⊹ ࣪ ˖ Positive in Love & Wine ─ Spencer Reid.
Hiding your pregnancy is getting harder and harder, especially when you agree to go to a dinner party and Spencer has to drink every glass of your wine to keep the secret.
୨ৎ ──── fluff. 5,4k. fem!reader. drunk reid. english isn't my first language. main masterlist.
David Rossi loved hosting dinners.
Not because he particularly enjoyed cooking—though he’d spend the entire evening pretending he did, shooing away anyone who wandered too close to the stove with the indignation of a Michelin-star chef—but because dinner was one of the rare occasions when the people he cared about gathered for reasons that had nothing to do with bloodstained crime scenes or the worst humanity had to offer. Around his dining table, they weren’t profilers or agents or supervisors carrying the weight of impossible decisions. They were simply friends. They laughed a little louder, lingered a little longer over dessert, argued about books instead of behavioral patterns, and, for a few precious hours, remembered what life looked like outside the Bureau.
At least for the first twenty minutes.
After that, someone inevitably mentioned a case.
“You realize,” Morgan announced as he reached across the kitchen island and shamelessly stole a piece of warm bread straight from the basket, “this is exactly how horror movies start.”
Rossi didn’t even bother looking over his shoulder. He merely stirred the sauce with practiced ease, entirely unfazed by the theft.
“The difference,” he replied smoothly, “is that my guests survive dessert.”
Morgan laughed, surrendering with an exaggerated nod before tearing into the bread anyway.
The house was already alive with familiar voices.
Soft jazz drifted through hidden speakers, blending with the rhythmic clatter of pots and the comforting aroma of garlic, rosemary, simmering tomatoes, and freshly baked bread. Warm light spilled from antique lamps, reflecting against framed photographs and shelves lined with decades of books and souvenirs collected from places Rossi rarely spoke about. Every room carried that unmistakable feeling of having been lived in, a home that had witnessed countless celebrations, quiet conversations over late-night whiskey, and the occasional impromptu team meeting when cases refused to stay at Quantico.
Emily wandered into the kitchen, accepting a glass of wine from Rossi before immediately rolling her eyes at something Morgan said.
Garcia was already circling the living room in complete admiration, pausing every few steps to gush over a painting, a sculpture, or an antique clock.
“Oh my God, Rossi,” she gasped dramatically, “this lamp is gorgeous. It’s giving wealthy Italian novelist who solves crimes in his free time.”
“It was just a lamp until you said that.”
JJ slipped toward the patio with Henry balanced comfortably on her hip, the little boy already fascinated by the garden lights beginning to glow outside. Will followed behind carrying an impressive collection of toys that looked capable of entertaining an entire daycare, smiling patiently as Henry reached for everything except the toys he’d brought.
Hotch, unsurprisingly, had arrived exactly on time.
Not a minute early. Not a minute late.
His jacket was already neatly folded over the back of a chair, a glass of sparkling water in one hand as he quietly observed the controlled chaos with the smallest hint of amusement softening his usually unreadable expression.
And, of course, Spencer’s attention had been on you from the moment the two of you stepped through Rossi’s front door.
Before anyone could greet you, Spencer was already helping you out of your coat with the quiet attentiveness that had become second nature over the past several weeks. His hands were careful as he eased the fabric from your shoulders, lingering for just a heartbeat as if making sure you were steady before draping both your coat and his neatly over the rack by the entrance. It was such a small gesture that no one else would have noticed it.
“You okay?” he asked quietly, leaning close enough that only you could hear him beneath the lively chatter filling the room.
You offered him a reassuring smile, hoping it looked more convincing than it felt.
“Perfect.”
The word came automatically, polished by repetition until it sounded almost believable. You’d said it to your mother over the phone earlier that week. To your coworkers when they’d commented on how pale you’d been looking lately. To the cashier who had apologized after you’d abruptly abandoned a shopping cart halfway through the supermarket because someone nearby had opened a container of tuna. You were becoming remarkably good at pretending everything was normal.
Spencer, however, had never been particularly easy to fool.
His honey-colored eyes lingered on your face for another moment, quietly studying you with the same careful concentration he reserved for unsolved cases and impossible puzzles. He noticed everything: the faint shadows beneath your eyes despite the makeup you’d carefully applied that afternoon, the way your smile didn’t quite reach them, the almost invisible hesitation before you shifted your weight from one foot to the other. For a second, you watched concern flicker across his expression, followed by the unmistakable impulse to suggest going home instead. You knew him well enough to see the thought forming before he gently pushed it aside. You had insisted you wanted to come. You’d been looking forward to seeing everyone. If he asked again, you’d only reassure him again.
So instead, he simply intertwined his fingers with yours for the briefest moment and gave your hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it, silently reminding you that if you needed to leave, even five minutes after arriving, you only had to say the word.
Because the truth was…you hadn’t exactly been perfect lately.
For nearly eleven weeks, your body had seemed determined to reinvent itself overnight, transforming familiar routines into unpredictable obstacles and ordinary sensations into impossible challenges. Pregnancy wasn’t anything like the books had described. It wasn’t the glowing skin and sentimental smiles people loved talking about. At least, not yet. Right now, it was exhaustion so profound it settled into your bones no matter how much you slept. It was waking up starving only to burst into tears because the toast you’d been craving suddenly smelled unbearable. It was dizziness when you stood too quickly, headaches that appeared without warning, and emotions that shifted so rapidly they often left you laughing one moment and crying the next.
And the smells were by far the worst.
It was as though someone had turned every scent in the world up to an impossible volume.
Coffee, the rich aroma you’d once relied on every morning, now seemed so overwhelmingly bitter it made your stomach twist before you even entered the kitchen.
Garlic lingered in the air like smoke.
Perfume clung to strangers in grocery stores so intensely that you found yourself instinctively holding your breath as they walked past.
Gasoline from passing cars seeped through open windows with startling force.
Fresh paint, cleaning products, scented candles, everything had become an enemy.
Even the earthy fragrance of Spencer’s favorite loose-leaf tea, a scent that had always reminded you of rainy afternoons spent reading together on the couch, had betrayed you. One quiet Saturday morning, he’d barely begun pouring the boiling water over the tea leaves before your stomach lurched violently. You hadn’t even managed to explain what was wrong. You’d simply clamped a hand over your mouth and hurried toward the bathroom, leaving Spencer frozen in confusion beside the kettle.
When he’d found you a few minutes later, you were sitting on the cool tile floor with your knees pulled to your chest, wrapped in one of his oversized cardigans because you hadn’t had the energy to put on your own sweater after climbing out of bed. Your eyes were watery, your face pale with exhaustion, and the half-steeped tea sat forgotten in the kitchen.
He’d knelt beside you immediately, rubbing slow circles against your back until your breathing steadied.
“I think,” he’d said carefully, as though presenting a well-researched hypothesis, “we should buy different tea.”
The absurd sincerity of the suggestion had broken something inside you.
You’d laughed, the kind that left tears streaming down your face and your stomach aching until Spencer began smiling too, still entirely unsure what had been so funny.
An hour later, you’d taken the pregnancy test.
You remembered sitting together on the edge of the bathtub, your shoulders pressed together so tightly they might as well have been one person, both pretending not to stare at the little plastic stick resting on the counter. Spencer’s knee bounced nervously the entire time, though he’d deny it if anyone ever asked. When the result finally appeared, neither of you moved.
Positive.
You’d looked at him, and he’d looked at you.
For a long moment, there had simply been silence, stunned, breathless silence, as though neither of you trusted your own eyes enough to speak first.
Then Spencer had whispered, almost reverently,
“We’re having a baby.”
The memory still settled warmly inside your chest every time you thought about it.
Only the two of you knew.
No one else.
Not the team, your parents, or his mother.
No one.
It wasn’t because you weren’t excited.
God, you had never loved someone you’d never met quite so fiercely. And you had never been so afraid.
At night, when the apartment had gone quiet and Quantico seemed impossibly far away, the two of you often found yourselves lying awake long after the lights were off, talking in hushed voices about a future that suddenly felt both unimaginably distant and frighteningly close. Spencer wondered aloud whether babies recognized music before they were born and whether reading aloud during pregnancy had any measurable effect on language development. You debated names neither of you was ready to admit you genuinely liked. You imagined tiny knitted sweaters, impossibly small socks, sleepy mornings, first birthdays, scraped knees, school concerts, and the possibility—one that made you laugh every single time—that Spencer might accidentally teach your future toddler quantum mechanics before the alphabet.
Other nights, words simply weren’t necessary.
You would lie tangled together beneath the blankets, your head resting against his shoulder while he absentmindedly traced slow circles over your arm. Eventually, almost without thinking, his hand would drift lower, settling with extraordinary care against your abdomen. There was hardly anything to feel yet. At eleven weeks, your stomach remained almost perfectly flat, your dresses fitting exactly as they always had. If someone didn’t know, they would never have guessed. But Spencer touched you as though the slightest movement might disturb the tiny life growing there, his palm resting so gently against you that it sometimes made your chest ache. He would smile into the darkness with an expression so impossibly soft it stole your breath every single time, as though he could already sense the little heartbeat hidden beneath his fingertips. Sometimes he whispered things you weren’t sure he realized he was saying: little observations about fetal development he’d memorized from medical journals, promises about museums he’d one day visit with your child, absentminded thoughts about buying children’s editions of classic literature. Other times, he simply stayed there, smiling quietly, overwhelmed by the astonishing reality that someone already existed. Someone who belonged entirely to the two of you.
Every ultrasound photograph had become a treasure.
The first one lived inside an ivory envelope that had already begun to soften at the edges because neither of you could stop taking it out to look at it. Realistically, there wasn’t very much to see. To anyone else, it was little more than a grainy black-and-white blur surrounded by indecipherable shadows and medical measurements. Yet the two of you had spent embarrassing amounts of time staring at it as though it were the most extraordinary piece of art ever created. Spencer, naturally, had analyzed it with the same enthusiasm he brought to everything else.
Of course, once the initial excitement had settled, he had immediately begun worrying about where to keep the photographs.
Not because he thought someone was going to steal them.
Because he wanted them safe.
You still remembered finding him standing in front of his bookshelf one afternoon, head tilted thoughtfully as though he were solving one of the Bureau’s most complicated cases. He had scanned hundreds of titles before finally pulling out one of the thickest mathematics textbooks you had ever seen.
“They’re going inside my copy of Differential Geometry,” he’d declared with complete confidence while carefully sliding the envelope between two chapters.
You had stared at him, blinking in complete confusion.
“…Why that one?”
Without so much as lifting his eyes from the pages, he’d answered with absolute certainty.
“Statistically speaking, no one voluntarily opens my copy of Differential Geometry.”
You had laughed so hard your stomach hurt.
Weeks later, the ultrasound photographs remained exactly where he’d hidden them, tucked safely between chapters discussing curved manifolds and tensor fields, untouched by anyone except the two of you. Every now and then, usually late at night, Spencer would quietly retrieve the envelope before climbing into bed beside you, and together you’d study the tiny image all over again, smiling as though seeing it for the very first time.
You weren’t keeping the pregnancy a secret because you were ashamed.
If anything, the secret had become almost impossible to contain.
You loved this baby already with a depth that surprised you daily. Sometimes you caught yourself resting your hand absentmindedly against your stomach while reading on the couch or waiting in line for coffee you could no longer stomach. Sometimes Spencer would catch your eye from across the apartment, and without either of you saying a single word, you’d both smile, remembering the extraordinary little secret that existed only between you. It felt like carrying a universe inside your chest, one that threatened to spill into every conversation, every laugh, every quiet glance exchanged across a room.
But eleven weeks still felt fragile.
Delicate.
As though happiness itself had become something you were afraid to hold too tightly.
You knew the statistics.
So did Spencer...perhaps better than anyone.
The first trimester carried uncertainties neither of you could ignore, no matter how desperately you wanted to celebrate. So you had made a quiet promise together. Just a little longer. One more week. Maybe two. Long enough for the fear to loosen its grip. Long enough for the joy to feel louder than the anxiety. Then you’d tell everyone. Properly. Surrounded by the people who loved you most.
Which was exactly why tonight needed to remain wonderfully, blissfully ordinary.
Smile.
Compliment Rossi’s cooking.
Laugh at Morgan’s increasingly terrible jokes.
Listen to Garcia declare herself emotionally attached to another one of Rossi’s antique decorations.
Eat dinner.
Go home.
And above all else, pretend that beneath the soft fabric of your dress, your entire world wasn’t quietly growing one tiny heartbeat at a time.
***
For the first few minutes, everything went exactly according to plan.
The conversation flowed effortlessly around the table, moving from travel stories to teasing remarks about Rossi’s inability to let anyone else near his kitchen. The warm glow of candlelight reflected against crystal glasses, silverware clinked softly against porcelain plates, and the rich aroma of roasted vegetables, fresh herbs, garlic, and homemade pasta drifted through the dining room. It was warm. Comfortable. Familiar. Exactly the kind of evening you’d hoped for.
Then Rossi appeared beside the table carrying a bottle of red wine.
With practiced ease, he moved from place to place, pouring generous servings into each waiting glass until he eventually reached yours. Deep ruby liquid swirled elegantly into the crystal, catching the candlelight before he continued around the table without another thought.
Your smile froze.
Your stomach dropped so suddenly it almost felt like missing the last step on a staircase.
Of course. Wine.
You hadn’t thought about the wine.
For one long second, you simply stared at the glass sitting innocently beside your plate, your thoughts racing far faster than they should have. Refusing it outright would be strange. Claiming you weren’t in the mood might invite questions. Pretending to sip it was risky, especially with Rossi proudly watching everyone’s reactions to the bottle he’d undoubtedly spent far too much money on.
Across the table, Spencer had arrived at the exact same realization.
His eyes drifted from his own glass to yours.
Then to you.
You watched the understanding settle across his face almost instantly.
Without either of you exchanging so much as a glance, he quietly reached across the table toward your place setting, his movements so natural they might have gone completely unnoticed.
“I’ll take yours,” he said casually, lifting the untouched glass before anyone could question it.
Morgan blinked. “You stealing her wine already?”
The question earned a few amused smiles around the table.
Spencer answered so quickly it almost sounded rehearsed.
“She’s driving.”
For a single heartbeat, the entire table fell into that peculiar silence that followed an answer no one had expected. You turned your head slowly to look at him, your expression carefully composed despite the disbelief bubbling beneath it.
Driving? You hated driving.
Everyone at the table knew you hated driving. Morgan had teased you about it for years after you’d once admitted that parallel parking made you feel like you were diffusing a bomb. Garcia had jokingly offered to create a color-coded GPS system “for emotionally distressed drivers.” Even Rossi had learned long ago that inviting the two of you over automatically meant Spencer would be behind the wheel on the way home. If given the choice between navigating rush-hour traffic yourself or spending an hour on public transportation with three transfers, you’d choose the train without a second thought. Spencer knew that better than anyone. Which was precisely why, judging by the fleeting look of horror that crossed his face, he realized what he’d said the exact moment the words left his mouth.
Your eyes met across the table for the briefest instant.
He knew. You knew.
Neither of you dared acknowledge it.
Fortunately, Morgan simply shrugged, entirely unbothered.
“Fair enough.”
The conversation drifted elsewhere almost immediately, someone making a comment about Rossi’s pasta sauce before Garcia launched into a dramatic story about accidentally adopting another stray cat she absolutely insisted she hadn’t meant to bring home. Around the table, laughter resumed, forks scraped softly against porcelain plates, and the comfortable rhythm of dinner settled back into place. You released a slow breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding, allowing yourself to believe, if only for a moment, that perhaps the obstacle had been overcome more easily than you’d feared.
Or so you thought.
Barely ten minutes later, Rossi reappeared beside your chair carrying the bottle of red wine in one hand, his attention immediately falling to the untouched glass still sitting exactly where he’d left it. His thick brows drew together in mild confusion before his expression softened into concern.
“Oh, bambina,” he said, tilting his head slightly as he gestured toward the glass. “You haven’t touched your wine.”
Your heart lurched.
For a fraction of a second, your mind raced desperately through possible explanations. You weren’t feeling like drinking. You were waiting until dinner. You had a headache. None of them felt convincing enough, particularly not with Rossi watching you so expectantly.
Before you could utter a single word, Spencer calmly reached across the table, lifted your untouched glass as though it had belonged to him all along, and took a generous sip.
“I did.”
Rossi looked between both of you.
“You finished two glasses already?”
“I was thirsty,” Spencer replied with complete sincerity, sounding as though that single sentence explained everything.
Rossi stared at him.
“You were thirsty.”
“Yes.”
“For wine.”
“Correct.”
For another beat, Rossi simply looked at him, clearly debating whether there was any point continuing the conversation. Eventually, with the resigned expression of a man deciding that Spencer Reid’s brain operated on principles beyond ordinary comprehension, he shrugged lightly and reached for the bottle once more.
“There.”
Deep red wine flowed smoothly back into your crystal glass until it sat nearly full again.
“There we go.”
“Thank you,” you offered with what you hoped was a perfectly natural smile.
Rossi nodded once before wandering toward the other end of the table to refill Morgan’s glass, already distracted by an entirely new discussion about baseball statistics.
The instant his back was turned, Spencer moved.
Without saying a word, without drawing attention to himself, he rested one hand casually beneath the edge of the tablecloth and, in one fluid movement, exchanged your freshly filled glass with his own half-empty one. The motion was so smooth it could have passed for absentmindedness, his fingers never fumbling despite the growing amount of alcohol already in his system. By the time Rossi looked back toward the two of you, Spencer was quietly lifting the newly acquired glass toward his lips while your place setting once again held one that appeared partially consumed.
No one noticed.
Well…almost no one.
Across the table, Emily’s conversation with JJ faltered for just a fraction of a second.
She didn’t say anything.
She simply took another sip of wine while her gaze lingered thoughtfully between the two of you before returning to her plate.
Another half hour slipped by beneath easy conversation and frequent bursts of laughter. Stories gave way to teasing, teasing turned into old Bureau memories, and before long the first bottle stood empty in the center of the table. Rossi noticed almost immediately.
“Well,” he announced proudly as he disappeared toward the kitchen, “that means it’s time for the good one.”
He returned carrying another bottle with the reverence of someone transporting a priceless family heirloom.
“This one’s from Tuscany,” he declared, carefully peeling away the foil. “I bought it during my last trip. You have to try it.”
The cork eased free with a satisfying pop.
You felt your stomach sink all over again.
One by one, Rossi circled the table, refilling each glass with generous enthusiasm.
Including yours.
Again.
You forced another smile.
“Thank you.”
Your glass remained untouched.
Again.
Spencer noticed before anyone else did.
Again.
Without hesitation, he reached over sometime during the next conversation, lifted your glass as naturally as though the two of you shared everything—which, technically, you did—and quietly added yet another serving to the growing collection he’d already consumed.
By now he’d finished one glass.
Then two.
Then three.
Now…four.
Under ordinary circumstances, four glasses of wine spread across an entire dinner might not have seemed particularly remarkable.
For Spencer Reid, it was becoming increasingly obvious.
A warm flush had spread across his cheeks, dusting the bridge of his nose with soft pink that somehow made him look several years younger. His posture remained perfectly straight, and his words retained the precise articulation that years of lecturing and endless reading had ingrained into him. If anything, he enunciated even more carefully than usual, each syllable pronounced with meticulous clarity. Spencer Reid, it seemed, was physically incapable of slurring his words.
Instead, he simply became significantly more talkative.
“Do you know,” he announced to absolutely no one in particular while thoughtfully examining his wineglass as though it were a fascinating scientific specimen, “that the average adult liver metabolizes approximately one standard alcoholic beverage per hour? Assuming average enzymatic activity and normal hepatic function, I’m currently operating at a significant biochemical disadvantage.”
Morgan leaned back in his chair, grinning so broadly it bordered on smug satisfaction.
“You drunk, pretty boy?”
Spencer looked genuinely offended by the suggestion.
“No.”
He paused.
Thought about it.
Then nodded once with complete seriousness.
“Probably.”
The table erupted into laughter.
Even Hotch lowered his gaze toward his plate to disguise the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
You couldn’t help laughing too, though yours carried a distinct note of affection.
Spencer looked utterly adorable.
Hopelessly, undeniably adorable.
Across the table, however, Emily wasn’t laughing nearly as much.
She watched Spencer lift your glass instead of his own.
Again.
She watched you politely thank Rossi for every refill without drinking a single sip.
Again.
She watched Spencer volunteer to finish both glasses with increasingly enthusiastic determination.
Again.
Something about the evening refused to fit together.
Emily wasn’t quite sure what the answer was yet.
But she knew, with absolute certainty, that something wasn’t adding up.
***
By the time coffee replaced the wine, the evening had settled into that wonderfully unhurried stage that always followed one of Rossi’s dinners. Dessert plates had been pushed aside, empty bottles stood abandoned along the center of the table like evidence of a celebration well enjoyed, and the rich scent of freshly brewed espresso drifted through the dining room, mercifully replacing the overwhelming aroma of alcohol. Conversations had fractured into smaller ones, overlapping comfortably without anyone needing to follow every thread. Garcia and JJ were animatedly debating vacation destinations, Garcia insisting that every itinerary should be based entirely around bookstores and bakeries while JJ attempted, unsuccessfully, to convince her that beaches had their own merits. At the other end of the table, Morgan and Rossi had somehow wandered into a passionate disagreement over baseball statistics, each one accusing the other of remembering history incorrectly despite both sounding equally confident. Hotch sat quietly between them, one hand wrapped around his coffee cup, saying very little but wearing the faintest trace of amusement at the corners of his mouth as he watched the familiar chaos unfold around him.
Beside you, however, sat the true consequence of the evening.
Spencer Reid was undeniably drunk.
Not the loud, reckless kind of drunk that knocked over glasses or forgot people’s names. Spencer remained perfectly articulate. Every sentence emerged with the same impeccable diction he used while lecturing, every word carefully pronounced as though he were still delivering an academic presentation. If anything, the alcohol had only made him even more determined to enunciate correctly. His tie had been loosened somewhere between the second and third bottle, though neither of you remembered who had done it. His curls had escaped in every direction until they framed his flushed face in complete disarray. A warm blush stretched across his cheeks and over the bridge of his nose, his eyes had taken on a dreamy softness you rarely saw, and he had developed the oddly adorable habit of pausing before every answer, nodding solemnly to himself as though consulting an invisible committee inside his own mind before reaching a unanimous decision.
Watching him was almost painfully endearing.
You couldn’t help smiling as your fingers found the middle of his back, rubbing slow, comforting circles through the fabric of his shirt.
“You okay?”
He turned toward you immediately, his entire face lighting up with such overwhelming affection that your heart threatened to melt on the spot.
“I love you.”
The words came so easily, so honestly, that several people around the table instinctively smiled.
You laughed quietly.
“I love you too.”
“No…” He shook his head with exaggerated seriousness, lifting one finger as though correcting an important scientific misconception. “I don’t think you understand the statistical magnitude of how much I love you.”
Morgan snorted into his coffee.
“Oh, this is priceless.”
Spencer didn’t even acknowledge him.
His complete attention remained fixed on you, his expression one of absolute sincerity as he searched painstakingly for the perfect description.
“You are…” He frowned thoughtfully, eyes drifting toward the ceiling for several long seconds before returning to you with visible satisfaction. “…my favorite person.”
Warmth spread through your chest so quickly it almost hurt.
God, he was going to destroy you.
“You’ve had enough wine,” you said gently, brushing one of his unruly curls away from his forehead.
“I have had…” He stopped speaking to count carefully on his fingers, restarting twice after apparently losing track somewhere around three. “…more wine than you.”
“Yes.”
He nodded proudly, pleased that you’d confirmed his calculation.
“Because you couldn’t.”
Every muscle in your body went rigid.
The smile disappeared from your face almost instantly.
“Spencer.”
He looked delighted with himself.
“I helped.”
Across the table, Emily glanced up from her coffee.
“So noble.”
“It was.” Spencer nodded once, completely accepting the compliment. “Because it’s a secret.”
Your stomach dropped so violently you were certain everyone could hear it.
Without thinking, you reached for his hand beneath the table, gently squeezing his fingers.
“Sweetheart—”
He leaned closer immediately, lowering his voice in what he clearly believed was an incredibly discreet whisper.
It wasn’t.
“We’re very good at secrets,” he confided with unmistakable pride.
The entire table continued talking.
No one seemed to notice.
Relief washed over you so suddenly you nearly laughed.
Then Spencer smiled thoughtfully, as though another important realization had just occurred to him.
“Although…”
Every instinct in your body screamed.
“Oh no.”
He looked around the entire table before announcing, in a voice loud enough for everyone in the dining room to hear with perfect clarity, “keeping a baby secret is significantly harder than I expected.”
Silence.
Morgan blinked once.
“A what?”
Garcia’s mouth slowly fell open.
JJ lowered her coffee cup so carefully it barely made a sound against the saucer.
At the far end of the table, Hotch’s eyes shifted from Spencer to you with the calm expression of a profiler mentally reorganizing every unusual observation he’d made over the previous several weeks: your sudden avoidance of coffee during morning meetings, Spencer’s increasingly protective behavior, the mysterious disappearances during cases to “find crackers,” the exhaustion, the nausea, the untouched wine.
Pieces quietly clicked into place.
Rossi simply stared.
His mouth opened slightly before closing again.
For perhaps the first time in anyone’s memory, David Rossi seemed completely incapable of finding words.
Emily, meanwhile, merely closed her eyes and a slow smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“Oh,” she sighed, sounding more relieved than surprised. “I knew it.”
You buried your face in both hands.
“Spencer…”
He looked around the table with complete confusion, blinking at everyone’s expressions as though he genuinely couldn’t understand why the conversation had stopped.
“What?”
“You…” you whispered through your hands, shaking your head helplessly. “You just told them about our baby.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I did?”
“Yes.”
A long pause.
He frowned thoughtfully.
“I wasn’t supposed to.”
“No.”
“Oh.”
He considered that information with remarkable seriousness, nodding slowly as though accepting constructive criticism.
For one suspended heartbeat, nobody moved.
Then Garcia exploded.
The delighted shriek that escaped her was so loud it probably startled every bird within a three-block radius. She launched herself out of her chair before anyone else had even processed what was happening, one hand already covering her mouth as tears filled her eyes.
“I can't believe it!” she squealed. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!”
JJ was crying before she’d even reached you.
She wrapped her arms tightly around your shoulders, laughing and wiping away tears simultaneously.
“I am so happy for you,” she whispered.
Morgan shot to his feet with a bark of laughter, pointing triumphantly between the two of you.
“I knew something was going on!”
Emily looked at him flatly.
“You absolutely did not.”
“I suspected!”
She folded her arms.
“You spent the entire evening convinced Spencer had developed a drinking problem.”
Morgan hesitated.
“I was…close.”
Rossi finally recovered enough to laugh, a deep, warm laugh that echoed through the dining room as he crossed the room and pulled both you and Spencer into one of his characteristically overwhelming hugs.
“I’ve spent years trying to get this kid drunk,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief as he stepped back to look at Spencer with unmistakable affection. “Years.”
His eyes flickered toward you before returning to Spencer.
“I have to admit…”
He smiled.
“I didn’t expect this to be what finally loosened his tongue.”
Even Hotch stood.
He wasn’t particularly demonstrative, never had been, but the smile he offered the two of you was genuine enough to soften every sharp line in his face.
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” you whispered, your voice thick with emotion as you leaned instinctively against Spencer’s shoulder, still half laughing and half hiding your burning face from everyone’s delighted attention.
Spencer looked down at you with sleepy affection, completely oblivious to the fact that he had single-handedly dismantled weeks of carefully orchestrated secrecy. He leaned over and pressed the gentlest kiss against the top of your head before sighing softly.
“I ruined the surprise.”
“You did.”
“I’m sorry.”
You looked up at him.
His expression was so genuinely remorseful, so heartbreakingly sincere despite the unmistakable haze of alcohol clouding his thoughts, that you couldn’t possibly stay embarrassed.
A smile spread across your face.
“I’ll forgive you.”
His eyes brightened immediately.
“You will?”
“Eventually.”
The relieved smile that followed was almost childlike.
“Good.”
He sat quietly for another few seconds, apparently satisfied that the crisis had been resolved.
Then he turned toward Rossi with complete seriousness.
“Can I have some water now?”


















