Title: Balancing Act
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Spencer Reid
Fandom: Doctor Who/Criminal Minds
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1, letter100
Prompt: 56, Balance
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the Tenth Doctor or Spencer Reid, unfortunately. Please do not sue.

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Dear Doctor,

I'm writing yet another letter to you, even though I'm sitting right here beside you and it would probably be easier for me to talk. But I don't feel like I can express myself as clearly in words sometimes as I can in writing, so I'm doing this instead.

I've never been good at expressing my feelings. I can quote passages from books; I have an eidetic memory, and I don't have any trouble memorizing pages of information to parrot back. But when it comes to my own emotions, I go blank.

Being with you is making me get better about that. You're the first person I've ever really felt I can open up with, and be completely honest about my feelings. I've always had to hide them from everybody else -- because I always felt like I had to make up for being a geek.

With you, I'm not a geek. I'm not a brain first and a person second. I'm not somebody who has a big reputation to live up to. I'm just Spencer, a guy you fell in love with and want to be with. You don't know what a relief that is.

I used to feel like I was balancing on a tightrope, trying to find a middle ground between who I actually was and who I wanted to be. I've dealt with that all my life.

It's always been a struggle for me to find that balance. When I was a kid, it was a lot harder, because I didn't feel like I really had anything to compare who I wanted to be with who I was. I didn't have a real concept of what was considered "normal."

To me, being smart and interested in a lot of different things was normal. It's not like I didn't have the usual varied interests that kids do. I even had the usual kids' dreams, like wanting to be a cowboy or a fireman or a cop. On the outside, I was normal.

On the inside, I was anything but. I knew I was a lot smarter than other kids; zooming through grade school and then high school, and going to college when most people were still struggling through their first algebra classes and hitting puberty.

That balance was never there. I was always teetering to one side, and I never really learned how to be comfortable around other people and explore who I was. I never really accepted myself; I always looked in the mirror and saw a maladjusted freak, not a real person.

Even when I joined the BAU, there was still a pretty big gulf between the person I was and the person I thought I wanted to be. Working with them for as long as I did helped me a lot. I started to find out that being me was okay, and that I didn't have to change.

The most important thing was that I learned I didn't have to hide, or pretend to be like everybody else. That I could be who I am and still be accepted.

But only to a certain point. You see, the people in the BAU never really looked at me as being a person who had a life. To them, I was a brain, somebody who was outside of their realm of experience. They accepted me, but there was always a wall between me and them.

I guess it's always going to be like that with people who don't understand me. It's not their fault; it's not like my work colleagues were trying to push me away or put up barriers. They just didn't know how to deal with somebody who was so different from them.

They were my friends and my colleagues, and I still care about them a lot. I'll always consider them my friends, but they never really got close to me. They got to within a certain distance, and then they hit a wall and stayed behind it. They didn't want to pass through that barrier.

You're so different from anybody I've ever known before. You've never looked at me like I was some kind of freak; with you, it's more than I'm an equal, at least in most ways. You don't see my intelligence as being something that sets me apart.

With you, it's like a meeting of the minds as well as the hearts. Maybe it's weird that I had to fall in love with an alien to truly be acceped, but to me, you're not an alien. You're just the man I love with all my heart. The man I'm always going to love.

Nobody on Earth would ever have been able to accept me and love me the way you do. Nobody would ever have thought I was completely normal.

Because to humans, I'm not normal and I never have been. My mind sets me apart from them, and I accepted that about myself a long time ago. I've never been able to like the fact that I'm different, but at least I don't beat myself up about it any more.

Does that mean that I've finally found the balance I've been searching for? No, not really. It just means that I've more or less resigned myself to being who I am, and that I know I can't escape from that. I am the person I was meant to be, no more, no less.

My whole life has always been a balancing act, trying to find the perfect place between being who I am and being true to myself, and trying to fit in. I don't need to do that any more. I've found where I fit in, and I've stepped off that tightrope right into your arms.

Maybe I haven't been able to express myself as clearly as I thought I could. Seems like my writing gets as mixed up as my words do sometimes. But I know you'll understand what I mean -- you always do. And I know you'll love me for who I am, even if I can't always say what I feel.

Love,

Spencer

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