A few words before you start this fic: first, I took the entirety of Criminal Minds, picked it up, and dropped it to set place in the 2020s instead of the 2000s. I emotionally couldn't handle, as someone born in 2000, writing a twenty-something year old in the early 2000s. Couldn't do it, so you now have Gen-Z Spencer Reid as your consolation prize. All of the chapters have dates, so hopefully it's not too confusing.
Second: This fic is not linear; the storyline moves back and forth between their time at the academy, the years between their remeeting, and the Criminal Minds canon. Again, dates are present for all of those parts, so hopefully it'll be easy to keep track of.
Third: there are time-skips between each chapter. The dates should help you see how the fic moves throughout time, but for reference, the canon begins in November of 2023 and ends in February of 2027. That time period covers seasons 2-5 of Criminal Minds.
Fourth: I did a lot of research to make this fic as true to both the Criminal Minds canon and the real world as possible. That being said, the writers of Criminal Minds did not do the same amount of research I did, so if something does not match the real world, I'm following CM lore, and if something doesn't match CM lore, I have decided that the real world makes more sense. Any inconsistencies made were conscious decisions, but if you feel something really doesn't make sense, please let me know in the comments and I will do my best to explain.
A final note: Maeve will not be appearing in this fic at all. I have my own issues with Maeve, not because of her status as Spencer Reid's love interest, but because she was his doctor and falling in love with him was a violation of a few ethical codes. I'm not into that personally; it's a bit of a power dynamic that the CM writers ignore but that I think is important to reference. That being said, she doesn't appear in this fic, so I will not be mentioning her at all outside of this. The same goes for Cat and the Prison Reid storylines. Not mentioning it. Does not happen in this fic. Does not happen in this universe. I make the rules, and I say that trauma is unnecessary.
I hope you enjoy!
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Ardently I Admire and Love You
FanfictionFour years ago, you made a decision that would change your life forever. And life, well, life is just a path of decisions that sometimes lead you right back to the father of your child. Except, well, he didn't know that there was a child at all. Now...
