you ask him to slow down and explain things more clearly? How about body language? Do you turn towards him? Do you maybe look him in the eye or give him any other signs that you're actively listening to what he has to say?"

"Uh..."

"Dave... how much do you actually listen to him?" Fran asked hesitantly.

Dave rubbed tiredly at his forehead. "Honestly? Not enough. Every time he's ever tried to - " Reach out. Say it, you jackass! He was trying to reach out, to make a connection, and you couldn't even make a show of paying attention to him. Because you were always looking for an out. "Every time he's ever tried to talk to me, apart from things to do with whatever case we were on, or when he desperately needed some emotional support, I listen to him drone on with half an ear for a minute or two, and then seize on the first opportunity to escape." All the while usually thinking, Thank God that's over! "I'm not even sure if I can honestly say that we've ever really had a real, everyday conversation."

Fran grimaced in sympathy and squeezed his hand again. "At least you've been there when he needed a shoulder to lean on. And listening to him about cases would have shown him you respected him as a colleague."

"Yeah."

"Don't do that, Dave. Beating yourself up isn't going to solve anything. Concentrate on the fact that you've noticed your behaviour and you regret it. And realize that now that you know about the problem, you can work on fixing it."

"That really doesn't make me feel like any less of a shit heel."

"David," Fran said, gently scolding. "Let's move on. Tell me how these conversations start. Have you ever gone up to him and asked him about something he likes or might be interested in, or does he simply corner you when you can't get away fast enough."

Dave breathed out in a whuff, as if already exhausted by what he was going to say next. "He corners me," he admitted. Dave honestly couldn't recall even one single time when he'd voluntarily asked Spencer anything about his hobbies or his opinion on anything non-work related, at least until it was discovered he was the younger man's father. He did remember asking the Kid once or twice what he'd done over the weekend, but then Spencer had started yammering on about some museum or science fiction movie in Russian and Dave would mentally pull out of the conversation without asking any follow-up questions. And he eventually saw it too, didn't he? Dave asked himself. You saw the slight hurt and confusion in his eyes more than once, and the shame on his face when he would abruptly shut his yap because he figured out he was boring you. You saw and yet you never did anything about it. Because you thought he was being oversensitive, that he'd get over it.

Because you didn't care.

"So you instinctively avoid them?" Fran asked, drawing him back to the moment.

"You know, my sense of being an asshole is rising, not going down."

"I take it that's a yes, then? How about the others? I can guess how Derek would usually react, but what about the rest of the team? Do they act the same way?"

"Garcia, and sometimes Emily, can usually be counted on to talk to him about science fiction, but otherwise I'd have to say their reactions are the same as mine. Aaron is generally the one who shows the most patience with Spencer's rambling."

"But even he still finds Spencer's conversational attempts something to endure rather than participate in?"

"I can't say for sure, but I suspect as much."

Fran placed her head against Dave's shoulder again. "So what do you think all of this tells Spencer when no one wants to talk to him about the things he enjoys or finds interesting? The things that define him and make him happy?" she asked softly and without judgement.

"It tells him we find the things he likes pointless and stupid. That we find the things that make him him not worth caring about. Which, by extension, might in his mind make him think that we find him not worth caring about. It probably also makes him feel like he's not as equally important to us as the rest of us are to each other. And, Jesus, who can blame him when we act like everyone's interests and choices of activity are welcome except his? That he can't even bring them up without us looking at him like he's from another planet? How could he help but feel at times that we merely tolerate him, only caring about him when we feel like it or need the ego boost we get from playing the wise grown-up? Not to mention the mixed signals we must have been giving him all this time! We bug him to open up constantly, but our actions are continually reenforcing the idea that we never want to actually listen to him. Why would he believe he can come to us with the big stuff when none of us can be bothered to listen for a few minutes to the small stuff?"

"Why do you think Spencer keeps at it, then?" Fran prodded. "Why does he keep trying to talk to all of you?"

Dave propped his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands. "Because he's lonely."

-x-

August 30, 2015

The dinner party hosted by Rossi to welcome baby Michael into the BAU family was winding down when Dave spotted Henry wandering out the back door. Worried the six-year-old was feeling left out with all of the attention so focused on his new brother, Dave followed at a discreet distance. However, he needn't have worried; the boy wasn't sulking, he knew exactly where he was going.

"Whatcha doing, Uncle Spence?"

Spencer, home for a brief few days to wrap up last minute preparations and travel visas, was flying out to San Francisco the next day to finally meet his first batch of student engineers. Slightly quieter than usual, and obsessing a bit over the myriad of details he had to deal with, Spencer had been showing all the signs of being nervous about his first stint as leader and teacher, but as Dave watched from just inside the patio screen door, he saw his son turn around to greet the little boy and smiled at how much Spencer visibly relaxed in the presence of his godson.

"Hello, Henry. I'm just looking at the stars."

"Can I look too?"

"Of course!" Spencer told him, and shifted over on the deck chair to allow Henry to sit beside him. "Do you remember the constellations I showed you?"

"Unh huh! There's Hercules, and the swan one, and the scorpion one!" Henry reeled off, pointing to each in turn.

"How about Sagittarius? Can you find that one?"

Dave, who had turned out the light behind him in order to better see the dark silhouettes of the two stargazers, could practically see Henry's scrunched up 'thinking face' as the little boy searched the sky. Suddenly pointing, Henry yelled out, "There it is! There it is, Uncle Spence!"

"Wow, Henry! You're really good at this."

"Show me something else, Uncle Spence!"

"Well," Spencer said, drawing Henry back against him so that the boy's head rested against his chest, "do you want to know something really cool? We can see ghosts out here."

"Ghosts!"

"Up there," Spencer said, pointing towards the night sky with Henry avidly training his gaze along his godfather's outstretched finger. "The ghosts of stars."

"I don't get it. How can stars be ghosts, Uncle Spence?"

"Okay, do you know that light travels?"

"Uh, sort of..." Henry said, a little unsure. "My teacher said light's the fastest thing in the whole universe."

"But it's kind of hard to picture, huh?"

"Yeah," Henry admitted.

"That's all right. All you have to know right now is that light is incredibly fast. It may not be the fastest thing since some physicists in Italy may have found some sub-atomic particles that go even faster, but light is soooo fast you can't even believe it."

"But what's that got to do with ghosts, Uncle Spence?"

"So light is incredibly fast, but space is sooooo big that it still takes time for light to go from place to place. For instance, the light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach the Earth."

"That's not that long."

"No, but that's the nearest star to us. Other stars, however, are so far away that the light coming from them could take hundreds, thousands, and even millions of years to get to us. For the stars the most far away, it might even take the light from them billions of years to get here. Are you with me so far?"

Dave saw Henry's head bob up and down in a nod.

"All right. So now picture the light from the star like a letter the star is sending in our direction. That light letter, coming in its mail truck, is going to be on the road fro a very long, long time, travelling all the way across the galaxy just to get here, right?"

"Right!" Henry agreed.

"But while the letter is travelling, passing by comets and asteroids and alien spaceships, the star left back home is growing older and older. What we see when we look at the sky is the light the star sent to us, not the star itself. Or you could say the star as it looked however many years ago. And by the time that light reaches us, the star may have died. We can see its light, but the star itself may no longer be there, so, in a sense, it's like looking at a ghost."

"That's sad," Henry said softly.

"You know what? I used to think so too, but now I think it's wonderful. It's like a part of the star is still with us, almost like it's saying hello to us, even though it's gone. Its light can make us happy and illuminate our night sky, and we can know they once were there, even though we will never see the star itself.

"I didn't think of it like that," Henry whispered.

"The same can be true for people as well. Did I ever tell you the story of Blind Willie Johnson, Henry?"

Henry sat up and turned to face his godfather, shaking his head wildly. "Nope! Who's he, Uncle Spence?"

Spencer pulled the little boy against him again. "Blind Willie Johnson was a blues musician who lived a long time ago," he began. "Way before you and I were born. I mean, it was even before Uncle Dave was born! Can you imagine that?"

Henry burst out giggling. "No! You're making that up, Uncle Spence!" Meanwhile, Dave thought, Oh, he's going to pay for that one!

"Anyway, Mr. Johnson had a very hard life. His mom died when he was four and then when he was seven he lost his ability to see. He made money by singing on street corners and eventually even got to make some records, but then the Great Depression came along and people couldn't afford to buy his records anymore, and so people kind of forgot about him. Some years after that, his house burned down and because he had nowhere else to go, he had to live in the ruins of his home. But being exposed to the weather like that made him sick, so he tried to go to the hospital. However, they wouldn't let him in because he was African-American and so he died."

"That's stupid! Why wouldn't that dumb hospital let him in?"

Spencer sighed. "That's a long story, Henry, but you know that sometimes people treat other people badly for some pretty silly reasons, right?"

"I guess so, but it's still mean," Henry grumbled sadly, burying his face against Spencer's chest. "Uncle Spence, are there hospitals that won't let Uncle Derek in?"

"I hope not. It's against the law to do something so wrong now. But that's not the point of this story. You see, about thirty years or so after Mr. Johnson died, something really amazing happened."

"What?" an eager Henry asked.

"In 1977 - a year before your Mom was born - a man named Carl Sagan and his team of researchers were putting together a bunch of things to go in a space probe which was being sent out into the universe with a message for anyone who might be out there, telling them all about the people of Earth."

"Aliens?" From the sound of his voice and the sudden bouncing up of his head, Dave could just imagine the little boy's astonished look of awe.

"Yep. That probe was going to be our message in a bottle, sent out on the sea of the universe. Anyway, Mr. Sagan and his team wanted to find things like art and music which represented our planet and the human experience. Out of all the music throughout history, they only picked twenty-seven pieces to go on the probe, but one of those songs, songs meant to represent everyone in the whole wide world, was a song called Dark was the Night Cold was the Ground, written and performed by Blind Willie Johnson. Mr. Sagan said his team picked it because, 'Johnson's song concerns a situation he faced many times: nightfall with no place to sleep. Since humans appeared on Earth, the shroud of night has yet to fall without touching a man or woman in the same plight.' "

Spencer shifted so that Henry would turn his face back to the stars. "That's why I love that story, even though I still always feel sad for Mr. Johnson and all the things he went through. He was treated so badly and had such a hard, short life, only to die thinking he was a forgotten man, but he left something behind that's going to those stars out there, just like their light comes to us, almost like we're talking to each other across the universe. His music has left the solar system and it's gone to tell the whole universe that he was here, that we all were here. People may have pushed him aside and stopped listening to what he had to say during his lifetime, but in the end, he'll speak for all of us. Someday, maybe people from a civilization we can't even imagine will listen to that music and know who we are because of it. And maybe, just maybe, when we reach them a thousand or a hundred thousand years from now, we'll introduce ourselves and they'll say they already know us, all because of a long-ago forgotten man whose song touched something in their hearts, a song that made them say, "We know that feeling!" Then they'll play that music and we'll recognize it as something familiar, something of ours, and we'll feel like we've got a little bit of home with us, even though we're so far away.

"So you see, Henry, you never know what you'll leave behind, what part of you might be seen or heard long after you're gone. Not to mention just who might see or hear it! And if you put good things into the world - music or art or even just kind actions - look how far they might go."

"Wow!" Henry said breathlessly, staring transfixed at the stars above him.

Wow is right, Dave thought, gazing not at the sky but at his son, and seeing him with a new wonder.

.

I'm terribly sorry for making you wait so long for an update! I could give you half a dozen excuses, but the main one is that I had a hard time figuring out what to do with this chapter. I had intended to go on more about the Asperger's question, but quickly realized that it would turn into nothing but Dave getting a boring lecture from the shrink. So after I tossed that idea I had no idea of how to approach the thing. I hope you liked what I finally came up with.

However, despite the obstacles, I'm really going to try harder to pick up the pace on this story. I would like to have it done by at least the end of the year. And if this story turns into a Spencer Reid Appreciation Day and you don't like it, you're just going to have to accept it. I'm getting really ticked off at the way the character is being handled on the show. It's bad enough as a Reid fan, but the constant tragedy (and nothing else!) is turning the character one-dimensional, and speaking even as a simple viewer, that's getting old. It's as if heartbreak and disaster are all there is to him now; when he's there, either something horrific is happening to him, or he's invisible. The rest of the time he's not there at all. So yeah, good things are going to happen for him in this story from here on in.

In any case, thank you everyone for reading and reviewing!