Spencer really liked them. The way they blended so well with his skin, how every blot of ink was balanced out by the scale of his arm. Spencer and his colleague had formed a close bond ever since he had joined the BAU. One thing immediately noticeable about him was the tattoos that encased his body.

Every now and again, Reid caught himself tracing his finger along the bold lines of the tattoos before moving onto the thinner ones. It was relaxing, almost therapeutic. Just like now, as they sat together on the plane. The team had just been briefed on a new case - an unsub with a strange fascination with tattoos who was targeting men with tattoos, while giving postmortem tattoos to men without them.

Reid sat next to his tattooed colleague, lightly tracing the stories on his arm as he began sharing historical facts. "Tattoos can even date back to Egyptians, some mummies had tattoos on them. Greeks learned to tattoo from the Persians and used it to mark slaves and criminals."

The case had made Reid think more deeply about the meaning behind tattoos. People mainly got tattoos to tell a story, to explain something that words couldn't - even if they didn't realize it. As he peered down at the images he traced on his colleague's arm, he wondered what stories they told.

His teammate was always secretive about his history, never speaking a word about it. Without thinking twice about his words, Reid spoke aloud, "Why do you have tattoos? I mean, everyone has tattoos for a reason - mainly to tell a part of their history. So why do you have so many?" He continued to stare at him, awaiting his response, genuinely curious about the messages and stories behind the ink.