gold-onthe-inside

he knows that if he presses a kiss to the side of your neck, you’ll drop your head back to give him more room, and he knows that if he lets his hand linger on the softness of your hip just a second longer than normal, you’ll let out a shaky sigh. he drags his hand over your waist, feeling your body shiver and pulse, and he pulls you onto his lap, pressing light kisses down the column of your throat. your hands squeeze his shoulders, fingers digging in through his shirt. “you haven’t been very nice to me today,” he murmured, pressing one last kiss to the hollow under your throat, steady hands unbuttoning your blouse, your pretty breasts making him slightly dizzy.

“i’m always nice to you,” you protested weakly, hands gripping his shirt, knuckles white. you try to grind down onto him but his hands still your hips, a soft chuckle sounding from behind you.

“don’t try to lie to me,” he said, letting his fingers trail up the bare skin on your stomach. “you’ve been teasing me all day.” he moved one of his hands underneath your skirt, pressing against the fabric of your underwear. you let out a whine at the contact, gripping the fabric of his shirt. “did you really think i’d give you what you want that easily?” he whispered, breath hot against the shell of your ear.

you leaned your head back on his shoulder, the sound that left your lips a whine, his hand palming you through your underwear. “no,” you gasped, pressing your thighs together. “i knew you’d get me back.”

"is that what you were looking for, pretty girl?" he asked, his voice soft and sweet, never rough with you, even if you did deserve it.

you whimpered, shifting on his lap, your body hot and flushed from his touch. “please, spencer,” you whispered, your eyes squeezing shut. “you know what i want.”

"do i?" he asked, all innocent as he curled a finger against your underwear, making you whimper.

"yes," you nodded, your hands grasping his shoulders, pushing your hips forward against his hand. "you do, you just like to make me say it first."

"smart girl," he murmured, his fingers too slow to please you. "go on, then. tell me what you want."

you let out a shaky moan, his hand rubbing you through the fabric of your panties. "i want you," you managed out. "i want you so bad." you leaned back against him, letting your head fall against his shoulder, his touch making your breath catch in your throat.

"and what makes you think you deserve it after how you've treated me today?" he asked, tilting your chin up to look at him.

you felt like you were melting under his honeyed gaze, your eyes dark with desire and pleading. “i’m sorry,” you whispered. “i didn’t mean to tease you, i just like the way you react when i do.”

"much better," he said, smiling at you. "but you're gonna have to do a little more than that to make me happy."

you nodded, desperate to get what you wanted. “anything, spencer, i’ll do anything.” your voice was breathy, your body trembling in anticipation. “please.”

"that's my girl," he murmured, holding your waist. "you're gonna take care of yourself on me like a big girl. all by yourself. think you can do that for me?"

you nodded furiously, desperate for any friction you could get. your hips rocked against his thigh, a whine leaving your lips. “yes, i can do that for you,” you said, your voice breathy.

"good girl," he praised, hands sliding around your stomach and back, pulling you closer. you flushed at the name, hips grinding down against his thigh, your underwear damp from the friction. you let out a soft gasp, your body trembling.

“you’re so good to me.” you murmured, your hand reaching back to tangle in his hair.

"i'm always so nice to you," he replied, wetting his lips. "but i'm starting to think you don't deserve it."

you whined at the words, your thighs clenching around his. “no, i do, i swear,” you said, your head dropping forward. “i’ll be good for you, i promise.”

"no more teasing me?" he asked, stroking your spine with the lightest touch as your breaths shallowed, coming closer to falling apart.

you gasped, your eyes squeezing shut as he touched you. you arched your back, his touch sending shivers down your spine. “no more teasing,” you managed to gasp out, heat building up in the pit of your stomach.

"because you know what happens when you tease me, don't you?" he asked, almost patronising as he cupped the back of your neck as you whined and rutted against his thigh.

you nodded wildly, feeling your body grow weaker, your thoughts getting fuzzy. “i know,” you panted out. “you get back at me.”

"smart girl," he praised. "you gonna come for me, sweetheart?"

you nodded desperately, your body trembling, your movements becoming more erratic. “yes,” you gasped out, your hands clenching at his shirt. “spencer, i’m gonna -” your words were cut short, a soft gasp leaving your lips, your body stilling as you pressed your thighs, shuddering through your release. you went boneless in his lap, your head falling back against his shoulder, breaths leaving you in ragged puffs. spencer kept his arms around your waist.

"you did so well, angel," spencer mumured, kissing your bare shoulder and rubbing your back.

you hummed in response, still fuzzy edged from your orgasm, and just curled into him. “thank you,” you whispered, eyes closed as you nuzzled into his neck. his hand rubbed slowly circles over the soft skin of your stomach, gentle and soothing.

"think you can take one more?" he asked you. after all, you weren't the only one who needed to be taken care of.

you opened your eyes, peering at him from your position in the crook of his neck. you felt warm and boneless, but there was a possessive part of you that didn't want to stop touching him. a greedy part of you that wanted nothing more than to see him fall apart under your touch. "i can take it," you said quietly, your hand coming to rest on his thigh.

The hinges perform their usual creaking dance as the door opens, their soft duet with the footsteps on the floor a familiar comfort to you now. Spencer has a specific rhythm he moves in after long cases, and tonight is like all the others. First, his bag is placed by the door, open and sorted through to assure the contents are ordered correctly. Next, his coat slides off his shoulders, forming an orderly ghost on the rack next to yours. Then, his converse come off, laces neatly tucked away and alighted with your own shoes, matching coloured laces reflecting the light. Finally, after he’s assured everything is in order, he moves from the hall to the main room, in search of you.

Tonight, you’re sitting at the kitchen counter, one leg crunched up in a position that looks painful but probably isn’t. You’re reading something on your phone, no doubt something you’ll tell him about later whether he’s interested in it or not; he’s always fascinated when it comes to your interests. There’s a pot on the stovetop, and Spencer can hear the faint bubbling of it like muted conversation. The stack of pages in his arms is deposited gently on the table, and your eyes finally drift up to meet his, soft meeting exhausted.

“Hi,” you murmur.

“Hi,” he replies, equally quiet.

“Tea or coffee?” you ask, smiling at the way his shoulders slump at the familiarity of the question.

It’s a litmus test you’d created together as an indirect way to check up on the other without giving away details you’re not ready to say aloud. Tea means a little time to decompress, and a quiet evening curled together, soaking in the warmth you bring each other. Coffee means everything is fine, and that you could go for a little more excitement in your evening by means of a new movie or new adventure. When his eyes turn melted and soft at the question, you know the reply before he even gives it.

“Tea, please,” he says, slouching even further.

“What kind?”

Your voice is kind in the way that almost brings tired tears to his eyes.

“Chamomile?” he asks weakly.

You stand from the chair, walking over to him and slinging your arms around his shoulders, guiding his head to the crook of your neck.

“I love you,” you whisper as he shuffles closer. “Go shower while I finish dinner. Take your time.”

“Okay,” he hums, making no motion to move.

“I can wash your hair,” you offer.

“I- I can do it.”

“I know.”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

You step back just a half step, your hands planted firmly on his arms.

“Do you want me to?” you ask.

“To what?”

“To wash your hair.”

For a moment, he’s still, the only sounds being his breathing mixing in time with yours and the low boil of soup. His soft doe eyes flick to yours and away again, dropping to the floor as he nods shyly.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” he asks.

You softly kiss his cheek, turning it a soft pink.

“It’s always okay,” is your reply.

Spencer makes a soft noise, something that sounds like acceptance with the tiniest hint of guilt. You catch the guilt, soothing it away with another kiss, this time to the opposite cheek.

“Go get ready,” you say. “I’ll be right there.”

“Are you sure?” he asks again, because he needs to be absolutely certain he’s not burdening you with things you don’t want to handle.

“Mhm.” He can hear the smile in your tone. “Always.”

Spencer lingers for a moment longer, seemingly unwilling to part from you. He finally does after you squeeze his shoulder, muttering softly to yourself as you shut off the stove. You follow him down the hall, one of your hands resting firm on the small of his back, grounding him through his dress shirt. While he heads right into the bathroom, you make a quick stop in the laundry room, throwing a towel and Spencer’s sleep clothes into the dryer. It chimes happily as you feed it the clothing, the door locking with a determined click when you close it. Back in the bathroom, you bring your own pyjamas inside, setting them on the floor while Spencer meticulously folds his work clothes, a desperate attempt to regain whatever control he feels he’s lost. He hovers, watching you undress like you’ll disappear if he looks away for too long.

“Spencer?” you say.

“I- Yes. Hi.”

You offer a smile, so sweet and tender that the only word for it is loving.

“Where’d you go?”

He pauses, sorting his options and deciding on the truth, because you deserve to hear nothing but the truth.

“Just…” he trails off into a heavy silence, leaving you to fill in the planks.

“Okay,” you say, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “C’mon handsome.”

Spencer blushes pink at your compliment, and with his clothes off, you can see the blush moving down his neck that would normally be hidden. Luckily, you’re too focused on the waster temperature to tease him, your soft murmurs as you search for his preferred temperature; warm enough to remind him he’s safe, but cold enough to remind him he’s still alive. The shower rain is interrupted by you stepping under it, muffling a yelp when you realize the water is way too cold, and Spencer has to try very hard not to laugh at your misfortune. You peel back the curtain and beckon Spencer inside after a few more adjustments.

As soon as he’s inside, you move so that he’s under the water. He sighs audibly at the warmth on his back, pattering rainfall washing away his stress, eyes closed and shoulders curling ever inward. He looks impossible small, as close to a scared child as a grown man can be. You feel yourself melting at the sight, and he physically does when your fingers meet his hair and start working the water through his curls. Each press of your fingers to his scalp soothes him more, and by the time you’re reaching for his shampoo, he’s learning almost all of his weight on you, head resting on your shoulder. The opening of the bottle lid cracks like a firework, loud and unwelcome, but the flood of his shampoo scent makes up for it; warm, slightly sweet, smelling entirely like home and comfort. It’s blissfully comfortable in here, under your touch, under your loving hands.

The only sign Spencer is still conscious is the soft sob he bites back the moment it escapes.

“You’re okay,” you murmur into his ear. “’S okay Spence, you’re home.”

“I know,” he says, voice thick yet not entirely convinced.

“Yeah?” you say, adjusting his head.

He puffs a watery sigh, clearing his throat decisively. He’ll probably talk about it later, but words have no space in here right now. He settles instead of nodding and shuffling slightly closer, basking in your warmth. Each pas of your hands through his curls as you wash the soap out chokes him up a little further, and he’s painfully aware of how helpful the water is in hiding his tears.

When he’s fully cleaned off, you leave him a few minutes to himself for soaking while you go fetch his towel and clothes. You say his name with cautious care when you return to avoid spooking him, the only acknowledgement being the shower turning off and his hand peeling back the curtain before wrapping around himself again. Your arms are spread wide and he walks right into them, collapsing against you as you wrap him in the towel.

“It’s warm,” he comments.

“Mhm. Put it in the dryer for a moment.”

He makes another wounded noise, throat tight. The feeling of your arms around his body, warm and solid, drag and uneven breath out of him. You smile, laughing softly as you towel him dry, only stepping out in order to give him privacy as he changes.

You’re back at the stove when he returns, stirring the pot with a wooden spoon, the steam curling up around your face like a halo. The clean shirt and flannel pants you set out for him also carry the warmth of your dryer, achingly gentle in his heart as he envelops himself further in your domesticity. The stool creaks a little as he sits down, the wobbly leg slamming into the floor harder than he intended. If you’re mad about the sound, you don’t say anything, instead opting to grab the good bowls for the soup, placing one in front of him with a soft clink.

“Open,” you say, bringing the soup ladle toward him.

He’s about to ask why, but when he sees that you’ve made his favourite soup recipe he got for you from Rossi, he opens his mouth for you without question. It burns his tongue a little, but he’s so beyond grateful for the taste of something made with love that he barely even registers the discomfort. When it hits his stomach, a gooey warmth floods him, ocean waves of home tugging at his body until he gives in and floats away.

“Good?” you ask, watching him.

“Very,” he replies, blinking. “It’s hot.”

You giggle. “Well, yeah. It’s boiling.”

You side a cup of water across the counter that he drinks gratefully, soothing his burned tongue and throat.

“Eat here or out there?” you ask, jutting your thumb to the couch.

Spencer evaluates his options with the kind of serious calculation he leaves only for your questions. Eating on the couch means he can wrap up in blankets and keep you tucked close, your head a grounding weight. But, eating on the couch means you’re both more likely to spill, given the liquid nature of soup and the uneven surface properties of your thrift store couch and wonky coffee table. Sitting at the counter guarantees a safter surface, dramatically reducing the chances of a spill. He’ll just have to settle for the only physical touch being your knees resting together under the countertop.

“Here,” he finally answers, still uncertain. “It’s more stable and I don’t want your couch to have soup spilled all over it.”

You nod, accepting. “Get cozy.”

The soup is ladled into bowls and placed in your spots, two spoons following, and two crumpled napkins ending the setup. Then, decisively like you’d read his mind and planned this all along, you slide your chair next to his.

“Scootch over,” you say, nudging him with your hip.

Immediately, his chair scrapes clumsily on the floor to make room, his hand pulling your chair close enough to be content. As soon as you sit, he curls into you, resting his head on your shoulder, damp hair tickling your neck. Your hum reverberates in Spencer’s chest, and he’s fairly certain if kept up long enough, it would have healing properties like a cat’s purr.

“Y’okay?” you ask, ruffling his hair.

“Mhm.” He sighs, heavily, the stress melting from him bit by bit until the knot in his chest feels just a little looser.

“Bad case?”

He shrugs. “Guess so.”

“Nothing wrong with saying that.”

“I know. Saying it just makes it more real, I suppose.”

You kiss the top of his head. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Is there a happy ending?”

His silence says everything and more. The heavy pause fills the room wall to wall, leaving barely any space for anything else. It crowds you and him out, pressing against his skin until it aches, and until the reminder of his failure is settled heavily in his soul.

“’S not your fault, y’know,” you say as you take a spoonful of soup.

“I was meant to talk him down.”

“And did you?”

“…Not well.”

You frown. “What’s that mean?”

Spencer’s fingers leave the spoon and opt to twist with each other in his lap, nails starting to pick at his cuticles. You give him a few minutes to collect his thoughts before your hands grab his, intertwining his fingers with yours and squeezing tightly.

“I- I did talk. For a while, actually.”

When you say nothing, he continues.

“It was just- his mental barriers are- were very strong. He was able to keep it all locked up tight, and breaking that resulted in a breakdown. I pushed too hard.”

Your hand tightens reassuringly in his.

“It just didn’t matter, in the end. It wasn’t enough for him.”

“Spence?”

“Hm?”

Your hands cup his face, thumbs stroking cheekbones, dipping into dark circles and sweeping along rosy warmth. One thumb passes over a silvery scar, and you smile fondly.

“Did he listen? When you spoke?”

Spencer pauses. “For a while.”

“Then it meant something.”

“He still-.”

“Sweetheart,” you say. “Sometimes people decide they’re going to do something no matter what.”

“I know.”

“And sometimes,” you interrupt kindly. “Someone talking in their last moments makes them feel alive. You don’t have to change everyone’s mind, Spence. You just have to remind them they’re human.”

Spencer goes quiet, the kind where he’s internalizing something, making it rational and real, something more than just a string of words.

“Look,” you say. “All you can offer is comfort. Something to remind them they’re not alone. I know you can do that.”

“Even if it didn’t change the outcome?”

“Especially then.”

You lean closer, pressing a soft kiss to his forehead, lips brushing the furrow in his brow.

“Whatever happened today changes nothing to me. I still love you, I know you did your best, and I’m still right here.”

Spencer heaves a shuddering breath, hands trembling faintly in his lap. You tilt his head up to find his bottom lip trapped between his teeth in an effort to keep it from trembling too. Another forehead kiss and a half-choked sob breaks free, his body crunching in on itself like he’s recoiling from a shot. You lean his body into yours just like in the shower; one hand on his back, the other buried in his hair as his head rests in the crook of your neck. You rock slowly side to side, stroking his hair that’s still slightly damp and slides nicely through your fingers.

“You’re okay,” you murmur.

“I’m okay.”

You nod, squeezing the hug tighter. “You’re okay, you’re home, you’re safe.”

He’s quiet for a moment. Then, so soft you barely hear it, he whispers one word into the skin of your neck.

“Promise?”

Your heart shatters, pulling him tighter to you so that you can envelop as much of him as possible. Your smell surrounds him, warm and safe and you.

“Promise. Always promise.”

Spencer breaks quietly, a rock sinking gracefully to the sea floor, the ripples only big enough for you to see them and follow them to him. You cradle him to your chest, feeling his tears wet your skin as he clings tighter.

“I gotcha,” you murmur, soft and safe and so tender it hurts his chest more than his quiet sobs do.

He nuzzles closer to you, noes pressing to your neck and mouth muffled in your shirt, quieting the last dregs of already quiet sobs. With each slow movement of your body’s pendulum motion, your voice is whispering reassurances, and your lips are pressing gentle kisses to his teary cheeks and his hair. You don’t rush him, and he doesn’t make nay indication he’s moving; you just exist in each other’s orbits, lines of yourself molding into one being, the best part of the both of you tangling together. His empathy and your sympathy. Your rationality to his emotionality. Everything that makes him cry meeting every part of your comfort. Spencer feels softer than he ever has before, because nowhere will ever be as safe as home in your arms.

Finally, after what was several minutes and only felt like half a moment, Spencer’s head tilts up from its burrow in your neck. You hum lightly at the feeling of his weight leaving, letting him pull as far out of your arms as he wants. He sniffles heavily, taking the tissue you hand him and wiping his nose. He uses the backs of his hands to wipe his eyes, knuckles scraping on rough, red skin. Spener clears his throat a few times as your hands finish wiping stray tears, and he laughs a little in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes.

“God, Spence, don’t apologize.”

“I- okay.”

He sniffs again, looking at his shoes.

“You needed that, hm?” you ask, rubbing the back of his hand with your thumb.

“Actually, crying releases hormones that help with emotional regulation. Many people report fewer negative emotions after crying.”

You’re watching him, fond and soft, listening to every word just to dissipate it all with one statement.

“So yes, you did need that.”

He blushes. “Yea, I did.”

“C’mere,” you say, tugging at his hands until he follows you to your feet. He’s standing a little taller now, like the weight compressing his spine as been lifted.

“What are you doing?” he asks as you loop your arms around his middle.

“That thing,” you offer unhelpfully. “Deep…uh. Deep something, I forget.”

Spencer laughs low in his throat, soft as ever. “Deep pressure therapy?”

“Yeah, that.”

“You know, it’s actually-.”

He’s cut off abruptly by your arms spreading over as much of his back as you can, squeezing him tight to your chest. He’s stiff for a moment, taken aback by the pressure and the abruptness of it all. Slowly, his arms land on your waist, resting there as you scoop him up into the biggest bear hug of his entire life. You eventually part with one last squeeze and a soft kiss to his lips that make them tingle pleasantly.

“Better?” you ask, turning to the table and grabbing his bowl.

“Much.” He goes to sit and take a spoonful of soup, finding both his bowl and spoon are gone. “What’re you doing?”

“Reheating your soup,” you say easily, sticking both bowls in the microwave and setting the timer, the hum loud in the kitchen space.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

You shrug, leaning on your elbows. “I know. I wanted to.”

“Why?”

“For you.”

“Why-.”

“Because you’ve had a right day and because I love you.”

Another pause follows, the air hesitating.

“Why…”

You sigh in mock exasperation, grinning widely. “Do you ever stop asking questions?”

Spencer returns your grin, brighter than he’s looked all evening. “No.”

Just then, your eyes light up like you’ve discovered some secret he doesn’t know about. “I know what you can do, though.”

“What?” he says, excitedly.

“Sit down,” you say, pushing him into the chair. “Let yourself be cared for,” you say with a kiss. “And let me love you like you deserve.”

He gives you a weak glare. “You could just tell me to stop talking.”

“I don’t want you to stop talking, I want you to stop pretending you feel perfectly normal.”

That shuts him up quick, because you are right and there’s only so long he can argue before giving in and letting you win. Before he can think of more to say, the microwave beeps and you’re sliding soup in front of him again, spoon in his hand as he eyes it. The soup is gone in minutes, Spencer not quite realizing how hungry he really was until he finally started eating. Normally, you’d make a joke about slowing down, but tonight doesn’t feel like the night for it.

He sits with his head on your shoulder while he waits for you to finish, the heat of the soup in his stomach and the emotional drain of crying starting to lull him into a half-asleep state. He doesn’t even realize you’re done until you’re tapping his shoulder and he’s stirring with a soft groan.

“Still with me?” you ask lightly.

“Mhm,” he sighs, sitting up and rubbing at his puffy eyes.

“Bed?”

He nods, stretching out like a cat and curling back in. His next question, asked so softly you almost miss it, makes your heart burst in light.

“Read to me?”

You hesitate, not because you don’t want to, but because it’s him. “Haven’t you memorized every book we own?”

He shrugs, starting into your eyes so tenderly they need to make a new word for it.

“Not in your voice.”

The admission makes your soul feel important for the first time in way too long. Spener, the boy with the eidetic memory, who knows every word to every line of every book he’s ever read, thinks having them read to him by you means more than his perfect memory of the pages. You can feel your cheeks flush hot at the knowledge, but if he sees it or not is lost on you.

“Pick something then,” you say instead, gesturing to the shelf. “I’ll clean up.”

“Love you,” he mumbles, kissing your cheek before hopping out of his chair and scurrying to the bookshelf.

The faint sounds of your movement in the kitchen perfectly fill in the stillness between Spencer’s own movements. The clink of spoon on bowl in the pauses as he thinks, the soft hush of water under his breathing as he mutters to himself about each book. Eventually, quiet conversation fills the space, two separate ones who’s answers flood together until the commentary sounds like two people talking to each other. You’re commentating the dishes, chastising the water that flies off the spoons and hushing the bowls that touch too loudly. Spencer is relaying the plot of the book to you, knowing you’re listening just to hear the sound of his voice. He digs through his shelves, unsatisfied, until he finds something tucked behind a copy of The Odyssey; a collection of children’s stories, with a foreword about the history of illustrated novels, gifted to him by his mother. It features her careful handwriting noting his childhood commentary on the margins of almost every page.

“Find something?” you say, startling him a little.

“Jesus, you scared me.”

“Sorry.” You peer closer at the tan cover in his hands, reading the title. “Is that Beatrix Potter?”

He’s quiet, face flushed a deep red, turning the book away in his arms to hide it from your gaze.

“Spencer, these are great. What’s up?”

He shrugs, trying to be casual and landing somewhere in the realm of petrified.

“They’re children’s stories,” he says like that changes everything.

“So?”

“So…I’m not a child.”

“I know.”

He makes a frustrated noise in his chest. It’s not at you, it never is. Rather, it’s t he fact that for all his might he can’t figure out how to put it into words that he should be past the children’s story phase. Yet the fact you’ve still offered to read something he holds such fond memories of makes every argument he had disappear from his mind.

“DO you want to read it?”

Your voice snaps hm back. “What?”

“Do you want me to read it to you?”

Spener swallows anxiously, though he’s not sure why he’s afraid.

“Would you?” he asks softly.

“’Course I would. They’re good stories. Bedisdes, you need something lighter tonight.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Spencer hands you the book, rising to his feet and clearing his throat.

“Just don’t make it weird. Please. I’m not a kid.”

You smile reassuringly. “I know, sweetheart. It won’t be weird.”

Spencer takes your free hand in his, his thumb tracing over the mountain ranges of your knuckles. His footsteps pad lightly down the hall in time with yours, socked feet whispering in rhythm the way they only do because you’ve spent so long around each other. His flannel pyjama pants hush soft too, reeds in the water of your apartment’s oasis. The hall feels both endless and barely a step long, Spencer getting lost in his thoughts as you walk the few steps to your bedroom.

Cracking the door open, you let him in first, watching as he climbs into bed, throwing the sheets over his legs and sighting when he gets comfortable. You close the blinds over your window, lighting the bedside lamp and taking note of how kindly the light caresses Spencer’s face. The edge of his nose is lit up gold, soft eyes reflecting it back too. When he smiles at you, his eyes light up with love amidst the hazel, reminding you exactly why you love him.

“Scootch over,” you say, crawling into bed beside him.

He’s adjusted the pillows your for already, learning them against the headboard so that you can comfortably read. You already know where he’ll move before he does; you register his pillow right in place for your head at the exact moment he throws an arm over you and rests his head on your chest.

“Are you comfy?” he asks when you’re settled in.

“Mhm,” you reply. “Are you?”

Spener answers by snuggling closer with a satisfied groan.

“Good,” you say, ruffling his hair.

You’re about to flip past the foreword when Spencer’s eyes ask you to read it without his voice saying the words. You adjust seamlessly, clearing your throat as you start with the foreword. With your hand carding through his curls and your voice vibrating in his ears, spencer falls asleep faster than he has in years; before you’re finished the foreword, he’s already snoring impossibly soft against your chest, fingers twined carefully in your shirt. You finish the entire first section just in case, but when he doesn’t wake, you set it on the table and turn out the lamp, slowly easing yourself down the mattress until you’re lying comfortably. Spencer doesn’t stir, and it’s not long before you drift off with him after pressing a final kiss to the top of his head.

 You sit in the middle of it all, shoulders loose, a half-finished drink warming between your palms. A fire kindles in your chest, and expands until it presses against your ribs. 

It arrives with no fanfare, and suddenly the world is too beautiful to carry alone, the plague of gratitude and joy, impossible to quarantine. It spills from rib to rib until every breath catches on light. Even the room seems to laugh with you. 

The sky forgets its distance and joy multiplies fast; if this is an illness, you shall let it have you completely. Let it flood every quiet room, every trembling hand, every lonely name. Someone speaks, and joy jumps ship, landing in their chest too. You are sick with wanting more days exactly like this–breathing out thank you, thank you, thank you, until the whole room is infected.

Morgan's laugh is the loudest, rolling out of him like he has never once learned to ration joy. Garcia's bracelets jangle every time she reaches for the shared plate of fries, which is often. JJ’s smile is soft, aimed at Emily, her eyes crinkling at the edges. Rossi is halfway through a story about a man in Palermo who owed him money and a favor and gave him neither, and he is telling it with his hands, both of them, wine forgotten, and the punchline is still two minutes out.

Hotch left at nine thirty. He stood up, put his hand on the back of his chair, said “don’t drive,” said “good work,” to the room in the voice other men use for I love you, and went home to a five-year-old who has been asleep for hours and who he will look at anyway. It is the six of you now, in the back corner, under a neon sign for a beer they stopped making in 2004.

None of you have to pretend that you are made of anything harder than flesh. 

Spencer is sat beside you, close enough that every time he shifts, the sleeve of his cardigan brushes your arm. He has one beer that he has been nursing for over an hour, gone warm and flat in his hand, more prop than beverage. Across the table, Garcia has begun telling a story that involved a disastrous online order and a package of sequined panties that somehow ended up in an evidence locker. Morgan is already halfway out of his chair with amusement. 

You laugh so hard you have to put your forehead down on the table, on the sticky varnish, on somebody’s ring of condensation; Spencer’s hand comes to rest very lightly between your shoulder blades for approximately four seconds and then goes away again.

In a world of dog-eat-dog, this is the easiest hour of your life.

No teeth are bared, no scrambling, just the soft animal truth that you are fed, you are warm, you are here and so is everyone you love, at least for now, at least in this room. The wolves rest today, and ambition puts its feet up. The whole pack curled up together in the one hour nobody has to fight for.

JJ gestures for another round. Someone–Rossi, you think–has ordered a plate of something fried and questionable that arrives glistening under the low lights. The conversation swirls and eddies around you, easy as flowing water. You contribute when the current pulls you in, and when it doesn’t, you simply float, and that is allowed too. 

It is Morgan who turns the ship; he leans forward, elbows on the table, a familiar grin spreading across his face. He has just decided that the night needs a new kind of fuel. “Okay. New business.  I want everyone's worst hookup story, and I mean worst; I want blood in the water.”

“Absolutely not,” says JJ, already laughing with her hands over her face.

“Absolutely yes, and you’re going first, because you looked away.”

“I have a child.”

“You had to have that child somehow, JJ.”

“I hate you,” she says into her hands.

“You love me. Now go.”

She goes eventually, because the table starts a slow drumroll on the tabletop and there is no dignity available to her in any direction. Her story is approximately four sentences long, delivered mostly into her glass, and involves a Christmas tree lot, the back of a car, and a man who was not an employee there.

“Then why was he wearing–”

“I have no clue, Emily.”

“You don’t know?”

“I was twenty!”

The table erupts, and Morgan points at JJ with the whole flat of his hand like he’s presenting evidence to a jury, saying,

“This, this is what I’m talking about; this is what I wanted.”

Emily follows suit without being asked. Hers begins at a diplomatic function in Prague and ends with her explaining, in Czech, to a man in a tuxedo why she was standing inside of a coat closet.

“So what did he say?” Garcia urges.

“He said it was fine.” “It was fine?”

“He said it happens.” Emily takes a drink. “That’s the part that’s stayed with me. Not that I got caught. That a man in a tuxedo looked into that closet and decided it was ordinary.”

“What happened after?” “There was no after; there was just a point where I left the country.”

Garcia’s is next, and she requires no encouragement whatsoever. Her tale involves a fantasy convention, a hotel with a broken thermostat, and a costume that was not technically flame-retardant.

You have your face in your hands; your ribs hurt, you are already a little loose from the tequila, and the world's edges are just a touch softer, making every laugh land deeper in your chest. Happiness sits in you like a second heartbeat, steady and almost too big. You think, distantly, that if someone cracked your ribs open right now they would find nothing in there but light.

Rossi’s, when his turn comes, is two sentences and a shrug, the moral center of a shipwreck. All that follows is silence, and then:

“That’s it?” Garcia says. “That’s all we get?”

“That’s all anybody gets,” Rossi says serenely, and sips his four-dollar red.

The drinks keep coming, for Morgan has decided that the only acceptable way to mark the occasion is another round, and then another. Your glass empties and refills without you quite tracking how. Your drink has turned into something sweeter, stronger; the room has taken on that gentle, golden tilt and every sound is richer, rounder at the edges, like it’s been dipped in something warm before it reaches you. Garcia's bracelets jangle like tiny little bells.

Morgan turns his head, full of theater, and looks at Spencer. The whole table leans in like a held breath about to be spent–the hush of a crowd right before a card trick. There is no better sport on earth than watching Spencer Reid be asked a personal question.

He goes red from the collar up, a tide coming in. “I don’t–okay. Okay, statistically, self-reported sexual histories are the least reliable data in all of behavioral science. People overreport, and there is asymmetry in the direction of the lie, which tells you significantly more about social expectation than it does about actual–”

“Reid.”

“--behavior, so in a very real sense this entire exercise is a study in performance rather than in–”

“Reid.”

He stops and looks into his warm beer as though the answer might be somewhere in the abyss of it.

“There was a girl in the physics program at Caltech, and we knocked over a bookcase.”

One full second of nothing.

“A bookcase,” Morgan jeers.

“It was load-bearing for the entire organizational system of the room,” Spencer says, wretched, “and I spent the rest of the night alphabetizing.”

“Did you finish?” Emily asks.

“The–the alphabetizing?”

“Reid.” “Yes,” Spencer says, “I finished.”

You are laughing so hard that you have one hand curled around his forearm because you need something to hold onto, and he lets you, and the neon over the booth turns everything the color of a warm bruise. You are unshakeably happy, surrounded, and for once not carrying anything heavier than the pleasant float of too many drinks.

It is your turn before you fully realize the circle has closed around you.

Morgan points at you with the neck of his bottle, eyes bright. “Your turn, pretty girl. Don’t hold out on us.”

The alcohol has sanded the edges off of everything, and you laugh; the sound is easy and a little breathless, and you set your glass down carefully because your fingers feel pleasantly unreliable.

“I’ve got nothing.” “Come on.”

“No–I mean I’ve got nothing.” You lift your glass an inch, a toast to the void. “I’m a virgin.”

It is not a hard thing to say, here, tonight, in this booth; it is a slightly warm thing, tepid coal after being burned down past the danger of it, a hot thing that would’ve once scorched you, has now gone soft and orange and harmless, passed hand to hand around a fire because everyone here would rather hold it than let it die out.

Morgan's eyebrows go up. “Shut up.” He says, delighted, the way he’d say it if you told him you’d met the President.

The teasing that follows is immediate, merciless, and completely without teeth. Derek starts by inventing increasingly elaborate scenarios involving you in various precarious positions. You take it all in and lean into it.

The alcohol has made everything soft and bright, and the teasing feels like affection wearing a louder coat. Spencer’s shoulder is pressed fully against yours now, and when you glance sideways at him, his eyes are warm in a way that makes your already spinning head spin a fraction more.

He does not join the teasing; he simply stays close, the stable, quiet center of the storm, and every so often his fingers brush the back of your hand under the table. He feels like the only solid thing left in your world that has now developed a suede finish. The one thing your hand keeps finding without you sending it looking.

Somebody orders another round. Someone else–probably Morgan–declares that the night is still young and that virginity is a state of mind that can be fixed with the right amount of tequila, and JJ throws a napkin at him.

You tip your head back against the booth and laugh until your heart hurts, and the joy in your chest is so large and so simple it almost feels like it could lift you clean out of the booth and into the pink and blue night outside.

The fire in your chest has room; there is nowhere else on earth you would rather be. Nobody warns you how much can go right in one unremarkable night, how full a person can get on nothing but light and noise and the people who stayed.

Penelope has commandeered the jukebox with a fistful of quarters, and every four minutes the whole tenor of the room changes, as she deposits another selection into what she keeps calling “the queue of joy.” Something with horns in it gives way to something slow and sweet, with a beat you can feel in the tabletop, and every time the song turns over Garcia does a small shimmy back to the booth

She hauls you up for a song with a saxophone in it, both your hands in both of hers, and you go, because you are drunk and warm and every breed of happy.

You dance badly, and so does the rest of the team. Morgan does something with his shoulders, and JJ laughs so hard she has to sit back down, shoeless feet tucked under her in the booth, and you laugh too, breathless, spinning once under Garcia’s raised arm just to feel the room tilt on its own axis for a second.

When the song ends, you drop back into the booth out of breath, chest heaving, grin stretching across your whole face, and Spencer is right there where you left him; you have found your true north. He watches you quietly, and when you sit, he shifts an inch closer.

The action makes you giggle into your hands, and the whole table is loud around you, the neon doing its slow, warm-colored thing over everyone’s faces, and somewhere in the last hour the fire in your chest has become something else: a house that’s finally warm all the way through.

You lose twenty minutes somewhere in there and find them again with your head on Spencer’s shoulder.

Your limbs feel loose and generous, with your temple against the bone of his shoulder and your hand gathered up in the loose knit at his elbow, and you let the table go on without you for a while, and the whole warm noise of it comes to you slightly muffled. You turn your face in a little further.

“Spencer.” His name comes out a bit slower than you intended. “Mm.”

“Take me home.” 

There is a pause above you, and you feel him look down.

“Please,” you add into his cardigan.

“Okay,” Spencer says immediately, without any air between the word and the question, like it had already been sitting in his mouth.

Morgan overhears and immediately begins a theatrical protest about abandoning the party, but you are already sliding out of the booth, laughing, one hand still caught in the fabric of Spencer’s sleeve. The others call after you with varying degrees of mock betrayal. Garcia blows extravagant kisses before getting up, sauntering over to you, and hugging you so hard your spine clicks.

“You,” she says into your hair, “are so so precious. I mean it.”

“Thank you, Pen, I know.”

“You don’t,” she says before giving you a kiss on the cheek and holding your face in both hands for a second, her rings cold against your jaw, before she is gone across the bar.

The good hours have let your hand go, though they were generous all the way right up to the door. A chest full of embers sits still and warm in your chest, and you let the hour close, let the light change; nothing has ended here, it has only traveled out through your ribs into whatever comes next, already looking for the next room to light up. 

Spencer has your coat off the hook before you have finished saying goodbye to anyone, holding it open at exactly the right height without being asked, and you shrug into it backward twice before getting it right. He waits for you patiently as weather, one hand hovering an inch from your shoulder in case the floor decides to be unkind to you on your way past it.

Outside the cold air nips at you; it is chilly and wet and tastes of asphalt, and you pull it in anyway. It rained while you were away. The street has that black mirrored look, every light doubled, the world laid out twice–once solid, once trembling.

Spencer steadies you with a hand at the small of your back when you misjudge the curb, and you let yourself tip toward him half a degree more than balance requires. The touch is light, familiar, the kind of contact that has always existed between the two of you. You lean in to it, claiming more of him than the night allows. 

The rain has stopped, but the city hasn’t dried, every surface still slick and confessional. You walk without speaking, and the silence asks nothing of either of you.

It settles over your shoulders as naturally as the damp night, soft and unhurried, stitched together by footsteps that have learned each other's rhythm years ago. The easy intimacy of matching breaths that bloom white into the cold, in slowing your pace without realizing you’ve matched someone else's stride 

Streetlights bleed downward into the puddles, doubling everything–you, him, the whole quiet block–as if the city wants a second copy of this moment, one to keep for itself after you’ve both walked on. The sounds of traffic are softer, muffled, like the world put on socks to walk around in. 

Spencer’s hand doesn’t move from the small of your back–just stays there, warm against the chill coming up off the concrete, and so you tip your head against his shoulder while he raises an arm for a taxi.

“Spencer. Can I tell you something?”

“That depends entirely on the something you’re referring to.”

“I’m serious.” You point at him, finger not entirely steady.

He goes quiet to show that he is actually listening, and it makes you sway a bit. You look at him for a second too long before you say it; now that you have his full attention, you’re not sure the sentence survives contact with it.

“You are the best part of my week.” It comes out plainer than you mean it to, simple as fact with no decoration on it at all. “Every week. Not just tonight–every single one. It sounds a little pathetic, but I’m drunk, so.” A small, helpless laugh, half into his shoulder. “So there. Now you know.”

“I look forward to Tuesdays because that’s your late shift, and I know I’ll see you before anyone else does. I’ve never told anyone that either.”

You stare at him.

“That’s not fair,” you say. “I say one nice thing, and you immediately say a nicer one back; that’s not–that’s not how this is supposed to work, Spencer. You’re supposed to just take the compliment and be normal about it.”

“I don’t know how to be normal about you.”

You don’t even try to compose yourself first. You duck your head straight back down and hide the whole helpless shape of your smile against the wool of his cardigan, pressing your face into it like you could keep it there, as if it’d leave a mark that lasts past morning.

“I’m not going to remember saying all this tomorrow,” you say, softer now, muffled, watching the traffic pass. “Not clearly anyway. So I need you to remember it for me. Just–keep it somewhere. For both of us.”

“I remember everything you say to me.” His voice comes out low, close to the crown of your head. “That has never once been a problem.”

The cab arrives sooner than you’re ready for it to. Spencer opens the door, and you fold yourself in ahead of him, and he slides in after, close, knee to knee, and gives the driver your address. The cab pulls from the curb and the bar’s light slides off the back window, and you watch it go, the shape of the night changing before your eyes. 

You have crossed out of the warm, loud room into something quieter, something down to just the two of you and a stranger's radio. Every door has been removed from the house of your mind, leaving you loose-lipped and every room of you exposed to the hallway.

Words spill out of you without filter or order. Your tongue is clumsy. Sentences start in one direction and veer wildly into another. More than once you catch yourself saying his name just to feel the shape of it in your mouth, soft and necessary.

The streetlights come through the window in long slow sleeps, up over his face and off again, up and off, like something breathing. Twelve minutes into the ride, you become aware of a situation. The need arrives sharp and sudden, impossible to ignore. You shift in the seat, legs pressing together, and Spencer’s head turns to you.

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to pee,” you announce, Spencer. I have to pee right now.”

He leans forward and speaks to the driver. “Pull over at the next block, please. Anywhere with lights.”

The cab noses into the curb outside a stretch of shuttered storefronts, and Spencer is out and around and opening your door before you have located the seatbelt release. You mutter a soft string of oh no, oh oh no’s under your breath, and you half-fall onto the sidewalk, Spencer’s hand steady at your elbow. The street is quiet save for the distant rush of traffic and the soft click of Spencer’s shoes as he follows.

“I love you,” you say, because the only thing louder than the need in your bladder is the need to tell him. “I–I love you. I love you so much, Spencer–”

“I know. There’s a place on the corner, come on–”

“I don’t think you do know–”

“I know enough to find you a bathroom,” he says, and takes your hand, and steers.

The corner place is closed. The next one is closed. There is a bar with a bouncer who takes one look at the two of you and says, not unkindly, sorry, bathrooms shut, and Spencer opens his mouth, and you drag him away by the sleeve.

“Don’t argue with him. Spencer, I will die out here.”

You end up hurrying down a side street, half running, the two of you, past a laundromat and a shop that sells only lamps, and you are laughing so hard by the third block that it is actively making your situation worse, and it makes you laugh harder. Spencer is saying don’t, don’t laugh; you can’t laugh right now, and the not quite rain is beading on both of you like frost.

You two stumble upon a diner, twenty-four hours, humming under fluorescent light with three people at the counter and a waitress reading a magazine. A hand-lettered sign is stationed in the window that reads: RESTROOMS FOR CUSTOMERS. You are through the door immediately.

You are standing in the little back hallway by the payphone that hasn’t worked since the nineties with your hand flat on the restroom door. You push the door open six inches. You look at the tile and let it swing shut. 

The room is very bright and small with only one stall, one sink, and a fluorescent light that hums, doing its gentle work. Spencer has stopped a polite distance back down the hall with his hands tucked away in his pockets, waiting. 

You turn around and lean your back against the door. “I can't,” you say, voice small, “will you come in with me? I need–moral support. Emotional support. Please.”

He doesn’t hesitate. He steps inside, closes the door behind him as best he can, and the tiny room shrinks around the two of you, fluorescent lighting making everything look slightly unreal. You can smell the industrial soap and the faint tang of old pipes. Spencer’s presence fills the remaining space like something safe.

You shuffle into the stall, still mostly dressed, and in the thirty seconds that follow, there is a comedy of errors performed for an audience of one. Spencer stands just outside the stall door, close enough that when you reach out blindly, your hand finds his. He takes it without comment, and his fingers are warm and entirely steady.

You hover, and the relief that follows is profound.

“I love you,” you murmur, staring at the scuffed tile between your shoes, Spencer’s hand held tight in yours through the small gap in the stall door. “I love you in the way that makes the rest of the world quieter.” Your voice cracks on a sudden rush of drunken tenderness, and suddenly everything feels too big and too soft and too true.

“I love you in the way that makes me want to keep every version of you I’ve ever met.”

Spencer’s thumb moves across your knuckles, infinitely gentle. “I’m right here,” he says softly. “Take your time.” You finish and stand on slightly unsteady legs. The stall door opens, and there he is in all his glory, still holding your hand, looking at you with an expression so open that the light suddenly feels too kind. 

He briefly releases you to let you wash your hands, then grips it again when you reach out. He does not let go while you dry them on rough paper towels. He does not let go when he moves to open the bathroom door, then he offers his arm as if the entire interlude has been nothing more than the usual.

Outside of the restaurant, the night has grown cooler, the cab is gone, Spencer already has his phone out, calling for another, but you are still leaning into him, still talking in soft astonished fragments about the shape of his hands and the sound of his voice and the impossible fact that he stayed. 

The city moves around you in quiet streaks of light, and your bladder is empty. Your heart is not, and Spencer Reid is walking beside you through the dark with the same steady patience he brings to every impossible thing.

 While others bent and blew away on autumn's careless breath, he was the flower that stayed, one stubborn bloom that chose to stay past summer, past the rest. No grand parade, no fanfare bright, just quiet, patient grace–a single splash of fading light still holding to its place. The frost came close but hadn’t won; the stem, though thin, stood tall, for some things don’t leave when summer's done. Some things don’t leave at all.

The new cab takes longer to arrive than the first one did, or maybe it only feels that way because you are now tired after a night so full. When it pulls up, Spencer opens the door for you before the driver has fully stopped, and you step into the back seat; he gets in after you and gives your address for the second time tonight, laying it out carefully so it won’t chip.

You don’t speak much on this second ride; instead, you fade in and out of consciousness. You occasionally watch the city go by doubled in the window, streetlights unspooling over wet asphalt, and you somehow find that your head has ended up against his shoulder again; it is simply that the shape of you knows how to be next to him.

You smile into the wool of him, and the meter ticks, the radio murmuring something low and forgettable, and the fire in your chest, banked now, quieter, is not gone; it burns on low, warming you from somewhere underneath the exhaustion.

The taxi slows, and your building comes up on the left, rising out of the dark, several floors of brick with a dying hedge out front and a security door that’s been broken since March. The not quite rain has thinned and simply hangs in the air and gets you wet by attrition, patient about it.

Spencer pays and comes around to open your door. You take the hand he offers and climb out onto the wet sidewalk on feeble legs. The night air feels cooler now, sobering you in the gentlest way. You lean into him as you climb the three flights of stairs, and every time you miss a step, his hand is a constant, steadying presence at your elbow.

At the door, you fumble with your keys. They jingle uselessly in your fingers, a wind chime for an audience of two. You try the lock several times, the metal refusing to cooperate with hands that no longer remember the exact angle required. Spencer waits without argument, and you stand there with your hand on the keys, and behind you the street is doing its quiet nothing, tires shushing through the wet.

Twenty years of a locked room finally leaning on its own hinges.

“Spencer. Will you have sex with me?”

You turn around to face him in the entryway, your porch light casting everything in soft amber, moths writing their small frantic cursive around the bulb above you. He does not speak at first, but the silence isn’t empty, and it stretches long enough that you can hear the city breathing three floors down. When he does speak, his voice is quiet.

“Why me?” he says.

Not why. Why me. As though the second word were the one that bears the load, as though of all the strange things standing on his doorstep at night, the strangest was being chosen. He has spent his whole life being the answer to questions nobody meant to ask him, and he cannot fathom being the answer to one somebody did.

He is the only room in the world you have never wanted to leave.

“Because I trust you. Because you’re the only person on earth I’ve never once had to be careful around.”

He is exceptionally still, and somewhere below, a car passes and takes its light with it.

“Why now?” he asks, and it is so gentle, a hand held out to something skittish.

In the wordless dark where you keep the oldest things, you look down at the keys in your hand, and then you look back up.

“Because it’s the one thing that’s left, and nobody got to it. Nobody took it from me,” you say. Nobody took it. Like a thing that thieves come for, something you have been sitting up with night after night, in a dark room, with a shotgun across your knees. “Everything else about my body was decided for me, and I’d like to be the one who decides what happens to it. Just once, I’d like something to be mine to give.”

Spencer has always known where you keep your ruins. You had let him stumble into your chambers years ago, and he’d admired what you’d hung there for company–the pinkish hues that adorn your interior, the cherubs, the cherry trees, all that painted springtime. You gave him a tour like a docent. You whispered him lovely lies, immersing yourself in the fairy tale you’d created, praying to whatever god that still took your calls that he wouldn’t ask why the deepest corners of you smelled of rotting flesh.

He never asked; that's why, eventually, you let him see the corpses that rot behind your innermost door; a hundred versions of you that lie dead and unburied, every version of you that didn’t survive intact. You had told him the bones of it, the version every fairy tale warns the girl about: you were six, they weren’t, they were family, it went on for three years, and now you’ll never get to be little again. 

Let me give away one room on purpose, before someone finds a way to steal that too.

He doesn’t say I’m so sorry, or any of the other useless things that people grab for. He doesn’t reach for a statistic, though you can see one pass behind his eyes like a fish under ice. He just says your name, and holds it with both hands.

“Ask me tomorrow,” he says, and you blink.

“That’s not a no,” he says, before your face can finish falling. “I need you to hear that. It isn’t a no, but you’re drunk, and I–” a breath, “--if this is real, it will still be real in the morning. Real things keep, and you deserve to be asked back by someone sober, and to answer as someone sober, and I deserve to know it was you asking and not the tequila. So ask me tomorrow, if you still want to, and I’ll say yes tomorrow.”

“You’ll say yes,” it comes out small. Six years old and standing at the top of the stairs.

“I’m saying tomorrow,” he says, and an almost-smile plays at the corner of his lips. 

In this moment, the one that the night has been saving in its breast pocket, he reaches out and takes the keys from your unresisting hand, and he unlocks your door on the first try. He doesn’t hand the keys back right away; instead he folds them into your palm, and closes your fingers over them, and holds your closed hand between both of his, there under the porch light, in the wet gold air, moths keeping their frantic vigil.

“Thank you for trusting me with it,” he says quietly. “I know what it costs you.”

You lean forward and press your forehead against his sternum, and his chin comes to rest on the crown of your head, and for a moment the two of you just stand there in the doorway, one warm shape against the cold, and the fire in your chest puts out one last long ember of light.

“Goodnight, Spencer.”

“Goodnight.” As you step inside, as the door begins its slow swing between you: “Drink some water. Tuesday’s my favorite day, by the way. In case you don’t remember tonight, somebody should keep that for both of us.”

The door clicks shut, and you stand in your dark apartment with your keys in your hand and your heart does something unsupervised, and outside you hear it–the sound of him not leaving yet. He waits on the landing until your deadbolt turns, and only then, footsteps on the stairs, unhurried, growing fainter—a man walking home through a city laid out twice, carrying your question somewhere safe until morning.

Hermes wore wings at his ankles for this, someone quick enough to carry what the heart was too slow to say itself. He carries no arrow, asks no wound to prove it true; he is only faithful–delivers the word from the mouth that trembled it so into the hands that carry it now. So let him come tonight, sandals worn thin from the errand; he sets the message between you and holds it with both hands. He does not linger for thanks; he only delivers, and trusts to the ones who stayed.

The message arrives, and the night keeps it safe until morning, nothing intending to be spent.

Tomorrow comes, as it always does, indifferent to what it's been asked to hold. 

You wake with an ache and a sense of dread.

Will you sleep with me?

In the merciless light of a hangover, with your mouth tasting like a bar rag and your skull feeling like something borrowed and returned late, the question is still there, sitting where you left it. Sober, you look at it and don’t flinch.

You go through the motions of early day; you shower, feed yourself, and sit at your kitchen table with the file you’re meant to be reading and read the same line four times without it going anywhere. At eleven, you stop pretending you’re going to get any work done and call him.

He picks up on the second ring.

“Good morning,” you say

“Good morning.” You can hear that he’s somewhere quiet, his apartment most likely, a book open somewhere nearby that he has no intention of getting back to.

“It’s tomorrow,” you say, “my ask hasn’t changed, but I wanted you to hear it in the daylight.”

There is a pause on the line. “Okay,” he says finally. “Yes.”

You go quiet, and he clearly cannot stand it, because a second later: “You’re supposed to say something back, you know. That’s how phone calls work.”

“I’m processing.”

“Process faster; you’re making me nervous.”

“You don’t get to be nervous; you already said yes.”

“I can be nervous after the yes. Nobody said that the nervousness had an expiry date.”

You laugh, too loud for eleven a.m. in an empty kitchen. “I missed your neurotic rambling.”

“I wasn’t rambling.”

“You said, and I quote, ‘the nervousness had an expiry date.’”

“That is a complete and grammatically correct sentence.”

“It’s insane, is what it is.”

“You called me at eleven in the morning to reconfirm you want to have sex with me, and you’re critiquing my grammar.”

That shuts you both up for a second.

“Okay,” you say slowly. “Since you wanted to say it out loud first,” a breath, “yes. That’s still the question; I called to ask it again, properly, so–I’m asking. Will you sleep with me, Spencer?”

“You already asked me that.”

“I’m asking again; sober counts as its own ask; those are the rules, I don’t make them.”

“You do make them, actually; you made that one up right now.”

“Doesn’t make it wrong.”

He goes quiet, and you can hear him smile. “Yes,” he says. “Still yes, ask me again in a year, and it’ll still be yes.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” “I’m being thorough.”

“You’re being a lot of things right now.” “Name one that isn’t true.”

You don’t have an answer for that, so you deflect. “You know you never actually asked me.”

“Asked you what?”

“The same thing. I asked you twice now, and you’ve just been saying yes both times like it’s a pop quiz.”

There’s a brief pause; you can feel him sit up straighter through the phone, the air on his end of the line changing shape.

“Fine,” he says. “Will you have sex with me?” “That’s not how you ask a question, Spencer; that came out like a threat.”

“It did not come out like a threat.”

“It came out like you were reading me my rights. Now ask me properly.”

He exhales, and when he speaks again, his voice has dropped the joke entirely, gone real. “Will you let me sleep with you because I want to–not because you asked first, not because it’s owed, not for anything except the fact that I would like, for once, to be the one asking instead of the one being asked.”

“Yes,” you say, all the teasing gone out of it. “Obviously yes. You’re an idiot if you thought that was in question”

“I like hearing you say it anyway.”

“I like hearing you ask.”

“Very romantic, Spencer.”

“I contain multitudes.”

You’re grinning again, the whole kitchen a warm hug around you. “So now what, are we just going to stand here–sit here, whatever–on the phone saying yes at each other all day?”

“I mean, I have the time.”

“Spencer, be serious.”

“We can go out on Tuesday and discuss the intricacies. We’ll go to the diner—the one with the milkshakes you love–at seven.”

“Are you going to bring your legal pad?”

“I refuse to confirm or deny–”

“Fine. Tuesday, at seven, bring your pad, bring your color-coding, bring whatever you need.” “I’ll bring myself, mostly.” “Good. That’s the part I actually want.”

Neither of you says anything for a second after that, and then you speak of nothing much at all, the weather, friends, work, and yet these words like crumbs still fall and feed you, plain and sure as that.

 No wisdom nor great aim needed, just voices, trading warmth for sound. The heart wants the same small nourishment the belly’s found. A joke retold, a sigh, a laugh, you fill the hours by half and half with nothing that you’re speaking of, and still you leave the table fed, though nothing wise was ever said. 

“I should let you go,” you say, and don’t move to end the call.

“You should.” “I’m not going to, though.”

“I know,” he says, “neither am I.”

And you stay there, the two of you, saying nothing into a phone line that’s carrying, for once, absolutely nothing but good news.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Tuesday finds you there before Spencer does, your arrival marked with the ring of a bell.

The diner sits on its corner, glowing like something conjured–pink neon, chrome trim, windows fogged something soft at the edges–stepping inside is stepping into the warm sugared middle of something. It smells of coffee and griddle butter and vanilla sweetness. You take the booth that is tucked in the back, with the cracked vinyl; you watch the door, and you win.

He arrives at 6:58 exactly, hair wrecked by the wind, scarf attempting to swallow him whole. He spots you and the smile that breaks over his face is the kind you want to fold up and keep in your pocket for the worst days.

“You’re early,” he says, sliding into the booth across from you.

“You’re earlier than me every single time we do this. I wanted to win just this once.”

“It’s not a competition.”

“Life is a competition,” you say, and he sets a legal pad on the table between you. You look at it, then at him, then back at it.

“There are tabs, and they’re color-coded, Spencer. You made a color-coded document about having sex with me.” “Don’t be so crass; I made a color-coded document about having a conversation about having sex with you,” he corrects, a man defending his dissertation. “The sex itself remains, at present, entirely undocumented.”

“You’re being an ass, at present.”

“I’m being a thorough person.”

You order the milkshake you always do; he orders a coffee that he will ruin with enough sugar to classify it as frosting, and the waitress calls you both sweetheart in a tone that includes you as a single unit.

The evening has that quality again–all that spun-sugar thin–all of late night pulled into threads and draped over the booth like something a confectioner left to cool. It catches on the chrome napkin holder, on the rim of his coffee cup, on the steam rising off the grill, and for a moment the whole room looks caramelized, edible, about to melt, dreamt up of neon and warm air and the two of you, sweetness with no architecture under it but faith.

“All right,” you say, nodding to the pad, “present your findings, Doctor.”

He flips it open, and there it is: two columns in his cramped left-slanting hand, headers underlined twice, yes, no, and beneath them, mostly white space, waiting.

“It’s empty,” you say.

“We’re supposed to fill the contents tonight, together; that’s the whole point of the structure.”

“You do realize that normal people just sort of figure it out as they go along.”

“Normal people have years of iterative trial data, and we have one Thursday and a controlled environment.” He uncaps the pen. “I’d like to stack the deck in your favor. Okay, first column.”

He starts easy–kissing–yes, obviously, established, field tested, and he writes it down anyway. You laugh at him for writing down kissing like it’s breaking news, hiding your smile in your milkshake.

Hands, next, hair, neck. He asks about each one plainly, no flinching, occasionally citing sources, because he is who he is, and strangely this is the least awkward conversation ever held in this diner.

“Above the waist,” he says, pen hovering. “Over clothes, under clothes, or both.”

“Both.”

“Below the waist.”

“Yes.” “Over, under, or both?” “Both, Spencer, we’re going to be here all night if you disaggregate every single one.”

“We have all night, that’s what the coffee is for.” He writes both in small, careful letters.

“You annoy me.”

“Mouths?” “What about them?” “Where are they allowed to go?”

You take a long pull of your milkshake, mostly to buy the two seconds you need to essay it with a straight face. Then you set the glass down, and say in a matter of fact tone: “Anywhere, everywhere, and with the same academic rigor you bring to literally everything else in your life. I’ve seen you speed read; I have expectations, don’t disappoint me.”

He chokes on coffee, a full ambush of the respiratory system, one hand flying up over his mouth while the tips of his ears go a red so immediate and total it looks almost medically significant, and he has to set the mug down and collect himself in stages, a man reassembling after a minor explosion. It is horribly entertaining.

“Noted,” he says finally, hoarse, and writes something you cannot read upside down, and when you crane your neck he tilts the pad away from you, prim as a schoolboy guarding a test.

“What did you write?” “It’s proprietary.” “Spencer.” “Column one is thriving. Moving on.”

But then he asks the next questions, and it’s. “What do you like?”---not where, not what’s permitted, but like, the word landing open palmed on the table between you and the machinery in you stalls.

“Whatever you want,” you say, automatic, worn smooth from twenty years of use.

He puts his pen down. “That’s not an answer.” “It is, though. I’m easy, flexible, whatever you–”

“I need the answer to come from you, not whatever part of you is telling me what I want to hear,” he says, terribly gently, and the booth is suddenly very quiet.

“I don’t–” you stop, try again, and the truth comes out smaller than you’d like. “I don't actually know what I like. I don’t have–nobody ever asked before, so I genuinely don’t know.”

“Okay,” he says, “then we’ll try things out. Everything in this column is provisional, subject to revision, revocable at any time.”

The laugh comes out of you sideways, “it sounds like you’re making my sexuality a rental agreement."

“I’m making it yours, the paperwork’s just how I flirt,” he says.

The second column is harder, the list of no’s. The word no has never once been structural in your life; every boundary laid down, hands walked over it like it was a welcome mat, until eventually you stopped laying them, because a boundary that nobody honors isn’t a boundary, it’s just evidence, proof you saw it coming and couldn’t stop it anyway. It is easier to have no walls than to watch them fail, easier to be easy.

“I don’t know how to fill in that column,” you finally say, voice lacking armor.

“Then we’ll practice. Tell me no to anything; it doesn’t matter what.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Wonderful, it's ridiculous, tell me no anyway.”

The milkshake sits between you, whipped cream leaning, and he reaches for it slowly.

“No.”

The word is out before his fingers touch the glass, and nothing bad happens. His hand withdraws, that’s all.

“No, you may not drink half of my milkshake, Spencer. I simply won’t allow it; you have done this four separate times since March.”

“You kept a list?”

“Of course.” He laughs, and something in the sound washes the last of the weight out of the booth, and the column suddenly doesn’t look like a wall on it, only a door, and only your hand on the knob.

After that, entries come easier, though it is not many–two, three, small ones, a word you’ve always hated, a thing you’re not ready to think about yet, filed under not yet, instead of never.

“Last section, words that mean stop.”

“Can’t we just use stop?” “Stop works, and always will, but sometimes, people freeze on the ordinary words, or the ordinary words get tangled up in–other things. So we pick one that has no history, a word that’s never been in the room with you before.”

You think about it. “Banana boat,” you decide, and at his look: “Yes, like the sunscreen. I want the emergency exit to be something that makes me laugh.”

“Banana boat,” he repeats, and writes it down, underlining it twice, “and a word for slow down.”

“Bookcase.”

He looks up. “Absolutely not.” “It’s load-bearing, Spencer.” “You are never letting that go, are you?”

“It’s load bearing for the entire organizational system of the room.”

“Fine,” he says, “bookcase. I hope you’re happy.” “Very. Next should be lights.” “Lights,” he agrees. “On, off, or low.”

“Low,” you say, the answer coming easy from somewhere true: “I want to be able to see you.”

“There’s a lamp in your bedroom, the amber one, far corner,” he says, because of course he has your apartment layout memorized, “We’ll use that one,” and it goes on the list, your entire Thursday assembling itself line by line in his careful handwriting, a structure built from words alone.

The rest of the hour spends itself the way the best ones do–on nothing. He tells you about a book on medieval marginalia and does the voice of the monks, which you will never once let him live down. You build a profile on each of your cats, and he asks serious follow up questions, and you laugh so hard that you put your forehead down on the cool fornica. 

The waitress refills his coffee twice without asking, and you steal one of his onion rings, and he watches you do it and says nothing at all, just smiles into his mug.

“We can meet on Thursday,” you say when the plates are cleared, and neither of you has moved. “My place at seven.”

“Okay, Thursday,” he agrees, and doesn’t write it down, because some things get kept in better places than paper.

When you finally step out into the world, the neon follows you through the glass, laying its pink and blue down across the sidewalk, and he walks you to the corner with his legal pad tucked under his arm like a hymnal and his shoulder knocks yours every few steps, not by accident.

Let it stay spun, just a little longer; you will carry it home whole, cupped in both hands like something bought at a fair, too delicate for the walk, carried anyway, because some nights you decide melting can wait, because some sweetness is worth the risk of losing it between here and the porch light. Holding something that might not survive the walk is better than never having carried anything sweet at all. 

It stays spun just a bit longer, it does.

· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·

Thursday dawns eager and golden. You go on with the familiar motions of your day. You go to work, eat lunch at your desk without tasting it, and somewhere around four o'clock, between one case file and the next, you look up and realize that your hands have gone still and your mind has already walked three hours ahead of you, standing at your front door.

You have been rehearsing this moment more times today than you’d ever admit out loud, standing at the door, opening it, what your face is supposed to do, and nothing prepares you for how ordinary it feels when the knock comes at seven exactly, three sharp raps.

“Hi,” you say, opening the door.

“Hi,” he parrots, and you close the door behind him; the click of the lock feeling less like a room sealing shut and more like a held breath finally let out, the sound of the world being asked, politely, to wait outside for a while.

For a while, you just talk about ordinary things–the case that closed Monday, a movie neither of you has seen, but have strong, competing opinions about. It helps, Spencer, laying a path of solid ground for you to walk across, one ordinary sentence at a time, a long steady runway.

Eventually, the ordinary conversation runs its course, and there is a pause neither of you rushes to fill, and both of you understand, without saying so, that this pause is where the evening turns. 

You end up on the couch eventually, close but not touching, a careful few inches of cushion between you, and you look at him.

“Come here,” you say, and he does.

You close the last of the distance yourself, and kiss him, catching the shape of him still warm against your mouth. He makes a small, startled sound against your lips, and then he’s kissing you back, smiling the whole time.

His hand comes up slow to cup your jaw, and his mouth goes slower, deeper, and you feel everything, everywhere, all at once: the ground tilting slightly under you, every nerve in your body reorienting itself around the single fact of his mouth on yours. 

He kisses you thoroughly, and when you finally pull back for air, he chases you half an inch before he lets you go, eyes still closed, breathing hard with one hand braced flat against the couch cushion like he needs it there to stay upright.

It builds from there, slow and unhurried, his hands finding their way into your hair, down the line of your spine, resting warm and open at your waist like they’ve always belonged here. 

You lose yourself in the physical certainty of him–the low sound that catches in his throat when your fingers slide beneath the hem of his shirt and find bare skin, the way his whole frame sways toward you like something magnetized, off balance, half a breath from tipping over.

 When you press closer and drag your mouth along the line of his jaw, he goes entirely boneless against you, a full-body shiver working down through his shoulders.

“You,” he manages, voice rough, “are going to be the death of me.”

“Good,” you murmur against his throat, feeling him swallow hard under your mouth. “I like you unsteady.”

He laughs, breathless, and kisses you again, deeper this time, and you feel it in the soft scrape of his teeth against your lower lip, in the warm, clean smell of him, the way his hands start to wander, mapping you out slow and careful.

Somewhere in the tangle of it, you end up moving without quite deciding to, mouths barely parting, moving up and toward the bedroom, his hand finding yours in the dark hallway like it’s the easiest, most natural thing in the world for your fingers to lace through his.

The bedroom is dim, lit only by your lamp, and a streetlight coming soft and gold through the blinds, striping the ceiling in long amber bars. He lays you back against the pillows like something he intends to be careful with, following you down, his weight braced on his forearms so that none of it presses down on you all at once, just settles, warm and welcome and entirely within your control to push away if you wanted to.

You don’t want to.

His hands find the hem of your shirt eventually, the question folded so gently in the motion it barely registers at all, and you nod and lift your arms, letting him pull it over your head. It lands somewhere on the floor behind you, forgotten immediately, because his eyes have gone soft and adoring in a way that makes you feel, for one unguarded second, entirely beautiful. And then the second passes.

He will peel you back like an orange, thumbnail finding the seam you spent twenty years keeping hidden, and the rind will give way. Underneath is not sweetness, not the bright wet flesh the mouth goes looking for. You built a whole orchard's worth of skin to keep this moment from happening, and his hands are already at the seam, how easily his knife finds the give. 

Opening is not sweet, juice on the chin, a mess worth being made. Hands once held you like you owed them this, pressure, squeezing till the quiet came out worst; now every hand feels like it wants to eat the parts of you you’d rather leave kept away. You want to trust the fruit is still good news, but you know that he will find what rots in the deepest parts of you, what lies underneath your bruise.

Your arms move, curling in slightly, instinctive and small, not quite covering yourself but close, some old posture your body remembers even when your mind has mostly moved past needing it. 

Spencer notices immediately, and his hands go still against your ribs, patient, and he pulls back enough to actually look at your face, steady attention.

“Hey,” he says low, “we can stop. Say the word, and we’re done for tonight, no explanation needed, nothing owed to me or to anyone.”

“No–I’m okay. I promise I want to keep going. Please.” Your voice comes out smaller than you mean it to.

Something moves behind his eyes; he studies your face a moment longer, searching for whatever would tell him you’re saying this because you mean it and not because you think it’s what he wants to hear, and whatever he does or doesn’t find, he decides to trust you, the way the whole plan was built to let him.

“Okay,” he says softly, “I’ve got you; tell me if that changes, and I mean at any second.”

The kissing starts again, slower now, his mouth finding your jaw, your throat, the ridge of your collarbone; he’s trying to prove something to your skin that words alone could not manage. You reach for his shirt in turn, fingers a little less steady, and he lets you work the buttons open one by one, watching your face the entire time, breaking every few seconds into a soft private smile, before he leans back in to kiss you again.

His shirt joins yours on the floor, and his skin is warm underneath your palms, the long lean line of him lit gold and amber by the streetlight. You let your hands wander over his shoulders, down the plane of his chest, along the soft trail of hair leading beneath his waistband. 

He kisses you like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to be doing, his hands mapping slow, careful paths against your skin, learning where you like to be touched, where you flinch. You lose yourself in the golden stretch of it, the drag of his mouth, the low sound he makes when your hands find his hip. The two of you move together, entirely wrapped up in eachother, the whole apartment gone quiet and golden and safe around you.

There is nothing left between your mouths but breath and the soft, wet sound of wanting. You can feel the rabbit-quick hammer of his heart and the fine tremor that runs through him every time your fingers map a new inch of skin. 

His hands slide up your back, careful over the newly bared skin, tracing the line of your spine, learning a new language he has only ever spoken in dreams, your bedroom reduced to the quiet rush of blood and the taste of him.

You kiss the corner of his mouth, then the hinge of his jaw, then the pale column of his throat where his pulse beats wild and visible. He tips his head back to give you more, the trust its own kind of heat. Your hands find the waistband of his pants, and he lifts his hips to help you. Fabric slides away until there is only skin, long and pale and trembling under your touch—the evidence of his wanting apparent.

You settle over him, the heat perfect against the softest part of you. The kiss that follows is deeper than any that came before, mouths open, tongues sliding. His hands roam with tenderness, over the curve of your waist, the undersides of your breasts, the skin just below your ribs. Then one palm settles low on your stomach, the touch loving, the same careful reverence he has given every other part of you.

You are six, and the hands that press there are not his. They are smaller, meaner, sticky with something you were too young to name. The weight is wrong, too heavy for the size of the body doing the pressing, too sure of its right to be there. A slow, spreading filth blooms under the place where the palm rests, glitter trapped beneath hot flesh unable to ever be washed clean, grown into the meat of you. 

A vicious fine, ground into the hot, soft flesh of your belly by hands that did not care what they left behind. A thousand tiny, glittering barbs trapped under skin that is still too small, still too warm, still trying to reject the foreign glitter of other people’s want. Their hands are still on you, and they won’t come off, catching on every ridge and fold, refusing to be rinsed, sparkling with malice every time the light of a new touch finds them.

You feel dirty in the places no soap can reach. The obedience rises, the small frozen stillness of a child who has already learned that struggling only makes it last longer. The body remembers what the mind was too young to file away properly, and it remembers here, in this inch of skin, heat stored in a struck match, dormant, never extinguished all the way down. 

You know that Spencer is safe, some clear steady part of your mind insists upon it, the way it might for the color of the walls, or the day of the week, an anchor thrown down and holding even while everything above the waterline goes dark. 

You know it's him, you know his hands have never once given you reason to flinch from them, but your skin cannot seem to tell the difference. The weight of his palm has reached down into a much older layer of you and found the wiring crossed, already primed to be hurt, years before he ever touched you at all, years before anyone should have.

He feels the change the instant it happens and his hand lifts as though scorched. Both palms come up to cradle your face instead, thumbs brushing the wetness that has already started at the corner of your eyes.

“Hey,” his voice is quiet, “hey, I’m right here.” You don’t answer. You are not sure, in this moment, that you fully exist to answer with.

“You’re here in your apartment. It’s Thursday night. I’ve got you.” The words are not empty; they are facts he is willing to repeat until they become true again

Slowly, the ceiling resolves into your ceiling, and you can feel your own ribs again and the breath moving through them. You become aware, gradually, of your own hands, of the fact that they’re shaking.

“There you are,” he says softly, when your eyes finally focus on his instead of through them. There’s no relief performed, just steady welcome, a man opening a door for someone he’d have waited at all night if he’d needed to.

You start shaking harder once you’re back in your body; a return to yourself is its own kind of shock, and your face is wet, and you don’t remember deciding to cry at all, but you are, quietly, your breath catching and breaking against him.

“What do you need right now?” Spencer asks, “Do you want space, or do you want to be held? Both are allowed.”

You can’t answer in words yet; you just blindly reach for him and he’s there instantly, easing his weight off you and gathering you up against his chest instead, tucking you into the space beneath his chin like he understood without needing to be told exactly how small you needed to feel allowed to be right now.

“No. Don’t stop, I’m fine. I can do this. I want–” The sentence frays and the ghost weight is still there, pressed into the soft give of your stomach even though his hand has long since left you, their hands still stuck. Tears spill over, sudden and hot, and impossible to swallow back, and you have never once felt so ugly. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I don’t know why–I’m sorry, I’m sorry–”

He gathers you in, arms wrapping around your bare back, one hand cradling the back of your head so you can hide your face against the warm skin of his shoulder. You sob into him, and the sound is raw, broken, your body crying for someone who wasn’t him. 

Somewhere in you there’s still a mouth that cries the way it did before you learned to speak, not words, just sound, the kind that magnifies into the dark. How quickly your body forgets all the years you have lived and becomes something newborn and wailing. 

A baby doesn’t know that calling’s wrong; it just knows empty, and it knows how to reach for warmth with everything, so long as breath allows. Yours is reaching even now; it mistakes his gentleness for that first hour, and cries the way it did before it came to understand that even if you make yourself loud enough, no one will hear you and make it stop. 

Somewhere inside of you, the baby keeps calling, keeps believing that this time a mother will come through the door, gather her up, cover what should have never been exposed, and say, I heard you, I hear you, you can stop crying now.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” he murmurs into your temple, over and over. “Not for this, not for any of it. We stop. That was always the rule; I’m right here.”

You cling harder, fingers digging into the thin muscle of his back, face pressed into the place where his neck meets his shoulder. The tears keep coming, ugly and helpless. He does not rush you; he only stays, solid and warm and breathing, while the worst of it moves through you. You just stay there, folded against him, his heartbeat steady, his hand moving in patient circles against your back, and you let yourself be held by someone who isn’t going anywhere.

The crying runs itself out slowly, diminishing waves, each one a little further apart than the last, until you’re just lying there against him, wrung out and quiet, his breathing going steady like something that has never once considered stopping.

Neither of you moves to get dressed, or moves at all, and his hand keeps up its slow orbit against your back, and the apartment holds the two of you, a cupped palm holding water, knowing it can’t keep every drop.

“Yesterday was the anniversary,” you say, finally, into his chest. “Of the last one. The most recent assault.”

His hand pauses for half a heartbeat in its circling and then resumes.

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I don’t really make it a habit of telling anyone. I don’t like giving it a day. It already took one year–it doesn’t get to have this day every year in this month.” You breathe out something that wants to be a laugh and doesn’t make it. “That’s why I wanted it to be tonight. I wanted to put something good next to it on the calendar, close enough to touch. I thought maybe if tonight went right, then next year, when the date came around, I’d have somewhere else for my head to go.”

He doesn’t say anything, just keeps holding you, and somehow the not-saying is the thing that makes it possible to keep talking, the silence on his end functioning like an open door.

“And the stupid thing is, it’s not even the last one I think about. Every year I brace for the date, and the date comes, and my head just–walks straight past it all the way back to the first. Like all the others were just echoes and the first is the only bell.” 

You pick at a loose thread on the pillowcase, needing your hands to be doing something. “I think that when I was six, something went wrong with me that day. Not just to me, but with me, like something got switched or rewired because it never stopped after that. It just kept happening –different years, different places–like–” your voice thins, and you push through it, “-- like there’s a bright neon sign on my back that says: vacancy, open all night, ready to be abused, and they just keep reading it and pulling in.”

You lift your head off his chest so you can look at him, and your voice comes out harder than you intend, but you don’t soften it, because it’s honest, and tonight seems to be the night for that. “It always finds me. Once is bad luck, twice is terrible luck, but it just kept happening, Spencer–how does that keep happening to one person unless there’s something in them that calls it? Unless they’re marked somehow?”

He is quiet for a moment. You watch him reach for a statistic, something about revictimization, about predators selecting for the exact stillness that earlier predators trained into a person, watch it get all the way to the back of his teeth, and watch him set it down.

“The common factor in a string of robberies is never the house,” is what he says instead, quietly. “No matter how many times it gets broken into.”

You look at him for a long moment. Then you put your head back down on his chest, because it's easier to say the rest of it to his sternum than to his face.

“Tonight was supposed to be the good one,” you say. “That’s the part that kills me. I’ve never–I have never once in my life been touched in a way that was for me. Twenty-six years old and every hand on my body was taking something—every single one. I don’t have a–a reference point. Other people got years of good touch first, hugs and hand-holding and clumsy teenage kissing; they got to build the whole house on a good foundation, and I got–I got what I got, and then nothing, so there’s just this gap where a whole education was supposed to be. Tonight was supposed to be the first page of it, and for a while it was.” Your voice cracks, and you let it. “It was, wasn’t it?”

“That part was real,” he says, and there is no theater in it, nothing performed. “Nothing that happened after cancels it. It happened, it’s yours, it’s on the calendar now, next to the other thing, right where you wanted it.”

You cry a little more at that, quietly, the tears running sideways across the bridge of your nose and into his skin. He lets them land without wiping them away, like they have as much right to be there as you do.

“I–” You take a breath, and it shakes on the way down, and then you say it, something kept in a jar so long you’re not sure it remembers how to fly. “I think there’s something missing in me that the rest of the world has, some–organ everyone else got issued at birth, whatever it is that lets people be touched and loved. Whatever it is that made every other girl in my high school someone you take to prom, and made me someone you–” you stop, redirect. “I’ve never been on a date. I've never been kissed before–actually kissed, chosen-kissed. Never had a boyfriend, never had anyone try. There has to be something underneath, something they can smell. Whatever’s missing in me, they can tell. Animals always can tell when another one is wounded and nobody wants to build a house on ground that’s already caved in once.”

“That’s not–”

“I’m not done.” He stops completely, and you feel his arms tighten. “I feel so weak, Spencer, all the time. I feel powerless. Other people have had it so much worse. I keep telling myself that. I did everything I was supposed to: I told someone, I’m in therapy, I did the worksheets and the grounding and the reframing. I tried so hard to heal the little girl who got left in that room. I tried to grow her up, to make her safe inside me, but she’s still there, and she’s still so small. My body still remembers like it happened this morning. I still feel dirty, like something was taken. I can never get clean again, and I don’t even feel like I’m allowed to feel this bad; it could’ve been worse. People carry heavier things.”

“Doing everything right doesn’t buy you out of hurting. I wish it did. I wish that’s how any of this worked,” he says quietly. “You survived something–” “I didn’t survive anything.” It comes out sharper than you mean it to.

“I’m not–I don’t mean that the way it sounds,” you say, backing away from your own edge. “I know what you’re trying to say. I know it’s meant kindly. Everyone says it: my therapist, my friends, you’re saying it now–survivor, like it's a medal, something in me that fought and won. But I don’t feel like that. I just–endured it; I wasn’t given a choice in the matter, and I just feel like that’s not surviving; it’s just still being here afterward, which isn’t the same thing no matter how many people want it to be.”

“Okay,” Spencer says. No argument, no gentle correction, just–okay. His hands wrap around yours, and he lets your framing of it stand exactly as you gave it to him without trying to sand off the parts that make other people uncomfortable. “You get to decide what to call what happened to you. That’s not mine to assign. If victim of circumstance is the truest word you have for it, I’m not going to trade it out for one that makes me feel better. I just wanted you to know that I see what it cost you to still be here.”

Something in your chest loosens at that, a tension you didn’t fully register carrying. “I hate her for it. Me–her–whatever. I hate myself so much, and it’s so easy–it never once gets tired–I hate every ounce, every liter, every gallon of me. There isn’t a denomination of me I don’t hate. I hate the way my hair curls at my nape, I hate my stare, I hate the way that my teeth line my gums, I hate how my voice sounds. I hate how quiet I go. I hate that I never screamed; I only let out a soft no as if that would make them stop, but I didn’t scream not once, not one single time in three years–what kind of child doesn’t scream? I hate the way I look in photographs; I have hated it since I was seven. There is not one photo of me as a child where my smile touches my eyes, and I hate that I’ve checked. I hate that I fold. I hate that I love so much and so fast, like a dog that’s been kicked and still runs to the door. I hate that I’m jealous of every person who got a boring childhood, with nothing to report. I hate how each time that I talk I cannot help but think that you are screaming for me to stop. I hate that I cannot find any part worth loving.”

The room is very quiet when you finish, and your own breathing sounds enormous.

“I’m not going to spend tonight arguing with twenty years I’d lose, and you’d feel unheard, and the hating would just go back in the jar, but I am going to disagree quietly. You should know that I’m doing that. The whole time you were talking, every single item on that list–I disagree, even the times I didn’t say so.”

“That’s such a lawyer answer.” A sound comes out of you that’s half sob and half laugh, wet and involuntary. “I still feel like her, sometimes. I have a badge, and an apartment and a job, and none of it touches the part of me that’s still small. I’ve tried to go back and comfort her, tell her it wasn’t her fault, hold her hand through it, and some days it almost works, and then a hand touches me, and it's like none of the work ever happened at all.”

“You’re still allowed to hurt. I wish I could give you a schedule for this, tell you that everything will be better by a certain date, but I can’t.”

“That’s not very comforting.”

“I know,” his voice is gentle, apologetic. 

You lie there for a while. “I’m still her,” you say quieter. “Some days more than others. Today, a lot.”

He presses a kiss to the crown of your head. “I know. I see her too, sometimes, when I look at you, and I think she deserves better company than she’s had.”

You don’t say anything; you just press yourself into the warmth of him and let yourself be held. The night stretches elastic between the two of you. 

“I can still feel their hands,” you continue, voice thinner. 

Fresh from the wrapper, they peeled you open and feasted upon you as if you’d been the sweetest candy. They’d whisper the sweetest words to you, before chewing you up and spitting you out like a piece of gum that’s stale in flavor. 

You adorn gorgeous wrappers, and beg to be seen again, pull it back and you won’t say no this time, anything to be looked at again; to be loved again–so you glitter still beneath the foil, soft and yielding, offering the last sugar-dusted edge to any hand that would reach, praying that the next bite might remember the sweetness you once were before the world grew tired of the taste. 

You wonder when your body became an offering laid at the altar of please, please, please, please don’t stop wanting me. Still, beneath every beautiful wrapper, there is a part of you that remembers being bitten into before you ever offered a taste.

“I have lived twenty years in a body that still keeps the appointment they made with it. The hands are always there: when I try to fall asleep, when someone stands too close in a grocery line, an accidental brush of a shoulder. I forgot about it right when it stopped, when I was nine, and I wondered why I was always left wanting, why I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. There was a stretch of time where I couldn’t make myself step into the shower because the water felt like another set of hands.”

You feel the little girl inside you go very still; you are still six and twenty-six.

“I started to remember again when I turned thirteen, and it came back in pieces. I wish I could forget it all over again. I wish that it never happened at all. I thought if I just kept surviving long enough the ache would get bored and leave, and when that wasn’t enough I stopped trying that too. I struggled a long time with surviving.”

You take a breath. The ceiling stripes hold still and listen.

“I wet the bed until I was fifteen.” It comes out in a rush, ripping the bandage. “I used to set alarms–two in the morning, four in the morning–so my body couldn’t betray me while I slept. I hid sheets and did laundry silently at three a.m. Nobody told me it was–that it’s a thing, that it happens to kids like me. I didn’t find that out until I was twenty-two, in a library, in a book I was too ashamed to check out.”

The gum is still being chewed, and you are the flavor that’s running out.

His arms tighten around you, careful, and he says nothing. You cry once more, no flood breaking, just a quiet overspill.

“I had cereal that morning, the first morning it happened. The good kind with the toy inside.” You laugh, humorless. “And after, I remember going back outside, and the sun was just hanging there in the sky. I guess I was confused that the world hadn’t done anything; there were no sirens, no thunder, nobody’s face changed. I had dinner that night, spaghetti, and I ate it, and I kept waiting for something to mark it. A day like that should have had weather; it should have rained something biblical. Instead it was just–blue. Regular blue.”

The sky did not flinch. It wore the same quiet blue it had offered to birthdays, grocery runs, and morning jogs, as though the world had misplaced nothing at all. Beneath its placid gaze, something sacred was unstitched, a flower plucked before its time. 

“I think that’s the part I’ve never forgiven the world for. The world that let it happen under a completely ordinary sky, on a day that otherwise did its job perfectly. Somewhere that same day, someone fell in love for the first time, someone got a promotion, all of that happened on the exact same day, under that same sky, like the day had enough room in it for all of it at once.”

He’s quiet, listening in the way he always has.

“All of that was years ago. The alarms, the bed, the shower, I stopped, I built a life, I did everything I was supposed to do. On most days I thought the distance was real, that it was behind glass now, look but it can’t touch you, and now it’s not behind glass at all. It just hurts so much, aching like it happened yesterday, like it's still happening.”

You are tissue paper and milk teeth and forty pounds of trust; a child's body–a thin soft melt on three boys’ tongues. Consumed; no resistance possible because there’s no substance to resist with. They took you up like the sacrament of nothing, three of them, family, older, larger, sure. 

Melting was the only property your body had been issued. No teeth marks, just a thin soft dissolve on three tongues across three years, consumed like the consecrated–ritually, with everyone else in the house facing forward, eyes closed, as though something holy were happening.

“When I think of myself at six, I will think of this, pliant, and ready to be abused. Once, I could–a child can be ambushed once; no one blames the deer for the first set of headlights, but it was three years. A thousand days, and somewhere in that thousand, there had to be one day, one hour, where I could have said something, told someone, made it stop. I didn’t. I just kept showing up small and quiet. That’s my earliest self.”

Spencer shifts, slowly, until he can see your face. There is no careful receiving stillness; there is grief with its sleeves rolled up.

“It was not your fault,” he says slowly, evenly, giving each word its own floor to stand on. “Not the first day, and not the thousandth. There is no version where a six-year-old is the one who was supposed to stop it. Six-year-olds are supposed to be playing outside; scraped knees, chalk on the driveways, losing teeth the ordinary way and putting them under pillows. Learning to defend yourself intimately is not on the list. That was the job of every adult in that house, every single one, and every single one of them failed you, and the failure is theirs. It never transferred to you; it doesn’t transfer to you retroactively because you got older and learned bigger words for what happened.”

You take in every word, and you can feel that he means every word, that this isn’t recitation, that he has thought about this–about you–with the whole enormous machinery of his mind, and arrived here, at this, certain. 

It doesn’t help. You know he’s right; you could recite it to another person and mean it with your whole chest.

“I know,” you finally, “I know it and hate myself anyway, both at the same time. That's–I think that’s just where I live, Spencer, on the corner of those two streets.”

He doesn’t argue, but you watch him want, with everything in him, to say something that would move you off that corner, and watch him understand that, maybe not tonight, and maybe not for years.

When the next truth comes, it is one you have carried longest.

“I just–I just feel like I’m not the kind of girl you love,” you say, the words barely more than breath against his skin, “I’m the kind of girl you prey upon.”

He goes very still under you. 

“There’s a difference, and I know where I live. Some girls get built into wives and valentines and someone’s whole future, and others get built into opportunities. I used to lie awake wanting to know why; that was the big question I had for years, the one I was going to ask if I’d ever got them in a room: why me, what was it about me, what invitation must I have been writing without knowing the language.” You laugh, one gray breath of it. “And then somewhere in my twenties I realized I already had the answer. I was young, I was naive, I was available, that’s it; it was never even about me. I was just the softest, most convenient thing in the room. I wanted there to be a reason because that would have made me matter, even like that, and there isn’t one.”

The city is as quiet as it ever gets. You are newsprint, and flour paste and forty layers of someone else’s hands; a shape that did not choose itself, wound strip over strip until wet paper forgot it used to be a page, a list, a letter someone might have read, torn without your say-so.

“Predation is a fact about a predator.” He says it the way he’d testify on the stand. “It’s not a fact about you, or how quiet you were or how little you fought or how available the room made you. The responsibility lives entirely on the side of the one who chose to take. You were never the reason.”

You hear it, and you want so badly to believe it on your own behalf.

“I want out of her sometimes,” and it comes up from somewhere very deep and old. “My skin, I want to unzip the whole thing and step out and be somebody else for twenty-four hours; a day is all I ask—one day in a body with no history. I just–I hate it, I hate it all. I hate that I wasn’t protected enough. I hate that no one noticed. I hate that I hate my abusers much in the same way that I hate myself: wholly, and completely yet not at all.”

What comes up out of you then is not more grief; it is anger, it arrives sudden and total, pressure dropping across your whole body, and it is clean, this is pure, it burns clear. 

“I was a child, and my body did everything it knew how to do to say something is wrong here, and every adult in that house just kept facing forward. I was owed a wall of grown people between me and the world, and they fell short. Three years, in one house, three of them, and you want me to believe nobody saw? Nobody heard or said anything, counted the sheets, asked about the showers, wondered why the smiling stopped?”

“Yes,” Spencer says, “you were owed that, and they failed you, and I have nothing that can make that better.”

The anger burns another minute, then banks–not gone, it never will be gone; that is maybe the healthiest thing you own. You close your eyes, and the lamp hums softly; his heartbeat continues its quiet count under your cheek.

The sun clears something out beyond the buildings, and the first true light of Friday comes through the blinds and lies down across the bed, across his hand on yours.

The tears return, and they are almost gentle, because here, at the bottom of the night, you find the thing you weren’t expecting to find: not healing, nothing so grand, just a floor—a place where the falling stops. You might never feel better, not fully, not the way the pamphlets promise. What was done to you was a violation with no bottom to strike and no exit to walk out of; you will be forty and it will rain and the bone will ache; you will be seventy and a smell will find you in a grocery store, that is not the tragedy of it anymore, for even old wounds still ache, and the ache is allowed. You can stop bringing your pain to court; you can just carry it, in whatever weather comes.

Old stars flare beneath your ribs, and you feel impossibly young, but morning always finds you older. Settling beneath the skin like falling constellations, their light crushed but never quite extinguished; you grow around them anyway. You are a hundred small burning things crowded into one small chest, a body of crushed little stars.

A/N: The anniversary of my most recent assault just passed, but for some reason I’ll always go back to the first one. I was six, and they weren’t, and now I’ll never get to go back to being little again. I think it hurts worse because it was just like any other day; the world kept turning, yet mine ended that day. I have a lifetime worth of memories, yet one of my first will always be this, and it hurts more than you know. I go to therapy and do everything I’m supposed to, but it still hurts so much; even old wounds still ache, I suppose. Now I write Spencer Reid fanfiction to cope.

Her phone buzzed, startling her, then block heels stumbled on a chair, the thermos close to overturning when you rushed to brace her, which kept her from falling, but not from her iced frappe spilling all over her dress. “Shit!” she cried out, staring at herself, ice cold liquid and whipped cream staining her dress.

You can feel the other patrons staring at the both of you and you huffed internally — people really had nothing better to do than watch a girl’s misfortune. The woman’s close to tears as she dropped everything on the table you were standing at, grabbing at paper napkins to clean herself up. “Why don’t we head to the bathroom?” you asked, your voice soft and kind and she nodded, fighting back tears. You scooped up all your things as well as hers, guiding her to the public bathroom, leaving it on the side while the woman grabbed rolls of paper towels to clean herself up.

“God, this just had to happen the day I’m running late,” the woman muttered, wiping herself dry while you fought the urge to stare, counting bathroom tiles instead.

“Murphy’s Law, right?” you asked dryly. “Everything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

“You sound like one of my co-workers,” the woman huffed, glancing at you, and actually took you in — sharply dressed, simple but expensive… “I’m Penelope,” she said, watching you smile warmly.

“Well, Penelope, I hate to see a dress that vibrant ruined,” you said, your voice as soft as silk. “So, how about we get you a new dress, and I can get that dry-cleaned for you?”

“Oh.” She flushed. Adorable. “That’s nice. You’re nice, like really nice, but I’m running super late—”

“It happens,” you countered, tilting your head to look at her. “And I’m sure your boss would rather you come into work without wearing your coffee. Let them know you’re running late, and I’ll take care of the rest. I’ll be waiting out front.”

You deliver your promise in a way that exceeds expectations, driving her home in a sparkling Mercedes that has her internally squealing and also stressing about spoiling the seat, and a fresh frappe in her hand, cutting through lanes to avoid traffic with the radio on. Once at her apartment, you entertain all her caffeine-powered rambling with a small, amused smile as she changed behind a screen, throwing on an entirely new colour-coordinated outfit, and you take the coffee-stained dress in the paper bag she gives you.

A few days later, Penelope came back to her apartment to find her dress dry-cleaned in an outfit bag, and a card with your number on it, laid on her bed by a neighbour who kept a spare key. She sent you a text, thanking you, before settling on her bed and stalking you, her curiosity getting the better of her, and once she figures out your net worth, she slammed her laptop shut, eyes wide.

Her phone buzzed, with a text from you.

You: You’re very welcome.

Penelope swallowed, staring at the text from quite possibly the wealthiest person she knew.

Penelope: How can I make it up to you?

She tried not to think of the last bank account statement she’d been sent, watching the text bubble from you.

You: How about dinner with me? Friday, 7pm?

It hadn’t been done on purpose, and Penelope was in no way using you for your money — in fact, you had been the one to insist on the little gifts. Bracelets that reminded you of her, prescription sunglasses after a vague mention that she was missing a pair in a specific colour, getting more expensive the longer the relationship blossomed. It graduated from little trinkets and flowers to branded bags and precious jewellery, and had finally hit the peak when Penelope had a brand new Mac desktop sent to her office, with a note written in your loopy handwriting — ‘So you don’t have to crane your neck.’

Penelope tried to bring up in conversation at a dinner, but you had simply charmed her out of her discomfort, delicate hands on her hips. “Why have the money if I can’t spoil my favourite girl?” you’d asked, with that stunning smile that made her heart stutter. It always felt like Penelope was floating on cloud nine around you, especially when you brought her gorgeous lingerie in exactly her size, lacy little numbers that made her curves pop and nightrobes that made her feel like a princess in your silk sheets.

She’d never felt more taken care of, and yet all Penelope wanted to do was find a way to return the favour, no matter how many times you assured her that you weren’t doing any favours. It came to her when you were out of town on business, a networking thing for your advertising firm, on the same night she wasn’t working her cute butt off in the BAU.

That was definitely all it was, she told herself, putting on a Rihanna CD and preparing to take an everything shower with candles. Not that she missed the way you touched her like she was something fragile, or the way your eyes tracked every curve of her body as if it was her possession. But no amount of delusion could stop her imagining they way you’d unmake her, gently taking her jewellery off and placing it in the hot pink organiser you’d bought for her, or your slender hands taking the pins and clips out of her blonde curls and running through them, gently untangling knots with care. Brushing it aside to place soft kisses on plush skin, slowly unzipping the back of her dress, like it was something precious. That’s why she sends you that first video, making you almost choke on the champagne at the networking party, instantly lowering the brightness on your phone. To repay the favour.

Penelope: Miss you so much tonight <3

You closed your eyes, sighing, torn between telling her off and disappearing out the nearest exit and back to her hotel suite.

You: Are you trying to get me fired?? You: I can’t believe you wear that pretty a bra to work.

Penelope bit her lower lip, grinning as she ran her bath, one hand checking the water temperature, the other holding her phone, wearing a silk kimono.

Penelope: You know you’re the only one who gets to see it ;) You: God, I wish you were here tonight. You: The things I’d do to you in my hotel room… Penelope: Well, in your absence, I’ll just have to make do with what I have.

You groaned at the message, having to put your phone away for a moment and drain another glass of champagne. Meanwhile, Penelope was busy filming another little video of herself, involving bubbles, candles, rose petals, and a vibrator, laying back in your bathtub, the phone set up on a wall-mount.

She started by touching herself to the R&B music, closing her eyes and imagining your touch, how you’d let her rest her back against yours, and caressed her neck, down her collarbone to her heavy breasts. Her breath grew shallower as she squeezed one, fingers brushing over her nipple, the other starting to rub her thigh.

If she opened her eyes, she could see the disheveled mess she was becoming, with heaving breaths and lidded eyes, flower petals sticking to her glistening body. She desperately wanted you here, eliciting breathy gasps with your lips against her shoulder, touching her exactly the way she was, murmuring sweet endearments that she could only echo in her head.

She started running her perfectly manicured hand through her folds, enveloped in hot bubbly water, her thighs sticking out, a foot against the edge of the tub. She let out a low moan as she slid her fingers over her sensitive nub, aching for you. It was only a couple of days ago that your head was between her thighs, gripping her legs wide as your tongue swirled in that magic way that sent rivulets of cum dripping between your lips. Her fingers couldn’t do you justice, but it did the job, Penelope’s first orgasm leaving her half-sated, like warm honey-like relief releasing the coil that had been building. She took a few moments to catch her breath, drying her hands and sitting up to crop the end of the video and sending it to you.

All it took was the thumbnail of Penelope in the bath that forced you to leave the party early, faking sick to cut across a few blocks and into a hotel, and sitting at a table as you watched the whole thing. The funny thing was how your hips automatically started rutting against the chair to the video, watching your girlfriend get off.

You: Christ, you look gorgeous. My gorgeous, gorgeous girl. You: I want to touch you so bad…

Just sending those two messages had taken every ounce of cognition you had left, but one look at Penelope’s beautiful curves had sent you over the edge, rocking against the plush edge of the chair.

While you were still on the way to your first orgasm, replaying Penelope’s video, your girlfriend had moved on to her toys, recording herself as she dipped her finger into her dripping hole, both from her first orgasm and the bathwater, sliding it in with a soft gasp. It was an intoxicating sight, her perfect plush lips splitting apart, where you would have slid your fingers in, or kissed her, as her finger probed at her g-spot, then curled, just about as slow as you would have gone.

The next finger slid in after that, Penelope’s free hand gripping the edge of the bathtub as her hole stretched to accommodate her fingers. She kept stroking, curling her fingers against that sweet spot, groaning and shifting her hips in water that was growing cooler by the second, incentivising her to finish quicker, crying out your name, until her hand couldn’t work without cramping.

Which meant she was twisting in the tub to reach for her toys, a beautifully long pink dildo that had served her well in the past, that she slowly slid inside her, sinking lower into the water with a groan, hitting just the right spot. The best grip she could maintain was the edge of the tub, instead of your hips, or your hands, as she moved the toy in a slow easy rhythm.

She missed you so much as she touched herself, trying to get back that initial pressure to peak. She missed the way you’d play with her hair, crooning soft things in her ear, about how pretty she was, how you could touch her all day, all while pumping a strap-on inside her, turning her into a soaked, speechless, whining, writhing mess. And so she’s muttering profanities and moaning, the bubbles starting to dissipate as she came for a second time, her toes curling, hips arching uselessly as she thrust the dildo against her g-spot, letting slip a ‘Jesus fucking Christ’ as she pulled it out.

She waited to catch her breath, sliding back in the thumb, the cool water soothing against her over-heated body, slick with water and a little sweat on her brow, before eventually drying off and draining the tub.

Penelope finally lay back in your silk sheets, wearing a feathery pink robe, and all tucked up in your champagne coloured duvet, trimming her ‘short film’ before sending it.

Penelope: Something for you to dream about <3

By the time you got the message, you’d taken a hot shower and settling into bed in your own simple cotton pyjamas.

You: Jesus Christ, woman, do not make me hop on a red-eye and come find you.

Penelope’s grinning at your text, curled up in bed like a lovesick teenager.

Penelope: Is that a promise? You: A fantasy. But you’re definitely coming more than twice when I get you alone. You: That’s a promise.

The anticipation of your return leaves a flutter in her chest, as she inhales the scent of your perfume on the pillows.

Penelope: I’m holding you to that.

And with that, she clicked her phone off, setting the bejewelled device aside (with a brand new cover paid by yours truly), turned out the light, and closed her eyes, wondering if you would dream of her like she was bound to.

Saturday arrives like a soft bell chime you can almost hear before it happens.

You’ve got the apartment half-lit, curtains pulled back just enough to let in honeyed afternoon sun. There’s a faint stack of snacks on the coffee table, a questionable amount of blankets piled like you’re preparing for emotional weather, and the TV already paused on the opening menu of Doctor Who, glowing patiently like it knows it’s about to be emotionally overused.

You hear the knock.

Not loud. Never loud with him. Two beats, careful, like he’s asking permission from the door itself.

You pad over barefoot, smoothing your hands down your dress out of habit more than necessity. The fabric is light purple, soft as early twilight. It fits you neatly at the top before easing outward into something airy and floaty that shifts when you walk, like it can’t decide whether it wants to stay still or drift.

You open the door, and there he is.

Spencer looks like he always does when he’s trying to be normal and failing in the most quiet, devastating way possible. Button-up slightly rumpled from sitting on the train. Messenger bag slung over one shoulder. Hair already doing whatever it wants, curling forward like it has opinions about gravity.

His mouth opens.

Nothing comes out.

It’s subtle at first, the way his expression shifts, like a thought trips over itself inside his head and refuses to stand back up. His eyes flick up to your face, hold there for a respectful second too long, then betray him almost immediately by dropping, catching on you in a way he clearly did not intend.

You tilt your head slightly. “Hey.”

That seems to reboot him, but only halfway.

“Hi,” he says, too quickly. Then, like he’s correcting a mistake only he can hear, “Hello. Hi. I mean. Hi.”

There’s a beat where he looks like he’s considering reassembling the sentence in his hands.

You lean lightly against the doorframe, watching him with growing amusement. “You’re doing great.”

“I am,” he agrees immediately, then stops. Swallows. Adjusts his grip on his bag strap like it has suddenly become very interesting. “I’m doing… normal levels of greeting.”

“Normal levels,” you repeat.

“Yes.”

Another pause.

His gaze flickers again, just for a fraction of a second, before he catches himself and snaps it back to your face so fast it almost looks like a reflex. His ears have gone a little pink already, which is never a good sign for his composure.

You step back and open the door wider. “Come in before you short-circuit on my porch.”

“I’m not short-circuiting,” he says, immediately proving the opposite by stepping inside and nearly forgetting how to move his own limbs.

You don’t comment on it right away.

Because the thing about Spencer is that he always thinks he’s being subtle. Like his attention is something he can fold neatly into his lap and hide under polite conversation. But you’re starting to learn the language of him anyway, the small tells that give him away before he realizes he’s been read.

The couch dips when he sits, all careful angles and nervous adjustments, like he’s negotiating peace treaties with cushions. You settle beside him with the easy confidence of someone who has already claimed this space a dozen times before.

The episode starts.

TARDIS glow. Theme music. The familiar whirl of escapism wrapping around the room like a spell.

Spencer exhales softly, tension loosening from his shoulders in a way that makes him look almost younger. Less like an FBI profiler and more like a man allowed, briefly, to exist without solving anything.

You shift closer without thinking.

It starts innocently.

Your legs stretch across the couch, dangling lazily over the cushions. Your back presses against Spencer's chest as you snuggle into him. He adjusts immediately, like it’s instinct, like your body near his is something his nervous system has already been trained to accommodate. One arm settles around your shoulder, careful but certain, pulling you in just enough that your weight rests comfortably against him.

The episode keeps playing, but you feel it before you see it.

That shift in the air behind you. Not movement exactly, more like attention becoming tangible. Like someone has turned a page too slowly and the silence between words has started to mean something.

Spencer’s arm is still around you. Still steady. Still careful in the way he always is when he thinks about touching you too much.

And yet.

There’s a pause in his breathing that doesn’t match the rhythm of the scene on the TV.

You don’t turn right away.

You just tilt your head a fraction, like you’re listening to the room instead of the show. “Spence.”

A beat.

“Yeah?” he answers too quickly.

That’s enough.

You glance up. And there it is.

He’s looking at you.

Not the TV. Not the snack table. Not anywhere defensible.

Just you.

For a second he doesn’t move at all, like he’s been caught mid-thought and forgot how to pretend otherwise. His eyes flicker when they meet yours properly, caught in the act of being unguarded.

Then his brain clearly returns to the scene all at once.

“Oh—” he starts.

It comes out small. Almost soundless. Like the word itself is embarrassed to be involved.

His cheeks bloom pink so fast it’s almost unfair, color rushing up beneath his skin in a way that gives him away completely. He tries to look away immediately, but it’s too late now, the moment already exposed between you like a page turned too far.

“I wasn’t—” he begins again.

Stops.

Swallows.

His hand, still resting around your shoulder, tightens just slightly like it forgot it was supposed to be relaxed. Not enough to pull you closer. Just enough that you notice.

“I’m not doing anything,” he says, which is objectively not an explanation but sounds like he needed to say it anyway.

You shift just enough to angle yourself toward him.

“Oh?” you murmur.

That single syllable does something catastrophic to him.

His gaze flicks away again, immediate and reflexive, like eye contact has become too loud. “I mean, I am doing things. Just… not the things you’re thinking I’m doing.”

“That’s very specific,” you say softly.

His cheeks are fully pink now.

You let the silence stretch just a little, like you’re testing how far it will go before he tries to fill it.

The TV hums on in the background, all blue light and distant alien drama, but it feels secondary now. Like the room has quietly rerouted itself around the two of you without asking permission.

You glance back at him, lips curving. “I thought this was your favorite show.”

Spencer blinks once.

Twice.

Then, a little too fast, “It is.”

There’s immediate conviction in it, but also something strained underneath, like he’s trying to hold the answer in place with both hands.

You hum, tilting your head against his shoulder slightly, settling in even more like you belong there. “Mm. Strange behavior for someone watching his favorite show.”

His throat works as he swallows.

“I’m watching it,” he says.

“You’re watching me.”

His gaze darts to the TV for half a second, as if checking whether it still exists. It does. Unfortunately for him, it is not helping.

“I’m doing both,” he insists, but it comes out softer now, less like an argument and more like a confession he didn’t plan to make.

You shift slightly so you can look up at him properly.

His arm around you tightens again, subtle enough that it could almost pass for unconscious. Almost.

“Both,” you repeat, slow and amused. “So the Doctor is saving the universe, and you’re… what? Multitasking emotionally?”

A faint huff of air leaves him that might be a laugh if it had more confidence behind it.

“I’m not emotionally multitasking,” he says. “That would imply I’m managing it well.”

You don’t answer him right away.

Because the look on his face is doing something quiet and dangerous to you too.

Spencer sits there like he’s holding himself very carefully in place, as if any sudden movement might tip the whole moment over. His arm is still around you, but now it feels less like comfort and more like containment. Like he’s forgotten where he’s supposed to stop and start.

His eyes flick to your mouth for half a second.

He catches himself immediately, of course. But you see it anyway.

That’s enough.

You lift a hand to his cheek first, slow enough that he has time to pull away if he wants to. He doesn’t. His breath catches instead, a small break in the careful rhythm he’s been maintaining all afternoon.

He looks at you like he’s bracing for a math problem that might change his life.

You kiss him.

It’s not rushed. Not theatrical. Just simple and certain, like you’ve finally decided to stop pretending there’s any other logical outcome for the way he’s been looking at you.

For a second, he doesn’t move at all.

Then he makes a sound under his breath that disappears into you before it can become anything fully formed, and suddenly he’s kissing you back like something in him has finally been allowed to exist without permission slips.

It’s Spencer in every detail: careful at first, almost hesitant, like he’s checking if this is still real.

Then it changes.

His hand shifts from your shoulder to the side of your neck, fingers curling gently there as if he’s learning your shape by memory instead of sight. The hesitation doesn’t vanish so much as dissolve into something warmer, something more certain.

The TV continues in the background, forgotten.

Time does not so much pass as it gives up.

When you finally pull back just slightly, it’s only enough to breathe.

Spencer’s eyes are half-lidded, unfocused in a way that makes him look undone. Like someone has quietly rearranged the air inside him and he hasn’t figured out where to put his thoughts yet.

You don’t let the distance last.

You shift.

It starts small, just repositioning your legs, but the intent changes everything. You move fully onto him, straddling his hips in a way that makes the entire world narrow down to the couch beneath you and the warmth of him under your hands.

Spencer goes still.

His hands hover for a fraction of a second at your waist like they’re asking questions without words.

“Is this—” he starts.

His voice is rougher now, threaded with something he hasn’t figured out how to regulate yet.

You lean in before he can finish the sentence and kiss him again.

That seems to answer it better than language ever could.

His hands finally settle.

Carefully. Like he’s choosing you on purpose.

One at your waist, steady. The other sliding up your back in a slow, cautious motion that makes your skin feel suddenly too aware of itself. He exhales into the kiss like he’s been holding it in for too long.

You pull back just enough to breathe again, forehead still hovering close to his.

The room feels warmer now. Not in a dramatic way, just subtly rearranged, like the air itself has decided to sit closer.

Spencer’s eyes open slowly.

And immediately, they drop.

It’s quick. Instinctive. Like gravity briefly forgets its manners.

Then he freezes as if he’s been caught committing a crime he didn’t realize was visible.

His throat bobs. His hands, still resting at your waist, go very still in a way that somehow feels louder than movement.

You don’t move right away. Just watch him for a second longer than strictly necessary.

“Spence,” you say softly.

His eyes snap up immediately.

Too fast. Too guilty.

“I wasn’t—” he starts.

Stops.

Swallows.

His grip at your waist tightens just a fraction, not pulling you in, just anchoring himself like he’s trying not to float away inside his own thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” he adds, quieter now.

You tilt your head, studying him like he’s a puzzle you already know the answer to. “You’ve been doing that all afternoon.”

You can see it. The way his brain tries to compute whether there is any version of reality where he hasn’t been entirely obvious.

“I have not been—” he begins, immediate reflex.

Then his gaze slips again.

Just for a second.

Down.

And that tiny lapse undoes the whole sentence.

You let out a slow breath, almost amused. “You have.”

His ears go pink again, softer this time but spreading quickly.

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” he says, and that’s the thing that always sits under everything with him. Not denial. Not ego. Just concern, threaded through every reaction like a nervous stitch.

You shift slightly closer, fingers sliding up to rest at his jaw.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” you say.

You feel it then.

The smallest shift of his fingers at your waist. A subtle tightening, like he’s grounding himself through touch because looking is getting harder to regulate.

He notices your expression immediately and stills again, as if he’s afraid even that small movement gave too much away.

You don’t let him retreat into politeness.

“Spence,” you murmur again. 

His eyes lift again, already softer now, already a little lost.

You wait until he’s actually looking at you.

“Just say it,” you say gently.

His breath catches.

For a second, he looks like he might actually obey. Like the words are right there, lined up behind his teeth, just waiting for permission to exist.

Instead, what comes out is smaller.

“…That dress is just…”

He trails off.

His gaze drops again, slower this time, less like a reflex and more like he forgot how not to look.

His fingers at your waist twitch again, betraying him completely.

He clears his throat, embarrassed at himself, and tries to recover, but it’s already gone. The sentence has dissolved.

You let the silence sit between you, warm and expectant.

When he speaks again, it’s barely above a whisper.

“I’m trying not to be obvious,” he admits.

His eyes finally lift back to yours, fully honest now in a way that makes something in your chest go quietly still.

“And I’m… not doing a very good job.”

“You don't say?”

Spencer looks at you like he’s trying to decide whether he’s misunderstood something fundamental about language.

His hands are still at your waist, warm and careful, like they’ve forgotten they’re allowed to exist anywhere else. His thumbs make a tiny, unconscious movement against your sides, then still again as if he’s caught himself thinking too loudly.

“I’m serious,” he says quietly.

“I know,” you answer, softer now. No teasing in it this time. Just certainty.

That seems to make things worse, in the way truth often does when someone has been bracing for correction.

His gaze drops again. Not greedy. Not reckless. Just helpless in its honesty. Like his eyes keep slipping out of his control.

You shift closer instead of giving him space to retreat into his head.

“You’re allowed to touch me.”

It lands differently than everything before it.

His entire body stills.

Not tense exactly. More like all his nervous movement has been paused mid-thought, hands frozen at your waist as if the concept needs time to render.

“I am,” he repeats, like he’s testing whether the sentence is real.

You nod once. “Yes.”

A beat.

His throat works as he swallows. “I just don’t want to assume anything.”

“I know,” you say again, and there’s something warm in it now, something that softens the edges of his restraint instead of pushing against it. “You don’t have to guess.”

That does it.

You feel the shift before you see it. The smallest exhale breaking out of him, like something inside finally loosens just a fraction.

Still, he doesn’t move.

His hands stay exactly where they are, fingers slightly curled into the fabric at your waist, as if even this is already more than he’s sure he’s been granted.

So you take the decision away from him.

You reach down, sliding your fingers over the backs of his hands where they rest tensely against your ribs. You don’t ask again. You don’t give him the chance to overthink the geometry of the question.

You just pull.

His breath hitches in a way that sounds almost like a stopped note, a sharp intake of air that he doesn’t quite manage to swallow. You guide his hands upward, slow and deliberate, sliding them up your ribcage until his palms settle fully against your breasts.

For a second, Spencer doesn’t seem to breathe at all.

It’s like a system crash in real time. His eyes go wide, dark and unfocused, staring at you like you’ve just performed a magic trick that violates the laws of physics. His hands rest against your chest, heavy and warm through the light fabric of your dress, but he’s holding them so rigidly it’s like he’s terrified they might burn through the material.

“Is this—” His voice cracks, splintering on the word. He clears his throat, tries again, and it comes out thin and high. “Is this okay? I feel like I should be asking for a notarized statement of consent.”

"Jeez, Spencer, you'd think you'd take me having you touch my boobs would be enough consent," you tease.

Spencer lets out a sound that’s halfway between a huff of breath and a genuinely startled laugh, his eyes widening a fraction more.

“That is not—” He stops, his gaze darting from your face to his own hands and back again, color climbing up his neck so fast you can practically feel the heat radiating off him. “That is not the point. The point is statutory interpretation is much clearer than non-verbal cues, and I have a history of misinterpreting data sets that are… significantly less high-stakes than this.”

You smile, feeling the way his fingers are still curled slightly inward, hovering against you without actually applying pressure. He’s touching you, but he’s terrified of holding on.

You let out a quiet laugh, soft and breathless, and lean forward just enough to rest your forehead against his. “Yes, Spencer. This is okay.”

You feel the exhale leave him, shuddering and uneven, like a breath he’s been holding for weeks finally escaping.

“Okay,” he whispers, mostly to himself. “Okay. Good. This is… good.”

The word “good” has barely left his lips before his hands move.

It’s not calculated. It doesn’t feel like a decision his brain made and then communicated to his body. It feels like gravity. Like his hands have been wanting to do this for so long that the moment you gave them permission, they just… stopped fighting it.

He squeezes.

It isn't rough or greedy, though you can feel the potential for it trembling in his fingertips. It’s careful. Reverent, almost. His palms mold to the weight of you, thumbs brushing experimentally over the curve of your chest, and the sensation is so electric that your breath hitches audibly.

That sound seems to break something inside him.

His fingers curl in, just a fraction, testing the give of you against his hands. A low, broken sound escapes him—half a groan, half a sigh—and his eyes flutter shut like he’s trying to memorize the topography by touch alone.

“Oh,” he breathes out, like he’s just solved an equation he didn’t know he was working on.

He doesn’t stop. The squeeze turns into a slow, kneading motion, his palms heavy and warm through the fabric of your dress. He’s exploring, mapping the shape of you with a focus that borders on academic, but the feeling behind it is anything but clinical. His thumbs sweep over the swell of you, hesitating slightly when they graze the edge of your bra, then circling back like he’s found a favorite page in a book.

You rock forward involuntarily, your body chasing the friction before your brain catches up.

Spencer reacts like he’s been burned, but in the best possible way.

His hands stutter to a halt for a fraction of a second, palms pressing flat against you like he’s trying to anchor himself to the earth, and then his head falls back against the couch. His eyes are squeezed shut, his throat exposed, a long, vulnerable line of skin that makes your mouth go dry.

“You moved,” he chokes out. It sounds like an accusation, but his tone is ruined. It’s wrecked.

“I felt you do it,” you point out, amused breathless. You grind down again, slower this time, deliberate. “I’m supposed to move, Spencer.”

He makes a noise that is dangerously close to a whine, high in the back of his throat. His fingers twitch against you, no longer kneading, just pressing in like he’s trying to anchor himself to the only solid thing in the room.

“I know,” he gasps, his head tipping back even further, exposing the long, pale line of his throat. He looks like he’s in pain, but you know better. It’s too much sensation and not enough friction all at once. “I know you’re supposed to. I just— I wasn’t prepared for the kinetic energy transfer.”

You laugh again, but it’s breathless now, caught somewhere between amusement and the sudden, sharp heat that’s taken up residence in your own lungs. “You’re thinking about physics while you’re feeling me up?”

Spencer opens his eyes at that, blinking up at you like he’s surfacing from deep water. They’re dark, pupils blown so wide the iris is just a thin, burning ring of hazel.

“I’m always thinking,” he manages, but his voice is wrecked. It cracks in the middle, betraying him completely. He looks at his hands on you, then back up at your face, and the sheer adoration mixed with hunger on his expression makes your heart trip over itself. “It’s how I process. If I don’t categorize the input, I’m going to—” He cuts himself off, his breath hitching as his thumbs brush the underside of your breast again. “I’m going to lose it.”

You rock your hips down again, harder this time, watching the way his composure fractures like glass under a hammer.

“Then lose it,” you whisper.

You lean down, bracketing his face with your arms so he has nowhere else to look. His hair is a mess against the cushion, his lips red and swollen, and he looks at you like you’re the only gravitational constant in the universe.

It’s not a request. It’s a permission slip for a system failure.

Spencer stares up at you, his eyes wide and wet and unblinking, like he’s seeing the solution to a problem that’s been haunting him for months. His breath shudders out of him, a ragged, uneven exhale that fans against your cheek.

“You’re—” He starts, then stops, his voice cracking on the word. His hands flex against you, no longer careful, no longer testing the weight. They just hold. His fingers dig into the soft fabric of your dress, dragging over the curve of your chest with a desperation that makes your own head spin. “You’re dangerous.”

You smile, but it’s not sweet. It’s slow, knowing, a smile that acknowledges exactly what kind of power you have over him right now.

“You have no idea,” you murmur.

You reach up, hooking your fingers into the thin straps of your dress. You don’t look at him as you slide them down your shoulders—you keep your eyes locked on his, watching the dilation of his pupils until they almost swallow the color.

The fabric sighs as it slides down your arms, pooling at your waist.

Spencer doesn't blink. He physically cannot.

His eyes track the movement like it’s the most critical data stream he’s ever analyzed, dropping from your face to your shoulders, and then lower. The air between you feels suddenly oxygen-thin.

For a moment, the world is absolutely silent.

Spencer just stares.

It’s not a leer. It’s not even particularly sexual in the way you’re used to men looking. It’s captivated. His eyes roam over the lace, the shadow of skin beneath it, the way your chest rises and falls with your shortened breath. He looks like he’s trying to commit the image to memory with the same intensity he usually reserves for crime scene photos or quantum physics equations.

"Spence."

His name snaps him out of the trance, but his eyes don't lift. They stay glued to you, dark and reverent, like he’s forgotten how to look anywhere else.

"You can touch me," you say, your voice dropping to a whisper that feels like the only sound in the room.

For a second, you think he might actually argue.

His hands hover over your bare skin, trembling slightly, fingers curling into loose fists like he’s physically stopping himself from reaching out. He looks stricken, caught between the overwhelming urge to touch and the terrifying reality that he finally can.

"I don't want to..." He trails off, swallowing hard. He looks up at you finally, and his expression is so open it’s almost painful. "I don't want to ruin this. I don't want to be too much.”

You smile, soft around the edges, stripping away any lingering teasing until all that’s left is the truth. You lean in, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, feeling the way his breath stutters against your lips.

“You’d never be too much for me,” you whisper against his skin. “I want exactly what you’re giving me, Spencer. Not less.”

He breathes. A sharp intake of breath through his nose, followed by a ragged exhale that sounds like a deflation. The tension that has been holding his shoulders rigid evaporates, replaced instantly by a kind of trembling intent.

His hands aren't hovering anymore.

They settle on you with a kind of desperate, aching gravity.

His palms are warm, slightly damp with nervous sweat, and they cup the weight of your lace-covered breasts like he’s handling something volatile. Precious. Unstable.

He doesn’t hesitate this time. The second his skin makes contact with the lace, something inside him just—unspools.

He squeezes, harder than before, no longer treating you like something that might shatter. A rough, broken sound tears out of his throat, halfway between a groan and a sigh, and his eyes flutter shut as his fingers dig into the soft fabric.

“God,” he breathes, the word sounding like it’s been dragged out of him. “You're... You're beautiful."

He says it like a discovery. Like he’s the first person to ever find land.

He dips his head then, not waiting for encouragement, not giving himself time to second-guess the trajectory. He presses his face against your chest, burying himself in the soft curve of you with a desperation that makes your breath catch.

His lips are hot against the lace, dragging over the sensitive skin beneath with an open-mouthed kiss that feels more like worship than foreplay.

You gasp, your fingers tangling automatically into his hair, holding him there as he mouthes at the fabric. He doesn't seem to care that there’s still a layer of lace between his mouth and your skin; if anything, the friction seems to undo him.

His hands are restless now, roaming the shape of you with a focus that makes your head spin. He squeezes the weight of you, thumbs sweeping over the lace just to feel the texture of it against your skin. He’s mapping you. Memorizing the give of you under his palms, the way your breath hitches when his thumb grazes a sensitive spot.

Then he nips.

It’s shocking.

Not enough to hurt, just a sharp, intentional pressure of his teeth against the sensitive curve of your breast, right through the lace. A spark of heat jolts through you, electric and sudden, and your hips jerk against his before you can stop them.

“Spencer,” you gasp, your fingers tightening in his hair, pulling just enough to make him groan.

The sound of his name on your lips seems to snap whatever remaining thread of control he’s been clinging to. He lifts his head just enough to look at you, his expression dazed, mouth wet and eyes completely blown. There is a desperation in his gaze that seeps right into your bones.

"Off," he says.

It comes out wrecked, barely a word at all. Just a harsh, expelled breath shaped by consonants. He sounds almost pained, his voice cracking on the single syllable like it’s costing him something just to say it.

"Please."

The addition is ragged, tacked onto the end like a prayer he forgot he was saying. His hands are still cupping you, thumbs dragging over the lace with a restless, repetitive motion, like he’s trying to soothe an itch he can’t scratch.

You nod immediately.

His hands leave you, leaving a sudden cool space against your skin that makes you shiver. But before you can miss the warmth, his long fingers are skating up your back, searching for the clasp.

He doesn’t fumble. You expected him to—Spencer fumbles with doorknobs and coffee cup sleeves—but his hands are steady on your spine. There is a terrifying precision in the way his index finger finds the hook, the way his thumb slides the metal eye free with a click that sounds loud in the quiet room.

The tension in the band gives way with a second and third soft click, and then the pressure against your back simply... vanishes.

You feel the lace loosen immediately, the support slipping away, but Spencer doesn’t pull it off you right away. He leaves his hands resting against your spine for a moment, his splayed fingers spanning the width of your back, grounding himself against the reality of what he’s about to do. He’s breathing hard, you can feel the expansion of his chest against yours, a rapid, unsteady rhythm that matches your own.

Then, slowly, so slowly it feels like time has stretched thin, he slides his hands forward. He drags his palms around your ribcage, following the line of your bra until he reaches the straps. With a gentle tug, he pulls them down your arms, peeling the fabric away until it joins your dress at your waist.

The air hits your skin, cooler than you expected, and the sensation makes you shiver. But the reaction is purely physical. Emotionally, you are burning.

His eyes are locked on your chest in pure, unadulterated awe, like he’s just walked into a library he’s spent his entire life dreaming about and realized he’s allowed to read the books.

For a moment, he does absolutely nothing but look.

He doesn’t reach out. He doesn’t lean in. He just stares, his eyes cataloging every inch of newly exposed skin like he’s trying to build a photographic memory in real-time. It’s the kind of attention that would usually make you feel self-conscious, the kind that feels like a spotlight, but coming from Spencer it just feels… heavy. Like being known without speaking.

"You're so pretty," he breathes, and it sounds like a confession.

It’s soft, barely audible over the blood rushing in your ears, but the reverence in it knocks the air out of your lungs. He doesn’t say it like he’s commenting on your appearance; he says it like he’s acknowledging a force of nature, something inevitable and beautiful that he is helpless to resist.

Before the echo of the words has even faded, his restraint dissolves completely.

Before you can process the compliment, his head dips.

He doesn’t ease into it. He doesn’t start with the slow, drag of lips you were expecting. He just surges forward, his mouth closing over your nipple with a desperation that borders on clumsy.

The contact is electric—hot and wet and sudden. A sharp gasp tears out of your throat, your back bowing instinctively, pushing you deeper into the heat of his mouth. It feels like he’s trying to consume you, like he’s been starving for this exact moment for months and finally remembered how to eat.

His other hand moves to your neglected breast almost on instinct, his palm molding to the curve with a kind of desperate, grateful pressure. He’s greedy with it, squeezing and releasing in a rhythm that matches the pull of his mouth, the circle of his tongue, like he can’t get enough of the way you fill his hands.

He’s mapping you by touch and taste simultaneously, and you can feel him trembling against you, vibrating with the sheer effort of holding himself back from completely falling apart.

You look down at him, your fingers tangling tight in his hair, and the sight nearly undoes you. His eyes are squeezed shut, his lashes fluttering against his cheeks, his brow furrowed in intense concentration. He looks lost in you, wrecked in the most beautiful way, like the entire world has narrowed down to the feeling of your skin under his hands and the taste of you on his tongue.

He doesn't stay there long. It seems he needs to ensure equity in his research, or perhaps he just needs to know if the other side tastes just as overwhelming. He pulls away with a wet, audible pop that sends a jolt straight down your spine, his breath panting hot against the damp skin he's left behind.

Before you can even miss the heat, he’s shifting, turning his face to capture your other breast. He treats this one with the same desperate reverence, his tongue swirling over the peak before he sucks it deep into the heat of his mouth.

Your body reacts instinctively, your hips grinding down against his, seeking friction to match the wet heat of his mouth. You expect his hand to follow the lead, to switch sides so he can touch and taste in tandem, maintaining the rhythm he’d established.

But his hand doesn't move up.

Instead, his long, clever fingers trace a distracted path down your ribs, his palm skating over the curve of your waist before slipping beneath the bunched fabric of your sundress.

The air feels cool against your skin for a split second before his hand makes contact, sliding over the heated expanse of your stomach. He maps the terrain of your body with single-minded focus, bypassing the tease of your hip to slide directly toward the apex of your thighs.

He pulls his mouth away from your nipple with a wet, ragged gasp, but he doesn't give you—or himself—a moment of stillness. His lips immediately find the soft swell of your breast again, pressing open-mouthed kisses against the sensitive skin, his breath hot and uneven.

"You're so... God, you're perfect," he mumbles, the words muffled against your skin. He sounds delirious.

His hand doesn't hesitate beneath the fabric of your dress. His fingers trace the edge of your underwear, just for a second, a fleeting tactile confirmation of what lies beneath, before he’s hooking his fingers into the lace and pulling it to the side.

The drag of the lace against your hip is sharp and fleeting, but the touch of his fingers following immediately after is searing. He doesn’t wait, doesn’t ask for permission again—he’s already past the point of being able to form coherent sentences. He simply slides his fingers through the slick heat of you, his touch exploratory but devastatingly sure.

"Oh," he breathes, the sound vibrating against your chest. "You're... you're wet."

It’s a statement of fact, delivered with the same wonder he’d use to identify a rare botanical species. He pauses there for a beat, his fingers coated in the evidence of how much you want him, seemingly stunned by the data.

“So that’s—” He swallows hard, his voice cracking on a dry throat. “That’s for me?”

“Yes,” you breathe, your head tipping back as his fingers slide through the wetness again, testing the slickness with a fascination that makes your toes curl. “It’s all for you, Spencer.”

He makes a sound that is purely involuntary—a choked-off groan that vibrates against your ribs. He can’t seem to decide where to put his hands. He wants to touch you everywhere, memorize every reaction, but his focus keeps snapping back to the heat between your legs.

He seems to accept the data, files it away under a header labeled Miraculous, and then his brain clearly short-circuits from the overload of sensory input. Because his hand moves, but his mouth doesn't abandon its post.

He slides two long fingers inside you, slow and deliberate and the sensation makes your vision white out at the edges. It’s a stretch, a burning pressure that feels exactly like relief, and he seems just as overwhelmed by it as you are. His other hand remains on your breast, kneading the soft flesh with a rhythmic, desperate squeeze, his palm dragging over your nipple in a way that makes you gasp.

“You feel—” He chokes on the word, his breath fanning hotly over your damp skin. He presses a messy, open-mouthed kiss to the side of your breast, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin just enough to make you shiver. “You feel incredible.”

He doesn’t give you time to adjust to the intrusion. He starts to move, curling his fingers in a slow, devastating arc that drags against your inner walls with terrifying precision. It’s practiced in theory, even if he’s shaking with nerves, his mind clearly cataloging the anatomy of your pleasure even as he loses himself in the reality of it.

"Spencer," you gasp, your hands tightening in his hair, pulling hard enough to make him hiss against your skin.

He takes the sound as encouragement. He shifts his weight, pressing the heel of his hand against your clit in a way that makes your hips buck off the couch, a desperate, involuntary motion that chases more friction.

He catches the rhythm of your hips immediately, his brain fast-tracking the mechanics of your pleasure even as he’s losing the battle for his own composure. The heel of his hand grinds down in slow, deliberate circles, matching the curl of his fingers inside you, and the dual sensation is so sharp, so perfect, that your nails dig involuntarily into his scalp.

“God, yes,” he breathes, the words damp and hot against your skin. He doesn’t lift his head; he’s too consumed. He presses his face into the valley between your breasts, nipping at the sensitive skin there, kissing the marks he leaves like he’s trying to soothe the sting even as he inflicts it. “You’re so tight, I can’t—I can’t believe how you feel.”

His other hand is still busy on your breast, kneading with a desperation that borders on worship. He drags his thumb over your nipple, catching the peak just as his fingers curl inside you again, hitting a spot that makes your whole body jerk.

"Wait," you gasp, the word scraping against your throat.

Spencer stops instantly. It’s not a gradual slowdown; it’s a full cessation of motion, like a puppet whose strings were cut. His fingers still inside you, his hand pauses its ruthless rhythm, and his mouth lifts from your skin, though he stays close enough that his breath fans hot and damp against your sternum.

He looks up at you, eyes wide and wild, blinking rapidly like he’s waking from a deep sleep. There’s a sheen of sweat on his upper lip, his hair is a complete wreck from your fingers, and his mouth is swollen and red. He looks dazed, dangerously undone, but mostly he looks terrified.

“Did I hurt you?” The question tumbles out in a rush, his voice cracking on the syllables. His hand twitches against you, like he wants to pull away but is paralyzed by the fear that moving might make it worse. “Oh god, I hurt you, didn’t I? I was moving too fast, I should have been more careful, I know the anatomy but I didn’t—”

“Spencer,” you cut in softly, trying to catch his frantic gaze. You reach up, smoothing a hand over his messy hair, your thumb brushing his temple. He leans into the touch immediately, his eyes fluttering shut for a split second before snapping back open to search your face for any sign of pain. “Spencer, breathe. You didn’t hurt me.”

"But if it wasn't pain..." He falters, his brow furrowing so deeply it looks like it hurts. He looks confused, genuinely baffled as to why you would call a halt to something that seemed to be going so well. "Did I do it wrong? I know the statistics on female pleasure are often exaggerated in media, and I thought I was hitting the anterior wall but I might have miscalculated the angle, and if the pressure was too much—"

You can't help it; a soft laugh bubbles up in your chest, spilling out before you can stop it.

Spencer blinks, the rambling cutting off mid-syllable. The confusion in his eyes shifts, melting into something softer, though no less intense.

"Sorry," you murmur, your thumb stroking his cheekbone, feeling the frantic pulse of his heart hammering against his ribs where your bodies press together. "I didn't want to come yet."

The silence that follows is absolute.

Spencer stares at you, his mouth slightly open, the frantic apology dying on his tongue. The sheer confusion on his face would be funny if he didn't look so completely floored.

You just smile, shaking your head gently at his disbelief, and drop your hands to his waistband.

It takes him a second to process the shift. His brain is still stuck back on the confession, trying to calculate the variables of why exactly stopping is a good thing when the outcome was so promising, but then your fingers are working at the button of his dress slacks, and his thought process whites out entirely.

His breath hitches—a sharp, jagged intake of air that sounds almost like a sob. His hands, which had been hovering uncertainly over your hips, snap down to grip your thighs, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

"Is this—?" he starts, his voice pitching up high and tight, cracking on the question. He doesn't finish it. He can't. His eyes are glued to your hands, watching your fingers deftly slide the metal button through the loophole.

The sound of his zipper lowering in the quiet room is obscenely loud. It feels like a gunshot in the heavy atmosphere between you.

You tug the fabric of his slacks and boxers down just enough to free him, and the reaction is immediate. Spencer gasps, a full-body shudder racking his frame, his hips jerking up off the couch to help you, desperate to be rid of the barrier.

He’s hard—achingly, undeniably hard.

The sight of him, flushed and straining against his stomach, makes your mouth go dry. He feels heavy in your hand, hot to the touch, and when you wrap your fingers around the base, his entire body jerks like he’s been electrocuted.

"Ah—!" The sound is sharp, startled out of him. His head falls back, exposing the long, vulnerable line of his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently as he swallows. "Okay. Okay, that’s—God.”

"Do you want to keep going?" you start to ask, your voice dropping to a whisper that feels too loud in the quiet room. "Or should we—"

"Yes."

The answer cuts you off before you can even finish the sentence. It’s immediate, desperate, breathed out on an exhale that sounds like he’s been holding his breath for a lifetime.

"Please," he tacks on, his eyes snapping open to find yours, wide and desperate and completely unguarded. "I need—please."

You smile, soft and reassured, and shift your hips. You line him up, the head of him nudging against your entrance, hot and insistent. The stretch is slow as you lower yourself down, inch by inch, taking your time to adjust to the sheer size of him.

Spencer makes a sound like he’s dying.

It’s a low, broken noise that starts in his chest and rattles its way up his throat, sounding for all the world like a prayer that’s gone horribly wrong. His head drops back against the couch cushions, his eyes squeezing shut so tightly his lashes tremble, his mouth falling open on a silent gasp that looks almost painful.

You go slow, torturously slow, sinking down until your hips meet his. The feeling is overwhelming—a thick, impossible fullness that makes your breath hitch and your thighs tremble. You can feel him everywhere, the heat of him searing you from the inside out, the way his body strains to stay still under yours.

"Oh god," he chokes out, his voice wrecked. His hands find your waist again, but instead of gripping you, they just hold on, his fingers pressing into your skin like he's trying to anchor himself to the earth. "You're... you're tight. I can't—Jesus, you feel like..."

He doesn't finish the sentence. He can't seem to find the words in the English language—or any of the other ones he knows—that adequately describe the feeling of being inside you. Instead, he just exhales, a long, shuddering breath that ruffles the hair falling near your face.

His grip on your waist tightens, not to steer you, but just to hold on. His thumbs press into your hip bones, his long fingers spanning nearly the entire width of your torso, and he looks at you like you are the only thing keeping him from floating away.

"You can move," he breathes, the permission falling from his lips like he’s granting you access to a restricted section of the library. "Please, you can move.”

You lift your hips experimentally, dragging yourself up his length before sinking back down, and the friction is enough to make you both gasp. Spencer’s fingers flex against your waist, his breath hitching in a rhythm that matches your movements.

And as soon as you start to find a steady pace, his attention snaps right back to where it’s been desperate to go all night.

His hands leave your waist, sliding up your torso with a reverent urgency that makes your skin prickle. He doesn't ask; he just reaches, cupping the weight of your breasts in his palms like he’s checking their density, confirming their reality. He squeezes, his fingers digging into the soft flesh with a pressure that borders on possessive, his thumbs sweeping over your nipples in time with the roll of your hips.

It’s like he’s trying to physically merge with them. He pushes them together, his palms pressing inward to create a deep, soft valley, and then he’s burying his face in it with a groan that sounds absolutely wrecked.

He breathes you in, his nose brushing against your sternum, his exhale hot and damp against your skin. He turns his head, rubbing his cheek against the curve of your breast like a cat claiming territory, his hair tickling your skin in the sweetest, most maddening way.

"Perfect," he mumbles, the word vibrating directly into your chest. "You're so—God, I can't believe I'm touching you. Who gave me the right?"

"I did," you gasp out, the rhythm of your hips making your voice shaky. You bury a hand in his hair, holding him close to you as you move. "You literally asked permission five minutes ago."

He lets out a huff of breath that might be a laugh, but it sounds more like a sob of relief. He presses a wet, open-mouthed kiss to the inner curve of your left breast, right over the hammering of your heart. "Best decision I ever made."

He seems to lose himself in the slide of skin against skin. He’s not just touching you anymore; he’s interacting with you, experimenting with what makes you gasp and what makes your internal muscles clamp down around him. When you grind down particularly hard, he whines low in his throat, his hands spasming against your ribs, and he ducks his head to capture a nipple in his mouth again.

He sucks hard, the sudden pull of his mouth sending a sharp jolt of pleasure that arcs all the way to your toes. It makes your rhythm stutter, a broken moan tearing from your throat as your walls flutter around him.

He groans at the reaction, the vibration humming against your sensitive skin. He’s completely lost to it now, any remaining semblance of his usual control shattered. He lifts his head just enough to switch sides again, but he doesn’t let go with his hands. Instead, he kneads the heavy weight of them, pushing them up and together, burying his face between them with a desperate, breathless sound.

"Spence," you gasp, your fingers tightening in his hair, tugging hard enough to make him hiss. He doesn't pull away; he just leans into the sting, his tongue flicking out to taste the salt-sweat gathering in the valley of your cleavage. "I'm gonna—fuck, I'm gonna come."

He doesn't stop. If anything, the confession acts like a detonator.

He pulls his face out from the valley of your breasts just enough to look up at you, his eyes dark, blown wide, and utterly frantic. He looks like a man watching a supernova, terrified and awestruck all at once.

“Yes,” he breathes, his voice cracking on a desperate whine. “Please, let me—let me feel it.”

The coil in your belly snaps, heat flooding your veins with a force that makes your vision blur. Your body seizes up, your back arching instinctively, pushing your chest further into his hands as the wave crashes over you.

You cry out his name, your voice breaking, and Spencer takes it like a revelation.

He doesn't stop moving, but he gentles the roll of his hips, guiding you through the aftershocks with a terrifyingly precise intuition. He watches your face with rapt attention, his eyes darting across your features like he’s trying to memorize the exact expression of your pleasure. The feeling of you pulsing around him drags a guttural sound from his throat, raw and unfiltered.

"God," he chokes out, his hands trembling against your ribs. "I can feel you... I can feel everything."

The sensation of you coming around him seems to be the final straw. His control, already hanging by a thread, evaporates. His hips snap up to meet yours, a sharp, involuntary thrust that punches a startled moan out of you, but he’s gone too far to stop it now.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I can't—" The apology is a fractured chant, breathless and desperate. His head falls forward, burying itself back against the soft sanctuary of your chest as his rhythm breaks apart completely. "You feel too good, I can't hold it—”

"It's okay," you breathe out, the words hitching in your throat as his movements turn sharp and erratic. Your hands find his hair again, tangling in the messy curls to hold him against you, grounding him as he starts to unravel. "Spence, let go. It's okay."

The permission seems to break the last dam.

He lets out a sound that is half-groan, half-sob, muffled completely against your skin. His hips snap up one last time, harder than before, and then he’s freezing, his entire body growing taut.

A moment later, he collapses.

The tension in his frame releases all at once, leaving him heavy and pliant against you. He shudders violently, a full-body reaction that feels like it’s rattling his bones, and you feel the pulse of him deep inside as he falls apart. He’s making low, broken sounds against your chest, frantic little noises of relief that taper off into wet, shaky breaths.

For a long time, the only sound in the room is the ragged harmony of your breathing. The air feels thick, charged with the static of what just happened, the smell of sex and warmth hanging between you.

Eventually, his breathing slows, the ragged gasps smoothing out into something deep and rhythmic, but he doesn’t move. If anything, he seems to be actively trying to merge his skeleton with yours.

He keeps his face tucked firmly against your chest, his nose pressing into the soft curve of your breast, his hair a wild halo of sweat-damp curls tickling your skin. Every so often, a small, involuntary shudder ripples through him, an aftershock of the intensity, and he tightens his arms around your waist like he’s afraid you might evaporate.

You can feel the frantic thud of his heart where his chest is pressed to yours—fast, too fast, like a bird trapped in a cage.

You run your fingers through his hair, the damp strands clinging to your fingertips, and scratch gently at his scalp. The simple touch seems to soothe him immediately; you feel the tension drain out of his shoulders, his muscles turning liquid against you. He sighs, a long, contented exhale that ruffles the skin over your heart, and presses a kiss there—lazily, without any of the earlier desperation, just a soft, reverent press of his lips.

"Spence?" you murmur, your voice raspy in the quiet.

"Mhm," he hums, the sound vibrating through your chest. He doesn't lift his head. If anything, he tries to burrow deeper, nuzzling into the softness of your breast like he's found the perfect pillow. "Don't talk yet. I'm rebooting."

You smile, your chest rising and falling with a quiet laugh that he feels instantly. You keep stroking his hair, letting your nails graze lightly against his scalp, feeling the way he leans into the touch like a starved plant leaning toward the sun. He feels heavy in your arms, a solid, warm weight that pins you to the couch in the most grounding way possible.

"Take your time," you whisper.

Spencer Reid is either busy, or he’s talking. Rambling in soft tones about work, or physics, or quite literally anything—you’ve heard him talk at length about centipedes before—because that’s just the type of person he is. So to see him just…sitting there, picking at the skin around his nails, neither speaking nor acting, is uncanny. 

Your boyfriend has been replaced with a statue, and it’s been like this all day. You noticed something was off when you first woke, and you were immediately able to identify the problem. You had hoped—evidently in vain—that Spencer might broach the topic himself, exercise his usually excellent communication skills, but no; he stayed quiet, grew quieter. And now it’s 6pm and you’re elbow-deep in the sink washing dishes, and Spencer’s still sitting on the couch, fidgeting in silence.

Or you think he is, until you feel a pair of arms wrap around you from behind. His chest against your back, nose pressed into your hair. You purse your lips, wait a beat, then two, for him to speak before setting the dishes in the sink and reaching for a towel.

“You okay?” you ask, voice light.

“Mhm.”

After drying your hands, you shimmy around until you’re facing him, brows set in a small frown. “Sure?”

Spencer flashes you a small, visibly strained smile. “Yeah, I’m sure. Are you, uh—” he clears his throat. “Are you all packed?”

“Yes sir.”

“And you’re not missing anything?” he asks. “You, um, forgot your toothbrush when we went on that road trip, and—”

“I have my toothbrush,” you say softly. 

Spencer nods. He swallows like it’s painful. “Good.”

For a moment, you just watch him, hoping that he might take your look of concern as a sign to speak up but, of course, he doesn’t. 

So, with gentle hands you reach up to cup his cheeks. “Spence,” you murmur, “I know something’s up.”

He lets his eyes flutter closed, and he leans into your touch with a soft sigh. But he doesn’t speak.

“You worried about this trip?” you prod.

You feel it under your palm, the way he bites the inside of his cheek before answering, “No. I’m not— well, I…” he sighs. “I don’t know.”

Leaning back against the countertop, you wait with patience. You keep your hands on his face, thumbs brushing tender circles against his skin as you let him organise his thoughts, giving him as much time as he needs.

“It doesn’t make sense, logically,” he eventually mutters. “What I’m feeling, I mean. I-I keep trying to…reason with it, but there’s just this— this voice in the back of my head.” He lowers his voice until he’s speaking in almost a whisper. “I just can’t help but worry you’re not gonna come back.”

His words catch you off guard. Your brows twitch, and he immediately begins to backtrack.

“And I know it’s stupid, and— and I know that, obviously, you won’t—"

“Spencer.” You cut him off carefully, hands moving from his face to his neck.

He falls silent, lowers his head. Shame seems to taint his entire being, weighing him down.

You wait a beat, trying to gauge where he’s at, what he’s thinking, before asking, “Is this about Gideon?”

All he does in response is smile. Self-conscious. Sardonic.

And it breaks your heart.

You know he’s been sensitive, more so than usual, since Gideon left—since Elle left, even. Since the awful incident with Tobias Hankel, the weight he carried—still carries—in the wake of it all. You can’t imagine how he must feel, and it’s rare that you see it at all because he handles it all so silently. Like he’s afraid of being too much. Too human. 

“Spence,” you murmur his name again so he meets your gaze, “of course I’m gonna come back.”

“I know.” He shakes his head, takes a deep breath like he’s trying to will himself into being okay, and then he deflates once more. He leans forward and touches his forehead to yours like you’re the only thing keeping him upright, and he closes his eyes. “I just can’t stop…thinking.”

“About what?”

“Sleeping in an empty bed for a week,” he mutters.

“And?”

He sighs. “The hypothetical—very hypothetical—scenario where you…enjoy being there, away from me, more than you enjoy being here.”

“Oh, honey…” your hands slip down further, fingers curling into the neckline of his sweater. “Spence—”

“I know it’s unfounded,” he says. His hands find your wrists, and he holds onto you like you may disappear if he lets go. “I know I’m being…clingy. Ridiculous.”

“You’re not being ridiculous.” You release his sweater, opting instead to entwine your fingers with his, holding his hands. “You’re allowed to worry.”

“I keep—” A laugh cuts through his words. Soft, light, but still laced with that slight self-consciousness that just makes you want to hug him and never let him go. “I keep hoping that Reagan will end up…falling down, or something. That way you won’t have to go.”

“Hopefully not while I’m there?”

“Oh, no— of course not!” His voice cracks as he pulls away, wide-eyed. “God, I’d never wish for—”

“I know, I know.” You squeeze his hands with a quiet chuckle, one that, thankfully, he mirrors.

You pull him back in, pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek as his lips curl into a small smile. When you lean back, you find that smile to be tainted, still, with a subdued sadness—less than there had been previously, but still more than what you want to see.

“Hey,” you murmur.

“Hey,” he echoes.

“I’m gonna come back, and— Spencer, look at me.” You cup his cheek as he tries to turn his face away, gently guiding him back to you. “And I’m gonna call you, okay? Every day, I promise.”

A frown crosses his face at your words, and he shakes his head. “You don’t need to…placate me,” he says. “I’m being childish—”

“I want to call you,” you interrupt, voice firm. “I wanna hear your voice. I’m gonna miss you, too, you know.”

His gaze drops to his feet, but even as the silence starts to sting you take care not to rush him. It takes him a few moments but, eventually, he meets your gaze once more, holds it like a lifeline. “You’ll call me?”

“Every day,” you repeat.

He nods. Slowly, like his head weighs twice what it should—but it’s still a nod. You pull him closer, press a kiss to the tip of his nose, before releasing his face.

“Here.” You fumble with the clasp of your necklace, removing it so you can press it into his palm. “Hang onto this for me, okay?”

A stretch of silence. Spencer stares blankly at the necklace, like he doesn’t know what to do with it, before shaking his head. “I can’t,” he says. “This— this is your favourite. You never take it off—"

“Then it gives me all the more reason to come back, right?” you ask, smiling. 

Of course, Spencer himself is reason enough to come back. You could tell him that a thousand times, but there’d still be a part of him that doesn’t—can’t, for whatever reason—believe it. 

It’s your favourite necklace, sure, you wear it every day, and going without it will undoubtedly feel weird, but you’d happily leave it behind for Spencer. You’d leave every piece of jewellery—no, everything, period, for him. You just wish there were a way to make him understand that. 

So you settle for putting the necklace on him, not because it “gives you a reason to come back”, but because it gives him part of you to keep with him. Something that he can hold onto; a physical reminder of how much you love him.

You pull him into a hug, squeezing him tight like it may somehow convey, wordlessly, all the things you wish he’d believe. Like, if you hold him tight enough, you might infect him with just a fraction of what you feel for him. 

His arms wrap around your waist once more, and you feel the tension that’s been wracking him all day begin to ease. He presses his face to your neck, mumbles “I’m gonna miss you” into your skin like a prayer, and you murmur back “I know, I’m gonna miss you, too.” 

Time seems to stop existing entirely, and you have no idea how much of it passes during your embrace (a minute? Five? Maybe more?), but when you pull yourself away Spencer seems as though he’s had new life breathed into him. He smiles, kisses your lips, holds your waist not like you’re going to vanish into thin air, but like you’re something precious. And you think for a moment that maybe your hug did work, even if it’s only for a short time. 

“So.” You run your fingers up and down his arms, tracing the creases in his sweater. “Are you gonna drive me to the airport tomorrow, or am I gonna have to call a cab?”

“Why would you call a cab?” he asks, frowning. “I’m not at work.”

“I dunno, in case you feel like driving us off of a bridge, so I miss my flight.”

Spencer’s jaw drops. “I would never—”

“I know.” You chuckle, poking his shoulder as a playful grin creeps up your face. “I’m kidding.”

He rolls his eyes, very obviously suppressing a smile of his own, and kisses your forehead. “I’ll drive,” he murmurs, “don’t worry.”