#Dibs x self insert | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

godsiero · 5 months ago

Text

promises

spencer reid x oc (that you can pretend is bau!fem!reader)

warnings: general cm details, not canon compliant at all (but is written with post-season 14 reid in mind, like, all of his trauma has happened (and also everybody who has worked at the bau, has worked at the bau, and hotch and morgan are back ur welcome)), not a warning but slowest slow burn ever

wc 5073

this is my spencer reid fanfiction debut, please be nice. it is also a self-insert because this is what i daydream about when real life sucks however comma i hate y/n and/or saying my own name when it says y/n so i come up with a fake name, in this case that is "claudia jessup," and you can replace her name with yours for your reading pleasure idc.

chapter 1 of ??? i actually really enjoyed just spewing my stream of consciousness, so sorry if the ramblings seem unnecessary, but they're there for DETAIL!! i have sooooo many ideas for this, so i sure hope i stick with it.

plz provide feedback i love attention (any title rec would be appreciated)

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“Is Hotch talking to the new agent?” JJ had just got in and asked Emily, who was staring intently into Hotch’s closed blinds.

She turned to face JJ, “Has to be. They’ve been in there since before I arrived.”

“Any idea who they could be?” Derek entered the conversation after wrapping up his phone call.

“No clue, but if they’ve been in there for over an hour and a half, there’s no telling how vital they could be. Hotch rarely spends that much time with one candidate if they don’t mean something.”

“Could also mean they didn’t get the position and have been begging him to reconsider,” Derek chuckled, knowing that’s absolutely a possibility, after all of the candidates they’ve seen since Kate left.

“Funny, but they’d probably be shouting, by now,” JJ countered.

“No shouting detected. In fact, I’ve heard some laughter,” Rossi emerged from his office, wanting to know what everybody was gossiping about, drama queen that he is.

“Really? Wow, if they can manage a lighthearted conversation with Hotch, they’ve gotta be a keeper,” said JJ.

“Keeper they must be, look,” Rossi lifted his chin in the direction of Hotch’s office, where he was opening the door for the new agent to come out.

They all turned to watch as Hotch shook her hand, thanking her for her time, and welcoming her to the team before noticing the audience that had accumulated.

Garcia had caught the very end of this congregation and was the first to congratulate her from afar, “Oh! Is she the new team member, please tell me this is the new team member, I am dying to end this manhunt for a new best friend to go to O’Keefe’s with, and if she’s into Doctor Who and aliens and unicorns, I call dibs on bestest friend number one.”

Hotch had come down the stairs to formally introduce the team to their newest addition, “Everyone, I would like you to meet Dr. Claudia Jessup, who just finished her time at the academy and was instantly recommended by the director to join the BAU. Welcome to the team.”

Emily beamed at her, shaking her hand, “Let me be the first to say congratulations on such a high honor and praise, I’m Emily Prentiss.

JJ was next, “We’re happy to have you here, I’m JJ.”

Penelope was too eager to wait any longer, “Welcome to the BAU, we will be your friends, your family, and your confidants. I would also like to note that the estrogen finally adds up to the testosterone on this team, which is filling me with an enormous amount of serotonin and dopamine that I don’t think will ever be replicated.” She hugged Claudia, who smiled and accepted it. She knew the BAU was a prestigious, close-knit team and already felt the love radiating through the air while meeting everybody.

After being released, Rossi picked up where Penelope left off, “She’s Penelope, by the way, and she doesn’t know a thing about manners, but I do. David Rossi, pasta and wine afficionado, at your service.”

Finally, Derek took his turn to shake her hand, “Doctor, huh? Looks like pretty boy has got some competition, when he gets back. Nice to meet you, name’s Derek, but you can call me whenever you like.”

He shot a wink with his last statement, which forced Emily to chime in, “He does that to everyone, ignore him,” she rolled her eyes and playfully hit his arm while Claudia let out a breathy chuckle.

After she realized everyone was done with their introductions, she took that moment to look at all of them and thank them for welcoming her so ardently. She had an air of professionalism about her that was balanced out with a girlish charm that everybody was instantly drawn to. The entire group was enamored with how young, spritely, and energetic she seemed. Penelope especially liked her style; how it was colorful, yet suitable to be out in the field, but there was something else about her that wasn’t so obviously worn on her sleeve that Penelope couldn’t quite place at the moment.

Hotch had walked away during the meet and greet and came back to interrupt the niceties with the news of a new case, which forced everybody to make their way into the roundtable room.

Since Hotch got the call straight from the director, everybody instantly knew it was high-priority and trumped any and all other cases that could’ve potentially taken their time. Burnt bodies were turning up in random places all over Las Vegas. All of victims had been drowned prior to being burnt. There had been three bodies in the span of three weeks, but what had made it such a dire case in the directors eyes, was that it seemed there were messages being left for a new member of BAU with each new body that was discovered. The M.E. had found pieces of paper in the slit throats of each body, which had been put there after they had been burnt. Seemingly, the unsub had dumped the bodies and then did this last step. The first had said “E.P.” which had been nondescript enough to not garner any worry (besides the fact that a person was dead), but the next had said “J.J.” Yet again, not enough cause to explicitly state this was a targeted message, but it turned some heads. It was when the third body had said “A.H.” the director decided to bite the bullet and come straight to the BAU with the case.

With only that information to go on, they’d all made their way to the jet.

“Should we tell Spence, he could be in trouble,” JJ seemed worked up about that in a way nobody else particularly was.

“No. He has enough to worry about right now with his mother. If the case escalates, we’ll inform him, but everybody should avoid communicating with Reid about this, for now,” Hotch was dead set in this deduction, which nobody argued with, but JJ still seemed anxious about it.

Hotch seemed to sense it, too, because he followed up with, “I’m serious, JJ. If anybody informs Reid about this before I give the okay, I will not be happy about it.”

With that, JJ shook off her anxiety and focused back in on the case, though Claudia could still see something behind her eyes.

The journey on the jet was full of silence. There was no possible way to trace prints or any DNA linked to the unsub, so Garcia had no way of coming up with any new information for the team.

However, it was clear to everyone that this seemed religiously charged.

Genesis 6:17 I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens.

2 Peter 3:10 The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid here.

Enforcing Occam’s razor, the team concluded that there seemed to be no other explanation, especially when it came to something so particular as this unsub’s MO. Until they landed, nothing else was to be discussed.

Claudia had had her headphones in for a while. She’d looked through the file an immeasurable amount of times, trying to memorize it all as best as she could before the jet landed. She was brought out of her trance when she was tapped on the shoulder by Derek.

She looked up at him and saw his mouth move, but didn’t hear what he had said. She took out one headphone while responding with a smile and, “Hey.”

“What are you listening to?”

“Just a podcast,” she lied.

“Are those noise canceling? Because last time I checked, podcasts aren’t loud enough to drown out people talking to me.”

Claudia had picked up on Morgan’s sarcastic way of speaking to people before he even opened his mouth for the first time. She found it reassuring that not everything had to be so serious, even though it was. Two can play at this game.

“They’re not. Sometimes I just don’t feel like talking.”

“Oh! She’s feisty, I like that. Hate to break it to you, but you’re gonna have to talk to some people when you don’t want to.”

She realized he’d taken her statement the wrong way and felt the need to overexplain herself. She couldn’t determine if that was a good or bad idea in the short amount of time she needed to respond to him in, so she settled with a respectfully and equally sarcastic comeback.

“I only have to talk to people when I find it absolutely necessary. Requirement or not,” she quirked her mouth in to a sly, half-smile when Morgan opened his mouth and raised his eyebrows in shock at how quickly she slipped into the energy and nature of this conversation.

“You’re gonna fit right in,” he chuckled and put his own headphones back on his head and went to scroll on his phone.

Claudia went back to rereading the file and placed the headphone she’d taken out back into her ear. She’d never turned the music off.

______________________________________________________________

The case was nearly impossible to solve without reacting to the unsub in real time. Everyone was upset by the very real truth that they wouldn’t be able to act until another body had been found. This unsub truly left no stone unturned when covering their tracks. No paper trail, no electronic footprint, no evidence of where they were coming from or where they were going. Worst of all nobody could think of why they were targeting the BAU, besides the obvious, of course.

The one clue that the team had been given was the fact that the victim’s dental records helped uncover their identities, which gave you one single answer to the unsubs victimology.

Each victim that had been found with an agent's initials in their throat may as well have been that agent’s dopplegänger.

While this obviously helped you figure out who to protect, it did not make it any easier, seeing as the unsub wasn’t going in any obvious order.

It was Friday. The bodies had consistently turned up Saturday morning at six in the morning, but the location changed every time. There was no way of knowing where they would go next. The entire team was at a loss.

For her first case, Claudia felt a little discouraged, but she could sense that everybody else felt the same. This wasn’t normal for them, being so dumbfounded and sitting so idly.

Nobody slept that night, just waiting for the call that a body had been found somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in an alleyway, in a dumpster, quite literally anywhere.

Then, it came. Everybody hopped in the SUV’s and went straight to the scene. Everything was exactly the same here as it was with the last three. They wouldn’t know whose initials were in the throat until the M.E. report came back, which wouldn’t be for hours.

Since they were all here for this body to be examined, and knowing Claudia’s background, Hotch instructed her to come with him to oversee the body pre and post examination. Having an agent with a BS in forensic science and extensive (albeit, sometimes, unapproved) time in the field with the CSI in Philadelphia, was new, useful, and vital and he would like her to be at most if not all of these in the future.

Taking the lead, she asked, “What were the initials found in this body?”

The M.E. pulled out the evidence bag and handed it over. What Claudia saw made no sense to her.

“E.G.? None of our agent’s initials are E.G., does this mean anything to you?” she handed the bag to Hotch and saw how the realization hit him like a truck.

“Greenaway,” he handed the bag back to the examiner, “Elle Greenaway. She was an agent back in 2005. If this unsub is sending a message including past agents, our job just got a lot harder.”

After that discovery, it felt like everything picked up for a few days. There was a media junket, led by Hotch, informing people if they looked like anybody on the screen to be hyper-vigilant, including images of past agents that had since left the team. It felt surreal to warn people that looked like the team to be aware of their surroundings because it was such a subjective judgment to make, but it was the best bet they had of keeping people safe.

Taking it to the news, inevitably, meant Reid found out about it and blew up everybody’s phone. Nobody had answered him, too afraid to unless Hotch did it first.

When he finally gave in and called Hotch, he answered instantly and stepped away from the group.

“Before you say anything, you were on requested leave, in which I am not permitted nor required to inform you of a case,” Hotch began.

“You are absolutely permitted to inform me of a case, if you see fit, which you should’ve, considering this is taking place in the same town where my mother lives and I am visiting,” Reid countered. He was fuming, Hotch could practically feel his phone lighting on fire.

“Reid, it was my call for nobody to contact you, unless the case picked up, which it hasn’t-” he was cut off by Reid.

“What do you mean it hasn’t? If it hasn’t advanced, why are you still here, and why are you holding press conferences about it? Is my mother at risk? Am I at risk?”

“Reid, if your mother was at risk, you would’ve been notified immediately, you know that.”

“Do I? Since you’re not permitted or required to tell me while on requested leave, how do I know when and what you will tell me, if at all?”

“You’re being irrational and you need to calm down.”

“I’ll calm down by the time I get there.”

“Reid, no,” but before he could finish what he was going to say, Reid had hung up the phone. Hotch walked back into the room where the team had been set up for the past week.

“Reid is on his way.”

“Is he okay?” JJ asked.

“He’s upset. Not with any of you. If he shows any hostility, don’t take it personally, it’s all meant for me. I’ll deal with him later.”

Claudia had done copious amounts of research on the team before she officially considered joining the BAU. She’d known for a long time she wanted to pursue something like this, but was never certain how big she wanted to go. Once she got her PhD in forensic psychology, she had made up her mind that the FBI was where she needed to be and set to work on figuring out what department to shoot for. After stumbling upon the BAU and reading all she possibly could about the current team, she knew this was the answer to her lifelong question of where she was going to end up. She read any article she could find about any cases they had solved. She read up on Prentiss’ time at INTERPOL, Garcia’s history as a hacker, Morgan’s time in the military with the bomb diffusion unit, all of Rossi’s books, all of Hotch’s closed cases he’d won in court, JJ’s government reviews from the Pentagon, and all of Reid’s clinical essays ranging from god-knows-what to god-knows-what. She’d taken a particular interest in Dr. Spencer Reid. She didn’t know what she had seen in all of his essays, all of his reports that were accessible (via a database Claudia would never admit to having access to, thanks Roy), all of the TedTalks and seminars he’d given that she’d watched, but there was something about him that begged her to pick his brain as soon as she possibly could, doctor to doctor.

With that, she worked her ass off to be the top performer in her time at the academy and, luckily, her academic credentials preceded her when she met with the director by special request. She needed to be a part of this team. She needed to know all of them on a personal level. Knowing they were profilers, she knew they would see right through her with a glance, so leading up to her time at the academy, she learned to mask her sincerity in a way she’d never been able to. She was used to disguising her real personality for the sake of the people she was around, but she wasn’t used to straight up hiding her genuine emotions from her peers, let alone profilers. She assumed she was doing a good job, considering nobody had given her sideways glances or confused looks, and she was especially proud of the lie she got past Morgan. She wasn’t particularly proud that she was lying to them about how much she knew or what she was really like, but she knew she would let them know, one day. First, she needed them to like her, then she would let them in, once she could trust they wouldn’t judge her.

She was more than disappointed to see that Spencer was not in the bullpen when Hotch introduced her to everyone, but she knew she’d meet him eventually. Unfortunately, the circumstances in which they were meeting under were not what she had been expecting, she was excited to meet him regardless.

She was, truthfully, disgusted with what little restraint she felt inside of her when she first saw him storming through the door. She was riddled with excitement that she hoped nobody caught onto. She calmed herself down because she knew he wouldn’t even glance in her direction, much less introduce himself, right now. She just pretended like she had always been on the team, like they’d met a million times before, like she was just seeing her friend who’s been gone for a few weeks.

Before Spencer even made it into the meeting room, Hotch stopped him in his tracks.

“You need to take a breath before you go in there and take your anger at me out on somebody else.”

“Hotch, I am calm. You know that isn’t how I behave,” he pushed past Hotch and into the room where only you and Morgan were, “Brief me.”

Morgan hesitated because of Spencer’s hostile behavior, but Claudia jumped right into briefing him on the entire case thus far with that same confidence and ease she showed back in the bullpen, leaving Morgan with his eyebrows raised at how naturally and casually she fit right into the missing piece of the BAU’s puzzle. Hotch just crossed his arms because he knew this is exactly what was going to happen once everybody got to see her in action the same way he had in the academy and in his office that morning.

Once she had finished getting Spencer up to speed, he nodded his head and said, “Okay. We need to head back to the coroner’s office, I think I know of something we might’ve missed.”

Instead of taking this as an insult, Claudia took it as an ignorance of her education, since he didn’t know who she was. In reality, he did know about her background, but he also knew if anybody had sent the handwriting to be analyzed, she would’ve said that in her brief.

Not missing a beat, she started heading out of the building and to the SUV, following closely behind Spencer, who was handing his theory over to her, and she was still pretending like they had done this for years. Silently thinking to herself she should’ve been an actor.

As they got into the SUV, with Claudia behind the wheel, Spencer began to ramble, “I think we could find something based on the handwriting. We’ll need to take the evidence and make an analysis. It seems this person is comfortable here in Vegas, so they either have to be a local or somebody who moved here a long time ago. Judging by how random the places they’ve been dumping the bodies are and how much foot traffic those locations get both during the day and at night, this person has to have a keen awareness of when, if ever, these locations are barren and lacking people. Point is, this person could’ve attended school or certainly worked in the city, which would mean there could be handwriting samples anywhere in the city, if we know where to look, which we do, thanks to Garcia.” During his last sentence, he had taken out his phone and called Garcia.

“Garcia, I’m heading back to the coroner’s office with Claudia. I think we may be able to run a handwriting analysis that I’ll need you to run through the entire city of Las Vegas as far back as you possibly can.”

Hearing him say her name and know who she was was a shock she certainly wasn’t expecting. Had somebody told him about her already? That wasn’t farfetched at all. Did he know anything else about her? If he did, he didn’t show it, hell, she didn’t even know he had known who she was. Maybe she wasn’t as good at this as she thought. Granted the game he was possibly playing with her was the same game she was definitely playing with everybody else. She pretended it was completely normal that he knew her name without introducing herself.

“I know it’s a high ask, but you can do it. I’ll send it over the second I get it,” he hung up the phone and continued to ramble, “If that ends up being a dead end, we may just have to follow a paper trail, which won’t be impossible, but I’d have to do it alone while everybody else waits around for me, but I guess that’s all that’s been happening anyway, considering this unsub is not making our jobs any easier, but I suppose that’s part of whatever this insane plan is that they’ve got going on. Has anybody thought about going to the churches? That would also be a dead end, but it’s something we could try. We can’t even come up with a profile to give to these people so it would seem unfair and useless to tell every person in the city to watch their back.”

She sat there in silence, not wanting to interrupt in case he started again. When she said nothing, he looked over at her, confused.

“You didn’t interrupt me. Or tell me to stop.”

Trying to control herself, without looking over at him, she said “Why would I do that?”

“That’s the general reaction people have when I don’t stop talking,” he seemed shy and bashful, now that he was explaining this to her.

“Well, I don’t particularly enjoy when people interrupt me, so I’m not too keen on doing it to others.”

He continued to look at her. Trying to figure out where she was coming from. He noticed she hadn’t reacted when he knew her name, despite having not formally introduced each other, which he found intriguing, to say the least. Truthfully, Morgan had texted him the second after she was introduced to the team, teasing Spencer, saying he had some young, brainiac competition now. Spencer ignored that and had Garcia send over her file. He may or may not have done some of his own research as well. He’d found her dissertation, her four theses, and her handwritten files she made for cases she’d participated on during her time as a CSI agent (thank you, Garcia), and he was certainly very close to admitting that Morgan might have been correct. He had read everything he could possibly find about her right after Morgan told him who she was. He had only meant to read her dissertation, but then he knew she must’ve had a thesis, and upon looking for one, he had stumbled upon four. Each one was even better than the last, but none so eloquent and intuitive as her dissertation. “The effectiveness of integrating forensic psychology to enhance criminal therapy rehabilitation success rates.” He had already committed it to memory and had a laundry list of questions to ask her about it, as well as her theses, which, if you looked close enough, foreshadowed her dissertation beautifully, like they were all apart of a book series, as if she had been planning them from the beginning of her academic career, like she hadn’t needed the degrees, and she just got them for the sole purpose of knowing that getting them would get her ideas published in a dignified way.

He chuckled at the thought, which prompted her to ask, “What? Is that funny?”

He realized he had never responded to her initial statement, so he responded now, “No, no, not funny at all. Respectable, actually. No, I was just thinking that we haven’t formally met. I’m Dr. Spencer Reid.”

It was her turn to chuckle, “Thank you for the formality, but I already knew that, and it seems you already know who I am as well, but…Dr. Claudia Jessup.” This time, she did glance over at him and gave a tight-lipped smile.

He smiled and looked down at his hands that he was fidgeting with, “You would be right. Morgan told me about you the morning you were added to the team…and I…might’ve asked Garcia for your file.”

“Oh, really? Got a head start on me, then,” she lied to her teammate for the second time since joining the team, and it didn’t feel any better this time.

There was a long, comfortable silence after she spoke. Neither of them knew what to say, but both of them desperately wanted to ask the other about the papers they’d written, the research they’d done to write those papers, how they came up with the ideas for those papers, what led them to choose those degrees that required them to write those papers, obsessively wanting to ask every single question they had under the sun about their academic influence and passion, but just as they both got the courage to finally ask a single question they were thinking of, they’d arrived back at the hospital.

_____________________________________________________________

The handwriting analysis turned out to be a dead end, as each note had a different type of handwriting that seemed intentional. Garcia found no trace of the handwriting used in any of the fonts in any Las Vegas directory and Spencer found nothing when it came to a paper trail, even considering every style. Fast as he was, it took him a whole two weeks to get through everything that was sent to him, and in that time one more body had been found after E.G. This one had said K.C. Kate Callahan. The agent who had just left the team. A week after that no body had been discovered. SWAT, CSI, bloodhounds, and local police searched everywhere, but found no trace of any victims matching this unsubs MO on Saturday or the week following. Just like that, the case went cold, and they headed home. Not reassured in the slightest. The fact that two bodies showed up while the team was there and no unsub was found was not going to bode well with the director, but there was nothing that could’ve been done.

Spencer said goodbye to his mom and got on the plane home with everybody. It was secretly an opportunity to pick a certain doctor’s brain, but he’d never let anybody know that was the real reason he didn’t stay a little longer. His requested leave was over anyway.

Everyone had settled in on the jet except for Claudia. Hotch stopped her on her way to the couch.

“Hey, have a seat.”

Having got to know Hotch a little before all of this started, she felt truly comfortable speaking with him. No anxiety, no fear of lying to him, she felt like for the first time in three and a half weeks she could just be herself.

“Oh no, do you want me to hand in my resignation letter now?” she joked, earning a small breath out of Hotch, acknowledging that he did find that funny.

“No. I want to talk to you about your performance your first time out in the field.”

The aforementioned nervousness was back, and not hidden at all.

“You don’t need to be worried. You did a great job. I need you to know that wasn’t how our cases usually go. There’s never so much waiting around, and we’re normally led in a certain direction rather than stuck at a standstill for so long. Cases don’t usually go cold for us. I don’t want you to think it’ll be like this every time.”

She nodded her head, knowing already that that was not how their cases went (she’d read every case file this team had ever submitted to the database, again, thanks Roy), “Don’t worry, I know. The director wouldn’t have directly sent the team there if he had known it was so…hopeless. Forgive my pessimism, but there’s not another word I could think of.”

“You’re right. Some cases end poorly, but at least they end. We may or may not have to come back to this later on. I know that you can accept that this might stay open for a while and it might never be solved. I just wanted to reassure you that most of our other cases won’t be like this.”

“Thank you. Not to say I look forward to it, but…”

“I understand. Now go get some rest, you’ve earned it.”

Claudia got up and continued walking toward the couch, putting her headphones in and starting her music before she even sat down. As she got up, Spencer saw that Hotch was finished speaking to her, and got up from his own spot to follow her to the couch, but Hotch had stopped him in his pursuit.

“Reid.”

He halted his forward motion and Hotch gestured for him to sit down.

“I’m not mad at you and I would like to apologize for not telling you sooner. The case seemed like it could’ve been solved sooner and without your input. My intention was to not bother you while you were spending time with your mother, since I know this time is especially important for you to spend with her.”

Spencer wasn’t shocked that Hotch was apologizing, persay, but he was expecting to be given a stern talking-to. His eyebrows rose at the admission, but he thanked Hotch for the apology, anyway. He would know a thing or two about loss. Spencer knew that.

Hotch let him go and he set back to his initial mission: speaking to Claudia.

Had he seen that she had headphones in, he would’ve left her alone, but they were so discreet that he couldn’t tell she had any in underneath her hair. He’d never admit this, but he did, in fact, want to tuck it behind her ears. For no reason besides the ability to know if she had headphones in or not. Obviously.

She’d pulled out a book in the time it took Hotch to speak to him, but he sat down next to her anyway. She noticed this and looked up from the book and took out one headphone, not stopping the music the same way she’d done with Derek.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were listening to something,” he’d started to get up.

“No, it’s fine. Do you need something?” this time, she did pause what she was listening to.

“Not exactly…” he had no idea how to go about telling her she’d written the most glorious dissertation he’d ever seen and needed to know everything about it starting with how she thought of it and ending with her research.

Meanwhile, Claudia had been thinking, relatively, the same thing. She’d had no intention of asking Spencer about his writings on the way home, but since he approached her, now seemed like the perfect time. Enough time had passed that it would seem reasonable for her to have done research on the team now that she’d been on it for three weeks. It wouldn’t seem weird that she had read his journals, now.

At the exact same time, they both said:

“I want to talk to you about your dissertation.”

The two just looked at each other, shocked at what had just happened. Both had grins slowly growing on their faces before they both just started laughing.

With that, they both knew they were going to like “the other doctor.”

chapter two

#Spencer Reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x self insert #spencer reid x oc #doctor spencer reid #dr spencer reid #spencer reid criminal minds #bau team #bau family #incorrect criminal minds #criminal minds #slow burn #writing #creative writing

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