Title: Checkmate
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: this is an AU of Memorium, familiarity with that episode is suggested
Warnings: themes of mental illness and kidnapping, nothing explicit
Pairings/Characters: Spencer Reid - age 4, Diana Reid, William Reid
Word Count: 3,670

Summary: "You can't talk to strangers," Mom tells him. Her knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel so hard. "I've told you before. You can't do that."

She never said that, actually. Spencer talks to strangers all the time. Adults are easier to talk to than other children because they usually understand what he's talking about. Adults think he's bright and precocious. Other kids just think he's weird.

Notes: I was going to write a five times fic, with five things that didn't happen to Reid. Seeing as I wrote this first thing that didn't happen to Reid back in May and haven't gotten around to writing the other four yet, I'm going to go ahead and post it now and hope that the new season is inspiring. The book that Reid's reading is by Isaac Asimov. So many thank yous to boysinperil for listening to me ramble on about this and cooing over baby!Reid with me and betaing and getting me hooked on this show in the first place.

"In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate."

—Isaac Asimov

September, 1986

"Hey, you're pretty good."

The man smiles as Spencer looks up. "Do you play chess a lot?" he asks.

Spencer nods. "My Dad taught me."

"He must be pretty good too."

The man is still smiling so Spencer just smiles back, even though that's not true. Dad is awful at chess. He'd been trying to teach Spencer how to play checkers last summer, but checkers is an incredibly boring game and all the chess pieces had been right there—they all came in the same box—so he'd wound up teaching Spencer how to play chess instead. It isn't that Dad doesn't know how to play chess, he does, it's just that he always tries to let Spencer win. When Spencer moves his queen to b3 Dad follows with his bishop, but the only reason Spencer moved the queen to begin with was because he knew Dad would go after it, and the bishop was the only thing standing between his rook and Dad's king.

It's too easy. Spencer can mess up and still win. He can sacrifice all his pawns and somehow, Dad will still find a way to lose. Spencer can sacrifice his queen and still, Dad will lose. It doesn't make sense.

"Mind if I play?" the man asks.

"Sure," Spencer says brightly. He's been playing against himself at the park next to school for the past hour while he waits for his mom to finish teaching and come pick him up. Playing against other people is more interesting and less likely to end in a draw. "My name's Spencer." He holds out his hand across the board as the man sits down on the bench across from him and the man shakes it. The man's hand is a bit sweaty and Spencer tries to wipe his hand off on his pants when the man isn't looking.

"I'm Gary. Do you want white or black?"

Spencer tilts his head at the board for a moment before choosing, "Black."

"Really?" Gary asks. "You know white gets to go first, right?"

"Black's more challenging," Spencer explains. "Having the first move can be an advantage, but if you make the right second move then it doesn't matter at the end."

Spencer rests his elbows on the table as he waits for Gary to make his first move, but Gary just stares at him, forehead crinkled. "It's true," Spencer insists. People stare at him all the time and act like he doesn't know what he's talking about, because he's little, but he does know.

"You're very smart, aren't you," Gary says. It isn't really a question.

Spencer shrugs. He reaches over and presses his fingertip to the top of the black king's crown, spinning the piece a bit on its base, careful to keep it within its designated square.

Gary finally moves a pawn, hits the clock, and asks, "Where's your mom? Doesn't she usually pick you up from school?"

"She's late." Spencer rests his chin on his palm as he thinks about all the possible moves that Gary might make next—still too many possibilities, too many variables this early in the game—before moving one of his pawns forward.

"She's a professor, right?" Gary moves his knight forward.

Spencer nods, nudging one of his pawns forward again. "She teaches poetry."

"Hmm." Another pawn.

Spencer pulls himself up onto his knees so he can look down at the board better, biting his tongue a bit as he thinks. The knight, he decides, moving it to f6 and reaching over to slam his fist down on the clock.

"So what do you like besides chess?"

Spencer looks up from the board, startled by the question. "What?"

"You like other things, right? Do you like sports?"

"I play t-ball," Spencer says. He doesn't like t-ball because he isn't any good at it but he plays anyway because Dad is the coach and Dad acts like he's really proud of him whenever he manages to actually hit the ball or run to the base without getting tagged out. "And I like reading."

Gary looks interested. "What kind of books do you read?"

Spencer grins. "All kinds! My Mom has lots of poetry books, for her classes and stuff, and she reads them to me. But my Dad got me Norby the Robot and I read that yesterday."

Gary's smiling at him, listening to him ramble on and on about the book, when Mom shows up, calling his name from over where the cars are parked.

Spencer waves back at her, then tells Gary, "I have to go home."

"Too bad we can't finish our game."

Spencer frowns down at the board. He does want to finish playing and Mom might let him. She likes it when he wins. "Hang on," he says, getting to his feet on the bench and then jumping down to the ground. "I'll be right back! I'll know if you move any pieces," he warns.

"I won't move anything," Gary promises.

Mom doesn't want to stay. She keeps looking at her watch as Spencer tugs at her hand, insisting, "It's time to go home. We're already late."

"But I'm in the middle of game," Spencer whines. "Come see."

He pulls her along behind him back to the table where Gary is still waiting. Mom rests her hands on Spencer's shoulders, pulling him back towards her body. "Who are you?" she asks.

Gary holds out a hand to her as he introduces himself. "Gary Michaels. Your son's very good at chess."

Mom's eyes dart down to the chess board, then back to Gary. "You're only three moves in. How would you know whether he's good at it or not based on that?"

"There aren't many five-year-olds who know how to play."

"Four," Spencer corrects, holding up four fingers. They both look down at him. "I'm four."

"Four-year-olds," says Gary. "Even more impressive!"

Spencer smiles back at him.

Mom grabs his hand, starting to pull him away. "We can't stay. It's time to go home, Spencer."

"But we're not finished playing."

"We have to go." She tightens her grip on his hand, walking fast enough that Spencer has to jog to keep up. He twists around to wave goodbye to Gary and then Mom is buckling him into his car seat and slamming the doors. Another car honks at her as she backs out of the parking spot but she doesn't slow down until they're out of the lot and jerking to a stop at the light.

"You can't talk to strangers," Mom tells him. Her knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel so hard. "I've told you before. You can't do that."

She never said that, actually. Spencer talks to strangers all the time. Adults are easier to talk to than other children because they usually understand what he's talking about. Adults think he's bright and precocious. Other kids just think he's weird.

"We were just playing chess."

"You can't ever do that again!" She turns to him, practically yelling in the small car.

"Sorry!" Spencer yells back.

"Promise you won't," she demands. Her mouth is drawn into a tight line and she's not blinking as she stares at him, which makes Spencer feel like he can't blink either.

He sniffs and says, "Promise."

Mom doesn't look away until the car behind them honks because the light is green now. Spencer spends the rest of the ride home looking out the window and escapes to his room as soon as they're inside. He still has three chapters of Norby the Robot left to read, and then there's another book in the series.

He's hoping that if he doesn't bring up the park then Mom won't mention it either, and then Dad won't get mad at him for talking to strangers too. Getting yelled at once is enough for one day. But then it's time for dinner—spaghetti, one of the few things Mom cooks really well and therefore one of Spencer's favorites—and Dad asks what he did after school.

Spencer glances at Mom before he answers, but she's not looking at him. "I went to the park." He knows he's leaving out the part about playing chess and that Dad's going to ask, because that's what he usually does when he goes to the park.

"Did you beat anybody at chess?" Dad smiles.

Spencer looks at Mom again before shaking his head no.

"Finally find someone who could beat you?"

"No."

"We need to move," Mom says.

Spencer and Dad both turn to look at her, but she's still not looking at either of them. "What?" Dad asks.

"We need to move," she repeats. "This is a bad neighborhood. And Spencer needs a better school."

Dad sighs and his fork clinks loudly against his plate as he sets it down. "The neighborhood's fine."

"It's not safe anymore."

"Diana—"

"We need to find a better school district anyway," she continues. "These teachers are all incompetent. They want to keep him in kindergarten instead of moving him up a grade. He doesn't need kindergarten." She turns and smiles at Spencer as she says this. "Do you?"

No, Spencer thinks, he really doesn't need kindergarten. He knows how to read and write and tell time and spends most of class doing different assignments anyway. The teacher lets him read a lot and gives him a math book to work through, but she usually doesn't sit and go over things with him. Which is okay, because he never needs her to. The worksheets she gives him are easy.

Spencer's not sure if he's supposed to answer Mom's question or not though. It might be one of those rhetorical ones that people ask when they either already know the answer or just want to ask for the sake of asking. Spencer doesn't understand why people ask questions they don't want answered.

Dad saves him from trying to determine what kind of question it is by asking Mom, "What grade do you want them to put him in?"

"He's reading at a fourth grade level already."

"Fourth?" Dad asks. "You can't be serious."

"Why not?"

"He's four!"

"His reading and comprehension levels—"

Spencer tunes her out as he considers sliding off his chair and under the table. He wonders if they would notice that he left without asking to be excused. He plots his path along the floor, crawling out from under the table and then slinking along the wall until he got to the corner. From there, no one would be able to see him run up the stairs.

"He can't go to school with ten-year-olds," Dad argues.

Mom crosses her arms over her chest, pushing her chair away from the table. "Well, he's not learning anything listening to that woman talk about the alphabet all day."

"It's not just facts and figures he needs to learn in school. He's got to learn how to get along with other kids too."

Mom shakes her head. "They're trying to hold him back."

"No one's—"

"Can I be excused?" Spencer asks. They both turn to look at him. He's pretty sure they forgot he was there because Dad's mouth is gaping a little bit, like he's surprised.

"You didn't eat very much." Mom frowns.

Spencer pushes his plate away. "I'm not hungry. Can I go?"

It looks like Mom is going to say no and tell him to eat more, but Dad says, "Yeah. Just… go to your room."

Spencer slides off his chair and hurries around the corner before either of them can change their minds. As he retreats up the stairs, he can hear Mom saying, "Don't just dismiss him like that. He barely ate anything."

"Well, maybe that's because…"

He shuts the door of his room, muffling their voices so that he can't actually make out what they're saying anymore.

The next day is Saturday, but Dad has to work anyway. "It's a big case," he says when he leaves after breakfast.

Mom's still in bed because she likes to sleep in on days when she doesn't have classes to teach. Spencer crawls in next to her, burrowing under her arm and resting his head against her chest. She tilts her head down against his. "Did your Dad leave yet?"

Spencer nods.

Mom hums in response and they both doze for another half hour, then she's waking him back up again. "Come on. We've got things to do today."

"What things?" Spencer asks, sitting cross-legged on the bed to watch as she moves around the room, gathering clothes and brushing her hair. They hardly ever do anything on Saturdays. Or Sundays. Mom likes relaxing on the weekend and never wants to go anywhere.

She meets his eye in the mirror on her dresser and grins. "It's a surprise. Go get dressed."

By the time they're both dressed and ready to go, it's nearly time for lunch. "Where are we going?" Spencer asks again, once they're in the car.

"House hunting."

He frowns up at her, confused. "What's that?"

"We're looking for a new house," Mom explains. "So we can move."

"Oh. I thought Dad didn't want to move."

"He'll understand. That neighborhood isn't safe. I don't like you running around and playing and talking to strangers there."

"I said I wouldn't," Spencer argues, because he promised not to talk to strangers anymore and she hasn't even given him a chance to keep his promise before saying that he hasn't.

Mom waves him off. "You might though. Moving is better for all of us. We'll find something closer to work and with a better school district."

"I won't," Spencer insists, but Mom has already moved on to thinking about the new house, so it's useless to try and talk to her about the strangers now.

House hunting, it turns out, is a lot of fun. They drive all over town until Mom sees a subdivision she likes and then there's always a lady—"the realtor," she'd explained at the first house—wearing a suit and heels that shows them a model house. Mom doesn't care if he wanders off to explore the house while she talks to the realtor about things like money and schools and neighbors and appliances.

One of the houses has a playhouse in the backyard that looks like a log cabin. "Can we get one at the new house?" Spencer asks when Mom comes to find him.

She kneels down, ducking her head inside the window to look around inside. "Maybe," she says. She smiles when he pouts at that answer. "For your birthday," she adds.

"Really?" His birthday is only twenty-seven days away. Then he'll be five and the same age as the other kids in his class at school.

Mom nods. "Ready to go?" she asks.

He crawls out of the playhouse and follows her back to the car. "Are we going to move to any of these houses?"

"No, we haven't found the right one yet."

"How do you when it's the right one?"

"You just know." She taps the side of her head with a finger. "None of these have been quite right."

Spencer thinks that all the houses they've looked at have been the same. They've all had three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a den and a two car garage and ugly wallpaper. "Is it the wallpaper?" he asks. Mom hates wallpaper, especially the kind that just looks like paint splatters. "The last one only had one room with wallpaper."

She frowns as she stares out the windshield. "It had pink sinks, though."

By the end of the day, house hunting is no longer fun. It's exhausting. Even eating lunch at McDonalds and getting a happy meal with a racecar is not enough to distract Spencer from the fact that's it's been a long day. He sits at the kitchen table of another house, rolling the racecar back and forth, back and forth, while Mom talks to the realtor. The faster he pulls it back, the faster it shoots forward and the faster he has to react to catch it before it shoots off the table. He doesn't catch it in time and it flies off the edge and bangs into the cabinet, making Mom and the realtor look over at him.

"Sorry," Spencer says, scrambling off the chair to retrieve his toy.

It's nearly dark when they finally leave. "Are we moving to that house?" Spencer asks.

"No," Mom says.

"We have to go look at more?" he whines.

"Not today. We'll look again later."

Dad is already home when they get back, and the first thing he says is, "Where the hell have you been? It's ten o' clock."

"We went house hunting!" Spencer tells him, bouncing on his feet a bit. "And then we went to McDonalds and I got a racecar and then we went house hunting again but none of the houses were the right one." He holds his racecar up for Dad to see.

Dad stares at him for a minute, then looks back up at Mom. "House hunting?"

"You have no idea how hard it is to find a decent house in this city," she says as she sets her bag down.

"They all had bad wallpaper," Spencer explains.

Mom nods. "And they weren't far enough away. We need to be further away from this neighborhood to be safe."

"Spencer," Dad says. "Go to your room."

"What? But I didn't do anything," Spencer protests.

Mom's glaring now. "What are you mad about?"

"I told you we weren't moving," Dad says. "There's no reason to move."

"It's not safe here!" Mom shouts.

"Spencer, go."

Spencer turns and runs up the stairs, blinking hard against the angry tears prickling at his eyes. Behind him, he can hear Mom saying, "Don't yell at him," and Dad's response of, "Stop dragging him along when you decide to do something crazy."

He shuts his door as Mom starts screaming back.

Sunday is quiet. Dad watches football in the living room and Mom stays in bed all afternoon. Spencer climbs in next to her and hands her one of the books off her shelf. She frowns as she turns it over. "Tristan and Isolde? Didn't we read that last week?"

Spencer shrugs. He likes this one. He likes listening to Mom's voice. It's always calm when she reads to him. It's just the two of them and it's quiet except for the sound of her voice and the whisper of the pages.

Dad raises an eyebrow when he comes in later. "Couldn't you find a nicer story?"

"It is a nice story," Mom says.

"Not really."

"It's nice, it's just not happy," Spencer tells him.

Dad just shakes his head at them and goes back downstairs.

Mom pulls him in closer as she turns to the next page. "He just doesn't understand like we do. It doesn't have to have a happy ending to be a good story, does it?"

"No," Spencer shakes his head.

Spencer doesn't go to the park again until next Saturday, when he has t-ball practice. Halfway through it's his turn and he hits the ball as hard as he can and runs for the base as fast as he can and trips halfway there. His knees and palms are scraped bloody and covered in dirt.

Dad walks him over to the water fountain. Spencer hisses as the cold water hits his hands. They didn't really sting before that.

"Ouch. You scraped your knees up pretty good," Dad says as he peels the packaging away from a bandage.

Spencer kicks his legs a bit and winces. "It hurts."

"Too much to walk?"

Spencer kind of wants to say yes, but says no instead because it doesn't really. The bandages pull at his skin with every step, but it's not so bad that he can't.

"Come on, your Mom should be here in a little bit and then you can go home." Dad leaves him on the bleachers behind the dugout while he goes back to finish coaching, and Spencer sighs, nearly resting his chin in his palms before he remembers that it will hurt if he does that right now. T-ball is boring at the best of times, but just watching the other kids when he can't play is even worse.

"Baseball's not as interesting as chess, is it?"

Spencer looks up, squinting against the sun as he searches for the source of the question. The same man who played chess with him last weekend, Gary, is standing on the next row down, smiling at him.

"I'm not very good at it," Spencer says.

"You're good at chess though. It's a better game," Gary says.

Spencer smiles. "It's more intellectually stimulating."

Gary laughs and sits down next to him. "Very much so." Then he asks, "Are you waiting for your Mom again?"

Spencer nods and holds his hands out. "I fell."

Gary takes hold of one of his wrists. "Ouch! That looks painful."

"It's not that bad," Spencer says.

"And look, you scraped your knees up too," he says, touching the bandage on Spencer's knee. "Apparently baseball's a very dangerous sport."

"Only if you're me."

Gary laughs again. "We could go play chess while we wait for your Mom," he suggests.

The offer is very tempting. Spencer looks back out at the field but Dad isn't paying attention to him and watching practice is boring. Mom will probably come look for him at the chess tables anyway, since he usually goes there when they're at the park. And if he wins then she'll be happy. She always likes it when he beats people older than him.

"Just one game." Gary stands up and holds out a hand for Spencer to take. "We can come back if she doesn't come looking for you," he promises.

"Okay," Spencer says, taking his hand.