𝑀’

the info-dumping is a way of him inviting you into his world. the facts and rambles about his tv shows, books, and studies judge how you will react to that side of him – they are the easiest way for him to share himself with someone without feeling too vulnerable. it is hardly a secret that he internalizes his stress to handle things alone. if you care enough to let him ramble, he could then be encouraged to communicate more openly with time. it's a game of patience, but one well worth playing.

spencer is already smart enough for two people – he doesn't need someone that can match him intellectually. he needs someone who will accept him, rather than strive to impress him. he adores curiosity, at the very least, enough to remember perhaps a fraction of what he rambles about. that is more than enough for him.

no matter when you meet him, spencer is protective, and not just in the sense of his work. while that does, of course, play a part, he has waited for so long to share himself with someone entirely, that he doesn't then want to share you with others. not entirely. it presents itself in small ways – keeping you close, checking in with you, not hesitating to say something if someone makes you uncomfortable.

speaking of keeping you close, spencer craves your physical touch to keep him grounded, and the simplest form of that is locking your fingers. it keeps him from fidgeting sometimes, stops him rubbing his own fingers raw. his fingers link between your own, firm, his thumb drifting over the back of your hand whether you're curled on the couch or on the jet.

cuddles are a non-negotiable, to the point where he will inconvenience himself for the sake of keeping you at his side. yes, his arm fell asleep twenty minutes ago. no, he does not care come back.

be prepared to wake up beside a mad scientist each morning. spencer's hair is wild at the best of times, but the mornings take the cake. it will stick up at all angles, no matter how still he slept, resembling something not to far from einstein. careful where your eyes pause, however. if you're caught staring, you'll soon have messy hair to match.

if he ever senses you are feeling low, he prescribes magic. you can remind him he is not a medical doctor, and that you're not actually ill as he places a palm against your forehead, but his response is the same nonetheless – a course of magic should clear it right up. besides, how else were you going to get that coin out of your ear? that can't be making things better, after all.

he brings magic into every part of your life when he can, and his proposal is no different. he practises for hours, even if he knows the trick inside out, your ring between his fingers, getting shinier with each run, trialled over and over again so that when his hands shook (and he knew they would) he wouldn't make a fool of himself.

It was ridiculous, really.

You had to remain beneath the shower long after there was any reason to. Long after the shampoo had disappeared down the drain and the soap had been washed from your skin. The water had long since turned cold, yet you never reached for the faucet. Instead, you stood there motionless beneath the relentless stream, arms wrapped tightly around yourself as icy water cascaded over your shoulders, your spine and your chest. You just welcomed the discomfort because it was easier to endure the ache of freezing water than the unbearable warmth that had settled beneath your ribs the instant your hands had touched Spencer again.

It had been so innocent.

He was injured, still izzy from the concussion and barely able to stand without swaying. You had simply done what anyone would have done, guided him carefully beneath the spray, steadied him when his knees threatened to buckle and helped him wash around the bandages the doctors had warned you to keep dry.

And yet your body had betrayed you with humiliating ease the moment your fingertips settled against the broad slope of his shoulder.

All because showers had never simply been showers with him.

They had been stolen mornings before work, when one of you inevitably wandered into the bathroom after the other with the flimsiest excuse imaginable. They had been quiet reunions after cases, when he returned home exhausted enough to barely keep his eyes open, yet somehow still found the strength to pull you beneath the water with him because seeing you was the only thing that truly convinced him he was safe. They had been conversations, laughter echoing off tiled walls, shampoo bottles exchanged absentmindedly between sleepy hands, arguments about whose turn it was to buy more soap dissolving into kisses.

Oh...the kisses.

You could remember every single one with a clarity so sharp it almost hurt.

Because Spencer had never kissed you carelessly. Every kiss carried the intensity of someone determined to commit a moment to memory before it disappeared forever. He always approached you slowly, giving you every opportunity to pull away, though neither of you ever did. His hands inevitably found your face first, cupping it with such impossible gentleness that it often left you wondering whether he truly understood how loved he made you feel with such simple gestures. His thumbs would brush absentmindedly over your cheeks while he looked at you for one lingering heartbeat too long, studying your expression as though there were something endlessly fascinating hidden inside it.

Then one hand would drift upward, disappearing into your damp hair while his fingers settled at the nape of your neck, slipping effortlessly between wet strands until his palm rested against your skin. He would tilt your head ever so slightly before his mouth found yours again, deepening the kiss. Outside the shower, the world continued to exist—cases, paperwork, deadlines, violence, grief—but inside those four tiled walls it all ceased to matter. There was only the rhythmic percussion of water striking porcelain, the damp curl of his hair brushing your forehead, and the slow rhythm of two hearts beating close enough that you sometimes couldn’t tell which belonged to whom.

Now, you could almost feel his hands finding your waist again. You could almost hear the quiet hum he always made whenever he was content, vibrating softly against your lips whenever he smiled into a kiss. It felt so vivid that your body leaned into the illusion before your mind could stop it.

Your eyes opened.

Oh.

The shower was empty.

There was no Spencer standing in front of you, no shy smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, no hazel eyes looking at you as though you were still the safest place he had ever known. There was only cold porcelain beneath your feet, pale steam clinging stubbornly to the glass, and the deafening absence of the man your body still remembered with humiliating precision.

Your arms wrapped instinctively around yourself, holding your own elbows so tightly your fingertips blanched white. You weren’t entirely sure whether you were trying to warm your chilled skin or keep your heart from splintering all over again.

Then your phone began to vibrate.

The insistent buzz shattered the stillness with startling violence, echoing across the marble countertop and pulling you so abruptly out of the past that you physically flinched. Your pulse leapt into your throat as you blinked through the curtain of water still clinging to your eyelashes. Through the fogged bathroom, the screen glowed brightly against the counter.

Penelope.

Your hand reached the faucet before your brain fully caught up. The rushing water disappeared instantly, leaving behind a heavy silence interrupted only by the rhythmic drip…drip…drip from the showerhead. You snatched the nearest towel, wrapping it hurriedly around yourself before crossing the room in damp footsteps and grabbing your phone almost before it had finished vibrating.

“Penelope?”

“There you are!” Garcia’s voice burst through the speaker with its usual sunshine, though underneath it lingered the unmistakable exhaustion that had settled over everyone since Spencer had been shot. “I was beginning to think you’d fallen asleep.”

You frowned, absently rubbing the towel over your damp hair as cold droplets slid lazily down the back of your neck.

“…What?”

A brief pause followed.

“What do you mean what?” Penelope laughed, genuine amusement bubbling through the phone. “Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten.”

Your brow knitted together.

Forgotten…what?

Then, almost audibly, the pieces clicked together.

Dinner.

“Oh my God,” you breathed, squeezing your eyes shut in disbelief. “I did forget.”

“I knew it!” Penelope exclaimed triumphantly. “Morgan insisted you’d remember because you’re terrifyingly organized, but I told him trauma beats planners every single time.”

Despite yourself, a tired laugh escaped your lips. You pinched the bridge of your nose, still feeling the lingering ache behind your eyes.

“What time is it?”

“A little after six.

Six.

You had spent nearly forty minutes standing beneath freezing water trying to convince yourself your heart hadn’t just betrayed you.

“We’re only about ten minutes away,” Penelope continued brightly. “Morgan stopped to grab dinner because he refuses to believe either of you has actual food in that kitchen after…” She hesitated delicately before finishing more softly. “…everything.”

A helpless laugh escaped you.

“He’s probably right.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she laughed. “He’s absolutely right.”

Your gaze shifted toward the bathroom door. Beyond it, the house had settled back into its quiet rhythm. Somewhere down the hallway Spencer was exactly where you had left him. Maybe asleep beneath the comforter. Maybe stubbornly reading every line of his discharge packet despite strict instructions to rest. You could practically picture him with his glasses perched low on his nose, mentally cataloguing recovery statistics instead of allowing himself to simply exist for five uninterrupted minutes.

“I’ll be ready,” you promised.

“You don’t have to impress us,” Penelope replied, her voice gentler now. “We’re coming to see Reid…and maybe confirm neither of you has accidentally burned the house down.”

A genuine laugh slipped free this time.

“I think we can manage that.”

“Mmm.” You could almost hear her grin through the phone. “I’ll reserve judgment until I see the kitchen.”

The call ended with another round of affectionate teasing.

You lowered the phone slowly, your hand lingering around it for a moment as silence reclaimed the bathroom. The mirror in front of you had fogged over completely now, softening your reflection into blurred outlines and muted colors. Even so, you could still make out the evidence the shower had failed to erase. Your cheeks remained flushed despite the freezing water, loose strands of damp hair clung stubbornly to your temples and neck...but no amount of cold water had managed to wash away the memories that lingered beneath your skin.

With a slow sigh, you tightened the towel around yourself before reaching automatically for clean clothes. Familiar motions steadied your hands where your thoughts could not: soft sweater, comfortable jeans and dry socks. The ordinary ritual of getting dressed became something to focus on, each small task another step away from the woman standing beneath the shower only moments ago, remembering kisses she had no business remembering.

Ten minutes.

You should probably warn Spencer.

The thought arrived with enough practicality to interrupt the dangerous direction your mind had been drifting: dinner, just Derek and Penelope, familiar faces and voices. Normality, however temporary, you welcomed the distraction. Taking one final breath, you smoothed invisible wrinkles from the front of your sweater, more out of habit than necessity, before quietly stepping into the hallway.

The bedroom door stood slightly ajar.

You paused outside, lifting your hand to knock softly against the wood despite knowing he would almost certainly tell you to come in anyway.

“Spencer?”

No answer.

“…I’m coming in.”

You pushed the door open carefully.

Spencer was standing beside the bed.

Or, more accurately, trying to.

One hand remained firmly planted against the mattress to steady himself while the other was hopelessly trapped somewhere inside the sleeve of a pale blue button-down that had twisted itself halfway up his injured arm. His hospital sweatpants rested low against his hips, the loose waistband sitting carefully above the thick bandage wrapped around his upper thigh, while the rest of the shirt hung completely open, exposing the pale expanse of his chest and abdomen. And fresh bruises painted themselves across his ribs in uneven shades of violet and yellow, and every few seconds he paused, blinking faintly as though his brain needed another moment to remember how sleeves were supposed to work.

It was strangely endearing.

He looked up the instant he heard the door.

“Oh.”

There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment on his face, only relief.

“I appear to have encountered…” His gaze dropped thoughtfully to the offending sleeve. “…a surprisingly complicated engineering problem.”

The corner of your mouth betrayed you before you could stop it.

“You got stuck putting on a shirt.”

“I did.”

His agreement was so completely sincere, that any teasing remark died before it reached your lips.

“The statistical probability of this occurring under normal neurological conditions,” he continued gravely, giving the twisted sleeve another experimental tug that accomplished absolutely nothing, “is relatively low.”

“But you’re not under normal neurological conditions.”

“No.”

He sighed softly.

“I’m also making a conscious effort not to elevate my right arm beyond approximately forty-five degrees because you specifically instructed me not to.”

Your smile threatened to become an actual laugh.

“I did, didn’t I?”

“You did.”

For a moment neither of you spoke.

The room settled into a gentle silence broken only by the quiet rustle of fabric and Spencer’s careful breathing. Without the distraction of conversation, your eyes finally lingered on him properly.

His curls were still damp from the shower, darker than usual where they curled untidily against his forehead and temples. Tiny droplets continued their slow journey down the graceful line of his neck, slipping across his collarbone before disappearing beneath the waistband of his sweatpants. You noticed the faint tension around his mouth every time he shifted his weight, the careful way he unconsciously favored one side.

He looked so tired that your chest tightened painfully.

“May I…” Spencer hesitated and his fingers loosening around the stubborn fabric before he lifted his eyes to yours. “…ask for assistance?”

You didn’t answer with words and simply crossed the room before he had the chance to regret asking.

“Turn around.”

He obeyed immediately.

The mattress shifted softly as he pivoted, careful of his balance, until his back was facing you. Standing this close to him again felt profoundly unfair, close enough to catch the clean scent of his shampoo mingling with the sterile trace of antiseptic ointment lingering around the bandage on his upper arm. If you leaned forward the smallest fraction, your forehead would rest naturally between his shoulder blades, exactly where it had countless times before.

You refused to let yourself think about that.

Instead, you focused on the shirt tangled stubbornly around his arm.

“Relax your shoulder,” you murmured, already gathering the twisted fabric between your fingers.

“I’m trying.”

Very carefully, you eased the sleeve down over the thick white bandage, lifting the fabric millimeter by millimeter so it wouldn’t catch against the gauze. Your fingertips barely grazed his skin, more conscious of where you weren’t touching than where you were. Every adjustment required you to stay close enough to feel the slow rise and fall of his breathing beneath your hands.

Spencer remained perfectly still, just as he always had.

It had always been like this with you. Whether you were standing in front of him before an FBI banquet, frowning in concentration as you straightened the knot of his tie because he insisted yours somehow always looked better, brushing away invisible flecks of lint from the shoulders of his jacket before a case, or sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with one of his favorite cardigans pooled across your lap while you patiently stitched together the sleeve he’d torn climbing a fence after a foot pursuit, Spencer had never once flinched beneath your hands.

Now, once his injured arm was finally eased through the sleeve, the rest came naturally. You guided his other hand into the fabric with care before lifting the shirt over his shoulders, settling it carefully against his back. The cotton fell into place with only a few stubborn wrinkles remaining, and almost without thinking, your palms smoothed over them in slow strokes, flattening the fabric the same way you had done hundreds of times before.

“There,” you murmured softly.

Spencer turned to face you, allowing you to finish what you had started. The shirt still hung open, revealing the pale skin beneath and the fresh bandage wrapped around his shoulder. Your fingers found the first button automatically. Then the second. Then the third. One by one, you worked your way upward with precision, each button sliding through its place beneath fingertips that remembered the task far better than your mind wanted to admit.

By the time you reached the last button, there was nothing left to fix.

The shirt sat perfectly against his chest. Every crease had been smoothed away. Every edge lay exactly where it belonged.

You should have stepped back.

Instead, your hands remained there.

Your fingertips rested lightly against the soft cotton over his heart, feeling the steady rhythm beneath it. Perhaps it was truly his heartbeat...or it was only your own pulse echoing loudly enough to convince you it belonged to him. You couldn’t tell anymore.

Only then did you realize how close you had drifted.

Close enough to count the impossibly long lashes resting against his cheeks. Close enough to notice the tiny scar tucked beneath his jaw, the one you’d kissed absentmindedly so many times throughout your marriage that you’d eventually stopped seeing it altogether. Close enough to catch the faint scent of cedar soap lingering in his damp curls, fresh from the shower.

A loose curl had fallen across his forehead and before you could think better of it, your hand lifted entirely on instinct.

You brushed it back with a tenderness so deeply ingrained it no longer felt like a conscious decision. Your fingers slipped gently through the still-damp curls before settling for the briefest moment against the side of his face, your thumb barely grazing his cheekbone and his eyes closed.

When Spencer finally opened his eyes again, they didn’t wander. They found yours immediately, searching your face with a softness that felt almost vulnerable, as though he were looking for evidence that this wasn’t another concussion-induced dream. Neither of you spoke. Neither of you seemed capable of it. So the silence stretched between you, delicate enough that even breathing felt like it might disturb it.

Then, so carefully it felt more like a question than a movement, Spencer lowered his forehead until it rested lightly against yours.

You didn’t pull away and your noses brushed, featherlight, and for one suspended moment the rest of the world simply ceased to exist. His breathing mingled with yours in slow rhythms, his eyelashes rested against his cheeks once more, eyes closed as though he couldn’t bear to look at you and risk discovering you’d disappeared and the distance between your mouths dwindled until there was almost nothing left of it, only the smallest sliver of trembling air separating two people who had once known each other so completely that kisses had never required thought.

“You…” Spencer whispered, your name caught somewhere behind the single broken word, his voice little more than a breath that ghosted across your lips.

One of his hands lifted hesitantly, slowly enough that you could see him thinking through every inch of the movement. It trembled hovering beside your waist without quite daring to touch you. His fingers curled faintly in empty air, stopping just short of your sweater, waiting for a permission neither of you knew how to ask for.

Oh.

And then the doorbell rang.

The sharp sound cracked through the silence with almost violent force, followed immediately by the unmistakable boom of Morgan’s voice from the front porch.

“Pretty boy! If you’re unconscious again, I’m kicking this door down!”

The moment shattered so completely it almost hurt.

You stepped back too quickly, your hand slipping from Spencer’s cheek as though waking from a dream. His own hand dropped immediately to his side before it had ever reached you, fingers curling into his palm instead. And for a heartbeat neither of you moved, you simply stared at one another, both trying to remember how to exist inside a room that suddenly felt ordinary again.

“I…” You cleared your throat, though it did nothing to steady your voice. “They’re here for dinner.”

Spencer blinked once, twice, as though the sentence had to travel a much greater distance than it should before making sense.

“…Right.”

Another impatient knock rattled the front door.

“Derek Morgan,” Penelope called over his shoulder, “stop traumatizing the recovering patient!”

A small breath escaped you, somewhere between relief and disappointment, because the interruption had arrived at exactly the wrong moment…or perhaps exactly the right one. You weren’t sure anymore.

“I’ll let them in.”

You had almost reached the doorway when Spencer spoke again.

“Thank you.”

You looked back.

He wasn’t talking about the shirt.

But you simply offered a small nod before leaving the room, carrying the weight of another unspoken conversation with you as Morgan knocked dramatically for what was undoubtedly the third time.

***

The front door had barely swung halfway open before Penelope swept inside in a whirl of bright colors and floral perfume, two grocery bags hanging from her wrists and somehow still managing to gesture animatedly while she talked. Behind her came Morgan, nudging the door shut with his foot as he balanced enough takeout containers to feed an entire squad rather than the handful of people expected for dinner.

“There they are!” Penelope announced triumphantly, already smiling before she’d properly crossed the threshold.

Then she stopped.

“…Huh.”

You frowned before you could stop yourself.

“What?”

Penelope didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she continued studying the two of you with the exaggerated seriousness of someone examining evidence at a crime scene.

“You both look…” She narrowed her eyes dramatically. “…different.”

Morgan finally looked up from the stack of containers he’d been carefully preventing from collapsing, following Penelope’s line of sight. His gaze landed on Spencer first, then shifted to you, lingering just long enough for a slow grin to begin spreading across his face.

“You know,” he said thoughtfully, “I was just about to say the exact same thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you replied a little too quickly.

“Uh-huh,” Morgan drawled.

Penelope abandoned the grocery bags on the entry table and wandered closer, circling the two of you with the kind of open curiosity that only she could somehow make seem affectionate rather than invasive. She hummed softly to herself as though mentally cataloguing every tiny inconsistency.

“Okay…” she murmured. “Let’s see…Spencer’s wearing a clean shirt.” Her finger lifted thoughtfully. “Which is impressive considering a few days ago he could barely lift one arm.” Another finger. “And…”

Her smile widened.

“Your hair’s wet.”

You instinctively reached for it and your fingertips found damp strands immediately.

“It hasn’t dried yet.”

“No,” Penelope agreed brightly. “It really hasn’t.”

Morgan’s attention shifted to Spencer, whose curls were still dark with moisture despite his best efforts to towel them dry. A tiny bead of water escaped one stubborn curl near his temple, tracing a slow path down the side of his neck before disappearing beneath the neatly buttoned collar of his shirt.

Morgan watched it happen and his grin became positively dangerous.

“And his hair’s still dripping.”

Spencer, entirely unaware of the significance of the observation, reached up absently to smooth the offending curl back into place.

Morgan’s eyes flicked between the two of you again.

“Were you two showering?”

Your heartbeat climbed into your throat.

“No,” you answered instantly.

“Well…” Spencer began at exactly the same time.

Both of you stopped.

Morgan’s eyebrows climbed so high they practically disappeared beneath his curls, while Penelope clapped both hands over her mouth in delighted horror.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, this just became significantly more interesting.”

“I helped him shower,” you corrected immediately, the words tumbling over one another with enough speed that even you knew it sounded suspicious. Folding your arms across your chest, you forced yourself to slow down. “His stitches weren’t supposed to get wet, and the doctor specifically said someone needed to supervise him because of the concussion—”

Morgan nodded solemnly through the entire explanation.

“Perfectly reasonable.”

Relief began settling into your chest.

Then—

“I just hope nothing happened that elevated his heart rate.”

Your head snapped toward him.

“Derek.”

“What?” he asked with flawless innocence, adjusting the stack of takeout containers in his arms. “I’m talking about the patient’s recovery.” He turned toward Spencer with exaggerated professionalism. “So…how was the assistance?”

Spencer blinked.

Then, with complete sincerity that only made everything worse, he answered, “It was very helpful.”

Morgan barked out a laugh.

Penelope made a sound somewhere between a squeal and a cackle before immediately rescuing you from the conversation, slipping her arm through yours and steering you toward the kitchen before you could formulate a rebuttal.

“Come on,” she declared, patting your arm with exaggerated sympathy. “Let’s leave the children unsupervised while we find plates.”

“I’m older than both of you,” Morgan called after her.

“Yes,” Penelope replied over her shoulder without missing a beat as she opened the first cabinet she came across. “And somehow you’ve made that everyone else’s problem.”

The two of you disappeared into the kitchen, cabinet doors opening and closing as Penelope accepted the stack of plates from your hands. The kitchen looked almost untouched by time, with the pale blue kettle still rested on the stove beneath the little shelf Spencer had insisted on building himself despite having absolutely no business handling power tools. Even the tiny chip in the corner of the butcher block remained exactly where it had always been after the two of you had accidentally dropped an entire cast-iron skillet during your first attempt at making homemade pasta. Most people would’ve looked at the room and simply seen a kitchen but Penelope saw six years of your life.

“It’s almost exactly the same,” she murmured, the observation slipping from her lips so quietly it barely sounded like a question.

You followed her gaze almost reluctantly. It wasn’t that you hadn’t noticed before. Time had moved forward everywhere else but inside these walls, it had simply…settled.

“I suppose it is.”

Penelope looked at you then, studying your face with the kind of gentle concern only someone who had known you for years could wear.

“I thought you would’ve sold it.”

A quiet laugh escaped through your nose, though there wasn’t much humor in it.

“So did everyone else.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

The answer came easily.

You reached into the drawer for the cutlery, carefully separating forks from knives more because your hands needed something to do than because the task required any concentration.

“I bought an apartment instead.”

Penelope blinked.

“I know that,” she said. “But why keep both?”

Your hands slowed.

“It’s closer to work,” you answered first, almost automatically. “The apartment makes more sense. It’s twenty minutes from the courthouse instead of almost an hour. I practically live there now. But this place…” You said and glanced around the room again. “I couldn’t sell it.”

Penelope waited.

“It wasn’t because of Spencer.” Your fingertips rested against the edge of the counter, tracing absent circles across the wood worn smooth by years of dinners, paperwork, birthday cakes, late-night coffee and ordinary conversations. “I mean, my life happened here, so much of who I became happened inside this house.”

Your eyes wandered toward the dining room.

“I passed the bar while living here, and I painted that wall three different colors before deciding I liked the first one after all.” You shook your head softly. “I planted those herbs because I thought keeping basil alive couldn’t possibly be that difficult.”

Penelope smiled.

“I loved my husband and being married.” You added and your fingers curled against the countertop. “I’m not going to erase six years of my life because they ended badly.”

Penelope reached out instinctively, but you shook your head before she could touch your hand.

“Honey...”

“No.” You stopped her and smiled sadly before she could say anything else. “I know where this conversation is going.”

“Do you?”

“You think this…” You gestured vaguely toward the living room where Spencer and Morgan’s voices drifted faintly through the wall. “…means something.”

“I think,” Penelope corrected softly, “that he still looks at you like you’re the first beautiful thing he’s ever seen.”

You looked away.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to him.”

“It didn’t matter enough.” You inhaled slowly. “He left.” Your voice remained calm, almost frighteningly so. “He looked me in the eye, signed divorce papers, and walked away.”

Your gaze settled on the wedding photograph that no longer sat on the sideboard because you’d packed it away months ago.

“I begged him to stay.”

Penelope closed her eyes briefly.

“I remember.”

“And he still left.”

You shook your head.

“So whatever he felt…” Your voice caught for the first time. “…it wasn’t enough.”

Penelope stepped closer. “He loves you.”

You laughed softly.

“If that’s what love looks like…” Your eyes stung. “I don’t think I want it anymore.”

The words hung between you, heavy and terrible.

After a long silence, you forced yourself to straighten the stack of plates, needing the distraction.

“I’m taking care of him because he’s hurt.”

Penelope didn’t answer.

“He’ll recover.” You picked up the serving bowl and started toward the dining room. “He’ll go home and I’ll go back to my apartment.”

Penelope watched you for a long moment before speaking, her voice so gentle it almost broke your heart.

“Oh, sweetheart…”

You stopped, but you didn’t turn around.

“That man doesn’t need a nurse. I think he just needs you.”

You closed your eyes.

“Let’s talk about something else,” you said suddenly, forcing another smile onto your face before she could answer. It settled on your lips too easily, practiced from years spent standing in courtrooms where feelings were liabilities instead of truths. “How’s your life going?”

Penelope looked at you for a long moment.

She knew that smile.

It was the one you wore whenever you had already made up your mind. The one that politely informed everyone around you that the discussion was over, whether they agreed or not. She had watched you use it on stubborn witnesses, difficult judges, reporters outside courthouses, and, years ago, on Spencer himself whenever you refused to let him know how frightened you really were.

So she let the subject die.

“Oh, don’t get me started,” she sighed dramatically, accepting your escape with theatrical reluctance as she reached for the serving bowl in your hands. “My dating life continues to resemble an FBI behavioral profile titled Serial Disappointments.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.

“That bad?”

“Sweetie, at this point I’m considering marrying my computer. At least it already knows all my passwords.”

The laughter that followed was quieter than before, but genuine enough to drift through the open doorway separating the kitchen from the living room. It mingled with the clink of ceramic plates, the scrape of silverware against the countertop, cabinet doors closing softly, and the low whistle of the old kettle settling on the stove after being nudged aside. For a brief moment, the house sounded almost exactly as it used to.

Alive.

The sound carried farther than either of you realized.

Out in the living room, Morgan’s shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly as your laughter reached him through the hallway. He waited until your voices dissolved back into indistinct conversation before turning away from the kitchen and looking across the room at Spencer.

“So.”

Spencer looked up from where he’d been staring toward the hallway for the better part of five minutes.

“So.”

Morgan leaned back against the couch, crossing one ankle over the other as though the conversation were casual.

“How’s it going?”

Spencer instinctively reached toward the bandage on his arm before stopping himself.

“The headache’s improving. The dizziness is mostly positional now. My short-term recall appears unaffected despite the initial concussion symptoms, although I suspect the fatigue will—”

Morgan held up a hand.

“I’m not talking about that.”

“No?” Spencer frowned.

“No.”

Morgan gestured subtly toward the kitchen, where the muffled sound of you and Penelope debating where the serving bowls were kept floated through the house.

“I’m talking about…that.”

Understanding dawned slowly.

“…Oh.”

Morgan settled into the armchair opposite him.

“So?”

“I don’t know.” Spencer said and looked toward the kitchen doorway without really seeing it.

“You don’t know how it’s going?”

“I don’t know what it means.” His voice had quieted considerably. “She’s being kind.”

Morgan nodded.

“But she would’ve done this for anyone.” Spencer added.

“Doubt it.”

Spencer finally looked at him.

“She would’ve helped anyone. We know she’s that kind of person.” Morgan started and leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. “But she didn’t bring just anyone home, she brought you.”

Morgan didn’t answer immediately.

He simply sat there, elbows resting against his knees, listening as another burst of your laughter drifted from the kitchen. It was softer this time, almost muffled beneath the sound of cabinet doors opening and Penelope’s dramatically offended voice insisting that you had absolutely moved the serving bowls since the last time she’d been here. Spencer smiled before he realized he was doing it, the expression appearing so naturally that it seemed completely disconnected from conscious thought. It was small, but Morgan caught it anyway.

“You still look for her,” he said quietly.

Spencer didn’t answer.

His eyes remained fixed on the kitchen doorway, not really looking at it anymore but listening, waiting for the next sound of your voice the way someone waits for a familiar song to begin again.

“You hear her laugh,” Morgan continued after a moment, “and you stop listening to everything else in the room. You’ve been doing it all evening.”

Spencer lowered his gaze to his hands, fingers absently turning the edge of the blanket draped across his lap. For a long moment he seemed determined not to respond, as though silence alone might be enough to keep everything inside him contained. When he finally spoke, his voice had dropped so low Morgan almost had to lean forward to hear it.

“I never stopped loving her.”

There wasn’t any drama in the confession.

No tears or visible breaking apart.

And Morgan wasn’t surprised.

He’d known long before the divorce papers had ever been signed. He’d known because he’d watched Spencer stay at Quantico long after everyone else had gone home, volunteering for every case that crossed the bullpen whether the team needed him or not. He’d watched him bury himself beneath reports, research, lectures, consultations and anything that filled enough hours to postpone returning to an apartment that had become unbearably empty. He’d watched him show up to Rossi’s Sunday dinners with the same polite smile every week, only to spend the evening unconsciously staring at the chair where you used to sit before eventually inventing an excuse about paperwork or an early meeting and leaving before dessert was served. And Morgan had seen heartbreak before. Hell, he’d lived through his own.

But Spencer hadn’t healed from losing you.

He had simply become frighteningly efficient at functioning while carrying the wound.

“I kept waiting for it to get smaller,” Spencer admitted, still staring down at his hands. His thumb drifted unconsciously over the scar across the back of one of them. “People always say grief changes. That eventually it becomes…manageable.” A humorless laugh escaped him. “I thought I’d stop walking past bookstores and wondering whether she’d already bought whatever was in the front window before I had a chance to recommend it.” His voice caught almost imperceptibly. “I thought eventually I’d stop missing her every time the world reminded me she existed.”

Morgan let him speak.

He knew Spencer well enough to recognize how rare this was. Spencer didn’t confess things. He analyzed them, categorized them, buried them beneath statistics and probabilities until they became manageable enough to survive.

“I kept working,” Spencer continued quietly. “More cases. More lectures. More consultations. It made sense mathematically. The fewer hours I spent alone, the fewer opportunities I’d have to think about…” His voice faded. “…her.”

Morgan nodded slowly.

“I know.”

“No.” Spencer shook his head. “I don’t think anyone did.”

Morgan looked at him carefully.

“So why’d you leave?”

Spencer didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, his eyes settled on the scar crossing the back of his own hand, his thumb absently tracing it.

“My mother’s neurologist changed her medication.”

Morgan remembered.

He remembered every frantic phone call Spencer had excused with, “It’s nothing.” Every morning he’d arrived at Quantico looking like he hadn’t slept. Every case where his coffee had gone cold because he’d spent the night in a hospital chair instead of his own bed. He remembered watching Spencer lose weight without seeming to notice, watching exhaustion settle permanently beneath his eyes while he insisted everything was under control.

“It stopped working,” Spencer murmured, his attention never leaving the scar beneath his fingertips. “Around the same time… I started getting migraines.”

“You never told anybody.”

“I told myself they were stress.”

“Were they?”

A bitter smile crossed Spencer’s face.

“I still don’t know.”

Silence stretched between them.

“My memory is…” Spencer swallowed, searching for words he had probably never imagined saying out loud. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever trusted about myself. Intelligence changes. Knowledge expands. Skills deteriorate if you don’t practice them. But memory…” His eyes finally lifted, hollow with something Morgan had never seen in them before. “Memory has always been the constant. It’s who I am.”

Morgan didn’t interrupt.

“Then one morning I walked into Hotch’s office…” Spencer’s expression unfocused, replaying the memory with agonizing clarity. “I reached for the doorknob, walked inside…” His breathing caught almost imperceptibly. “…and I couldn’t remember why I’d gone there.”

He laughed once, but it sounded broken.

“It lasted three seconds.”

Morgan didn’t interrupt.

“Three seconds,” Spencer repeated, almost to himself. “Objectively insignificant. Most people would’ve forgotten it happened before lunch.”

“But you couldn’t.”

“Because I couldn’t afford to.”

His fingers tightened until the tendons in his hand stood out beneath his skin.

“After that…” He exhaled slowly. “I started watching myself.”

The confession sounded almost ashamed.

“Every headache became evidence. Every forgotten word. Every misplaced file. Every moment I lost my train of thought halfway through a sentence.” His jaw tightened. “Every time I walked into a room and needed a second to remember why.”

His breathing became slow, deliberate.

“I was profiling myself.”

Morgan felt something twist painfully in his chest.

“I made lists and I tracked sleep deprivation, migraine frequency, vocabulary retrieval, episodic recall, processing speed.” Spencer’s voice had become frighteningly clinical, as though retreating into science somehow made the memories less terrifying. “I compared my cognitive performance against my own baselines.”

“And what did you find?”

“I found exactly what fear wanted me to find.”

Another burst of laughter floated from the kitchen.

Without thinking, Spencer turned toward the sound.

“When she’d talk about our future…” His entire expression softened before grief quietly erased it again. “She’d already picked baby names.”

Morgan closed his eyes briefly.

“She wanted a little boy who looked like me.” A faint smile appeared despite everything. “She used to wonder whether he’d inherit my curls or her smile. Whether he’d spend afternoons buried in libraries because of me or come home covered in paint because of her.”

The smile vanished.

“And all I could think about…” His voice almost disappeared. “…was whether he’d inherit schizophrenia.”

A long pause.

“Or Alzheimer’s.”

The living room became impossibly still.

“I stopped imagining birthdays.”

His gaze drifted somewhere far beyond the room.

“I started imagining neurologists.”

Morgan said nothing.

“I couldn’t stop seeing her twenty years from now.”

“Forty.”

“It didn’t matter.” Spencer’s voice was barely audible now. “Every version ended the same way.”

His throat tightened.

“I kept seeing her sitting beside my hospital bed exactly the way I used to sit beside my mother’s.” His eyes closed. “Watching me disappear a little at a time. Correcting my memory. Introducing herself to me over and over until one day…” His voice broke for the first time. “…until one day I forgot she had ever been my wife.”

The silence that followed felt sacred.

“I loved her too much to ask her to survive that.”

“I know,” Morgan said softly.

Relief flickered across Spencer’s face, but it lasted less than a second.

“But that’s not what happened.”

Spencer frowned.

“You didn’t save her from watching you get sick.” Morgan leaned forward, his voice calm but unyielding. “You made her watch the man she loved walk away without giving her a reason.”

The words landed with visible force.

“You didn’t spare her grief, Reid.” Morgan shook his head slowly. “You just chose a different version of it.”

Spencer looked away.

“You know what she spent the last two years believing?”

Nothing.

“She believed she wasn’t enough.”

Spencer shut his eyes.

“She believed somewhere along the way you stopped choosing her. That every promise you made together meant less to you than it did to her.” Morgan’s own voice thickened despite himself. “She came to me, you know.”

Spencer looked up.

“She asked if I’d noticed when you started pulling away. Asked if maybe there’d been someone else.” He shook his head slowly. “She kept trying to find a reason because the truth made even less sense.”

Spencer’s face folded inward.

Morgan had seen Spencer cry but somehow this was worse because there weren’t any tears. Just the horrifying realization that every nightmare he’d imagined for you had been replaced by one he’d never considered.

“I thought…” He whispered.

“I know what you thought.”

Morgan’s eyes glistened.

“You thought if she hated you, it’d be easier for her to move on.”

Silence settled heavily over the room.

Morgan let it before he asked quietly,

“Did she?”

Spencer couldn’t answer.

Because less than thirty minutes earlier, you’d stood beneath the shower with sleeves rolled to your elbows, carefully washing his hair so he wouldn’t reopen his stitches. Because you’d buttoned his shirt with hands that still knew him by memory and when he nearly kissed you, you’d almost let him.

Morgan already knew the answer.

“You were wrong.”

Spencer inhaled shakily, his shoulders sagging beneath a weight that suddenly seemed too heavy to carry anymore.

“So…” he asked quietly. “…what am I supposed to do now?”

Morgan looked toward the kitchen where your laughter drifted through the house once again, familiar enough to make the years between then and now disappear for just a moment.

“For the first time in two years,” he said, “stop deciding what’s best for her and use this opportunity to fix it.”

He looked back at Spencer.

“She deserved the truth before you left.”

A pause settled between them before Morgan finished, his voice softer than it had been all evening.

“And if you still love her as much as I know you do…” he said, “…then stop protecting her from a future that doesn’t exist yet and let her decide whether it’s one she’s willing to face with you.”

Spencer stared at him for a long moment before quietly shaking his head.

“Telling her doesn’t change genetics.”

Morgan’s expression softened with something painfully close to pity, but before either of them could say another word, Penelope’s voice carried brightly through the house, cutting effortlessly through the heaviness that had settled over the living room.

“Dinner’s ready! And if you boys don’t get in here in the next thirty seconds, I’m declaring the garlic bread legally abandoned!”

Morgan exhaled through his nose, a sound that might have been a laugh under different circumstances, and pushed himself to his feet. As he passed, he rested a hand against Spencer’s uninjured shoulder, giving it one firm squeeze that lingered just long enough to say everything words no longer could.

“Think about what I said.”

Then he disappeared toward the kitchen, where the warmth of conversation swallowed him almost immediately.

Spencer stayed where he was, only for a few seconds.

Eventually, he stood, careful not to pull too hard against the stitches beneath the fresh bandage. His shoulder protested immediately, the sharp ache radiating down his arm as the lingering concussion left the room swaying almost imperceptibly around him. Under any other circumstances he would have catalogued the symptoms automatically because physical injuries had always obeyed rules, they announced themselves honestly and could be measured, monitored, predicted. Bones knitted. Skin scarred. Neurons recovered. Given enough time, the body almost always found a way to heal itself.

The human heart, he had learned too late, followed no such science.

By the time he reached the dining room, everyone had already slipped into the effortless rhythm they used to share every Sunday evening, as though years had collapsed into minutes while he had remained behind in another lifetime. Penelope was animatedly recounting how she had apparently searched five different cabinets for serving bowls that had been sitting directly in front of her the entire time, accusing the kitchen itself of malicious intent while Morgan laughed so hard he nearly dropped his fork trying to defend the cabinetry. You sat across from her shaking your head with that helpless, affectionate smile you had never quite managed to hide whenever Penelope committed herself wholeheartedly to complete nonsense.

Nobody realized Spencer had stopped in the doorway.

So, for a brief moment, he simply watched.

The dining room glowed beneath the warm light suspended above the table. Steam curled lazily upward from the food Morgan and Penelope had brought, carrying the scent of roasted garlic, rosemary, butter and fresh bread through the house. Someone reached across the table for the pepper. Glasses clinked gently together.

It was ordinary.

Ordinary in the quiet ways that had once made Spencer believe this life could never disappear. There had been a time when he assumed evenings like this would simply continue indefinitely, accumulating one after another until they became decades.

Oh.

Then you looked up.

The moment your eyes found him, you smiled automatically, the expression arriving before thought ever had the chance to intervene. Without interrupting your conversation with Penelope, your foot hooked gently around the empty chair beside you, pulling it away from the table just enough that he wouldn’t have to wrestle with it using one injured arm. It was an almost invisible movement, so absentminded that no one else even noticed it had happened.

Spencer did.

Because he remembered the first time you had done it when he had thanked you.

You had laughed and told him that married people eventually stopped thanking each other for things like that because love, after enough years, stopped announcing itself. It became instinct and lived in gestures so ordinary they disappeared almost as quickly as they happened. A mug of tea already waiting before the other person realized they wanted one. Picking up their favorite cereal during grocery shopping without checking the pantry first. Straightening a crooked tie in the middle of a conversation neither of you would remember the next day. Sliding out a chair because your body had memorized someone else’s comfort long before your mind thought about it.

Love had never lived inside declarations, it had always hidden itself inside habit.

His chest tightened so suddenly it became difficult to tell whether the ache came from grief or from the bruising beneath his ribs.

Because your body remembered him, even after everything.

You were still quietly dividing the food into portions before anyone asked. Still passing Morgan the pepper without him reaching for it because you knew he’d want it eventually. Still carefully avoiding the mushrooms on Penelope’s plate because she insisted she hated them unless they were chopped so finely she couldn’t identify them. Still noticing that Spencer’s glass was empty before he’d realized it himself, your hand already reaching for the pitcher without interrupting the conversation unfolding around you.

You had loved people for so long that kindness had become involuntary.

You had loved him for so long that caring for him still happened before you remembered you weren’t supposed to anymore.

Only then did Spencer move, lowering himself carefully into the chair beside you. The movement pulled uncomfortably against the stitches beneath the fresh bandage, but before he had even settled completely, you had already turned toward him.

“Does your arm hurt?”

The question was so simple that it almost undid him.

Not Why did you leave me? Not Why wasn’t I enough? Not Did you ever stop loving me? There was no accusation hidden beneath your voice, no bitterness sharpened into politeness, no attempt to collect the explanations you had deserved two years ago and never received. You looked at him with nothing more complicated than concern, as though the first thing that mattered after everything that had happened was whether he was in pain.

He wondered, with a guilt so profound it bordered on unbearable, how someone whose heart he had broken so completely still instinctively reached for his wounds before her own.

For as long as Spencer could remember, his life had been governed by a single certainty: every mystery surrendered eventually to knowledge. Every impossible equation possessed an answer whether humanity had discovered it yet or not. Every cipher could be broken, every pattern understood, every unanswered question yielded eventually to enough intelligence. It was the principle that had shaped him long before the FBI, long before profiling. When his mother became ill, he had met terror the only way he knew how. He had read every paper ever published on schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s, memorized neurological pathways until he could sketch them from memory, devoured clinical trials, inheritance models, molecular studies, experimental therapies. He had learned languages simply because another country’s research might contain a sentence no one had translated yet. Somewhere, he had believed it with the stubborn conviction only geniuses and desperate sons possessed, there had to be an answer hidden inside enough information.

There wasn’t.

For the first time in his life, Spencer Reid had found a problem intelligence could not solve. No theorem could rewrite a strand of DNA. No probability model could bargain with heredity. No amount of brilliance could negotiate with fear. And somewhere between trying to outrun a future that might never come, he had forgotten the one variable he had never had the right to remove from the equation.

You.

His eyes drifted almost involuntarily toward your left hand as you reached across the table for the bread basket, your fingers brushing absentmindedly against Morgan’s before apologizing with a smile that came as naturally to you as breathing.

The ring was gone.

He had been the one who slipped it from your finger in a lawyer’s office that smelled faintly of coffee and old paper, convincing himself that every signature he placed on those documents was another act of love. He remembered how cold your hands had been that day. He remembered noticing the pale indentation the band had left behind after years against your skin and wondering, absurdly, how long it would take for it to disappear.

He knew now.

Two years.

Long enough for the mark to fade, but not nearly long enough for the absence to stop hurting.

Yet memory betrayed reality with effortless precision. And for one impossible heartbeat he saw the gold band exactly where it had belonged, catching the warm dining room light as you laughed over something Penelope had said, your fingers colliding with his while both of you reached for the last piece of bread. He remembered saving part of every paycheck because nothing displayed beneath those jewelry store lights had ever seemed worthy enough of you. He remembered visiting three different shops before finding the one you had insisted was “far too expensive,” only for you to burst into tears when he opened the little velvet box because, in your own words, it looked like forever.

Forever.

Such a deceptively simple word.

Such an impossible promise.

For someone who had built his entire identity around certainty, forever should have been the easiest concept to reject. There was no mathematical proof for permanence. Entropy alone guaranteed that everything eventually unraveled. Stars exhausted themselves. Languages died. Civilizations disappeared beneath the earth. Every statistical model pointed toward impermanence.

And yet…he had believed in forever the moment you slid that ring onto your finger.

Not because the odds supported it.

Because you did.

The laughter around the table continued uninterrupted. Morgan was insisting he’d only taken one potato while Penelope accused him of crimes against carbohydrates with the theatrical indignation only she could manage. You quietly reached across the table to refill Spencer’s glass without asking if he wanted more water, your hand finding the pitcher almost before he’d realized it was empty. It was such an ordinary gesture that no one else noticed.

You had loved him for so long that your body still remembered him, even when your heart had every reason to forget. And that, more than anything Morgan had said, became the realization Spencer could not survive.

Because the future he had spent two years trying to protect you from had never arrived. Instead, he had created one infinitely crueler.

He had feared a disease that might one day make him forget the woman he loved, so he had left while he still remembered her perfectly.

As conversation carried on around him and warmth filled every corner of the room, Spencer found himself wondering whether every great tragedy began the same way: not with cruelty, nor hatred, nor even the absence of love, but with one terrified person convincing themselves that destroying something beautiful today was kinder than risking its loss tomorrow.

He had spent years believing the cruelest inheritance his family carried was written into its genes.

He knew better now.

Fear could be inherited too.

And unlike every illness he had ever devoted his life to understanding, this one had no treatment, no trial, no cure waiting somewhere inside another language, another country, another forgotten journal article.

Because this disease had never lived inside his blood, it had lived inside a single decision and he would carry its symptoms for the rest of his life.

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She had been stripped of her modern jeans and threadbare canvas sneakers, discarded and left in a crumpled pile by the rotting doorframe. In their place, her cold, rigid limbs were shrouded in a coarse, unbleached linen gown that scraped against her skin like sandpaper. Her body bore the red, blistering chemical burns of lye and sulfur, a violent attempt to scorch away the perceived filth of the modern world. She had been arranged with meticulous, terrifying reverence upon a hand-carved oak altar, her fingers woven together across her sternum, her dead, unblinking eyes forced wide open to stare through a hole in the collapsed roof toward the thick canopy of weeping willow and moss above. Her killer had offered her up, a corrupted sacrifice framed by a warped, extreme interpretation of Levitical purity laws.

–

When the BAU’s two black SUVs rolled through the rusted iron archway that marked the limits of Oakhaven Fen the heat hit like a wet velvet curtain. The town was an eerie, suspended breath of a bygone era. Women in ankle-length, dark cotton dresses stood on porches, their hair bound tightly in severe knots, watching the government vehicles with eyes devoid of warmth. Men in sweat-stained linen shirts and braces paused their work, their faces hard and lined like dry riverbeds. There were no brightly coloured signs, no radios playing or any sound except the heavy thrum of cicadas. The atmosphere was stale, suffocating, and swaddled in an isolationist paranoia that felt less like a rural town and more like a frozen cult compound.

Inside the cramped, wood-paneled Sheriff's station, the team gathered around a weathered oak table. Aaron Hotchner’s jaw was set as he pinned the crime scene photos to a corkboard, while Jason Gideon stood off to the side, his gaze drifting toward the window to watch the silently staring locals outside. 

“The local authorities are overwhelmed, but more than that, they’re uncooperative,” Hotch said, his tone low. “They don’t view these girls as victims of a serial predator, but as sinners who brought judgement upon themselves.”

“They’re leaning heavily on Leviticus,” Spencer murmured, his fingers gently tracing the edge of an autopsy photo without touching the burned skin. “Specifically the purity rituals of Leviticus 15, cross-referenced with nineteenth-century holiness movement literature. The use of lye for ritualistic washing, the unbleached linen, it’s an attempt to force a physical state of sinlessness before death. To the unsub, he isn't committing murder. He believes he’s performing an act of mercy.”

“Mercy?” Morgan raised his eyebrows, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, his eyes dark with disgust. “The second girl was nineteen, Reid. She was scrubbed raw while still breathing.”

You stood beside Spencer, your shoulder brushing against his rough, tweed sleeve. You could smell the distinct, comforting scent of his sweet coffee, and fresh cedar that always seemed to cling to him, a stark contrast to the thick, metallic tang of swamp humidity slipping through the screen door. You reached down, adjusting your FBI badge at your hip, acutely aware of the eyes watching you from the front desk, the local deputy hadn’t stopped glaring at your trousers, your badge, or your exposed forearms since you walked in. 

“We need to speak to the local spiritual leader,” Gideon said, turning from the window. “A community this closed off doesn’t move without its shepherd.”

That shepherd was Pastor Silas Thorne. 

You found him behind the First Covenant Chapel, a whitewashed building whose bell tower leaned slightly toward the swamp. Thorne was a tall, gaunt man with knuckles like gnarled oak roots, and milky blue eyes that never seemed to fully focus. As you, Spencer and Morgan approached, the pastor didn’t pause his work. He continued splitting logs with a heavy iron wedge, the rhythmic thunk echoing through the heavy air. 

“You bring the noise of the outside world to the quiet valley,” Thorne said, his voice a deep, gravelly rasp that seemed to vibrate in his chest. He set the axe down and wiped his brow with a graying rag, his eyes lingering on you with a cold, piercing disgust. “A world of corruption. Of loose garments and brazen women.”

“We’re here to find out who tortured and killed Mary-Anne Miller and Sarah Smith, Pastor,” Morgan said, stepping slightly in front of you, his posture radiating a controlled warning. “We’re not interested in a sermon.”

Thorne’s thin lips curled into a mirage of a smile. He looked directly at you, stepping closer until the stench of old tobacco and bitter herbs radiated off him. “The scripture teaches us that the foot of the rebellious woman leads down to death. Those girls… they strayed into the deep woods. They painted their faces, cast off modesty. They tasted the filth of the cities. What befell them was the harvest of the seed they sowed. A righteous cleansing.”

Spencer stepped forward, his tall frame awkward but firm as he subtly shifted himself into Thorne’s line of sight, effectively shielding you behind himself and Morgan. “Leviticus 20:27 speaks of judgement, Pastor, but the early American purity cults of the 1880s warped those passages to justify human sacrifice, a heresy condemned by every major Christian synod of the era. Are you preaching heresy to your congregation, Mr Thorne?”

Thorne’s eyes flicked to Spencer, a sudden, dangerous flash of heat crossing his pale face. “I preach the word, young man. Pure and unrefined. And those who walk in brazen arrogance,” he looked past Spencer’s shoulder towards you again, “will find the fire catches them soonest.”

The hostility only deepened as the afternoon wore on. As the team split up to interview the townspeople, the reception was universally stone cold. Leaving the churchyard behind you, you paired up with Emily to canvas the town’s main dirt thoroughfare, hoping to find anyone willing to speak off the record. 

The heat felt thicker now, pressed down by the gray storm clouds gathering on the horizon. The dirt under your boots was soft and powdery, kicking up fine dust that clung to your clothes. As you and Emily walked, the silence of the town felt violent. Doors snapped shut at the sound of your footsteps on the wooden boardwalks. 

“Notice how no one here looks us in the eye?” Emily muttered under her breath, her hands tucked casually into her jacket pockets. “It’s not just distrust of federal agents. It’s fear. They’re terrified of stepping out of line.”

“Or terrified of Silas Thorne,” you said, glancing toward an old woman sitting on a porch. The woman snapped her bible shut, spat on the dusty floorboards and ducked inside, locking the door with a loud iron latch. You sighed, turning back to Emily. “He’s a classic narcissist with a messiah complex.”

“He fits the profile,” Emily said, her brow furrowed as she scanned the empty street. “High dominance, absolute control over his flock, deep-seated misogyny masked as following the word of the Lord.”

“Did you see the callus on his thumb?” You asked, Emily shook her head. “That’s from carving. He could easily be the one making those altars. When Spencer called him out on the heresy, he didn’t argue the theology. He made a threat. He stared right at me and talked about fire catching the brazen ones.”

Emily inhaled deeply, her voice dropping as two men in sweat-stained shirts crossed the street ahead, staring at your badges with open malice. “He wants to punish women who break his mold. The victims were trying to leave Oakhaven. Thorne couldn’t let them take his authority away. Killing them, cleansing them… it re-establishes his total control over the town.”

You approached a small library, stepping up onto the porch. An elderly man sweeping the wooden steps immediately stopped, clutching his broom like a weapon. “Excuse me, sir,” you said gently, holding up your badge. “We’re investigating the deaths of Sarah Smith and Mary-Anne Miller. Did you notice anyone near the old chapel-”

“A foolish woman seeketh her own destruction,” the man interrupted, his voice cracking like dry leaves. He glared past you, his eyes locking onto Emily, then sliding down to your badge. “Pastor Thorne warned us the pestilence would wear the skin of pride. The Lord sees your unbowed heads. You tread on holy ground with filth on your soles.”

“Sir, two young women from your town were murdered,” Emily pressed, taking a half-step forward, her voice hardening. “A killer is walking these streets.”

“The killer is the sin inside them!” The man spat, slamming the broom down onto the porch with a crack that made it vibrate. He leaned in, his yellowed eyes wild and unblinking. “The Pastor spoke the truth from the pulpit on Sunday. The judgement shall scrub the land until the flesh is white as wool. You keep walking these roads, girl, and you’ll find yourself lying on the altar right alongside them.” 

He backed into the library and slammed the heavy oak door in your faces, throwing the deadbolt on with a heavy clunk. You and Emily stood on the porch for a moment, the heavy silence settling over you again.

“Charming,” Emily muttered. “They’re totally indoctrinated. Thorne has them convinced that these murders are divine interventions.”

“He’s feeding them the exact rhetoric used at the crime scenes,” you said. “The lye, the linen, the white wool… Thorne isn’t just preaching this stuff, Emily. He’s weaponising it. He’s directing the violence.”

You reached the steps of an old carpenter’s workshop. Inside, the air was cooler than the heat outside, but it carried a different kind of heaviness, stale, thick with the scent of unrefined lard and cedar shavings. As you and Emily stepped over the threshold, a bell clinked dully above the door. Sitting at a low workbench in the corner, illuminated only by the tim, sickly yellow light filtering through a dust-crusted window, was a man with narrow shoulders and hollow, sunken cheeks. He was working with a heavy drawknife, peeling long, smooth curls of pale wood from a block of solid oak. His movements were smooth, practiced, and rhythmically quiet.

"Excuse us," Emily said, her tone professional, though her eyes immediately swept the quiet room. "FBI. We're looking to ask a few questions."

The man didn't jump. He didn't even drop his knife. He simply slowed his hand, letting the steel blade rest against the raw wood, before slowly raising his head. His eyes were a muted, clouded blue, wide and strangely unblinking.

"Mmm," he hummed. His voice was shockingly soft, almost gentle, contrasting sharply with the harsh, rasping venom of the other townspeople. "You shouldn't be out in this heat. The air is sour today. It turns things."

You stepped forward, your boots clicking softly on the floorboards. "We're investigating the deaths of Sarah Smith and Mary-Anne Miller. We're asking if anyone saw anything unusual near the old chapel grounds over the last few days."

At the mention of Sarah's name, the man's fingers tightened just slightly on the wooden handles of his blade, the knuckles turning white.

"Sarah was a fragile girl," he said, his tone flat, devoid of grief, yet laced with a peculiar, unsettling reverence. "Her mind was easily clouded by the weeds of the road. People think she was lost... but she isn't lost anymore. She’s at peace now."

You narrowed your eyes, taking in his physical presence. His shirt was a plain, unbleached cotton, tucked neatly into rough canvas trousers, but his hands were deeply stained, grimy slate-gray around the cuticles, the skin dry and cracking from harsh chemicals.

"You knew her well?" you asked, taking a careful step closer to his workbench.

"I'm her brother. Eli," he said simply. He didn't offer a hand, nor did he look away from you. His gaze drifted down from your eyes, lingering on the open collar of your shirt, then down to the leather holster at your hip. "Sarah used to wear bright things. Red ribbons. Blue glass beads. She thought they made her pretty. But bright things only attract the rot, don't they?"

A prickle of cold discomfort traced its way up the back of your neck. Unlike Pastor Thorne, who radiated loud, theatrical hostility, Eli radiated a deep, hollow stillness that felt far more dangerous.

"Eli, if you know anything about who hurt your sister, you need to tell us," Emily said, her posture shifting subtly as she read the odd energy in the room. "We want to catch the person responsible."

Eli let out a faint, breathy sound, a shadow of a laugh that barely made it past his lips. He picked up a handful of fresh oak shavings from his lap, letting them spill slowly through his rough fingers like coarse sand.

"Man doesn't hurt what God cleanses, Lady," Eli said softly, his eyes locking back onto yours. The intensity in his gaze was terrifyingly calm. "The river washes the mud from the stone. Is the river hurting the stone? No. It’s just making it white again. Preparing it for the sun."

He reached out with a thumb, gently touching a drop of raw, milky sap oozing from the carved wood, rubbing it between his stained fingers.

"You're very loud," Eli added, his voice dropping to a near-whisper as he stared at you. "The way you walk. The metal on your belt. You carry so much weight from the outside world. It must be very heavy... carrying all that rot around on your skin."

The hair on your arms stood straight up. He didn’t raise his voice, or quote scripture, there was no overt threat, just an absolute, unshakeable certainty in his hollow eyes that made your chest tighten with an instinctual warning.

"We're done here for now," Emily said sharply, her hand hovering near her belt as she picked up on the sudden, toxic atmosphere. She placed a subtle hand on your shoulder, gently pulling you back a half-step. "If you think of anything else, Eli, you let the Sheriff know."

Eli didn't answer. He simply picked up his drawknife again, setting the steel blade against the white oak.

As you turned to exit, you could feel his clouded blue eyes tracking your every move, watching the sway of your dark trousers and the flash of your badge until the screen door clicked shut behind you.

Out on the porch, Emily rubbed her temples, exhaling a long breath. "Lovely town. That guy was creepy, but Thorne is still our primary. He’s feeding them the exact rhetoric used at the crime scenes, he’s directing the violence. We need to get Hotch to pull his records."

"I'm with you," you said, trying to shake the lingering feeling of Eli's stare. "If Thorne isn't holding the lye brush himself, he's holding the leash."

“She walks in the attire of a harlot,” a woman with sunken cheeks hissed at you from a garden gate, her fingers clutching a wooden rosary so tightly her knuckles were white. “The storm is coming to wash the plague. You’d do well to strip yourself of your pride before the wood takes you too.” 

You swallowed thickly, the warning seeming more like a threat. Emily took your elbow, guiding you away towards the street corner where the rest of the agents were gathering. “Ignore her.”

–

By late afternoon, the sky had turned a bruised, unnatural purple. The air pressure dropped so violently it made your ears pop. Seeking shelter from the rising wind, you and Spencer slipped into the porch of an abandoned general store at the edge of the woods. The wind rattled the loose tin roof above, creating a metallic roar that cut off the rest of the world. Rain began to fall in massive, heavy sheets, turning the dirt road into a churn of red mud. 

You leaned your back against the weathered wood, exhaling a long, shuddering breath. “I don’t like it here, Spence.”

Spencer turned to face you, adjusting his leather messenger bag strap over his shoulder. The dim, violet light of the storm caught the softer angles of his face. His eyes watched your fingers, picking at the skin around your nails. You were usually strong, these cases rolled off your back, but Spencer noticed the shift in your demeanor. He reached out, hesitating for a fraction of a second, before his long fingers gently touched your forearm, right where the cold air had raised goosebumps on your skin. 

“They’re living in a shared delusional system,” he said softly, his voice a quiet, grounding anchor amidst the howling wind. “It’s a defensive mechanism against the isolation and decay of the geography, but… You don’t have to listen to them.” He pushed, his brown eyes searching yours with an earnest, vulnerable intensity that made your heart skip a beat. “You’re strong, and you’re brilliant, and your presence here is saving lives. Don’t let them make you forget that.”

You looked up at him, the wind catching his hair, blowing a strand across his forehead. You gently reached up to move the curl back behind his ear, a faint blush creeping up his neck at the contact. “Thanks, Spence.” You said softly as your thumb moved to gently trail across his cheekbone, making his breath hitch as the pad of your thumb brushed underneath his eye. “Don’t know what I’d do out here without you.” 

His eyes softened into something tender, his head tilting into your touch for a moment, his mouth opened to say something more, his lips parting, an unguarded look in his eyes. A massive clap of thunder ruined the moment, shaking the very boards beneath your feet. 

“We should get back to the station,” Spencer said reluctantly, looking out at the sheet of gray rain as your hand fell from his face. “Hotch wants us to regroup before the roads flood entirely.”

–

The atmosphere at the station felt like a held breath, Spencer stepped in, holding the door for you when you paused. He turned to face you when the weight of the door didn’t ease on his hand. “What is it?”

“I left my notebook in the unit by the cemetery,” you said, already turning back to the steps. “Go ahead, I’ll be two minutes.”

“I’ll come with you,” he insisted immediately. 

“It’s twenty yards, Spence,” you offered him a small reassuring smile. “I think I can handle a puddle.” 

He hesitated, watching you for a second longer before nodding. “Two minutes. I’m counting.”

You darted off the porch, shielding your head with your jacket as you ran toward the lone SUV parked near the ancient, moss draped iron fence of the cemetery. The rain was deafening, blinding. You pulled open the passenger door, reaching across the console to grab the leather-bound logbook, and stepped back out into the rain. 

You couldn’t hear the footsteps over the roar of the storm. 

A heavy, burlap sack reeking of lye, stagnant water and old tallow was shoved violently over your head. Before you could draw in a breath to scream, a pair of thick, iron-strong arms pinned your elbows to your sides. A rag soaked in a sweet, suffocating chemical was slammed against your nose and mouth. You thrashed wildly, driving your heel back into your attacker’s shin, but the fumes invaded your lungs instantly, turning your limbs to lead and spinning the dark, stormy sky into complete blackness. 

–

“You’re alone.” Hotch glanced behind Spencer as he waited for you to make your entrance. There was a silence that hung heavy over Spencer’s head, one that was thick with regret. “I told you all specifically to not walk around alone.” He said, keeping his eyes on Spencer as he moved around him to push open the heavy wooden door to the tempest outside. Morgan followed. 

The driver's side door of the secondary vehicle was hanging wide open. The sight stilled them, Spencer followed out, his chest already twisting with guilt.

Your notebook was lying in a puddle on the red dirt, its pages rapidly drinking in the muddy rain.

Spencer called out your name as he rushed into the rain, his voice instantly tightening with panic as he sprinted toward the car. 

Silence, save for the violent roar of the wind through the cypress trees.

He dropped to his knees in the mud, his hands hovering frantically over your dropped radio and the fresh tread marks of a heavy, rusted farm truck spinning out into the dirt road. "Hotch! Morgan!" Spencer’s scream ripped through his throat, raw and terrified, barely recognisable as his own. "HOTCH!"

Within seconds, the BAU descended into chaotic, furious motion.

Inside the makeshift command post at the Sheriff's station, maps were slammed onto tables. Hotchner was on the satellite phone, his voice dripping with controlled, lethal authority as he demanded state police air support, despite the storm grounding most helicopters. Morgan slammed his fists down onto a wooden desk so hard a water glass shattered, his eyes bloodshot and wild as he paced the room like a caged predator.

"She’s been gone twenty minutes!" Morgan roared, turning on the local Sheriff, who sat quietly sipping coffee in the corner. "You have deputies on these roads! How does a giant government SUV get breached and an Agent dragged off without a single one of your men seeing it?!"

"The storm's heavy, Agent," the Sheriff drawled, unfazed. "Things go missing in the Fens when the water rises."

Morgan grabbed the front of the Sheriff's uniform collar, hauling the older man out of his chair until they were nose to nose. "You listen to me, you corrupt son of a bitch. If anything happens to her, there isn't a holy law in this swamp that's gonna protect you from me."

"Morgan! Back off!" Hotch commanded, grabbing Morgan's shoulder and forcibly pulling him back, though Hotch’s own eyes were burning with a cold, terrifying rage. "Threatening him doesn't find her. Reid, where are we?"

Spencer was standing over the topographic map of the county, his long fingers trembling so violently he had to press them flat against the paper to steady himself. His breathing was shallow, his hyper-analytical mind spinning into an agonising loop of worst-case scenarios and brutal timelines.

"The chemical used on the previous victims was a mixture of industrial lye and sulfur," Spencer stammered, his voice tight and raspy. "It takes... It takes approximately forty-five minutes to prep the ritualistic washing. If he follows the exact Levitical timeline of the previous two victims, he won't attempt the final offering until midnight... but the chemical burns... the lye destroys skin tissue within fifteen minutes of application..."

"Reid, breathe," JJ said gently, placing a hand on his back. Her own face was pale, tears pricking the corners of your eyes, but she kept her voice steady. "We are going to find her. Think. What is the profile telling us?"

"We were wrong," Gideon declared suddenly, stepping into the center of the room from the front window, his hands clasped tightly behind his back.

The room went dead silent.

Spencer whipped his head around, hair plastered to his forehead by rain and sweat. "What? Why? He matches the dominant profile, he threatened her-"

"Thorne is a narcissist, he wants an audience," Gideon said firmly, pointing toward the window where Pastor Thorne was currently standing on the church steps across the street, calmly watching the storm. "Look at him. He’s enjoying the chaos. He preaches on the porch, he confrontationally defends his doctrine because he craves power over the living. But this offender is covert. He operates in the deep shadows of the flood zones. He doesn't want power over a living congregation, he wants to present dead, immaculate offerings to God."

"Thorne is the catalyst. The spark," Hotch realised, his jaw tightening. "The unsub is someone who lives in absolute, total submission to the doctrine, someone who thinks he's the unseen, humble instrument."

"Eli Smith," Emily breathed.

Spencer’s eyes widening as a cascade of facts locked into place. "Sarah’s brother! You talked to him…” 

Emily nodded gravely. “He works for the parish drainage board, he knows every abandoned structure in the swamp. He’s a woodworker. He built the oak altars. He has access to the carpenter's shop, the lye, the unbleached linen...He wasn't acting out of grief," Emily said, her hands flying to her mouth as horror dawned on her face. "When we interviewed him, he spoke about Sarah like she was... like she was clean now… He looked at her clothes, her belt... he said she was carrying rot on her skin."

"He's consecrating them," Spencer whispered, a tear finally spilling over his lash line. "He thinks he's saving her. Where would he take her? Where is the highest, most isolated consecrated ground?"

He slammed his hand down on the map, his thumb hovering over a faded blue landmark buried deep in the green expanse of the marsh. "The old sunken chapel. St. Jude's in the Fens is already flooded, but there's a twin site built by the same settlement in 1888, the Chapel of the Seven Wounds. It's built on a hill inside the basin. It’s accessible only by the drainage access roads he maintains!"

"Load up," Hotch barked, unholstering his weapon to check the chamber. "We move. Now."

–

Meanwhile, miles away inside the gloom of the Chapel of the Seven Wounds, consciousness returned to you in agonising stages.

The air was heavy with the reek of burning tallow, heat radiating from dozens of candles ringing the hand-carved altar. You opened your eyes to find yourself strapped down, your wrists bound tightly with hemp rope to iron rings embedded in the oak block. You were stripped of your clothes, wearing the same unbleached linen gown as the other victims. The lye paste already smeared across your neck and collarbone bit into your skin like hundreds of hot needles.

Eli Smith towered over you, his eyes wide with a terrifying, ecstatic devotion as he carefully mixed a bowl of white chemical paste with a wooden spoon.

"You're awake," Eli murmured softly, setting the bowl beside your head. "Good. The soul must be present for the scrubbing. It loses its grace if the body sleeps."

"Eli..." you gritted out, forcing your voice through the chemical haze in your lungs. You looked up at him, focusing on keeping his attention locked on you, trying to buy every second possible. "Eli, listen to me. Your sister... Sarah... she didn't want this. She loved you. You don't have to carry out Silas Thorne's sickness."

Eli’s face contorted violently, a sudden, blinding rage flashing in his pale eyes before vanishing back into hollow calm. "Do not speak his name in this holy place. Pastor Thorne is a hypocrite. He talks of judgment, but he is weak, He lets the rot walk the streets. He let Sarah buy tickets for the bus. He let her laugh in the square."

"So you killed her to keep her from leaving?" you asked, gasping as a drop of lye splashed onto your shoulder.

"I saved her!" Eli said, leaning over you, his breath sour and hot against your face. "I washed her clean before the city could put its black marks on her soul. I placed her spotless before the throne… And now... now He gave me you. The boldest one. The one who carries the gun and speaks with the voice of men."

He picked up the boar-bristle brush, soaking it in the thick lye solution. "When I am finished scrubbing you, you will be white as wool. They will find you, and they will see what true purity looks like."

You pulled against the ropes with all your strength, the coarse fibers tearing into the skin of your wrists, blood slicking the wood. 

"Let the men come," Eli whispered serenely, bringing the bristled brush down hard against your exposed neck.

You screamed as the caustic paste seared through your flesh, tears streaming down your face as you fought against the unbearable heat.

"Scour the stain!" Eli began to chant, his voice rising over the howling storm outside as he scrubbed violently. "Scour the flesh until the spirit shines!"

"FBI! Don't move!" Hotch's voice boomed through the high-vaulted, burning room.

Eli froze, his wide eyes turning toward the entrance. Through the haze of candle smoke and rising heat, you saw Morgan and Hotch with their weapons drawn, taking point, with Gideon right behind. And behind them, his face pale with utter terror, was Spencer.

"Drop the weapon! Put your hands on your head!" Morgan roared, stepping around a cluster of burning tallow candles.

Eli looked down at you, then up at the agents. A sickly, triumphant smile spread across his face. "You cannot stop the consecration!" he said, his voice too calm for the current predicament.

With a sudden, violent sweep of his arm, Eli knocked a heavy iron candelabra containing dozens of open flames off the altar. It crashed into a stack of dry, resin-soaked pine firewood and ancient, dry-rotted velvet pews. The flames took instantly, hungry for oxygen, roaring up the walls in a terrifying wall of fire that completely severed the altar from the chapel entrance.

"Fallback! The roof is going to collapse!" Hotch shouted, grabbing Morgan's vest as a blazing cypress beam crashed down near the entrance, showering the room in sparks. "Reid, stay back!"

Spencer didn't hear him. Or rather, he completely ignored the direct order of his senior agent.

His eyes were locked on you, on your body bound to the oak altar, the red burns on your skin, the raw terror in your eyes as the flames began to lick at the edges of your linen gown.

"Spencer, NO!" Hotch yelled.

Spencer didn't hesitate. He threw his arms over his face and hurled his body directly through the wall of roaring fire.

He crashed onto the burning floorboards on the other side, his tweed jacket catching fire at the hem. He scrambled to his feet instantly, beating out the flames on his sleeve with his bare hands, his eyes wild as he sprinted to the side of the altar.

"I've got you, I've got you," Spencer sobbed out, his voice cracked with raw, unadulterated emotion. He pulled a heavy pocketknife from his trousers, his hands shaking violently as he worked the blade under the thick hemp ropes at your wrists.

Behind him, Eli lunged forward with the heavy iron wedge, his face contorted in rage, but a single shot echoed through the roar of the fire, Morgan had found a narrow angle through the smoke, dropping Eli to the floor.

The hemp rope snapped. You pulled your hands free, instantly reaching up to grab the lapels of Spencer’s singed jacket. He sliced through the ankle bindings in seconds, then gathered you up into his arms, pulling your trembling, chemical-burned body tightly against his chest.

"I have you," he whispered frantically into your wet hair, his body trembling violently against yours as heat roared around you both. "I've got you. You’re okay."

He hoisted you up, carrying your weight with a frantic strength you didn't know he possessed. He carried you through the blinding, choking smoke, dodging falling embers as Morgan and Hotch cleared a path through the burning structural debris, guiding you both out into the torrential, cool deluge of the Mississippi rain.

The air outside felt cold and shockingly pure.

The storm was beginning to pass, the heavy rain washing away the stink of lye and tallow from your skin. Paramedics immediately swarmed the area, placing a thick, warm blanket over your linen gown and tending to the chemical burns on your neck and arms with soothing ointment. Nearby, Eli Smith was being hauled into the back of a state trooper's cruiser in handcuffs, his lips still moving in silent, mad prayers. Pastor Thorne stood near the edge of the police perimeter, watched closely by Gideon, the pastor's authority completely shattered as the town watched his loyal follower led away in irons.

Spencer refused to leave your side. He sat on the back bumper of the ambulance right next to you, a blanket wrapped around his own singed shoulders, his hands raw, soot-stained, and blistered. The rest of the team was giving you both space, Hotch standing near the lead vehicle, watching Spencer with a quiet, knowing expression before turning to speak with the state troopers.

You sat shivering, staring down at your bandaged hands. "Spencer..."

He turned to look at you. In the faint, soft blue light of the emergency vehicles, his brown eyes were glossy with unshed tears. The usual calculated, analytical barrier he maintained was completely gone, shattered by the night's horrors.

"When I saw that car empty..." Spencer began, his voice barely louder than a whisper, trembling with an intensity that made your heart stop. "When I saw your notebook in the mud... my heart stopped. I couldn't process the statistics. I couldn't process the profile. All I could think was that the world couldn't exist without you in it."

He reached out, his soot-stained, trembling fingers gently taking your bandaged hand, holding it like something impossibly fragile.

"I.. I’m so sorry" Spencer said softly, leaning his forehead against yours, his warm breath fanning across your damp cheek. "I love you. I think I've loved you since the moment you walked into my life."

You looked at him, feeling the heat of his skin, the frantic, steady beating of his heart beneath your hands, and for the first time all night, the cold darkness of Oakhaven completely vanished.

And he hated every moment your eyes met when Morgan or someone else on the team teased the two of you about each other, as if sharing something unspoken.

He didn't hate it because it happened. Truthfully, he couldn't stop thinking about whenever that happened. It would keep him awake at night, till the sun came up, just thinking about you and everything he wanted to do.

He hated it because even after all those secret shared glances, after every case where you moved in sync with him, he wasn't the one you went home to. Instead, it was him, your horrible boyfriend who never seemed to care about you.

Instead of dinner dates, or trips to the bookstore on your day off, or even soft Sunday mornings where you just laid in bed, whispering sweet nothings to each other, he was always nowhere to be found. He canceled dates because of something "more important"; which usually meant his shitty friends invited him to go get wasted. Or, he was at some girl's apartment, or trashy hotel; because not to mention he was constantly cheating on you.

You didn't know, except for one incident at the start of your relationship; but, stupidly, you forgave him for it. Spencer knew about the others though. He asked Penelope to do a bit of digging on your boyfriend, only to find a bunch of hotel room charges, jewelry that definitely wasn't for you, and countless charges at bars in the city.

He knew he should've brought it up to you. It would've felt good to rub it in your boyfriend's face that you knew all that he was up to and dumped his moronic ass for it.

Spencer even indulged himself in the fantasy of telling you everything and somehow ending up back in his apartment. Your clothes would be strewn about his room, mixed in with his things; as he laid you down softly onto his mattress. Your body on his sheets as he trailed wet kissed down your body. He would take care of you in the way he knew your useless boyfriend never did. Even after he’d admire you sleeping softly in his bed, holding you till you woke up. Then he'd make you breakfast, not leaving your side till you inevitably had to part. And even then he'd keep going back to you for more, always taking care of you when you needed to be.

And yet, he couldn't bring himself to tell you. There was something about the chance hurting you by telling you that kept him from doing so.

He knew it was stupid and even Penelope had ridiculed him for it, rather hypocritically though, since she knew. Although she claimed it was Spencer that caused her to be part of that mess, so he had to be the responsible one and tell you.

Still he couldn't muster the courage to do so. He continued to listen to vent about your boyfriend's latest behavior. Pretending to be interested, when really he was fighting the urge to show you how you should actually be treated.

The worst incident of this had to have been when you were working a case in some dingy small town. The unsub was kidnapping women—big shocker—their bodies turning up within three days. The team had been working on the case for two days, close to finding the unsub. They had Garcia looking through files while the rest of the team was told to return to the hotel and get some rest.

Usually, it was a relief for Hotch to let everyone return their hotel rooms, except when the hotel's air conditioning was broken in the middle of summer. The rooms felt sweltering even with the fans the staff had placed in each room.

You'd been looking through your files, trying to make any last minute connections before heading to bed for the night. Or, at least you tried to. Your head felt foggy, making you unable to focus well. Your boyfriend had called you drunk, babbling some nonsense. You thought it was cute that when he was drunk he was still thinking about you, until you heard some random girl's voice calling out for him. A pit settled in your stomach that just wouldn't go away. You tried convincing yourself you had nothing to worry about.

But not even the most gullible of people would truly believe that. This had happened before, so it wasn't impossible. That only made you question if he was actually as faithful as he had promised to be.

You tried to push the thoughts out of your head. You busied yourself organizing your files till you noticed one was missing. You tried to remember where you misplaced it. It wasn't in your bag, or on the hotel desk. You mentally retraced your steps, thinking you might've left it in the precinct.

You then remembered how you lent it to Spencer to look at when he asked to borrow it for a moment. He must've forgotten to give it back and still had it.

It wasn't too late into the night and usually Spencer was still awake at this time. You slipped out your room, making your way down the hall before knocking on his door.

You heard his footsteps on the other side of the door before he opened it. He was still wearing his work clothes, only he had taken off his sweater vest, leaving him in just his button down that had the top couple buttons undone. His tie hung loosely around his neck, having been also undone. His hair looked tussled, as if someone had just ran their hands through it.

You froze for a moment, unable to tear your eyes away from him. There was just something so enticing about how vulnerable he looked. Spencer was always very put together. With his perfectly curated crisp button ups, making sweater vests and ties, with his perfectly groomed hair. Getting to see him look so undone made your heart flutter and warmth spread to your face, as if this was something scandalous you shouldn't have been allowed to lay your eyes on.

It took you a moment before remembering that he was just your coworker, who you should definitely not be looking at like that. He was just your friend at most, who had no reason to make your entire body shudder at just the sight of him.

"Do you need something?" he asked, clearing his throat.

He hadn't noticed your staring as he was too busy doing the same to you. Not that you noticed either.

"Uh," you stuttered, trying to regain your thoughts, "yeah, I was wondering if you still had that file I let you borrow earlier?"

He paused for a moment, looking into his room, noticing the stray file he had packed into his bag.

"I do actually," he told you, opening the door wider to allow you in.

You took a couple steps into his room before he closed the door behind you. He brushed past you, sending shivers down your spine. He picked up the file, handing it to you.

It was truly a simple interaction that should only have taken a couple seconds. And yet, you couldn't bring yourself to step out of his room, and he couldn't bring himself to let go of the file.

He couldn't stop staring at you. Normally, you'd never appear in front of another agent in nothing but a tank top and rather short shorts, but the lack of air conditioning had a role to play in your outfit choice. He'd seen you a couple times in your pajamas, or comfier clothes, but never in something that showed off so much skin. He knew you were gorgeous, but to him that word felt like an understatement, and maybe even an insult. All he wanted to do was slide off your shirt and shorts, feeling every inch of your body before covering it in wet kisses.

Instead he was stuck having to remind himself you unfortunately had a boyfriend.

"T-thanks," you stuttered out, your gazes locked on each other.

"It's no problem," he said, his voice rather harsh.

He took in the rest of your appearance, studying your face. Your eyes looked devoid of something, as there was something fogging them up. He noticed the slight fading redness around your eyes, as if you'd been crying. He noticed every detail, coming to the conclusion that something had happened before you walked into his room.

He wanted to ask you what happened, letting you sit next to him on his bed as he held you. You'd explain everything and he'd kiss away the tears that fell from your eyes, placing delicate kisses on the corners of your mouth till he got you to smile again. He wanted to hold you in his arms, running his hands through your hair, whispering in your ear that everything would be okay.

Instead he had to settle for just asking you what was wrong as your gaze fell to the ground.

"I-it's nothing," you stammered, unable to look him in the eye.

He knew you better than anyone, especially your own boyfriend, immediately knowing something was very wrong.

"Don't lie to me," he said, his voice low.

"I don't want to burden you."

"You won't, I'll be more burdened if I know something's wrong and I can't help you."

At that moment he felt a bit of confidence and tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear. Your face immediately felt on fire by his gentle touch.

You let out a deep breath before speaking.

"My boyfriend called me," that was all you said, yet it was enough to anger Spencer, "he was drunk and then I heard some girl calling his name, and I don't know what happened, but I hung up, and I can't stop thinking about it."

Your voice trembled as you spoke. Spencer was a mess of emotions. On one hand he felt angry at your boyfriend for his constant infidelity; but on the other hand he felt sad for you, and all you were going through.

He threw the file onto the nearby bed before pulling you into his arms. He knew somewhere it most definitely crossed a line to hold his colleague, and someone who was "just a friend", so closely, but he didn't care.

"You don't deserve that," he whispered in your ear, stroking your hair softly.

You rested your head on his chest, letting him hold you closely. You knew this crossed a line, and your boyfriend would be mad if he ever found out. But, at this point who cares. He was already probably cheating on you, so was it really so bad to be in Spencer's arms at a very vulnerable moment?

"I know," you sniffled against his chest, trying to choke back your tears.

"You deserve someone who actually cares about you, and would never cheat on you, and can care for you however you need."

You lifted your head up off his chest slightly, as his hold around you loosened.

"Sometimes that feels like too much to ask for," you joked, thinking back to your past relationships.

Spencer looked down at you, using two of his fingers to lift your chin up to make your gaze meet his. He looked into your glossy eyes, his gaze soft.

"It shouldn't be," he told you, "you deserve all of that and more."

"That's sweet, Spence."

You were both quiet for a moment, looking into each other's eyes. Neither of you had noticed, but subconsciously you started to lean in closer. Spencer's hand had remained on your chin, pulling you in close, as his other hand delicately rested on your waist. Everything in your brain had shut off. All you knew was that Spencer was in front of you, with his hands on you, as he pulled you closer.

Your hands made their way up Spencer's chest as you were mere inches from your lips meeting his. You were so close to kissing Spencer when you realized.

Oh shit, you were about to kiss Spencer.

At the very last possible second you came to your senses, pulling back. You shook your head a bit, avoiding his gaze as you tried to push what happened very far back in your mind.

Spencer took a step back, also realizing what almost just happened. As much as he really wanted to kiss you, he knew it was wrong. You had a boyfriend anyway. Granted, he was already cheating on you, there was no reason to make you a cheater too.

"I should head to bed, probably," you said, clearing your throat.

You walked over to the bed, picking up the discarded file. Spencer paced around the room, fidgeting with his hands before stopping noticing you leaving the room.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, "goodnight, I'll see you in the morning."

You smiled at him before walking out his room. The second the door was closed you paused, taking a deep breath. Everything felt like too much, and was feeling more like something you'd deal with in the morning.

Once you had closed the door Spencer sat down onto the bed, running his hands through his hair. He never expected anything like that to happen. Sure, he'd imagined it, and hoped someday it would, but he kept telling himself it just wasn't plausible.

And yet, there you were. One move away from kissing him.

He couldn't shake the memory out of his head no matter how hard he tried. Nothing was going to make him forget what almost transpired in his room.

Both of you knew how bad this was. Not even just for your personal relationship with each other, or yours with your boyfriend. Fraternization was very frowned upon at the office, and if it messed with your job, you'd both no doubt get scolded and lectured by HR till everyone in the office knew what happened.

And yet, even though you both knew just how much that shouldn't have happened, you both couldn't stop thinking about what would've happened. Even worse, found yourselves wishing it had.

a/n i'd be willing to do another part (or multiple) if you guys want, also I was debating if i should have them kiss, or write smut for this, but i decided not to so that reader isn't technically a cheater, but if we want that i'd write it lowkey 👀

taglist ask to be added or removed

The briefing room at the precinct felt at least ten degrees hotter than it should have, as if someone had quietly dragged a second sun into the room and positioned it directly beside your face. The heat seemed to cling to your skin no matter what you did, sinking beneath your clothes and settling deep in your bones until even sitting still felt exhausting. It made no sense. Outside, New York was buried beneath a miserable gray winter afternoon. Through the narrow windows, you could see people hurrying down the sidewalks bundled in thick coats, scarves wrapped around their necks and gloved hands shoved into pockets. Everyone else in the room appeared perfectly comfortable. Morgan had his jacket on. Hotch hadn’t loosened his tie. Even the detectives looked like they were recovering from the cold.

Meanwhile, you felt like you were being slowly roasted alive.

Your jacket had been abandoned nearly an hour ago, draped over the back of your chair despite the winter weather. A cold can of soda rested against your palm, condensation gathering on the aluminum and dampening your fingertips. It was your second one of the afternoon. Everyone else was nursing cups of coffee, grateful for the warmth after coming in from outside. You couldn’t imagine drinking something hot without immediately passing out. The thought alone made you feel worse.

At the front of the room, one of the detectives continued outlining timelines, victim movements, and witness statements, his voice blending into the low buzz of fluorescent lights overhead. You tried to focus. You really did. Your pen moved across the page in front of you, creating the illusion of productivity, but the words seemed determined to slide out of your grasp before they could properly register. Every sentence entered one ear and disappeared out the other. You would catch the beginning of a fact, lose the middle, then suddenly realize the detective was already discussing something completely different.

You blinked hard.

The page in front of you blurred for a moment.

You blinked again.

The black ink swam slightly across the paper before reluctantly settling back into place.

Not ideal.

You lowered your gaze and rubbed your eyes discreetly, hoping nobody noticed. Maybe you were just tired. The team had been working long hours for days. Maybe you hadn’t slept enough. Maybe the flight had caught up with you. Maybe the hotel room’s heating system had turned your brain into soup.

Unfortunately, the growing ache behind your eyes and the uncomfortable wave of dizziness that followed every small movement of your head suggested otherwise. The pain had settled somewhere behind your forehead hours ago and had been slowly expanding ever since, pressing against the backs of your eyes until even concentrating felt like work. Every sound in the room seemed slightly too loud. Every fluorescent light overhead felt slightly too bright. You kept telling yourself it wasn’t a big deal, that you just needed food or sleep or five uninterrupted minutes of silence, but the excuses were becoming harder and harder to believe.

Across the table, Spencer Reid was staring at you.

Ugh.

At first, you had ignored it.

Spencer looked at people all the time. It wasn’t unusual. Sometimes he became so focused on whatever was happening inside his own head that he forgot basic social rules existed. He would accidentally stare at people while connecting information, analyzing behavior, or mentally cataloging details nobody else had even noticed. Occasionally he seemed so absorbed in his own observations that blinking appeared to become an optional activity.

Normally, you could tolerate it.

Today, however, was an entirely different situation.

Every single time you glanced up from your notes, Spencer was still looking directly at you.

His notebook sat open in front of him, several pages already filled with neat handwriting and observations from the case. Yet for the last several minutes, he hadn’t written a single thing. The detective continued talking from the front of the room, occasionally pointing at photographs pinned to a whiteboard. JJ interrupted every now and then with a question. Gideon sat near the head of the table, listening with the kind of quiet intensity that made everyone else in the room unconsciously lower their voices.

And through all of it, Spencer kept watching you.

Each time your eyes accidentally met his, you immediately looked away again, forcing your attention back toward the pages in front of you with exaggerated determination. Your pen continued moving across the paper, creating the illusion that you were taking detailed notes, but the truth was that half of what you were writing made absolutely no sense. You scribbled random words. Circled information that wasn’t important. Underlined things that didn’t need underlining. At one point, you were fairly certain you wrote the same victim’s name three separate times without realizing it. The letters seemed to blur together every time you looked down, swimming slightly across the page before settling back into place. Between the pounding headache building behind your eyes and the uncomfortable heat radiating through your entire body, concentrating on the briefing felt like trying to solve a puzzle underwater.

Your plan was simple: ignore Spencer long enough and eventually he’d lose interest.

It was a solid theory.

Unfortunately, it was also proving completely useless.

An entire minute passed. The detective at the front of the room continued discussing timelines and victimology while photographs shifted beneath the beam of a projector. Chairs creaked occasionally. Someone turned a page. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Through all of it, Spencer’s gaze never seemed to move.

You reached for your soda again, wrapping your fingers around the cold aluminum can and lifting it to your lips. The icy carbonation offered brief relief as it slid down your throat, momentarily cooling the uncomfortable warmth that seemed determined to consume you from the inside out. For a few precious seconds, it actually helped.

Then you lowered the can.

And Spencer was still staring.

At this point, you could practically feel it. His attention sat between your shoulder blades like a physical weight, impossible to ignore no matter how hard you tried. Most people knew how to look away when they got caught staring. Most people at least pretended to be interested in something else.

Spencer apparently did neither.

Finally, unable to tolerate it any longer, you lifted your head and looked directly across the table.

Big mistake.

He wasn’t even pretending to pay attention to the detective anymore.

The realization made you release a slow breath through your nose.

“Do I have something on my face?” you asked, the question coming out more tired than annoyed.

Your hand automatically wrapped around the soda can again, pressing the cool metal against your palm in a desperate attempt to lower your body temperature by sheer force of will. Condensation dampened your fingers, but you barely noticed.

At the front of the room, the detective paused for a moment, distracted by the interruption, before awkwardly attempting to continue his explanation.

Unfortunately, your question had already attracted attention.

A lot of attention.

You watched Morgan glance over immediately from the other side of the table. JJ looked up from her notes. One detective stopped writing entirely. Another subtly lowered the folder he had been pretending to read. Even Gideon’s eyes briefly lifted from the paperwork in front of him.

You resisted the overwhelming urge to crawl under the table and stay there until everyone forgot this conversation had ever happened.

Across from you, Spencer seemed completely unaware that an entire room full of people was now listening.

He leaned forward slightly, his brow furrowing as though he were carefully considering your question.

“No,” he said honestly.

For a moment, relief washed through you.

Then he continued.

“But you’ve been rubbing your eyes every five minutes.”

The statement landed in the middle of the briefing room with the same casual tone someone might use to mention that it looked like rain outside. There was no accusation in his voice. No judgment. No awareness whatsoever that what he had just said was an absolutely insane thing to admit in front of a room full of law enforcement officers.

You stared at him.

The detective stopped talking.

For a second, you were genuinely convinced the fever had finally become severe enough to cause auditory hallucinations.

“What?” you asked.

Spencer seemed to realize belatedly that his estimate might not have been entirely precise. He cleared his throat and adjusted slightly in his chair.

“Approximately,” he corrected.

You blinked once.

Then twice.

Trying to decide if this conversation was actually happening.

“You timed it?”

“No.”

The answer came immediately.

“You counted it.”

A tiny hesitation.

Then—

“Yes.”

Of course Spencer Reid had apparently spent part of an active homicide briefing keeping track of how frequently you rubbed your eyes.

A long groan escaped before you could stop it, and you let your head tip backward slightly toward the ceiling as if divine intervention might suddenly arrive and rescue you from this conversation. The movement proved to be a terrible idea. Almost immediately, dizziness swept through you, making the fluorescent lights overhead smear together into bright streaks before slowly settling back into focus. You squeezed your eyes shut for a moment, waiting for the room to stop tilting.

“I'm fine,” you said, forcing yourself upright again.

The words sounded weak even to your own ears.

Across from you, Spencer didn’t look convinced in the slightest.

In fact, he looked exactly the way he looked whenever a suspect presented an alibi that contradicted three witness statements, two security cameras, and basic common sense. His expression remained serious, thoughtful, and increasingly concerned as he watched you. The detective had resumed talking at some point, but Spencer seemed completely detached from the briefing now. There was a murderer being discussed. Evidence being presented. Investigative leads being explored.

Spencer ignored all of it.

His entire focus remained fixed on you.

“You’ve also been drinking significantly more cold soda than usual,” he said, pointing directly at the can in your hand as if presenting evidence in court.

You stared at him slowly, genuinely trying to decide whether this was impressive, concerning, or just deeply unfair. The soda was the only thing keeping you from feeling like you were slowly melting into the chair. The condensation had already soaked into your fingers, the cold metal pressed against your palm and wrist in a desperate attempt to cool you down whenever you thought no one was looking. The fact that Spencer had apparently been tracking that behavior, in real time, during an active homicide briefing, felt like a violation of privacy you hadn’t known you were entitled to until this exact moment.

“You’re tracking my beverages now?” you asked, your voice edged with exhausted disbelief rather than real anger.

Spencer didn’t hesitate for even a second.

“I notice patterns,” he replied, completely calm, as if that explained everything and should logically end the conversation.

It did not.

Before you could even begin to argue with that, his gaze shifted toward the back of your chair. You followed it instinctively and immediately spotted your jacket still hanging where you’d abandoned it nearly an hour ago when the room had started feeling like a furnace. Just looking at it made you feel warmer somehow, which was completely unreasonable and only deepened your irritation.

“And you’re not wearing your jacket,” Spencer added.

You let out a slow, tired exhale through your nose, already feeling the conversation slipping further out of your control. “So?” you said flatly, as if this was the most reasonable response in the world.

Spencer blinked at you, visibly thrown by the lack of concern in your tone.

“So?” he repeated, quieter now, like he genuinely couldn’t understand how that wasn’t self-explanatory.

“Yes,” you insisted, lifting your chin slightly despite the fact that your head immediately protested the movement. “So.”

A pause stretched between you, heavy enough that even the detective speaking at the front of the room faltered for a fraction of a second before continuing. Spencer leaned forward slightly, his expression tightening in that familiar way it did when he was about to say something that he considered obvious but everyone else somehow didn’t.

“It’s winter,” Spencer said, the words coming out with the same matter-of-fact certainty he used when reciting statistics or correcting factual inaccuracies. To him, that single observation seemed perfectly sufficient. Winter existed. Therefore, people wore jackets. Therefore, you should be wearing yours. The logic was apparently airtight.

You let out a frustrated breath through your nose and searched desperately for an explanation that sounded even remotely believable. Unfortunately, your brain felt as though it was moving through molasses. Every thought arrived three seconds later than it should have, and by the time you grabbed hold of one, another had already slipped away.

“It’s called…” you began, lifting your free hand in a vague gesture that was supposed to look confident and definitely did not. “It’s called me trying to show off my new sweater.”

The excuse sounded weak before you had even finished saying it.

Spencer’s expression didn’t change.

“No, it isn’t.”

The immediate certainty in his response was almost offensive.

You blinked.

“Yes, it is.”

“No.”

There wasn’t even a hint of hesitation. No consideration. No possibility that maybe, just maybe, you knew your own motivations better than he did.

You narrowed your eyes at him, irritation cutting through the haze of fever clouding your thoughts. “Spencer,” you warned, trying for something intimidating. Unfortunately, between the headache, the exhaustion, and the fact that you were currently losing an argument about your own sweater, it came out sounding more tired than threatening.

Spencer remained completely unfazed.

“You’ve had that sweater since the academy.”

You simply stared at Spencer while Spencer stared right back, completely serious, as though remembering exactly how long you'd owned a sweater was perfectly normal information for him to have stored away.

Then Morgan snorted.

The sound burst out before he could stop it, and you immediately pointed at him from across the table. “This is not your conversation.”

Morgan raised both hands in surrender, though the grin spreading across his face only widened. “I didn't say anything.”

“You made a sound.”

“I breathed.”

“You laughed.”

His grin turned shameless.

“I definitely laughed.”

Across the table, JJ looked suspiciously close to losing her own battle against amusement. One detective lowered his head toward his notes to hide a smile. Another suddenly became fascinated by a file folder. The briefing had now officially transformed into a spectator event.

Unfortunately, Spencer seemed completely unaware that anything about this moment had shifted in tone at all.

His attention never once drifted from you, not even briefly, not even in the reflexive way most people in a crowded briefing room would allow their focus to flicker between the case board and the people standing beside it. There was no hesitation in him, no social awareness pulling him back toward the present urgency of the investigation unfolding around them. Not toward Morgan, who had already started tapping his pen impatiently against his notepad. Not toward the detectives clustered near the wall, whispering among themselves as though they could collectively will the briefing to move faster. Not toward the increasingly exasperated officer who was still attempting to maintain control of the presentation.

Just you.

Spencer watched you with a level of sustained, almost unsettling concentration, the kind of focus that looked less like casual attention and more like he was actively working through a complex problem only he could see. His gaze didn’t waver, not even when the officer raised his voice slightly to redirect the room back to the case details pinned across the board. It was as if the entire investigation, with its photographs, timelines, and red-string connections mapping a serial offender’s movements across New York, had been pushed into secondary importance simply because something about you didn’t align with his expectations.

“You look flushed,” he said at last, as though continuing a line of reasoning he had already been silently developing. “And you haven’t touched your camera since we arrived.”

The words landed with a precision that made you want to disappear into the floor.

Of all the possible conclusions he could have drawn from watching you so closely, it had somehow narrowed down to that. Not the case. Not the urgency. Not the tension in the room or the weight of the victims’ files stacked in the officer’s hands. No, he had noticed the exact absence of your usual behavior, as if he had catalogued your habits with the same obsessive accuracy he applied to geographic profiling or behavioral patterns of unknown subjects.

The camera, of course, was sitting untouched inside your bag beside your chair, exactly where you had placed it the moment you arrived in New York. Normally it would never have stayed there for more than a few minutes. It would already be hanging from your neck, its strap worn in all the familiar places where your fingers habitually adjusted it without thinking. You photographed everything when the team traveled, almost compulsively, as Morgan liked to tease. Buildings with ornate facades that no one else bothered to look up at. Narrow storefronts with neon signs flickering in daylight. Street performers freezing in impossible poses mid-motion. Graffiti tucked into alleyways like hidden messages. Skyscrapers that turned the sky into something fragmented and reflective.

Morgan had once said—half-joking, half-amused—that if you were ever left alone in a new city for longer than five minutes, you’d come back with hundreds of photos and a lecture about why each one mattered. You had rolled your eyes at the time, but the truth was that the habit had become so automatic you rarely even noticed it anymore. It was simply how you moved through unfamiliar places: observing, capturing, holding onto details most people let blur together.

Apparently, everyone on the team had picked up on it.

More importantly, Spencer had noticed.

But before you could gather even the smallest fragment of an excuse, before you could redirect the conversation, deflect attention, or steer everyone back toward the far more important subject of a serial offender active in Manhattan, a quiet sound cut cleanly through the layered noise of the room.

Jason Gideon’s sigh.

It wasn’t theatrical. It didn’t demand attention the way Morgan’s comments sometimes did, or the way a raised voice from a detective could instantly fracture a room into silence. It was something much more controlled than that, resigned, almost weary in a way that suggested this wasn’t the first time he had seen a situation like this unfold, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. The kind of sigh reserved for stubborn witnesses who refused to cooperate, for agents who insisted they were fine when they clearly weren’t, for human beings in general who seemed determined to complicate their own lives unnecessarily.

For a brief moment, the entire briefing room seemed to shift its focus without anyone explicitly deciding to do so.

“You have a fever.”

Gideon didn’t phrase it like speculation. There was no upward inflection, no softness around the edges of uncertainty, no invitation for disagreement. It wasn’t a theory offered up to be debated, nor was it a question waiting for confirmation.

The certainty of it made the air feel heavier.

You blinked.

Once.

Then slowly turned your head toward him, as if doing so might change the meaning of what you had just heard.

“What?”

Gideon had already removed his glasses, folding them with deliberate care as if this entire exchange had been anticipated long before it ever reached language. He pressed two fingers briefly against the bridge of his nose, exhaling through it in a way that suggested patience worn thin in familiar patterns rather than genuine frustration. When he looked back at you, his expression wasn’t harsh, but it did carry that almost clinical kind of concern he reserved for situations where denial was clearly doing more harm than good.

“You have a fever,” he repeated.

For a brief second, you actually glanced over your shoulder as though Gideon’s accusation had been meant for someone else entirely, like there might be another, equally suspiciously unwell agent sitting somewhere behind you who had somehow escaped your notice. The idea didn’t fully form into logic, but it was enough to make you look anyway, scanning the room in a sluggish sweep that only confirmed what you already knew: there was no one else.

“I do not,” you said immediately, too quickly, as if speed alone could force reality to comply.

You glared at him with as much conviction as you could muster, which unfortunately was not nearly as much as you would have liked. The effort itself felt intact, your intent was there, but something about it didn’t quite translate cleanly into execution, like your thoughts were arriving half a second too late to fully anchor themselves in your body.

Gideon, for his part, looked completely unbothered.

Not offended. Not challenged. Not even mildly interested in your resistance in the way most people would be when contradicted. He simply regarded you with that steady, assessing calm that made it feel like arguing was less a disagreement and more a delay tactic he was patiently waiting to outlast.

Then he stood.

The movement itself wasn’t sudden or sharp. It was unremarkable in its simplicity, just the natural act of a man deciding to rise from his chair. And yet, in the context of everything else happening in your body at that exact moment, it landed with disproportionate weight. Something about it shifted the air in the room.

It felt like a scene from a horror movie where nothing technically threatening is happening yet but everyone in the audience already knows something irreversible has begun.

Not because Gideon was frightening. Not because he was aggressive or unpredictable.

But because of what he represented.

Because ever since you had joined the BAU, Jason Gideon had existed in your mind in a category that bordered uncomfortably close to myth. He was the profiler other profilers referenced. The man whose interviews were studied, analyzed, broken down into teaching material for people who wanted to learn how to see what others missed. The one who could sit in silence for minutes at a time and still seem more informed than anyone else in the room who had been talking nonstop.

Watching him stand now felt like watching a judge rise in court just before delivering a verdict that no one in the room was going to be able to appeal.

And you already knew, with an unsettling kind of certainty, that whatever came next was going to override your objections entirely.

“Come here,” he said.

Your head started shaking before you even fully processed the instruction.

“No.”

Gideon’s expression didn’t change. Not even slightly. If anything, the lack of reaction made it worse, like your refusal had simply been recorded, acknowledged, and filed away as irrelevant data.

“Come here,” he repeated.

“No.”

Your answer came out slightly weaker the second time, mostly because the room had started tilting again in a slow rhythm that made standing feel like a negotiation your body was no longer fully interested in participating in.

Across the table, Spencer’s attention flickered between you and Gideon with visible unease, like he had been unintentionally seated at the center of a conversation that had escalated far beyond his preferred category of “manageable social interaction.” His posture had gone rigid in that immediate, reflexive way it always did when he was unsure whether he was supposed to analyze, comply, or simply disappear entirely.

Unfortunately for him, and for you, by extension, Jason Gideon had already reached the point of no return in his internal decision-making process.

“Reid.”

Spencer straightened so quickly it looked almost involuntary.

“Yes?”

The single syllable carried the cautious hope of someone being called on in class when they were fairly sure they didn’t know the answer but were still praying the question would be gentle.

Gideon didn’t look at him when he spoke again. His focus remained fixed on you.

“Check her temperature.”

For a full second, your brain simply refused to process what it had heard.

“What?!” The protest came out immediately, before you could even begin to filter it into something more controlled or reasonable.

Across the room, several detectives suddenly developed a deep fascination with their paperwork. One of them lowered his head a little too quickly, as if the sudden urge to review case notes had struck him with alarming intensity. The officer at the front cleared his throat and pretended the wall behind Gideon was the most interesting object in existence.

Morgan, on the other hand, looked like he was one sentence away from losing the last of his composure entirely.

Spencer, meanwhile, looked genuinely horrified.

“I don’t have a thermometer,” he said, frowning slightly as though this detail might serve as a logical and sufficient objection capable of dissolving the entire situation on contact.

Gideon didn’t so much as glance at him.

“Then use your hand.”

You stared at Gideon.

Spencer stared at Gideon.

Morgan looked like he was physically restraining himself from laughing so hard he’d be removed from the building.

“Absolutely not.”

The words came out sharper than you intended but they didn’t carry nearly enough force to change anything in the room. If anything, they just seemed to confirm for Gideon that you were still conscious enough to object, which apparently wasn’t the same thing as being well enough to be listened to.

He ignored you completely.

It wasn’t as though you and Spencer had never touched before. That would have been impossible in a job like this, in a unit like this, where proximity was constant and personal space was often sacrificed in favor of urgency. You had bumped shoulders in narrow hallways, passed folders hand-to-hand mid-briefing, leaned in over shared case files until your elbows nearly overlapped on the same table. Once or twice, in chaotic moments, you had even grabbed his wrist or forearm to redirect his attention when he’d started spiraling too deep into a thought.

But those moments were accidents. Functional. Inconsequential.

Forgettable.

This...this was not that.

Deliberate physical contact, especially when it came to Spencer Reid, felt like something entirely different. Something that required awareness in a way that made your chest tighten a little just thinking about it. You knew how easily he flinched away from strangers who invaded his space too quickly, how his posture would subtly tighten when someone clapped him on the shoulder too hard or leaned in too close while speaking. You’d seen it before: the brief flicker of discomfort in his expression, quickly buried under politeness so practiced it almost looked automatic.

And you had always made a point of not being the source of that feeling.

Which was ironic, because your instinct for comfort had never been something you had to think about. Touch, for you, was natural. A hand on someone’s arm when they were stressed. A brief hug after a difficult case. Leaning into the presence of people you trusted without needing permission first. It was how you communicated warmth when words didn’t feel like enough.

With Spencer, you had always been careful.

Deliberately so.

Careful in a way that now felt painfully relevant.

“Reid,” Gideon said again, not raising his voice, not needing to. It wasn’t a request anymore, it was simply the next step in a process already in motion.

Spencer stood.

Slowly, like he wasn’t entirely sure his body had agreed to the decision.

“I—okay,” he said, though the uncertainty in his voice made it sound less like agreement and more like surrender.

A moment later, his hand lifted.

It hovered for the briefest second, just long enough to feel like an apology before contact even happened, and then came to rest gently against your forehead.

Careful.

As though you were something fragile that might react badly to pressure.

The effect on him was immediate.

His eyes widened.

“Oh.”

One syllable, but it carried enough weight to change the atmosphere in the room.

You went completely still.

Across the table, Gideon exhaled through his nose, a quiet sound that landed somewhere between confirmation and resignation.

“There it is,” he said simply.

Spencer didn’t move his hand right away. Instead, he looked at you with a kind of startled focus, like his brain had just recalibrated its entire understanding of the situation in real time.

“You’re really hot,” he said, plainly.

A beat of silence.

Then Morgan lost it.

“Hot, uh?” he repeated, already laughing.

And just like that, whatever remaining dignity the briefing room had been holding onto evaporated entirely, leaving you standing in the middle of it with Spencer’s hand still on your forehead and the sinking realization that you would never be able to exist in this room normally again.

***

The elevator ride passed in near silence.

Not because Spencer didn’t have anything to say.

Quite the opposite.

His mind had become a relentless machine the moment his hand brushed against your forehead outside the conference room. Every observation demanded a hypothesis. Every hypothesis produced three new questions before he had even answered the first. Elevated body temperature. Fatigue. Slowed motor responses. Mild photophobia. Viral infection? Influenza? Exhaustion combined with dehydration? He could practically see the information arranging itself into neat categories inside his head, every symptom filing itself beside statistics he had memorized years ago. Under normal circumstances he would have spoken through every possibility aloud, words tumbling out faster than anyone could comfortably process, connecting percentages to symptoms and symptoms to outcomes until someone—usually Hotch—interrupted him simply to make him breathe between sentences. But this wasn’t an interesting medical discussion or an intellectual exercise. This was you. And every time his eyes drifted toward your face, every carefully organized thought dissolved beneath a feeling he couldn’t categorize nearly as easily.

Still, the questions escaped him in fragments.

“Are you dizzy?” he asked quietly.

The words sounded oddly restrained coming from Spencer Reid, stripped of their usual breathless speed. They were almost tentative, as though asking too loudly might somehow make you feel worse.

You only managed the smallest shake of your head.

It wasn’t convincing. The movement came a heartbeat too late, slow enough that Spencer briefly wondered whether you had understood the question at all before realizing you were simply exhausted. Your neck seemed stiff, your expression tightening almost imperceptibly afterward as if even something as simple as moving your head had made it ache. Your eyelids lingered shut for a fraction longer than a normal blink before opening again, and Spencer stored the observation away despite wishing he could stop noticing things.

The elevator continued its slow descent.

A soft mechanical hum settled into the silence, accompanied by the distant groan of cables somewhere above the ceiling and the occasional vibration beneath your feet whenever the old machinery adjusted its weight. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead with that faint electrical sound Spencer had always hated. Fluorescent lighting distorted skin tone, flattened facial features, exaggerated shadows beneath the eyes. It wasn’t an accurate representation of someone’s health. He knew that. Statistically, hospital lighting often made perfectly healthy people appear pale.

Today, however, it wasn’t the lights.

They only made the truth impossible to ignore.

A few moments later—

“Do you think it’s influenza?”

A pause.

“Your temperature is probably above thirty-eight point five degrees Celsius if your skin felt that warm, and considering the average incubation period for—”

He stopped himself.

Again.

His mouth closed before the sentence could outrun his better judgment. His lips pressed together in a thin line as he looked over at you once more, immediately regretting it because somehow you looked even worse than you had thirty seconds earlier.

The fluorescent lights drained the remaining warmth from your complexion until your skin looked almost translucent. Wisps of hair clung stubbornly to your temples where the fever had left a sheen of perspiration, and faint shadows had settled beneath your eyes, darker than he’d ever seen them. Your shoulders had slumped forward just enough that your entire posture seemed borrowed from someone carrying invisible weight. Every few breaths your eyelids fluttered heavily, fighting against sleep with visible effort, and Spencer couldn’t decide which concerned him more: the fever itself or the obvious fact that your body had begun prioritizing rest over stubbornness.

You looked…small.

Not shorter. Not fragile.

Simply diminished. As though someone had quietly turned down the brightness that normally surrounded you, leaving only a tired outline behind.

And Spencer noticed all of it.

Which meant he noticed the subtle bend in your knees every time the elevator shifted beneath your feet. He noticed your fingers uncurling against your side before discreetly finding the wall for balance. He noticed how your breathing had become slower, heavier, and how every blink lasted just a little longer than the one before it. None of those things meant immediate danger individually.

Together they made his chest tighten.

Without consciously deciding to, his hand drifted toward the small of your back. He didn’t touch you, not yet, but he remained close enough that if your balance disappeared entirely, he’d catch you before gravity had the chance.

You noticed anyway.

Without even looking at him, a tired sigh escaped through your nose.

“I’m sick, Spencer,” you muttered, your voice roughened by fever until every word sounded softer than usual. “Not ninety.”

“I know.”

“…You keep looking at me like I’m about to collapse.”

“You almost fell asleep standing up.”

“I was resting my eyes.”

“You were blinking for seventeen consecutive seconds.”

You turned your head just enough to squint at him.

“…That’s not even possible.”

Despite everything, despite the pounding ache behind your eyes and the fever making your thoughts feel wrapped in cotton, the corner of your mouth threatened the smallest smile.

Spencer noticed that too.

It lasted less than a second.

The elevator doors finally slid open with a soft chime, and the quiet hallway beyond felt almost unnaturally still after the relentless noise of the precinct. No ringing telephones. No detectives arguing across desks. No Morgan making entirely inappropriate jokes at inappropriate volumes. No Garcia appearing out of nowhere with coffee and unsolicited emotional support. Only the steady whisper of the hotel’s air conditioning and the thick carpet muffling every step until the corridor seemed wrapped in its own sleepy silence.

Neither of you spoke as you walked.

Spencer stayed half a pace behind without realizing he was doing it, his attention fixed entirely on the possibility that you might stumble. Every few seconds his gaze flickered downward to your footing before returning to your face, performing tiny unconscious checks the way he always did at crime scenes, except this wasn’t evidence he was monitoring.

It was you.

When you reached your door, Spencer slid the keycard into the lock.

Morgan had practically shoved it into his hand downstairs, accompanied by an expression that somehow balanced teasing with unmistakable concern.

“Make sure she actually takes the medicine, Pretty Boy.”

“She’s an adult.”

“Exactly. Which means she’ll pretend she’s fine.”

At the time Spencer had rolled his eyes.

Now, watching you lean just a fraction more heavily against the wall while waiting for the lock to click green, Spencer reluctantly admitted Morgan had profiled the situation with irritating accuracy. The slight shift in your weight probably would’ve escaped anyone else. To him, it was obvious. Your shoulders sagged just enough for the wall to catch part of your balance, your eyes drifting shut for a second longer than a blink before reopening with visible effort. You were still standing, still breathing evenly, still insisting without words that you had everything under control. But Spencer had spent years studying the tiny things people didn’t realize they were revealing. Fatigue always appeared in the details long before it appeared in collapse. You were absolutely going to pretend you were fine. And despite knowing he had a habit of overstepping when he worried about people, he had already decided he wasn’t going to let you.

The green light blinked, followed by the soft mechanical click of the lock releasing. Spencer pushed the door open first and stepped aside automatically, one hand still holding it open until you walked past him. It was such an ordinary gesture that neither of you acknowledged it, but he waited until you had crossed the threshold before following behind and quietly pulling the door shut. The latch clicked into place, sealing away the noise of the hallway, and the instant it did, something inside you seemed to surrender.

The careful composure you’d maintained all afternoon dissolved almost immediately, as though the hotel room itself had become permission to stop pretending. Your posture softened first, the stiffness leaving your shoulders in one slow exhale before your head dipped forward with unmistakable exhaustion. Even your expression changed. The determined little smile you’d forced at the precinct disappeared completely, replaced by the blank, worn-out look of someone who had simply run out of energy to perform wellness for other people’s sake. Spencer watched the transformation happen in seconds, and it struck him just how much effort you’d spent hiding how miserable you actually felt.

You nudged your shoes off with absent-minded movements that lacked every trace of your usual neatness. One slid crookedly across the carpet until it bumped gently against the leg of the desk, while the other landed near the nightstand, abandoned without a second glance. Your FBI jacket slipped from your shoulders moments later, crumpling untidily over the back of a chair instead of being folded or hung as you always did after long days. On any other evening you would’ve noticed immediately, muttering something about wrinkles before fixing it. Today, you didn’t even look at it. Your attention had narrowed into something wonderfully simple, your feverish brain reducing the entire room to one objective.

The bed.

You shuffled toward it in slow, heavy steps, your socks barely leaving the carpet as though lifting your feet properly required more energy than you had left to spare. There wasn’t even an attempt to pull back the comforter or sit on the edge first. The moment you reached the mattress, your body simply tipped forward. You landed face-first against the neatly made bed with a soft, defeated whump, your arms trapped awkwardly beneath your chest and your cheek disappearing somewhere into the pillows. It didn’t look like someone choosing to lie down. It looked like gravity had patiently waited all day before finally winning.

Spencer stopped halfway across the room, blinking once.

“…Is that comfortable?”

Your answer came out hopelessly muffled by several inches of pillow.

“No.”

He waited, expecting you to push yourself upright or at least roll over.

You didn’t move.

His head tilted slightly.

“…Then why are you lying like that?”

There was a long pause before you answered again, your voice carrying the vague confusion of someone whose brain no longer felt interested in solving problems.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

He accepted the explanation with surprising ease, offering nothing more than a small nod to himself. Fever frequently impaired executive functioning and decision-making, especially once body temperature climbed high enough. There was nothing particularly irrational about remaining in an uncomfortable position if changing it required more effort than your exhausted brain wanted to spend. The explanation was statistically sound, which somehow made the sight of you lying face-down in complete defeat feel…oddly reasonable.

After quietly locking the door, Spencer finally allowed himself to look around the room. Like every hotel the Bureau booked, it carried that anonymous sort of comfort designed to feel familiar to everyone and personal to no one. Heavy curtains softened the late afternoon sunlight into warm amber bands that stretched lazily across the carpet, dust drifting through them whenever the air conditioning stirred. Somewhere beyond the window, traffic hummed steadily through the city, distant enough to become little more than white noise. The room smelled faintly of fresh linen, hotel soap, polished wood and, beneath it all, the unmistakable warmth that seemed to radiate from you despite the cool air.

His eyes landed almost immediately on the small hospitality station tucked neatly beneath the television. A stainless-steel kettle. Assorted tea packets arranged in perfect rows. Disposable cups. Sugar. Tiny packets of honey. His shoulders relaxed almost imperceptibly. Good. That was something tangible. Something he could do instead of standing uselessly beside the bed feeling increasingly anxious every time you looked paler.

His thoughts immediately arranged themselves into a sequence. Water. Boil the kettle. Tea. Medicine. Encourage fluids. Monitor temperature. Blanket if the chills returned. Rest. Reassess in thirty minutes. Spencer had always found comfort in procedures. Cases had profiles. Books had chapters. Illness had treatment plans. As long as there was an order to follow, he felt less overwhelmed by the uncertainty surrounding it.

His movements became almost automatic. He filled the kettle carefully beneath the tap, watching the water catch the warm light before setting it onto its base with practiced precision. The switch clicked beneath his thumb, and within seconds the quiet murmur of heating water began filling the room, soft and rhythmic against the otherwise comfortable silence.

Behind him, the mattress creaked.

Spencer glanced over his shoulder just in time to see that you’d finally managed to roll onto your back. The movement itself looked exhausting, forcing you to pause for a moment afterward as though even shifting positions had stolen what little energy remained. One arm rested loosely across your stomach while the other lay abandoned beside you, your fingers curled lazily into the comforter without purpose. Sometime during the day, every careful attempt you’d made that morning to keep your appearance professional had quietly surrendered. Loose strands of hair escaped to fan across the white pillowcase, framing cheeks still flushed with fever, while your eyes followed Spencer’s every movement around the room with curiosity.

He found himself relaxing almost imperceptibly.

At least you were no longer lying face-first in the pillow.

“You know…” you murmured after several quiet moments, your voice softer now, the edges blurred by exhaustion.

Spencer looked up from the small cardboard box of acetaminophen he had just picked up.

“Hm?”

“You have nice hands.”

His fingers stopped halfway through opening the package.

For a second, he simply stared at his own hands as though expecting to discover something unusual about them. Long fingers. Ink smudge near the side of his thumb from taking notes earlier that day. A faint scar across one knuckle from a childhood accident he’d almost forgotten. They looked exactly as they always had.

Slowly, he lifted his eyes back toward you.

“…I…”

Nothing.

His mind, capable of recalling thousands of pages of medical literature, quoting obscure neurological studies without hesitation, and explaining the statistical likelihood of virtually any scenario imaginable, offered absolutely nothing useful.

You continued before he could assemble a response.

“They’re warm.”

Spencer blinked once.

“I…”

His brain remained stubbornly, spectacularly blank.

“…Thank you?”

“They’re comforting.”

The words drifted across the room with such effortless sincerity that they almost didn’t register at first. There was no teasing hidden beneath them, no self-conscious laugh, no embarrassment over saying something unexpectedly personal. You sounded as though you were making the simplest observation in the world, no different than commenting that it looked like rain outside or that the tea kettle was beginning to boil.

Heat climbed the back of Spencer’s neck almost instantly.

It spread to his ears next, then across his cheeks with such alarming speed that he was grateful you were too feverish to appreciate just how completely he’d begun blushing. He cleared his throat, suddenly discovering an intense interest in the medicine box still resting between his hands.

“You only think that because you have a fever.”

“No.”

The answer arrived before he’d even finished speaking.

“I always think that.”

A small smile tugged lazily at your lips, sleepy and entirely unguarded, before your eyes drifted closed for the briefest second.

The room fell quiet again.

Only this silence was different.

It wasn’t the awkward uncertainty of the elevator or the careful quiet of concern. It settled around the two of you with surprising gentleness, interrupted only by the growing hum of the kettle as the water neared boiling and the occasional muted sound of traffic filtering through the thick hotel windows. Somewhere far below, a car horn echoed briefly before disappearing back into the rhythm of the city.

Spencer, meanwhile, became intensely fascinated by the dosage instructions printed across the acetaminophen box.

He already knew them.

Adults over fifty kilograms. Maximum daily dosage. Recommended intervals between doses. He could have recited every instruction word for word with his eyes closed.

He read every line anyway.

It gave him somewhere safe to look while he tried to ignore the uncomfortable awareness of his own heartbeat, which suddenly seemed far louder than the room itself.

When he finally trusted himself to speak again, his voice emerged noticeably quieter.

“You should take these.”

You didn’t argue.

There wasn’t even the faint protest he’d expected.

With a tired little sigh, you pushed yourself upright just enough to accept the pills from his outstretched hand. The movement was slow, your muscles protesting every inch of the effort, and when your fingers brushed lightly against his, Spencer immediately understood why your earlier compliment had unsettled him so much.

Your skin was burning.

The heat radiating from your fingertips lingered against his hand even after you’d taken the medicine, startling in its intensity. Fever always elevated body temperature, of course. He knew that. He’d expected it.

Knowing something statistically and feeling it firsthand, however, were two entirely different experiences.

You swallowed the tablets obediently with nearly half a bottle of water, pausing only once to catch your breath before lowering yourself back onto the mattress. The blanket came up almost absentmindedly until it rested just beneath your chin, cocooning you in a way that might have looked childish under any other circumstance. Now it simply looked instinctive, your body seeking comfort wherever it could find it.

Within moments, you rolled carefully onto your side.

Your knees drew loosely toward your chest while one hand disappeared beneath the pillow, the position so natural it seemed your body had chosen it without asking permission from your exhausted mind. Fever still burned beneath your skin, yet somehow you still curled inward as though searching for warmth that wasn’t there. Spencer knew chills often accompanied high temperatures despite elevated body heat.

Knowing the physiology behind it didn’t make the sight any easier.

He remained standing for another few seconds, watching quietly until your breathing settled into something slower and steadier. Only when he was satisfied that you looked comfortable did he finally glance around the room in search of somewhere to sit.

The edge of the bed felt too intimate.

Standing over you felt even worse.

His eyes settled instead on the armchair positioned beside the window.

It was close enough that if you needed anything—a glass of water, another blanket, help standing—you’d only have to say his name. Far enough that you wouldn’t feel watched or crowded if you managed to fall asleep.

It seemed like the appropriate distance.

He lowered himself into the chair carefully, resting his forearms against his knees almost immediately instead of leaning back. The position wasn’t particularly comfortable, but he doubted he would have relaxed regardless. His attention drifted back toward the bed before he’d even consciously decided to look again.

Your breathing had already deepened, each slow inhale softer than the last.

The medicine would need time before the fever began to ease. Until then, he’d stay.

Just in case your temperature climbed higher.

Just in case you woke up thirsty.

Just in case you insisted you felt perfectly capable of going back to work the moment your eyes opened.

Those were perfectly reasonable explanations.

They were certainly more logical than admitting the real reason he couldn’t seem to stop glancing toward you every few seconds.

Because no matter how carefully he tried to occupy his mind with medication schedules, hydration, or symptom management, one quiet sentence continued repeating itself somewhere in the back of his thoughts, refusing to be organized away like every other fact he knew.

I always think that.

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It's so endearingly predictable. Of course Melissa—who loves snow, fantasy and fairy tales, and anything tipped with silver frost—would choose a winter ballroom wedding. The colors on the invitation say dress in the colors of the northern lights, accompanied with a palette that's admittedly very pretty. Some of these colors would be flattering on you. It's workable.

Unfortunately, the dress code is black tie. Which poses a problem.

You have black tie gowns in your closet, but they don't quite fit the whimsical winter theme. Plain black silk with modest necklines, falling straight to the floor. Just pretty enough to suggest effort, but never eye catching, never particularly beautiful. Dresses that say I made an effort while simultaneously insisting please don't perceive me.

Perfect for faculty dinners.

Terrible for pretending to be a glamorous guest at a winter fairytale wedding.

Thus, shopping.

Now for your next issue: finding someone who'll come with you last minute.

In-store shopping has always triggered a very specific kind of anxiety—the tongue-tied, chest constricting, panic sweating kind. It's irrational—you know that—but knowing it's irrational has never stopped your pulse from racing every time a sales associate asks, Can I help you?

Normally, you'd simply order online and save yourself the stress. But you don't want to risk the delayed shipping, or the inaccurate sizing. Additionally, in case the whole thing is a bust, online returns take way too long.

Besides, you have friends. Surely, you'll find one willing to accompany you, right?

Right.

Before you know it, you've dialed a number. It takes a full ring before you realize it's Spencer's.

Fuck. You stare at the screen, wondering when the hell did Spencer Reid become your go-to contact. Your thumb hovers over the end-call button, debating whether you should salvage your dignity and hang up now.

He answers before you can make the decision.

"Hey, what's going on?" he sounds soft.

Your mind flashes back to when he was here, in your apartment—in your bed—armed with takeout and reassurance and warm hugs while you cried over your dissertation.

He'd used the exact same tone then. Low enough to soothe over the frayed edges of your nerves. Does he use that voice with anyone else, or is it unique when he's talking to you?

Why do you care? You don't.

Why is that important? It's not.

You push your glasses up your nose and reply, "Hey. Um." Oh wow. Brilliant. You are so eloquent.

"Is something wrong?"

Is it too late to say you've accidentally butt dialed his number? Perhaps not. However, in that split second, you decide that the truth is less mortifying than a lie so lame as butt dialing, so you blurt it out.

"Nothing's wrong. Just wondering if you're busy."

"I'm free after lunch."

Fuck. Why couldn't he make your life easier by saying he's busy? Why didn't you just call Carrie in the first place? Why was Spencer's number the first thing you dialed?

"Would you..." You squeeze your eyes shut. "Would you maybe come shopping with me?"

No answer. You power through, against your better judgement, the words spilling in one suspended breath. "I… I need to find a dress for Melissa's wedding and I hate going shopping by myself."

There's a pause, which you use to alternate between praying the ground swallows you whole, and hoping he says yes.

"Are you sure you want me to come?" his voice more animated now, colored with confusion, "I'm not exactly knowledgeable on women's fashions."

"I don't really need you there for your expertise, just the moral support."

He doesn't answer again. An image of him comes so sharply to your mind—brows furrowed, nose crinkled, lips lightly curling like he's fighting back a smile—it makes your lips twitch before you catch the action and school them into a neutral straight line.

"It's fine if you don't want to," you begin to say, voice lightly strangled. "It's a weird request."

"No, no. I don't think it's weird at all."

You can imagine him shaking his head. Cheeks dimpled and curls gilded by light. You feel it would take too much energy to expel the thought from, so you allow it to linger. It roots like some sacred memory, and you find you don't mind it too much.

"I'm just curious why you need 'moral support' when you're shopping?"

You laugh, mostly at yourself. "It's… okay, those ladies doing sales freak me out. I feel like they're always sizing me up or something, it's a whole thing and it's dumb because I know it's literally their job to anticipate if I need help, but I just feel weird going there alone."

He hums through the phone, sounding thoughtful. You push your glasses up your nose, just for something to do.

"You know," Spencer says after a moment, "there's evidence that people significantly overestimate how much strangers notice them."

"You think I don't know that? I told you, I know this is dumb. You can say no."

"Okay."

"Okay I'm being dumb, or okay you're saying no?"

"Okay, I'll come with you," for the first time this whole conversation, he finally sounds amused.

And for the first time since he picked up, your chest doesn't feel like there's a pile of bricks sitting on top of it, impeding your breaths.

"Really?" you don't bother hiding the relief from your voice.

"Really. I can pick you up around 1:30."

Pick you up around 1:30 sounds awfully close to being picked up for a date. Your brain unhelpfully goes back to the dates of your youth, what few ones you've been on, arm and arm with a man and smiling in excitement. Traitorously, your brain also replaces the faces of the men in these memories into a tall, dimpled professor.

No. You shut the thought down quick.

This is normal friend behavior. Carrie uses the same terms, except Carrie is Carrie, not a very attractive older colleague who you're also pretending to date.

Whatever. You're getting worked up over nothing.

This is Spencer doing you a favour because he's an extraordinarily kind person helping out a friend.

You thank him, managing to sound remarkably normal considering your internal monologue has descended into complete chaos.

The boutique is just as you predicted. Too bright, too many sales associates welcoming you with too wide smiles. The air is saturated with cloying jasmine and vanilla, and soft, instrumental music hums just loud enough to hide the buzz of conversation.

""Welcome!" one of the ladies chirps the moment you and Spencer step inside. "Are you shopping for a special occasion?"

Your shoulders tense automatically.

"We're just going to look around," you answer, trying to match her enthusiasm without sounding as uncomfortable as you feel.

Her smile doesn't falter. "Of course! Let me know if I can start a fitting room for you."

"I will. Thank you." You don't move until she's turned away. Once she does, you make a beeline for the least crowded rack, shoulders still tense. Spencer follows beside you, and without a word, rests his hand between your shoulder blades. You feel the warmth of it through your coat, quietly, steadily melting some of the tension.

When you glance over your shoulder, you notice the sales associate watching the two of you from across the boutique.

Before you can overthink it, Spencer shifts. Instead of walking beside you, he moves behind by half a step. You're confused for just a moment until you realize that, with him standing at that angle, the sales associate completely disappeares from your view.

Quite literally shielding you with his body.

He doesn't say anything. Doesn't drop his hand either. Just follows you like a patient shadow, while you browse through rows upon rows of blues and greens. You feel you chest tightening for reasons unrelated to the perky sales ladies.

It's silent, surprisingly comfortable, until he breaks it with one of his usual tangents.

"You know," he says, lifting a hanger to inspect the fabric, "the distinction between black tie and white tie has become significantly less rigid over the last century. Certain movements have called out the elitism of these dress codes, as well as the ridiculous standards set upon each gender."

"I thought you said you know nothing about women's fashion?" you glance at him with a grin.

"I did a little research after you called."

"Are you aware that little usually means a lot?"

He shrugs with an easy smile. "I had a couple of hours to kill. Fashion, history, and capitalism go hand in hand."

You laugh, moving to the next rack while he regales you with more of his findings. Before you know it, you've forgotten about the other people in the boutique. Spencer Reid has successfully monopolized your attention, and though you can't believe you're saying this, you're glad he did. You're glad you asked him to come. You're glad he said yes.

Twenty minutes later, your arms are draped with dresses and you're surveying another one, when he breaks his current information dump with a question.

"Wouldn't you be cold in some of these?" Spencer looks at you with concern.

Indeed, most of the gowns are strapless, or made with thin material.

"The ceremony's indoors, everything will be heated." you reply. It had said so in the invitation.

"But getting there?"

"I can wear a coat over it on the way, don't worry."

He accepts your logic, keeps quiet as you go from one rack to the next. It lasts all of two minutes before he's asking something again.

"Am I expected to wear these colors too?" he asks, watching you peruse through shades of green.

You glance over, brows furrowing. "What?"

"Should I rent a new suit in these colors?" he says, gesturing at the array of gowns in your arms.

"I mean, men's formal wear is so much more straightforward, I think you can get away with a standard black coat and tie." you answer, checking a price tag on one dress and wincing lightly. Back on the rack it goes.

"I suppose that's true," he follows you to a different rack, hands deep in his pockets. Spencer's dressed the most casual you've ever seen him, in a black sweater without a button down collar peeking underneath, and a heavy black jacket to combat the cold. It's a good look on him, not that you'd ever admit it out loud.

"And I'm assuming you already have those already."

"I do, but wouldn't it be nice to match a little? If we're attending together, do men's accessories usually coordinate with the gown? I've never been someone's wedding date before."

You whirl to face him.

He smiles. "If we're going as a couple, don't you think that'll more convincing?"

You blink, mouth agape.

"No one would consciously notice," he continues, like this is something he's thought about for a while, "but coordinated colours tend to reinforce the perception that two people arrived together," he tilts his head, "it increases credibility."

"I suppose that's true." you say finally.

"It'll also narrow down my options."

"Your options?" your brows are probably at your hairline now.

"For which tie to wear. I wouldn't want to clash with you."

"Right."

"So, if you think about it, it's actually a good thing I came. I'll know exactly what color you'll pick, and I can match you accordingly."

"You realize it'll be unbelievably corny?" you joke, because how else are you supposed to react to Spencer Reid offering to color coordinate with you for a stupid fake relationship?

"I daresay most people would encourage being corny at a wedding." Spencer replies, grinning wide and proud.

"That's fair," you nod, "Yeah that's—oh god, I hate that this makes sense."

He laughs. "I'm just doing my job as your boyfriend."

There are three final contenders in the dressing room, all of them within your budget and fitting Melissa's curated winter color scheme.

The first dress is nice enough, a solid choice if you don't find anything better.

The second is gorgeous, a total steal for its price point, but the fabricis nearly translucent you can't even show it to Spencer without worrying about flashing him, so it's eliminated from the running.

Which leaves the third.

Save the best for last, so the saying goes, and this one is definitely it. It's cut in a timeless silhouette made of a heavier fabric than the other two, which makes it perfect for the cooling temperatures. Despite its weight, it is soft, draping delicately over your body, and flowing like liquid with every movement.

The neckline dips lower than anything you'd normally wear, while the back falls open a few inches above your hips, held together by slender ribbons threaded through loops and criss-crossing over across your back.

It's elegant. Daring. So unlike the plain, very classic dresses in your closet.

Which is probably why you like it so much.

Unfortunately, you can't quite get a whole picture of how it looks on you because you've unravelled the lacing while trying to put it on. One long ribbon is hopelessly tangled around your forearm, while the rest resemble the world's most expensive ball of string. You would be a cat's dream plaything right now.

"Fuck," you hiss. You're unsure how you fucked it up so badly, and you're terrified you'd accidentally tear open a seam if you keep twisting around. "Fuck!"

"You okay? You've been in there six minutes and forty-nine seconds, that's three minutes and thirty-one seconds longer than normal." Spencer calls out.

You stop struggling long enough to frown, even though he can't see you.

"Why are you timing me down to the seconds?" you huff.

"It's an old habit," he replies. "Need any help?"

No. Yes, but are you really prepared for that?

"I could call one of the ladies and—"

"No," you croak. You do not want one of them coming in, no matter how nice or accommodating they are, "I think you'd be… sufficient."

"If you're sure."

"I'm sure… I'm just, uh, a little tangled up."

"Ah." he knocks on your door, as if to indicate he's ready and willing.

"Don't peek or be a creep, Spencer, I swear to god."

"Of course not!"

The front of the dress is held up only by an arm tightly pressed to your chest. It's not so bad. He'll catch maybe a hint of side boob, but you can live with that. You crack the door open and peek out.

His owlish eyes greet you, concerned and unblinking. The rest of the hallway is clear.

"All right, here." You open the door wider, and turn around, letting him see the twisted mess of silk across your back. "The ribbons are supposed to go into the slots along the sides, see?"

Spencer's quiet. You feel his gaze like an insistent weight, and suddenly the room lacks oxygen.

"Spencer, do you see where they're supposed to go?" you repeat, your free arm twisting to run over the material, trying to feel for where the loops are located. "I think I missed a slot here, so it's always uneven when I tighten it."

"Yes, I see." his voice is low, hoarse, and lands in a space so unfamiliar you can't even name it. His exhale is a lick of heat across the back of your neck and shoulders, fingertips ghosting over your skin as he tugs at the silk ties, slowly separating them one by one.

"Okay."

"You really did tangle the entire thing, it's kind of impressive." he chuckles.

You can only sheepishly laugh in return, eyes fixed upon the ground, and arms crossed protectively over your chest. Anything to distract you from his proximity.

He's close enough that his scent surrounds you, the warm spices and slight musk of old books now welcome and customary.

"How'd you get so tangled up like this anyway?" he asks, pushing some of your hair back over your shoulder. The continued contact of his fingertips makes you suppress a shudder. He's going back and fixing the mistake from the top, and you're wishing the knot in your stomach is as easy to unravel as these ribbons.

"Beats me," you say, laughing weakly.

"They go kind of like shoelaces." he answers in that same hoarse voice.

You exhale. "Mhm, but those are easier to fix."

The ribbons drag across your back as he tugs, slow and steady. He repeats the same motion to the other side, quiet in his focus. Rough knuckles brush on your skin every now and then. Accidental. Probably unavoidable.

You think you're two seconds away from combusting.

The worst part is, you're not entirely sure why.

Because nothing about this is should be riling you up. He's lacing you in, for heaven's sake, not out. A friend helping a friend.

But every brush of his fingers on your skin, accidental or otherwise, lingers far longer than it should.

The frightening thing is, part of you wants to welcome it. Wants to become familiar with his touch, wants to lean in and relish it.

Spencer is quiet, guiding the ribbons through every loop with sure fingers, steadily getting lower. He fumbles with the loop by your waist. You can't help but jump.

"Did I hurt you?"

How could he possibly, moving this delicately?

"No, I'm good."

"Ticklish, then?" he asks, amused.

"I'm—yeah." Sure. Ticklish, let's go with that.

"My bad. I'll be more careful."

"It's fine, really. I'm not porcelain."

"I know, but I'd rather be."

You squeeze your eyes shut and bite the insides of your cheek. The dress settles to your form as he works, the bodice now properly hugging your torso, snug enough that you can lower your arm without fear of the top collapsing.

"Do you think it's too much?" you ask, relaxing now that you're more covered. A quick glance at the mirror confirms your initial assessment—this is the dress. Far more sensual than what you're used to

Now that it's fitted to you properly, it might be your favorite out of everything you've tried. Snug at the top, hugging your curves just enough. But the low, exposed back is a little out of your comfort zone.

"The dress?"

"Yes." You feel one harsh tug as he tightens the last row, and something in you clenches and burns.

"I don't know."

Unbidden, your stomach sinks. But then, he adds,

"This isn't my area of expertise, remember?"

You laugh, shaking your head. "You don't need to be an expert to give an opinion, Spencer."

"For a wedding? No, it's not too much. It fits the dress code, doesn't it?"

"It does. I really like it but I'm—I don't know, it's not something I normally wear."

Spencer's head lifts finally, looking over your shoulder. Your eyes meet in the mirror, equally apprehensive.

"I think it suits you." he says, "Different can be good, right?"

"Right." You exhale, relieved.

"Do you feel comfortable in it?"

You pause, considering. Are you willing to spend an entire evening in this dress without being worried about wardrobe malfunctions? You shift, turn to one side, eyeing your reflection in the mirror. Oddly enough, even though it reveals a lot more than what you're accustomed to, the dress feels very secure.

"Yeah. I do. It's a pretty thick fabric, too." You consider for a moment, before adding, "I like it.

"Then that's what matters," he smiles, watching you move around the dressing room, feeling out the dress. He adds, in a rushed tone, "For what it's worth, I think you look beautiful."

The words make you pause. Even the haphazard speed couldn't mask the earnestness in his voice. You manage a smile, murmur a thanks, because he might not know it yet—hell, you don't want to admit it yourself—but it's worth a lot.

Thank you deeply for reading, please reblog if you enjoyed!

spencer can sometimes struggle to sleep, that is not a secret. he can toss and turn and stare at the ceiling in bed for hours until his mind lets him fall asleep and stay that way. he’s found pressure helps – a heavy blanket that he can curl up into a ball beneath. as soon as you enter his life, you become that blanket. he will tangle your legs with his, tuck you into his chest, and sleep far more soundly like that – a mess of long limbs wrapped around you.

has a killer sweet tooth, and while he usually has an aversion to shared food, he will share his sweet treats with you. in the early days he does not go so far as to share a fork with you, but further into your relationship he has been known to hold his desserts up to your lips for tasting, fork or fingers, he doesn’t mind.

his favorite late-night indian place becomes your regular spot – it makes sense, given that his strange, unpredictable working hours means planning dates is far from an exact science. it’s comfort and predictability, everything he loves. he stops asking the team to go with him, securing it as your special place.

spencer never lost his love of being read to, and he would ask, sheepishly, in the beginning if you would read aloud when he caught you with a book. the quiet propositions settled into him laying his head in your lap when a tome was balanced in your palms, waiting patiently for your story to begin and your fingers to find his hair.

he’s tall, almost prohibitively so, often slouching or stooping his shoulders so as to not stand out quite so much. he straightens quickly when he sees you across a room, so you might spot him (you do, of course), and stoops only to brush your hairline with his lips when no one is looking.

while tall, he has no aversion to being the little spoon. whether you’re curled against his back with your nose pressed to his spine, or he’s tucked into the crook of your shoulder with his cheek smooshed against your chest, he doesn’t mind. after so long alone, it’s simply nice to be held again.

it would be impossible for him to have written his daily letters to his mother without mentioning you. your name appeared scarcely at first – a slow means of introduction, drops of your habits, fragments of his feelings. by the time he finds the courage to introduce you, diana understands your small intricacies perfectly, can recognise the tiny eccentricities spencer found that you’d become blind to – each loved in equal measure – that it feels as if she had somehow known you for years.

having spent so much time looking after his mother, and in spite of his frequent interjection of fact and statistic, there are few better nurses than spencer. be it a simple cold or a chronic illness, he tends to every whim, every ache, whenever he physically can.

clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. there are few words that describe him better. it’s endearing, in truth, but there are moments where you wonder how your giraffe of a man has made it so far with all of his fingers. cooking, in particular, is troubling. burnt fingertips are usually the extent of your concerns. he is lucky those deep, wet, puppy dog eyes are so sweet as you force his hand under a cold running tap and fetch the aloe vera from the cabinet beside the sink. it’s nothing a kiss better won’t fix.